Mrs. P discharges her nursery maid for untruthfulness and gives her a recommendation testifying to her neatness, quickness, pleasant disposition, and fondness for children.
Mr. Q discharges his butler for incapacity, but in view of the fact that the latter has a widowed mother and an invalid sister dependent on him gives him an excellent recommendation.
Mr. R discharges his housekeeper “for infirmity of temper,” as he subsequently testifies in court, but gives her so excellent a recommendation that she believes she has been discharged for physical disability, and gives her testimony to this effect in the same lawsuit.
Mrs. S has a cook who drinks to excess one fourth of the time, but the latter has no fear of dismissal because three fourths of the time she cooks in a superior manner.
Mrs. T dislikes manual labor of every kind. Her servants therefore know that she will tolerate inefficient and incompetent service rather than be left for a single day without help.
Mr. U, the father of three young sons, has a coachman who swears like a trooper, but he retains him because Mrs. U considers him the most stylish coachman in the city.
Mrs. V applies to an employment bureau for a domestic and refuses six applicants because they are not “pretty” and “refined.” After finding one whose appearances are satisfactory, she parts with her because she is unwilling to black the gentlemen’s boots.
Mrs. W engages a woman to go out of town for service, the latter to wait a week before going and meantime to pay her own board. At the time agreed upon she reaches the employer’s house, to learn that the former “help” has decided to remain. She has thus lost a week’s board and wages and more than two dollars in going and returning to the city, and all of “her set” refuse to make engagements in the country.
The different economic, social, and moral questions connected with these various conditions, the illustrations of which could be multiplied indefinitely, may be, generally are, decided by each individual without reference to society at large. Wages are too often regulated by the employer’s bank account, hours of service by his caprice, and moral questions by his personal convenience. The employer is too often the autocrat in his own home. He considers that neither his neighbor nor the general public has any more concern in the business relations existing between himself and his domestic employees than it has in the price he pays for a dinner service or in the color and cut of his coat.