Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework: Business principles applied to housework

by C. Hélène Barker

It is not unusual at the present day for a woman to work twelve, or fourteen hours a day, or even longer, when she earns her living as a household employee. A man's mental and physical forces begin to wane at the end of eight, nine, or ten hours of constant application to the same work, and a woman's strength is not greater than a man's. The truth of the proposition, abstractly considered, has been long acknowledged and nowadays requires no argument.

When a woman accepts a position in business, she is told exactly how many hours a day she must work, but when a woman is engaged to fill a domestic position in a family, the number of hours she is expected to give her employer is never specified. She is simply told that she must be on duty early in the morning before the family arises, and that she may consider herself off duty as soon as the family for whom she is working has withdrawn for the night. Is it surprising that under such conditions working women are not very enthusiastic over the domestic proposition to-day?

A household employee ought to have her hours of work as clearly defined as if she were a business employee, and there is no reason why the eight-hour labor law could not be applied as successfully to housework as to any other enterprise.

Work in business is generally divided into two periods. Yet this division can not always be effected, and in railroad and steamship positions, in post offices, upon trolley lines, in hotels, in hospitals, and in other cases too numerous to mention, where work must follow a continuous round, the working hours are divided into more than two periods, according to the nature of the work and the interests of the employer, not however exceeding a fixed number of hours per day or per week.

It would be far better for the housewife as well as for her employees, if the housework were limited in a similar way. But with the introduction of the eight-hour law in the home, certain new conditions would have to be rigidly enforced in order to ensure success.

Firstly, the employee should be made to understand that during the eight hours of work agreed upon, she must be engaged in actual work for her employer.

Secondly, when an employee is off duty, she should not be allowed to remain with or to talk to the other employee or employees who are still on duty. When her work is finished, she ought to leave her employer's house. The non-observance of either of these two points produces a demoralizing effect.

Thirdly, a general knowledge of cooking, and serving meals, of cleaning and taking proper care of the rooms of a house, of attending correctly to the telephone and the door bell, of sewing, of washing and ironing, and of taking care of children, should be insisted upon from all household employees.

There are many housewives who will state that this last condition is impossible, that it is asking too much from one employee; and since it is hard to-day to find a good cook, it will be still harder to find one who understands other household work as well. But those who jump to these conclusions have never tried the experiment. It is not only possible but practicable.

Judging from the ordinary intelligence displayed by the average cook and housemaid in the majority of private homes to-day, it ought not to seem incredible that the duties of both could be easily mastered by young women of ordinary ability. A woman who knows how to prepare and cook a meal, may easily learn the correct way of serving it, and the possession of this knowledge ought not to prevent her from being capable of sweeping a room, or making a bed, or taking care of children.