“When a native American girl goes out to housework she loses caste at once, and can hardly find pleasure in the foreign immigrants that form the majority of servants, and who make most of the trouble from their ignorance and preconceived notions of America.”—Employer.
[264] “The reason for dislike of housework is the want of liberty, and the submission which girls have to submit to when they have to comply with whatever rules a mistress may deem necessary. Therefore many girls go into mechanical pursuits, that some of their life may be their own.”
“Girls in housework are bossed too much.”
“There are too many mistresses in the house when the mother and grown-up daughters are all at home.”
“Most of us would like a little more independence, and to do our work as we please.”
“In housework you receive orders from half a dozen persons, in a shop or factory from but one.”
“A man doesn’t let his wife and daughters and sons interfere in the management of his mill or factory—why does a housekeeper let everybody in the house boss?”
[265] A description of domestic service in Japan is of value on this point. “From the steward of your household, to your jinrikisha man or groom, every servant in your establishment does what is right in his own eyes, and after the manner he thinks best. Mere blind obedience to orders is not regarded as a virtue in a Japanese servant; he must do his own thinking, and, if he cannot grasp the reason for your order, that order will not be carried out.” “Even in the treaty ports [Japanese attendants] have not resigned their right of private judgment, but, if faithful and honest, seek the best good of their employer, even if his best good involves disobedience of his orders.”—Alice M. Bacon, Japanese Girls and Women, pp. 299, 301.
F. R. Feudge, in How I Kept House by Proxy, quotes from her Chinese cook, who said that he could boast of forty years “of study and practice in his profession.” “I am always willing to be told what to do, but never how to execute the order—especially when in that department I happen to know far more than my teachers.”—Scribner’s Monthly, September, 1881.
[266] A shrewd young colored woman gives her version, verbally, of the servant question. She lays great stress on her own “bringin’ up,” as “she wa’n’t brung up by trash,” and thinks the average colored girl “only a nigger.” She prefers to live “at service,” but insists upon “high-toned” employers, and “can’t abide common folks.”