s is very amusing. One girl we
had frankly asked my wife to allow her to take a dress she admired to her
dressmaker, in order that she might have one made up like it. Whilst
girls in the upper and middle classes are very handy with their fingers,
and often make up their own hats and dresses, the servant-class despise
to do this, and almost invariably employ milliners, who often cheat them
dreadfully, knowing that they appreciate a hat or a dress much according
to the price they have paid for it, and the amount of show it makes. In
hats and bonnets this is specially noticeable; I have often seen our
servants with hats or bonnets on, which cannot have cost them less than
three or four pounds.

The shortest and upon the whole the best way to get a servant is by going
to one of the numerous registry offices. Some of these exist merely to
palm off bad servants upon you; but there are always offices of good
reputation, which will not recommend a girl they know absolutely nothing
about.

The needlewoman is little in vogue here; but as nearly everyone washes at
home, washerwomen are plentiful; their wages run from four to five
shillings a day, according to their capabilities, food being of course
included.

In spite of constant shipments from England, servants are always at a
premium, and I need scarcely point out what an excellent opening these
colonies afford for women-servants. Unfortunately, but a very small
proportion of the daughters of the poorer colonial working-class will go
into service. For some inexplicable reason, they turn up their noses at
the high wages and comparatively light work offered, and prefer to
undertake the veriest drudgery in factories for a miserable pittance. At
a recent strike in a large shirt-making factory in Melbourne, it came out
that a competent needlewoman could not make more than eighteen shillings
a week even by working overtime, and that the general average earnings of
a factory girl were only eleven to thirteen shillings a week. But so
great is the love of independence in the colonial girl, that she prefers
hard work and low wages in order to be able to enjoy freedom of an
evening. It is in vain that the press points out that girls whose parents
do not keep servants are accustomed to perform the same household duties
in their own homes that are required of them in service; that work which
is not degrading at home cannot be degrading in service; and that they
will be the better wives f