’It may be said that such a change as we propose would entirely alter the relations between mistresses and their “helps.”  No doubt it would.  But we may ask why the relations between mistresses and servants should continue as they were in semi-feudal times, when the relations of other classes of society to each other have been resettled on an entirely different basis?  Nearly all sorts of service now are matters of simple contract, and we know of no reason why domestic engagements should not be regulated in the same way.  It would be better for employers to have a plentiful supply of efficient servants liable to work eight or ten hours per diem, than a scanty stock of discontented women whose services they can command day and night.  With altered relations, we should soon have a change of demeanour on both sides.  The correspondent we have quoted says that another of the things which prevents seamstresses from “going into service,” is “the over-anxiety of mistresses that servants should know their position.”  In a democratic country like this, where young people are brought up with the idea that one man or woman is as good as another, we can easily understand that any assertion of superiority on the part of employers, or attempt to exact an outward show of deference, is very galling to undisciplined minds.  Those who have been accustomed to be waited on from childhood upwards, are never very careful to insist on those forms and modes of address which at one time servants invariably adopted.  As long as they are well served, they are content to sacrifice something to the modern spirit of equality.  It is those who have risen in the social scale late in life who are always standing on their dignity and exacting homage.  If the latter class would moderate its pretensions, a stumbling-block would be removed from the entrance to domestic service.  We already have several agencies for training servants; could they not add to their duties the work of training mistresses in the ideas we have set forth, and in any others which are likely to diminish the distaste of Australian girls for household work?  If they would take the matter in hand in a practical way, and familiarise the public mind with the notion of limited domestic labour, they would, we believe, do much to promote the comfort of home life in Victoria, and to improve the position of female labour.’

FOOD.

Generally speaking, food in Australia is cheaper and more plentiful than in England, but poorer in quality.  Adulteration is, of course, as yet unknown, or but very little known, for the simple reason that it costs more to adulterate than to provide the genuine article.  The working-man’s food here is also immeasurably better and cheaper.  Mutton he gets almost for the asking, and up-country almost without it.  Bread is only 11/4d. to 2d. a pound, and all the necessaries of life are good, healthy, and fairly cheap.  But the richer man, who asks for more than soundness