THE TWENTIETH CENTURY HOUSE. 669 
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY HOUSE: A 
SUGGESTION TOWARDS THE SOLUTION 
OF THE SERVANT PROBLEM. 
By Joun Surman, F.R.1.B.A., Lecturer Sydney University. 
THE great and bitter cry of the distressed middle-class 
housekeeper of the present day in advanced countries like 
Australasia and the States, is the impossibility of obtaining 
capable servants, or indeed, in many cases, of obtaining any 
at all. And without servants the middle-class house, as we 
know it, is practically unworkable. All the signs of the 
times point, not to any alleviation, but rather to the 
accentuation of the difficulty, for as the status of the so- 
called “ working classes” is improved, and wages increase, 
daughters will be less and less inclined to “go out to 
service,’ and if they wish to add to the family income, 
or provide pocket-money for themselves, will rather choose 
occupations with definite hours of labour which leave their 
evenings free, and do not cut them off from their own 
home and family life. 
Many are the suggestions that have been made to meet 
the difficulty, but they are mostly of the palliative order. 
Says one, “ Give the girls more liberty, let them out more 
frequently ;’’ but to be valued the time must be in the 
evening, and the locality the city; and this is good neither 
for mistress nor maid, as some domestic work must be" 
performed after the evening meal—we cannot all live in the 
city, and freedom for young girls at night without home 
restraint is not wholly desirable. 
Another suggests a central bureau, from which servants 
may be sent out by contract to do specific work, in specific 
hours; but I have not heard of it being tried, though it 
will probably come. Many have attempted to solve the 
difficulty by employing girls of their own class, “ lady helps,”’ 
but the lack of physical strength and early training in 
household work, and the roughness of the work as at 
present conducted, renders this method only a_ partial 
success. There is in it, however, the germ of a possible 
solution; but if the demand became general the supply 
of workers would soon be exhausted. 
Many have given up in despair the attempt to keep 
house at all, and have fled to hotels, flats, and boarding- 
houses as a refuge; but these are only the unmarried, or the 
