Some of these and other reasons demand a more detailed explanation.

The first industrial disadvantage is the fact that there is little or no opportunity for promotion in the service nor are there opening out from it kindred occupations. An ambitious and capable seamstress becomes a dressmaker and mistress of a shop, a successful clerk sets up a small fancy store, the trained nurse by further study develops into a physician, the teacher becomes the head of a school; but there are no similar openings in household employments. Success means a slight increase in wages, possibly an easier place, or service in a more aristocratic neighborhood, but the differences are only slight ones of degree, never those of kind. “Once a cook, always a cook” may be applied in principle to every branch of the service. The only place where promotion is in any way possible is in hotel service.[258] Those women who would become the most efficient domestics are the ones who see most clearly this drawback to the occupation.[259]

The second disadvantage is the paradoxical one that it is possible for a capable woman to reach in this employment comparative perfection in a reasonably short time. Table service is a fine art which many waitresses never learn, but it is easily mastered by one who “mixes it with brains.” One illustration of this is the superior service given at summer resorts by college students without special training. The proper care of a room is understood by few maids, but the comprehension of a few simple principles enables an intelligent woman soon to become an expert. The work of a cook involves much more, but because many persons cook for years without learning how to provide a single palatable and nourishing dish, it does not follow that the art cannot be readily acquired. This fact taken in connection with the previous one unconsciously operates to prevent a large number of ambitious women from becoming domestics.

A third disadvantage is the fact that “housework is never done.” In no other occupation involving the same amount of intelligent work do the results seem so literally ephemeral. This indeed is not the true statement of the case—mistresses are learning slowly that cooking is a moral and scientific question, that neatness in caring for a room is a matter of hygiene, and that table service has æsthetic possibilities. But if it has taken long for the most intelligent part of society to understand that the results of housework are not transient, but as far-reaching in their effects as are the products of any other form of labor, it cannot be deemed strange that domestics as a class and those in other occupations complain “in housework there’s nothing to show for your work.”

A fourth disadvantage is the lack of organization in domestic work. The verdict from the standpoint of the statistician has been quoted.[260] A domestic employee sums up the question from her point of view when she says, “Most women like to follow one particular branch of industry, such as cooking, or chamber work, or laundry work, because it enables one to be thorough and experienced; but when these are combined, as a general thing the work is hard and never done.”

A fifth disadvantage is the irregularity of working hours. This is a most serious one, since the question is complicated not only by the irregularity that exists in every family, but also by the varying customs in different families. The actual working hours of a general servant may vary from one instance of five hours in Kansas to another of eighteen hours in Georgia. They sometimes vary in the same city from seven to seventeen hours. It is a difficult matter to ascertain with the utmost definiteness, but a careful examination of all statements made seems to show that the actual working hours are ten in the case of thirty-eight per cent of women employees, thirty-seven per cent averaging more than ten hours, and twenty-five per cent less than this. The working hours for men average somewhat longer than the hours for women, while there are slight differences in the various classes of servants; but they are of too indefinite a character to be specially noted. Table XIX will illustrate these points.

TABLE XIX
Actual Daily Working Hours

Occupation Number working Not answered Total Per cent working
10 hours 11 hours 12 hours Less than 10 hours More than 12 hours 10 hours 11 hours 12 hours Less than 10 hours More than 12 hours
Women
General servants 149 28 91 142 45 183 638 32.75 6.15 20.00 31.21 9.89
Second girls 29 6 26 40 21 52 174 23.77 4.92 21.31 32.79 17.21
Cooks and laundresses 25 7 21 21 26 42 142 25.00 7.00 21.00 21.00 26.00
Cooks 58 9 41 45 43 92 288 29.59 4.59 20.92 22.97 21.94
Laundresses 94 11 16 36 3 91 251 58.75 6.88 10.00 22.50 1.87
Chambermaids and waitresses 34 4 20 21 20 36 135 34.34 4.04 20.20 21.21 20.20
Chambermaids 23 3 10 17 6 37 96 38.98 5.09 16.95 28.81 10.17
Waitresses 46 3 2 7 10 39 107 67.65 4.41 2.94 10.29 14.71
Nurses 25 8 25 8 19 45 130 29.41 9.41 29.41 9.41 22.35
Seamstresses 57 2 4 26 18 107 64.04 2.25 4.50 29.21
Housekeepers 1 4 5
Total 540 81 256 364 193 639 2073 37.66 5.65 17.86 25.38 13.45
Men
Butlers 11 10 5 7 13 46 33.34 30.30 15.15 21.21
Coachmen and gardeners 31 8 26 20 10 35 130 32.63 8.42 27.37 21.05 10.53
Coachmen 27 4 18 5 10 48 112 42.19 6.25 28.13 7.81 15.62
Gardeners 52 6 12 23 8 25 126 51.49 5.94 11.88 22.27 7.92
Choremen 7 1 2 11 3 17 41 29.17 4.17 8.33 45.83 12.50
Cooks 7 3 3 1 3 17 50.00 21.43 21.43 7.14
Total 135 19 71 67 39 141 472 40.79 5.74 21.45 20.24 11.78