To begin with, it is perhaps worth while to notice certain broad
distinctions which differentiate the household, considered merely as an
economic institution, from other agencies engaged in the production of
commodities and services.
One main difference is, as was noticed earlier, that the household
produces use-values, and all other organisations (save some public
bodies) exchange-values. Or to put the same thing in another way, the
industrial world is run to make a profit; the household, on the
contrary, is kept up by the contributions of its members, and exists
to provide for them the necessaries and comforts of life. None the
less is the work of cooking, cleaning, and serving of real economic
value when carried on within the household, as people discover when
they have to pay for the organisation of the same services in hotels
or boarding-houses.
The second great distinction is that while any other business may expand
to meet the demands of a growing market, and as a result of the
increasing competency of its organiser and work-people, the household is
definitely limited in scope by the numbers of the family included within
it. Biscuit-makers or jam-makers, to put the matter concretely, may
succeed by skilful management in enlarging their businesses until they
supply their goods to hundreds of thousands of people, and earn a large
profit by doing so. But the most efficient housekeeper continues all her
life to organise and cater for the same number of people, and her reward
for her good management does not consist in a raised salary or increased
profits. It is, in fact, not pecuniary at all, but is the increased
well-being of those whom she serves.
Important consequences follow from these two distinctions, some of them
desirable, others the reverse. The household is preserved, as it were,
as a little oasis in the midst of the surrounding commercialism. There
at least exists no temptation to adulteration or sophistication, or to
shoddy work intended to sell but not to last. No housewife would be such
a fool as to put alum in the bread baked at home, to use decaying fruit
in the tarts, or questionable meat in her pies. She can have no object
save to provide the best she can for her family with the means at her
disposal. This is an enormous advantage, the value of which it is hardly
possible to overrate.
But the absence of profit-making has certain disadvantages. It means
that while other economic organisations are being constantly spurred to
increasing efficiency by the stimulus of competition, the household
remains backward. A manufacturer knows to-day that he must use the most
up-to-date machinery and employ the most skilled management or be beaten
in the race for commercial supremacy. But housekeepers may continue (and
do continue) to use old-fashioned ranges or antiquated systems of
hot-water heating without any reference to the proceedings of their
neighbours. Without doubt it results that new inventions make their way
much more slowly in housekeeping than in profit-making industry. How
rare, for instance, it is to find properly constructed grates outside
very wealthy households. How badly the kitchen, larder, and scullery are
planned in relation to one another. In how few cases is any attempt made
to utilise electricity for cooking or removing dust, for both of which
purposes admirable machines are already on the market.
But there are other factors which also contribute to the backwardness of
domestic engineering. The smallness of the household is one. It pays a
large hotel, for instance, to buy special machines for cleaning knives,
or to instal superheated steam, for washing plates and dishes. But
neither the initial expense nor the cost of running could be met out of
the funds at the disposal of the small household. Another reason exists
in the fact that the average housewife does not distinguish between
annual and capital outlay. Unaccustomed to finance, and keeping
accounts--if she keeps them at all--in a very amateurish fashion, she
fails to understand that capital expenditure, let us say, on one of the
little electric vacuum cleaners now on the market might pay for itself
in a short time by saving the wages of a charwoman.
(_a_) THE ORGANISATION OF THE HOUSEHOLD AS AFFECTED BY THE HOUSING
QUESTION
Then, finally, few people own their houses, and are therefore
disinclined to make an outlay which would benefit their successors
rather than themselves. Landlords (who are frequently retired tradesmen
or elderly ladies depending on the rent of a row of houses for their
sole income) are in their turn unprogressive and unenlightened. It is
often hard to induce a landlord of the type indicated to consent to
structural changes even if carried out at the tenant's expense. The
builders of new houses, again, are not, to put it mildly, educated in
the best schools of household architecture and domestic engineering. It
is true that in some suburbs, largely under the influence of the more
competent architects employed by the garden city organisations, a marked
improvement in domestic building is noticeable. But only too often the
hot-water system is inefficient, the ventilation poor, the grates
wasteful, and so on. I have never yet heard of a speculative builder who
deliberately planned the laying out of the streets in the area which he
was developing in such a way that the living-rooms might have a maximum
and the larder and pantries a minimum of sunlight. The new roads are
usually all set at right angles to the main street, and the houses
rigidly planted square to the roads, regardless of the points of the
compass.
All these factors, acting together, prevent that general improvement in
the construction of houses which is noticeable in other branches of
industry. Progress does, of course, take place. The pressure exercised
by the local health authorities leads to improved drainage and plumbing;
lighting, owing to the recent competition between gas and electricity,
has become both cheaper and better. But an intelligent application of
science and investment of capital when a house is under construction
could easily effect still further improvements.
Since, however, the household is not influenced by the ordinary
processes of competition, advance will probably depend on some form of
co-operation among tenants. The principle of tenant co-partnership has
hitherto been applied only to the construction of working-class houses,
but there seems to be no reason why it should be not equally useful
among the middle classes. The advantages of the organisation are that it
secures to the tenant a well-built house, sometimes specially
constructed to meet his wishes, while his complete mobility is not
interfered with as it is by ownership of his dwelling. These apparently
opposed results are obtained by the formation of a company which is the
legal owner of the land and the houses; but no one is allowed to rent a
house until he invests a certain amount of money in the company. Thus
there are two classes of shareholders--tenant shareholders and ordinary
shareholders. If a man wishes to move from the neighbourhood, then he
ceases to be a tenant and becomes only an ordinary shareholder, and if
he needs the money he can always sell out. Rent is paid in the ordinary
way, and so too are dividends on the shares. Thus groups of people are
enabled to control the conditions under which they are housed, without
being hampered by the possession of a dwelling-house, which in an
emergency they may be forced to sell at a serious loss. Minor advantages
are greater cheapness of construction owing to wholesale buying of
materials, and the provision of a more liberal repair fund than is
contemplated by the ordinary landlord. It is possible, too, to provide
common tennis courts, children's playgrounds, pleasure gardens, &c.,
which are kept up out of the general funds of the company.[74] The
"co-partnership tenants'" villages at Bournville, Hampstead, Ealing,
&c., are all doing well,[75] and we may venture to hope that if the
same principle were applied to the housing of the middle classes, the
worst horrors of the dreary and yet pretentious suburbs constructed by
the speculative builder would soon be checked.
(_b_) THE PROBLEMS OF DOMESTIC SERVICE
The position of the domestic servant is the next subject which demands
consideration. It is a question which has aroused much acrimonious
controversy, mistresses accusing maids of ignorance and inefficiency,
maids objecting in their turn to the menial position and lack of freedom
involved in domestic service. Yet it is curious to notice that the
conditions of this branch of work have been little studied by the
economist. The number of domestic servants as enumerated in the census
of 1901 was 1,330,783, the largest single occupation in the country.[76]
But while dozens of books and blue-books could be named discussing the
position of the textile worker or the agricultural labourer, not more
than three or four investigators have concerned themselves with the
domestic servant, on whose efficiency our health and comfort absolutely
depend.
Another curious anomaly is that domestic servants are becoming fewer in
proportion to the population, although the level of their wages is very
high in comparison with the usual payments for women's work. Between
1881 and 1901 female indoor servants increased from 1,230,406 to
1,330,783, an increase of 8.2 per cent., while the population increased
25.2 per cent. Actually, then, there was a smaller proportion of the
population engaged in domestic service in 1901 then in 1881.[77] What is
still more remarkable is that at the younger ages the number has
actually decreased. Between the ages 15-20, there is a decrease of 7.3
per cent., while in the number of females living at those ages there is
an increase of 28.1 per cent. This suggests that the difficulty of
finding servants will intensify as time goes on, as is indeed borne out
by observation. Other women's industries are growing very rapidly. The
number of female clerks more than trebled between 1891 and 1901. In the
same period, female elementary school teachers increased by over 50 per
cent., and the women engaged in hospital and institution service and in
workhouses and workhouse infirmaries by 41 per cent. These facts
indicate that domestic service is becoming less and less popular and is
losing ground, while other women's industries are gaining.
It is our duty then to consider the causes of this state of things,
which cannot be regarded with equanimity. Our steadily increasing wealth
ought to make it more and more possible and desirable for more women to
specialise in those basic industries of cooking and cleaning, which are
of the utmost importance for the right ordering of life.
The question must be treated in reference to the general industrial
and social changes of our time. Many ladies, knowing nothing of
economics, discuss the matter as one of personal relations only, and
when they find themselves annoyed with one incompetent servant after
another, content themselves with blaming the servants as individuals
without inquiring whether the difficulty has any deeper root. Or they
take up a reactionary attitude, and declare that the lower classes are
over-educated and too well off, and are in consequence refusing to
perform their natural duties. But neither personal blame nor the
semi-feudal belief that the one and only rightful destiny of daughters
of bricklayers, coal miners, or small clerks is to become cooks or
housemaids in the service of their betters will avail to throw any
light on the difficulty of obtaining competent domestic workers. We
must study carefully and without bias the conditions of that industry as
compared with other industries, in order to solve the problem.
In the first place, we may note the advantages of domestic service. It
is, as has been already observed, well paid. Some investigations carried
out by a group of my students last year led to the conclusion that the
ordinary cook, housemaid, or general servant in middle-class households
costs her employer in wages, food, house-room, heating, lighting, and
insurance about L50 a year.[78] I have been informed by a lady
accustomed to deal with servants in a wealthy household, that board
wages are usually 14s. 6d. for men servants, and 12s. 6d. and 10s. 6d.
for women servants. When we remember that in the ranks from which
servants are drawn,[79] a workman is comparatively well off if he is
earning 35s. a week for the support of himself and his family, and that
a woman who makes L1 a week is a rarity,[80] we should expect to find
domestic service one of the industries in which the supply outruns the
demand. Again, there is no period of apprenticeship or training
necessary. The servant earns from the first day she enters service, and
is often carefully trained by a mistress in cooking or waiting at table,
only to leave that mistress for a better situation the moment she
thoroughly understands her duties. Again, in many households the maids
share in the family holidays. They spend a month at the seaside or in
the country, having all their travelling expenses paid as a matter of
course. Their allowance of personal holidays may not be large, but at
all events their wages run on without interruption. These advantages
are the more remarkable, when it is considered that they have been
attained without the aid of any trade organisations at all. Trade unions
for domestic workers have been formed from time to time, but their life
has been ephemeral and their membership of the smallest. High wages,
practically continuous employment, food and lodging usually of a
standard much above that in the servant's own home--all these are to be
found in domestic work. Why, then, does it remain unpopular?
In the first place, the hours are long and irregular. A domestic
servant, especially in a place where only one or two are kept, is "on
duty" for at least fifteen hours a day--from 7 A.M. to 10 P.M. Even
meal-hours are not free from interruption. The thoughtful mistress, it
is true, will not summon her maids at dinner-time or supper-time if she
can help it, but all mistresses are not thoughtful, and in any case
there is the doorbell to be answered. Much of the work is not hard; in a
well-managed household there should always be an hour or two of
comparative leisure in the afternoon and again in the evening. But the
average maid is never sufficiently free through the whole day to go out
without asking leave, or to lie down for an hour should her morning work
have been unusually heavy. Of some households a much blacker picture
could be painted. Not merely do the maids have no leisure, but they are
actually hard at work washing, cooking, ironing, serving meals, washing
up, carrying coals and hot water, &c., for even a larger period than
the fifteen hours which, as noted before, is the minimum of time "on
duty." These hours compare very unfavourably with the six or seven
hours' day of the elementary school-teacher, the eight hours' day of the
Civil servant, and the nine or ten hours worked in factories and in
offices.
Next, there is the lack of personal freedom. This may seem a mere
sentimental objection not to be weighed in the balance for a moment by
sensible persons as against the solid advantages of domestic work. But
sentimental objections count more decisively with women than with men.
Miss B. L. Hutchins points out in a recent article that respectable
girls of the working class often accept quite low wages, provided only
their employment is light, clean, comfortable, and affords abundant
hours of leisure. And women enter on domestic service exactly at the age
at which freedom and some amount of leisure seem more valuable than high
wages. Doubtless in later years many sweated drudges have wished that
they had become servants instead of entering the jam-factory or the
steam-laundry. But at sixteen and seventeen, when the choice was made,
the situation appeared very different. I have very little doubt that one
of the greatest objections to domestic service is that it removes the
young woman from her own class just at the marriageable age, and
therefore decreases her chances of marriage, while in some ill-governed
households and in hotel and restaurant service she may be subjected to
severe temptation. The widening of the gulf between rich and poor and
their segregation into distinct districts increases this disadvantage.
Again, there is the fact that domestic service is strangely enough
regarded as a peculiarly menial occupation, in itself a mark of a lower
social grade. This is indicated by the use of the Christian name, the
insistence on a uniform, and the commonness of contemptuous terms such
as "slavey." Refined people are careful to avoid the use even of the
word "servant," replacing it by "maid," so strong is this connotation of
inferiority. Here again we are on sentimental grounds. But it certainly
seems undesirable, in view of the spread of doctrines of social
equality, that this suggestion of a low social status should cling
around the person who undertakes such important duties as cooking and
washing.
Another disadvantage is the loneliness of domestic servants. In other
occupations women have colleagues and companions. The general servant,
coming as she does from a lively even if poor working-class home, with
neighbours at hand for gossip in moments of relaxation, may find it very
hard to bear up against the restraint and unnatural quietude of her
first place,[81] and often ends by returning in haste to the factory
industry she had been persuaded to abandon, when she will find the
gaiety and lively society of girls and young men of her own age. Even
when two maids are kept, they may not be congenial to one another, and
one cannot deny that to share work, meals, and often bed with a woman
whom one has reason to dislike, is a fate we would all wish to avoid.
Girls of higher status and more intelligence are often turned from
domestic service by the fact that it affords little or no opportunity
for self-improvement or recreation, or for promotion inside its own
ranks. Servants cannot go to lectures or evening classes. The servant's
piano or bicycle is a common theme for jesting in the comic papers. In a
large household or in a hotel promotion may be obtained, but the maid
who becomes a general servant or a single-handed cook reaches the limit
of her increase in income at an early age.
Many of the disadvantages noted do not apply to large households. There
companionship is to be found, and promotion may be looked for. The hours
are more regular, meals less interrupted, and free time easier to
obtain. Hence I was not surprised when I questioned proprietors of
clubs, residential hotels, and the mistresses of wealthy households to
learn that most of them considered the servant difficulty to be greatly
exaggerated. The housekeeper of one suite of residential flats told me
she had no trouble at all in getting servants, and that she sent them
off at a week's notice if they proved unsatisfactory. "Even if I cannot
get a maid to live in at once," she added, "I can always supplement the
work of the others by an extra charwoman. There are any number of
outworkers to be had." In another residential hotel all the women
servants had two evenings a week free from 5 to 10.30. Here, too, there
was never much difficulty in obtaining workers.
Another disadvantage of the small as opposed to the large household is
that the management is often inefficient, and the equipment poor. In
these residential flats, for instance, each suite had its own bathroom
and lavatory, and consequently the work of carrying water was reduced to
a minimum. I think, too, that the regularity of the discipline is often
liked by girls, who find it hard to keep to good ways when they work
alone.
On the whole, then, I see no reason to believe that domestic service is
unpopular because cooking and cleaning are regarded as disagreeable
occupations in themselves. It is the conditions under which it is
carried on that are disliked, and if mistresses desire to have better
servants, those conditions must be altered. Some of them, it must be
admitted, are inherent in the present organisation of the household.[82]
Some form of co-operation might obviate certain of these defects; in
groups of associated homes, the domestic equipment could certainly be
improved, skilled supervision and proper discipline could be more easily
carried out, and the maids would have the advantages of shorter and more
regular hours and of companionship with their equals. Here again it may
be possible to apply the co-partnership tenants' organisation. Many
people, however, not unnaturally dread the lack of privacy and
independence which such a mode of life would, they think, entail, and
would prefer to endure the disadvantages of the present system rather
than lose control over their own kitchen and their own servants. It is
too soon yet to express an opinion. Fortunately, at Letchworth, at Brent
Lodge, Finchley, and elsewhere, experiments in the provision of
associated homes with a common kitchen and a common staff of servants
are shortly to be tried. If successful, they will no doubt prove a boon
to many people.
In the meantime one can only suggest that mistresses must endeavour
individually to mitigate some of the disadvantages of domestic service.
It is not higher wages that are needed, but more leisure and more
society, and an absence of the foolish snobbery which regards it as an
amusing joke that a servant should wish to possess a bicycle or go to a
meeting or concert.
The suggestion has sometimes been made that distressed gentlewomen might
find a refuge in domestic service. But "lady servants" or "mothers'
helps" only rarely prove a success. Their presence is inevitably a
hindrance to the full enjoyment of family privacy, and often enough
their gentility is an excuse for incompetence. But in special cases
lady servants turn out well, especially as children's nurses. The
most interesting attempt to introduce them into general domestic service
is that started by the Guild of the Dames of the Household at
Cheltenham. A short period of training is insisted upon, while on
the other hand certain privileges not usually conceded to maids must be
granted, in particular, a period of two hours each day free from
duty. In small and quiet households, specially in those composed of
ladies only, a "Dame" would be welcomed in place of the incompetent
general servant, or two Dames might take the place of the regulation
cook and house-parlour maid. But it would not be easy to have one Dame
demanding special privileges and imbued with different traditions in
a larger household.[83]
Nor do I see any reason to expect that increased provision for domestic
training alone is likely to improve the lot of mistresses who want
maids. The training in the elementary schools is often given to children
too young to profit by it, and is besides designed rather to enable them
to be of use in their own homes than to qualify them to become cooks or
housemaids in middle or upper-class households. Again, the girls who
attend at the special domestic economy schools are not usually available
for ordinary domestic service; the greater number of the students are
being prepared either for teaching or for positions as housekeepers and
matrons. While untrained girls can find a place and wages without any
difficulty, working-class parents are not likely to spend money on
training for domestic service; and the numbers for whom scholarships
are provided must naturally be limited.
Improvement is much more likely to result from alterations in the
condition of domestic service. If, as regards leisure and social status,
that occupation could be put more nearly on a level with other women's
trades, the outlook would be much brighter, and then training in
domestic economy in continuation schools or trade schools for girls from
fourteen to sixteen would be valuable.
Failing these reforms, mistresses will probably continue to find
themselves obliged to put up with cooks who cannot cook, and housemaids
and laundresses who are both ignorant and incompetent. The irk and
irritation of living all day long at close quarters with an impertinent
and inefficient person, which often severely tries the nerves of the
women of the professional classes, will continue. These things are
inevitable so long as domestic servants do not choose their occupation
because they wish to follow it, but because they have been failures in
other directions. Therefore no improvement would be attained by shutting
other avenues of employment to women and forcing them back into this.
Such a line of action is, of course, quite impracticable, whatever be
the difficulties of mothers of families and mistresses of households;
factories, offices, shops, elementary schools and post-offices will
continue to offer employment to women. But even if it were practicable
it would fail of its aim. Work is only well done when it is chosen for
its own sake, not when it is unwillingly accepted because the worker is
fit for nothing else. And a genuine improvement in domestic service can
only come about by an alteration in its conditions.
A systematic investigation into English domestic service similar to that
carried out in America by Professor Lucy Salmon of Vassar College would
be most useful at the present juncture, and may possibly be undertaken
by the household economics class at King's College. Professor Salmon
issued 5000 schedules to employers and 5000 to employees, and received
in all 1744 answers. On the answers received she based the conclusions
arrived at in her book, "Domestic Service," which are not dissimilar to
those set forth in the preceding paragraphs. Conditions in America are,
however, so unlike those in England that a separate investigation for
this country would be most valuable.
(_c_) A DISCUSSION OF DOMESTIC BUDGETS
(1) _Working-Class Budgets_
I have left myself very little space for dealing with another important
section of household economics, namely, domestic budgets. Unfortunately
the material for a satisfactory study of the actual and the advisable
division of household expenditure is only abundant in certain classes.
There are a considerable number of investigations into the cost of
living among the working-classes.[84] From these it is clear that we
must make a very marked line of distinction between the domestic
circumstances of labourers and of artisans. The former spend at least
from 75 to 80 per cent. of their income on food and lodging alone; yet
if the family is of ordinary size and none of the children are earning
anything, they are commonly under-nourished and badly lodged. The
remainder of the income is devoted to fuel, clothes, savings, insurance,
and recreation.
Members of this class commonly wear second-hand clothes, and live in
tenement houses, originally built for a wealthier section of the
community. It is they who send their children to work at any employment
that turns up at the earliest moment allowed by the law. The burden laid
on the women of this class is peculiarly heavy. They must work for wages
if possible, for every extra shilling adds immensely to the family
comfort. Hence they go out charing; they undertake ill-paid home work;
and at the same time all the toil of keeping the house and children
clean and of doing the cooking and washing falls on the mother. Add to
this the fact that if the food supply runs short, then the children and
the husband have their share first and the mother takes what may be
left. It has been calculated[85] that this class amounts to about
one-third of the population, and is the source whence comes the greater
part of the pauperism with which the country is afflicted.
The artisan class was found by Mr. Rowntree to comprise about one-half
of the working-class population. Its domestic circumstances differ in
several respects from those of the class already described. Food and
housing were adequate; and, save in the textile districts, the wife
commonly remains at home and the children stay longer at school. It is
this class that is the backbone of trade unionism and the co-operative
movement; it is in fact the true "middle-class" of Britain.
Lady Bell in her book "At the Works" gives a very sympathetic sketch of
the home life of the ironworkers of Middlesborough, pointing out that
the monotony and narrowness of the lives led by the women and the
ugliness of the surroundings of the workers' houses are the main defects
from which they suffer. Roughly half their income goes on food, which is
plain but adequate. The proportion of rent varies very much from
district to district. In York it was 12.8, but in such crowded towns as
London and Glasgow it would be higher. There is, however, a surplus
sufficient for clothing, saving, holidays, and reasonable recreation.
It is conjectured that the excessive expenditure on drink in the United
Kingdom[86] must be largely due to this class. But the evidence is
insufficient to show whether the labourer or the artisan is the more
guilty.
(2) _Lower Middle-Class Budgets_
The next class which should be examined is that made up by the clerks
and routine brain-workers. As already noted, there is little or no
material available for the study of the budgets of this class. The
Economic Club published a few years ago a collection of family budgets,
four of which might be taken as illustrating the home life of this
important section of the community. From these and from the rather
unreliable divisions of income given in some of the smaller women's
papers, I have come to the conclusion that food absorbs 30 to 40 per
cent. of the income, and rent 15 to 20 per cent. The expenditure on
clothing is much more liberal, and I am inclined to believe that the
poorer clerks are sometimes insufficiently fed.
It should be noted that in this class the cost of education tends to be
borne by the parent and not by the State; no doubt there is here a
genuine grievance, one, however, which the provision of municipal
secondary schools is gradually removing. But a thorough and accurate
study of the circumstances of the lower middle-class would be of the
utmost value at the present time. It is certain that its needs and
demands are to some extent at all events overlooked through the
increasing power of organised labour on the one hand and the increasing
wealth of the upper classes on the other.
(3) _The Budget of the Well-to-do_
Probably it is in the budgets of these wealthier classes that the reader
of these pages will be most interested from a personal standpoint. Under
this head there is very little scientifically collected material; but on
the other hand the ladies' papers and the housekeeping handbooks afford
considerable information of somewhat varying value.
It is in this class that service becomes an important item; it is in
this class that the artistic side of life, the enjoyment of physical and
intellectual luxury, first becomes possible. In a sense the study of
expenditure here is both more useful and more interesting. A fraction of
the income would suffice for the satisfaction of the mere physiological
needs, and there is a real choice possible in the disposition of the
surplus.
Therefore, in the case of these larger incomes, I propose to discuss
rather the general principles of expenditure than the statistical facts.
The latter are not thoroughly reliable, and at the same time the
circumstances of the class in question are better known to my readers.
The fundamental principle, as Marshall[87] states, is that the marginal
utility of each separate division of expenditure should be equal. He
means by this that our income should be so distributed that the last
sixpence we spend on clothes should yield us the same amount of pleasure
as the last sixpence expended on food or on books. And he rightly
remarks that to the housekeeper the value of keeping accounts lies
precisely in the fact that it makes the application of this principle
easy.
If we know exactly how money has been spent, then it is possible to see
that expenditure has been wrongly balanced, that impulsive extravagance
on hats or on out-of-season delicacies has unduly curtailed the amount
spent on holidays, books, or concerts. It is for this reason that
itemised tables are more useful to the housekeeper than is the ordinary
creditor and debtor method of account-keeping. She should of course be
able to present an accurate statement of the money spent and received,
but she should not be content with this. She should further show for
each quarter the amount spent on rent, food, fuel, &c.