The government also protects women from being worked at hours that will necessitate their going home late at night. One labour inspector reported that he found a factory in which a set of girls were put on from eight to ten in the morning and then taken off until one. They were worked from one until five, and again from seven to nine, making altogether eight hours. Another lot of girls worked from ten until twelve, from three until seven, and from nine until eleven. This arrangement did not require more than the legal time, but the officials thought it was bad for the girls to have to go home so late at night, and not have their regular time for rest.
The working day of hotel helpers, many of whom are women, is defined by law, and meals cannot be served outside the regular hours. If dinner is limited to the hours between six and eight, the traveller arriving at a hotel at eight-fifteen cannot get anything to eat until breakfast, no matter how hungry he may be. Even a world-famous prima donna found she could not get dinner at an unusual hour at her hotel in Wellington. She was accustomed to postponing her dinner until after her concerts, and asked to have it served at eleven o’clock. But the hotel manager refused. It would have meant keeping several servants after hours and paying them overtime, and he was unwilling to do so.
The Maoris do not make good servants but prefer to lead their own easy-going lives. This belle’s robe is handwoven from New Zealand flax. She wears also the greenstone charm without which no native woman is fully dressed.
The town of Nelson has the reputation of having “the prettiest girls in the country,” and “seven women to one man.” Some of its surplus women find work in the hop fields.
The women working in factories are not so well organized as the men, and even where they do the same work they do not, as a rule, get as much pay. Most of the women in the manufacturing industries are in the clothing, hat-making, tailoring, printing, and shoe-making trades.
In New Zealand there is no real servant class, such as our immigrant girls from Europe. The native Maoris do not make good house workers and most of the Chinese are in business for themselves, running laundries, fruit shops, and market gardens, though some of them are employed as cooks. The people who first came here from the British Isles were not of the lower classes. New Zealand was never a penal colony and men came voluntarily, seeking better opportunities than those they had found in the old country. Some came for their health, some followed the gold rush in the middle of the last century, and some were remittance men, members of the finest of the old British families. Moreover, many of the settlers acquired lands of their own, and the children of independent landholders do not care to go out as domestic servants. Therefore, domestic workers are scarce, and in the average New Zealand household the whole family shares in the work of the home. Every child has his duties, and, I may add, is generally paid for performing them. Nearly every ten-year-old has a savings account which grows with the money earned at home.
In the country it is almost impossible to get servants, and in the towns the young women prefer to work in the factories, notwithstanding the fact that when the matter of board is taken into consideration, wages there are often less than those of house servants.
When a family does secure a servant girl she frequently rules the household, besides fixing her own wages and hours off. She usually demands one half holiday every week, every Sunday afternoon, and the whole day free every other Sunday.