Household work

“ A household employee ought to have her hours of work as clearly defined as if she were a business employee, and there is no reason why the eight-hour labor law could not be applied as successfully to housework as to any other enterprise. ”

“ Let me give two concrete illustrations of the practical application of housework on a business basis.
Mrs. A. lives in a small city in the Middle West. Her household consists of herself, her husband, and her twelve year old son. She had had the usual string of impossible maids or none at all until she tried the new system. Through a girls' club in a factory in the city, she secured a young woman to work for her at factory hours and wages. Her assistant came at seven-thirty in the morning. ”

“ The young people of the family should each have some regular piece of work, at least in their own rooms; and the paid helpers should have a definite plan given them, including some hours to themselves, as regular as possible. There are emergencies that upset even the most perfect system, and these must be met as they come, but a fair amount of work at regular times should be the system. ”

“ In the olden times, when the daughters of the family, as well as the wife, were occupied with useful and profitable work in the household, getting the meals and washing the dishes three times in every day of every year, doing the baking, the brewing, the washing and the ironing, the whitewashing, the butter and cheese and soap making, the mending and the making of clothes for the entire family, the carding, spinning and weaving of the cloth—when everything to eat, to drink and to wear was manufactured in the home, almost no young women "went out to work." ”

“ For unless yours be the only pair of feminine hands in the family, you will not find more than three hours occupied with household work, and part of that time will comprise a daily walk, a constitutional with an object, and the remaining part will not be disagreeable ”

“ A household run on a strict schedule becomes an institution, not a home; on the other hand, a household in which the work is done at any time or no time is neither clean, restful nor knit together with the bonds of mutual service and mutual compliance.
Housework is some of it daily, and some of it periodical. Bedmaking is daily; sweeping is periodical. There is also work which may be done by the workers in the house, or by others coming from without. In one family the laundry work, bread making, window cleaning, floor polishing and the like will be done by those in the house ”

“ 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. ”

“ In a small family there is less work to be done; in a large one there are more hands to do the work, and many hands make light labour.
We would have no mistress of a family a household drudge, while her daughters lounge over fancy-work or a novel ”

“ It is the foundation upon which 286 depends the welfare of each member of a household; for it is the housekeeper who plans the food and is responsible for its character and suitability to age, season, health, and occupation. It is she who superintends, if she does not carry out, the details of cleanliness, so arduous and discouraging in our great cities. It is she who selects the clothing of her family; who directs the order of their lives:—their work and play, their rest and exercise, their sleep and their habits. ”

“ She must be master of all these special lines of work, and know a thousand and one things about the household not enumerated. She must not only be the housekeeper, but the homekeeper. [58] She must furnish her house with taste, and often at the same time with economy. She should understand the principles of the kindergarten, and not shrink from applying the fundamental ideas of ethics and psychology to the training of children. She must at all times be ready to perform her social obligations in the circle in which she moves. ”

“ Further, in the numerous households where husband and wife alike go out to work—perhaps at the same form of labour, as is the case in many factory districts—the woman on returning home (after working all day, just as her husband does, to contribute her share to the weekly expenses necessary for the support of household and children) has to cook, clean, sew, etc., in the time which her husband can employ as he chooses. ”

“ When domestic work is sufficiently honored to be taught as an art and science in our boarding-schools and high-schools, then possibly it may acquire also dignity in the eyes of our working classes, and young girls who have to earn their 273 own living may no longer feel degraded in engaging in domestic service. The place of a domestic in a family may become as respectable in their eyes as a place in a factory, in a printing-office, in a dressmaking or millinery establishment, or behind the counter of a shop. ”

“ Families look forward to the buying of landed homesteads, and the scattered brothers and sisters work awhile in domestic service to gain the common fund for the purpose; your seamstress intends to become a dressmaker, and take in work at her own house; your cook is pondering a marriage with the baker, which shall transfer her toils from your cooking-stove to her own. ”

“ The importance of housekeeping continually decreases in consequence of the extension of manufacturing, which absorbs the special tasks of the household one after another. While formerly clothes were made at home, bread was baked there, etc., at present there remains for the work of the household only the care of the house and the preparation of the food. And even these occupations may soon be taken out of the house.48 Unmarried women of the bourgeoisie used formerly often to be able to find a home with members of their family, since they were able to be of service. ”

“ They had plenty to keep them busy with their numerous household duties and the making of their own clothing and that of their children. Many of them were engaged in the care of silk-worms and in tea-picking. The country wife was busy in the rice-field, doing her work alongside her husband and sons, as well as performing the other duties that came into her country life. "Among the daily tasks of the housewife, one, and by no means the least of her duties, is to receive, duly acknowledge, and return in suitable manner, the presents received in the family. ”

“ When daughters are old enough to become their mother’s companions, they should also become joint partners in home and household responsibilities. When out of school, divide the work so that every other week the mother shall be entirely free from all care,—a guest in the family; or if that is at first too great a tax on the young partner, “take turns” in dividing the work,—the daughter one week having the charge of the cooking, marketing, and arranging for each meal entirely herself; the next week, of the dairy, if on a farm, or the laundry or chamber- work. ”

“ Special skill in arranging rooms, hanging pictures, preparing for lunches, teas, or other social entertainments, repairing furniture and wardrobes, fine laundry-work, special table-service, etc., could be performed for housekeepers by those who retain their own homes and yet are able and anxious to give a few hours daily to outside work. The exchange, through a bureau of information, could accomplish much for both those wishing work and those wishing workers, as well as in a business way for itself. ”

“ The real work of education in supplying the needs of the household is far more important. There are constantly arising in every household emergencies for which the housekeeper is, and must be, totally unprepared as regards the amount of available information she possesses. ”

“ Day Service.—A large number of single women and housewives work out regularly in families, or take washing into their homes; and, like house servants, are paid by the week, or if they work by the day from 30 to 50 cents a day. This absence of mothers from home not only occasions a neglect of their household duties but also of their children, especially of girls. ”

“ The responsibilities of the housewife place her at every turn in economic relations to the rest of the community, and therefore it is only right that coming housewives should be trained not alone in the manual crafts of cooking and laundry-work, but also in 206 the general principles of economic science which underlie the development and present organisation of the household. ”

“ The conclusion seems to be that all these efforts, from fashionable cooking-school to charity kitchen-garden, have not been able to remove, scarcely to lessen, either ignorance or prejudice.
The average housekeeper does not yet know the best, the easiest, the most practical, or the most scientific way to manage her household affairs. Her work is often monotonous and wearisome, and must be so until its true place as a profession is acknowledged. ”

“ Of these, many might live comfortably in those homes, and others might earn a support by working in their neighbors' houses, where they would be considered as members of the families, have good lodging and nourishing food, and where their assistance is not only desired, but in some cases actually suffered for. They prefer the excitements of city life. ”

“ In Virgil's account of the good housewife, who rises early in order to measure out the work of the household, and in Solomon's description of the thrifty woman of his time, one sees the value set upon feminine industry and economy in times far removed from our own, yet resembling it in this appreciation. ”

“ For the first time in her life, this housewife asked herself the following questions: Why should she allow her household employees to live in her house? Why should she consent to board them at her expense? Why should she continue to place at their disposal a bedroom each, a private bathroom, a sitting room or a dining room? Why should she allow them to make use of her kitchen and laundry to do their own personal washing, even providing them with soap and starch, irons and an ironing board, fuel and gas? Why should she do all this for them when no business employer, man or woman, ever does it? ”

“ The peace of the family and the joy and comfort of one's home should be a great enough incentive to awaken the housewife to the realization that something must be wrong in her present methods. It is in vain that she complains bitterly, on all occasions, of the scarcity of good servants, asserting that it is beyond her comprehension why work in factories, stores, and offices, should be preferred to the work she offers. ”

“ We have reviewed the daily labors indispensable to all classes of homes, giving whatever suggestions or criticisms seemed to us most needed or desirable, not only as regards the manual labor of a household, but also the actions, motives, and principles which build up and secure the happiness of a family ”

“ In the household of a rich industrial, whose family consists of himself, wife, and four children, the man-servant receives 80 marks, the chauffeur 200, the cook 45, the lady’s maid 35, the house-maid 25, kitchen-maid 12, and the governess 30 marks a month. ”

“ The week's washing for the family she must do, the mending and darning for the household is her task, the children must be washed and clothed and properly cared for by her. Of her many duties there is no end. ”

“ 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 housekeeping becomes an enthusiasm, and its study and practice a fashion, then we shall have in America that class of persons to rely on for help in household labors who are now going to factories, to printing-offices, to every kind of toil, forgetful of the best life and sphere of woman. ”

“ Depend upon it, if we thought of the poor primarily as husbands, wives, sons, and daughters, members of households, as we are ourselves, instead of contemplating them as a different class, we should recognise better how the house training and high ideal of home duty was our best preparation for work among them. ”

“ The plan for housekeeping in this large establishment was for each wife in turn to take charge for a month. It was no small undertaking to provide for the household, with the growing flocks of children and the frequent addition of visiting sisters, cousins, or aunts. The women involved, being individuals, had differing capacities and ideas, and each had the desire for a home managed according to her own idea. Imagine sitting down to every meal with six parents, twelve children and half a dozen guests! Inevitably the communal plan could not but fail to be altogether ideal. ”

“ Then, and only then, did her employer wake up with a start to the realization of the true position every housewife occupies in the eyes of her household employees. They evidently regard her in the light of a caterer; she does the marketing not only for her family but for them too. She pays a cook high wages, not only to cook meals for herself and family, but for her employees also. ”

“ It is, indeed, not improbable, for there is in every clime the tradition of a time when household helpers were abundant, competent, and cheap,—a golden age when harmony reigned in the household and domestic discord was unknown. ”