Certain general principles have been suggested in accordance with which it seems reasonable to expect improvement in domestic service to be made. Of specific remedies, the first class to be suggested concerns the social degradation as yet entailed by the occupation. For the most part the oppressive conditions are the lack of all social and educational advantages, the use of an obnoxious epithet applied to the individuals of the class, the universal use of the familiar Christian name in address, the requirement of livery, enforced servility of manner, and the offering of fees to several large subdivisions of the class. Every one of these must seem a reasonable objection to one who can put himself in the place of another; they are among the weightiest arguments against entering the service; each one can be entirely removed, or so modified as to become unobjectionable. It is useless to look for any improvement in the character of domestic service until these oppressive conditions have been removed; but it is not vain to hope for an emancipation from them in time. The social ban has been removed from other occupations in which women have become wage earners—it has been removed from teaching,[294] the practice of medicine and law, and business industries—women can engage in all of these without fear of being ostracized. The relative social position of different occupations in which men engage has also changed. In colonial New England, the minister, not the lawyer, had the social precedence; in the Southern colonies the lawyer was an honored guest, while the chaplain of the plantation was a hireling who often married an indentured servant on the same plantation. Dentists, men “in trade,” brewers, and veterinary surgeons have in other localities all felt the lack of an assured place in society. Social barriers against both men and women are everywhere breaking down in the presence of high character, ability, education, and technical training; they will ultimately fall before men and women engaged in domestic service, who can bear these same tests of character, ability, education, and technical training.
In considering the specific social disadvantages, it must be conceded that the desire for greater social and intellectual opportunities is most reasonable. Mr. Higginson says in answer to the question, “Why do children dislike history?” “The father brings home to his little son, from the public library, the first volume of Hildreth’s United States, and says to him, ‘There, my son, is a book for you, and there are five more volumes just like it.’ He then goes back to his Sunday Herald, and his wife reverts to But Yet a Woman, or Mr. Isaacs.” The attitude of society towards social opportunities for domestic employees is much the same. Society demands the theatre, the opera, the parlor concert, the lecture, the dinner, the afternoon tea, the yacht race, the tennis match, the bicycle excursion, the coaching party, and expects the class lacking at present all resources within themselves to stay quietly at home and thus satisfy their desire for pleasure and intellectual opportunity. Country life sometimes proves lonely and distasteful to employers educated in the city. Is it less so to the employee lacking the opportunity for change enjoyed by others?[295]
Comparatively little can be done in the ordinary private home to meet these difficulties; but even if much could be done, it is at least an open question whether this would be the true remedy. In large establishments sitting-rooms can be provided for employees, but such establishments are few in number, and the fact that such rooms are in the home of another prevents that “good time,” the craving for which is so natural. Many employers are glad to give personal instruction evenings, but solitary instruction is even more defective for the domestic than it is for the children of the family. Enthusiasm must always come with numbers, and comparatively little can be done for employees through this means. But social opportunities and intellectual advantages can be provided, as has been done so successfully in the case of the employees of shops and factories. Social life everywhere tends towards clubs, societies, and organizations. Domestics can be encouraged to form clubs and societies through which parlors can be provided for social intercourse, and reading-rooms where intellectual needs will be met. If the domestic employee were taken from the home of the employer and encouraged to find for herself avenues of improvement and entertainment, her social condition would be greatly improved. She must be made to see that the reason why she does not rise to the social position to which she aspires, is not because her work is degrading, but because her conversation is often ungrammatical and lacking in interest, her dress sometimes untidy and devoid of taste, and her manner not always agreeable. She must do her part towards improving her social condition. It is true, that probably at first comparatively few domestics would avail themselves of such privileges, but just as long as social and intellectual advantages do not exist anywhere for this class, just so long will the intelligent and capable young woman most needed in this occupation shun it for others where such opportunities do exist.
The stumbling-block in the use of the word “servant” is easily removed. The exclusive application of this word to domestic employees must be abolished before the class most desired in the occupation will enter it. As has been done in every other occupation, a word like “employer” must be substituted for “master” and “mistress,”—terms associated only with a system of apprenticeship or slavery,—while “domestic,” “housekeeper,” or some other descriptive term must be used for “general servant,” the words “cook,” “waitress,” and “maid” being unobjectionable for other classes of service.[296] As a matter of fact the word as now used is inappropriate in characterizing the work expected of an efficient domestic employee. Division of labor has made her in reality, though not in position, not a menial, a drudge, a slave, but a co-operator in the work of the household. The cook who prepares the raw material for consumption is not more a servant than is the farmer who produces the raw material; indeed her work is justly considered skilled labor, while that of the agricultural laborer is often unskilled. The cook is the co-operator with her employer in the same sense as the farmer is a co-operator in the industrial system; and the term “servant” as indicating a menial applies to her as little as it does to him. New words are coined and pass into familiar usage in a short time, old words become obsolete, new meanings are given old terms, and it is possible in the course of a few years to substitute for the present objectionable usage of this word a term which will describe more definitely the duties of the position and at the same time remove one of the most serious obstacles in the way of improving the character of the occupation.[297]
The inferiority implied in the use of the Christian name in address is less clearly seen and less easily removed because its effects are more subtile. It may not be possible to attempt any immediate or general change, but a compromise is possible in giving the title to married men and women in domestic service, since marriage is supposed to carry with it added dignity. The Japanese custom of addressing one’s own employees by a familiar term, but the employees of another by a title of respect,[298] is also a possible compromise. It seems difficult to find weighty arguments in favor of refusing to a class of self-supporting men and women the title of respect accorded in all other occupations.
The cap and apron are in themselves not only unobjectionable, but they have certain very definite advantages. They are conducive to neatness and economy and moreover form a most becoming style of dress. The picturesque effect of both is appreciated by all young women who take part in public charitable entertainments, it was understood by the matrons of an earlier generation, and it has formed the theme of many letters written on foreign soil. No costume in itself could be more desirable or better adapted to the work of the wearers, and a more general rather than a more restricted use of this form of dress should be advocated on theoretical grounds. But the cap and apron as worn do not always indicate a desire on the part of the wearer for neatness, economy, and tasteful attire, nor always an appreciation of these things on the part of the employer. They are regarded as a traditional badge of servitude, and while so regarded it seems unwise to force them on those unwilling to wear them. Moreover the cap and apron while serving admirably their place within the house have no raison d’être out of doors; the cap affords no protection from heat, cold, or storms, and the apron is inappropriate for street wear. The cap and apron are appropriate and desirable in all places where they would be worn by the employer under the same circumstances, they are inappropriate elsewhere and hence out of taste. If employees as a class would recognize the many advantages of the costume within doors and adopt it universally, and if employers would accept its limitations out of doors and abandon the requirement of it there at all times, the vexed question of livery would seem to be answered.
The servility of manner demanded—at least in public—of all domestics is an anomaly in a country where there is no enforced recognition of social and political superiors. The price paid for it—high wages, poor service, constant change, household friction—seems a heavy one and the excuse for it small. As long as domestic service lacks the safety valve of personal independence and the outward expression of self-respect, just so long is there danger of too great repression and consequent explosion. No genuine reform in domestic service is possible while this theory of outward servility is enforced.
The most objectionable of all the manifestations of social inferiority—the feeing system—has its economic as well as its social side and will be considered by itself in the chapter on profit sharing in domestic service.