THE HELP QUESTION.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 24, 11 June 1892, Page 604

THE HELP QUESTION.

‘ Many labour organizations are well enough in their way, no doubt,’ said one housekeeper to another, ‘but what I want to see is an organization which shall encourage excellence in labour rather than efforts to do the least amount of work and extort therefrom the greatest amount of money, for this seems to be the aim and object of most of the unions as they at present exist. lam wearing my life out because I cannot find good help. I want a seamstress, an upstairs girl and a nurse. I tolerate my cook merely because I do not know where to find a better one, and my gardener and useful man is so distressingly bad and useless that he really must go at once.’ ‘ Yours is a common complaint,’ was the reply. ‘ I have tried several seamstresses, with the most discouraging results. One of them hemmed a set of sheets, one hem turned each way, leaving it a matter of doubt which was the right and which the wrong side. Another cut the skirts of two wash-dresses so short they had to be pieced down before they were finished. Another folded her hands in her lap and gazed out of the window, on one occasion, just twenty minutes by the clock—that I took note of—and I don’t know how much longer, for, when I first observed her, she was thus occupied. When I spoke to her, she was angry, and asked : “Do you expect me to work like a galley slave ? I was raised a lady, I was, and I ain’t goin’to slave for no tyrant like you.” And she didn’t but all the same I paid her for a week’s time, when she didn’t do the equivalent of two days’ work. ‘ My upstairs girl never moves an article of furniture when she sweeps, unless she is specially told to do so, and her dusting is really no dusting at all. She merely swishes the duster around where it will be easiest seen, and leaves all out-of-the way places untouched. L T nless I have every article taken from the beds, she merely spreads the clothes smoothly back and leaves them, without turning over the mattresses. I caught my last nurse girl giving the baby soothing syrup, so that she could go out evenings when I was away. The child was ill for weeks, and we could not imagine what ailed him. And I seem to have as good help as the average. They all appear to make it a point to do something that upsets and neutralises whatever good there may be about them. ‘ One of my friends tells me that she gets the best results by employing first class help and exacting first-class service. But I fail to find such help at any price. I have tried young lady helps, independently-inclined daughters of well-to-do families, but they are the hardest of all to manage. They do not conform to any rules, neither are they willing to perform in a thorough fashion the duties belonging to their position. If I try to encourage them and in any way help them along, they take advantage of my amiability and neglect their work. If lam decided and stern lam a monster, and without feeling for the poor and despondent. Oh, dear, but it is a problem, and one which I despair of being able to solve.’