CHAPTER IX
THE SOCIAL DISADVANTAGES OF DOMESTIC SERVICE
The most serious disadvantage in domestic service that remains to be considered is the low social position the employment entails at the present time on those who enter it. This shows itself in various ways. The most noticeable is the lack of home privileges. It is true that the domestic employee receives board, lodging, protection, and many incidental privileges in the home of her employer; that these are as a rule better than she could provide for herself elsewhere, and much superior to those which can be secured by women working in shops and factories. But board and lodging do not constitute a home, and the domestic can never be a part of the family whose external life she shares. The case is well stated by an employee who writes:
“Ladies wonder how their girls can complain of loneliness in a house full of people, but oh! it is the worst kind of loneliness—their share is but the work of the house, they do not share in the pleasures and delights of a home. One must remember that there is a difference between a house, a place of shelter, and a home, a place where all your affections are centred. Real love exists between my employer and myself, yet at times I grow almost desperate from the sense of being cut off from those pleasures to which I had always been accustomed. I belong to the same church as my employer, yet have no share in the social life of the church.”
This appreciation of the difference between being in a family and being a part of it is in direct ratio to the delicacy and sensitiveness of the organization of the employee. An American who can be considered one of the family is the very one who most appreciates the difference between being one of the family and like one of the family. The differences which are most keenly felt are three. The first is the fact that a certain amount of regulation must always be exercised by the employer in regard to the number and character of visitors received by the employee. It is a matter of self-protection, and is sometimes due to the employee as well. It often does not differ in kind or in degree from the care exercised for the other members of the household. The necessity for it is recognized by the better class of employees.[267] Nevertheless the restraint is irksome, the desire for independence not always unreasonable, and the wish for a place in which to receive visitors not surprising.
Another deprivation is the lack of opportunity for receiving or showing in even a slight degree that hospitality which can be accepted and exercised in every other employment involving equal intelligence.[268] The domestic employee can neither accept nor give an invitation to supper; she cannot offer a cup of tea to a caller; she does not ask a friend to remain to dinner, except perhaps at rare intervals a mother or a sister. She has the privilege of using without limit for her own necessities the food purchased by her employer, but she cannot share it without transgressing this privilege. She cannot invite her friends for an afternoon tea to meet a friend from another place, or give a small dinner party or a chafing-dish supper. She can do none of these things the desire for which is so natural and which can be gratified in a small way in almost every other occupation. Even more than this, she is never a sharer in the general social life of the community.[269] She is precluded not by her character but by her condition from exercising those social privileges which are instinctive in all persons.
Another social barrier is the failure of society to recognize the need on the part of the employee of those opportunities for personal improvement so freely accorded to those in other occupations. If she has a taste for music or art she can cultivate it only at the expense of ridicule,[270] while her need of intellectual advantages in a similar way meets with no recognition.[271] If she is refined and cultivated, she must often associate with those who are coarse and ignorant.[272]
But the question of social standing goes farther than this. Not only are social advantages of every kind denied the domestic employee, but the badge of social inferiority is put upon her in characters as unchangeable as are the spots of a leopard. This badge assumes several different forms. The first is the use of the word “servant.”[273] We may prove from etymology that every person who confers a favor on another is his servant. We may present a lawyer’s brief showing to the satisfaction of every local and national court that every employee in the eye of the law is a servant. We may argue from the biblical standpoint and show without a flaw in our chain of reasoning that we are all servants of one another. We may point to the classification of occupations made by the national census bureau and show that clergymen, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and domestic servants are placed together. We may quote to every employee the proudly humble motto of the Prince of Wales, “Ich dien,” and the example of the Pope, who calls himself “the servant of the servants of the Lord.” We may by a social fiction subscribe ourselves a score of times each day, “Your most humble and obedient servant.” We may do all of these things, but just as long as common phraseology restricts the ordinary use of the word to those persons engaged in domestic employments for which they receive a fixed compensation, just so long will arguments prove of no avail and the word “servant” continue to be a mark of social degradation. The efforts of domestic employees to substitute the terms “maid” or “working housekeeper” have as yet in many quarters excited little more than ridicule.
A second mark of social inferiority is the use of the Christian name in address. It may seem a very trifling matter, yet the fact again remains that domestic employees are the only class of workers, except day laborers, who are thus addressed. The weight that is attached to the matter in other walks of life is seen in the policy of more than one well-known newspaper; a strong weapon of attack in encounter with opponents has been the reference by Christian name to those whom the writers wish to consign to political obscurity. In no way does advancement in age and dignity show itself sooner than in the substitution of the surname for the Christian name. The boy shows his sense of growing importance by dropping the Christian name in addressing his companions. In the eyes of the débutante the first card bearing the name “Miss Brown” throws into insignificance many other advantages of the new position. Probably few persons would choose to go through life addressed by even their most intimate friends, aside from kith and kin, as are the class of domestic employees. The use of the Christian name in address undoubtedly grew out of the close family relationship that existed between the employer and the employee, but it has become a badge of social inferiority since it is used alike by strangers and friends. Any person considers himself privileged to use the familiar address towards any employee simply by virtue of the employee’s position. Even more objectionable is the English custom, sometimes affected in America, of dropping the Christian name and using the surname without a title, since it implies social inferiority even more than the familiar address.[274]
A third badge of the position sometimes insisted on is the cap and apron. These are not worn, as are the cap and sleeves of the trained nurse, to indicate the completion of a regular course of scientific training; they are not the uniform of the postman or the policeman, which shows the recognition by national or municipal authorities of superior fitness for the position filled and carries with it somewhat of the prestige of the power the wearer serves; they represent necessarily no attainment on the part of the person wearing them, nor are they, as worn, always the object of laudable ambition. The cap and apron sometimes indicate the rise of the employer in the social scale rather than the professional advance of the employee. The wider the separation in any community between employer and employee, the greater is the tendency to insist on the cap and apron. The same principle is involved when coachmen are not permitted to wear beards and hotel and club waiters are required to sacrifice the moustache.