Many of the domestic evils in America originate in the fact that,
while society here is professedly based on new principles which ought
to make social life in every respect different from the life of the
Old World, yet these principles have never been so thought out and
applied as to give consistency and harmony to our daily relations.
America starts with a political organization based on a declaration of
the primitive freedom and equality of all men. Every human being,
according to this principle, stands on the same natural level with
every other, and has the same chance to rise, according to the degree
of power or capacity given by the Creator. All our civil institutions
are designed to preserve this equality, as far as possible, from
generation to generation: there is no entailed property, there are no
hereditary titles, no monopolies, no privileged classes,--all are to
be as free to rise and fall as the waves of the sea.
The condition of domestic service, however, still retains about it
something of the influences from feudal times, and from the near
presence of slavery in neighboring States. All English literature, all
the literature of the world, describes domestic service in the old
feudal spirit and with the old feudal language, which regarded the
master as belonging to a privileged class and the servant to an
inferior one. There is not a play, not a poem, not a novel, not a
history, that does not present this view. The master's rights, like
the rights of kings, were supposed to rest in his being born in a
superior rank. The good servant was one who, from childhood, had
learned "to order himself lowly and reverently to all his betters."
When New England brought to these shores the theory of democracy, she
brought, in the persons of the first pilgrims, the habits of thought
and of action formed in aristocratic communities. Winthrop's Journal,
and all the old records of the earlier colonists, show households
where masters and mistresses stood on the "right divine" of the
privileged classes, howsoever they might have risen up against
authorities themselves.
The first consequence of this state of things was a universal
rejection of domestic service in all classes of American-born society.
For a generation or two, there was, indeed, a sort of interchange of
family strength,--sons and daughters engaging in the service of
neighboring families, in default of a sufficient working force of
their own, but always on conditions of strict equality. The assistant
was to share the table, the family sitting-room, and every honor and
attention that might be claimed by son or daughter. When families
increased in refinement and education so as to make these conditions
of close intimacy with more uncultured neighbors disagreeable, they
had to choose between such intimacies and the performance of their
own domestic toil. No wages could induce a son or daughter of New
England to take the condition of a servant on terms which they thought
applicable to that of a slave. The slightest hint of a separate table
was resented as an insult; not to enter the front door, and not to sit
in the front parlor on state occasions, was bitterly commented on as a
personal indignity.
The well-taught, self-respecting daughters of farmers, the class most
valuable in domestic service, gradually retired from it. They
preferred any other employment, however laborious. Beyond all doubt,
the labors of a well-regulated family are more healthy, more cheerful,
more interesting, because less monotonous, than the mechanical toils
of a factory; yet the girls of New England, with one consent,
preferred the factory, and left the whole business of domestic service
to a foreign population; and they did it mainly because they would not
take positions in families as an inferior laboring class by the side
of others of their own age who assumed as their prerogative to live
without labor.
"I can't let you have one of my daughters," said an energetic matron
to her neighbor from the city, who was seeking for a servant in her
summer vacation; "if you hadn't daughters of your own, maybe I would;
but my girls ain't going to work so that your girls may live in
idleness."
It was vain to offer money. "We don't need your money, ma'am, we can
support ourselves in other ways; my girls can braid straw and bind
shoes, but they ain't going to be slaves to anybody."
In the Irish and German servants who took the place of Americans in
families, there was, to begin with, the tradition of education in
favor of a higher class; but even the foreign population became more
or less infected with the spirit of democracy. They came to this
country with vague notions of freedom and equality, and in ignorant
and uncultivated people such ideas are often more unreasonable for
being vague. They did not, indeed, claim a seat at the table and in
the parlor, but they repudiated many of those habits of respect and
courtesy which belonged to their former condition, and asserted their
own will and way in the round, unvarnished phrase which they supposed
to be their right as republican citizens. Life became a sort of
domestic wrangle and struggle between the employers, who secretly
confessed their weakness, but endeavored openly to assume the air and
bearing of authority, and the employed, who knew their power and
insisted on their privileges. From this cause domestic service in
America has had less of mutual kindliness than in old countries. Its
terms have been so ill understood and defined that both parties have
assumed the defensive; and a common topic of conversation in American
female society has often been the general servile war which in one
form or another was going on in their different families,--a war as
interminable as would be a struggle between aristocracy and common
people, undefined by any bill of rights or constitution, and therefore
opening fields for endless disputes. In England, the class who go to
service _are_ a class, and service is a profession; the distance
between them and their employers is so marked and defined, and all the
customs and requirements of the position are so perfectly understood,
that the master or mistress has no fear of being compromised by
condescension, and no need of the external voice or air of authority.
The higher up in the social scale one goes, the more courteous seems
to become the intercourse of master and servant; the more perfect and
real the power, the more is it veiled in outward expression,--commands
are phrased as requests, and gentleness of voice and manner covers an
authority which no one would think of offending without trembling.
But in America all is undefined. In the first place, there is no class
who mean to make domestic service a profession to live and die in. It
is universally an expedient, a stepping-stone to something higher;
your best servants always have something else in view as soon as they
have laid by a little money; some form of independence which shall
give them a home of their own is constantly in mind. Families look
forward to the buying of landed homesteads, and the scattered brothers
and sisters work awhile in domestic service to gain the common fund
for the purpose; your seamstress intends to become a dressmaker, and
take in work at her own house; your cook is pondering a marriage with
the baker, which shall transfer her toils from your cooking-stove to
her own. Young women are eagerly rushing into every other employment,
till female trades and callings are all overstocked. We are
continually harrowed with tales of the sufferings of distressed
needlewomen, of the exactions and extortions practiced on the frail
sex in the many branches of labor and trade at which they try their
hands; and yet women will encounter all these chances of ruin and
starvation rather than make up their minds to permanent domestic
service. Now what is the matter with domestic service? One would
think, on the face of it, that a calling which gives a settled home, a
comfortable room, rent-free, with fire and lights, good board and
lodging, and steady, well-paid wages, would certainly offer more
attractions than the making of shirts for tenpence, with all the risks
of providing one's own sustenance and shelter.
I think it is mainly from the want of a definite idea of the true
position of a servant under our democratic institutions that domestic
service is so shunned and avoided in America, that it is the very last
thing which an intelligent young woman will look to for a living. It
is more the want of personal respect toward those in that position
than the labors incident to it which repels our people from it. Many
would be willing to perform these labors, but they are not willing to
place themselves in a situation where their self-respect is hourly
wounded by _the implication of a degree of inferiority which does not
follow any kind of labor or service in this country but that of the
family_.
There exists in the minds of employers an unsuspected spirit of
superiority, which is stimulated into an active form by the resistance
which democracy inspires in the working class. Many families think of
servants only as a necessary evil, their wages as exactions, and all
that is allowed them as so much taken from the family; and they seek
in every way to get from them as much and to give them as little as
possible. Their rooms are the neglected, ill-furnished, incommodious
ones,--and the kitchen is the most cheerless and comfortless place in
the house. Other families, more good-natured and liberal, provide
their domestics with more suitable accommodations, and are more
indulgent; but there is still a latent spirit of something like
contempt for the position. That they treat their servants with so much
consideration seems to them a merit entitling them to the most
prostrate gratitude; and they are constantly disappointed and shocked
at that want of sense of inferiority on the part of these people which
leads them to appropriate pleasant rooms, good furniture, and good
living as mere matters of common justice.
It seems to be a constant surprise to some employers that servants
should insist on having the same human wants as themselves. Ladies who
yawn in their elegantly furnished parlors, among books and pictures,
if they have not company, parties, or opera to diversify the evening,
seem astonished and half indignant that cook and chambermaid are more
disposed to go out for an evening gossip than to sit on hard chairs in
the kitchen where they have been toiling all day. The pretty
chambermaid's anxieties about her dress, the time she spends at her
small and not very clear mirror, are sneeringly noticed by those whose
toilet-cares take up serious hours; and the question has never
apparently occurred to them why a serving-maid should not want to look
pretty as well as her mistress. She is a woman as well as they, with
all a woman's wants and weaknesses; and her dress is as much to her as
theirs to them.
A vast deal of trouble among servants arises from impertinent
interferences and petty tyrannical exactions on the part of employers.
Now the authority of the master and mistress of a house in regard to
their domestics extends simply to the things they have contracted to
do and the hours during which they have contracted to serve; otherwise
than this, they have no more right to interfere with them in the
disposal of their time than with any mechanic whom they employ. They
have, indeed, a right to regulate the hours of their own household,
and servants can choose between conformity to these hours and the loss
of their situation; but, within reasonable limits, their right to come
and go at their own discretion, in their own time, should be
unquestioned.
If employers are troubled by the fondness of their servants for
dancing, evening company, and late hours, the proper mode of
proceeding is to make these matters a subject of distinct contract in
hiring. The more strictly and perfectly the business matters of the
first engagement of domestics are conducted, the more likelihood there
is of mutual quiet and satisfaction in the relation. It is quite
competent to every housekeeper to say what practices are or are not
consistent with the rules of her family, and what will be inconsistent
with the service for which she agrees to pay. It is much better to
regulate such affairs by cool contract in the outset than by warm
altercations and protracted domestic battles.
As to the terms of social intercourse, it seems somehow to be settled
in the minds of many employers that their servants owe them and their
family more respect than they and the family owe to the servants. But
do they? What is the relation of servant to employer in a democratic
country? Precisely that of a person who for money performs any kind
of service for you. The carpenter comes into your house to put up a
set of shelves,--the cook comes into your kitchen to cook your dinner.
You never think that the carpenter owes you any more respect than you
owe to him because he is in your house doing your behests; he is your
fellow-citizen, you treat him with respect, you expect to be treated
with respect by him. You have a claim on him that he shall do your
work according to your directions,--no more. Now I apprehend that
there is a very common notion as to the position and rights of
servants which is quite different from this. Is it not a common
feeling that a servant is one who may be treated with a degree of
freedom by every member of the family which he or she may not return?
Do not people feel at liberty to question servants about their private
affairs, to comment on their dress and appearance, in a manner which
they would feel to be an impertinence if reciprocated? Do they not
feel at liberty to express dissatisfaction with their performances in
rude and unceremonious terms, to reprove them in the presence of
company, while yet they require that the dissatisfaction of servants
shall be expressed only in terms of respect? A woman would not feel
herself at liberty to talk to her milliner or her dressmaker in
language as devoid of consideration as she will employ towards her
cook or chambermaid. Yet both are rendering her a service which she
pays for in money, and one is no more made her inferior thereby than
the other. Both have an equal right to be treated with courtesy. The
master and mistress of a house have a right to require respectful
treatment from all whom their roof shelters, but they have no more
right to exact it of servants than of every guest and every child, and
they themselves owe it as much to servants as to guests.
In order that servants may be treated with respect and courtesy, it is
not necessary, as in simpler patriarchal days, that they sit at the
family table. Your carpenter or plumber does not feel hurt that you do
not ask him to dine with you, nor your milliner and mantua-maker that
you do not exchange ceremonious calls and invite them to your parties.
It is well understood that your relations with them are of a mere
business character. They never take it as an assumption of superiority
on your part that you do not admit them to relations of private
intimacy. There may be the most perfect respect and esteem and even
friendship between them and you, notwithstanding. So it may be in the
case of servants. It is easy to make any person understand that there
are quite other reasons than the assumption of personal superiority
for not wishing to admit servants to the family privacy. It was not,
in fact, to sit in the parlor or at the table, in themselves
considered, that was the thing aimed at by New England girls,--these
were valued only as signs that they were deemed worthy of respect and
consideration, and, where freely conceded, were often in point of fact
declined.
Let servants feel, in their treatment by their employers, and in the
atmosphere of the family, that their position is held to be a
respectable one, let them feel in the mistress of the family the charm
of unvarying consideration and good manners, let their work rooms be
made convenient and comfortable, and their private apartments bear
some reasonable comparison in point of agreeableness to those of other
members of the family, and domestic service will be more frequently
sought by a superior and self-respecting class. There are families in
which such a state of things prevails; and such families, amid the
many causes which unite to make the tenure of service uncertain, have
generally been able to keep good permanent servants.
There is an extreme into which kindly disposed people often run with
regard to servants, which may be mentioned here. They make pets of
them. They give extravagant wages and indiscreet indulgences, and,
through indolence and easiness of temper, tolerate neglect of duty.
Many of the complaints of the ingratitude of servants come from those
who have spoiled them in this way; while many of the longest and most
harmonious domestic unions have sprung from a simple, quiet course of
Christian justice and benevolence, a recognition of servants as
fellow-beings and fellow-Christians, and a doing to them as we would
in like circumstances that they should do to us.
The mistresses of American families, whether they like it or not, have
the duties of missionaries imposed upon them by that class from which
our supply of domestic servants is drawn. They may as well accept the
position cheerfully, and, as one raw, untrained hand after another
passes through their family, and is instructed by them in the
mysteries of good housekeeping, comfort themselves with the reflection
that they are doing something to form good wives and mothers for the
Republic.
The complaints made of Irish girls are numerous and loud; the failings
of green Erin, alas! are but too open and manifest; yet, in arrest of
judgment, let us move this consideration: let us imagine our own
daughters between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four, untaught and
inexperienced in domestic affairs as they commonly are, shipped to a
foreign shore to seek service in families. It may be questioned
whether as a whole they would do much better. The girls that fill our
families and do our housework are often of the age of our own
daughters, standing for themselves, without mothers to guide them, in
a foreign country, not only bravely supporting themselves, but sending
home in every ship remittances to impoverished friends left behind. If
our daughters did as much for us, should we not be proud of their
energy and heroism?
When we go into the houses of our country, we find a majority of
well-kept, well-ordered, and even elegant establishments where the
only hands employed are those of the daughters of Erin. True, American
women have been their instructors, and many a weary hour of care have
they had in the discharge of this office; but the result on the whole
is beautiful and good, and the end of it, doubtless, will be peace.
In speaking of the office of the American mistress as being a
missionary one, we are far from recommending any controversial
interference with the religious faith of our servants. It is far
better to incite them to be good Christians in their own way than to
run the risk of shaking their faith in all religion by pointing out to
them the errors of that in which they have been educated. The general
purity of life and propriety of demeanor of so many thousands of
undefended young girls cast yearly upon our shores, with no home but
their church, and no shield but their religion, are a sufficient proof
that this religion exerts an influence over them not to be lightly
trifled with. But there is a real unity even in opposite Christian
forms; and the Roman Catholic servant and the Protestant mistress, if
alike possessed by the spirit of Christ, and striving to conform to
the Golden Rule, cannot help being one in heart, though one go to mass
and the other to meeting.
Finally, the bitter baptism through which we are passing, the life
blood dearer than our own which is drenching distant fields, should
remind us of the preciousness of distinctive American ideas. They who
would seek in their foolish pride to establish the pomp of liveried
servants in America are doing that which is simply absurd. A servant
can never in our country be the mere appendage to another man, to be
marked like a sheep with the color of his owner; he must be a
fellow-citizen, with an established position of his own, free to make
contracts, free to come and go, and having in his sphere titles to
consideration and respect just as definite as those of any trade or
profession whatever.
Moreover, we cannot in this country maintain to any great extent large
retinues of servants. Even with ample fortunes they are forbidden by
the general character of society here, which makes them cumbrous and
difficult to manage. Every mistress of a family knows that her cares
increase with every additional servant. Two keep the peace with each
other and their employer; three begin a possible discord, which
possibility increases with four, and becomes certain with five or six.
Trained housekeepers, such as regulate the complicated establishments
of the Old World, form a class that are not, and from the nature of
the case never will be, found in any great numbers in this country.
All such women, as a general thing, are keeping, and prefer to keep,
houses of their own.
A moderate style of housekeeping, small, compact, and simple domestic
establishments, must necessarily be the general order of life in
America. So many openings of profit are to be found in this country
that domestic service necessarily wants the permanence which forms so
agreeable a feature of it in the Old World. This being the case, it
should be an object in America to exclude from the labors of the
family all that can, with greater advantage, be executed out of it by
combined labor.
Formerly, in New England, soap and candles were to be made in each
separate family; now, comparatively few take this toil upon them. We
buy soap of the soap-maker, and candles of the candle-factor. This
principle might be extended much further. In France no family makes
its own bread, and better bread cannot be eaten than what can be
bought at the appropriate shops. No family does its own washing; the
family's linen is all sent to women who, making this their sole
profession, get it up with a care and nicety which can seldom be
equaled in any family.
How would it simplify the burdens of the American housekeeper to have
washing and ironing day expunged from her calendar! How much more
neatly and compactly could the whole domestic system be arranged! If
all the money that each separate family spends on the outfit and
accommodations for washing and ironing, on fuel, soap, starch, and the
other et ceteras, were united in a fund to create a laundry for every
dozen families, one or two good women could do in firstrate style what
now is very indifferently done by the disturbance and disarrangement
of all other domestic processes in these families. Whoever sets
neighborhood laundries on foot will do much to solve the American
housekeeper's hardest problem.
Finally, American women must not try with three servants to carry on
life in the style which in the Old World requires sixteen: they must
thoroughly understand, and be prepared _to teach_, every branch of
housekeeping; they must study to make domestic service desirable by
treating their servants in a way to lead them to respect themselves
and to feel themselves respected; and there will gradually be evolved
from the present confusion a solution of the domestic problem which
shall be adapted to the life of a new and growing world.
X