The proposal that a Commission should be appointed to establish standard terms of ployment for domestic service the outcome of the desire im Great Britain to remove the prefudiees which are alleged to lose that occupation to many young women, Miss Margaret Bondfield has gone out of her way to dignity domestic service with considerable justification, The feeling that it is socially suspect, ju spite of the congested state of the female labour and the far greater ies now offered to its votaries by the mere operation of the law of supply and demand, fg difficult to eradicate. When all is said and done young women judge of the merits of a career, " not' so much on' its intrinsic advantages, as in the light of its facilities for transfer to the other career to which even the most ardent ist, in every class, aspi 3 long as hope can conveniently last. In other words, the restaurant. waitress, the factory worker, the clerk has better matrimonial _prospects than the domestic servant. The Togical notion that the trained manager of a household is better fitted to run a home of her own fg held to be of little account by the stupid sex in whose hands—theoretically—the determination of feminine destiny rests.
The creation of the Commission, to be composed of a majority of women, depends on the success of a private bill. At! this stage in parliamentary business the chances of sucha bill becoming law are not impressive, unless the Government can make special provision for its welfare. The probability is that this measure will, before many weeks fare out, be one of the victims of the slaughter of the innocents with which parliamentarians are so familiar, Whether such a commission would achieve anything must be left to the experts to decide, The servant problem is one of the most persistent of the ills of civilization: "Farmers' daughters refused to work, despised labour sat idle and amused themselves, beautifying their hands with cosmetics whil they played on the harpsichord. 'That is the complaint of England of the XIXth Century in the throes of the economic depression after the Napoleonic wars. Early Victorian literature shows that the middle class household relied a good deal on male labour' for the work which is now done] by the female servant. "Does. the male domestic of Mrs. Boftin hear me?" boomed the majestic Wilfer. The male servitor who' brings out the tiffin basket foy the City clerk and his wife on Hampstead Heath, in the beginning of good Queen Vie~ toria's reign, is portrayed as a typical figure. Higher up In th social scale, the belles of May fair had their negro pages. Lower down there were the drudges, the poor little erertures of whom Dickens wrote so feelingly. From them, in happier case, sprang the Tweenies for the greater glory of Sir James Barrie, Exempt from mention in thi discussion must be that magnificent, awe-inspiring tribe of Butlers. The majesty of their] occupation can hardly come within the scope of an inquiry on domestic service, After all, the Speaker's butler, only the other day, contributed a weighty letter to the "Times" and was) given the due obeisance of {he leader page. Mr. P, 13. Wodehouse has created Jeeves, Mr. George Bernard Shaw, Jugsins, Sir James Barrie, the Admirable Crichton, thus making amends: for Mr. Sam Weller's irreverent behaviour at Bath and Thack-croy's impiety with Jeames. It would be a pity, in some ways, if the Commission far the Better Appreciation of Domestic Service—perhaps that would be the label—did not function. "The evidence of amiable ladies! groaning under the tyranny of cooks-general, flighty parlour' maids—does that class or ruthless "lady" helps might be highly diverting. It would) fulfil the highest standards classical humour for tragedy would be its keynote, Then let the memory be cast back to the days when servants were allowed Sunday afternoon off once a month, wore clothes strictly conforming to their employers' wil were not allowed followers' and slept in the attic. Yes: there may be something in this, complaint of a shortage. But will a Commission be an effective instrument of reform?
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.