Note 279 — Chapter IX · THE SOCIAL DISADVANTAGES OF DOMESTIC SERVICE
Reading edition
An employer writes: “I recently advertised for a young woman to help me with the children, and be received as one of the family. The forty answers received formed the most pathetic reading I have ever seen. My selection was the daughter of a poor clergyman, and this was the class from which the majority of the answers came. All desired domestic service if unaccompanied with social degradation.”
How conscious many are of this inferior position is seen from a single illustration. An employer recently invited her housemaid to take a boat-ride with her. The maid replied, “I should love to go if you wouldn’t be ashamed to be seen with me.”