follows: First and most obvious is the fact that wages are not only
relatively but absolutely high; for aside from the actual cash there are
also board, lodging, fuel, light, and laundry, all of which the worker
in trades must provide for herself. There is no capital required, as for
type-writer, sewing-machine, or any appliances for work, nor is the girl
forced to expend anything in preparation, since under the present system
housekeepers take her untrained fresh from Castle Garden, and willingly
give the needed instruction, at the same time paying the same wage as
that given to competent service. Professor Lucy Salmon, of Vassar, who
has devoted much time to this subject, reports that, on examination of
testimony from three thousand employees, it is found that on a wage of
$3.25 a week it is possible to save annually nearly $150 "in an
occupation involving no outlay, no investment of capital, and few or no
personal expenses." The wages received are relatively higher than those
of other occupations; for in Professor Salmon's comparison of wages
received by three thousand country and the same number of city employees
it was found that of six thousand teachers in the public schools the
average salary actually paid is less than that paid to the average cook
in a large city.
The second advantage lies in the healthfulness of the work, which
includes not only regularity but variety; the third, that a home, at
least in all externals, is insured; the fourth, that a training which
makes the worker more fit for married life is certain; and a fifth, that
the work is congenial and easy for those whose tastes lie in this
direction.
These are the facts that are constantly urged upon the army of
under-paid, half-starving needlewomen in our great cities, and no less
upon another army of girls in shops and factories, who are implored to
consider the advantages of domestic service and to give up their
unnecessary battle with the limitations hedging in every other form of
labor. Astonishment that the girls prefer the factory and shop is
unending, nor is it regarded as possible that substantial reason may and
must exist for such choice. As a means of arriving at some solution of
the problem, some six hundred employees of every order were interviewed,
under circumstances which made their replies perfectly free and full;
and the results tallied exactly with others obtained by an inquiry in
the Philadelphia Working-Woman's Guild, a society then representing
seventy-two distinct occupations.
A report of this inquiry was made by Mrs. Eliza S. Turner, the President
of the Guild, and is given as the most suggestive view of the whole
subject yet secured. She writes as follows:--
"Why do not intelligent, refined girls more frequently choose house
service as a support?" The replies here given are as nearly as
possible _verbatim_:
1. Loss of freedom. This is as dear to women as to men, although we
don't get so much of it. The day of a saleswoman or a factory hand
may be long, but when it is done she is her own mistress; but in
service, except when she is actually out of the house, she has no
hour, no minute, when her soul is her own.
2. Hurts to self-respect. One thing that makes housework
unpleasant--chamber-work, for instance, and waiting on table--is
that it is a kind of personal service, one human being waiting on
another. The very thing you would do without a thought in your own
home for your own family seems menial when it is demanded by a
stranger.
3. The very words, "service" and "servant," are hateful. It is all
well enough to talk about service being divine, but that is not the
way the world looks at it.
4. Say that a young woman well brought up undertakes to do
chamber-work; she is obliged to associate with the other girls, no
matter how uncongenial they may be, what may be their language or
personal habits or table manners. If she tries to keep to herself,
the rest think she is taking airs, and combine to make her life
unbearable.
5. Or say she takes a place for general housework; to be alone in
the midst of others is crushing,--quite different from being alone
in one's own lodgings.
6. I suppose a soldier doesn't mind being ordered around by his
captain; but in a family the mistress and maid are so mixed up that
it is much harder to keep the lines from tangling. It takes a very
superior person, on both sides, to do it.
7. I knew an educated woman--a lady--who tried it as a sort of
upper housemaid. The work was easy, the pay good, and she never had
a harsh word; but they just seemed unconscious of her existence.
She said the gentlemen of the house, father and son, would come in
and stand before her to have her take their umbrellas or help them
off with their coats, and sometimes without speaking to her or even
looking at her. There was something so humiliating about it that
she couldn't stand it, but went back to slop shop sewing.
8. Many mistresses have no standard of the amount of work a girl
ought to do. They know nothing about housework themselves. If a
girl is deliberate and saves herself, they call her slow; if she is
ambitious, and gets her work done early, and they see her sitting
down in working-hours, they conclude that she is not earning her
wages, and hunt up some extra job for her. No matter if you can't
find anything undone, if she is found sitting about she _must_ be
lazy.
9. Some employers think that after the more violent work is done,
it is only a rest for the girl to look after the child awhile. They
don't seem to realize that if the mother finds it such a relief to
get rid of her own child for an hour or so, it is likely to be
still less interesting to take care of somebody else's child.
10. Many people think the position of a child's nurse is very light
work indeed,--mostly just sitting around; so they don't hesitate to
give her the care of one or two children all day, not even
arranging for her to get her meals without the oversight of them;
and then most likely put the baby to sleep with her at night. Any
one minute of such a day may not be heavy, but to have it for
twenty-four hours is enough to wear out the strongest human being
ever made.
11. I knew a school-teacher who thought more active occupation
would better suit her health; she took a place as child's nurse.
She loved children, and found no objection to the work; but soon
the employer concluded to put her in a _bonne's_ cap and apron. My
friend would have worn and liked a nurse's uniform, but she
objected to a family livery. On this question they parted; and her
employer hired an uncouth, ignorant woman to be her child's
companion and to give it its first impressions.
12. In most houses, however elegant, the girls have no home
privacy; they must sleep, not only in the same room, but most
frequently in the same bed; it is rarely thought necessary to make
that room pleasant or even warm for them to dress by or to sit in
to do their own sewing. The little tastes and notions of each
member of the family, down to the youngest, are provided for; but a
"girl" is not supposed to have any. She is just a "girl," as a
gridiron is a gridiron, an article bought for the convenience of
the family. If she suits, use her till she is worn out and then
throw her away.
13. To go into house service, even from the most wretched slop or
factory work, is to lose caste in our own world; it may be a very
narrow world, but it is all to us. A saleswoman or cashier or
teacher is ashamed to associate with servants.
14. The very words, "No followers," would keep us out of such
occupation. No self-respecting young woman is going to put herself
in a position where she is not allowed to entertain her friends,
both male and female; nor where, if allowed, the only place thought
fit for them is the kitchen.
Now, the above is not theory, but testimony, taken by the present
writer from the lips of intelligent working-girls, many of whom
would be better off at housework than at their present occupations,
except for the objections. And from a consideration thereof results
this query: Given a certain number of young women of a class
superior to the imported, willing to take service under the
following conditions, how many housekeepers would agree to the
conditions?--
1. The heaviest work, as washing, carrying coal, scrubbing
pavements, and the like, to be provided for, if this be asked, with
consequent deduction in wages.
2. In families, where practicable, certain hours of absolute
freedom while in the house, especially with the child's nurse.
3. Such a way of speaking, both to and of your house help, as
testifies to the world that you really do consider housework as
respectable as other occupations.
4. A well-warmed, well-furnished room, with separate beds when
desired; and the use of a decent place and appointments at meals.
5. The privilege of seeing friends, whether male or female; of a
better part of the house than the kitchen in which to receive them;
and security from espionage during their visits,--this accompanied
by proper restrictions as to evening hours, and under the condition
that the work is not neglected.
6. No livery, if objected to.
Turning from this informal examination of the subject to the few labor
reports which have taken up the matter, it becomes plain that domestic
service is in many points more undesirable than any other occupation
open to women. The Labor Commissioner of Minnesota reports, while
stating all the advantages of the domestic servant over the general
worker, that "only a fifth of those who employ them are fit to deal
with any worker, injustice and oppression characterizing their methods."
Figures and detailed statements bear him out in this conclusion. The
Colorado Commissioner gives even more details, and comes to the same
conclusion; and though other reports do not take up the subject in
detail, their indications are the same.
The first general and rational presentation of the subject in all its
bearings, both for employed and employer, has lately been made during
the Woman's Congress at Chicago, May, 1893, in which the Domestic
Science section discussed every phase of wrongs and remedies.[48] The
latter sum up in the formation of bureaus of employment in every large
city, fixed rates, and full preparatory training. A keen observer of
social facts has stated: The intelligence offices of New York alone
receive from servants yearly over three million dollars, and are
notoriously inefficient. This, or even half of it, would provide a great
centre with training-schools, lodgings for all who needed them, and a
system by which fixed rates were made according to the grade of
efficiency of the worker. Till household service comes under the laws
determining value, as well as hours and all other points involved in the
wage for a working-day, it will remain in the disorganized and hopeless
state which at present baffles the housekeeper, and deters
self-respecting women and girls from undertaking it. To bring about some
such organization as that suggested will most quickly accomplish this;
and there seems already hope that the time is not distant when every
city will have its agency corresponding to the great Bourse du Travail
in Paris, but even more comprehensive in scope. Co-operation within
certain limited degrees, so that private home life will not be infringed
upon, must necessarily make part of such a scheme, and has already been
tried with success at various points in the West; but details can
hardly be given here. It is sufficient to add that with such new basis
for this form of occupation the "servant question" will cease to be a
terror, and the most natural occupation for women will have countless
recruits from ranks now closed against it.
FOOTNOTES:
[41] Fifteenth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor, p.
68.
[42] Ibid.
[43] House of Representatives Report No. 2309: Report of the Committee
on Manufactures on the Sweating-System, House of Representatives,
January, 1893.
[44] Child Labor. By William F. Willoughby, A.B. Child Labor. By Miss
Clare de Grafenried, Publications of the American Economic Association,
vol. v. no. 2.
[45] Our Toiling Children. By Florence Kelley, W.C.T.U. Publishing
Association, Chicago.
[46] Married Women in Factories. By W. Stanley Jevons, Contemporary
Review, vol. xli. pp. 37-53.
[47] Miss Alice Woodbridge, Secretary of the Working-Woman's Society, 27
Clinton Place, New York.
[48] The association then formed, and from which much is hoped, made the
following summary of its objects:--
"The objects of this Association shall be: 1. To awaken the public mind
to the importance of establishing a Bureau of Information where there
can be an exchange of wants and needs between employer and employed in
every department of home and social life. 2. To promote among members of
the Association a more scientific knowledge of the economic value of
various foods and fuels; a more intelligent understanding of correct
plumbing and drainage in our homes, as well as need for pure water and
good light in a sanitarily built house. 3. To secure skilled labor in
every department of women's work in our homes,--not only to demand
better trained cooks and waitresses, but to consider the importance of
meeting the increasing demand for those competent to do plain sewing and
mending."
XII.
REMEDIES AND SUGGESTIONS.
The student of social problems who faces the misery of the lowest order
of worker, and the sharp privation endured by many even of the better
class, is apt, in the first fever of amazement and indignation, to feel
that some instant force must be brought to bear, and justice secured,
though the heavens fall. It is this sense of the struggle of humanity
out of which have been born Utopias of every order, from the "Republic"
of Plato to the dream in "Looking Backward." Not one of these can be
spared; and that they exist and find a following larger and larger, is
the surest evidence of the soul at the bottom of each. But for those who
take the question as a whole, who see how slow has been the process of
evolution, and how impossible it is to hasten one step of the unfolding
that humankind is still to know, it is the ethical side that comes
uppermost, and that first demands consideration.
Taking the mass of the lowest order of workers at all points, the first
aim of any effort intended for their benefit is to disentangle the
individual from the mass. It is not charity that is to do this. "Homes"
of every variety open their doors; but in all of them still lurks the
suspicion of charity; and even when this has no active formulation in
the worker's mind, there is still the underlying sense of the essential
injustice of withholding with one hand just pay, and with the other
proffering a substitute, in a charity which is to reflect credit on the
giver and demand gratitude from the receiver. Here and there this is
recognized, and within a short time has been emphasized by a woman whose
name is associated with the work of organized charities throughout the
country,--Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell. It is doubtful if there is any
woman in the country better fitted, by long experience and almost
matchless common-sense, to speak authoritatively. She writes:--
"So far from assuming that the well-to-do portion of society have
discharged all their obligations to men and God by supporting
charitable institutions, I regard just this expenditure as one of
the prime causes of the suffering and crime that exist in our
midst.... I am inclined, in general, to look upon what is called
charity as the insult added to the injury done to the mass of the
people, by insufficient payment for work."
Just pay, then, heads the list of remedies. The difficulty of fixing
this is necessarily enormous, nor can it come at once; since education
for not only the employer but the public as a whole is demanded. To
bring this about is a slow process. It is a transition period in which
we live. Material conditions born of phenomenal material progress have
deadened the sense as to what constitutes real progress; and the
working-woman of to-day contends not only with visible but invisible
obstacles, the nature of which we are but just beginning to discern.
Twenty years ago M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu wrote of women wage-earners:--
"From the economic point of view, woman, who has next to no
material force, and whose arms are advantageously replaced by the
least machine, can have useful place and obtain a fair remuneration
only by the development of the best qualities of her intelligence.
It is the inexorable law of our civilization,--the principle and
formula even of social progress,--that mechanical engines are to
perform every operation of human labor which does not proceed
directly from the mind. The hand of man is each day deprived of a
portion of its original task; but this general gain is a loss for
the particular, and for the classes whose only instrument of labor
is a pair of feeble arms."
Take the fact here stated, and add to it all that is implied in modern
competitive conditions, and we see the true nature of the task that
awaits us. To do away with this competition would not accomplish the end
desired. To guide it and bring it into intelligent lines is part of the
general education. Profit-sharing is an indispensable portion of the
justice to be done; and this, too, implies education for both sides, and
would go far toward lessening burdens. We cannot abolish the factory,
but hours can be shortened; the labor of married women with young
children forbidden, as well as that of children below a fixed age.
Industrial education will prevent the possibility of another generation
owning so many incompetent and untrained workers, and technical schools
in general are already raising the standard and helping to secure the
same end.
Our present methods mean waste in every direction, and trusts and
syndicates have already demonstrated how much may be saved to the
producer if intelligent combination can be brought about. Competition
can never wholly be set aside, since within reasonable limits it is the
spur of invention and a part of evolution itself. But if wise
co-operation be once adopted, the enormous friction and waste of present
methods ceases,--the waste of human life as well as of material.
One cheering token of progress is the increased discussion as to methods
of training and the necessity of organization among women themselves.
Ten years ago only a voice here and there suggested the need of either.
In 1885, at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement
of Science, Miss Sarah Harland, lecturer on Mathematics at Newnham
College, insisted that educated gentlewomen must have larger opportunity
for paying work. The three qualifications in all work she stated to be:
(1) Organization on a large scale; (2) Permanency; (3) Giving returns
that will enable the salaries paid to compete with those of teachers.
She regarded dressmaking as the trade which could most readily organize
and meet the other conditions specified, and millinery as the trade
which would come next. Until such organization and its results have
gradually altered present conditions, it will be true for all workers,
on both sides of the sea, that not health alone but life itself are
continuously endangered by the facts hedging about all labor. Dr.
Stevens, the head of St. Luke's Insane Asylum in London, in a paper read
before the Social Science Association, said:--
"It may be stated with great confidence that a prolific cause for
the rapid and extensive increase of insanity in this country is to
be found in the unceasing toil and anxiety to which the
working-classes are subjected, this cause developing the disease in
the existing generation, or, what is quite as frequently the case,
transmitting to the offspring idiocy, insanity, or some imperfectly
developed sensorium or nervous system. The agitated, overworked,
and harassed parent is not in a condition to transmit a healthy
brain to his child."[49]
Accepted as true in 1857, the words are not less so to-day, when cheap
labor swarms, and the unemployed number their millions.
How best to combine and to what ends, is the lesson taught in every
form of the new movement for organization among women. To learn how to
work together and what power lies in combination, has been the lesson of
all clubs. Among men it has counted as one of the chief educating
forces, but for women every circumstance has fostered the distrust of
each other which belongs to all undeveloped natures. For the lowest
order of worker even, the "Working-Woman's Journal," published in London
and the organ of the Working-Woman's Protective Union, has for the last
year recorded, from month to month, the gradual progress of the idea of
combination, and the new hope it has brought to all who have gone into
trades unions.
With us there has been equal need and equal ignorance of all that such
combinations have to give. They mean arbitration rather than strikes,
and the compelling of ignorant and unjust employers to consider the
situation from other points of view than their own. They compel also the
same attitude from men in the same trades, who often are as strong
opponents of a better chance for their associates among women workers
in the same branches, as the most prejudiced employer.
Six points are urged by the Working-Woman's Society of New York, all in
the lines indicated here. Its purposes and aims, as given in the
prospectus, are as follows:--
1. To encourage women in the various trades to protect their mutual
interests by organization.
2. To use all possible means to enforce the existing laws relating
to the protection of women and children in factories and shops,
investigating all reported violations of such laws; also to
promote, by all suitable means, further legislation in this
direction.
3. To work for the abolition of tenement-house manufacture,
especially in the cigar and clothing trades.
4. To investigate all reported cases of cruel treatment on the part
of employers and their managers to their women and children
employees, in withholding money due, in imposing fines, or in
docking wages without sufficient reason.
5. To found a labor bureau for the purpose of facilitating the
exchanging of labor between city and country, thus relieving the
over-crowded occupations now filled by women.
6. To publish a journal in the interests of working-women.
7. To secure equal pay for both sexes for equal work.
These points are the same as those made by the few clubs which have
taken up the question of woman's work and wages; but thus far only this
society has formulated them definitely. Working-girls' clubs, friendly
societies, and guilds are giving to the worker new thoughts and new
purposes. The Convention of Working-Girls' Clubs held in New York in
April, 1890, showed the wide-reaching influence they had attained, and
the new ideals opening before the worker. It showed also with equal
force the roused sense of responsibility toward them, and the eager
interest and desire for their betterment in all ways. Where they
themselves touched upon their needs, there were direct statements in the
same line as many already quoted, which called for better pay, better
conditions, shorter hours, and fewer fines.
Following the points given above came another presentation, the result
of still further and long-continued investigation; and as the methods of
the search and its results are practicable for all towns and cities
where women are at work, the statement prepared for the Society is given
in full:--
"We would call your attention to the condition of the women and
children in the large retail houses in this city,--conditions which
tend to injure both physically and morally, not only these women
and children, but working-women in general. The general idea is
that saleswomen are employed from eight A.M. to six P.M., but they
are really engaged in the majority of stores for such a time as the
firm requires them; which means in the Grand Street stores, until
ten, eleven, and twelve o'clock on Saturday night _all the year
round_, the Saturday half-holiday not being observed in summer; and
in the majority of houses that stock must be arranged after six
P.M., the time varying, according to season, from fifteen minutes
to five hours, _and this without supper or extra pay_; thus
compelling women and children to go long distances late at night,
and rendering them liable to insult and immoral influences.