Editorial Reflections

Ladies' Mirror, Volume I, Issue 7, 1 January 1923, Page 4

Editorial Reflections

Holiday Changes MIDSUMMER air, wondrous time of long days, glorious skies and nights of magic insistently calling to the great outdoors, is now upon us, and with it comes the recurrent problem of where and how the annual holiday shall be spent. The brine in the blood of our forefathers ever since Britain was set down in the broad Atlantic, transmitted to us in fullest measure by our pioneering sires, drives most of us to the hundreds of magnificent beaches, broad to the open ocean or sheltered in some land-locked harbour with which Nature has sc bountifully endowed these sea-girt isles. Willy-nilly the sea forces itself down the throat of the holiday seeker, and usua'ly it has its own way, the answer to the call being a very emphatic one. Some there are amongst Ui. who, for economic reasons, perhaps, fail to answer the call, and thereby run the risk of a greater tax upon their economic resources than any reasonable holiday would create. The absolute essentiality of a break in the usual habits of life and in outlook and environment is beyond argument. It is one of the surest and most dependable deposits in the bank of health, an insurance against "nerves" and ennui, and a reservoir of stored energy that keeps the body's mechanism going when otherwise a breakdown may have been on the horizon. Seaside, mountain or farm for the city dweller, a change for the country dweller to the closer contacts of the cities. These are in the minds of every Mirror reader at the moment, and, for the nation's good, as well as that of the individual, we trust that the urge will be allowed the fullest sway possible, and that one way or another means will be found to give nature a chance by a complete change, for a brief spell, in the habits and methods of the daily routine. And the change must be complete. No use to go to another spot and do exactly the same things as in the everyday round; drop every little thing that compounds the customary life. Get out of doors and stay out; forget the existence of servants, brooms and dust, and for the while drop everything that calls to mind the multifarious duties that combine to make up the gentle art of housekeeping. Qirls and the Home T'HE unpopularity of housework as an occupation for girls -*- has been causing concern the world over. It has been suggested that the spread of education is the cause, that the State must accept the blame for educating girls highly enough to send shoals of them to offices. But it is clear that the girls who take sufficient advantage of the education offered them would never have been domestic servants, even in the days when domestic service was less unpopular than it is to-dav, The importation of girls from Britain to relieve the shortage is a very partial solution, for the trained servant is nearly extinct in Britain, where the revolt from housework is as extensive as it is here. The main reason for the lack of efficient service in the home is fairly apparent. One has but to contrast the hours and conditions offered to girls in the home with those held out in the factories. Many of the factories employing large staffs of girls have the five-day week; they offer high wages with prospects of good positions for the ambitious; they offer morning and sometimes afternoon tea; they are models of bright cleanliness; they offer every concession to attract girls, even to the organisation of games and recreation clubs, and they hold out many tempting baits to girls and to their parents to attract them to the factory door. On the other hand, women who require help do not go out of their way, with few exceptions, to make service in the home attractive to girls in the impressionable—which is the teachable--period of their lives. Many mistresses expect their maids to be on duty all day, with only one or two evenings a week out. They supervise every movement when they are in, catechise the girls as to their movements when they are out, and generally act as supervisors and controllers of the girls' every hour and act. This censorship becomes oppressive, and

with other factors tends to make recruits for the factories from girls who, with more rational treatment, would have helped to solve the Help! Help! problem. Women must move with the times if they are to find a perspective in the new day and outlook of the younger generation, or it will be found that the last girl has gone to the industrial arena. We will have to make some change in our ideas and domestic schemes. If women think it beneath them, or too much of a bore, to assist in the work of the house, then it is likely that they will find themselves short of much-needed aid. If servants cannot be kept to work in relays, then those who are employed should have their definite hours of work, outside of which the mistress should undertake the duties of the home. Selfish women who refuse to recognise any such responsibility have done much to spoil the chances of the sensible woman with the rational point of view. The young, overburdened mother is paying for the less heavily laden woman who wants to play at being mistress of a home without soiling her hands. She seeks to shirk her duty, but servant girls, by their gradual evanishment, are deciding that whether she wants to or not she must do her duty. More intelligence must be displayed in the conduct of the home if a permanent improvement in the shortage of help is to be effected. Mistresses who realise what is expected on their side of the contract, and who themselves understand good work, will find girls of the right sort to help them out, so long as there is a general effort in this direction. Domestic service must develop in the future along the lines which nursing has followed in the past. The day of the "slavey" has gone, and the skilled work-woman must take her place, just as the smart and efficient nurse of to-day has put Sairey Gamp out of business. A Healthy Nation THE campaign conducted throughout the Dominion during the past few months has of late been a little obscured by the hurly-burly of the general election, but its impress is abiding and indelible, and its effects will remain, an influence for health and sanity of treatment, upon no small proportion of the rising generation. The number of people who "enjoy" poor health is rapidly diminishing, an open-air living race has little sympathy to spare on the professionally delicate, and the hypochrondriac is very decidedly at a discount. The fainting and anaemic girl of a generation or two back has vanished—exiled by the robust maid who does not think slenderness the only virtue, and who is ready to let her figure develop along its own lines. It was the passing of the health-destroying iron-clad corset which gave the athletic, high-spirited girl of to-day her chance, and it was in preaching the doom of that instrument of torture that the medical profession first began the campaign that has developed into the modern cult" of health and health-preserving methods. It is hard for those who were not in the fight to realise what a task the doctors set themselves when they began their attack upon the "wasp waist," but when that great battle ended in victory, some of them were so deeply impressed with the need for further education that they could not drop the crusade, and thus began the campaign for general hygiene which has done so much for the development of the race. Of such is Dr. Truby King, but he blazed a new trail, and he has carried his fiery cross through New Zealand, through Australia, and through many of the crowded areas of the Old World, earning the undying gratitude of thousands of mothers in spreading a gospel whose results, already magnificent, will be of marvellous utility in the future. No longer is any woman expected to rear her children by instinct; the resources of science are at her disposal, she is asked to take nothing on trust, and methods and systems tried a thousand times and under all conditions are j women, for whom no praise could be adequate. Medical men and women are, with a good deal of altruism, urging the way of health and prevention of illness, rather than the cure of it when it fastens its claws upon the body. This is the aim of medical science to-day, and though it has a long road still to travel, it has already done much to check the spread of evil.