Domestic worker

“ The Ladies Home Journal believes that, no less than factory and commercial worker, the oldest of home workers—the “domestic”—should be protected by standardization of wages, hours and living conditions. ”

“ Trade unions for domestic workers have been formed from time to time, but their life has been ephemeral and their membership of the smallest. High wages, practically continuous employment, food and lodging usually of a standard much above that in the servant’s own home—all these are to be found in domestic work. ”

“ But neither personal blame nor the semi-feudal belief that the one and only rightful destiny of daughters of bricklayers, coal miners, or small clerks is to become cooks or housemaids in the service of their betters will avail to throw any light on the difficulty of obtaining competent domestic workers. We must study carefully and without bias the conditions of that industry as compared with other industries, in order to solve the problem. ”

“ I look forward to a time, I believe it to be rapidly approaching, when the home of the workingman, like everyone's else home, will be truly the home, the happy resting-place, the sheltering nest of father, mother and children, and when through the rearrangement of labor, the workingman's wife will be relieved from her monotonous existence of unrelieved domestic drudgery and overwork, disguised under the name of wifely and maternal duties, when the cooking and the washing, for instance, will be no more part of the home life in the humblest home than in the wealthiest. ”

“ But such employers are right in saying that theirs are the houses in which such a thing can be done, because it is of little consequence who does the daily business, and whether it is always exactly and punctually done: and such irregularity may even be good for single ladies who are only too likely to grow excessively “particular;” but it is out of the question in family dwellings where the business of life presses from day to day. In such households the first requisite in a domestic servant, after character, is health. ”

“ Since there is no chance of promotion and in consequence of receiving better pay, the domestic employee is often tempted to seek higher wages elsewhere, and thus the desire "to make a change," so disastrous to the peace of mind of the housewife, is engendered in her employees. ”

“ In the foregoing suggestions,—that the historical study of the subject points to relief through the removal of the social stigma; that the specialization of household employments in consequence of the removal of as much work as possible and the removal of the domestic employee as well from the home of the employer leads to a simpler and better manner of life for both employer and employee; that the introduction of profit sharing is one means of placing household employments on a business basis ”

“ These various explanations of the failure to consider domestic service in connection with other forms of labor are in reality but different phases of a fundamental reason—the isolation that has always attended household service and household employments. ”

“ In modern society, being a middle class or upper class housekeeper means something entirely different from being a housekeeper in a farmer's cottage or a workingman's fiat. On the one hand we have the woman whose housekeeping means actual, domestic labor: cooking, washing, scrubbing, etc. ”

“ It is idle to complain of poor servants and of poor mistresses so long as domestic service is divorced from general labor questions, and employers everywhere are ignorant of the economic laws, principles, and conditions underlying the household. Men and women might better give to the study of domestic service as an occupation the time and energy that now are absorbed in considering the vices and virtues of individual employees. ”

“ If a housewife was in a position to engage help, she desired such help not only at the wash tub and the oven, but also, and often particularly, at the spinning-wheel and the loom. In the early newspapers there sometimes appeared advertisements for domestic servants, with the added qualification that they must be good spinners or skilled in weaving, and sometimes they were even required to be good tailoresses. Many domestice servants, particularly those who were widows, went out to work by the day, but the majority lived in the homes of their employers. ”

“ But still more it has opened up to women what has been practically a new occupation. Domestic work within the house performed by members of the family without fixed compensation and by those not members of the family with compensation had been the previous rule. The Exchange has shown that it is possible for the women of a family to prepare within the house for sale outside many articles for table consumption, both those of necessity and luxury. ”

“ The mere manual performance of domestic labors is not, indeed, absolutely necessary in the female head of the family of professional men; but, even here, and also in the case of great merchants and of gentlemen living on their fortunes, surely the head of the household ought to be able to give directions as to the purchasing of meal, salting meat, making bread, making preserves of all sorts ”

“ All these changes in the personnel of factory operatives have meant that while much labor has been taken out of the household, that which remained has been performed by fewer hands, and also that women of foreign nationalities have been pressed into household service. ”

“ If his wages were sufficiently high for her to devote herself to household affairs, she became his unpaid domestic servant, depending entirely on his goodwill for the living of herself and her children; otherwise she must have conducted a business on her own account, or obtained work as a wage-earner, in neither case receiving any protection from her husband in the competition of the labour market. ”

“ Already it is such a common occurrence in some cities and in many parts of the country, not to find any woman willing to do housework, that many housewives are beginning to think that their future comfort in all household matters will depend entirely upon new labor saving devices and upon the help of the community rather than upon the increased knowledge and skill of domestic employees. ”

“ In the country and in families where the larger part of the domestic labor is done without servants, it is very easy to keep up an interest in domestic industrial employments. The tending of a small garden in summer, the preparation of fuel and food, the mending of household utensils—these and many other occupations of the hands will keep alive activity and interest in a man ”

“ When a woman accepts a position in business, she is told exactly how many hours a day she must work, but when a woman is engaged to fill a domestic position in a family, the number of hours she is expected to give her employer is never specified. ”

“ There are many ways of regulating the housework, as will be seen in the schedules at the end of this book, in order to give one day of freedom each week to household employees without causing much inconvenience to the housewife. By continuing to refuse this privilege to women employed in domestic labor, housekeeping is becoming more and more complicated. ”

“ First, that, besides board, washing, fuel, and lights, which she would have in a family, she would have also less unintermitted toil. Shop-work exacts its ten hours per diem; and it makes no allowance for sickness or accident.
“A good domestic in a good family finds many hours when she can feel free to attend to her own affairs. Her work consists of certain definite matters, which being done her time is her own; and if she have skill and address in the management of her duties, she may secure many leisure hours. ”

“ Many ladies, in consequence of their own ill health, or that of their children, are compelled to employ their servants to market for them; but when they can avoid doing so it is better. I do not say this from a suspicion that either tradespeople or servants are always likely to take advantage of an opportunity to impose upon their customers or their employers, but because this important part of household management ought to be conducted by some one of the family, who must necessarily be more interested in it than servants can be. ”

“ Though the testimony given in the preceding chapter on this topic includes the chief objection to be made by the class of workers who would seem to be most benefited by accepting household service, there remain still one or two phases seldom mentioned, but forming an essential portion of the argument against it. They belong, not to the order we have had under consideration, but to that below it from which the mass of domestic servants is recruited, and with which the housekeeper must most often deal. ”

“ Now this matter ought to be understood beforehand, for all employers would prefer to hire the time, even if they have to pay more wages. It is a great inconvenience to have domestics who feel that their time is their own, except when they are doing certain jobs they agreed to do. It is much the best for the comfort of a family, to have domestics who can be called on to help whenever they are needed. Of course there must be an understanding, in such cases, that domestics shall have time enough to do their own sewing and mending, and also for meetings and visiting to a suitable extent. ”

“ A glance at our periodical literature does indeed show unusual interest in all questions affecting domestic life. Economists are asking why the wages paid for domestic service are higher than those paid the average woman in other occupations, and why, in spite of this, the demand for household workers is greater than the supply. ”

“ The labourer is surely worthy of his hire; and the wife, upon whose shoulders the domestic load presses most heavily, is as justly entitled to her payment as her housemaid, whose duties are more clearly defined. ”

“ It simplifies the problem in all families where there is more work than can be done by one employee but not enough for two. It makes possible such a division of labor in the household as will discriminate between skilled and unskilled labor. Under the present system the employer expects to find in one individual for $3 per week and expenses, a French chef, an Irish laundress, a discreet waitress, a Yankee maid-of-all-work, a parlor maid a Quaker in neatness, all this, “with the temper of a saint and the constitution of a cowboy thrown in.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ The irregularities in even a well-regulated family are always great. Many of these are apparently necessary, and the employee must expect to meet them—they are often not so great as those that perplex the mistress of the house in her share of the household duties, but the fact cannot be ignored that they exist and have weight. The one afternoon each week with generally one or more evenings after work is done is not sufficient compensation. ”

“ Now domestic service is all the while fitting a girl physically, mentally, and morally for her ultimate vocation and sphere,—to be a happy wife and to make a happy home. But factory work, shop work, and all employments of that sort, are in their nature essentially undomestic,—entailing the constant necessity of a boarding-house life, and of habits as different as possible from the quiet routine of home. ”

“ The mistress who has never cleaned a room or cooked a dinner cannot realise the difficulties of either task. Hence it is that because domestic work generally has been done by paid servants, we have made but little effort to plan and furnish our houses in a labour-saving fashion. ”

“ Domestic employees would be benefited by having these extra days of liberty, just as much as all other employees. A trial is all that is necessary to show how much better a household employee will work after having a holiday. ”

“ Domestic service is the only field of industry where the demand for workers permanently exceeds the supply. The nature of the work is essentially suited, by habit, tradition, and long experiment, to women. It offers economic independence within the shelter of the home.
Lastly, housework pays extremely well. A girl totally ignorant of the art of cooking, of any household art, one whose function is to clean, scrub, and assist her employer to prepare meals, can readily command ten dollars a month, with board. ”

“ It is impossible to understand the condition of domestic service as it exists to-day without a cursory glance at the changes in household employments resulting from the inventions of the latter part of the eighteenth century. ”

“ If they obtain employment, their labour is perhaps repaid by wages barely sufficient to keep them alive; destitute of the means of practising anything like household management, never having known what it is to have a home, worthy to be so called, for a single day, it is scarcely possible for them to obtain that knowledge, simple as it is, which is required to contrive the various modes of making much out of a little. ”

“ There might always, in a country-house, be one or more young girls, according to the size of the establishment; to be placed under older servants, or be instructed by the mistress herself, in all household occupations, from {xiii}the hardest work and most simple offices, to the more delicate arts of housekeeping, including needle-work. This practice would not only insure more good servants than there now are ”