Is domestic service a dying industry? At a public meeting held at the Aeolian Hall under the auspices of the Women's Industrial Council a great deal of evidence was brought forward to prove that it is. Can it be revived? The object of the meeting was to discuss this question, and to suggest a practical scheme which may save a serious situation. It is proposed to create a 'Household Orderly Corps' of women who shall live in hostels planned for their reception, and do daily domestic work for the various householders in the neighborhood who may require their services.

There can be no doubt that the demand for domestic servants at the present moment vastly exceeds the supply. The evidence given at the meeting went to prove that this state of things is not, as would appear at first sight, the outcome of the war, and will not be materially changed when it is over. Among young girls from fifteen to seventeen, who some years ago went into 'service' as a matter of course, there is a general determination not to do so, and among those war workers who have left service for other work there would appear to be an almost unanimous intention of not returning to their former profession. They are ready, they say, as soon as peace is declared, to take any work that offers itself, 'except service.' The feeling against service, so far as could be gathered from the various speakers-confirmed as their words were by applause from the back of the hall is very largely social. Servants do not complain of want of due respect on

A picture drawn by advocates of a new system is likely to be highly colored, but it is colored, but it is very difficult to rebut the evidence. Most employers of servants would, we think, admit that there is something amiss. Domestic work is interesting and full of variety. There is no comparison on this score between house work and factory work. It is, moreover, the natural work for women, the work which every young girl looks forward at some time or other to doing for the sake of her husband and children. Some monotony is inseparable from every method of gaining a livelihood, but we think there is less of it in domestic service than in nearly any other form of skilled labor. All housekeepers in every class of life, from the duchess to the laborer's wife, talk about their housekeeping. If among certain sets of people the subject is avoided, it is because it is apt unduly to monopolize conversation, unless consciously banished in order to give other subjects a chance to be aired. Men sometimes avoid talking 'shop' and women sometimes avoid talking housekeeping; but neither do so because they are not interested in it, and few do so for any long period

of time. Now servants are great talkers, and are apt, because of their rather noisy employment, to talk loud; but so far as their conversation comes to the cars of their employers, we should say that it seldom or never concerns 'shop.' From this fact we cannot help deducing that in their interesting work they are not much interested. They have, to use a colloquial phrase, 'taken against it,' and they are escaping from it in crowds. If they come back, it will be because the force of unemployment makes it necessary, and a house is not likely to be a very comfortable one which is 'run' unwillingly by young persons who can get nothing else to do.

Unless they completely revolutionize their way of living, it is impossible for the classes who employ servants to do their own work and have none. At least, it is impossible for most of them. The present shortage of servants has not gone far enough to make a real change in our way of living imperative, and the situation might be greatly relieved, at any rate for the time being, by the setting up of the proposed hostels. The social stigma attaching to service must rest upon something. We suppose it rests upon the fact that a servant is always under orders. In almost every other profession there are certain hours of the day (and all the hours of the night) in which the employed person is his or her own man.' If an eight-hour day could be instituted for those doing household work for wages, perhaps service would be again respected. Also it is obvious that the more highly trained the average employee is found to be in any profession, the more kudos that profession obtains. It is proposed by those who desire to inaugurate these hostels that they should be run in connection with some system of training whose exact

nature remains to be discussed. It is hoped, however, that every girl sent out to work from a hostel would be trained to the particular branch of domestic work for which she was wanted, and it would of course be an understood thing that, so far as inquiry could insure character, her character would be insured. Such a system would enable a large public who now keep one servant 'living in' to keep no servant at all, and a still larger public who now keep two or more to keep one less. Considering the present rents, this would be to many householders whose bedroom and kitchen accommodation is strictly limited a very great advantage. Also it would be to many employers a great relief to get their domestic work done by maids for whom they would not necessarily be obliged to cater, or at any rate for whom they would only be obliged to cater in part. A great many very small householders young couples and ladies living alone are constantly oppressed by the presence in the house at all hours of a single servant. It is not right to leave a young girl wholly without companionship; it is not right to allow her too much liberty to roam the streets in the evening. On the other hand, it is not right to interfere with her recreation and deprive her of her selfreliance. Almost all these problems would in the case of girls from a hostel devolve upon the 'management' of the institution, whether it was found better to let a committee of the inmates 'manage' for themselves, or to get a middle-aged and discreet woman to act as a final authority over all the members.

At the same time very great difficulties will occur to all those who consider the scheme from the point of view of both employers and em

ployed. The first is the difficulty of money. Thirty shillings for a week of forty-eight hours is proposed as a minimum wage. By that we mean that if a girl's full time is not filled, the management are still bound to pay her thirty shillings. Of this from fifteen to eighteen shillings would most likely have to be deducted for her board and lodging. The taking of meals at the houses she worked at would be of course a matter for arrangement. If the girl is to be paid thirty shillings a week, even if she cannot put in her full time,. and the hostel is to be self-supporting, it is obvious that the employer must pay at a still higher rate. In answer to questions it was elicited that the promoters of the scheme expected to be obliged to ask the employer for from eightpence to a shilling an hour for the work done. The payment is certainly very high as compared with the present wages given to quite efficient charwomen. It might be worth while to give it, however, in consideration of the saving in houseroom to result from the new system. Another awkward position would arise where one or more servants lived in' and one or more came from a hostel to help. Those who lived in' would want an equal wage - and another 'social question' would crop, up.

The Spectator

Those young women in uniform arriving from an institution would be supposed to give themselves airs,' and domestic peace would be over. Another obvious difficulty connects itself with hours of service. Most housework is necessarily done in the morning. No one would like to have beds made and rooms turned out' in the afternoon. On the other hand, the most important cooking of the day is in most professional homes done late in the afternoon, so that the hard worked master of the house may have a good dinner. It was suggested at the meeting that afternoon hours. should be filled by mending, to be done at the hostel, and paid for, we suppose, as piece-work, but not very many cooks can mend, and not very many good needlewomen can cook. Whatever the lions in its path, however, we wish the projected 'Household Orderly Corps' good luck. There is something altogether wrong in the notion that it is degrading to work for the proper upkeep of one's own or someone else's house and home, and any system which removes from domestic service an unnatural and absurd stigma should be welcomed. It would be a national misfortune if any large number of women came to prefer money making to home. making.

It was stated the other day that many Parisians are now wearing amulets as a protection against 'Big Bertha' and air raids. According to a correspondent of the Westminster Gazette:

There are very few young Parisians whom one sees without the ubiquitous Nénette and Rintintin pinned on their blouses. They are miniature representations in wool of a boy and girl, and they

are to be had in all the colors of the rainbow the favorite, however, being the patriotic tri-color. When the big gun sounds, in every corner of Paris the wearer of these fetishes can venture safely into the street. When the terrifying wail of the syren which announces the advent of the Gothas is heard, the little dolls are carefully attached to the nightgown before the descent to the cellar is made. With them the Parisian pretends to a complete security.

We have no doubt that thousands of people who buy these things do so with a smile, as though they were taking part in a joke. Most of us are skeptics in public. Even in our hearts we half doubt while we half believe. Our contempt for superstition may be judged from our attitude to other people's superstitions. When we read that the Emperor Augustus always carried a scal skin as a protection. against lightning, we are amused: and when we read that the Emperor Tiberius 'always wore a laurel wreath, because it is said that that kind of leaf is not blasted by lightning,' we begin to suspect a mild form of insanity relating to thunder and lightning as part of the mental furniture of a Roman Emperor. The belief that the seal and the laurel tree are never struck by lightning does not happen to be a belief common in these islands, nor is

lightning one of the things of which we have most occasion to be in fear. To put faith in such things seems as curious to us as the readiness of women among the Shans to wear a ring of elephant's hair on their fingers in order to prevent the death of a baby, or as the Italian custom of carrying a double walnut to ward off the evil eye and headaches. We look on these things as the oddities of foreigners. We do not think of them as belonging to the same world as the sprig of white heather or the sixpence with a hole in it which we ourselves take no shame in treasuring.

Yet who are we Europeans to criticize the Shans for believing in amulets? The number of people in Great Britain who religiously pick up pins from the ground for luck must be enormous, and one need not travel far to discover a house doing its best to keep away evil spirits with a horseshoe, usually nailed the wrong way up. If you accuse a man who has a horseshoe hung up on his door of superstition, he would probably pretend that he did not really believe in the efficacy of horseshoes, and many people will tell you that superstitions are dying out, though queer relics of them survive everywhere about us. The coral presented to a baby, and the bell and rattle that amuse it in its cradle, were in earlier times given to the infant not for its pleasure but for its protection. Even the ear rings of women are said originally to have been worn as charms, and it has been suggested that cow bells and sheep bells were also first invented to protect the animals from harm. But we need not turn to survivals of this

kind in order to find evidence of the belief in amulets in England. One found evidence of it in the advertisement columns of the press at the beginning of the submarine campaign, when sailors and travelers were reminded of the ancient virtue of cauls as a protection against drowning. And scores of thousands of soldiers at the Front must now be wearing some little coin or ribbon or ornament which they believe will bring them safety. The soldier in Mr. Bennett's novel, who gives the heroine the wrist watch as a mascot, is not exceptional in his faith in such things. Nor is he exceptional in the way in which he maintains his faith, even though the last man who had worn the watch had been killed. The will to believe is almost as strong in us as the will to live. It is greedy of evidence in its support, but it is blind of one eye to evidence on the other side. Nero was on one occasion given a little image of a girl as an amulet against plots, and, as a plot was almost immediately afterwards discovered, he had more faith in the image than he had ever had in God. 'He continued to venerate it as a powerful divinity,' says Suetonius, and to offer three sacrifices to it every day.' The amulet. is frequently the atheist's refuge. It is the faith of the man who has no faith.

Not that belief in religion and belief in amulets have not often gone together. Christianity, in spite of the denunciations of saints and church councils, gave the world a new kind of amulet rather than abolished such things. The Empress Helene used one of the four 'true nails of the Cross' as an amulet when, during a storm, she threw it into the sea and (so it is said) produced a calm. It is suggestive of the curious manner in which Christianity was blended with paganism in

most countries that one of the Christian amulets in greatest favor in the fourth and fifth centuries had a portrait of Alexander the Great on one side (Alexander having come down in legend with an immense reputation as a wonder worker). In some amulets, Christ or his monogram appeared on one side and Alexander with various pagan figures on the other. Many of the clergy seem to have acquiesced in and even encouraged the belief in amulets. The Council of Laodicea in the fourth century had expressly to forbid priests either to manufacture or to wear such things. At the same time, the laity has never been able entirely to discriminate between holy relics and amulets. It was a Pope who sent Queen Theodolinda a fragment of the Cross to help her during the perils of childbirth, and belief in things of this kind cannot easily be distinguished from belief in mascots and charms. All through the Middle Ages we come upon stories of wicked believers who stole the consecrated wafer and made an amulet of it. Thieves invoked its help in their calling. Old women used it to protect their cabbages. One story relates that on one occasion the Host was used as a charm to protect bees, and that the bees responded to the holy influence by building a little chapel of wax in the hive. We cannot be surprised at the popularity of such beliefs. Man does not need to think for many minutes before he discovers that he is walled round by mystery, and that creation is for him a still all but unknown continent of which he is not able to map even the outline. He may in modern civilized conditions easily settle down and move in a groove for a number of years at least, he could do so in peace time and stupefy himself into the belief that life is an intelligible