“PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE”
To seek wisdom through a questionnaire is a time-honored expedient, while to give wisdom through questions has classic authority. It is therefore immaterial whether it is Experience or Inexperience that may be either seeking wisdom or that may have wisdom to bestow in this interlocution concerning a domestic problem that has already been involved to the nth power.
What are the causes of our household troubles?
The causes are in part economic—a household system governed by the same economic laws that govern other industries, but resisting the action of these laws; in part social—the attempt to form a chemical compound of public and political democracy with private and social aristocracy; in part educational—the tradition that marriage acts as a solvent to change every ignorant, inexperienced young woman into an accomplished housekeeper, and that, therefore, mental training is for her a work of supererogation; in part religious—the persistent maintenance of the belief that from the primeval chaos every woman has been foreordained to be a housekeeper, united with the rejection of the parallel belief that every man has been foreordained to be a tiller of the soil.
But the situation in regard to household help has never been so critical as it is at the present time.
This statement has been found in one form or another in all literature, sacred and profane, from the times of Abraham and Achilles to the story of the last college graduate who has entered domestic service in disguise.
Other countries do not have the same difficulty.
On the contrary, the difficulty is universal. It may vary somewhat in degree, but fundamentally the problem is the same the world over. Moreover, in no country is there so intelligent an understanding of all its factors as in America, for in no other country is found so great a mass of material for a comprehensive study of the subject. Statistical investigations have been carried on through national, state, and private initiative, and the information asked for has, for the most part, been cheerfully given because of the widespread desire among household employers to coöperate in every way with those undertaking these investigations. Material of every kind, ranging from the scientific accumulations of bureaus of labor to the hysterical deductions of sentimental observers, is all at hand. In Berlin a young man who recently carried on a statistical inquiry in regard to domestic service was nearly mobbed for his presumption—so considered—in attempting to gather information that German housekeepers had guarded as sacredly as Tibet holds the Grand Lama.
When will our present household difficulty end?
The difficulty will end when every man is reasonable, when every woman is omniscient, when every child is obedient, when we discover the philosopher’s stone, when we drink of the Pierian spring, when we dig the treasure at the end of the rainbow, when we enter upon our inheritance in Spain, when the east meets the west.
Meantime?
Dismiss the cook from your attention for a moment and study the kitchen. Is the baking-table on the opposite side of the room from the baking-utensils, while the baking-materials are kept in the pantry? Does an inventory of the cooking-implements show one article for toasting and broiling, two battered saucepans for preparing a five-course dinner, and a soup-kettle with a cover that does not fit? Is the pump on the left-hand side of the sink? Is the sink three inches too low and in a dark corner where a blank wall is all that meets the eye of the one who works before it? Does the waste-pipe from the ice-chest lead into a pan that must be emptied daily? Must the ashes from the range be carried out of doors every day? Is the range-coal too large and is the kindling-wood green? Does the oven-door refuse to shut tight and has the tea-kettle sprung a leak? Do the unprotected water-pipes freeze with zero weather? Does the chimney fail to draw? The results of these investigations may be the discovery that the household engineer has been expected to run his engine with insufficient fuel. What if the skillful engineer has made the same discovery?
Occupy for a week in winter the room of the cook. Does the temperature hover near the freezing-point, while the rest of the house is warm? Is the mattress of husks and are the pillows of hen’s feathers? Does a row of hooks take the place of a closet? Try the room for a week in midsummer. Is the temperature stifling hot? Do flies and mosquitoes find joy in the screenless windows? Are the facilities for bathing a small bowl and a pitcher without a handle on the top of a triangular wash-stand? The two weeks’ vacation in an unknown part of your own home may lead to the traditional mauvais quart d’heure. What if the employee has spent a year under the protecting shelter of your roof?
Watch for a week the table conversation of your family and its guests. Count the number of times you hear the word “servant,” and remarks in regard to “household drudgery,” “menial service,” “knowing one’s place,” and “superiority to housework.” What if the household employee has also kept count?
Imagine that you can accept ten cents from a friend for doing an errand, half a dollar from a guest as he leaves the house and a dollar from another, and can flatter an unwelcome cousin in the hope of getting two dollars at his departure. Criticise mercilessly all of your friends after you have invited them to afternoon tea. Repeat at table all the gossip retailed by officious busy-bodies. Your own self-respect will be lowered. What if moral deterioration takes place in the kitchen under the same conditions?
But what can I do?
Try putting all the laundry-work out of the house; take up the carpets, paint the floors, put down rugs and send these out of the house to be cleaned, or clean house with a vacuum cleaning-machine; reduce useless work and incidentally add to the attractiveness of your house by taking down portières and paying storage on half of the bric-à-brac; buy ice-cream and cake and all “extras” at the woman’s exchange. These additional expenses will materially reduce your subscriptions to half-orphan asylums and to vacation funds for the indigent. What if this course saves you from hotel existence and enables others to keep their homes intact and to pay for their own vacations?
Substitute praise for constant censure and the principle of coöperation for that of “giving orders;” see that the daily paper is on the kitchen-table before it is a week old and that the magazines are promptly supplied; encourage the singing-class, the flower-bed, basket-making, bead-work, in-door evening games, and out-of-doors recreation; at least make the effort to give in some form a new and wholesome interest to lives that may have been repressed and mentally starved. Friends may smile and call the plan quixotic. What if it encourages self-respect in the employee and therefore respect for his work?
Consider the kitchen with its accompanying rooms in the light of an economic plant. Give the same careful attention to its arrangement and equipment that the owner of a manufacturing establishment gives to the fitting-up of a new factory with all the latest labor-saving contrivances and facilities for work; study the plumbing and the water-supply with the zest of a scientific investigator and select the cooking- and baking-utensils with the interest of an artist. This course may curtail expenditures for the “den” and the relinquishment of the “cosy corner.” What if thereby your house and home gain in unity for employer as well as for employee?
Abandon the attempt to maintain a Waldorf-Astoria style of living on a fifteen-hundred-dollar salary; abandon it, if you have the income to maintain it, if in maintaining it you are putting temptation in the path of a weaker friend and neighbor. This may reduce your calling-list by two hundred names. What if you gain thereby peace of mind and a contented household?
Establish household settlements among the cottagers at Newport, in the vicinity of Central Park, on Riverside Drive, Commonwealth Avenue, Euclid Avenue, and the North Shore Drive. What if successful settlement work in these localities should enable the families of millionaires to bridge the impassable chasm that now separates the dining-room from the butler’s pantry and the reception-room from the linen-closet?
Will these temporary devices remove all friction in the running of my household machinery?
No, they will probably not even lessen it. But these and similar expedients may be of benefit to you, inasmuch as they may help you to carry out the commendable advice of Charles Reade, “Put yourself in his place.” They may also be of benefit to your granddaughter in enabling her to be a member of that ideal trades-union—that between employer and employee.