FOOTNOTES
[1] These schedules are given in [Appendix I].
[2] Partial discussions of the subject can be found in the First Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of Minnesota, pp. 131-196; First Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of Colorado, pp. 344-362; Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics of Kansas, pp. 281-326; Third Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the State of California, pp. 91-94; Fifth Biennial Report of the Department of Statistics, State of Indiana, pp. 173-229. The last is especially full and excellent.
[3] The total number of domestic servants is given as 1,454,791. This does not include launderers and laundresses, paid housekeepers in private families and hotels, or stewards and stewardesses. It excludes also the very large number of persons performing the same duties as domestic servants, but without receiving a fixed compensation.
[4] This estimate is based on the supposition that the average wages paid are $3.00 per week, and that two weeks’ vacation is given with loss of wages. Both of these are probably underestimates, as will be seen farther on. If the wages paid launderers and laundresses are included, and also the fees paid for hotel and restaurant service, $300,000,000 seems a fair estimate for the annual cash wages paid for domestic service.
[5] This estimate supposes the actual cost of board for each employee to be $3.00 per week, which is probably less than would be paid by each employee for table-board of the quality furnished by the employer. It excludes the cost of house-rent furnished, and also fuel and light, all of which are factors to be considered in computing the cost of service received.
[6] It is difficult to estimate the value of the materials of which domestic employees have the almost exclusive control. If the number of domestic servants and launderers and laundresses in private families, hotels, and restaurants is placed at 1,700,000, the number of employees in each family as two, and the number of persons in each family, including servants, as seven, it will be seen that at a rough estimate the food and laundried articles of clothing of six million persons pass through the hands of this class of employees. It was formerly a common saying, “a servant eats her wages, breaks her wages, and wastes her wages.” If this verdict of experience is taken as approximately true rather than as scientifically exact, it will be seen that the actual expense involved in domestic service is probably double that included under the items of wages and support.
[7] The Factory System, Tenth Census, II., 533-537.
[8] A. E. Kennelly, “Electricity in the Household,” Scribner’s Magazine, January, 1890; E. M. H. Merrill, “Electricity in the Kitchen,” American Kitchen Magazine, November, 1895.
[9] In Massachusetts, in 1885, the number of women employed in manufacturing industries exceeded the number of men in eight towns. These were Dalton, Dudley, Easthampton, Hingham, Ipswich, Lowell, Tisbury, and Upton. Census of Massachusetts, II., 176-187.
A weaver in Lawrence, Massachusetts, reported in 1882: “One of the evils existing in this city is the gradual extinction of the male operative.” Fall River, Lowell, and Lawrence, p. 10. Reprinted from Thirteenth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, p. 202.
In Massachusetts, in 1875, women predominated in fifteen occupations, eleven of them manufacturing industries. In 1885 there were also fifteen occupations in which women exceeded men in numbers, twelve of them manufacturing. These were manufacturers of buttons and dress-trimmings, carpetings, clothing, cotton goods, fancy articles, hair work, hosiery and knit goods, linen, mixed textiles, silk and silk goods, straw and palm-leaf goods, and worsted goods. Report of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 1889, pp. 556-557.
[10] George Eliot in Felix Holt speaks of Mrs. Transome as engaged in “a little daily embroidery—that soothing occupation of taking stitches to produce what neither she nor any one else wanted was then the resource of many a well-born and unhappy woman.”
[11] Eddis, p. 63.
[12] DeFoe, Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack; Mrs. Alpha Behn, The Widow Ranter.
[13] Sir Joshua Child, pp. 183-184.
[14] Charles Davenant, II., 3. Velasco, the minister of Spain to England, writes to Philip III. from London, March 22, 1611: “Their principal reason for colonizing these parts is to give an outlet to so many idle and wretched people as they have in England, and thus to prevent the dangers that might be feared from them.” Brown, p. 456.
[15] Force, Tracts, I., 19.
[16] Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, 1661-1668. Abstracts 101, 772, 791, 858. An admirable discussion of “British Convicts Shipped to American Colonies,” by James D. Butler, is found in The American Historical Review, October, 1896.
[17] Eddis says, p. 66, that Maryland was the only colony where convicts were freely imported; but Virginia seems to have shared equally in the importation.
[18] In Pennsylvania and Virginia transported criminals were so numerous that laws were passed to prevent their importation.
[19] William Smith, History of the Province of New York from its Discovery to the Appointment of Governor Colden in 1762, pp. 207-210. John Watson, pp. 485-486, quotes from contemporaneous writers in opposition to the practice in Pennsylvania, circa 1750; Hening, II., 509-511.
[20] “It is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of people and wicked, condemned men, to be the people with whom you plant; and not only so, but it spoileth the plantation; for they ever live like rogues, and not fall to work; but be lazy, and do mischief, and spend victuals, and be quickly weary, and then certify over to their country to the discredit of the plantation.” Bacon, Essays, Of Plantations.
[21] Bruce, I., 606, says that the order of the General Court of Virginia prohibiting the introduction of English criminals after January 20, 1671 (Hening, II., 509-511), was confirmed by a royal order announcing that the importation of Newgate criminals was to cease, and that this rule was to apply to all the Colonies. But the frequent protests against the practice found in other Colonies at a much later date would seem to show that it could not have been generally observed.
[22] Eddis, pp. 71-75.
[23] Ibid., pp. 69-71.
[24] Berkeley’s Report, Hening, II., 515. Brantly, in Winsor, III., 545.
[25] “In the year 1730 ... Colonel Josiah Willard was invited to view some transports who had just landed from Ireland. My uncle spied a boy of some vivacity, of about ten years of age, and who was the only one in the crew who spoke English. He bargained for him.”—“Mrs. Johnson’s Captivity” in Indian Narratives, p. 130.
[26] Hildreth, III., 395.
[27] Samuel Breck writes under date of August 1, 1817, “I went on board the ship John from Amsterdam, ... and I purchased one German Swiss for Mrs. Ross and two French Swiss for myself.” Recollections, pp. 296-297.
[28] Winthrop Papers, Pt. VI., p. 387, note.
[29] Barber, Connecticut Collections, p. 166.
[30] Scharf, p. 209.
[31] Some improvement was soon seen in Virginia. “There haue beene sent thither this last yeare, and are now presently in going, twelue hundred persons and vpward, and there are neere one thousand more remaining of those that were gone before. The men lately sent, haue beene most of them choise men, borne and bred vp to labour and industry.” Declaration of the State of the Colonie and Affairs in Virginia, 1620. Force, III., 5. Hammond in Leah and Rachel, p. 7, also speaks of the improvement.
[32] A well-known case was that of Thomas, son of Sir Edward Verney, who at the age of nineteen wished to marry some one of lower rank than himself. He was sent to Virginia to prevent the marriage, not, however, as himself a servant. Verney Papers, Camden Society Publications, vol. 56, pp. 160-162.
A niece of Daniel DeFoe is said to have been sent to America as a redemptioner for the same reason.
The Sot-Weed Factor says of a maid in a Maryland inn,
“Kidnap’d and Fool’d, I hither fled,
To shun a hated Nuptial Bed,
And to my cost already find,
Worse Plagues than those I left behind.
These are the general Excuses made by English Women, which are sold or sell themselves to Mary-land.” p. 7.
[33] James Annesley when twelve years old was transported to Pennsylvania. His father died soon after, and his uncle succeeded to the peerage. The boy was sold to a planter in Newcastle County, but his title to the peerage was subsequently proved. Anglesea Peerage Trial, Howell, State Trials, XVII., 1443-1454.
[34] Neill, Virginia Carolorum, p. 108; The Verney Papers, Camden Society Publications, vol. 56, pp. 160-162, give a long and detailed account of the method of obtaining and transporting servants.
[35] Neill, Terra Mariæ, pp. 201, 202,
“In better Times, e’re to this Land,
I was unhappily Trapann’d.”
Sot-Weed Factor, p. 6.
A young woman in search of employment was told that by going on board ship she would find it in Virginia, a few miles below on the Thames. Another young woman was persuaded to enter the ship, and was then sold into service. Cited by Bruce, I., 614, from Interregnum Entry Book, vol. 106, p. 84, and British State Papers, Colonial, vol. XIII., No. 29, 1.
The evil of “spiriting away” both children and adults became so great that in 1664 the Committee for Foreign Plantations interposed, and the Council created the office of Register, charged with the duty of keeping a record of all persons going to America as servants, and the statement that they had voluntarily left England. This act was soon followed by another fixing the penalty of death, without benefit of clergy, in every case where persons were found guilty of kidnapping children or adults. But even these extreme measures did not put an end to the evil; and it is stated that ten thousand persons were annually kidnapped after the passage of the act. Bruce, I., 614-619.
[36] “The Forme of Binding a Servant” is given in A Relation of Maryland, pp. 62-63, and reads as follows:
This Indenture made the ____ day of ____ in the yeere of our Soveraigne Lord King Charles, &c. betweene ____ of the one party, and ____ on the other party, Witnesseth, that the said ____ doth hereby covenant promise, and grant to, and with the said ____ his Executors and Assignes, to serve him from the day of the date hereof, untill his first and next arrivall in Maryland; and after for and during the tearme of ____ yeeres, in such service and imployment as the said ____ or his assignes shall there imploy him, according to the custome of the countrey in the like kind. In consideration whereof, the said ____ doth promise and grant, to and with the said ____ to pay for his passing, and to find him with Meat, Drinke, Apparell and Lodging, with other necessaries during the said terme; and at the end of the said terme, to give him one whole yeeres provision of Corne, and fifty acres of Land, according to the order of the countrey. In witnesse whereof, the said ____ hath hereunto put his hand and scale, the day and yeere above written.
Sealed and delivered in the presence of ____
Neill, Virginia Carolorum, pp. 5-7, gives a similar copy. Bruce, II., 2, gives the indenture of one Mary Polly whose master was to “maintain ye sᵈ Mary noe other ways than he doth his own in all things as dyett, cloathing and lodging, the sᵈ Mary to obey the sᵈ John Porter in all his lawful commands within ye sᵈ term of years.”
[37] Hening, I., 257, 1642.
[38] Hening, I., 411, 1655.
[39] Ibid., I., 441-442, 1657.
[40] Ibid., I., 538-539, 1659.
[41] Ibid., II., 113-114, 1661.
[42] Ibid., II., 240, 1666.
[43] Ibid., 1705, 1748, 1753.
In North Carolina no “imported Christian” was to be considered a servant unless the person importing him could procure an indenture. Iredell, 1741, chap. 24.
In West New Jersey servants over twenty-one without indenture were to serve four years, and all under twenty-one to serve at the discretion of the Court. Leaming and Spicer, 1682, chap. XI.
In Maryland servants without indenture of over twenty-one years of age were to serve five years; if between eighteen and twenty-two, six years; if between fifteen and eighteen, seven years; if under fifteen, until twenty-two years old. Browne, 1692.
[44] Alsop, pp. 57-58.
[45] Leah and Rachel, pp. 12, 14.
[46] Neill, Terra Mariæ, pp. 201-202.
[47] Howell, State Trials, XVII., 1443-1454.
[48] Eddis, pp. 69-70.
[49] Neill, Virginia Carolorum, p. 58. Neill adds: “While some of these servants were treated with kindness, others received no more consideration than dumb, driven cattle.”
[50] P. 7.
[51] A negro servant in the family of Judge Sewall died in 1729, and the latter writing of the funeral says: “I made a good Fire, set Chairs, and gave Sack.” Diary, III., 394. The New England Weekly Journal, February 24, 1729, has a detailed account of the funeral: “A long train followed him to the grave, it’s said about 150 black, and about 50 whites, several magistrates, ministers, gentlemen, etc. His funeral was attended with uncommon respect and his death much lamented.”
[52] She complains of the great familiarity in permitting the slaves to sit at table with their masters “as they say to save time” and adds, “into the dish goes the black hoof, as freely as the white hand.” She relates a difficulty between a master and a slave which was referred to arbitration, each party binding himself to accept the decision. The arbitrators ordered the master to pay 40 shillings to the slave and to acknowledge his fault. “And so the matter ended: the poor master very honestly standing to the award.”—The Journal of Madame Knight.
[53] John Winter writes from Maine, “I Can not Conceaue which way their masters Can pay yt, but yf yt Continue this rates the servants will be masters & the masters servants.” Trelawny Papers, p. 164. John Winthrop makes a similar comment in narrating “a passage between one Rowley and his servant. The master, being forced to sell a pair of oxen to pay his servant his wages, told his servant he could keep him no longer, not knowing how to pay him the next year. The servant answered, he would serve him for more of his cattle. But how shall I do (saith the master) when all my cattle are gone? The servant replied, you shall then serve me, and so you may have your cattle again.” Winthrop gives as a reason for high wages the fact that “the wars in England kept servants from coming to us, so as those we had could not be hired, when their times were out, but upon unreasonable terms, and we found it very difficult to pay their wages to their content, (for money was very scarce).”—History of New England, II., 219-220.
[54] Lechford, Note-book, p. 107.
[55] Lechford, Note-book, p. 81.
[56] Bruce, II., 2.
[57] Travels, I., 303-304.
[58] Recollections, p. 297.
“Before the Revolution no hired man or woman wore any shoes so fine as calf-skins; course neats leather was their every day wear. Men and women then hired by the year,—men got 16 to 20l., and a servant woman 8 to 10l. Out of that it was their custom to lay up money, to buy before their marriage a bed and bedding, silver teaspoons, and a spinning-wheel, &c.”—Watson, Annals, p. 165.
[59] Hening, III., 451.
[60] Ibid., V., 550.
[61] Ibid., VI., 359.
[62] Trott, 1736.
[63] Purdon, Act of 1700; Carey and Bioren.
[64] Body of Liberties, chap. 88, Laws of 1672; Laws of the Duke of York.
[65] Iredell, Acts of 1741, chap. XXIV.
[66] Leaming and Spicer, Acts of 1682, chap. VIII.
[67] Ibid., chap. X.
[68] Browne, 1692.
[69] Bacon, 1715.
[70] Force, Tracts, III.: “Articles, Lavves, and Orders, Diuine, Politique, and Martiall, for the Colony in Virginea Brittania.”
[71] “All such Bakers as are appointed to bake bread, or what else, either for the store to be giuen out in generall, or for any one in particular, shall not steale nor imbezell, loose, or defraud any man of his due and proper weight and measure, nor vse any dishonest and deceiptfull tricke to make the bread weigh heauier, or make it courser vpon purpose to keepe backe any part or measure of the flower or meale committed vnto him, nor aske, take, or detaine any one loafe more or lesse for his hire or paines for so baking, since whilest he who deliuered vnto him such meale or flower, being to attend the businesse of the Colonie, such baker or bakers are imposed vpon no other seruice or duties, but onely so to bake for such as do worke, and this shall hee take notice of, vpon paine for the first time offending herein of losing his eares, and for the second time to be condemned a yeare to the Gallies, and for the third time offending to be condemned to the Gallies for three yeares.” The same penalties are attached in case cooks or those who dress fish withhold any part of the provision given them. Every minister was to read these laws publicly every Sunday before catechising. Force, Tracts, III.: “Articles ... for the Colony in Virginea.”
[72] Trelawny Papers, Collections of Maine Historical Society, III., 166-168.
[73] Ibid., 169.
[74] Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Fifth Series, I., 64-67.
[75] Ibid., 68.
[76] Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Fifth Series, VIII., 427.
[77] Winthrop Papers, Pt. VI., 353-354, note.
[78] Trumbull, Blue Laws, p. 155.
[79] Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Sixth Series, II., 112.
[80] Purdon, Digest.
[81] Purdon, Digest, Act of 1700. In East New Jersey the privilege was restricted to white servants. Leaming and Spicer, Acts of East New Jersey, 1682. In Massachusetts no servant was to be put off for more than a year to another master without the consent of the Court. Body of Liberties, § 86, Act of 1672. In New York no servant, except one bound for life, could be assigned to another master for more than one year, except for good reason.—Laws of the Duke of York.
[82] Iredell, Acts of 1741, chap. XXIV., § 4; Leaming and Spicer, Acts of East New Jersey, 1682, chap. XXVI. Any white servant burdened beyond his strength, or deprived of necessary rest and sleep, could complain to the justice of the peace. This officer was empowered, first, to admonish the offending master; second, to levy on his goods to an amount not exceeding ten pounds; and third, to sell the servant’s time. Trott, Act of 1717. In New York and Massachusetts servants were to have convenient time for food and rest.—Laws of the Duke of York; Massachusetts, Act of 1672. In Maryland the penalty for insufficient meat, drink, lodging, and clothing, burdens beyond their strength, or more than ten lashes for one offence, was for the first and second offence a fine of not more than a thousand pounds of tobacco, and on the third offence the servant recovered his liberty. Permission to exceed ten lashes could be obtained from the Court, but the master could not inflict more than thirty-nine lashes.—Dorsey, Laws of 1715, chap. LXIV.
[83] Trumbull, Public Records, p. 263; Massachusetts, Act of 1700; Iredell, Acts of 1741, chap. XXIV. In North Carolina if a master did not use means for the recovery of a servant when ill, and turned him away, he forfeited five pounds for each servant so turned away, and if this was not sufficient the Court was empowered to levy an additional amount. Such servants on their recovery were to have their freedom, provided they had not brought the illness on themselves. In Connecticut if the injury came at the hands of the master or any member of his family, the master was obliged to provide for the maintenance of the servant, even after the expiration of his term of service, according to the judgment of the Court. But if the injury “came by any providence of God without the default of the family of the governor,” the master was released from the obligation of providing for him after his term of service expired. In South Carolina masters turning away sick or infirm servants were to forfeit twenty pounds.
[84] Leaming and Spicer, East New Jersey, 1682; Body of Liberties, § 87, Act of 1672; Laws of the Duke of York. In Maryland the Act of 1692 freed a mulatto girl whose master had cut off both her ears.
[85] Body of Liberties, § 85, Act of 1672; Laws of Connecticut, 1673.
[86] Laws of the Duke of York.
[87] Iredell, 1741, chap. XXIV.
[88] Leaming and Spicer, East New Jersey, 1682, chap. VIII.
[89] Instructions of the Crown, November 16, 1702.
[90] Iredell, 1741, chap. XXIV.
[91] Carey and Bioren, chap. 635.
[92] Trott, Act of 1717.
[93] Act of 1673.
[94] Leaming and Spicer, Act of 1682. This is practically the re-enactment of a similar law in Carteret’s time, 1668, and of the law of 1675.
[95] Iredell, Act of 1741.
[96] Trott, Act of 1717.
[97] Browne, 1692; Dorsey, 1715, chap. XLIV.
[98] Leaming and Spicer, Act of 1682. The Acts of 1682 and 1675 had similar provisions.
[99] Act circa 1784; Trumbull, Public Records, 1665-1678.
[100] Trott, Act of 1717.
[101] Laws of the Duke of York.
[102] Purdon, Digest, Act of 1700.
[103] Act of 1704.
[104] Browne, 1692; Dorsey, 1715.
[105] Bacon, 1748.
[106] Browne, 1692; Dorsey, 1715.
[107] Bacon, 1748.
[108] Iredell, Act of 1741.
[109] Carey and Bioren, Act of 1700.
[110] Trumbull, Public Records.
[111] Acts of 1692 and 1715.
[112] Act of 1692.
[113] Connecticut, circa 1784; New York, Act of 1672; Maryland, Acts of 1692, 1715.
[114] Iredell, Act of 1741.
[115] Act circa 1784.
[116] Act of 1646.
[117] Trott, 1717; Massachusetts, Act of 1698.
[118] Act of 1646.
[119] Act of 1728.
[120] Iredell, Act of 1741. But corporal punishment was not to deprive the master of such other satisfaction as he might be entitled to by the Act.
[121] Act of 1717.
[122] Body of Liberties, § 88, Act of 1672; Laws of the Duke of York.
[123] Iredell, 1741.
[124] Leaming and Spicer, Act of 1682.
[125] Purdon, Digest, 1700.
[126] Act circa 1784.
[127] Laws of 1672.
[128] Act governing white servants, 1717.
[129] Laws of the Duke of York.
[130] Browne, 1692; Dorsey, 1715.
[131] Leaming and Spicer, Acts of 1668, 1675; Trott, Act of 1717.
[132] Massachusetts Bay, Act of 1636.
[133] Carey and Bioren, Act of 1721.
[134] Iredell, 1741.
[135] Ibid.
[136] Laws of 1672.
[137] Ibid.
[138] Iredell, 1741.
[139] Act of 1636.
[140] Act of 1784.
[141] Neill, Founders of Maryland, pp. 77-79, gives the names of eighty servants brought over by Cornwallis between 1634 and 1651; and of these, five became members of the Assembly, one became a sheriff, and two were signers of the Protestant Declaration. Other noteworthy instances are found in Virginia. Neill, Virginia Carolorum, p. 297. Sometimes, however, the trail of the serpent remained. R. G., in a treatise published about 1661, says of the burgesses that they “were usually such as went over servants thither, and though by time, and industry, they may have attained competent estates, yet by reason of their poor and mean condition, were unskilful in judging of a good estate, either of church or Commonwealth, or by the means of procuring it.”—Virginia Carolorum, p. 290. George Taylor, a Pennsylvania redemptioner, was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
[142] The Sot-Weed Factor describes a quarrel in which one says:
“... tho’ now so brave,
I knew you late a Four-Years Slave;
What if for Planter’s Wife you go,
Nature designed you for the Hoe.”—P. 21.
DeFoe says: “When their Time is expir’d, sometimes before it, (they) get marri’d and settl’d; turn Planters, and by Industry grow rich; or get to be Yearly Servants in good Families upon Terms.”—Behaviour of Servants, p. 140.
[143] Elkanah Watson, writing from London in 1782, compares the silent attention given by English servants with the volubility of those in France, and then adds: “In America, our domestic feels the consciousness, that he may in turn become a master. This feeling may, perhaps, impair his usefulness as a servant, but cannot be deprecated, whilst it adds to his self-respect as a man.”—Men and Times of the Revolution, pp. 169-170.
[144] Numberless advertisements are found like the following: “An Indian maid about 19 years of Age, brought up from a Child to all sorts of Household work, can handle her Needle very well and Sew or Flower and ingenious about her Work: To be sold on reasonable terms.”—Boston News Letter, June 8, 1719.
“An Indian Woman Aged about 30 Years fit for all manner of Household work either for Town or Country, can Sew, Wash, Brew, Bake, Spin, and Milk Cows, to be sold by Mr. Henry Hill.”—Ibid., January 4, 1720.
“A Very likely Indian Womans Time for Eleven Years and Five Months to be disposed of; she’s a very good Servant, and can do any Household work, either for Town or Country.”—Ibid., March 21, 1720.
“An Indian Woman aged Sixteen Years, that speaks good English; to be sold.”—Ibid., February 20, 1715.
“A Stray Spanish Indian Woman named Sarah, Aged about 40 Years taken up, which the Owner may have paying the Charges.”—Ibid., January 4, 1720.
[145] “A warr with the Narraganset is verie considerable to this plantation, ffor I doubt whither yt be not synne in vs, hauing power in our hands, to suffer them to maynteyne the worship of the devill which theire paw wawes often doe; 2lie, If vpon a Just warre the Lord should deliuer them into our hands, wee might easily haue men woemen and children enough to exchange for Moores, which wilbe more gaynefull pilladge for vs than wee conceive, for I doe not see how wee can thrive vntill wee gett into a stock of slaves sufficient to doe all our buisines, for our children’s children will hardly see this great Continent filled with people, soe that our servants will still desire freedome to plant for them selues, and not stay but for verie great wages. And I suppose you know verie well how wee shall maynteyne 20 Moores cheaper than one Englishe servant.”—Emanuel Downing to John Winthrop, 1645. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Fourth Series, vol. VI., p. 65.
[146] Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Fourth Series, vol. VI., p. 101.
James Russell Lowell commenting on this letter says, “Let any housewife of our day, who does not find the Keltic element in domestic life so refreshing as to Mr. Arnold in literature, imagine a household with one wild Pequot woman, communicated with by signs, for its maid of all work, and take courage. Those were serious times indeed, when your cook might give warning by taking your scalp, or chignon, as the case might be, and making off with it into the woods.”—“New England Two Centuries Ago,” in Among My Books, I., 263.
[147] Teele, History of Milton, Massachusetts, 1640-1887, Journal of Rev. Peter Thatcher, Appendix B, pp. 641-642.
[148] The Report of a French Protestant Refugee in Boston, 1687, evidently submitted to guide friends in France thinking of coming to America, says: “You may also own negroes and negresses; there is not a house in Boston, however small may be its means, that has not one or two. There are those that have five or six, and all make a good living.”—Pp. 19-20.
The New England papers, even in the first part of the eighteenth century, are full of advertisements like the following: “A Negro Wench with a Girl Four Years old both born in the Country, used to all Family work on a Farm, to be sold on reasonable Terms.”—Boston News Letter, October 5, 1719.
“A very likely young Negro Wench that can do any Household Work to be sold, inquire of Mr. Samuel Sewall.”—Ibid., April 9, 1716.
“Lately arrived from Jamaica several Negro boys and girls, to be sold by Mr. John Charnock & Co.”—Ibid., May 11, 1719.
Most of the advertisements describe those offered for sale as “very likely,” and add the specially desirable qualification that he or she “speaks good English.” Judge Sewall, in 1700, gives this account of his first protest against negro slavery: “Having been long and much dissatisfied with the Trade of fetching Negros from Guinea; at last I had a strong Inclination to Write something about it; but it wore off. At last reading Bayne, Ephes. about servants, who mentions Blackmoors; I began to be uneasy that I had so long neglected doing anything.”—Diary, II., 16.
[149] But it is of interest in passing to note two contemporaneous judgments on the effect of slavery. Elkanah Watson, writing of his journey through the South in 1778, says: “The influence of slavery upon southern habits is peculiarly exhibited in the prevailing indolence of the people. It would seem as if the poor white man had almost rather starve than work, because the negro works.”—Men and Times, p. 72.
Thomas Anburey writes, “Most of the planters consign the care of their plantations and negroes to an overseer, even the man whose house we rent, has his overseer, though he could with ease superintend it himself; but if they possess a few negroes, they think it beneath their dignity, added to which, they are so abominably lazy.”—Travels, II., 328.
[150] A New England woman writes: “In several instances our ‘help’ was married from our parlor with my sisters for bridesmaids. I correspond with a woman doctor in Florida whose sister was our cook when I was a child, and who shared her sister’s room at our home while she earned her education, alternating work in the cotton mills and going to school.” This is but one illustration of hundreds that have doubtless come within the experience of most persons living in New England fifty years ago.
[151] A visit to many New England burying grounds will illustrate this statement. It was doubtless a survival of the English custom. A curious and interesting collection of epitaphs of servants has been made by Arthur J. Munby.
[152] “... Help, for I love our Yankee word, teaching, as it does, the true relation, and its being equally binding on master and servant.”—J. R. Lowell, Letters, I., 105.
[153] Even Americans commented on it. John Watson writes: “One of the remarkable incidents of our republican principles of equality is the hirelings, who in times before the war of Independence were accustomed to accept the names of servants and to be drest according to their condition, will now no longer suffer the former appellation; and all affect the dress and the air, when abroad, of genteeler people than their business warrants. Those, therefore, who from affluence have many dependents, find it a constant subject of perplexity to manage their pride and assumption.”—Annals, p. 165.
[154] Autobiography, I., 331.
[155] Society in America, II., 248.
[156] Society in America, II., 245.
[157] Ibid., II., 254-255.
It is of interest to contrast this picture of service in America by an Englishwoman with one given a little earlier of service in England by an American. Elkanah Watson writes from London in 1782: “The servants attending upon my friend’s table were neatly dressed, and extremely active and adroit in performing their offices, and glided about the room silent and attentive. Their silence was in striking contrast with the volubility of the French attendants, who, to my utter astonishment, I have often observed in France, intermingling in the conversation of the table. Here, the servant, however cherished, is held at an awful distance. The English servant is generally an ignorant and servile being, who has no aspiration beyond his present condition.”—Men and Times of the Revolution, p. 169.
[158] Democracy in America, II., 194.
[159] The Americans in their Moral, Social, and Political Relations, pp. 236-237.
Thomas Grattan also says, “The native Americans are the best servants in the country.”—Civilized America, I., 260.
[160] A Year’s Residence in the United States, p. 201.
Charles Mackay also says that “service is called ‘help,’ to avoid wounding the susceptibility of free citizens.”—Life and Liberty in America, I., 42.
[161] Domestic Manners of the Americans, I., 73.
[162] Society, Manners, and Politics in the United States, p. 284.
[163] He adds the interesting facts that cooks usually received $1.50 per week; chambermaids, $1.25; gardeners, $11 per month, and waiters $10 per month.—Recollections, pp. 299-300.
[164] The Englishwoman in America, pp. 43, 214.
[165] Civilized America, I., 256-258.
[166] Ibid., I., 259.
[167] Civilized America, I., 264.
[168] Ibid., I., 269.
[169] Views of Society and Manners in America, p. 338.
[170] Views of Society and Manners in America, pp. 338-342.
[171] Arrivals of Alien Passengers and Immigrants in the United States from 1820 to 1890, pp. 16, 23.
By the Census of Massachusetts for 1885 it is seen that forty-nine per cent of all women in that state of foreign birth are Irish. I., 574-575.
[173] Lowell says of the Irish immigration, “It is really we who have been paying the rents over there [in Ireland], for we have to pay higher wages for domestic service to meet the drain.”—Letters, II., 336.
A racy discussion of the influence of the Irish cook in the American household is given by Mr. E. L. Godkin under the title “The Morals and Manners of the Kitchen,” in Reflections and Comments, p. 56.
[174] Arrivals of Alien Passengers and Immigrants in the United States from 1820 to 1890, pp. 15, 22.
[175] Women constituted 41.8 per cent of the total number of German immigrants arriving here during the twenty-two years ending June 30, 1890; the Irish forming 48.5 per cent.—Ibid., p. 11.
[176] The United States Census for 1890 gives the number of domestic servants born in Ireland as 168,993; the number born in Germany was 95,007.
[177] The number of Chinese in domestic service in 1890 was 16,439.
[178] Walker, Wages, pp. 376-377.
[179] An illustration of these various changes is seen in the case of one employee, who was born in Ireland, engaged in service in New York, and afterwards drifted to Minnesota, where the report was made.
[180] This is indicated by the various definitions given in early dictionaries. It is a curious fact that The New World of Words or General English Dictionary, large quarto, third edition, London, 1671, does not contain the word “servant.” Phillips’ Universal English Dictionary, London, 1720, has “servant, a man or woman who serves another.” Bailey’s Dictionary, London, 1721, 1737, and 1770, defines servant as “one who serves another.” The Royal Standard English Dictionary, first American edition, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1788, “being the first work of the kind printed in America,” defines servant as “one who serves.” The second edition, Brookfield, 1804, has “servant, one who serves for wages.”
Some interesting illustrations of this early use of the word are found in colonial literature. Thus Thomas Morton in his New English Canaan, p. 179, says, “In the month of June Anno Salutis, 1622, it was my chance to arrive in the parts of New England with thirty servants and provisions of all sorts fit for a plantation.”
Governor Bradford in his History of Plymouth, pp. 235-236, speaks of “Captaine Wolastone and with him 3. or 4. more of some eminencie, who brought with them a great many servants, with provisions & other implments fit for to begine a plantation.”
A “Narrative concerning the settlement of New England,” 1630, says,
“This yeare there went hence 6 shippes with 1000 people in them to the Massachusetts having sent two yeares before betweene 3 & 400 servants to provide howses and Corne against theire coming, to the charge of (at least) 10,000l., these Servants through Idlenes & ill Government neglected both theire building & plantinge of Corne, soe that if those 6 Shippes had not arived the plantation had ben broke & dissolved.”—Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1860-1862, pp. 130-131.
The same use of the word is found a number of times in the list of the Mayflower passengers.
[181] J. F. D. Smyth says, London, 1784, “However, although I now call this man (a backwoodsman of the Alleghanies) my servant, yet he himself never would have submitted to such an appellation, although he most readily performed every menial office, and indeed every service I could desire.”—Tour in the United States, I., 356.
[182] Fanny Kemble writes, “They have no idea, of course, of a white person performing any of the offices of a servant;” then follows an amusing account of her white maid’s being taken for the master’s wife, and her almost unavailing efforts to correct the mistake.—Journal of a Residence in Georgia, pp. 44-46.
[183] An illustration of this change is seen in the different definitions given to the word. In the Royal Standard English Dictionary, 1813, a servant is “one who attends and obeys another, one in a state of subjection.”
Johnson’s Dictionary, London, 1818, gives: “(1) One who attends another and acts at his command; the correlative of master. Used of man or woman. (2) One in a state of subjection.”
Richardson’s New Dictionary of the English Language, London, 1838, defines servant as the correlative of master.
The American usage was practically the same. The first edition of Webster, 1828, gives: “(1) Servant, a person, male or female, that attends another for the purpose of performing menial offices for him, or who is employed by another for such offices, or for other labor, and is subject to his command. Servant differs from slave, as the servant’s subjection to a master is voluntary, the slave’s is not. Every slave is a servant, but every servant is not a slave.”
Worcester, 1860, says of servant: “(1) One who serves, whether male or female; correlative of master, mistress, or employer. (2) One in a state of subjection; a menial; a domestic; a drudge; a slave.”
These various definitions all suggest the class association of the terms “servant” and “slave.”
[184] A curious illustration of the social position of servants in Europe is seen in their lack of political privileges.
The French Constitution of 1791 was preceded by a bill of rights declaring the equality and brotherhood of men, but a disqualification for the right of suffrage, indeed, the only one, was “to be in a menial capacity, viz., that of a servant receiving wages.” Title III., chap. 1, sec. 2. The Constitution of 1795, after a similar preamble, states that the citizenship is suspended “by being a domestic on wages, attending on the person or serving the house.” Title II., 13, 3. The Constitution of 1799 has a similar disqualification. Title I., art. 5. It is probable that these provisions were intended to punish men who would consent to serve the nobility or the wealthy classes when it was expected that all persons would be democratic enough to serve themselves, not to cast discredit on domestic service per se.—Tripier, pp. 20, 105, 168.
During the revolutionary movement in Austria, the Hungarian Diet at its session, in 1847-1848, passed an act providing that the qualification for electors should be “to have attained the age of twenty years; Hungarians by birth or naturalized; not under guardianship, nor in domestic service, nor convicted of fraud, theft, murder, etc.” Act 5, sec. 2.—Stiles, II., 376.
The qualifications for suffrage in England also excluded domestic servants, but there was no discrimination against them as a class.
The Declaration of Independence, declaring all men free and equal in the presence of African slavery, thus has its counterpart in these free constitutions disfranchising domestic servants.
[185] Some of the figures given in this chapter have been taken from advance sheets kindly furnished by the Census Bureau, and hence it is impossible to give in every case page references.
[186] Preface, [p. 1], and [Appendix I].
[187] The percentage of foreign born as given here differs slightly from that given on page 80, as it includes a small number of Chinese and Japanese.
[188] Arizona, California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Rhode Island.
[189] Colorado, District of Columbia, Illinois, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming.
[190] Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia.
[191] Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia.
[192] Eleventh Census, Population, Part I., p. lxxxiii.
[193] Census of Massachusetts, 1885, Part II., p. 38.
[194] Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming.
[195] Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont.
[196] New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania.
[197] Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Wisconsin.
[198] Delaware, District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia.
[199] Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Texas.
This classification is made with reference to conditions apparently similar as regards domestic service.
[200] Eleventh Census, Occupations, p. 20. It is interesting to note the increasing proportion of women of foreign birth who go into domestic service. The Tenth Census shows that, in 1880, 49.31 per cent of all women of foreign birth employed for pay were engaged in domestic service; thus in ten years an increase of 10.06 per cent was made.
[201] Census of Massachusetts, 1885, Part II., pp. xxxvi, xxxviii. In this statement only the number of women engaged in domestic service for remuneration is considered.
[202] Eleventh Census, Population, Part I., p. lxxxix.
[203] Eleventh Census, Wealth, Debt, and Taxation, Part II., p. 16, Chart.
[204] Ibid., p. 59.
[205] Eleventh Census, Wealth, Debt, and Taxation, Part II., pp. 376-403.
[206] Brooklyn, Buffalo, Camden, Fall River, Jersey City, Lowell, Newark, Paterson, Rochester, Trenton, Troy.
[207] P. 68.
[208] Report of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 1885, pp. 196-312.
[209] In the classification in these two tables the employees in several large boarding houses were omitted. All of those included under the term “nurses” are nurse-maids, with the exception of the few receiving the highest wages.
[211] The figures are taken from the annual reports of city superintendents. The attempt was made to find the average salaries in the fifty largest cities, but many cities do not publish in detail the salaries paid. The reports used were those for the year ending in 1889,—the year for which reports were made through the schedules,—with the exception of Paterson, where the report for 1890 was used. Half-day teachers are omitted as far as known. In cities having separate schools for colored and for white children, the teachers in colored schools are included where the salaries paid are the same as those paid in white schools of the same grade,—otherwise they are omitted.
[212] Fourth Annual Report, pp. 520-529.
[213] Ibid., p. 625.
[215] Report of the Bureau, 1887, pp. 216-219, 225.
[216] United States Bureau of Labor, 1887, pp. 794-797.
[217] More definitely, it numbered 4.85 persons.
[218] Forty-six per cent had kept house longer than this, averaging nearly thirty years; while forty-four per cent had kept house for a shorter period, averaging about eight years and a half. Seventeen reports came from housekeepers of fifty years or more experience.
[219] Seventy per cent reported that they had boarded since marriage; about one third of these had boarded less than the average time, and one half had boarded from one to five years.
[220] This estimate is based on the supposition that a cook is employed at $3.80 per week, a second girl at $3.04, and a man half a week at the rate of 87 cents a day.
[222] The place of birth of the employees represented by the schedules included the following countries: Australia, Austria, the Azores, Canada, China, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, New Brunswick, Norway, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Poland, Prince Edward’s Island, Russia, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Wales, the West Indies.
[223] Eleventh Census, Occupations, p. 122.
[224] An employer in a large city where there is much complaint of the inferior character of the foreign population writes: “A general impression prevails in most foreign families that any girl, no matter how stupid, dishonest, or untidy, can apply for and rightfully accept a position as general servant or housemaid at current prices.” A similar complaint comes from many other employers.
[225] Tenth Census, I., 708.
[226] “I went into housework because I was not educated enough for other work.”
“I haven’t education enough to do anything else.”
“I would change my occupation if I knew enough to do anything else.”
[227] This is illustrated by the experience of one housekeeper who frequently does her own work. At these times her ordinary kitchen expenses come within $50 per month. This sum is exclusive of fuel, rent, and water. When employing a servant, the same expenses amount to $80 per month, while if fuel, light, and water were included (rent not being affected) the difference would be still greater.
[228] Yet so great is the demand for help that this is apparently sometimes done. In Milwaukee it is a common thing to see affixed to houses, or standing upright in the dooryard, well-painted signs looking as if ready for frequent use, reading “Girl wanted.”
[229] Behaviour of Servants, p. 298.
[230] A lady recently went to an employment bureau, and in answer to her application for “a good cook,” received the reply, “Madam, good cooks are an extinct race.”
One large bureau in Philadelphia reports that the demand for good servants is twenty per cent greater than the supply.
[231] The character of some of the intelligence offices in another city is described by F. Hunt, in The American Kitchen Magazine, November, 1895.
[232] An excellent blank is used by the employment bureau connected with the Boston Young Women’s Christian Association. Seven questions are asked the persons to whom the employee has referred:
“(1) How long have you known her?
(2) Is she temperate, honest, and respectable?
(3) Is she neat in her person, and about her work?
(4) Is she of good disposition?
(5) Is she faithful to her work, and is she trustworthy?
(6) In what capacity did she serve you, and how long?
(7) Was she capable and efficient in that capacity?”
The bureau states its aim to be “the recommendation of worthy persons only.” The detailed form of the questions asked is more successful in preventing an evasion of disqualifications, than is the personal recommendation of a general character, which often tells the truth, but not the whole truth.
One large bureau states that it formerly used blank forms, which it sent out with each employee. Employers were asked to fill out these blanks and return them at the end of service, and these were kept on file as recommendations. It was soon found that employers grew lax and would not take the pains to fill them out, and the practice was abandoned.
[233] DeFoe says, “To be a good Master is to be a Master that will do his Servant Justice, and that will make his Servant do him Justice; he may be kind to a Servant, that will let him sleep when he shou’d work, but then he is not just to himself, or a good Governour to his Family.”—Behaviour of Servants, p. 293.
[234] Repeated statements like the following are made by employers: “A few wealthy families keep a large number of servants at high wages, which wholly unfits them for general service and moderate wages, and establishes customs and rates which cannot be met by the mass of people with moderate incomes.”
[235] An employer recently engaged a cook at high wages with sufficient recommendations it was supposed. The first dinner (an hour delayed) showed her incapacity, and when questioned more closely it was found that the only domestic work she had ever done was preparing vegetables in a boarding house. When asked why she had engaged as a cook, the reply was, “They told me I could get higher wages if I called myself a cook.” The experience does not seem to be exceptional.
[236] An employer writes: “I find no place on the schedule for stating that my cook and coachman have to-day each given notice of leaving unless the other is discharged.”
[237] “When I began housekeeping in 1870 I had one ‘general housework girl’ who stayed with me nine years. Now I consider myself fortunate to retain a cook or a second girl as many weeks.”
“Thirty years ago I had no difficulty whatever. I do not think my character has changed meantime, or my method of treating servants, or our style of living, yet now it is almost impossible to secure servants.”
“The question is very different now from what it was forty years ago.”
“The problem in this place grows more perplexing every year.”
“Many housekeepers here are between the Scylla and Charybdis of trying to tolerate wretched, inefficient servants, and the impossibility of getting along with them.”
[238] “In advertising recently for a general housework girl twelve answered the advertisement. Advertising the same week for my former servant, twenty-two ladies applied personally and twelve others wrote that a girl was wanted. Although I told each of the twenty-two that if the girl were even fair I would keep her myself, only two hesitated on that account to try to secure her.”
The report of a large employment bureau for the year 1889 is as follows:
| Number of employers registered | 1,512 |
| Number of employees registered | 1,541 |
| Number of employers supplied with servants | 1,366 |
| Number of employees supplied with situations | 1,375 |
The number of employees registered exceeds the number of employers, but many register who are incompetent to fill the position they seek, and therefore many employers are without servants. The bureau regrets “its inability at times to supply with competent help the large number of patrons.”
Another bureau reports 2,659 applications from employers, only 2,099 of which could be filled.
Still another bureau filling about three thousand positions annually reports that at times it has had six hundred applications from employers in excess of the number that could be filled with competent applicants for work.
The domestic employment bureau connected with the Boston Young Women’s Christian Association reports for the year ending 1890:
| Orders registered | 2,120 |
| Orders filled | 1,753 |
[239] “Our committee have been greatly puzzled to know how to supply the constantly increasing demand for good and efficient workers in small households, where fair compensation is offered for moderate requirements. This demand is great in the city, but more so in the suburbs and country. It is very difficult to find a woman willing to take service in a family living out of sight of Boston Common. It is still more difficult to find any one who will go twenty miles into the country.”—Report of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, Boston, 1888, p. 29.
One employer in an inland city of twenty-five thousand inhabitants, who has a family of eight, and employs sixteen servants, writes: “It is impossible here to secure competent servants.”
Another employer, employing thirteen servants, in a city of twelve thousand, writes: “It is very difficult to secure servants, since women here prefer to work in the factories.”
One employer with seven servants and a family of two, in a large manufacturing city, says: “It is impossible to find well-trained employees.”
[240] “This is the first time this question has been put to me directly, and I frankly answer, Yes—to-morrow, if an opportunity were offered me. For years it has been my wish to find employment of some kind which would keep me from being a servant. Mrs. X has been very kind to me, and tried to find me other work; but, of course, a girl who has been in a kitchen for so long (thirteen years) is inexperienced in different work. Nevertheless, I have met girls who had no better education than I, and now hold high and respectable positions and make a fair living.”
A colored man, who has been a cook for forty years, replies with some caution: “I don’t know, unless the other work was in sight. Can’t say, unless somebody had done offered me another job, and I could look into it.”
[241] See articles by Mrs. Ellen W. Darwin, The Nineteenth Century, August, 1890; Miss Amy Bulley, Westminster Review, February, 1891; Miss Emily Faithful, North American Review, July, 1891; C. J. Rowe, Westminster Review, November, 1890, on the question in the Australian colonies.
“If things go on much longer in the present state, we shall have to introduce the American fashion, and live in huge human menageries.”—M. E. Braddon.
An admirable scientific presentation of the subject of domestic service in London is given by Charles Booth and Jesse Argyle in Life and Labour of the People in London, Vol. VIII.
[242] It is of interest to notice some of these occupations. The list includes apparently nearly every form of work in every kind of mill and factory, farm work, cigar-making, sewing, dressmaking, millinery, tailoring, crocheting, lace-making, carpet-making, copying; places as cash girls, saleswomen, nurses, post-office clerks, compositors, office attendants; six have been teachers; others, ladies’ companions, governesses, and matrons. It is of interest, also, to note that the per cent of native born who have been engaged in other occupations is slightly higher than the per cent of foreign born (thirty-one to twenty-five).
[243] One employee writes, “I wanted to see for myself what it was to be a hired girl.”
[244] An employee in Colorado, who receives $35 a month, writes: “I choose housework in preference to any other, principally because for that I receive better pay. The average pay for store and factory girls is eight and nine dollars a week. After paying board and room rent, washing, etc., very little is left, and what is left must be spent for dress—nothing saved.”
“It pays better than other kinds of work.”
“My expenses are less than in any other kind of work.”
“I can make more. I have put $100 in the savings bank in a year and a half. I had first $10 a month, but now I have $12.”
“I can save more.”
“I can earn more without constant change.”
“I can earn more than in anything else ($15 a month), but do not save anything as I support my mother.”
“Any one that is industrious and saving can save a great deal by working at housework.”
“I began to live out when I was thirteen years old, and I am now twenty-seven. I have saved $1600 in that time. At first I had $.50 a week; now I have $3.00. One summer I earned $3.00 a day in the hop-picking season.”
[245] “We are not as closely confined as girls who work in stores, and are usually more healthy.”
“I chose it because I thought it was healthy work.”
“There is no healthier work for women.”
“It is healthier than most other kinds of work I could do.”
“You can have better-cooked food and a better room than most shop-girls.”
[246] “I came to a strange city and chose housework, because it afforded me a home.”
“I am well treated by the family I am with, feel at home and under their protection.”
“Housework fell to my lot and I have followed it up because it has secured me a home.”
“Housework gives me a better home than I could make for myself in any other way.”
“I have more comforts than in other work.”
“I like a quiet home in a good family better than work in a public place, like a shop.”
“When I came to ⸺ and saw the looks of the girls in the large stores and the familiarity of the young men, I preferred to go into a respectable family where I could have a home.”
[247] The New York Evening Post, January 11, 1896, cites from London Truth an account of a bill under consideration in the New Zealand Parliament providing that every domestic servant in the colony is to have a half-holiday every Wednesday, and that the employer is to be fined £5 if the domestic is deprived of this privilege. The “half-holiday” practically means that the servant will be entitled to leave of absence from two until ten. Inspectors are to be appointed to enforce the provisions of this measure, if it becomes a law.
[248] “I choose housework as my regular employment for the simple reason that young women look forward to the time when they will have housework of their own to do. I consider that I or any one in domestic employment will make a better housekeeper than any young woman who works in a factory.”
“I think you can learn more in doing housework.”
“It requires both care and study and so keeps our mind in constant thought and care, and ought to be respected.”
[249] “At home I was my mother’s help even when we had a girl of our own, and from childhood had always loved to cook, and learned to do all kinds.”
“My mother was a housekeeper and did most of her own work and taught me how to help her. When my father and mother died, and it became necessary for me to earn my own living, the question was, ‘What can I do?’ The answer was plain—housework.”
“I have a natural love for cooking, and would rather do it than anything else in the world.”
“I like it best, was used to it at home, and it seems more natural-like.”
“I enjoy housework more than anything else.”
“I was a dressmaker several years because my mother thought dressmaking more respectable than going out to work. But I always liked housework better, and when my health broke down I was glad to get a place as parlor maid.”
[250] A successful teacher says: “I have never liked teaching particularly, and would much rather be a good cook.”
A sewing woman says: “I should prefer to do housework, but do not wish to leave my home.”
A teacher says: “I am fond of children, and should like nothing better than to be a nurse-girl, but I will not wear livery.”
[251] Law of the Domestic Relations, p. 599.
[252] Commentaries, II., 258.
[253] Kent, II., 260-261.
[254] Story, On Contracts, II., §§ 1297-1298.
[255] Starkie, On Slander and Libel, p. 19.
[256] Story, On Contracts, II., § 1304.
[257] Daly, IV., 401.
A good discussion of “The Legal Status of Servant Girls” is given by Oliver E. Lyman, Popular Science Monthly, XXII., 803.
[258] An article on the last point is found in the Boston Herald, November 23, 1890.
[259] “Housework soon unfits one for any other kind of work. I did not realize what I was doing until too late.”
“I should prefer to housework a clerkship in a store or a place like that of sewing-girl in a tailor-shop, because there would be a possibility of learning the trade and then going into business for myself, or at least rising to some responsible place under an employer.”
“I would give up housework if I could find another position that would enable me to advance instead of remaining in the same rut day after day.”
[261] “You are mistress of no time of your own; other occupations have well-defined hours, after which one can do as she pleases without asking any one.”
[262] “Women want the free use of their time evenings and Sundays.”
“If I could bear the confinement I would go into a mill where I could have evenings and Sundays.”
“Sunday in a private family is usually anything but a day of rest to the domestic, for on that day there are usually guests to dinner or tea or both, which means extra work.”
“I wouldn’t mind working Sundays if it wasn’t for the extra work.”
“I suppose the reason why more women choose other work is, they would rather work all day and be done with it, and have evenings for themselves.”
“Some families have dinner at three o’clock Sundays and lunch at eight or nine, and that makes it very hard for girls.”
[263] “A great many very ignorant girls can get housework to do, and a girl who has been used to neatness and the refinement of a good home does not like to room with a girl who has just come from Ireland and does not know what neatness means.”
“In ⸺ they have much colored help and do not have white help, so the white girls think any other work is better than housework.”
“In California self-respecting girls do not like to work with Chinamen—they do not know how to treat women.”
“Before the introduction of Chinese labor a young girl never lost social caste by doing housework; but since this element came, household service as an occupation has fallen in the social scale.”—Employer.
“When a native American girl goes out to housework she loses caste at once, and can hardly find pleasure in the foreign immigrants that form the majority of servants, and who make most of the trouble from their ignorance and preconceived notions of America.”—Employer.
[264] “The reason for dislike of housework is the want of liberty, and the submission which girls have to submit to when they have to comply with whatever rules a mistress may deem necessary. Therefore many girls go into mechanical pursuits, that some of their life may be their own.”
“Girls in housework are bossed too much.”
“There are too many mistresses in the house when the mother and grown-up daughters are all at home.”
“Most of us would like a little more independence, and to do our work as we please.”
“In housework you receive orders from half a dozen persons, in a shop or factory from but one.”
“A man doesn’t let his wife and daughters and sons interfere in the management of his mill or factory—why does a housekeeper let everybody in the house boss?”
[265] A description of domestic service in Japan is of value on this point. “From the steward of your household, to your jinrikisha man or groom, every servant in your establishment does what is right in his own eyes, and after the manner he thinks best. Mere blind obedience to orders is not regarded as a virtue in a Japanese servant; he must do his own thinking, and, if he cannot grasp the reason for your order, that order will not be carried out.” “Even in the treaty ports [Japanese attendants] have not resigned their right of private judgment, but, if faithful and honest, seek the best good of their employer, even if his best good involves disobedience of his orders.”—Alice M. Bacon, Japanese Girls and Women, pp. 299, 301.
F. R. Feudge, in How I Kept House by Proxy, quotes from her Chinese cook, who said that he could boast of forty years “of study and practice in his profession.” “I am always willing to be told what to do, but never how to execute the order—especially when in that department I happen to know far more than my teachers.”—Scribner’s Monthly, September, 1881.
[266] A shrewd young colored woman gives her version, verbally, of the servant question. She lays great stress on her own “bringin’ up,” as “she wa’n’t brung up by trash,” and thinks the average colored girl “only a nigger.” She prefers to live “at service,” but insists upon “high-toned” employers, and “can’t abide common folks.”
[267] “In some families no acquaintance can call on the servant; she may have one or two friends, but the number is always limited, because, says the lady of the house, not without truth, ‘Who wants a dozen strange girls running in and out of one’s back door?’”
[268] “There are reasons why I sometimes feel dissatisfied with doing housework for other people. I would prefer to do work where people would say, supposing they were to give a company, ‘There is Miss So and So, let us invite her.’” This is from an unusually intelligent employee who says she does housework because she likes to do it best, and because a domestic can have better-cooked food and a better-ventilated room than most shop-girls, and who also writes, “Intelligence, brains, and good judgment are essential in getting up a dinner for six or eight.”
[269] One illustration of this social barrier was found in a small manufacturing city. The factory employees, all men and skilled workmen, arranged one winter a series of evening entertainments. Invitations were sent to the self-supporting women in the city, the list including dressmakers, milliners, stenographers, saleswomen, and others, but the social line was drawn at cooks.
[270] A lady was recently about to complete the engagement of a cook, a German girl, when the head of the employment bureau said: “I fear after all that A B will not suit you. You live in a flat, and as she wishes to take violin lessons her practising might annoy you.” The incident was narrated to a company of friends, and created much amusement, until one said, “This shows how unregenerate we are; why should she not take violin lessons?” It is not easy to find an answer.
A gentleman, whose family includes only himself and his wife, writes: “Our maid-of-all-work is a young Swedish girl of eighteen, who recently came to America. Three months ago she said, ‘If I had a musical instrument and a place to practise, I would get a music teacher and stay with you always.’ A few days later my married daughter sent us an organ of sweet tone, which was placed in a small room little used. We gave our maid permission to use it, and she at once secured a teacher. This morning she said: ‘My father writes me if I am on the street much. I write him, No, I enjoy myself better—I practise my music.’ We seem to have solved the domestic question—at least for a time.”
[271] “I should like work where I could come in contact with more people who would be of help to me.”
“A young woman doing housework is shut out from all society, nor can she make any plans for pleasure or study, for her time is not her own.”
“No one seems to think a girl who works out good enough to associate with, except those who are in domestic service themselves.”
“Domestics never have a chance to go to school or study.”
A domestic employee recently went to a public library for a book. The attendant was about to give it to her, thinking from her manner and appearance that she was a teacher in a neighboring school; but when the question was asked and the answer given, “not a teacher, but a housemaid,” the book was withheld, as servants were required to bring recommendations.
[272] “Domestics are not admitted into any society, and are often for want of a little pleasure driven to seek it in company that is often coarse and vulgar.”
“It is very hard for a young, refined woman to give up a pleasant home, and live constantly with ignorant and ill-bred people, as is very often the case where more than one servant is kept.”
[273] “I fairly hate the word ‘servant.’”
“I don’t like to be called a ‘menial.’”
“The girls in shops call us ‘livers-out.’”
“No woman likes to be called a ‘hired girl.’”
“American girls don’t like the name ‘servants.’”
“I know many nice girls who would do housework, but they prefer doing almost anything else rather than be called ‘servants.’”
“Some people call us ‘kitchen mechanics.’”
“I don’t know why we should be called ‘servants’ any more than other people.”
[274] A woman who had been for years a domestic employee left her place on account of sickness, and ultimately opened a small bakeshop. Her former employer called on her one day, and said, “Well, Sarah, how do you like your work?” She replied, “I never thought of it before, but now that you speak, I think the reason I like it so well is because everybody calls me ‘Miss Clark.’”
An employer invited her Sunday-school class to her home to spend an evening. One of the members went into the kitchen to render some assistance, and found there the housemaid, an unusually attractive young woman. The employer said, “Miss M, this is Kate.” The maid, who never before had showed the slightest consciousness of occupying an inferior position, said, under her breath, “I am Miss, too.”
[275] That this jest has a basis of fact in England is evident from the testimony of the footman of the Earl of Northbrook, who some time since stated under oath, in a court of law, that although his regular wages amounted to but $300 annually, yet he received from $2,000 to $2,500 more each year in the shape of tips from the Earl’s guests. “Her Majesty’s Servants,” in the New York Tribune, August 23, 1896.
[276] Mr. W. D. Howells has an excellent discussion of the feeing system in Harper’s Weekly, May 16, 1896; also, Julia R. Tutwiler in the American Kitchen Magazine, April, 1896; still a third is found in the Outlook, August 8, 1896.
[277] One illustration of the fact that domestic service is never judged by the same social canons as are other occupations, is seen in the unwillingness shown by a young woman to enter the service of a family having a questionable reputation. Her “squeamishness,” as it was called, excited only laughter in a circle of women, no one of whom would have exchanged calls with the family in question.
[278] First Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of Connecticut, 1885, p. 12.
[279] 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.”
[280] This is especially true in the matter of wages where wages and annual earnings are confused, the element of time lost never being considered. The fact is also often overlooked that when a young woman lives at home without paying her board, her family in effect pay a part of her wages and thus enable the employer to pay her low wages, though nominally more than paid in housework. Thus one employee writes: “If girls have homes where their board is given them, they can earn more money on other kinds of work than in housework.”
[281] Domestic service, as seen by the employee, cannot be dismissed without suggesting the fact that as many tragedies in life are found here as elsewhere. One employee had planned to be a teacher, but sudden deafness prevented, and domestic service was all she could do. Another hoped to become a physician, but loss of property prevented her from completing her education. A similar reason prevented another from becoming a trained nurse. One had hoped to be a dressmaker, but it became necessary to earn money at once without serving an apprenticeship. Could the struggles and disappointments in thousands of such lives be known, the household employee would cease to be the butt of jest and ridicule that she sometimes is.
[282] An employer in South Carolina writes: “The difficulty here can only be removed by the importation of competent servants.”
[283] The following table will indicate the preference:
| City or State | Number examined | No preference | White help preferred | Negroes preferred |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Charleston | 259 | 143 | 65 | 51 |
| Louisville | 200 | 104 | 80 | 16 |
| New Orleans | 145 | 103 | 35 | 7 |
| Savannah | 106 | 66 | 26 | 14 |
| Texas | 67 | 31 | 35 | 1 |
| Washington, D.C. | 135 | 61 | 54 | 20 |
| Total | 912 | 508 | 295 | 109 |
The Charleston Employment Bureau advertises, “White help especially in demand.” In Texas the proportion of the foreign born population is larger than in any other of the Southern states, and advertisements from all the leading cities in the state show a decided preference for German or Swedish domestics. One from the Fort Worth Gazette reads, “Wanted—A white woman (German or Swede preferred) as cook in a private family.” This illustrates a large number of “wants.” An employer writes from Austin, “In Texas cities domestic service is furnished by Germans and Swedes to a large extent, and the tendency to employ them is growing.”
[284] “The older generation of negroes who were trained for service have nearly all died, and the survivors are too old to be efficient. The younger negroes are too lazy to be of much use.”—Brenham, Texas.
“Old colored servants that were trained before the war are now inefficient; the younger ones will not submit to training.”—Austin, Texas.
“Old trained colored servants are no longer to be had,—younger ones are not well trained, and consequently cannot do first class work. White servants are better trained, but scarce, and therefore independent.”—Austin, Texas.
“We have 80,000 colored people in the city. The old trained servants of slavery times are mostly passed away, and the younger ones have not been properly trained.”—Washington, D.C.
“The servants who were trained before ‘freedom’ are too old to do good work, and they are not training their children to be efficient.”—Anderson, South Carolina.
“The majority of those now seeking domestic service are ignorant, uneducated, untrustworthy.”—Biloxi, Mississippi.
“Servants have no training.”—Edgefield, South Carolina.
[285] “One difficulty here is the indifference of our colored servants to what the morrow may bring forth. They are capable of living on a very small amount, and they assist each other during the time unoccupied.”—Charleston, South Carolina.
“The negroes do not know how to render good service as a rule, and they do not understand the term ‘thorough.’”—Charleston, South Carolina.
“Colored help have to be very patiently and charitably dealt with.”—Washington, D.C.
“The difficulty here is the general shiftlessness and liking for changed conditions that is characteristic of the colored race.”—Austin, Texas.
“There is special difficulty here during the cotton-picking season.”—Austin, Texas.
“The majority of our servants, who are negroes, are not willing to do steady, faithful work for reasonable wages. Their idea of freedom is to come and go at will, and they expect full wages for light work.”—Austin, Texas.
“The ease with which subsistence can be obtained in this productive climate and the high wages earned during the cotton-picking season make the labor supply unstable.”—Austin, Texas.
“The negroes need training, but rarely remain in one place long enough to repay one for the trouble of teaching them.”—Brenham, Texas.
“The negroes will do well enough if one is willing to overlook carelessness.”—Johnston, South Carolina.
“The colored servants do not like to be kept at steady employment.”—Trenton, South Carolina.
“The majority work only as a make-shift, with no idea of remaining.”—Biloxi, Mississippi.
“The whole colored race is in a transitional period which is full of evils.”—Marion, Alabama.
“Negroes are very stubborn under harsh treatment, but respond quickly to kind treatment.”—Crescent City, Florida.
“Most of the negroes are indifferent to improving in any way as long as they have enough to eat, a place to sleep, and clothes to wear.”—Tallahassee, Florida.
[286] A southern gentleman well known as a student of social science writes in regard to the importation of negroes to the North: “There is nothing to hope from it. I have been reared in the South, and I know the negro well. Speaking as one with no sectional prejudice and with the broadest sympathy for blacks as well as whites, I must tell you that in general negroes will not serve you as well as the Irish, Germans, or Swedes. Personal attachment alone will secure good service from colored people.”
[287] “I must say from my own experience and observation that well-trained Chinese are the very best servants to be had here.”—San Francisco, California.
“I have grown up with Chinamen in the house, and it seems to me quite revolting and unnatural to have in the heart of the house an alien woman who speaks your language, knows your affairs, is even in a way dependent on your companionship, yet is nothing to you as a friend, and would never be asked even as a guest into the house if it rested on her personal qualities.”—San Francisco, California.
“Our Chinese cook is an admirable servant, invariably respectful, and does his work beautifully; he has the self-respect to fill every requirement of respectful and obedient behavior that the occasion calls for.”—San Francisco, California.
“Three Chinese were the most satisfactory servants we ever employed. In a housekeeping experience of nearly fifty years we have employed negro, Norwegian, and Irish servants.”—San Francisco, California.
[288] “The difficulty can only be removed by repealing the restriction act.”—Centerville, California.
“The Chinese have become very independent since the new restriction act.”—San Francisco, California.
“The restriction act made the Chinese very independent. They thought the stopping of the supply would make those already here able to command higher wages.”—San Francisco, California.
“One difficulty is the exclusion act.”—San Francisco, California.
[289] Co-operative Housekeeping. The book is now out of print, but the original articles on which it is based can be found in the Atlantic Monthly, November, 1868, to March, 1869.
[290] A full account of the plan is given in Good Housekeeping, July 19, 1890. It was also described in nearly all of the daily papers during May and June, 1890.
[291] A more complete and possibly more serious account of Mr. Bellamy’s views than that found in Looking Backward is given by him in Good Housekeeping, December 21, 1889.
[292] The New York Tribune says of the sewing women in that city: “They are a product of city life; a sort of vitalized machines, fitted only to do a certain mechanical work and disabled for any other industry mainly because they have been fastened to a sewing-machine all their lives.”
[293] “The men of my family would consider it the greatest disgrace if one of the women connected with it were to support herself.”
[294] Mr. Charles Dudley Warner asserts that women teachers have no social position (Harper’s Monthly, April, 1895). But his statements can apply only to some of the ultra-fashionable finishing schools in two or three large cities.
[295] It is the testimony of more than one employer that those domestics remain longest in a place and are most content who have a taste for sewing and reading. Those who are wholly dependent for pleasure on excitement and change form of necessity a restless class.
[296] The word “servant” has been used many times in this work, but it has seemed unavoidable in the absence of any other generally recognized term.
[297] It has been suggested that the word “homemaker” be applied to the mistress of the house and “housekeeper” to the employee; “working housekeeper” is often used of an efficient caretaker who does her work without direction; “domestic” and “house helper” seem wholly unobjectionable. It certainly is not necessary in abandoning one objectionable word to adopt another equally so. The Lynn, Massachusetts, papers, for example, advertise under “wants” for a “forelady in stitching room,” “a position as forewoman by a lady thoroughly familiar with all parts of shoe stitching,” “on millinery an experienced saleslady.” In other places one finds “a gentlewoman who desires employment at twenty-five cents an hour.” The public has much to answer for in the misuse of both “servant” and “lady.”
[298] Japanese Girls and Women, p. 304.
[299] Ante, [Chap. II.]
[300] This does not refer to ordinary baker’s bread, but to that made according to scientific principles, such as is sold at the New England Kitchen in Boston and by the Boston Health Food Company.
[301] A beginning in this direction has already been made in the case of vegetables canned for winter use. In the canning factories of Western New York an ingenious pea huller is in use which does away with much of the laborious process hitherto necessary. In a trial of speed it was recently found that one machine could shell twenty-eight bushels of peas in twenty minutes. In some of the largest cities the principle has been applied, and this vegetable is delivered ready for use; but such preparation should be made universal and all other vegetables added to the list.
[302] Cited by Bolles, p. 413.
[303] Bolles, p. 130.
[304] The Oriental Tea Company of Boston sends out coffee and guarantees it to maintain a temperature of 150° Fahrenheit for twenty-four hours. The experiment has been tried of sending it from Boston to St. Louis, with the result of maintaining a temperature of 148° at the end of three days.
[305] The women connected with two churches in a city in Indiana have maintained for some time such sales, and they have proved very remunerative. In one city in New Jersey $1,200 was raised in a few weeks to pay a church mortgage. In a Long Island village several hundred dollars was raised for a similar purpose by the women of the church, who took orders for cooking and sewing. In an Iowa city funds were obtained in this way for missionary purposes. In a village of five hundred inhabitants, in Central New York, the women of one of the churches have sold, every Saturday afternoon for eight years, ices and ice-creams, and have cleared annually about seventy-five dollars. In another town, several women of limited incomes began paying their contributions to the church by baking bread and cake for other families, and finding it remunerative continued the work as a means of support. In one Western city an annual sale is held at Thanksgiving time, and about one hundred dollars netted for home missionary purposes.
[306] The Woman’s Exchange, The Forum, May, 1892.
[307] Many illustrations of this can be given outside of those connected with the Exchange:
Mrs. A, in Central New York, has made a handsome living by making chicken salad to be sold in New York City.
Mrs. B, in a small Eastern village, has for several years baked bread, pies, and cake for her neighbors, and in this way has supported herself, three children, and a father. She has recently built a separate bakehouse, and bakes from thirty to one hundred loaves daily, according to the season, and other things in proportion. She says she always had a “knack” at baking, and that when she employs an assistant she has nearly every afternoon to herself.
Mrs. C, in a Western city, supports herself, three children, and an invalid husband, by making cake.
Mrs. D makes a good living by selling Saratoga potatoes to grocers.
Mrs. E has cleared $400 a year by making preserves and jellies on private orders.
Mrs. F partially supports herself and family by making food for the sick.
Mrs. G supports a family of five by making jams and pickles.
Mrs. H has built up a large business, employing from three to five assistants, in making cake and salad.
Mrs. I, in a small Eastern city, began by borrowing a barrel of flour, and now has a salesroom where she sells daily from eighty to one hundred dozen Parker House rolls, in addition to bread made in every possible way, from every kind of grain.
Mrs. J, in a small Western city, sells salt-risings bread to the value of $30 a week; and Mrs. K, in the same place, Boston brown bread to the value of $75 a week.
Mrs. L, living on a farm near a Southern city, has built up “an exceedingly remunerative business” by selling to city grocers preserves, pickles, cakes, and pies. “One cause of her success has been the fact that she would allow no imperfect goods to be sold; everything has been of the best whether she has gained or lost on it.”
Mrs. M supports herself by taking orders for fancy cooking.
Mrs. N, living in a large city, sells to grocers baked beans and rolls.
Mrs. O, in New York City, has netted $1,000 a year by preparing mince-meat and making pies of every description.
Mrs. P, in a small village on Lake Superior, has large orders from cities in Southern Michigan for strawberry and raspberry jam.
Mrs. Q, in a country village of five hundred inhabitants, sells thirty loaves of bread daily.
Mrs. R and two daughters last year netted $1,500 (above all expenses except house rent) in preparing fancy lunch dishes on shortest notice, and delicacies for invalids.
Mrs. S puts up pure fruit juices and shrubs.
Mrs. T prepares consommé in the form of jelly ready to melt and serve.
Mrs. U has made a fair income by preparing and selling fresh sweet herbs.
These illustrations can be multiplied indefinitely. They have come to notice in nearly every state in the Union, and in places varying in size from country villages without railroad stations to such cities as Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York.
[308] Mrs. A has for several years gone from house to house at stated times sweeping and dusting rooms containing fine bric-à-brac.
Mr. B cares for all of the lawns of a large number of gentlemen, each of whom pays him a fixed sum for the season in proportion to the size of his grounds.
Mr. C cares for all of the furnaces and clears the walks in a city block.
Mrs. D earns a partial support by arranging tables for lunches and afternoon teas.
Mrs. E washes windows once in two weeks for a number of employers.
Mrs. F takes charge of all arrangements for afternoon teas.
Mrs. G earns $3 a day as a cook on special occasions.
Miss H waits on a table in a boarding house three hours a day.
Miss I distributes the clothes from the laundry in a large city school.
Mrs. J is kept busy as a cook, serving as a substitute in kitchens temporarily vacant.
Mrs. K derives a considerable income from the supervision of party suppers. “Her social position is quite unaffected by it.”
Mrs. L “makes herself generally useful” at the rate of ten cents an hour if regularly employed and twenty cents when serving occasionally.
Mrs. M goes out as a waitress at lunches and dinners.
Mrs. N employs a young man working his way through school to keep wood-boxes and coal-hods filled.
Many college students in cities partially pay their expenses by table service.
Hotels and restaurants frequently send out waiters on special occasions.
One employer writes, “I think a central office in this city at which competent waitresses could be hired by the hour would be largely patronized.”
The Syracuse, New York, Household Economic Club publishes a Household Register, giving the names and addresses of all persons in the city who do by the piece, hour, or day all forms of household work. Thirty-five different classes of work are enumerated.
[309] See also article on the “Revival of Hand Spinning and Weaving in Westmoreland,” by Albert Fleming, Century Magazine, February, 1889.
[310] One writes, “I find it much better to employ one servant and to hire work by the piece, and to purchase from the Exchange, rather than to employ an extra servant.”
Another housekeeper writes: “I began housekeeping twelve years ago with three servants and had more than enough work for all. I now have two and have not enough work for them, although my family is larger than at first. The change has come from putting work out of the house and hiring much done by the piece.”
A business man writes: “Our family is happier than it ever dared hope to be under the sway of Green Erin. We purchase all baked articles and all cooked meats as far as possible. A caterer is employed on special occasions, and work that cannot be done by the parents, three children, and two aunts, who compose the family, is hired by the hour. Since we signed our Declaration of Independence in 1886, peace has reigned.”
Still another says: “I used to employ a laundress in the house at $4 per week and board. I was also at expense in furnishing soap, starch, bluing, and paid a large additional water tax. Now my laundress lives at home, and does my laundry there for $4 per week, and we are both better satisfied.”
Several small families who do “light housekeeping,” have found that they have in this way been able to live near the business of the men of the family, and thus have kept the family united and intact, as they could not have done had it been necessary to employ servants.
One employee writes, “If more housework were done by the day so that more women could be with their families in the evening, I think it would help matters.”
[311] Seventeenth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, p. 157.
[312] Profit Sharing between Employer and Employee, p. 8.
[313] Methods of Industrial Remuneration, p. 158.
[314] Schloss, Methods of Industrial Remuneration, p. 173.
[315] Gilman, Profit Sharing, p. 189.
[316] Seventeenth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor, p. 178.
[317] Schloss, Report on Profit Sharing, p. 157.
[318] Ibid., p. 160.
[319] Schloss, Report on Profit Sharing, pp. 158-159.
[320] Schloss, Methods of Industrial Remuneration, pp. 173-174.
[321] Schloss, Report, p. 158.
[322] Wright, Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 1886, p. 231.
[323] Ibid., p. 172.
[324] This included the purchase of two new labor-saving appliances for the kitchen, costing $5.70. The maid was given the choice of having the new utensils or dividing a surplus; she chose the former.
[325] This included the presence in the family of two guests for two weeks.
[326] One housekeeper reports that she gives her cook five cents for every new soup, salad, made-over dish, or dessert that proves acceptable to the majority of the family. She thus secures variety and economy in the use of materials.
One reports that she has a German cook who understands thoroughly the purchase and use of all household materials. The cook is given a fixed sum each week with which to make purchases, and she keeps whatever sum remains after these have been made. The family report that they have never lived so well, or with so much comfort and so much economy as since the plan has been tried.
Another states that she adds at the end of the month twenty per cent to the wages of her waitress if no article of glass or china has been nicked, cracked, or broken during the time.
These are all variations of the same principle.
[327] An admirable work on Household Sanitation has been published by Miss Marion Talbot and Mrs. Ellen S. Richards.
[328] The work in this direction carried on by Professor W. O. Atwater of Wesleyan University has been of the greatest value, and indicates the lines along which future investigation must be made.
[329] Letter to the Clergy of the Diocese of New York, May 15, 1886.
[330] The Century, June, 1894.
[331] An excellent classification of standards of work and wages has been drawn up by the committee on Household Economics of the Civic Club of Philadelphia. See [Appendix III].
[332] Maria Mitchell, p. 26.
[333] “However grievous the ‘servant problem’ may be in some English households, it sinks into insignificance when compared with the conditions on the other side of the Atlantic.” Alice Zimmern, in The Leisure Hour, May, 1899.
[334] Ante, chaps. [VI.], [VIII.], [IX.]
[335] This is apparently the case universally in France and in Italy. In Italy, while the washing is always done out of the house, the ironing is often done at home. In Lombardy “a woman of color” washes the colored clothes and flannels, which are kept distinct from the ordinary laundry. On the continent bed linen is often changed only once in two, three, or even four weeks—a custom that has at least the advantage of reducing to a minimum this part of the household work.
“In England it is becoming the rule, except in large households with laundries of their own, and in households managed on narrow means, to send this work out.”—Miss Collet, Report, p. 9.
“Washing is put out, as it is now almost impossible to get a girl who will do it.”—Employer, cited by Miss Collet, Report, p. 30.
[336] In some parts of Switzerland women come in from outside every six weeks and do all the laundry work of a household for that period.
[337] The legal relations between employer and employee are everywhere prescribed with more or less fulness, but in Germany the laws are very minute in character, while the contract in particular is much more rigid, and it is carried out in much greater detail than elsewhere. The laws for Prussia are given in Posseldt, while a summary for the Empire is given in Braun. Each state has its own laws on the subject, but as far as I have been able to examine them, they are practically the same in principle.
I am indebted to Mrs. John H. Converse for permission to use an exhaustive statement of the legal relations between mistress and maid in England prepared by Mrs. Henry C. Lea of Philadelphia.
Weber, in Les Usages locaux, sums up many of the points in French law.
[338] Braun, chaps. VII., XI.
“In England situations are usually subject to a month’s notice on either side.”—Booth, VIII., 221.
No special contract is made in France, with the result that “one changes domestics these days almost as often as political convictions.”—Weber, p. 45.
In Italy, also, no special contract is required, though a servant cannot be turned off without giving him ten days’ notice or a week’s wages.
[339] Posseldt, p. 75. Braun, chap. XIV.
But under many circumstances, specified with great exactness, a servant may be legally dismissed without notice. Posseldt, pp. 64-70, gives a list of nineteen cases where this may be done in Prussia; the laws for Saxony are very similar (pp. 28-30); Braun, chap. XII., gives twenty-one.
[340] Braun, p. 64. In Saxony he is at liberty to choose between returning to his place, paying a fine of 30M., or being imprisoned for eight days. Gesindeordnung für das Königreich Sachsen, p. 8.
The employee is also privileged under certain conditions to break the contract without notice. Braun, chap. XII., enumerates seven. These are the same in Prussia, Posseldt, pp. 70-74; Schork, p. 38, gives only five for Baden.
[341] The fine in Saxony is a maximum one of 150M., and the imprisonment the maximum one of six weeks. Gesindeordnung, p. 10.
[342] Weber says, “If you have serious complaints to make, either seek legal redress or say nothing.” Pp. 53-54.
[343] In Italy the servant is protected by very stringent laws punishing slander and defamation.
[344] In England “the majority of adult male indoor domestic servants are in large households employing over six servants.”—Miss Collet, Report, p. 23.
“Every English man-servant is apt to consider himself a specialist.... This want of elasticity has led to his gradual disappearance from all except the most wealthy households.”—Booth, VIII., 227.
In Italy cooks are very generally men. In France nearly all domestic work in the provincial hotels is performed by men. In Germany waiters are, as a rule, men.
[345] This competition is not wholly unknown. In a pension in Athens the second waiter, a Greek, left because unwilling to take orders from an Armenian head waiter. French servants sometimes go to the French cantons of Switzerland, and the reverse. The same is true of German and Italian servants who are found in the German and the Italian cantons. But the permanent migration of servants from one country to another, especially on the continent, is very slight. The reason usually given is, “They do not understand the ways of another country and are unhappy in it.”
[346] “Not only will the foreigner work for less wages, but he is better educated and more thoroughly trained. Whilst in this country a waiter’s duties are ‘picked up’ in an irregular way, in Germany or Switzerland the work is properly taught by a regular system of apprenticeship. The knowledge of continental language which the foreigner possesses is found useful, and he has, moreover, a higher reputation than our own countrymen for neatness and civility.”—Booth, VIII., 235.
[347] English, French, and German are universally spoken by waiters in all the large hotels and pensions on the continent. Two or three other languages in addition are often found. One waiter in a very primitive hotel in Olympia, Greece, spoke eight. This can scarcely be considered exceptional. “The waiting staff of the great modern hotels consists mainly of foreigners.”—Booth, VIII., 231-232.
[348] In certain quarters of London the boarding-houses are full of waiters who have come over from the continent to learn English. Many waiters not French by birth took advantage of the Exposition in 1900 to improve their French by going to Paris at that time. It is not unusual for travellers to be asked concerning possible openings in hotels and pensions where waiters would have an opportunity of learning a new language.
[349] For wages in England, see Miss Collet, Report on the Money Wages of Indoor Domestic Servants, and Booth, VIII., 217, 221-224, 227-228, 231-235; for wages in France, M. Bienaymé in Journal de la Société de Statistique de Paris, November, 1899, and M. Salomon in La Nouvelle Revue, February 1, 1886. I have been unable to find satisfactory statistics concerning the wages paid in Germany and in Italy. Numerous inquiries lead me to believe that they are somewhat lower in Italy and in Spain than elsewhere (an English housekeeper residing in Spain for twenty-five years reports that general servants in Spain receive from $1.25 to $2.00 a month, cooks, who are considered “artists,” receiving somewhat more), and that in Germany the variations are not so great as in England in the wages paid in different classes of society. This, however, is but an impression, and the judgment cannot be considered authoritative.
[350] “We understand that the plan of paying board-wages throughout the year instead of providing food is increasing, and is usually at the rate of 16s. per week for upper men-servants, 14s. for footmen, and 12s. to 14s. for women-servants.”—Booth, VIII., 230.
“Another disturbing feature in many Irish households is the practice of paying ‘breakfast wages’ in some cases, and ‘full board’ wages in others.”—Miss Collet, Report, p. 10.
[351] M. Babeau says that in France as far back as 1692 a good cook expected presents at Easter and on Saint Martin’s day as well as at New Year’s. P. 283.
“To the 600 francs (given a domestic in the fashionable quarters of Paris) must be added gifts and New Year’s presents.”—M. Jules Simon, cited by M. Salomon, p. 549.
“A usually substantial Christmas box is given the waiters in West-End London clubs.”—Booth, VIII., 231.
In Germany, while a servant cannot legally claim presents at Christmas, New Year’s, and similar times (Welche Rechte und Pflichten haben Herrschaft und Gesinde? p. 30), the custom of giving them is universal. “I would not dare to give less than thirty marks at Christmas to the cook and twenty marks to the chambermaid.”—German housekeeper, Dresden.
It is not uncommon in Germany for housekeepers to give presents on the anniversaries of the days their servants come to them, and medals on special anniversaries, as the tenth or twenty-fifth. This explains the custom of the German Housewives’ Society in New York of presenting $10 gold pieces to employees who have served faithfully for two years in the home of a member of the society. The Evening Post (New York), December 12, 1900.
“I always give my cook twenty lire at Christmas and ten lire at the fête of the Madonna.”—Italian housekeeper, Milan.
[352] “I often give a present of two marks between times, pay often for extra service, and give my servants a great deal of cast-off clothing. The head of a factory is not obliged to propitiate the bad temper and sullen moods of his employees with gifts and fees as we housekeepers have to do.”—German housekeeper, Berlin.
“I give my cook a great deal of my husband’s cast-off clothing and the housemaid much of my own.”—Italian housekeeper, Rome.
[353] “I would not think of leaving less than two shillings with the housemaid when I have spent a night in a friend’s house.”—Englishwoman, Cambridge.
“I always leave five shillings with the servant when I spend Sunday with friends, and as she always seems glad to see me when I return I imagine it is enough.”—Englishwoman, London.
The traditional reply ascribed to Hanway (Bouniceau-Gesmon, p. 134) in declining an invitation from an English lord, “I am not rich enough to dine with you,” is typical of what one often hears in England.
“Vails to servants in households where a considerable number of visitors are entertained must be an important item in the real earnings of servants.”—Miss Collet, Report, p. 29.
An admirable discussion of the whole subject of fees paid by guests is given by W. J. Stillman in The Nation, October 11, 1900. See also The Nation, November 8, 1900. Mr. Albert Matthews in The Nation, December 13, 1900, cites an extract from the London Chronicle that shows that the custom dates back certainly as far as 1765.
Babeau, pp. 301-302, discusses the abuses of the custom in France, though they are less there than in Italy, and especially in England “where one cannot go out to dine without encountering, on leaving, all the servants drawn up in line and holding out their hands.”
[354] “It is very stupid, but it is generally done.”—German housekeeper, Dresden.
“The cook makes about three marks a month in this way.”—German housekeeper, Berlin.
“The ‘sou in the franc’ that certain tradesmen agree to give servants is not only tolerated, but it is recognized as a right.”—M. G. Salomon, p. 549.
“In the expression ‘theft’ we do not hesitate to include the ‘dancing of the basket’; the ‘sou in the franc’ given by some dealers does not constitute an act of disloyalty on the part of the domestic. It is for the master, if he would escape this tax, to levy it on the tradesmen less clever in advertising, unless he is very sure that the merchant makes the servant this allowance out of his profits alone.”—Weber, p. 47.
“In fact, the part taken by our servants in the purchase and use of almost all articles of consumption makes a necessary increase in the wages paid. Thus even before coming to the kitchen, provisions undergo an increase in cost from the fact that they are bought by the mercenary person who attends to the marketing; this does not include customary augmentations, the sou per pound or the sou in the franc, said to be met by the merchant, and certain others which, on account of their constant increase, deserve special mention.”—Bienaymé, pp. 366-367.
“What is done by these servants hired for a limited time? They go to the merchant and impose upon him the law of division of profits. The merchant raises the price, and the stranger buys the article for more than it should cost. These servants even levy a tax upon the eating-house keeper; the livery-stable keeper is obliged to pay them as much as twenty sous a day; these profits have become customary.”—Mercier, V., 156.
Bouniceau-Gesmon, pp. 107-113, cites from an unnamed English author a long account of similar practices in England.
“My cook always gets three lire from the butcher and three from the grocer at Christmas.”—Italian housekeeper.
[355] M. Colletet narrates the story of a young girl from the country who was told of a situation where in addition to her regular wages she could get various profits, such as ashes, old shoes, remnants of bread and meat, and various tidbits.—Le Tracas de Paris, p. 229.
M. Babeau, p. 283, cites from Fournier, Vanités historiques et littéraires, V., 243-257, the advice of an old servant to a new one as to ways of cheating his master, such as burning much wood in order to have many ashes, saving from articles for the table, etc. It is thus that a cook has been able to lay up enough to buy five large farms, while her husband, the coachman, has on his part saved out of the hay and straw bought for the stables.
“A large number of cooks increase these profits by illicit gains, and the tradesmen themselves, with no other reason than the fear of losing their customers, obligingly wink at, or rather become parties in, this trickery.”—M. Jules Simon, cited by M. Salomon, p. 549.
“The cook either brings short weight or reports paying a higher price than he has paid—he has many dodges. The housekeeper must weigh over again the articles purchased, or go to market to ascertain, if possible, the real price of articles bought, or submit to imposition.”—Housekeeper in Spain.
[356] Under this head come cast-off clothing, skins of animals, bones, tallow, drippings, etc. A. Weber, Les Usages locaux, p. 48.
[357] “Beer (or beer money) is allowed at the rate of about one pint a day for women-servants.”—Booth, VIII., 220 (1896).
Miss Collet considers it established that in England the custom of paying beer money is dying out, many employers not only give no beer money but also give no beer. Report, p. 29 (1899).
In Italy women-servants are allowed one-half pint of wine per day, and men-servants one pint. The wine is given out each day, or the money equivalent at the end of the month.
[358] Les Usages locaux, p. 52.
[359] The laws of insurance against accident, sickness, invalidism, and old age compel the employer to pay one-half the insurance,—about three dollars per year. It is said, however, that as a rule the employer pays the entire amount. It is true this amount is small in families employing but one servant and paying low wages, but where several servants are kept and high wages given the total amount is considerable. On the other hand, the burden is often relatively, though not absolutely, heavier in the family with one servant on low wages, since this means a small income. The amount of insurance varies with the wages, but the wages received by most domestics place them in Class II. The government rates board and lodging received by servants at 350M. per annum, and this with the cash wages received puts the insurance at about three dollars annually, an amount slightly in excess of that paid by the employees in Class I. See Unfallversicherungsgesetz, Krankenversicherungsgesetz, and Das Reichsgesetz über die Invaliditäts- und Altersversicherung. Each of the states of the Empire has its own Gesindeordnung and the conditions of insurance are often stated in these.
[360] In France scarcely forty years ago it was considered impossible to ascertain the wages paid domestic servants. Statistique de la France. Prix et salaires à diverses époques. Paris, 1863. Cited by M. Gustave Bienaymé in Journal de la Société de Statistique de Paris, November, 1899.
[361] M. Bienaymé has attempted, with the aid of information gained through employment bureaus, personal recollections, household expense books, and similar means, to give the wages paid in France since 1815. The results of his investigations seem to show that wages in nearly every branch of domestic service have steadily increased since that time, until now the wages of an ordinary cook are 50 francs per month and a chambermaid the same, while a general servant receives 40 francs per month, the wages of all these classes of house servants having doubled the past sixty years. At the same time the cost of maintenance has also increased. He gives a table showing the increase, or in some cases the decrease, in wages in every branch of domestic service during this period. Journal de la Société de Statistique de Paris, November, 1899.
Practically the same estimates are given by M. Georges Salomon in “La Domesticité,” La Nouvelle Revue, February 1, 1886. He cites a similar opinion from M. Jules Simon.
Mr. Booth shows a gradual increase in the wages of servants as they grow older or are advanced to better positions, but this does not necessarily show a general increase from year to year. VIII., pt. II., passim.
Mr. A. E. Bateman considers it impossible to state, for England, what the movement of wages in domestic service has been. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, LXI., 264-265.
[362] An account of the protest against this on the part of the “Amalgamated Waiters’ Society” is given by the London correspondent of The Evening Post (New York) in the issue of December 10, 1900.
[363] A writer in Le Matin (Paris) of April 15, 1900, urges the formation of a society each member of which shall pledge himself not to give fees.
[364] Mr. William Clarke, in The Social Future of England, sums up the character of domestic service in England in saying: “It is true that English middle-class service is bad, and even growing worse, and this will continue so long as factory labor is preferred to domestic service. But there is probably no country where the wealthy can secure such efficient and fairly honest service in the butler, valet, lady’s maid, and housekeeper lines as in England.”—The Contemporary Review, December, 1900.
The historical question whether the character of the service has ever been any better than it is at present must also remain unanswered for the same reason. Pandolfini in Il Governo della Famiglia finds the philosophical explanation of poor service in Italy during the fifteenth century in the tendency of servants to seek their own interests rather than those of their masters—an explanation limited by neither time nor place. All literature goes to show that our own age is not alone in finding it difficult to secure those who will “carry the message to Garcia.”
[365] Barber of Seville, I., 2.
[366] The employer as a rule commands absolutely the time of the employee; for example, in Germany the employee spends her time in knitting for the family, in working out of doors, or in similar ways. The hours everywhere seemed to me much longer than those required in America, largely owing to the lateness of the evening meal, which is universally dinner in France, Italy, and England.
[367] The lack of elevators in even large apartment houses, the necessity of storing fuel—unless bought in small quantities—in the cellar, the absence of a common heating system, no arrangements for carrying water to every room and the difficulty of securing an adequate supply of hot water, the necessity of daily marketing, the little use of ice, the punctiliousness with which the top box on the top shelf of the closet must be dusted, especially in Germany and in Holland, the endless scrubbing of floors and stairs and polishing of brass and copper, the use of candles and kerosene in private houses and even in large pensions and hotels,—these are but suggestions of ways in which domestic service is much harder than it is in America.
[368] The living accommodations provided for employees seemed to me everywhere distinctly inferior to those provided in America. In London, “as far as possible the men are lodged in the basement, while the women have their rooms at the top of the house. This arrangement, though always desirable, often necessitates two or even three men using the servants’ hall as their bedroom, while another sleeps in the pantry, and another beneath the stairs. Breathing space is restricted and the want of air, and high living, coupled with the absence of hard work or exercise, lead naturally to a demand for some form of stimulant, with the result that numbers of men-servants ultimately take to drink.”—Booth, VIII., 228-229. The sleeping rooms given servants are small and cheerless, hot in summer and cold in winter, while often the only place provided for taking meals is a corner of the kitchen table.
[369] Bouniceau-Gesmon finds a fundamental difference between slavery and domestic service, as indeed there is, and denies that one is the outgrowth of the other, since the two have sometimes existed side by side. Domestiques et Maîtres, chap. I. But while the one is bond and the other free, and while the labor performed in both states is the same and should be honorable, the fact remains that the domestic servant has inherited to a great degree the social opprobrium that attached to the slave and the serf.
[370] Gil Blas, Figaro, and Lafleur have long stood as types of the eighteenth century valet. Walter Scott says of the former, “as to respect, it is the last thing which he asks at his reader’s hand.” [Biographical Memoir of Le Sage.] Both Dean Swift and Daniel DeFoe sharpened their pens with infinite pains in describing the servants of their times. At a later date the pencil of Cruikshank found employment in illustrating Mayhew’s Greatest Plague in Life, while Punch for years revelled in the opportunities afforded by “servant-gallism.” Babeau, Bouniceau-Gesmon, and Salomon show similar conditions in France. “Stealing is an infamous thing—it is the sin of a lackey,” remarks a priest to a pupil who confessed a theft. Cited by Babeau, p. 290. “To lie like a lackey” is almost proverbial.
[371] There are indeed many illustrations of servants of an altogether different character—Caleb in The Bride of Lammermoor and Marcel in The Huguenots are types of the faithful servitor who alike in prosperity and in adversity remains constant to the family in whose service he was born. The fact remains, however, that the servant exists as a type in European literature as he does not in that of America.
[372] La Nouvelle Revue, February 1, 1886.
[373] “It is, in fact, almost necessary to have an inherited aptitude for the relationship involved—a relationship very similar in some respects to that subsisting between sovereign and subject. From both servant and subject there is demanded an all-pervading attitude of watchful respect, accompanied by a readiness to respond at once to any gracious advance that may be made without ever presuming or for a moment ‘forgetting themselves.’”—Booth, VIII., 225.
[374] “The habits of servants in large houses and the strict observance of etiquette give rise to some very curious customs. There are three grades of servants, named ‘kitchen,’ ‘hall,’ and ‘room,’ after the places in which they take their meals.”—Booth, VIII., 229.
“There is no class less open to democratic ideas than a contented servant class. Compared with them their titled and wealthy employers are revolutionists. They cannot bear change, their minds are saturated with the idea of social grades and distinctions, they will not even live with one another on terms of social equality.”—William Clarke, Contemporary Review, December, 1900.
[375] Mercier speaks of establishments where valets and maids had themselves valets and lackeys (XI., 277), and says that generally a lackey in the upper classes takes the name of his master when he goes with other lackeys, as he also adopts his customs, his gestures, his manners, carries a gold watch, and wears lace; a lackey du dernier ton even wears two watches like his master (II., 124).
“The maid of a visitor ranks, of course, with the upper servants. She is addressed not by her own name, but by the surname or title of her mistress.”—Booth, VIII., 230.
[376] “I have four servants in London who do the work two used to do in New York.”—American housekeeper in London. Booth, VIII., 225-230 passim.
[377] Booth, VIII., 224.
An interesting illustration of the social stratification in England is suggested by the sermons delivered to servants by the late Master of Balliol. Sermons, pp. vii., 348. Lewis Carroll “was always ready and willing to preach at the special service for college servants which used to be held at Christ Church every Sunday evening.”—Collingwood, Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll, p. 77.
[378] The home for aged servants in Dresden is under the immediate patronage of the Queen. In 1892, when visited, it had accommodations for fifteen women who must be at least sixty-two years old and give proof of having been a servant before being admitted. It does not apparently differ in principle from a well-conducted old ladies’ home except that its inmates must all have been servants.
[379] There are many of these homes where girls out of employment can have comfortable accommodations at a reasonable rate. One of the most interesting is the “Heimatshaus für Mädchen” in Berlin. In 1892 it was located under the “Stadtbahn” or elevated railroad of the city. Under pressure it could accommodate two hundred and was constantly increasing its facilities. In 1891 five thousand girls had found in it a temporary home. They remained on an average about five days. Each occupant pays 25 pfennigs for lodging, 10 for coffee, 15 for dinner, and 10 for supper. Even at these very low rates the home is self-supporting. The only source of income is the fees paid to the employment bureau carried on in connection with the home. Every employer pays 3 marks when he secures a servant through the bureau, and every employee pays the same when a place is secured. That the class of servants who frequent it have a family likeness to their sisters in America was indicated by the questions overheard asked by would-be servants of prospective employers: “How many children are there in the family?” “How many servants do you keep?” “Is there running water in your flat?” “How many flights up do you live?”
[380] The Sonntags-Verein has its headquarters in Berlin where in 1892 it had twenty-nine unions under its charge, with one hundred and twenty-one in other parts of Germany and six in Russia, England, and Austria. Its work is almost exclusively religious in character, but entertainment is provided consisting of music, games, and reading, and beer or tea is served with bread and butter. About fifteen hundred girls were members of the Berlin branches in 1892. The difficulty of starting and maintaining these unions was very great. The free time of household employees is every other or every third Sunday afternoon, so that attendance is very irregular and interest correspondingly fluctuating. Employers often discourage the attendance of their employees, saying that they need rest rather than recreation, while the girls themselves often prefer the coffee-houses or beer gardens. The Deutsche Mädchen-Zeitung in 1892 had been published twenty-three years in the interests of the Verein and had a circulation of four thousand copies. These, however, were not taken by the girls themselves, but by their employers for them. “The Germans never wish to pay for anything themselves, they wish everything given them,” said a German employer in explanation. The Sonntags-Verein owed its inception to the interest in the class of household employees taken by Frau Banquier Lösche, and since her death, four years ago, the work has been carried on by her daughter.
[381] These usually receive young girls after they have been confirmed,—at about fourteen years of age,—and train them in everything pertaining to the house. They do not naturally at that age go of their own accord, but they are taken by their parents or guardians who often sign a contract, agreeing that the girl will remain in the school at least one or two years, as the case may be. The schools are well attended, and the girls apparently contented.
Edward S. Joynes, in his report on the Industrial Education of Women in Germany (Columbia, S.C., 1896), gives a full description of the training in domestic work given in the regular German industrial schools for girls.
[382] At least two important historical studies of the topic have been made,—one by Mr. Albert Matthews on “The Terms Hired Man and Help,” and one by Mr. James D. Butler on “British Convicts Shipped to American Colonies.” Statistical investigations of the subject have been carried on by the state bureaus of labor in Minnesota, Colorado, and Indiana. The Massachusetts bureau has collated the results of investigations made by the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union of Boston, Miss Isabel Eaton has made an exhaustive study of negro domestic service in the seventh ward of the city of Philadelphia, different branches of the Association of Collegiate Alumnæ have carried on valuable local inquiries into the question, while the bureau of labor in Washington is about undertaking a comprehensive study of the entire subject. The New York state library has issued a full list of articles and books bearing on the matter, and the city libraries of Providence, Rhode Island, and Salem, Massachusetts, have published similar lists. In view of these facts it seems not unreasonable to make the above claim.