THE SOCIAL DISADVANTAGES OF DOMESTIC SERVICE
The most serious disadvantage in domestic service that remains to be
considered is the low social position the employment entails at the
present time on those who enter it. This shows itself in various ways.
The most noticeable is the lack of home privileges. It is true that
the domestic employee receives board, lodging, protection, and many
incidental privileges in the home of her employer; that these are as
a rule better than she could provide for herself elsewhere, and much
superior to those which can be secured by women working in shops and
factories. But board and lodging do not constitute a home, and the
domestic can never be a part of the family whose external life she
shares. The case is well stated by an employee who writes:
“Ladies wonder how their girls can complain of loneliness
in a house full of people, but oh! it is the worst kind of
loneliness—their share is but the work of the house, they do
not share in the pleasures and delights of a home. One must
remember that there is a difference between a _house_, a place
of shelter, and a _home_, a place where all your affections are
centred. Real love exists between my employer and myself, yet
at times I grow almost desperate from the sense of being cut
off from those pleasures to which I had always been accustomed.
I belong to the same church as my employer, yet have no share
in the social life of the church.”
This appreciation of the difference between being in a family and being
a part of it is in direct ratio to the delicacy and sensitiveness of the
organization of the employee. An American who can be considered one of
the family is the very one who most appreciates the difference between
being one of the family and like one of the family. The differences which
are most keenly felt are three. The first is the fact that a certain
amount of regulation must always be exercised by the employer in regard
to the number and character of visitors received by the employee. It is a
matter of self-protection, and is sometimes due to the employee as well.
It often does not differ in kind or in degree from the care exercised for
the other members of the household. The necessity for it is recognized
by the better class of employees.[267] Nevertheless the restraint is
irksome, the desire for independence not always unreasonable, and the
wish for a place in which to receive visitors not surprising.
Another deprivation is the lack of opportunity for receiving or showing
in even a slight degree that hospitality which can be accepted and
exercised in every other employment involving equal intelligence.[268]
The domestic employee can neither accept nor give an invitation to
supper; she cannot offer a cup of tea to a caller; she does not ask a
friend to remain to dinner, except perhaps at rare intervals a mother
or a sister. She has the privilege of using without limit for her own
necessities the food purchased by her employer, but she cannot share it
without transgressing this privilege. She cannot invite her friends for
an afternoon tea to meet a friend from another place, or give a small
dinner party or a chafing-dish supper. She can do none of these things
the desire for which is so natural and which can be gratified in a small
way in almost every other occupation. Even more than this, she is never a
sharer in the general social life of the community.[269] She is precluded
not by her character but by her condition from exercising those social
privileges which are instinctive in all persons.
Another social barrier is the failure of society to recognize the need on
the part of the employee of those opportunities for personal improvement
so freely accorded to those in other occupations. If she has a taste for
music or art she can cultivate it only at the expense of ridicule,[270]
while her need of intellectual advantages in a similar way meets with
no recognition.[271] If she is refined and cultivated, she must often
associate with those who are coarse and ignorant.[272]
But the question of social standing goes farther than this. Not only
are social advantages of every kind denied the domestic employee,
but the badge of social inferiority is put upon her in characters as
unchangeable as are the spots of a leopard. This badge assumes several
different forms. The first is the use of the word “servant.”[273] 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. We may quote to
every employee the proudly humble motto of the Prince of Wales, “Ich
dien,” and the example of the Pope, who calls himself “the servant of the
servants of the Lord.” We may by a social fiction subscribe ourselves a
score of times each day, “Your most humble and obedient servant.” We may
do all of these things, but just as long as common phraseology restricts
the ordinary use of the word to those persons engaged in domestic
employments for which they receive a fixed compensation, just so long
will arguments prove of no avail and the word “servant” continue to
be a mark of social degradation. The efforts of domestic employees to
substitute the terms “maid” or “working housekeeper” have as yet in many
quarters excited little more than ridicule.
A second mark of social inferiority is the use of the Christian name
in address. It may seem a very trifling matter, yet the fact again
remains that domestic employees are the only class of workers, except
day laborers, who are thus addressed. The weight that is attached
to the matter in other walks of life is seen in the policy of more
than one well-known newspaper; a strong weapon of attack in encounter
with opponents has been the reference by Christian name to those
whom the writers wish to consign to political obscurity. In no way
does advancement in age and dignity show itself sooner than in the
substitution of the surname for the Christian name. The boy shows his
sense of growing importance by dropping the Christian name in addressing
his companions. In the eyes of the débutante the first card bearing
the name “Miss Brown” throws into insignificance many other advantages
of the new position. Probably few persons would choose to go through
life addressed by even their most intimate friends, aside from kith and
kin, as are the class of domestic employees. The use of the Christian
name in address undoubtedly grew out of the close family relationship
that existed between the employer and the employee, but it has become
a badge of social inferiority since it is used alike by strangers and
friends. Any person considers himself privileged to use the familiar
address towards any employee simply by virtue of the employee’s position.
Even more objectionable is the English custom, sometimes affected in
America, of dropping the Christian name and using the surname without a
title, since it implies social inferiority even more than the familiar
address.[274]
A third badge of the position sometimes insisted on is the cap and apron.
These are not worn, as are the cap and sleeves of the trained nurse, to
indicate the completion of a regular course of scientific training; they
are not the uniform of the postman or the policeman, which shows the
recognition by national or municipal authorities of superior fitness for
the position filled and carries with it somewhat of the prestige of the
power the wearer serves; they represent necessarily no attainment on the
part of the person wearing them, nor are they, as worn, always the object
of laudable ambition. The cap and apron sometimes indicate the rise of
the employer in the social scale rather than the professional advance of
the employee. The wider the separation in any community between employer
and employee, the greater is the tendency to insist on the cap and apron.
The same principle is involved when coachmen are not permitted to wear
beards and hotel and club waiters are required to sacrifice the moustache.
A fourth badge is the fact that domestic servants are made not only to
feel but to acknowledge their social inferiority. Not only deference
but even servility of manner is demanded as of no other class, and this
in an age when social and family relationships are everywhere becoming
more democratic, when reverence and respect for authority are sometimes
considered old-fashioned virtues, when even undue freedom of speech and
manner are permitted to other classes. The domestic employee receives
and gives no word or look of recognition on the street except in meeting
those of her own class; she is seldom introduced to the guests of the
house, whom she may faithfully serve during a prolonged visit; the common
daily courtesies exchanged between the members of the household are not
always shown her; she takes no part in the general conversation around
her; she speaks only when addressed, obeys without murmur orders which
her judgment tells her are absurd, “is not expected to smile under any
circumstances,” and ministers without protest to the whims and obeys
implicitly the commands of children from whom deference to parents is
never expected.
A fifth mark of social inferiority is the fact that domestic employees,
especially those connected with boarding houses, restaurants, and hotels,
are generally given a fee for every service rendered.
A self-respecting man or woman in any other occupation is insulted by the
offer of a fee. The person who through mistake offers a fee to a person
belonging to his own station brings upon himself only ridicule and
embarrassment. The shop-girl who works for $7 a week spends half an hour
in a vain attempt to match for a customer a bit of ribbon; but she would
be justly indignant, as would be her employer, if she were offered a fee.
In hotels and restaurants, the larger the establishment and the more
the price of every article should warrant exemption from such outside
dues, the greater is felt to be the pressure for their payment. Nowhere
else is the democratic principle “first come first served” so flagrantly
violated, and nowhere else would its violation be tolerated. Feeing
is a system of begging that cannot be reached by charity organization
societies, a species of blackmail levied on all who wish good service,
for which there is no legal redress, a European and American form of
backsheesh that carries with it the taint of the soil from which it has
sprung. It has its origin in snobbishness and it results in toadyism
and flunkeyism. It is objectionable because it makes the giver feel as
humiliated in giving as the recipient ought to feel in receiving. It
puts a price on that kindness and consideration which ought to be the
“royal bounty” in connection with every paid service, it destroys genuine
sympathy and unselfishness, it creates an eye service and introduces
into every branch of domestic service an element of demoralization and
degradation that is incalculable. It takes from the person receiving it
the option of placing a value on the service rendered by him, and it is
the only occupation where fees are given that does not carry with it this
privilege. A lawyer or a physician must be the best judge of the value of
his services, but the domestic servant takes “what you please.”
One of the results of the system is indicated by a jesting paragraph
that recently went the rounds of the daily press to the effect that the
porter of the Grand Pacific Hotel, in Chicago, had retired with a fortune
of $100,000 accumulated from tips given him by guests of the house,[275]
while the men who contributed it were still struggling to keep the wolf
from the door. In tipping, as in bribery, the social odium falls on
the one who takes the tip or the bribe, not on the one who offers it.
The fortune of $100,000, more or less, would not give social position
to one who had acquired it through fees. But the fee is at bottom a
bribe offered for service for which payment is presumably made by the
employer; it is a bribe because it is an additional sum offered for quick
service or good service which a waiter will not give without this extra
compensation from the person served. As long as this form of bribery
prevails, every person who accepts the bribe is socially tainted and no
amount of financial success resulting from it can eradicate the taint.
Not only is the fee objectionable in itself, but the manner of giving
it is equally so. It is bestowed surreptitiously, as if the giver
appreciated the fact that he was doing an insulting thing and was ashamed
of it; or it is offered openly with the patronizing manner of one who
says, “I have no use for such a trifle; take it, if you wish it.” It is
folded in a napkin, tucked under a plate, slipped into the hand of a
waiter with a vain attempt to appear unconscious, left ostentatiously
on a tray, or contemptuously flung at an attendant. It can be neither
given nor received with the self-respect that accompanies any reputable
business transaction.
Two excuses for feeing are given. One, “because every one else does it
and one feels contemptible if he doesn’t do it,” an easy, good-natured
way of disposing of a serious problem. Comparatively few persons are
controlled by general principles; each acts according to what seems
most convenient at the time being. The second excuse is that employees
in hotels and restaurants and porters in drawing-room and sleeping cars
are underpaid. This is undoubtedly true, and _it will remain true as
long as the general public frees the class of hotel, restaurant, and
boarding-house proprietors, and palace and sleeping car companies, from
the responsibility of paying their own assistants_. But the general
public also knows that the saleswomen in many large stores work for
almost nothing, that street-car conductors and motor men are overworked
and underpaid, that school teachers receive but a pittance. The public,
however, pursues here a different policy; it puts on “the white list”
employers who pay their saleswomen well, it allows street-railway
employees to fight out the matter of low wages by strikes or in such
other ways as they deem fit, it permits the school teacher to struggle
on with a salary of $400 or $500 a year and patronizes a fair held for
the benefit of a pension fund. It is difficult to see why this reason
for feeing a domestic employee should not hold good in all underpaid
employments; that it does not is one reason why those in other
occupations do not fall in the social scale. That the public continues
to pay directly the employees in this occupation as it does in no other
is one explanation of the ill repute it bears among self-respecting
wage-earning men and women. Every person has a contempt for another who
accepts a fee, and the reproach extends from the individual to every
branch of the occupation he represents. No other thing has done more
to lower domestic service in the eyes of the public than this most
pernicious custom, and every person who fees a domestic employee has by
that act done something to degrade what should be an honorable occupation
into a menial service.[276]
Another phase of the social question is presented by an employer who
writes, “There is something wrong when a young girl servant is sent out
in the evening to accompany the daughter or perhaps the mistress and
return alone.” If protection is the thought, the maid needs it as much
as the mistress; if it is in deference to a social custom, the maid
must bitterly resent any custom which demands this distinction between
herself and those whom she serves. Another aspect of the same question is
suggested when it is realized what veritable dens of iniquity are some
of the intelligence offices in large cities, and how difficult it often
is for a domestic employee to come in contact with them without becoming
contaminated by the touch. These are the things that lead many to
believe that “the kitchen has become very like a social Botany Bay.”[277]
It is this social position with its accompanying marks of social
inferiority that, more than any other one thing, turns the scale against
domestic service as an occupation in the thoughts of many intelligent
and ambitious women whose tastes naturally incline them to domestic
employments. Professor Arthur T. Hadley has well said in a discussion of
comparative wages, “One thing which counts for more and costs more than
anything else is social standing.”[278] The social standing maintained by
a cash girl on $3 a week which she fears to lose by going into domestic
service ought not to be vastly superior to what is within the reach of
intelligent cooks earning $10 a week; yet undoubtedly it is; and while
this is true the number of intelligent women in domestic service will not
increase.[279]
Other objections to domestic service in addition to those enumerated
are sometimes made. Some of them arise from misconceptions,[280]
others are trivial and do not demand consideration, while others are
individual rather than general. These are the disadvantages that tell
most strongly against the occupation. They do not include the element
of ill-treatment by mistresses or their lack of consideration; or the
fact that there is sometimes much in the tone and manner of an employer
that is most irritating to a self-respecting person; or that there are
occasionally employers who feel that they rise in the social scale in
the same proportion that they make employees sensible of inferiority or
dependence; or that many mistresses demand more than can be performed;
or that some employers are unreasonable, others disagreeable, and still
others petulant and fault-finding; or that some “expect perfection
at twelve dollars a month and positive genius at thirteen.” These
conditions are found, but they are not peculiar to domestic service;
the disadvantages discussed are all independent of good or bad personal
treatment, they may be modified by the character of the family to whom
the service is rendered, but they cannot be removed by any individual
employer acting alone, however much he has at heart the interests of his
own employee or of domestic employees as a class.
In comparing the advantages and disadvantages of domestic service as
an occupation it will be obvious that the advantages are numerous,
substantial, and easily recognized; the disadvantages are many, but
they are far more subtile, intangible, and far reaching. The advantages
are those which the economic woman always sees and which take her from
unhealthy tenement houses into country air and sunshine; from overcrowded
occupations into one where the demand for workers is and always must
be unlimited; from starvation wages to peace and plenty; from long
hours of dreary mechanical toil to intelligent work; from failure in
an uncongenial occupation to success and prosperity in this; from a
life whose sufferings and privations, as yet but half told, have roused
the sympathies of all social reformers, to a life of freedom from the
sweater, the floor-walker, the officious and vulgar superintendent, the
industrial Shylocks of every occupation, to a life of comparative ease
and comfort. But while the economic woman, like the economic man, always
sees these things, the actual woman looks at another side. She does not
understand why work that society calls the most honorable a woman can do
when done in her own home without remuneration, becomes demeaning when
done in the house of another for a fixed compensation, but she recognizes
the fact; she sees that discredit comes not from the work itself but from
the conditions under which it is performed, and she does not willingly
place herself in these conditions; she sees that a class line is always
drawn as in no other occupation; she is willing and glad to pay her life
for what seems to her _life_—excitement, city ways, society of home
friends, personal independence which another might call slavery. She
does not care for those advantages which another person points out; to
her they count as nothing in comparison with the price she must pay for
them. Of five hundred and forty employees of whom the question was asked,
“Would you give up housework if you could find another occupation that
would pay you as well?” one-half answered, “Yes.” Yet the number is very
small of those who complain of ill-treatment or lack of consideration
on the part of the employer. There is, indeed, often much ground for
complaint on this score, but it must be seen that other relationships
besides the personal ones are entered into when the relation of employer
and employee is established. That which decides the question is not
always the economic advantage, not always the personal treatment, but
that subtile thing the woman calls _life_. “Wages, hours, health, and
morals” may all weigh in the scale in favor of domestic service, but
_life_ outweighs them all. The advantages are such as lead many people
to urge domestic service for the daughters of others, the disadvantages
are such as incline them to choose any occupation but this for their own
daughters.[281]