POSSIBLE REMEDIES—GENERAL PRINCIPLES
It has been seen that any measure looking towards a lessening of the
difficulties that stand in the way of securing at all times and in all
places competent domestic employees, must fail of its object if it does
not take into consideration economic history, economic conditions, and
economic tendencies. Economic history has shown the remarkable effect
of inventive genius and business activity on all household employments,
and through them on domestic service; a study of economic conditions
has shown the nature of the perplexities surrounding both employer and
employee. What are the social and economic tendencies in accordance with
which relief from present difficulties must be sought?
The first industrial tendency to be noted is that toward the
concentration of capital and labor in large industrial enterprises. Not
only have the factory and the mill superseded the individual system of
manufactures, but the growth of “bonanza farms” and the increasing number
of tenant farms show the same tendency in agriculture; the trust is the
resort of wholesale business houses; the department stores of the day
are driving out of the retail business circles the smaller houses of a
generation ago; the pool may be considered an illustration of the same
tendency at work in transportation industries.
A second tendency, forming the converse of the preceding one, is towards
specialization in every department of labor. Adam Smith’s famous
illustration of this principle—that he found ten persons able to make
nearly five thousand pins in a day, while each person working alone could
make but one pin—can be seen in every department of work except in the
household. Everywhere the field of labor has been narrowed in order to
secure the largest and best results.
A third tendency, growing out of these two, is towards the association
and combination for mutual benefit of persons interested in special
lines of work. Nearly every class of employers has its own special
organization; the associated press, associated charities, local, state,
and national educational associations, and associations of learned
societies, show the influence of organization in other departments;
nearly every class of employees also has its trade union or mutual
benefit association; everywhere, except in the household, mutual
interests are drawing together for protection, for consultation, for
economy of forces and resources, for a score of reasons, those engaged in
the same activities.
A fourth tendency is the result of the specialization of labor in its
higher forms. As all industries become more highly organized, greater
preparation for work is required wherever labor ceases to be purely
mechanical. Trade schools, technical schools, and schools for training
in special work are everywhere demanded, and the demand must in time be
fully met. While specialization is the end, special training must be the
means to accomplish it.
A fifth tendency is towards a realization of the fact that all who share
in industrial processes should participate in the benefits resulting
from their work, that “perpendicular” rather than “horizontal divisions”
in labor should be the aim in all industry. This is seen in the various
efforts made to introduce productive and distributive co-operation,
profit sharing, and other measures intended to give employees a share
in the results of their labors, and thus to take a personal interest in
their work.
A sixth tendency is towards greater industrial independence on the part
of women. This is an inevitable result of the substitution of the factory
for the domestic system of manufactures, and of the entrance of women
into all industrial pursuits at the time of the Civil War, as well as of
the inherent demand in every person for some opportunity for honorable
work. A comparison of the different census reports shows that the
percentage of women engaged in remunerative occupations increases faster
than the percentage of men so engaged. Massachusetts shows a larger
percentage than any other state of women occupied in business industry,
while the investigations of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of
Labor show that the marriage rate and the birth rate in that state are
both increasing. The facts and conditions do not seem to show that the
tendency is incompatible with home life.
One other semi-social and industrial tendency must be noted. It is
the result of that systematic study of social conditions seen in the
evolution of the principles that the best way to help a person is
to help him to help himself, and that reasonable measures aim at the
amelioration of some of the conditions under which work is performed, not
at the cessation of the work itself. The application of these principles
has led to wiser charities, to the Chautauqua movement, to university
extension, to working-girls’ clubs, to enlarged opportunities everywhere
for every class. These movements springing up in every locality mean
that every individual is to have the opportunity of making the most of
himself possible, and that the responsibility of so doing is to rest
with him, not with society; they mean that ultimately the position in
society of every person is to depend not on his occupation, but on the
use he has made of these increasing opportunities for self-help and
self-improvement; they mean that in time all social stigma will be
removed from every occupation and work judged by its quality rather than
by its nature; that in time, for example, a first-class cook will receive
more honor than a second-class china decorator, or a third-rate teacher.
One general tendency in all business circles must also be mentioned—that
towards increasing publicity in all business matters. It is coming to be
recognized that society has the right to know certain general and even
specific facts in regard to the conduct of affairs formerly guarded in
jealous privacy by the individual. The National Census Bureau requires,
for the benefit of society, an answer to a large number of personal
questions, and the requirement is resisted only by the most ignorant.
The state bureaus of labor have legal authority to obtain information
in regard to the management of business enterprises which they wish
to investigate. The salaries of all public employees are officially
published, and legal inquiry is instituted when the expenses of such
employees largely exceed the salary received. The number of joint-stock
companies is increasing, and these companies are legally bound to render
full and exact accounts of all receipts and expenditures. The Chinese
wall of absolute privacy is practically retained only with reference to
household occupations.
If then the question in domestic service is this: How can the supply
of domestic servants be increased, or how can the demand for them be
lessened? the only answer must be, by bringing household employments
and household service into the current of these and other industrial
and social tendencies. To state the case in detail, the problem is not
so much how to improve the personal relationship between the employer
and the employee as it is to decrease this relationship; not how to
increase the number of household drudges, but to decrease the amount of
household drudgery; not how to do more for domestics, but how to enable
them to do more for themselves; not how to merge the individual home into
the co-operative home or boarding house, but how to keep it still more
intact by taking out of it as far possible that extraneous element—the
domestic employee; not how to restore the old household system, but how
to bring about adaptation to present conditions; not so much how to
persuade more persons to go into domestic service, as to use to better
advantage the time and strength of those already engaged in it; not how
to induce sewing women in the tenement houses of New York City to engage
in work for which they have neither the physical nor the intellectual
qualifications,[292] but how to utilize the idle labor in boarding houses
and in the homes of the so-called middle and upper classes.
The statement cannot be made with too great emphasis that no plan can
be suggested that will enable a housekeeper whose inefficient employee
leaves to-day to secure a better one to-morrow; a complicated social
malady of long standing demands time and patience to work a cure or
even a relief. Two classes of measures, however, looking towards an
improvement in the character of the service can be suggested, the first
general, the second specific. It is believed that both classes will
conform to the general industrial and social tendencies enumerated.
In the first place there must be a truer conception on the part of both
men and women of the important place that household employments occupy in
the economy of the world. The utter neglect of the subject by economic
students and writers must give place to a scientific investigation of an
employment which is at least wealth-consuming if not wealth-producing.
A very large part of the wealth produced in the world is consumed in
the household, yet neither those who produce nor those who consume know
on what principles it is done. Time-saving and labor-saving devices are
made at enormous cost for uses in production, while time and strength
incalculable are wasted through consumption. In no other occupation is
there so much waste of labor and capital; in no other would a fraction
of this waste be overlooked. 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.
This truer conception of the place of household economics considered
from the theoretical standpoint will give rise to a more just estimate
of their place in a practical way. Those employers who “despise
housekeeping,” who “cannot endure cooking,” who “hate the kitchen,”
who “will not do menial work,” will come to regard household work in
a different light. Indeed, until the members of this class, far too
large in numbers, change either their opinion or their occupation, it
is hopeless to look for a reform in domestic service. That “dignity of
labor” so often prescribed as a panacea for the troubles in the kitchen
must first be maintained in the parlor if reform is to come. The simple
prescription of the remedy will not effect a cure. “To know the workman,”
wrote Leclaire in 1865, “one must have been a workman himself, and above
all _remember it_.” In a similar way the housekeeper must have not only
a knowledge of household affairs, but a respect for them, and being
presumably better educated and equipped, she must be the one to prove
that the interests of employer and employee are the same.
Again, more systematic study of the subject in a general way must remove
much of the ignorance, as well as of the aversion, that undoubtedly
exists in regard to this occupation. Public sentiment has not yet
demanded that when a woman assumes the care of a household she shall
possess at least a theoretical knowledge of household affairs; it is
deemed sufficient if she acquire it afterward at an enormous cost of
time, patience, energy, sometimes even of domestic happiness. But
public sentiment will make such demand when the economic functions of
housekeeping are understood. Until a larger number of housekeepers
understand at least the rudiments of the profession they have adopted, it
is to be expected that ignorant and inexperienced employees will waste
the substance of their employers, and fail to become skilled laborers,
and that able, intelligent, and ambitious girls will be unwilling
to enter an occupation in which the employers are as untrained in a
scientific way as are the employees. Water cannot rise higher than its
source. As long as inefficient service is accepted inefficient service
will be rendered; as long as mistresses are ignorant of the difference
between rights and extraordinary privileges, employees, like children,
will continue to be spoiled by careless indulgence; “as long as women
hate kitchen and household cares, and servants know that they know
more than their employers, just so long will employers everywhere have
eye-servants.”
A different conception must also come in regard to the work of woman,
especially where the factor of remuneration is involved. An explanation
is still needed for the fact that idleness is practically regarded as a
vice in men and a virtue in women;[293] that a young man is condemned
by society for saying “the world owes me a living,” while a young woman
is praised for her womanliness when she says it by her life; that a
wealthy woman must not receive remuneration for services for which
compensation would be accepted by a wealthy man or by a poor woman. This
does not mean that all women should engage in business enterprises, but
that it should be honorable for them to do so, dishonorable for them to
be ignorant of all means of self-support, and that they should receive
adequate remuneration for all public services performed when men would
be paid under the same circumstances. Household employments are too
often in effect, though less often than in theory, belittled by both
men and women, and they will continue to be until there is the freest
industrial play in all occupations for women as well as for men. As long
as household employments performed without remuneration are the only
occupations for women looked upon with favor by society at large, just
so long will this free industrial play be lacking. One effect of this
is seen in the case of very many mothers who have been overworked and
overburdened by household cares. The pendulum swings to the opposite
end of the arc, and they declare that their daughters shall never work
at all. The children therefore grow up in idleness and ultimately,
when driven to work by necessity, drift into shops and factories.
When household employments are removed from the domain of charity and
sentiment and put on a business basis, when the interests of women are
broadened, when they are better able “to distinguish between infinity and
infinitesimals,” there will be a more intelligent understanding of the
financial side of woman’s work.
The general remedies therefore must include a wider prevalence
of education in the true sense of the word, not its counterfeit,
information; that mental education which results in habits of accuracy,
precision, and observation, in the exercise of reason, judgment, and
self-control, and that education of character which results in the
ability constantly to put one’s self in the place of another. There must
be scientific training and investigation in economic theory, history,
and statistics, especially in their application to the household, and an
increased popular knowledge of all scientific subjects concerning the
home, those which secure the prevention of economic and material waste in
the household as well as those which concern the questions of production
for it. The educational forces must “pull from the top” and draw domestic
service into the general current of industrial development.