Lucy Maynard Salmon

“ Division of labor has made her in reality, though not in position, not a menial, a drudge, a slave, but a co-operator in the work of the household. The cook who prepares the raw material for consumption is not more a servant than is the farmer who produces the raw material; indeed her work is justly considered skilled labor, while that of the agricultural laborer is often unskilled. The cook is the co-operator with her employer in the same sense as the farmer is a co-operator in the industrial system ”

“ The aristocracy of the household must succumb to this universal desire for personal independence on the part of employees.
The plan suggested of specializing household industries to as great an extent as possible and encouraging the domestic employee to live in her own home has much in its favor. It substitutes for the responsibility to an individual employer, so irritating to many and so contrary to the industrial spirit of the age, the responsibility to a business firm. ”

“ That spirit of restlessness, nervous discontent, and craving for excitement which foreigners find characteristic of all who breathe American air is not confined to business men and society women—it permeates the kitchen, the nursery, the laundry, and every part of the household. Among employers the mode of life tends more and more towards a winter in California, a summer in Europe, an autumn in the mountains, and a spring in Florida. ”

“ Household employers and employees may be indifferent to the changes that the industrial revolutions of a century have brought, they may be ignorant of them all, but they have not been unaffected by them, nor can they remain unaffected by changes that may subsequently come in the industrial system. The interdependence of all forms of industry is so complete, that a change cannot revolutionize one without in time revolutionizing all. The old industrial régime cannot be restored, nor can household employments of to-day be put back to their condition of a hundred years ago. ”

“ The past and the present, the present and the future, stability and unrest, blind obedience and personal freedom, aristocracy and democracy, have been and are perpetually at war with each other. Every political revolution that has widened the circle of democracy, every industrial movement that has affected large classes of workers, every modification of national ideals of education, every social change that has shifted the relations of classes to each other, every barrier between nations that has been broken down or that has been put up, has changed the problem of domestic service. ”

“ The very foundation of a family is its integrity. Four plus one half can never equal five, and no one can ever be more than a fraction in any family into which he has not been born, married, or legally adopted. The family circle cannot be squared, and if it could be, the curve of beauty would be lost. Moreover, even if the plan could be carried out, it would not meet the needs of the majority of employees or of those who would become such if the conditions of service were more favorable. What domestics as a class desire is the opportunity of living their own lives in their own way. ”

“ The very perfection of the principle of the division of labor makes possible the expression of the greatest individuality in that it offers the possibility of selection from a hundred varieties whereas before no choice was given. The ability to choose between the work of a hundred cooks permits a truer individuality than does the command of the services of but one. Whims, caprices, and eccentricities sometimes masquerade as individuality and are not always entitled to respect. ”

“ We may prove from etymology that every person who confers a favor on another is his servant. We may present a lawyer’s brief showing to the satisfaction of every local and national court that every employee in the eye of the law is a servant. We may argue from the biblical standpoint and show without a flaw in our chain of reasoning that we are all servants of one another. We may point to the classification of occupations made by the national census bureau and show that clergymen, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and domestic servants are placed together. ”