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 for the knowledge of household work which they acquire in service.  They might as well preach to the winds; and there are more applications for employment in shops and factories than there is work for, whilst mistresses go begging for lady-helps.  There is a sad side to this picture as regards the social condition of the colonies, in addition to the inconvenience to people who keep servants.  The girls who go into shops and factories, and have their evenings to themselves, necessarily undergo a great deal of temptation, and it is undeniable that they are not at all delivered from evil.  The subject is out of keeping with these letters, but unless some means can be found to reconcile colonial girls to service, I fear an evil is growing up in our midst which is likely to be even more baneful in its effects upon the community than the corresponding tendency to ‘larrikinism’ amongst colonial youths.

Since writing the above, an article on the subject has appeared in the Melbourne Argus which is worth quoting in extenso: 

’We have undertaken to consider whether anything can be done to overcome the unwillingness which nearly all Australian girls exhibit to enter domestic service.  There is an abundant supply of female labour in the colony, but unfortunately it is not distributed in the way that would be most advantageous to the community and beneficial to the women themselves.  While household servants can scarcely be had for love or money, the clothing factories are crowded with seamstresses, who are content to work long hours at what are very much like starvation wages.  How is this?  We have shown that there is nothing in domestic work which any true woman need consider degrading; that the most refined and highly educated ladies have in all ages considered themselves properly employed when busy about household affairs; that servants have quite as many opportunities of forming matrimonial connections as factory girls, and that their training fits them to become much better, and therefore far happier wives.  We have no doubt that all this, or at least the greater part, would be admitted by the seamstresses themselves:  but nevertheless the fact remains that to domestic service they will not go.  There is a feeling in existence amongst them that in some way or other household labour is menial occupation, and that to undertake it is to lose caste in the class to which they belong.  We may call this fantastic idea “vanity” or “false pride,” or what we will; but that does not do anything to banish it, or to render it less potent for mischief.  Seeing that so much is at stake—­that employers are clamouring