occupations practised. Though man has taken out and developed all the
great trades, and, indeed, all trades beyond a certain grade, he has
left the roots of quite a number at home. The housewife practises the
conflicting elements of many kinds of work. First, she is cook.
Whatever else is done or undone, we must eat; and since eating is
ordained to be done at home, that is her predominant trade. The
preparation and service of food is a most useful function; and as a
world-industry, in the hands of professionals, students, and experts,
it has reached a comparatively high stage of development.
In the nine-tenths of our homes where the housewife is cook, it comes
under all these limitations: First, average capacity; second,
sex-tendency; third, isolation; fourth, conflicting duties.
The cook, having also the cleaning to do, the sewing, mending, nursing,
and care of children, the amount of time given to cooking is perforce
limited. But even the plainest of home cooking must take up a good
proportion of the day. The cooking, service, and "cleaning up" of
ordinary meals, in a farmhouse, with the contributory processes of
picking, sorting, peeling, washing, etc., and the extra time given to
special baking, pickling, and preserving, take fully six hours a day.
To the man, who is out of the house during work-hours, and who seldom
estimates woman's work at its real value, this may seem extreme, but
the working housewife knows it is a fair allowance, even a modest one.
There are degrees of speed, skill, intelligence, and purchasing power,
of course; but this is a modest average; two hours for breakfast, three
for dinner, one for supper. The preparation of food as a household
industry takes up half the working time of half the population of the
world. This utterly undeveloped industry, inadequate and exhausting,
takes nearly a quarter of a twelve-hour day of the world's working
force.
Cooking and sewing are inimical; the sewing of the housewife is quite
generally pushed over into the evening as well as afternoon, thus
lengthening her day considerably. Nursing, as applied to the sick, must
come in when it happens, other things giving way at that time. Cleaning
is continuous. Cooking, of course, makes cleaning; the two main
elements of dirt in the household being grease and ashes; another, and
omnipresent one, dust. Then, there are the children to clean, and the
clothes to clean--this latter so considerable an item as to take two
days of extra labour--during which, of course, other departments must
be less attended.
We have the regular daily labour of serving meals and "clearing up," we
have the regular daily labour of keeping the home in order; then we
have the washing day, ironing day, baking day, and sweeping day. Some
make a special mending day also. This division, best observed by the
most competent, is a heroic monument to the undying efforts of the
human worker to specialise. But we have left out one, and the most
important one, of our home industries--the care of children.
Where is Children's Day?
The children are there every day, of course. Yes, but which hour of the
day? With six for food, with--spreading out the washing and ironing
over the week--two for laundry, with--spreading the sweeping day and
adding the daily dusting and setting to rights--two for cleaning; and
another two for sewing--after these twelve hours of necessary labour
are accounted for, what time remains for the children?
The initial purpose of the home is the care of children. The initial
purpose of motherhood is the care of children. How are the duties of
the mother compatible with the duties of the housewife? How can
child-culture, as a branch of human progress, rise to any degree of
proficiency in this swarming heap of rudimentary trades?
Nothing is asked--here--as to how the housewife, doing all these things
together her life long, can herself find time for culture and
development; or how can she catch any glimmer of civic duty or public
service beyond this towering pile of domestic duty and household
service. The particular point herein advanced is that the conditions of
home industry _as such_ forever limit the growth of the industry
so practised; forever limit the growth of the persons so practising
them; and also tend to limit the growth of the society which is content
to leave any of its essential functions in this distorted state.
Our efforts to "lift the standard of household industry" ignore the
laws of industry. We seek by talking and writing, by poetising and
sermonising, and playing on every tender sentiment and devout
aspiration, to convince the housewife that there is something
particularly exalted and beautiful, as well as useful, in her
occupation. This shows our deep-rooted error of sex-distinction in
industry. We consider the work of the woman in the house as essentially
feminine, and fail to see that, as work, it is exactly like any other
kind of human activity, having the same limitations and the same
possibilities.
Suppose we change the sex and consider for a while the status
of a house-husband. He could be a tall, strong, fine-looking
person--man-servants often are. He could love his wife and his
children--industrial status does not affect these primal instincts. He
could toil from morning to night, manfully, to meet their needs.
Suppose we are visiting in such a family. We should find a very rude
small hut--no one man could build much of a house, but, ah! the tender
love, the pride, the intimate emotion he would put into that hut! For
his heart's dearest--for his precious little ones--he had dragged
together the fallen logs--chipped them smooth with his flint-ax (there
could have been no metal work while every man was a house-husband), and
piled them together. With patient, loving hands he had daubed the
chinks with clay, made beds of leaves, hung hides upon the walls. Even
some rude stools he might have contrived--though furniture really
belongs to a later period. But over all comes the incessant demand for
food. His cherished family must eat, often and often, and under that
imperative necessity all others wait.
So he goes forth to the hunt, brave, subtle, fiercely ingenious; and,
actuated by his ceaseless love for his family he performs wonders. He
brings home the food--day after day--even sometimes enough for several
days, though meat does not keep very long. The family would have food
of a sort, shelter of a sort, and love. But try to point out to the
house-husband what other things he could obtain for them, create for
them, provide for them, if he learned to combine with other men, to
exchange labour, to organise industry. See his virtuous horror!
What! Give up his duty to his family! Let another man hunt for
them!--another man build their home--another man make their garments!
He will not hear of it. "It is my duty as a husband," he will tell you,
"to serve my wife. It is my duty as a father to serve my children. No
other person could love them as I do, and without that love the work
would not be done as well." Strong in this conviction, the
house-husband would remain intrenched in his home, serving his family
with might and main, having no time, no strength, no brain capacity for
undertaking larger methods; and there he and his family would all be,
immovable in the Stone Age.
Never was any such idiot on earth as this hypothetical home-husband. It
was not in him to stay in such primitive restrictions. But he has been
quite willing to leave his wife in that interestingly remote period.
The permanent error of the housewife lies in that assumption that her
love for her family makes her service satisfactory. Family affection
has nothing to do with the specialist's skill; nor with the
specialist's love of his work for the pleasure of doing it. That is the
kind of love that makes good work; and that is the kind of work the
world needs and the families within it. Men, specialised, give to their
families all that we know of modern comforts, of scientific appliances,
of works of art, of the complex necessities and conveniences of modern
life. Women, unspecialised, refuse to benefit their families in like
proportion; but offer to them only the grade of service which was
proper enough in the Stone Age, but is a historic disgrace to-day.
A house does not need a wife any more than it does a husband. Are we
never to have a man-wife? A really suitable and profitable companion
for a man instead of the bond-slave of a house? There is nothing in
the work of a house which requires marital or maternal affection. It
does require highly developed skill and business sense--but these it
fails to get.
Would any amount of love on the part of that inconceivable
house-husband justify him in depriving his family of all the fruits of
progress? What a colossal charge of malfeasance in office could be
brought against such a husband--such a father; who, under the name of
love, should so fail in his great first duty--Progress.
How does the woman escape this charge? Why is not she responsible for
progress, too? By that strange assumption does she justify this
refusal to keep step with the world? She will tell you, perhaps, that
she cannot do more than she does--she has neither time nor strength nor
ambition for any more work. So might the house-husband have defended
himself--as honestly and as reasonably. It is true. While every man
had to spend all his time providing for his own family, no man ever
had, or ever could have, time, strength, or ambition to do more.
It is not _more_ work that is asked of women, but less. It is _a
different method_ of work. Human progress rests upon the interchange of
labour; upon work done humanly for each other, not, like the efforts of
the savage or the brute, done only for one's own. The housewife,
blinded by her ancient duty, fails in her modern duty.
It is true that, while she does this work in this way, she can do no
more. Therefore she must stop doing it, and learn to do differently.
The house will not be "neglected" by her so doing; but is even now most
shamefully neglected by her antique methods of labour. The family will
not be less loved because it has a skilled worker to love it. Love has
to pass muster in results, as well as intentions. Here are five
mothers, equally loving. One is a Hottentot. One is an Eskimo. One is a
Hindoo. One is a German peasant woman. One is an American and a
successful physician.
Which could do most for her children? All might compete on even terms
if "love is enough," as poets have claimed; but _which could best
provide for her children_?
Neither overflowing heart nor overburdened hand sufficiently counts in
the uplifting of the race; that rests on _what is done_. The position
of the housewife is a final limitation and a continuous, increasing
injury both to the specific industries of the place, and to her first
great duty of motherhood. The human race, fathered only by
house-husbands, would never have moved at all. The human race, mothered
only by housewives, has moved only half as fast and as far as it
rightly should have done, and the work the patient housewife spends her
life on is pitifully behind in the march of events. The home as a
workshop is utterly insufficient to rightly serve the needs of the
growing world.
VI
THE HOME AS A WORKSHOP
_II. The Housemaid_
Among that tenth part of the population sufficiently rich to keep
servants, the conditions of domestic industry are familiar to us. This
is the tenth which is most conscious, and most vocal. It has the widest
range of social contact; it is most in touch with literature; both in
speech and writing we hear oftenest from the small class who keep
servants.
The woman who does her own work is not usually a writer and has little
time for reading. Moreover, her difficulties, though great, are not of
the sort that confound the mistress of servants. The housewife is held
to her work by duty and by love; also by necessity. She cannot "better
herself" by leaving; and indeed, without grave loss and pain, she
cannot leave at all. So the housewife struggles on, too busy to
complain; and accomplishes, under this threefold bond of duty, love,
and necessity far more than can be expected of a comparatively free
agent.
Therefore we hear little of the "problem" of domestic service where the
wife is the servant; and have to draw our conclusions from such data as
the large percentage of farmers' wives who become insane, and such
generalisations as those of the preceding chapter. But the "Servant
Question" is clearly before us. It is an economic problem which presses
upon us all, (that tenth of us all which is so prominent that it
tacitly assumes its problem to be universal;) and the pressure of which
increases daily. We are even beginning to study it scientifically. Miss
Salmon's valuable book on "Domestic Service" contributes much useful
information. The Household Economic Association exists largely to
alleviate the distresses of this system of industry. Scarce one woman
(of this tenth) but feels the pinch of our imperfect method of doing
housework, and as they become better educated and more intelligent, as
some of them even learn something of more advanced economic processes,
this crude, expensive, and inadequate system causes more and more
uneasiness and distress.
What is the status of household industry as practised by servants? It
is this: The Housewife having become the Lady of the House, and the
work still having to be done in the house, others must be induced to do
it. In the period from which this custom dates it was a simple matter
of elevating "the wife or chief wife"[3] to a position of dominance,
and leaving the work to be done by the rest of the women. Domestic
service, as an industrial status, dates from the period of the
polygynous group; the household with the male head and the group of
serving women; from the time when wives were slaves and slaves were
wives, indiscriminately. (See domestic relations of Jacob.)
[3] See Veblen's "Theory of the Leisure Class."
The genesis of the relation being thus established, it is easy to
account for its present peculiar and dominating condition--celibacy.
The housemaid is the modern derivative from the slave-wife. She may no
longer be the sub-wife of the master--but neither may she be another
man's wife.
No married man wishes his wife to serve another man. This household
service, being esteemed as a distinctly feminine function, closely
involved with maternity, or at least with marriage, or, if not with
marriage, at the very least with woman's devotion, and quite
inconsistent with any other marriage; therefore we find the labours of
the household performed by celibate women of a lower class. Our modern
household is but a variation of the primitive group--the man and his
serving women still.
In the period of slave labour, where both men and women were owned and
exploited, we find household labour performed by men; and in those
Oriental nations where slavery yet exists we find man-service common in
the home. Also in nations still influenced by feudalism, where service
once went with the soil, where the lord is still attended by what was
originally his contingent of fighting men, but which has gradually
dwindled to an array of footmen and butlers; there we find men still
contented, or partially contented, to do house-service. But it ranks
last and lowest in man's mind, and justly. As fast as industrial
evolution progresses we find men less and less content to do this work
in this way; or, for that matter, women either.
In the highly advanced economic status of America we are especially
confronted with this difficulty, and have to supply our needs from
nations still largely under the influence of the feudal régime, or
those in the yet lower period of slavery. Men-servants, when obtained,
are generally satisfactory; no public outcry is made over them. It is
the "servant-girl" that constitutes the element of difficulty, and it
is she that we must consider.
Let it be clearly held in mind that the very first economic relation
was that of sex, based on the natural tendency of the female to work;
sex-labour. The second stage of economic relation is that of force;
slave-labour. The next is that of payment, what we call the contract
system; wage-labour.
Social evolution still shows us all these forms actively present in
this age, though belonging to such remote and different ones; just as
physical evolution still shows us monad and mollusk as well as
vertebrate mammals. Each stage has its use and value. But when an early
stage comes into contact with a later one there is trouble.
We have all seen how inevitably a savage status recedes and disappears
before the civilised. Individual savages may be assimilated by the
civilised competing race; but savagery and civilisation cannot coexist
when they come in contact and competition. A savage cult may endure on
an island in the South Seas, but not in England or America. So an early
status of labour has to give way to a later; as shown so conspicuously
in the last great historic instance in our own country.
Household industry is a mixed status, composed mainly of sex-labour,
the first stage; and partially of slave-labour, the second. This
slave-labour is in the act of changing to contract labour; and, as
such, cannot endure the conditions of home industry. The housewife has
to, the house-slave had to, the house-servant mostly had to; but the
house-_employee_ does not have to, and will not if she can help it.
The contract status of labour is incompatible with home industry. Note
how the condition of celibacy intereacts upon the relation. We expect
of our house-servants that they be "attached," "loyal," "faithful,"
"respectful," "devoted"; we do not say they always are, but that is
our ideal; these are the qualities for which we most praise them.
Attachment is especially valued. If only we could still _own_ them!
Then there would be that pleasant sense of permanence and security so
painfully lacking in our modern house-service. Short of owning them we
seek by various futile methods to "attach" them. Some societies give
medals for long service. The best thing we can say of a servant is "she
stayed with me for seven years!" or whatever period we can boast. Now
we do not seek to "attach" our butcher or baker or candlestick-maker;
why our cook? Because this status of celibacy has necessarily resulted
in the most painful conditions of transient incapacity in
house-service.
People must marry. People ought to marry. People will marry, whether we
say yes or no. Why should the housemaid stay a maid for our sakes? What
do we offer in the exciting prospect of always doing the same work for
the same wages, compared to the prospect of doing the same work,
without wages, it is true, but with a "mechanic's lien" on her
husband's purse? Or what would any scale of wages or promotion be
against the joys of a home of her own, a husband of her own, children
of her own?
We, intrenched in our own homes and families, think she ought to be
satisfied with serving our husbands and children, but she is not--and
never will be. There is of course a certain percentage of old maids and
widows, sufficiently disagreeable not to be wanted by their relatives,
or sufficiently independent not to want them; sufficiently capable to
hold a place as house-servant, but not sufficiently capable to follow
any other trade; or, in last possibility, there is here and there that
Blessed Damosel of our domestic dreams--a strong, capable, ingenious
woman, not hampered by any personal ties or affections; not choosing to
marry; preferring to work in a kitchen to working in a shop; and so
impressed by the august virtues and supreme importance of our family
that she becomes "attached" to it for life. These cases are, however,
rare. In the vast majority of households the maid is a maid, a young
woman of the lower classes, doing this work because she can do no
other, and doing it only until she marries. The resultant conditions of
the industry so practised are precisely what we might expect.
This young woman is in no way attached to the family. A family is
connected by the ties of sex, by marriage and heredity, with occasional
cases of adoption. If the servant is not a relative, or adopted, she
does not belong to the family. She has left her father's family, and
looks forward to her husband's, meanwhile as an aid to the first or a
means to the latter, she serves ours. She is of the lower classes
because no others will do this work. She is ignorant because, if she
were intelligent, she would not do it--does not do it; the
well-schooled, well-trained young woman much prefers other work. So we
find household industry in that tenth of our homes not served by the
housewife, is in the hands of ignorant and inferior young women,
_under conditions of constant change_.
The position of the lady of the house, as this procession of untrained,
half-trained, ill-trained, or at least _otherwise_-trained young
women march through her domain, is like that of the sergeant of
companies of raw recruits. She "lifts 'em--lifts 'em--lifts 'em"--but
there is never any "charge that wins the day."
Household industry we must constantly remember never rises to the level
of a regular trade. It is service--not "skilled labour." What is done
there is done under no broad light of public improvement, but is merely
catering to the personal tastes and habits, whims and fancies of one
family. The lady of the house is by no means a captain of industry. She
is not a trainer and governor of able subordinates, like the mate of a
ship or the manager of a hotel. Her position is not one of power, but
of helplessness. She has to be done for and waited on. Whatever maternal
instinct may achieve at first hand in the woman-who-does-her-own-work,
it does _not_ make competent instructors. When the lady of the house's
husband gets rich enough she hires a house-keeper to engage, discharge,
train, and manage the housemaids.
Here and there we do find an efficient lady of the house who can do
wonders even with this stream of transient incapacity, but the
prominence of the servant-question proves her rarity. If all ladies of
houses could bring order out of such chaos, could meet constant needs
by transient means, the subtleties of refined tastes by the
inefficiencies of unskilled labour, then nothing more need be said. But
the thing cannot be done. The average house-mistress is not a
servant-charmer and the average housemaid is _necessarily incapable_.
This is what should be squarely faced and acknowledged. The kind of
work that needs to be done to keep a modern home healthy, comfortable,
and refined, cannot be done--can never be done--by this office-boy
grade of labour. Because home industry is home industry, because it has
been left aborted in the darkness of private life while other
industries have grown so broad and high in the light of public life, we
have utterly failed to recognise its true value.
These industries, so long neglected and misused, are of supreme
importance. The two main ones--the preparation of food and the care of
children--can hardly be over-estimated in value to the race. On the one
the health of the world mainly depends, yes, its very life. On the
other the progress of the world depends, and that is more than life.
That these two great social functions should be left contentedly to the
hands of _absolutely the lowest grade of labour in our civilisation_ is
astounding. It is the lowest grade of labour not because it is
performed by the lowest class of labour--humanity can grow to splendid
heights from that beginning, and does so every day; but it is the
lowest because it is carried on in the home.
The conditions of home industry as practised by either housewife or
housemaid are hopelessly restrictive. They are, as we have seen, the
low standard of average capacity; the element of sex-tendency; the
isolation and the unspecialised nature of the work. In two of these
conditions the housemaid gains on the housewife. She is partly out of
the sex-tendency status and partly into the contract relation; hence
the patient, submissive, conservative influence is lightened. In
families of greater affluence there is some specialisation; we have
varieties in housemaid; cookmaid, scullerymaid, nursemaid, chambermaid,
parlourmaid,--as many as we can afford; and in such families we find
such elevation of home-industry as is possible; marred, however, by
serious limitations.