To be sure, they are not paid for this work, as professional cooks are.
Some of the social "reformers" are now demanding that husbands pay their wives for domestic work. If that point should be carried, what would be the social status of the wives—nine out of every ten in the country—who cook for their families?
In future, if there is any looking down, it will be done by the cooks, whose work is infinitely more elevating, refined, scientific and artistic than that of factory and shop girls, who, instead of enjoying the cooks' splendid opportunities for exercising their brains, their taste, and their inventive powers, are reduced to the level of mere machines by the deadly monotony of having to make so and so many dozen shirt-waists or paper boxes, or ruining their health by standing behind a counter, serving the same things, day after day and year after year, to customers most of whom look down on them as being of a lower social status.
That settles the foolish notion that American girls refuse to become cooks because they do not wish to lose social caste. Society women are no more addicted to inviting the girls who wait on them in stores to their banquets or teas than they are the girls who wait on them at home or preside over their kitchens.
Moreover, no mistress would dare to treat her cook so contemptuously, so insultingly, as shop girls and factory girls are often treated, or as chorus girls are treated habitually on the stage.
French supremacy is demonstrated in many ways, not the least of which is the recognition, generations ago, of the noble status of the cook, domestic or professional.
It may not be literally true that French girls read cookery-books with the avidity with which ours read novels, but certainly they are proud of their ability to cook savory dishes.
An article in the New York "Times" (February 11, 1912) on the most exclusive clubs in Paris, where the chefs receive the salaries of ambassadors, states that members "have obtained permission for their daughters—young women, belonging to well-known French families—to be present in the kitchen while the head cook is preparing dinner every afternoon. While the chef officiates in front of the huge furnace which stands in the center of the kitchen he is surrounded by a group of fashionably dressed young women, who follow all his movements with the greatest interest and listen eagerly to his explanations as he initiates them into the mysteries of his art."
The French cuisine is preëminent to-day because a century ago the daughters of the best French houses were taught to cook. And, as Anatole France has remarked, these girls knew that "there is no humiliation in washing dishes."
To be sure, dish washing, as done at present, is monotonous and hardly entertaining. But if we tried to avoid all things in this world that are monotonous and not entertaining, what would happen?