the ninety and more open to women. Thirty-eight of these are directly
connected with clothing, and include every phase of ornament or use in
braid, gimp, button, clasp, lining, or other article employed in its
manufacture. In every one of these competition keeps wages at the lowest
possible figure. Outside of the army here employed come the washers and
ironers who laundry shirts and underwear, whose work is of the most
exhausting order, who "lean hard" on the iron, and in time become the
victims of diseases resulting from ten hours a day of this "leaning
hard," and who complain bitterly that prisons and reformatories underbid
them and keep wages down. It is quite true. Convict labor here as
elsewhere is the foe of the honest worker, and complicates a problem
already sufficiently complicated. These ironers can make from ten to
twelve dollars per week, but soon fail in health and turn to lighter
work, many of them taking up cigar-making, which soon finishes the work
of demoralization.
Fringes, gimps, plush, and bonnet ornaments are overcrowded with
workers, for here, as in flowers and feathers, fashion determines the
season's work, and the fringe-maker has for a year or so had small call
for her knowledge save in some forms of upholstery. One and all are so
hedged in by competition that to pass beyond a certain limit is
impossible, and all wages are kept at the lowest point, not only by this
fact, but by the fact that many women who had learned the trade continue
it after marriage as a means of adding a trifle to the family income. An
expert in any one of them is tolerably certain of steady employment, but
wages have reached the lowest point and it does not appear that any rise
is probable. Sharp competition rules and will rule till the working
class themselves recognize the necessity of an education that will make
them something more than adjuncts to machinery, and of an organization
in which co-operation will take the place of competition. That both must
come is as certain as that evolution is upward and not downward, but it
is still a distant day, and neither employer nor employed have yet
learned the possibilities of either.
CHAPTER NINETEENTH.
DOMESTIC SERVICE AND ITS PROBLEMS.
At last we have come to the problem to which there has necessarily been
incidental reference here and there, but which has otherwise bided its
time. That these pages or any pages written by mortal hand in this
generation can solve it, the writer doubts, its solution being
inextricably involved with that of other social problems for which time
is the chief key. State the question as we may, there is always a fresh
presentation to be made, and replies are as various as the minds of the
staters. It is the mistress with whom such presentation has thus far
rested,--a mistress thorned beyond endurance by incompetence, dirt,
waste, insubordination,--all the evils known to ignorant and
presumptuous service. For such mistress, smarting from a sense of wrong,
and hopeless and faithless as to remedies, the outlook is necessarily
bounded by her own horizon. She listens with indignant contempt to the
story of the thousands who choose their garrets and semi-starvation with
independence, to the shelter and abundance of the homes in which they
might be made welcome. She may even aver that any statement of their
suffering is stupid sentimentality; the gush and maudlin melancholy of
"humanitarian clergymen and newspaper reformers."
For her, as for most of her order, in whom as yet no faculty for seeing
both sides of a question has developed, there can be no reply save in
words already spoken. "These women, working for wages that keep them
always just above starvation point, have no power left to think beyond
the need of the hour. They cannot stop, they dare not stop, to think of
other methods of earning. They have no clothing in which they could
obtain even entrance to an intelligence office. They have no knowledge
that could make them servants even of the meanest order. They are what
is left of untrained and hopelessly ignorant lives," given over to
suffering born in part from their ignorance; and for a large proportion
of such cases there can be merely alleviation, and such slight bettering
of conditions as would come from a system into which justice entered
more fully.
With this army of incompetents we have at present nothing to do. Our
interest lies in discovering what is at the bottom of the objection to
domestic service; how far these objections are rational and to be
treated with respect, and how they may be obviated. The mistress's point
of view we all know. We know, too, her presentation of objections as she
fancies she has discovered them. What we do not know is the ground
taken by sensible, self-respecting girls, who have chosen trades in
preference, and from whom full detail has been obtained as to the
reasons for such choice. In listening to the countless stories of
experiment in earning a living, the passage from one industry to
another, and the uncertainties and despairs before the right thing had
shown itself, the question has always been asked, "How did it happen
that you did not try to get a place in some good family?"
The answers were as various as the characters of those who replied; some
with indignation that they should be supposed capable of this
degradation, but most of them thoughtfully and reasonably. In time they
arranged themselves under heads, the occupations represented by the
various respondents being over seventy. They were chiefly above the
ordinary domestic in intelligence and education, their employments being
of every order, from paper-box making to type-writing and stenography;
but the trades predominated,--American being the nationality most
largely represented, Irish born in this country ranking next, and German
and a sprinkling of other nationalities following. These replies are
precisely of the same nature as those given some time ago in
Philadelphia during an investigation made by the head of one of the
first guilds for working-women established in this country, objections
being practically the same at whatever point they may be given. They
were arranged under different heads and numbered in order.
In the present case it seems well to take the individual testimony, each
girl whose verdict is chosen representing a class, and being really its
mouthpiece.
First on the list stands Margaret M----, an American, twenty-three years
old, and for five years in a paper-box factory. Seven others nodded
their assent, or added a word here and there as she gave her view, two
of them Irish-Americans who had had some years in the public schools.
"It's freedom that we want when the day's work is done. I know some nice
girls, Bridget's cousins, that make more money and dress better and
everything for being in service. They're waitresses, and have Thursday
afternoon out and part of every other Sunday. But they're never sure of
one minute that's their own when they're in the house. Our day is ten
hours long, but when it's done it's done, and we can do what we like
with the evenings. That's what I've heard from every nice girl that ever
tried service. You're never sure that your soul's your own except when
you are out of the house, and I couldn't stand that a day. Women care
just as much for freedom as men do. Of course they don't get so much,
but I know I'd fight for mine."
"Women are always harder on women than men are," said a fur-sewer, an
intelligent American about thirty. "I got tired of always sitting, and
took a place as chambermaid. The work was all right and the wages good,
but I'll tell you what I couldn't stand. The cook and the waitress were
just common, uneducated Irish, and I had to room with one and stand the
personal habits of both, and the way they did at table took all my
appetite. I couldn't eat, and began to run down; and at last I gave
notice, and told the truth when I was asked why. The lady just looked at
me astonished: 'If you take a servant's place, you can't expect to be
one of the family,' she said. 'I never asked it,' I said; 'all I ask is
a chance at common decency.' 'It will be difficult to find an easier
place than this,' she said, and I knew it; but ease one way was hardness
another, and she couldn't see that I had any right to complain. That's
one trouble in the way. It's the mixing up of things, and mistresses
don't think how they would feel in the same place."
Third came an Irish-American whose mother had been cook for years in one
family, but who had, after a few months of service, gone into a
jute-mill, followed gradually by five sisters.
"I hate the very words 'service' and 'servant,'" she said. "We came to
this country to better ourselves, and it's not bettering to have anybody
ordering you round."
"But you are ordered in the mill."
"That's different. A man knows what he wants, and doesn't go beyond it;
but a woman never knows what she wants, and sort of bosses you
everlastingly. If there was such a thing as fixed hours it might be
different, but I tell every girl I know, 'Whatever you do, don't go into
service. You'll always be prisoners and always looked down on.' You can
do things at home for them as belongs to you that somehow it seems
different to do for strangers. Anyway, I hate it, and there's plenty
like me."
"What I minded," said a gentle, quiet girl, who worked at a stationer's,
and who had tried household service for a year,--"what I minded was the
awful lonesomeness. I went for general housework, because I knew all
about it, and there were only three in the family. I never minded being
alone evenings in my own room, for I'm always reading or something, and
I don't go out hardly at all, but then I always know I can, and that
there is somebody to talk to if I like. But there, except to give
orders, they had nothing to do with me. It got to feel sort of crushing
at last. I cried myself sick, and at last I gave it up, though I don't
mind the work at all. I know there are good places, but the two I tried
happened to be about alike, and I sha'n't try again. There are a good
many would feel just the same."
"Oh, nobody need to tell me about poor servants," said an energetic
woman of forty, Irish-American, and for years in a shirt factory. "Don't
I know the way the hussies'll do, comin' out of a bog maybe, an' not
knowing the names even, let alone the use, of half the things in the
kitchen, and asking their twelve and fourteen dollars a month? Don't I
know it well, an' the shame it is to 'em! but I know plenty o' decent,
hard-workin' girls too, that give good satisfaction, an' this is what
they say. They say the main trouble is, the mistresses don't know, no
more than babies, what a day's work really is. A smart girl keeps on her
feet all the time to prove she isn't lazy, for if the mistress finds her
sitting down, she thinks there can't be much to do and that she doesn't
earn her wages. Then if a girl tries to save herself or is deliberate,
they call her slow. They want girls on tap from six in the morning till
ten and eleven at night. 'Tisn't fair. And then, if there's a let-up in
the work, maybe they give you the baby to see to. I like a nice baby,
but I don't like having one turned over to me when I'm fit to drop
scrabbling to get through and sit down a bit. I've naught to say for the
girls that's breaking things and half doing the work. They're a shameful
set, and ought to be put down somehow; but it's a fact that the most
I've known in service have been another sort that stayed long in places
and hated change. There's many a good place too, but the bad ones
outnumber 'em. Women make hard mistresses, and I say again, I'd rather
be under a man, that knows what he wants. That's the way with most."
"I don't see why people are surprised that we don't rush into places,"
said a shop-girl. "Our world may be a very narrow world, and I know it
is; but for all that, it's the only one we've got, and right or wrong,
we're out of it if we go into service. A teacher or cashier or anybody
in a store, no matter if they have got common-sense, doesn't want to
associate with servants. Somehow you get a sort of smooch. Young men
think and say, for I have heard lots of them, 'Oh, she can't amount to
much if she hasn't brains enough to make a living outside of a kitchen!'
You're just down once for all if you go into one."
"I don't agree with you at all," said a young teacher who had come with
her. "The people that hire you go into kitchens and are not disgraced.
What I felt was, for you see I tried it, that they oughtn't to make me
go into livery. I was worn out with teaching, and so I concluded to try
being a nurse for a while. I found two hard things: one, that I was
never free for an hour from the children, for I took meals and all with
them, and any mother knows what a rest it is to go quite away from them,
even for an hour; and the other was that she wanted me to wear the
nurse's cap and apron. She was real good and kind; but when I said,
'Would you like your sister, Miss Louise, to put on cap and apron when
she goes out with them?' she got very red, and straightened up. 'It's a
very different matter,' she said; 'you must not forget that in accepting
a servant's place you accept a servant's limitations.' That finished me.
I loved the children, but I said, 'If you have no other thought of what
I am to the children than that, I had better go.' I went, and she put a
common, uneducated Irish girl in my place. I know a good many who would
take nurse's places, and who are sensible enough not to want to push
into the family life. But the trouble is that almost every one wants to
make a show, and it is more stylish to have the nurse in a cap and
apron, and so she is ordered into them."
"I've tried it," said one who had been a dressmaker and found her health
going from long sitting. "My trouble was, no conscience as to hours; and
I believe you'll find that is, at the bottom, one of the chief
objections. My first employer was a smart, energetic woman, who had done
her own work when she was first married and knew what it meant, or you'd
think she might have known. But she had no more thought for me than if I
had been a machine. She'd sit in her sitting-room on the second floor
and ring for me twenty times a day to do little things, and she wanted
me up till eleven to answer the bell, for she had a great deal of
company. I had a good room and everything nice, and she gave me a great
many things, but I'd have spared them all if only I could have had a
little time to myself. I was all worn out, and at last I had to go.
There was another reason. I had no place but the kitchen to see my
friends. I was thirty years old and as well born and well educated as
she, and it didn't seem right. The mistresses think it's all the girls'
fault, but I've seen enough to know that women haven't found out what
justice means, and that a girl knows it, many a time, better than her
employer. Anyway, you couldn't make me try it again."
"My trouble was," said another, who had been in a cotton-mill and gone
into the home of one of the mill-owners as chambermaid, "I hadn't any
place that I could be alone a minute. We were poor at home, and four of
us worked in the mill, but I had a little room all my own, even if it
didn't hold much. In that splendid big house the servants' room was over
the kitchen,--hot and close in summer, and cold in winter, and four beds
in it. We five had to live there together, with only two bureaus and a
bit of a closet, and one washstand for all. There was no chance to keep
clean or your things in nice order, or anything by yourself, and I gave
up. Then I went into a little family and tried general housework, and
the mistress taught me a great deal, and was good and kind, only there
the kitchen was a dark little place and my room like it, and I hadn't an
hour in anything that was pleasant and warm. A mistress might see, you'd
think, when a girl was quiet and fond of her home, and treat her
different from the kind that destroy everything; but I suppose the truth
is, they're worn out with that kind and don't make any difference. It's
hard to give up your whole life to somebody else's orders, and always
feel as if you was looked at over a wall like; but so it is, and you
won't get girls to try it, till somehow or other things are different."
Last on the record came a young woman born in Pennsylvania in a fairly
well-to-do farmer's house.
"I like house-work," she said. "There's nothing suits me so well. We
girls never had any money, nor mother either, and so I went into a
water-cure near the Gap and stayed awhile. Now the man that run it
believed in all being one family. He called the girls helpers, and he
fixed things so't each one had some time to herself every day, and he
tried to teach 'em all sorts of things. The patients were cranky to wait
on, but you felt as if you was a human being, anyhow, and had a chance.
Well, I watched things, and I said it was discouraging, sure enough. I
tried to do a square day's work, but two-thirds of 'em there shirked
whenever they could; half did things and then lied to cover their
tracks. I was there nine months, and I learned better'n ever I knew
before how folks ought to live on this earth. And I said to myself the
fault wasn't so much in the girls that hadn't ever been taught; it was
in them that didn't know enough to teach 'em. A girl thought it was
rather pretty and independent, and showed she was somebody, to sling
dishes on the table, and never say 'ma'am' nor 'sir,' and dress up
afternoons and make believe they hadn't a responsibility on earth. They
hadn't sense enough to do anything first-rate, for nobody had ever put
any decent ambition into 'em. It isn't to do work well; it's to get
somehow to a place where there won't be any more work. So I say that
it's the way of living and thinking that's all wrong; and that as soon
as you get it ciphered out and plain before you that any woman, high or
low, is a mean sneak that doesn't do everything in the best way she can
possibly learn, and that doesn't try to help everybody to feel just so,
why, things would stop being crooked and folks would get along well
enough. Don't you think so?"
How far the energetic speaker had solved the problem must be left to the
reader, for whom there still certain unconsidered phases, all making
part of the arraignment, scouted by those who are served, but more and
more distinct and formidable in the mind of the server.
CHAPTER TWENTIETH.
MORE PROBLEMS OF DOMESTIC SERVICE.
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.
The phases encountered here are born of the conditions of life in the
cities and large towns; and denied as they may be by quiet householders
whose knowledge of life is bounded by their own walls, or walls
enclosing neighbors of like mind, they exist and face at once all who
look below the surface. The testimony of the class itself might be open
to doubt. The testimony of the physicians whose work lies among them, or
in the infirmaries to which they come, cannot be impugned. Shirk or deny
facts as we may, it is certain that in the great cities, save for the
comparatively small proportion of quiet homes where old methods still
prevail, household service has become synonymous with the worst
degradation that comes to woman. Women who have been in service, and
remained in it contentedly until marriage, unite in saying that things
have so changed that only here and there is a young girl safe, and that
domestic service is the cover for more licentiousness than can be found
in any other trade in which women are at work.
Incredible as this statement at first appears, the statistics of
hospitals and in infirmaries confirm it, and the causes are not far to
seek. Household service has passed from the hands of Americans into
those of the Irish first, and then a proportion of every European
nation. So long as the supply came to us entirely from abroad we were
comparatively safe. If the experience of the new arrival had been solely
under thatched roof and on clay floors, at least sun could visit them
and great chimneys gave currents of pure air, while simple food kept
blood pure and gave small chance for unruly impulses to govern. But once
with us demoralization began, and the tenement-house guaranteed sure
corruption for every tenant. Even for the most decent there was small
escape. To the children born in these quarters every inmost fact of
human life was from the beginning a familiar story. Overcrowding, the
impossibility of slightest privacy, the constant contact with the
grossest side of life, soon deaden any susceptibility and destroy every
gleam of modesty or decency. In the lowest order of all rules an
absolute shamelessness which conceals itself in the grade above, yet has
no less firm hold of those who have come up in such conditions.
There are many exceptions, many well-fought battles against their power,
but our concern at present is not with these but with facts as they
stand recorded. Physician after physician has given in her testimony and
one and all agree in the statement that open prostitution is for many
merely the final step,--a mere setting the seal to the story of ruin and
licentiousness that has always existed. The women who adopt this mode of
life because of want of work or low wages are the smallest of
minorities. The illegitimate children for whom the city must care are
not from this source. Often the mother is a mere child who has been
deceived and outraged, but far more often she has entered a family
prepared to meet any advances, and often directly the tempter.
It is this state of things which makes many mothers say: "My girl shall
never run such risks. I'll keep her from them as long as I can;" and
unsavory as the details will seem, their knowledge is an essential
factor in the problem. The tenement-house stands to-day not only as the
breeder of disease and physical degeneration for every inmate, but as
equally potent in social demoralization for the class who ignore its
existence. Out of these houses come hundreds upon hundreds of our
domestic servants, whose influence is upon our children at the most
impressible age, and who bring inherited and acquired foulness into our
homes and lives. And if such make but the smallest proportion of those
who serve, they are none the less powerful and most formidable agents in
that blunting of moral perception which is a more and more apparent fact
in the life of the day. The records from which such knowledge is gleaned
are not accessible to the general public. They are formulated only by
the physician, whose business is silence, and who gives only an
occasional summary of what may be found in the sewer underlying the
social life of great cities. Decorously hidden from view the foul stream
flows on, rising here and there to the surface, but instantly covered by
popular opinion, which pronounces such revelations disgusting and
considers suppression synonymous with extermination.
Naturally this phase of things is confined chiefly to the great cities,
but the virus is portable and its taint may be discovered even in the
remote country. It is one of the many causes that have worked toward the
degradation of this form of service, but it is so interwoven and
integral a part of the present social structure that temporary
destruction would seem the inevitable result of change. Yet change must
come before the only class who have legitimate place in our homes will
or can take such place. If different ideals had ruled among us; if ease
and freedom from obligation and "a good time" had not come to be the
chief end of man to-day; if our schools gave any training from which boy
or girl could go out into life with the best in them developed and ready
for actual practical use,--this mass of undisciplined, conscienceless,
reckless force would have been reduced to its lowest terms, and to
dispose of the residuum would be an easy problem. As it is, we are at
the mercy of the spirits we have raised, and no one word holds power to
lay them. No axioms or theories of the past have any present
application. It is because we cling to the old theories while diligently
practising methods in absolute opposition to them, that the question has
so complicated itself. We cannot go backward, but we can stop short and
discover in what direction our path is tending and whether we are not
wandering blindly in by-ways, when the public road is clear to see.