A good many of the papers in the colony have from time to time called attention to the scercity of servant girls. In the smaller towns it is very difficult to - obtain girls for house work although good wages are offered. In the cities girls may be obtained by constant advertising, but in uarly eyerycase they are of little or no use, and those that are any good at all are always moving from place to place. Even in Paeroa the " Gazette " has frequently received announcements for girls for house-work, but with out effect/ In fact quite recently several advertisements have been inserted in this paper offering situations for girls which we know to be good places and fair wages offered, but they are seldom applied for. That domestic service is orowing more and more distasteful to the young women of the colony is only too well understood by those who require their assistance

but cannot get it, even at rates of pay that are in effect higher than .those paid to men for the hardest unskilled labour. The chief reason of this scarcity of domestic servants is the long hours which inconsider ate employers ask their servants to work, which frequently extend from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m., and oc casionally until midnight. During this long day the domestic servant has absolutely no time she can call her own, as if she sits down to a meal, she is as likely to be called away from it as not, with the re sult that she has to snatch her meals in a hurried ■iashioh i *as op- j portunity allows. She has also in mauy houses to sleep in rooms ut terly unfit for such purpose, with the result that her health soon breaks down, and she has to re turn to her friends or go to the Hospital. With respect to the girls themselves, many of them are incompetent, idle, and impertenient and the more so they happen to be the higher the remuneration and the more numerous the "nights out " they demand. A really com petent, willing girl is not by any means overpaid at 15s per week, whereas the other sort are dear at any price/ and 1 keep a house^r^ turmoil the whole tiin^tney. are in it. 