[295] It is the testimony of more than one employer that those domestics remain longest in a place and are most content who have a taste for sewing and reading. Those who are wholly dependent for pleasure on excitement and change form of necessity a restless class.
[296] The word “servant” has been used many times in this work, but it has seemed unavoidable in the absence of any other generally recognized term.
[297] It has been suggested that the word “homemaker” be applied to the mistress of the house and “housekeeper” to the employee; “working housekeeper” is often used of an efficient caretaker who does her work without direction; “domestic” and “house helper” seem wholly unobjectionable. It certainly is not necessary in abandoning one objectionable word to adopt another equally so. The Lynn, Massachusetts, papers, for example, advertise under “wants” for a “forelady in stitching room,” “a position as forewoman by a lady thoroughly familiar with all parts of shoe stitching,” “on millinery an experienced saleslady.” In other places one finds “a gentlewoman who desires employment at twenty-five cents an hour.” The public has much to answer for in the misuse of both “servant” and “lady.”
[298] Japanese Girls and Women, p. 304.
[299] Ante, [Chap. II.]
[300] This does not refer to ordinary baker’s bread, but to that made according to scientific principles, such as is sold at the New England Kitchen in Boston and by the Boston Health Food Company.
[301] A beginning in this direction has already been made in the case of vegetables canned for winter use. In the canning factories of Western New York an ingenious pea huller is in use which does away with much of the laborious process hitherto necessary. In a trial of speed it was recently found that one machine could shell twenty-eight bushels of peas in twenty minutes. In some of the largest cities the principle has been applied, and this vegetable is delivered ready for use; but such preparation should be made universal and all other vegetables added to the list.
[302] Cited by Bolles, p. 413.
[303] Bolles, p. 130.
[304] The Oriental Tea Company of Boston sends out coffee and guarantees it to maintain a temperature of 150° Fahrenheit for twenty-four hours. The experiment has been tried of sending it from Boston to St. Louis, with the result of maintaining a temperature of 148° at the end of three days.