DEARTH OF GOOD MAIDS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 142, 19 June 1939, Page 10

DEARTH OF GOOD MAIDS

Sabotage In The Home

HPIIE Tokio housewife to-day is fac- i nig a genuine domestic crisis. In i the past there has been no serious scr- t vant problem in Japan. Maids were cheap and abundant, if not always well t trained. Now, however, circumstances havej; greatly changed. Women are going i into many more brandies of work aud v the factory, with its regular hours oi ] work and higher money wage*, is al- c trading many girls away from domes- I tie service. ] This is especially tine at the present tune when several hundred thousand <_ new industrial workers arc being taken '.! on every years because of .the cxcep- I tioual activity in munitions production and related industries. Labour exchanges report that domes- < tic service is one of the few occupations t where olicruig., of places outnumber i applicants for employment. And this is borne out by the experiences of a number of Japanese frieudsjjjpf the pro- : lessiunal and middle classes. They all report that maids are hard ' to get and harder to hold, that they leave at the first intimation of sickness in the family, or any other dc\elopment that requires extra work. One cause of the domestic crisis is the disappearance of some old patriarchal customs without the substitution of other relations. In former times household service was in the nature of an apprenticeship for marriage. It was considered rather a favour to a girl if a mistress woull take her into service for a year or two, teaching her Japanese housekeeping and simple etiquette. The girl m .such a case received a very small money v.age, but was rather considered as an adopted member of the family, sharing its simple festivals and outings, receiving clothing as well as board, and ultimately some handsome presents for the wedding which was the normal end of her apprenticeship. iSomehow this practice has gone out of fashion, and with it the family loyalty of the old-fashioned Japanese main. The incomes of the overwhelming majority of Japanese are so low that it is impossible, in most cases, to replace the attraction of the old-fash--wned tutelage with the inducement of high ■wages. As a result the cry gues up in many Japanese middle-class households that the present-day maid is capricious aud

unstable; and not a lew JapaneM middle-class homes are permanently o> temporarily without servants. The foreign housewife, in Japan troubles of her own in the domestic sphere. Operating, as a rule, on a bci get less restricted than that of her Jap unese friends, she can and almost in variably docs pay wages well above tl.e prevailing scale. But there are p»y chologicui obstacles to foreign housekeeping in Tokio that are beyond tb* power of g r old to remove. The foreign employer must make h«‘t choice between two types of servants in Tokio: those who have and those who have not worked in foreign houses. The latter, strong and simple countrv girls, it trained, often make the most devoted servants. But the process cl tra.ning is a protractcu anrt nerve-rack mg one lor mistress and maid alike. I’or to the Japanese peasant girl • foreign-style house is a strange p!:?c, full of pitfalls and complication's. Shs is profuondly ignorant of foreign hou- p keeping and habits; everything, from the practice of serving women before men to the care of furniture (which i" almost non-existent in the Japanese house i, and the use of knives, r‘ *< ’ini spoons is new and unaccustomc i. (’n the other hand, girls who nu\e worked in foreign houses feel the ■ selves part of a small class of “»;<’• ciabsts,” a sort of labour aristocrat;) and are apt to be very conscious of inuir’’uiilm al accomplishments and depart on slight provocation. Moreover, the tenure of maids of b/h these classes is usually likely to be abruptly interrupted by the inci' f of matrimony. A trait of the Japanese maid that is also baffling to the t 'r< employer i-> that she seldom, ii e-*', gives the true leason of her decis 'ii quit. The official cause is us .' y • dying grandmother or an ailing rdhef wdio demands all her filial attent n. When one further notes the deep* rooted Oriental tradition as “squeeze as part of the perquisites of the cook J may be realised that house-keeping 10 Tokio, as elsewhere, has its spC'ift* problems and tribulations. The “squeeze’' consists of more or less discreet padding of the food accounts* If these irregular expenditures ai« checked too closely the cook resorts tn subtle forms of sabotage; the roast beef mysteriously becomes tough, th« vegetables stringly, and the pastrycrust soggy.