CONCLUSION
Any study of the subject of domestic service must lead to the conclusion
that household service and household employments do not occupy an
isolated position; that while they may be indifferent to the political,
industrial, and social changes constantly occurring, they cannot
by virtue of this indifference remain unaffected by them; that the
inventions of the past hundred years have revolutionized household
employments, and that the present generation must adapt itself to
these new conditions; that while a century ago domestic service had no
competitors as an occupation for women, it now has hundreds; that the
personnel in the domestic service of America has been transformed through
industrial, political, and social revolutions; that it has been affected
by the democratic tendencies of the age and by the commercial and
educational development of the country; that because of these constantly
recurring changes in the conditions surrounding domestic service the
questions connected with it vary from year to year; that it is governed
by the same general economic laws as are all other employments, and that
it has developed within itself other economic laws peculiar to it; that
the increasing wealth and luxury of the country are introducing new
complications into a problem already far from simple; that both employer
and employee are heirs of conditions which their ancestors could not
control, and that they are surrounded by difficulties which no person
single-handed and alone can hope successfully to overcome.
It has been seen that many of these difficulties arise from the failure
to recognize domestic service as a part of the great industrial questions
of the day. It is not so recognized because economic writers have not as
yet discussed the subject, and because those who come in daily contact
with it overlook its economic side. The housekeeper who completes her
round of morning shopping by a visit to an employment bureau where she
engages a new cook regards that and her other business transactions all
in the same light; she has both in shopping and in securing a cook been
guided solely by her taste, her necessities, and her bank account. The
economist must include domestic service in his discussions of the labor
question, and the housekeeper must differentiate the various parts of her
housekeeping duties before improvement is possible.
It must also be recognized that another difficulty has been the natural
conservatism of many women—a conservatism arising from the isolated,
home-centred lives many housekeepers lead, and that prevents that
intellectual hospitality which is the presager of all true progress. The
typical housekeeper, like the Turk, is a born fatalist; because things
are as they are, they must always have been so and they must continue so
to be. Many persons take pride in being “old-time housekeepers” and look
with disfavor on any change. “That plan might succeed in some families,
but it would not in mine” is for many others the final settlement of
the question. This lack of mental elasticity and the dislike of taking
the initiative in any movement must be another obstacle in the way of
immediate improvement.
It has also been seen that other causes partially explain the
difficulty—the love of ease and pleasure, the attempt to keep up
appearances, a pretentious manner of living, the frequent desire of both
employers and employees to get everything for nothing, the willingness
of mistresses to find maids who will do their work half right and of
maids to find mistresses who will treat them half right, the endeavor to
get “the largest expenditure of woman for the smallest expenditure of
money,” a natural tendency among women toward aristocracy and a dislike
of everything savoring of social democracy.
Some of the difficulty arises from conditions to be expected in a
country comparatively new and possessing great possibilities of wealth.
The growing luxury among the middle classes not only creates a demand
for more employees but it also increases the requisitions upon those
rendering service. Those who have lately acquired riches make increasing
demands upon their employees, and they must become accustomed to their
riches before these demands will be modified. Bishop Potter has said,
“Luxury has its decent limits, and we in this land are in danger in many
directions of overstepping those limits.”[329] Persons with moderate
means are the greatest sufferers from this thoughtless transgression of
the bounds of luxury. The remedy lies in such education of the wealthy
classes, especially where wealth has been suddenly acquired, as will
give a more practical knowledge of general and household economics, a
realization of the ethical as well as of the economic principle involved
in paying high wages for poor service and abnormally high wages for good
service, such an education as will result in greater simplicity in manner
of living because it will be governed by ethical, economic, and hygienic
principles.
It is true that in thousands of households no difficulty in regard to
domestic service exists, but this fact does not relieve those in charge
of such households from further responsibility in the matter. A political
club recently formed to secure better municipal government in Montreal
took as its watchword, “Every man is individually responsible for just
so much evil as his efforts might prevent.”[330] In a similar way the
responsibility of the employer does not end with his own household, but
he is responsible for as much evil in the general condition of domestic
service as he could have prevented by his investigation and discussion of
the subject.
The first result of this investigation, discussion, and action must be
the attempt to remove from domestic service the social stigma attached
to it. During the feudal period every occupation was inferior socially
to that of warfare; physicians were leeches, clergymen were held in
disrepute, bankers were usurers, and merchants and traders were tolerated
only because they could furnish the ready money necessary for military
campaigns—social position belonged only to the profession of arms. The
substitution of higher ideals for those of feudalism and the spread of
democratic ideas have removed the social ban from every occupation except
domestic service. Industrial and social evolution point to its ultimate
removal from this employment as has been the case in others.
A second result of investigation and discussion must be the working out
of ways and means for taking both work and worker out of the house of the
employer. This must result in a simplification of household management
and a greater flexibility in household employments. It simplifies the
household because it takes out of it a cumbersome, unwieldy machine
long since become antiquated. It is possible to arrange a series of
mechanical contrivances operated by electricity that will enable a
person to open any window or door in his house without rising from
his chair, but it is as a rule easier to open a window without such
assistance than it is to keep the batteries in running order. A retinue
of employees in a household becomes like a complicated mechanism used
to attain simple ends. Taking the employee out of the house of the
employer brings flexibility into household employments, since it results
in greater personal independence and in openings for specialized work.
An ambitious and energetic office boy is pushed on by his employer into
more responsible positions, but the domestic employee is held back by
impassable barriers. Industrial promotion is impossible as the occupation
at present exists. “I suppose there must be a screw loose somewhere, or
a man of his age would not be my coachman,” said a lawyer recently in
reply to a question concerning a new employee. The industrial barriers
within the occupation must be removed before domestic service will
attract large numbers of capable, efficient persons; this can be at
least partially accomplished by taking the employee out of the house
and allowing him or her to become a self-reliant, independent, business
person.
Another direction in which progress lies is in the effort to put
the employment on a business basis. This must be accomplished if
any improvement is to come. No man takes his watch to a blacksmith
to be repaired, or employs a mason as bookkeeper, or a longshoreman
as superintendent of a mill, or a hod-carrier as floor-walker, yet
practically the same thing is done when a housekeeper employs an
inexperienced young woman as seamstress, installs a girl just from
Ireland as cook, takes a tenement-house woman into her home to care for
her table linen and bric-à-brac, and then adds to the incongruity of the
situation by paying high wages for this unskilled labor. Some agreement
must be reached by employers in regard to standards of work and wages
before domestic service can be classed as skilled labor.[331]
The suggestion of profit sharing is in line with the effort to put
the occupation on a business basis. Only where there is absolute
equality, when employer and employee stand on the same business level,
can amiability of manner and a spirit of helpfulness on the part of
the employee be prevented from being interpreted as springing from a
desire to curry favor with the employer. Not until the domestic employee
feels he has no reason to court the favor of his employer for the sake
of possible perquisites will he be self-respecting, and therefore
entitled to respect from others. The practice in many private houses of
subsidizing employees by numerous and valuable gifts is as subversive of
the best interests of all concerned, as is the giving of fees in large
establishments. It fosters subserviency rather than responsibility,
and creates dissatisfaction among the employees in families where the
custom does not and perhaps cannot prevail. Profit sharing appeals not to
selfishness but to intelligence, and has in it elements that tend to make
the employee a self-respecting and therefore a better man.
Improvement in all these directions, or in other ways far better, can
come only through the investigation of all household affairs by both
men and women. Travellers in other countries often lament the sight,
still so common in some places, of a woman harnessed to a cart with a
dog, or dragging the cart by her own efforts, or weighed down by the
heavy burdens placed upon her back. But a more unfortunate condition
in such countries than the woman harnessed to a cart is the fact that
wherever this is found the highest opportunities for education are not
open to women. The woman and the cart will remain in every country where
university education is not made possible for her. Until university
investigation of domestic affairs is made possible for every one having
the proper qualifications, the woman and the cart—the overburdened,
ignorant, and hopeless worker—will remain in the household.
If progress is to be made in the same direction that it has been up to
this time, it must bring a still further readjustment of the work of both
men and women. It must result in attracting every man and woman to the
work for which he or she is best fitted. Just as other forms of work once
held in low estimation have been elevated by scientific advancement, so
the time will come when it will be honorable to do housework of any kind
for remuneration. A woman with no talent for art has been known after
four lessons in oil painting to offer for sale the products of her work
without blushing for her audacity or incompetence. But though ignorant
of art, she may have been competent in cooking, and if the way had
been open to gain an honorable support by the exercise of this talent,
she might have been saved the attempt to secure a living by means from
which nothing but failure ought to result. The mistress of a large and
costly establishment said recently, “One of the most difficult things
about housekeeping is to dispose of old fancy work.” Much of this work
represents idle labor in boarding houses, done by women in various walks
of life who will not keep house under present conditions, but who would
be glad to do so if the conditions could be made more favorable.
It is in many ways difficult to deal with woman as an economic factor,
since many elements of uncertainty enter into her life which do not
hamper men. A young man is reasonably sure of two things in his future
life,—that he will have to support himself and that he will marry. But
many young women are not certain of either marriage or the necessity of
self-support. If a young woman marries, she is not permitted by the
conventions of society to be a breadwinner; on the other hand, she may
she may obliged, without preparation for it, to provide support, not
only for herself but also for her family. If she marries and boards, she
probably finds herself obliged to become a drone, and leads an aimless
life. If, without deference to convention, she engages in business, her
occupation may be broken up through the removal of her husband’s business
to another locality. For economic reasons it is impracticable for the
married woman to engage in any industry involving the use of capital
that cannot be readily transferred, unless this business is the same as
that of her husband, or unless she bears the entire burden of support
and has unrestricted control of the business enterprises of the family.
A thorough knowledge of some one line of domestic work which would yield
compensation would often lessen many of the perplexities surrounding a
married woman. Moreover, it seems not unreasonable to consider marriage
on its practical side as a business partnership to which the woman
as well as the man is to contribute. If she contributes a practical
knowledge of housekeeping, the business agreement is a fair one; if she
does not contribute this knowledge, but brings a knowledge of other
things as valuable, it is also a fair arrangement; but if she brings no
knowledge of household affairs, and no equivalent for it, the partnership
on its business side is unfair. There should be a definite understanding
when a woman marries whether she is to keep house or not, and if so,
that she knows how. The time ought to come when, in case she marries and
boards, she will be willing and able, and society will allow her, to
contribute her share in a business capacity to the life partnership.
Thousands of ambitious and talented women in the upper and middle classes
are crying for work, as women in a lower walk cry for bread. It is
impossible for society to maintain the former in idleness and at the same
time to pay full wages for work to the army of working women. The pay of
wage-earning women will never rise above the starvation point while the
women of the upper and middle classes are permitted to live without work.
The boycotting of dealers in ready-made clothing whose names are not on
the “white list” is but a sop thrown to Cerberus,—until the cause of the
evil is removed, until women now living in idleness become co-operators
in the work of the world, all women who work for remuneration must do
their share of the work for half-pay. Women want work for all the reasons
that men want it, but as long as so many of them, when they do work,
persistently give their work for nothing, just so long will women’s work
in general be undervalued.
This readjustment of work and the willingness of larger numbers of
women to work for remuneration would be as productive of improvement in
all household affairs as division of labor has been elsewhere. A more
far-reaching benefit is suggested by Maria Mitchell when she says: “The
dressmaker should no more be a universal character than the carpenter.
Suppose every man should feel it his duty to do his own mechanical work
and _all_ kinds, would society be benefited? would the work be well done?
Yet a woman is expected to know how to do all kinds of sewing, all kinds
of cooking, all kinds of any _woman’s_ work, and the consequence is that
life is passed in learning these only, while the universe of truth beyond
remains unentered.”[332]
In seeking for some measure of relief from the present oppressive
conditions, it must be said in conclusion that little can be accomplished
except through the use of means which already exist, developing these
along lines marked out by industrial progress in other fields. In the
foregoing suggestions,—that the historical study of the subject points to
relief through the removal of the social stigma; that the specialization
of household employments in consequence of the removal of as much work
as possible and the removal of the domestic employee as well from the
home of the employer leads to a simpler and better manner of life for
both employer and employee; that the introduction of profit sharing is
one means of placing household employments on a business basis; that
the establishment in connection with one of our great universities of a
school of investigation open only to graduates of the leading reputable
colleges is the only opportunity for the scientific advancement of the
household and all questions connected with it; and that together with the
last, a recognition of the necessity for the readjustment of the work
of both men and women must result in making any form of housework for
remuneration honorable for any person, man or woman,—in these suggestions
nothing either novel or original has been presented. Progress has been
made through such means; it seems not unreasonable to believe that
further progress will be made through their use.
Yet this view of the subject does not diminish, it rather increases,
individual responsibility. Sir James Stephen said, when civil-service
reform was first agitated in England, that a moral revolution was
necessary in that country before the reform sought could become an
accomplished fact. For a reform in domestic service a moral revolution is
everywhere needed, bringing with it to every person an appreciation of
his responsibility to all connected with the employment, whether employer
or employee.
Reforms begin at the top, revolutions at the bottom. It rests with the
men and women of the so-called upper classes, whether raised to their
position by birth, wealth, intellect, education, or opportunity, to work
out in the best way a satisfactory solution of the vexed question of
domestic service.