Other objections to domestic service in addition to those enumerated are sometimes made. Some of them arise from misconceptions,[280] others are trivial and do not demand consideration, while others are individual rather than general. These are the disadvantages that tell most strongly against the occupation. They do not include the element of ill-treatment by mistresses or their lack of consideration; or the fact that there is sometimes much in the tone and manner of an employer that is most irritating to a self-respecting person; or that there are occasionally employers who feel that they rise in the social scale in the same proportion that they make employees sensible of inferiority or dependence; or that many mistresses demand more than can be performed; or that some employers are unreasonable, others disagreeable, and still others petulant and fault-finding; or that some “expect perfection at twelve dollars a month and positive genius at thirteen.” These conditions are found, but they are not peculiar to domestic service; the disadvantages discussed are all independent of good or bad personal treatment, they may be modified by the character of the family to whom the service is rendered, but they cannot be removed by any individual employer acting alone, however much he has at heart the interests of his own employee or of domestic employees as a class.
In comparing the advantages and disadvantages of domestic service as an occupation it will be obvious that the advantages are numerous, substantial, and easily recognized; the disadvantages are many, but they are far more subtile, intangible, and far reaching. The advantages are those which the economic woman always sees and which take her from unhealthy tenement houses into country air and sunshine; from overcrowded occupations into one where the demand for workers is and always must be unlimited; from starvation wages to peace and plenty; from long hours of dreary mechanical toil to intelligent work; from failure in an uncongenial occupation to success and prosperity in this; from a life whose sufferings and privations, as yet but half told, have roused the sympathies of all social reformers, to a life of freedom from the sweater, the floor-walker, the officious and vulgar superintendent, the industrial Shylocks of every occupation, to a life of comparative ease and comfort. But while the economic woman, like the economic man, always sees these things, the actual woman looks at another side. She does not understand why work that society calls the most honorable a woman can do when done in her own home without remuneration, becomes demeaning when done in the house of another for a fixed compensation, but she recognizes the fact; she sees that discredit comes not from the work itself but from the conditions under which it is performed, and she does not willingly place herself in these conditions; she sees that a class line is always drawn as in no other occupation; she is willing and glad to pay her life for what seems to her life—excitement, city ways, society of home friends, personal independence which another might call slavery. She does not care for those advantages which another person points out; to her they count as nothing in comparison with the price she must pay for them. Of five hundred and forty employees of whom the question was asked, “Would you give up housework if you could find another occupation that would pay you as well?” one-half answered, “Yes.” Yet the number is very small of those who complain of ill-treatment or lack of consideration on the part of the employer. There is, indeed, often much ground for complaint on this score, but it must be seen that other relationships besides the personal ones are entered into when the relation of employer and employee is established. That which decides the question is not always the economic advantage, not always the personal treatment, but that subtile thing the woman calls life. “Wages, hours, health, and morals” may all weigh in the scale in favor of domestic service, but life outweighs them all. The advantages are such as lead many people to urge domestic service for the daughters of others, the disadvantages are such as incline them to choose any occupation but this for their own daughters.[281]
CHAPTER X
DOUBTFUL REMEDIES
The difficulties attending domestic service are so many and so pressing that a large number of measures intended to meet them have been proposed, all of them as varied as the personalities of those dealing with the problem. This difference of opinion in regard to the best methods of meeting the question is largely due to the fact that, not domestic service as an occupation, but domestic servants as individuals have been considered. It has also come from the fact that while the feudal castle of the Middle Ages has shrunk to the city apartment, the attempt is made to preserve intact the customs that had their origin in mediævalism and ought to have died with it, overlooking the fact that every other occupation has made at least some slight concession to economic progress. Moreover, it must be said that the purely ethical phases of the subject have been the ones most often kept in mind in discussing measures of relief. This ethical side of the question is indeed important, but it is largely based on the assumption that the relation between employer and employee is a purely personal one. Since the discussion of the question up to this point has been based on a different theory, namely, that other relations besides the personal ones are established when that of employer and employee is assumed, and that domestic service has been and is affected by political, economic, industrial, social, and educational questions, the present discussion of possible and impossible remedies in domestic service cannot take into consideration the purely ethical questions involved in the subject, but must deal with its other aspects.
Before attempting to answer the question of what can and what cannot be done, a few general principles deduced from the consideration of the subject up to this point must be indicated. First, since the evils are many and complicated no panacea can be found. The patent medicine that cures every physical ailment from consumption to chilblains is disappearing before the scientific studies of the day; it is quite as little to be recommended for economic and social maladies. Second, the remedy applied must have some relation to the nature of the disease. A sprained wrist will not yield to the treatment for dyspepsia, nor can rheumatism and deafness be cured by the same brown pills. The principle does not differ if moral remedies are administered for educational diseases and economic maladies are expected to succumb to social tonics. Third, reform in domestic service must be accomplished along the same general economic lines as are reforms in other great departments of labor—not at right angles to general industrial progress. Fourth, reform in domestic service must be the result of evolution from present conditions and tendencies—not a special creation. Fifth, no reform can be instituted which will remove to-morrow all difficulties that exist to-day. Domestic service cannot reach at a bound the goal towards which other forms of labor have been moving with halting steps.
These principles are simple and will perhaps be generally accepted. A few of the measures often suggested as affording means of relief may be tested by them.
It is the opinion of a very large class that all difficulties can be removed by the application of the golden rule. No belief is more widespread than this. But it rests wholly on the assumption that the relation between employer and employee is a personal one, and presupposes that if this personal relationship could be made an ideal one the question would settle itself. In so far as the connection between mistress and maid is a personal one, the golden rule is sufficient, but other factors are involved in the problem. The golden rule may be ever so perfectly observed, but that fact does not eliminate the competition of other industries where the golden rule may be observed with equal conscientiousness, nor does it remove the distasteful competition of American born employees with foreigners and negroes; it does not overcome the preference for city life or the love of personal independence; it is not always able to substitute intelligence, capability, interest, and economy for ignorance, inefficiency, indifference, and waste; the observance of the golden rule by the employer is not a guarantee that it will always be followed by the employee. For moral difficulties, moral remedies must be applied, but they will not always operate where the maladies are in their nature economic, social, and educational. The golden rule is a poultice that will relieve an inflammation but will not remove the cause of the evil—a tonic that will invigorate the system but which cannot be substituted for surgical treatment.
Another class of persons believes that the application of intelligence as well as of ethical principles is what is required of the employer. This position is best expressed by the correspondent of a leading journal who says: “The capable housekeeper is quite satisfied with the performance of her own domestic duties. If a true woman performs her whole duty, that which lies within her sphere of action, this everlasting cry of reform in domestic service would cease and in its place there would rise a more satisfied race of human beings.” But intelligence, capability, and the observance of all ethical principles must, like the golden rule, encounter the question of free Sundays and evenings after six o’clock, as well as that of the regularity of working hours and the possibility of promotion found in other occupations. No system ever has been or ever can be found that will enable a housekeeper to conduct a household satisfactorily on the instinct or the inspiration theory, to substitute sentiment for educated intelligence and for a knowledge of economic conditions outside of the individual home. The ostrich is said to cover its head in the sand and imagine that it is safe from capture; as well may the individual employer say, “I have settled the question for myself; it is sufficient and I am satisfied.”