DOMESTIC SERVICE IS SOCIAL SERVICE [To 11w Editor of the
SPECTATORd
Sin,—The subjects " Ilomecroft Policy " and " Domestic Service " are intimately connected. We need to learn how to use food as well as how to produce it. In Finland the teaching of vegetable and fruit cultivation goes hand in hand with that of cooking.
We need also to learn the economic preparation of food. A present given to an intelligent young wife of a skilled workman on short time has introduced and proved the value of a three-tiered steamer cooker (price 8s. 9d.). My friend and her husband are delighted ; a piece of salt beef, pease pudding, carrots, turnips, potatoes, apples and rice were all beautifully cooked and the nourishment conserved in such a steamer on one small gas ring with the expenditure
of two pennyworth of gas. This utensil was apparently unknown in this social circle ; it is now being bought by other housewives, who find it not only economical but labour- saving.
Your " Non-gloria " Huddersfield correspondent hits the right nail on the head when she says that domestic help is needed " in thousands of middle-class homes." They arc suffering frightfully from high prices, high wages, and the loss of the kindly efficient maiden aunt and useful niece of the despised Victorian Era. There is scope in this direction for social service of a very high order. If the young University women of the present day would give three to six months' ' domestic- help in some middle-class household after taking their degree, they would flind the personal experience splendid, and have the satisfaction of relieving some overworked, tired, discouraged mother.
" If youth but knew, if old age only could."
But youth is the most promising factor in the case. A girl friend, a Ph.D., did serve like this at the beginning . of this year with great success and satisfaction on both sides.
The formation of a " National Housewives' Association," non-party, non-sectarian, democratic, such as they have in every district in Sweden, to which all girls over eighteen and women could belong, would do much in the way of collecting information and disseminating the best results .of varied experience. To this employers, employed, as well as housewives who do their own work could all belong. Such an association could do much to encourage the " Homecroft -Policy," reduce high prices, and obtain a pure food supply. -Government Commissions of Inquiry are useful, but they need to be supported by a National Association of House- wives which need not be too exclusively feminine.—I am,
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