A JOLLY UNDERTAKING

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19033, 10 June 1924, Page 10

A JOLLY UNDERTAKING

MISS BONDFIELD’S ADVICE TO DOMESTICS. From a Lady Correspondent. LONDON, March 25. The time was when the Labour Party in England was reputed to be absolutely antagonistic to every scheme of migration, and it is well to call attention to a notable speech made by Miss Margaret Bondfield, the one woman on the Labour Front Bench, for the good spirit it displays. She addressed a number of domestics on the eve of sailing for Australia, and gave them some excellent ad vice. Miss Bondfield urged the girls while on the voyage out to enter into the “fun of the thing,” and have as good a time as they could. “You must look on yourselves in the light of pioneers, you know,” she said. “If you are difficult you will let us down and make things much more difficult for those who will follow later.” she asked them to write home and tell not merely of the things that went wrong, but of the thing that went Tight. “I understand that there will be no question about your getting employment,” she told the girls. “There are more mistresses wanting you than there are girls going out, and it is definitely understood that if you don’t like your first place you will be assisted by the committees with which you will be put in touch, to get another place.” Miss Bondfield pointed out that tke conditions and conventions were different in Australia from those prevailing in England, and asked them to start with the idea that this employment question had two sides. On the one side the Australian Government had guaranteed arrangements which would prevent them from being stranded, and which would secure rnat they got suitable situations under proper conditions. The girls, on their side, were under contract to give at least twelve months’ service. “I don’t know what is Dehind it,** she went on, with a smile, “but I rather suspect that in all probability you may be tempted to accept some other sort of service, some other kind of union before the twelve months are up. And we quite agree that if you meet some good honest man who wants you to become his wife and wants you to run his home for him, that would be one of the most fruitful sources of happiness to yourself and of benefit to -the community at large. But do remember .you are asked to give at least twelve months* service before you enter into that kind of obligation.” They would probably find that wages were exceedingly good compared with the standard in the Old Country, and that conditions were very much easier, but she wanted them to remember that the mistress of the household had a right to expect in return a real, good, honest day’s work. That was only playing the game. Some of the girls might get the opportunity of going into the country districts. “I am a country girl my self,” she told them. “I was born and bred in the country, and I would like very much for some of you town girls to be sufficiently adventurous to be willing' to make the trial; only don’t expect town conditions. There are joys in the country, in my opinion, far excelling the joys in the town.”

Miss Bondfield reminded the girls that they would still be within the British Empire, and asked them to remember that they had a reputation to maintain. They were doing some-

thing much bigger than merely going to search for a job. They were going to carry with them, as it were, the reputation of English women, and she wanted them to make that reputation a fine thing in Australia, to be splendid in their work and play, and in their personal conduct, so' that the people in Australia would say, “We want some more of these English women.”