These simple historical facts are one explanation of the unwillingness of American women to engage in work stigmatized by an offensive term applied to no other class of laborers.
In studying the question of domestic service, therefore, the fact cannot be overlooked that certain historical influences have affected its conditions; that political revolutions have changed its personnel, and industrial development its mobility. It is as impossible to dream of restoring the former condition of household service as it is of restoring former household employments, and neither is to be desired. In each case the question is one of preparing for the next step in the process of evolution, not of retrograding toward a condition impossible to restore. Any attempt to secure a change for the better in the present condition of domestic service must be ineffective if it does not take into consideration these historic aspects of the subject.
CHAPTER V
ECONOMIC PHASES OF DOMESTIC SERVICE[185]
The attempt has been made in the foregoing chapters to indicate the extent to which domestic employments and domestic service have been influenced by industrial and political events arising outside of the household, and apparently having little or no connection with it. That domestic service is amenable to some of the general economic laws and conditions which affect other occupations and that it is also governed by economic laws developed within itself will perhaps be evident from an examination of a few of these economic conditions and principles. These may be stated for the sake of brevity in the form of propositions.
The first group of propositions to be suggested concerns the number and distribution of persons of foreign birth engaged in domestic service.
(1) A large proportion of the domestic employees in the United States are of foreign birth. This is evident from the following table prepared from the schedules sent out:[186]
TABLE I
Place of Birth of Employees
| Person Reporting | Number | Per Cent | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Native born | Foreign born | Not given | Native born | Foreign born | Not given | |
| Employer | 922 | 1,212 | 411 | 36.23 | 47.62 | 16.15 |
| Employee | 324 | 395 | 45.06 | 54.94 | ||