POSSIBLE REMEDIES—IMPROVEMENT IN SOCIAL CONDITION
Certain general principles have been suggested in accordance with which
it seems reasonable to expect improvement in domestic service to be
made. Of specific remedies, the first class to be suggested concerns the
social degradation as yet entailed by the occupation. For the most part
the oppressive conditions are the lack of all social and educational
advantages, the use of an obnoxious epithet applied to the individuals of
the class, the universal use of the familiar Christian name in address,
the requirement of livery, enforced servility of manner, and the offering
of fees to several large subdivisions of the class. Every one of these
must seem a reasonable objection to one who can put himself in the place
of another; they are among the weightiest arguments against entering
the service; each one can be entirely removed, or so modified as to
become unobjectionable. It is useless to look for any improvement in the
character of domestic service until these oppressive conditions have
been removed; but it is not vain to hope for an emancipation from them
in time. The social ban has been removed from other occupations in which
women have become wage earners—it has been removed from teaching,[294]
the practice of medicine and law, and business industries—women can
engage in all of these without fear of being ostracized. The relative
social position of different occupations in which men engage has also
changed. In colonial New England, the minister, not the lawyer, had the
social precedence; in the Southern colonies the lawyer was an honored
guest, while the chaplain of the plantation was a hireling who often
married an indentured servant on the same plantation. Dentists, men “in
trade,” brewers, and veterinary surgeons have in other localities all
felt the lack of an assured place in society. Social barriers against
both men and women are everywhere breaking down in the presence of
high character, ability, education, and technical training; they will
ultimately fall before men and women engaged in domestic service, who can
bear these same tests of character, ability, education, and technical
training.
In considering the specific social disadvantages, it must be conceded
that the desire for greater social and intellectual opportunities is
most reasonable. Mr. Higginson says in answer to the question, “Why do
children dislike history?” “The father brings home to his little son,
from the public library, the first volume of Hildreth’s _United States_,
and says to him, ‘There, my son, is a book for you, and there are five
more volumes just like it.’ He then goes back to his _Sunday Herald_, and
his wife reverts to _But Yet a Woman_, or _Mr. Isaacs_.” The attitude
of society towards social opportunities for domestic employees is much
the same. Society demands the theatre, the opera, the parlor concert,
the lecture, the dinner, the afternoon tea, the yacht race, the tennis
match, the bicycle excursion, the coaching party, and expects the class
lacking at present all resources within themselves to stay quietly
at home and thus satisfy their desire for pleasure and intellectual
opportunity. Country life sometimes proves lonely and distasteful to
employers educated in the city. Is it less so to the employee lacking the
opportunity for change enjoyed by others?[295]
Comparatively little can be done in the ordinary private home to meet
these difficulties; but even if much could be done, it is at least
an open question whether this would be the true remedy. In large
establishments sitting-rooms can be provided for employees, but such
establishments are few in number, and the fact that such rooms are in the
home of another prevents that “good time,” the craving for which is so
natural. Many employers are glad to give personal instruction evenings,
but solitary instruction is even more defective for the domestic than
it is for the children of the family. Enthusiasm must always come with
numbers, and comparatively little can be done for employees through
this means. But social opportunities and intellectual advantages can
be provided, as has been done so successfully in the case of the
employees of shops and factories. Social life everywhere tends towards
clubs, societies, and organizations. Domestics can be encouraged to form
clubs and societies through which parlors can be provided for social
intercourse, and reading-rooms where intellectual needs will be met.
If the domestic employee were taken from the home of the employer and
encouraged to find for herself avenues of improvement and entertainment,
her social condition would be greatly improved. She must be made to
see that the reason why she does not rise to the social position to
which she aspires, is not because her work is degrading, but because
her conversation is often ungrammatical and lacking in interest, her
dress sometimes untidy and devoid of taste, and her manner not always
agreeable. She must do her part towards improving her social condition.
It is true, that probably at first comparatively few domestics would
avail themselves of such privileges, _but just as long as social and
intellectual advantages do not exist anywhere for this class, just so
long will the intelligent and capable young woman most needed in this
occupation shun it for others where such opportunities do exist_.
The stumbling-block in the use of the word “servant” is easily removed.
The exclusive application of this word to domestic employees must be
abolished before the class most desired in the occupation will enter it.
As has been done in every other occupation, a word like “employer” must
be substituted for “master” and “mistress,”—terms associated only with
a system of apprenticeship or slavery,—while “domestic,” “housekeeper,”
or some other descriptive term must be used for “general servant,”
the words “cook,” “waitress,” and “maid” being unobjectionable for
other classes of service.[296] As a matter of fact the word as now used
is inappropriate in characterizing the work expected of an efficient
domestic employee. Division of labor has made her in reality, though
not in position, not a menial, a drudge, a slave, but a co-operator
in the work of the household. The cook who prepares the raw material
for consumption is not more a servant than is the farmer who produces
the raw material; indeed her work is justly considered skilled labor,
while that of the agricultural laborer is often unskilled. The cook
is the co-operator with her employer in the same sense as the farmer
is a co-operator in the industrial system; and the term “servant” as
indicating a menial applies to her as little as it does to him. New words
are coined and pass into familiar usage in a short time, old words become
obsolete, new meanings are given old terms, and it is possible in the
course of a few years to substitute for the present objectionable usage
of this word a term which will describe more definitely the duties of the
position and at the same time remove one of the most serious obstacles in
the way of improving the character of the occupation.[297]
The inferiority implied in the use of the Christian name in address is
less clearly seen and less easily removed because its effects are more
subtile. It may not be possible to attempt any immediate or general
change, but a compromise is possible in giving the title to married
men and women in domestic service, since marriage is supposed to carry
with it added dignity. The Japanese custom of addressing one’s own
employees by a familiar term, but the employees of another by a title of
respect,[298] is also a possible compromise. It seems difficult to find
weighty arguments in favor of refusing to a class of self-supporting men
and women the title of respect accorded in all other occupations.
The cap and apron are in themselves not only unobjectionable, but they
have certain very definite advantages. They are conducive to neatness and
economy and moreover form a most becoming style of dress. The picturesque
effect of both is appreciated by all young women who take part in public
charitable entertainments, it was understood by the matrons of an
earlier generation, and it has formed the theme of many letters written
on foreign soil. No costume in itself could be more desirable or better
adapted to the work of the wearers, and a more general rather than a more
restricted use of this form of dress should be advocated on theoretical
grounds. But the cap and apron as worn do not always indicate a desire on
the part of the wearer for neatness, economy, and tasteful attire, nor
always an appreciation of these things on the part of the employer. They
are regarded as a traditional badge of servitude, and while so regarded
it seems unwise to force them on those unwilling to wear them. Moreover
the cap and apron while serving admirably their place within the house
have no _raison d’être_ out of doors; the cap affords no protection from
heat, cold, or storms, and the apron is inappropriate for street wear.
The cap and apron are appropriate and desirable in all places where they
would be worn by the employer under the same circumstances, they are
inappropriate elsewhere and hence out of taste. If employees as a class
would recognize the many advantages of the costume within doors and adopt
it universally, and if employers would accept its limitations out of
doors and abandon the requirement of it there at all times, the vexed
question of livery would seem to be answered.
The servility of manner demanded—at least in public—of all domestics is
an anomaly in a country where there is no enforced recognition of social
and political superiors. The price paid for it—high wages, poor service,
constant change, household friction—seems a heavy one and the excuse for
it small. As long as domestic service lacks the safety valve of personal
independence and the outward expression of self-respect, just so long is
there danger of too great repression and consequent explosion. No genuine
reform in domestic service is possible while this theory of outward
servility is enforced.
The most objectionable of all the manifestations of social
inferiority—the feeing system—has its economic as well as its social side
and will be considered by itself in the chapter on profit sharing in
domestic service.
These social barriers that now prevent so effectually the entrance into
domestic service of intelligent, well-educated, capable, and efficient
persons can all be swept away if employers as a class are willing to make
the effort. This effort will involve in some cases the relinquishing of
a favorite theory that employees can be made a part of the family with
which they are externally connected and, instead of this, assisting
them to live their own independent lives as citizens of the community
in a normal, happy way. It will involve in other cases abandoning the
assumption that domestic employees belong to a separate and obnoxious
class in society and cannot be met as individuals on the same plane as
are other persons of like attainments. It will involve in still other
cases the sacrifice of that personal vanity that is gratified by the
constant presence of those deemed to be of an inferior station. If
employers are willing to yield all of the points now often unconsciously
maintained by them in opposition to the teachings of political and
industrial history, the social objections that now hold against domestic
service as an employment will disappear. Sir Henry Sumner Maine has well
said, “The true equality of mankind lies in the future, not in the past.”
It is this true equality of the future, not the fictitious equality of
the past, that must free domestic service from the social ill-repute it
now bears.