Jane Addams

“ She is naturally lonely and constrained away from them, and the "new girl" often seems "queer" to her employer's family. She does not care to mingle socially with the people in whose house she is employed, as the girl in the country when she "works for" a country neighbor often does, and she suffers horribly from loneliness. This wholesome instinctive dread of social isolation is so strong that, as every city intelligence office can testify, the filling of situations is easier or more difficult just in proportion as the place offers more or less companionship. ”

“ There are few women so dull that they cannot paste labels on a box, or do some form of factory work, few so dull that some perplexed housekeeper will not receive them at least for a trial into her household. Household labor then has to compete constantly with factory labor, and women seeking employment, more or less consciously compare these two forms of labor in point of hours, in point of permanency of employment, in point of wages and in point of the advantage afforded for family and social life. ”

“ But, even in households comparatively humble, there is still one alien, one who is neither loved nor loving. The modern family has dropped the man who made its shoes, the woman who spun its clothes, and to a large extent the woman who washes them, but it stoutly refuses to drop the woman who cooks its food; it strangely insists that to do that would be to destroy family life. The cook is uncomfortable, the family is uncomfortable ”

“ Curiously enough the same devotion to family life and quick response to its claims on the part of the employer, operates against the girl in household labor and places her in a unique position of isolation. The employer of household labor, in her zeal to preserve her family life intact and free from intrusion, acts inconsistently and grants to her cook, for instance, but once or twice a week such opportunity for untrammelled association with her relatives as the employer's family claims constantly. This devotion to the narrow conception of family life the men of the family also share. ”

“ Forsooth, brothers, fellowship is heaven, and lack of fellowship is hell; fellowship is life and lack of fellowship is death; and the deeds that ye do upon earth, it is for fellowship's sake that ye do them. ”

“ There are suburban employers of household labor who make heroic efforts to supply domestic and social life to their employés, who take the domestic employé to drive, arrange to have her invited out occasionally, who supply her with books and papers and companionship. Nothing could be more praiseworthy in motive, but it is seldom successful in actual operation. In the first place it is a forced relationship, and nothing in the world can be worse than a simulacrum of companionship. ”

“ More important than this is the result of the isolation upon the worker herself. There is nothing more devastating to the inventive faculty, nor fatal to a flow of mind and spirit, than the constant feeling of loneliness and the absence of that fellowship which makes our public opinion.
If an angry foreman reprimands a girl for breaking a machine, twenty other girls hear him, and the culprit knows perfectly well their opinion as to the justice or injustice of her situation. ”

“ The difficulties really begin when the family income is so small that but one person can be employed in the household for all these varied functions, and the difficulties increase and grow almost insurmountable as they fall altogether upon the mother of the family, who is living in a flat, or worse still, in a tenement house, where one stove and one set of utensils must be put to all sorts of uses, fit or unfit, making the living room of the family a horror in summer, and perfectly insupportable in rainy washing days in winter. ”

“ The household employe has no regular opportunity for meeting other workers of her trade, and of attaining with them the dignity of a corporate body. The industrial isolation of the household employé results, as isolation in a trade must always result, in a lack of progress in the methods and products of that trade and a lack of aspiration and education in the workman. Whether we recognize this isolation as a cause or not, I think we are all ready to acknowledge that household labor has been in some way belated ”

“ The selfishness of a modern mistress, who, in her narrow social ethics, insists that those who minister to the comforts of her family, shall minister to it alone, that they shall not only be celibate, but shall be cut off more or less from their natural social ties, excludes the best working people from her service. A man of dignity and ability is quite willing to come into a house to tune a piano. ”

“ The worker in the first is the woman who endeavors to support herself "by taking in sewing." She is the last unit of the sweating system—the home finisher. The majority of her sisters in all the other trades have gone into the factories, she alone remains at home and turns her already uncomfortable tenement into a workshop. Isolated as the sewing woman is, industrially she still has advantages over the household employé, in that she may remain in the same part of town with her kinsfolk and her natural social associations. In that respect she is nearer the conditions of factory life. ”

“ When she is old enough to go to parties, those she attends are usually held in a public hall and are crowded with dancers. If she works in a factory, she walks home with many other girls, in much the same spirit as she formerly walked in school with them. She mingles with the young men she knows, in frank economic and social equality. Until she marries she remains at home with no special break or change in her family and social life.
If she is employed in a household, this is not true. ”

“ This breaking-up of long established industrial habits and occupations and the necessity for a difficult readjustment comes about constantly with changing conditions, and it is easy to believe that we are in the midst of one of these sweeping industrial changes now; in fact, that it has already come about in regard to many commodities formerly produced in the household which are now produced in factories; that it would naturally come about in regard to most of them, if women did not oppose it and fatuously believe that within these old methods is bound up the sanctity of family life. ”

“ These men would all resent the situation and consider it quite impossible if it implied the giving up of their family and social ties, and living under the roof of the household requiring their services. Most of the cooking and serving and cleaning of a household could be done by women living outside and coming into a house as a skilled workmen does, having no "personal service" relation to the employer. There is no reason why the woman who cleans windows in a house, should not live as full a domestic and social life as the man who cleans windows in an office. ”

“ She is belated in a class composed of the unprogressive elements of the community, and which is recruited constantly from the victims of misfortune and incompetence, by girls who are learning the language, girls who are timid and slow, or girls who look at life solely from the savings bank point of view. The distracted housekeeper struggles with these unprogressive girls, holding to them not even the well-defined and independent relation of employer and employed, but the hazy and constantly changing one of mistress to servant. ”

“ It would be folly to force the companionship of myself or my family upon her when doubtless she would vastly prefer the companionship of her own friends and her own family. The unnaturalness of the situation is brought about by the fact that she is practically debarred by distance and lack of leisure from her own natural ties, and then her employer feeling sorry, insists upon filling the vacancy in interests and affections by her own tastes and friendship. She may or may not succeed, but the employé should not be thus dependent upon the good will of her employer. ”

“ In any great industrial change the workmen who are permanently displaced are those who are too dull to seize upon changed conditions. The workmen who have knowledge and insight, and who are in touch with their time, quickly reorganize. There are many noble exceptions, but it follows that on the whole the enterprising girls of the community go into factories, and the less enterprising go into households. It is not a question of skill, of energy, of conscientious work, which will enable a girl to rise industrially while she is in the household ”

“ On the other hand, I should consider myself very stupid if merely because a woman cooked my food and lived in my house I should insist upon having a friendship with her, whether her nature and mine responded to it or not. ”

“ And when she leaves her employer her reasons are often incoherent and totally incomprehensible to that good lady, who naturally concludes that she wishes to get away from the work and back to her dances and giddy life, content to stand many hours in an unsanitary factory, if she has these. The charge of the employer is only a half truth. ”

“ Added to all this is a social distinction which the household employé feels keenly against her, and in favor of the factory girls, in the minds of the young men of her acquaintance. A woman who has worked in households for twenty years told me that when she was a young and pretty nurse girl, the only young men who "paid her attention" were coachmen and unskilled laborers. The skill in the trades of her suitors increased as her position in the household increased in dignity. When she was a housekeeper, forty years old, skilled mechanics appeared, one of whom she married. ”

“ Women seeking employment understand perfectly well this feeling, quite unjustifiable I am willing to admit, among mechanics, and it acts as a strong inducement towards factory labor.
I have long ceased to apologize for the views and opinions of working people. I am quite sure that on the whole they are just about as wise and just about as foolish as the views and opinions of other people, but that this particularly foolish opinion of young mechanics is widely shared by the employing class can be easily demonstrated. ”

“ A fuller social and domestic life among household employés would be the first step toward securing their entrance into the larger industrial organizations by which the needs of a community are most successfully administered. Many a girl who complains of loneliness, and who relinquishes her situation with that as her sole excuse, feebly tries to formulate her sense of restraint and social mal-adjustment. ”

“ The minimum wages paid an adult in household labor may be fairly put at two dollars and a half a week; the maximum at six dollars, this excluding the comparatively rare opportunities for women to cook at forty dollars a month, and the housekeeper's position at fifty dollars a month. The factory wages, viewed from the savings bank standpoint, may be smaller in the average, but this I believe to be counterbalanced in the minds of the employes by the greater chance which the factory offers for increased wages. ”

“ In the fewer cases in which the household employés have no family ties, doubtless a remedy against social isolation would be the formation of residence clubs, at least in the suburbs, where the isolation is most keenly felt. Indeed the beginnings of these clubs are already seen in the servants' quarters at the summer hotels. In these residence clubs the household employé could have the independent life which only one's abiding place can afford. ”

“ To quote from a recent writer, in the Forum, "Not only does a lack of organized effort among farmers result in much misdirected energy and consequent economic loss, but it works an even more serious injury by placing the farmer population at a disadvantage in the great industrial contest in which other and coordinated industries—by virtue of their ability for thorough concentration and organization—have a superior advantage. ”

“ If the girl who engages in domestic labor is doomed to a narrow social life, if she is isolated from her family and natural industrial associations, then it follows that the brightest girl will not engage in domestic labor, but will follow the natural trend of their times, towards factory work and associated effort. ”

“ Were she in line ethically, she would have to believe that the sacredness and beauty of family life do not consist in the processes of the separate preparation of food, but in sharing the corporate life of the community, and in making the family the unit of that life. ”

“ Young unmarried women are not detached from family claims and requirement as young men are, and, so far as my observation goes, are more ready and steady in their response to the needs of the aged parents and helpless members of the family. But women performing labor in households find peculiar difficulties in the way of enjoying family life, and are more or less dependent upon their employers for possibilities to see their relatives and friends. ”

“ To allow household employés to live with their own families and among their own friends, as factory employes now do, would be to relegate more production to industrial centers administered on the factory system, and to secure shorter hours for that which remains to be done in the household. ”

“ In regard to hours there is no doubt that the factory has the advantage. The average factory hours are from seven in the morning to six in the evening, with the chance of working over time in busy seasons. This leaves most of the evenings and Sundays entirely free. The average hours of household labor are from six in the morning until eight at night, with little difference in seasons. There is one afternoon a week, with an occasional evening, but Sunday is almost never wholly free. ”