By the Author of “Home Life in Germany,” etc.
I received a letter from Germany the other day, written by a young American woman who was recently married to a German officer. They live in a city with about the population of Rochester, N. Y., only distinguished from other places of its size in possessing an old cathedral, a water-cure (Bade Anstalt), and being a military post. These distinguishing features have nothing to do, however, with the part of her letter which I desire to reflect upon. She writes:
“I am so fortunately situated in domestic matters; I have really no care, the mädchen is so competent, and so willing, it is a real pleasure to keep house.”
Just before the arrival of this letter I had patiently listened for two hours to the just and lamentable complaints of an American house-keeper about “the impossibility of procuring a good servant!” The latter resides in a university town, and if a university is worse than a garrison, or students than military men, in destroying the tone of the laboring women and girls, then let the fact have its weight against the statement that the relation between mistress and maid in Europe is better regulated and understood than in America. The two cases I have presented seem to me to have about equal accessories, and it is a curious search to find the reasons for the difference in them.
“Six years ago the Empress of Germany announced that she would henceforth decorate with a golden cross every female servant who had passed forty years of her life in the same family. The Empress has been called upon to bestow this mark of her royal favor 893 times. Can any other country make such a remarkable showing? In America house-maids are apt to reckon their terms of continuous service by weeks and months instead of by years. The beginning of reform in this matter is anxiously awaited by millions of worried households. The heavy emigration from Germany to this country ought to bring to our shores some of these steady-going maids. Possibly there is something in the atmosphere of America, in the restless movement of our people that puts the devil of change into the heads of Gretchens and Bridgets.”
It is the “devil of change,” as the writer expresses it, which gets into the heads of the Gretchens and Katherinas when they come to this country. I think I have discovered a still better reason, which I shall timidly reveal later on, for, in doing so, I must encroach upon national taste and education.
First of all, we should consider that especially the uneducated German man, or woman, girl, or boy, loves the Vaterland. The heimath, with its low ceilings and plastered walls, its sanded floors and wooden bench outside the door, where the father smokes his pipe in the evening, while the mother knits, is all enshrined in the hearts of the children, and the recollection of the festtage, when the father and mother put on their best clothes and take all the children to the neighboring beer-garden to hear music, is always joyous. It is only by rumors of “higher wages” that such people are ever induced to bundle up the feather beds, and lock the wooden chest, and start as poor steerage passengers across the great Atlantic. After the horrors of the voyage, and the strange and confusing days of Castle Garden, what do they find in place of the old home and the familiar ways of the Vaterland? The daughters hire out probably for cooks. First of all, they are expected to cook a heavy breakfast by 8 o’clock, and nothing seems so hard to a foreigner as this. Their traditions are at once set at naught. They begin to grind on a differently constructed wheel. Just as John Chinaman has to learn that we even turn the screw the opposite way to the way in which he has been drilled, so the poor Germans have to learn that if Americans offer higher wages, they also expect things done in their own way. The dull gray kitchen is perhaps a previous disappointment to the heavy breakfast. No white tiles around the oven; no brassware to see her face in! No open market with benches where she can sit and talk with the market women under their red umbrellas, and watch the lads go by: covered, dull grey places are our American markets compared with the bazar appearance of the meat and vegetable markets of Europe. No concert in the evening for five cents. Nothing—but a long day and a longer evening in an uninteresting kitchen, with different food and different duties. Finding a young, fresh-looking girl with her white cap on her head, in the kitchen of a friend of mine, recently, where I chanced to be visiting, I asked her in German if she was contented in this country, remarking at the same time that she was fortunate to live with a lady who could speak German, and who was so kind. “O yes,” said she; “but then I think I can do better. If I can’t, it were happier for me in the Vaterland.”
One of our distinguished politicians and scholars, who served in Germany as United States minister, brought back with him a German diener, or butler. Karl did well for a season; maintained his respectful bearing toward the herrschaften and their guests until finally he announced he was “discontented,” and the reason for his desire to change places was that the herrschaften did not entertain as grandly in this country as they did in Germany, and that the guests were not such fine ladies and gentlemen—they did not give trink-gelt (civility money). But the most heartfelt reason was, he was lonely. He missed music, he missed beer, he missed gemüthlichkeit, and fine and high titles by which to call the ladies and gentlemen. And then the festtage—no days in America for the poor working classes to be relieved from care and have a good time. This did not please Karl.
On these festtage in Germany a servant man or woman has as good a chance to go to a picture gallery, or a pottery, or a museum, or a concert, as gentlefolks; and does not the knowledge and pleasure gained at such places make the servant more cheerful, and intelligent, and competent to look at work not as drudgery, but as something in which the whole human family is engaged in one way or another? Said an observing servant to me after an afternoon in a picture gallery: “How can those poor artists sit all day long with their feet on the stone floor and copy pictures? They look so tired I was glad I was not one of them!” After a visit to the Königliche Porzellan Manufactur, in Charlottenburg, I remember once having asked a servant if she knew how much labor it required to manufacture a cup and saucer; and I proceeded to tell her how the feldspar found in the vicinity of Berlin was ground to powder, cleaned through various tanks of water, each time running through a sieve, then how they pass it between heavy weights so that it came out in great sheets of pliable putty, which are laid over moulds, just as a piece of dough is laid over a pie-pan. When these forms are taken off, they are carefully finished in every indentation by skilful workmen, who have delicate tools for the purpose. Afterward they take these forms, cups, saucers, plates, vegetable dishes, as they may be, and bake them in ovens for sixteen hours the first time, and after they are taken out they are glazed and baked again, and then if the ware is to be painted it must be baked again; and if gilded, still again. I ended this elaborate description all out of breath, for it required as much command of the German language as I at that time thought I had. The attentive girl, however, relieved my excitement by saying: “Yes; I have been out there, gnädige frau, and seen it all, and this is why I try to be so careful with china.” In the five years this good girl had lived with me she had rarely broken a piece. I could but think how unlike the answer “Biddy” would have given, that “the kitchen floor is very hard on china.” I have known servant girls as much interested in the collections of laces in the museums, especially the specimens made by poor peasant women in different centuries, as any high-born lady, and much more capable of reproducing specimens of this industry. The costumes of the peasants and the costumes of the kings and queens, and the furniture used by the latter, will attract crowds of ignorant people by the hour in European museums. But who ever sees any but the intelligent and rich walking about in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, or the Academy in Boston. We do not care to interest the working classes in this country; only care to see that they work well and as many hours as possible. “There remains,” says a writer on duties of contract, “outside of their actual service, or of any assumption of authority on our side, really limitless fields for the exercise of our natural influence as their immediate superiors and friends.” I think, in the matter of lodging—the rooms the Americans give their servants to sleep in—they fare infinitely better than in any foreign country; but the food is not so well adapted to their physical wants. Delicate dishes and highly seasoned food are sent into the kitchen for the servants by our American housekeepers, and you hear them say: “O, we would not think of denying our servants all the dainties of our own table.” Do they ever think that a working man or woman, no matter of what nationality, prefers boiled beef and turnips, or bacon and cabbage, to sweet breads and peas, or venison and cauliflower. But this is an inexhaustible theme, and one I must defer yet again before I venture to say what I think about the genuine American table.
In the town of Delitzsch, in the province of Posen, resides a man—Herr Schulze-Delitzsch—who has devoted himself almost exclusively for years to the study of the labor question and the elevation of the working classes. He is a great reformer, but escapes being known as a revolutionist. More practical and perhaps more methodical than Lasalle, he relies not upon the state for aid, but upon the sympathy and help of the working classes themselves. He organized workingmen’s associations, union stores, etc. France, Belgium, Italy, and even England, became awakened, and looked with interest upon his work, and inquiries were made by authority of the English government into the real manner and methods adopted. As a writer on the subject remarks: “Schulze’s methods are economical and reformatory; Lasalle’s were political and revolutionary.” The Credit und Vorschuss Verein, which is a species of savings bank, was practically his work. The members contributed of their savings to this fund, and when old age, sickness, or misfortune overtook them, and they were obliged to give up laboring by the day, they were in turn helped. The Vereins were entirely under the management of the members. The investment of the capital was entirely under their control, the surplus being divided annually, and the “sick funds” and “funeral funds” were distributed by them. The first institution was founded in 1850, and in 1869 the number reached 1,750. The permanent capital was then 12,000,000 thalers. The hired laborers form a tenth of the membership of the unions, and they are on the increase; the farmers something more than a fifth; the tradesmen a tenth, and the mechanics a third. The farmer’s aim is, in part, the procuring, in common, seed, implements, etc.; in part, the sale in common of milk, butter, cheese, hops, wine, and other products. Thus, through moderate and just ideas and management, much has been accomplished. Working people must not be fed on incendiary ideas. Ruskin’s lectures to working men savor of dilettante ideas. A man who has never been poor rarely knows how to appeal to the poor or guide them. Schulze-Delitzsch’s philosophy has been learned from actual experience. There is nothing of the factious orator about him, but he is calm and persuasive. He is not a social-democrat, but belongs to the progressive party, which stands for the most advanced form of liberalism. He organizes the poor to teach them to resist their own worst faults. He was burgomaster of Delitzsch at one time, after leaving political life in the capital, because of differences which arose. He was assisted by his mother to go on lecturing tours, and when this was no longer practicable—as she had also small means—there was a purse raised by the citizens, which reached the sum of 50,000 thalers; the greater part being given by the poor working people in paltry sums. Thus he was saved for higher work, and gave up the position of burgomaster. He accepted this money only in trust—investing part in a home at Potsdam and the rest in such a way that the interest only accrues to him. If it was worth England’s time to inquire into the economic methods of the Credit und Vorschuss Verein, perhaps America could utilize some ideas on this subject. Germany is finding out many of our ways and means, which she considers superior to her own conservative methods. Dr. Max Zering, of Berlin, was recently commissioned by the government of Prussia to investigate and report upon the agricultural and transportation interests and methods of the United States. He will visit the different cities, make the acquaintance of their boards of trade, chambers of commerce, and railroad managers. It seems that the day has come when nations are becoming very liberal toward one another. The exclusive spirit which prevails in China, more than in any other country, is fast being eradicated, and all people are exclaiming, “If you know anything better, or accomplish anything in an easier way than we do, pray let us have a lesson of you.”