Regular courses in all the domestic arts, including laundering, are important for the girls of Australia, where servants are luxuries of the few and women are thrown on their own resources.
I had a talk with one of the parliamentary leaders in Victoria about working conditions and the Australian standard of living. He said to me:
“I know it is commonly believed that we have an eight-hour law down here in Australia. The fact is that an absolute eight-hour law would not suit us so well as our forty-eight-hour-per-week law. Many of our trades have such conditions that they cannot be restricted to a fixed time, and some days a man must work more than eight hours and sometimes less. Take the bakers. They set their sponge, and if the dough rises they can get through their work in less than eight hours; but if not, it takes them nine, or perhaps longer. What we have is a fixed time per week and an extra rate for all overtime. In New South Wales the forty-four-hour week prevails in many important industries. In certain unhealthful trades such as rock chopping, sewer mining, stone masonry, and underground mining of metals, the hours may be even shorter.”
“Is there not a large force in the government employ?” I asked.
“Yes,” was the answer. “In New South Wales the railroads, the street cars, and the wharves are under the state government. The state has also its employees for education, police, health, justice, state lands, public works, and other such activities. Besides, it operates timber yards, dockyards, brick and pipe works, stone quarries, and hydro-electric plants. Moreover, the Commonwealth government has its employees in the postal, telegraph, telephone, and other national services.”
“How many state and federal employees have you here in New South Wales?” I asked.
I was surprised at the answer, which was: “More than ninety-nine thousand.”
“And what is your population?”
“A little more than two million.”
“Well,” said I, “let us figure it. Divide your two million by ninety-nine thousand and you will find that practically one in every twenty persons works for the state. If we had a proportionate number of government employees in the United States, with our population of one hundred and ten millions, there would be five million government officials, which at the low average of a thousand dollars per annum would cost us at least five billion dollars every year. Our Congress would never stand for such a condition.”