Incredible as this statement at first appears, the statistics of hospitals and in infirmaries confirm it, and the causes are not far to seek. Household service has passed from the hands of Americans into those of the Irish first, and then a proportion of every European nation. So long as the supply came to us entirely from abroad we were comparatively safe. If the experience of the new arrival had been solely under thatched roof and on clay floors, at least sun could visit them and great chimneys gave currents of pure air, while simple food kept blood pure and gave small chance for unruly impulses to govern. But once with us demoralization began, and the tenement-house guaranteed sure corruption for every tenant. Even for the most decent there was small escape. To the children born in these quarters every inmost fact of human life was from the beginning a familiar story. Overcrowding, the impossibility of slightest privacy, the constant contact with the grossest side of life, soon deaden any susceptibility and destroy every gleam of modesty or decency. In the lowest order of all rules an absolute shamelessness which conceals itself in the grade above, yet has no less firm hold of those who have come up in such conditions.
There are many exceptions, many well-fought battles against their power, but our concern at present is not with these but with facts as they stand recorded. Physician after physician has given in her testimony and one and all agree in the statement that open prostitution is for many merely the final step,—a mere setting the seal to the story of ruin and licentiousness that has always existed. The women who adopt this mode of life because of want of work or low wages are the smallest of minorities. The illegitimate children for whom the city must care are not from this source. Often the mother is a mere child who has been deceived and outraged, but far more often she has entered a family prepared to meet any advances, and often directly the tempter.
It is this state of things which makes many mothers say: “My girl shall never run such risks. I’ll keep her from them as long as I can;” and unsavory as the details will seem, their knowledge is an essential factor in the problem. The tenement-house stands to-day not only as the breeder of disease and physical degeneration for every inmate, but as equally potent in social demoralization for the class who ignore its existence. Out of these houses come hundreds upon hundreds of our domestic servants, whose influence is upon our children at the most impressible age, and who bring inherited and acquired foulness into our homes and lives. And if such make but the smallest proportion of those who serve, they are none the less powerful and most formidable agents in that blunting of moral perception which is a more and more apparent fact in the life of the day. The records from which such knowledge is gleaned are not accessible to the general public. They are formulated only by the physician, whose business is silence, and who gives only an occasional summary of what may be found in the sewer underlying the social life of great cities. Decorously hidden from view the foul stream flows on, rising here and there to the surface, but instantly covered by popular opinion, which pronounces such revelations disgusting and considers suppression synonymous with extermination.
Naturally this phase of things is confined chiefly to the great cities, but the virus is portable and its taint may be discovered even in the remote country. It is one of the many causes that have worked toward the degradation of this form of service, but it is so interwoven and integral a part of the present social structure that temporary destruction would seem the inevitable result of change. Yet change must come before the only class who have legitimate place in our homes will or can take such place. If different ideals had ruled among us; if ease and freedom from obligation and “a good time” had not come to be the chief end of man to-day; if our schools gave any training from which boy or girl could go out into life with the best in them developed and ready for actual practical use,—this mass of undisciplined, conscienceless, reckless force would have been reduced to its lowest terms, and to dispose of the residuum would be an easy problem. As it is, we are at the mercy of the spirits we have raised, and no one word holds power to lay them. No axioms or theories of the past have any present application. It is because we cling to the old theories while diligently practising methods in absolute opposition to them, that the question has so complicated itself. We cannot go backward, but we can stop short and discover in what direction our path is tending and whether we are not wandering blindly in by-ways, when the public road is clear to see.
It is certain that many among the most intelligent working-women look longingly toward domestic service as something that might offer much more individual possibility of comfort and contentment than the trades afford. But save for one here and there who has chanced to find an employer who knows the meaning of justice as well as of human sympathy, the mass turn away hopeless of any change in methods. Yet reform among intelligent employers could easily be brought about were the question treated from the standpoint of justice, and the demand made an equally imperative and binding one for each side. The mistresses who command the best service are those who make rigorous demands, but keep their own side of the bargain as rigorously. They are few, for the American temperament is one of submission, varied by sudden bursts of revolt, and despairing return to a worse state than the first. A training-school school for mistresses is as much an essential as one for the servants. The conditions of modern life come more complicated with every year; and as simplification becomes for the many less and less possible, it is all the more vitally necessary to study the subject from the new standpoint, settle once for all how and why we have failed, and begin again on the new foundation.
Here then stands the arraignment of domestic service under its present conditions, given point by point as it has formulated itself to those who urged to turn to it. The mistresses’ side defines itself as sharply; but when all is said the two are one, the demand one and the same for both. Men who work for wages work a specified number of hours, and if they shirk or half fulfil their contract, find work taken from them. Were the same arrangement understood as equally binding in domestic service, thousands of self-respecting women would not hesitate to enter it. Family life cannot always move in fixed lines, and hours must often vary; but conscientious tally could be kept, and over-hours receive the pay they have earned. A conscience on both sides would be the first necessity; and it is quite certain that the master of the house would require education as decidedly as the mistress, woman’s work within home walls being regarded as something continuous, indefinable, and not worth formal estimate.
In spite of the enormous increase of wealth, the mass are happily what, for want of a better word, must be called middle class. But one servant or helper can usually be kept, and most often she is one who has used our kitchens as kindergartens, adding fragments of training as she passed from one to the other, ending often as fairly serviceable and competent. Sure of her place she becomes tyrant, and nothing can alter this relation but the appearance upon the scene of organized trained labor, making a demand for absolute fairness of treatment and giving it in return. Once certain that the reign of incompetence was over, the present order of servers would make haste to seek training-schools, or accept the low wages which would include personal training from the mistress, promotion being conditioned upon faithful obedience to the new order.
What are the stipulations which every self-respecting girl or woman has the right to make? They are short and simple. They are absolutely reasonable, and their adoption would be an education to every household which accepted them:—
1. A definition of what a day’s work means, and payment for all over-time required, or certain hours of absolute freedom guaranteed, especially where the position is that of child’s nurse.
2. A comfortably warmed and decently furnished room, with separate beds if two occupy it, and both decent place and appointments for meals.