MORE LIFE FOR THE HOUSEHOLD EMPLOYEE

“I WILL accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.” In these words of Walt Whitman’s can all of us who cherish the democratic ideal of equality of privilege and opportunity express our feelings with regard to domestic service, for when we are able to rise above the trials and tribulations that the institution brings to ourselves and to look upon it from an impersonal point of view, we find that the chief source of our dissatisfaction with it is in the fact that it gives benefits to one class by taking their counterpart from another.

The popular toleration of domestic service is due to a misapplication of the theory that the family is the unit of society. This theory has, in the past, played an important part in social evolution by calling attention to and emphasizing the family relation. It has, however, led to many undemocratic practices. This has been not so much because of anything wrong with the theory, as because it has not been supported by a clear conception of the value of the individual life. Thus unsupported, it has, by allowing itself to become entangled with the theory that man is the logical representative of the family in society, taken from woman the incentive to, and the opportunity for, independent action, and has also been responsible for the grossest infringements of her property rights. Thus unsupported, too, it has, by emphasizing the family as an institution, rather than the right of the individual to the family relation, led to the condoning of the maintenance of certain families at the expense of the freedom of individuals to enter into the family relation. Thus in slave times the family connections of the blacks were ruthlessly shattered in order to provide the service that was thought necessary to preserve the family life of the whites.

A better working theory, and one that is less likely to lead to undemocratic practices, is the one that sees in the individual the unit, and in the family relation one of the most important means for promoting his happiness and social usefulness. Such a view of the value of the individual and of the importance of the family relation leads logically to the conception of the obligation of the individual who accepts the privileges of the family relation so to adjust his life to the lives of the other members of his family group as to preserve their individual freedom, and to coöperate with them in the effort so to adjust the group to the social order as not to interfere with the freedom of other individuals to enter into and to maintain the family relation.

In the light of this view of society, domestic service looms up most undemocratic. It is so ordered as to bring a combination of benefits to a privileged class. This combination consists of the opportunity to live in retirement with those to whom they are bound by kinship or affection or by both, and thus to transform the places where they eat and sleep into homes, and the privilege of getting rid of the multiple activities which the maintenance of separate homes involves, the cooking, cleaning, etc., and of being able to engage in activities of their choice, and to secure leisure for social intercourse.

This combination of privileges is at present secured at the expense of a corresponding combination of privileges in the serving class. The result is three distinct disabilities for this class. The first, which arises from the fact that the domestic servant has not free choice of residence, and must accept the external form of home where her employer has his real home, may be called ethical, because its most serious result is that it takes from her the opportunity for moral development that comes from home-making. The second is industrial, and arises from the fact that she must offer in exchange for wages no particular services, but her entire time, to be disposed of as her employer sees fit. The third, which arises from her intimate personal relation to her employer, is social, and results in the determination of her position in society, not by her worth nor by her qualifications for social intercourse, but by her position as a member of the serving class.

These three disabilities on the part of the servants react on the employers, and bring them three forms of inconvenience. The first is a feeling of responsibility for the sex relations of the employee, a responsibility that is not felt with reference to those with whom the relation is a purely business one, such as the butcher, the grocer, the seamstress.

The second is the difficulty of making the servants “know and keep their places.” This leads at times to such serious dilemmas as the one in which the man found himself who appealed to Marion Harland, through her queries column in one of the daily papers, to know whether he ought to recognize his family servant on the street, and if so, whether he ought to lift his hat or merely to nod his head. One can imagine this poor man staying closely within his office on Thursday afternoons, if Marion Harland was not prompt with her reply, for fear that if he ventured forth upon the street he might on turning a corner come suddenly upon his household helper, and, being still unsupplied with a code of etiquette, not know how to conduct himself.

The third inconvenience to the employer is the lack in the servant of personal responsibility for good work, the inevitable result of time service.

To remove these three disabilities from the employee and the three inconveniences from the employer, certain changes in household administration must be made. First, the relation of mistress and servant must be changed to the more democratic one of employer and employee. Second, the work of the household must be so arranged as to allow a person to perform one service, such as cleaning, for many families, instead of many services for one family. Third, the work done in the home must be reduced, and then compressed within the limits of a reasonable working day, in order that it may not interfere with the home life of the employee.

For these modifications in household administration the changes that are going on outside of the home are paving the way. Public education is removing the stigma from domestic service by refusing to recognize class distinctions in the distribution of its benefits. Commerce, industry, science, and art are coöperating to reduce the amount of work necessarily done in the home.

Central plants for the distribution of hot water for heating, cleaning, and bathing purposes are now in use in many places. One city, Colorado Springs, is said to be considering the construction of a central pneumatic cleaning plant. Central refrigerating plants are practicable.

Commercial changes are continually making it possible to buy commodities which it was formerly necessary to prepare at home. This has been referred to so often that it need only be mentioned here, although it is one of the most important of the social changes that are affecting the conditions of home life. Improved methods of transportation are bringing us fresh fruit all the year around, and thus reducing the work of preserving and of making desserts. Industrial changes are making it possible to have performed outside of the home services like laundry work, mending, and carpet cleaning, which it used to be necessary to include in household labor.

Advances in medical science are putting nursing on the plane of the professions, and making the hospital seem a better place than the private house for the care of the sick. Hygienic considerations make it seem wise that maternity cases also be cared for in hospitals.

Advances in sanitary science are making it not only desirable, but possible, to transfer one whole class of duties from the housekeeper and her assistants to the individual members of the family. These are connected with the care of the bedroom and its furnishings. Now that it seems best that each person should have a separate sleeping room, and now that knowledge of hygiene is available for all, there is no reason why every able-bodied adult should not assume full charge of his own room, having it cleaned and changing bedclothes and towels as often as he thinks necessary considering the state of his health, the amount of sun that his room receives, and the amount of dust to which it is exposed.

Kindergartens are continually taking children at a younger age. Clubrooms are being made available for private entertainments.

Art is lightening household labor by teaching a better way in house decoration and furnishing. By teaching form, color, and design it is showing that a good color on the wall, which, being vertical, sheds the dust by reason of the force of gravity, may give so much esthetic satisfaction as to take away the necessity for many of our dust-entrapping decorations; that one piece of pottery of good color and form may please the eye more than a whole mantel shelf full of nondescript articles of bric-a-brac; that plain furniture of good form may be more beautiful than that which is covered with carving and brass filigree. Plain, substantial furniture and simplicity in decoration are not only lessening work, but are making it more practicable to turn houses over to professional cleaners.

Another change should be mentioned which, though at first thought it seems to have little connection with household management, may prove to be of much significance. This change has come about through the fact that the time of preparation necessary for the professions is continually lengthening. The result of this is that there is in college towns (and with the spread of university extension and of correspondence study there is coming to be in other towns) a class of young people who are still studying, but who must and should support themselves. The young men of this class now take care of furnaces, beat rugs, and perform other such services. The young women take care of children. If it were not for the popular feeling with respect to housework, they might be employed in many other ways. There is a whole class of tasks, like the cleaning of silver, the making of beds, and the serving of meals, which require less skill and experience than cooking and less strength than the heavy cleaning. These, as Lucy Maynard Salmon says in “Domestic Service,” are frequently not well performed, yet, on the other hand, they involve no principles which an intelligent person cannot master in a very short time. After the principles have been learned the tasks become only light routine work, suitable for relaxation after brain work. These tasks might be given to the students referred to above with profit both to themselves and to housekeepers.

The changes of which mention has been made, particularly the commercial and industrial ones, have been due chiefly to man’s enterprise. This is because man’s life has given him a broad and general view of society and its needs which woman’s life has not given to her, and because his position as breadwinner has given him an incentive to anticipate human demands and to meet them with business ventures, an incentive which woman’s position as housekeeper has not given to her. Woman is now, however, fast getting the far view, and has the advantage of having also the intimate view of human needs which she has secured through her care of the family. So it is happening that while man is going on ahead and initiating great changes, woman is following close behind and directing the changes into channels which lead to the satisfaction of real human needs. Thus men, by establishing great bakeries, showed the economic advantage of having bread made in large quantities. Women, like Mrs. Brainard, of Chicago, who started the Home Delicacies Company, have followed after and shown that man’s methods could be employed in making bread that meets the demands of taste and health. Men, by establishing public laundries, showed the economic advantage of having the laundry work removed from the home. It was left for women, like the Misses White, of Brookline, Massachusetts, who started the Sunshine Laundry, to show that public laundries could make clothes really clean, and at the same time preserve them for the future use of their owners (a point which all who patronize laundries will appreciate).

This control of changes woman must continue to exercise. She must also accept the task of adjusting household work to the social changes that have already taken place. For this double work she is well prepared. As an individual she can make the adjustments in her own home. As a club member she can, in coöperation with other women, look after the social work.

She can, through her clubs, establish residence clubs where household employees can live in comparative freedom, public kitchens from which food can be sent to be served in private houses, and in which the workers will be on the same footing as the workers in any other trade, bureaus from which special helpers can be sent to work by the day or hour, and public nurseries which shall combine the bacteriological cleanliness of hospitals with the educational advantages of kindergartens. Women’s clubs are particularly well prepared to do these things, first because failure would mean no serious loss to any individual, and second, because the members are intelligent enough to make their failures as well as their successes of benefit to those who come after them, an important consideration in all progressive work.

Besides this public work, woman can arrange the work in her own home so as to give her helper a limited day’s work—of ten hours, say—and thus make her free to choose her own place of residence. This she may do by preparing her own breakfast and employing her helper from ten in the morning until eight at night, or by going out for her evening meal and employing the helper from six in the morning until four in the afternoon, or in some one of the numberless ways which special conditions will suggest. Or she can make such adjustments as shall make it possible for her to employ special helpers. In this her greatest difficulty will probably arise from the fact that one helper cannot perform the same service in several places at the same time, and the housekeeper’s time schedule will have to be changed. It will require an effort for her to realize in her conduct that difference between disorder and dirt which she recognizes with her intellect, and to act upon the belief that delay in dishwashing involves disorder, but not necessarily uncleanliness, and that beds left open in the sun for many hours are really cleaner than those which are closed up early in the morning.

With cooking done in public kitchens, with washing done in public laundries, with cleaning done by specialists, with the individual members of the family taking charge of their own rooms, with hospitals to care for the sick, and with public nurseries and kindergartens to help with the care of babies and young children, there would still be left certain connecting links of work even in families employing regular helpers for a limited number of hours each day. It is these odds and ends that the various members of the family will have to accept as their tasks and perform in payment for the privilege of preserving family life without shattering democratic ideals.

With these changes the household employee will emerge from the restricted existence of “domestic service” to the broader life of ethical, industrial, and social freedom.