Domestic service

by Lucy Maynard Salmon

These social barriers that now prevent so effectually the entrance into domestic service of intelligent, well-educated, capable, and efficient persons can all be swept away if employers as a class are willing to make the effort. This effort will involve in some cases the relinquishing of a favorite theory that employees can be made a part of the family with which they are externally connected and, instead of this, assisting them to live their own independent lives as citizens of the community in a normal, happy way. It will involve in other cases abandoning the assumption that domestic employees belong to a separate and obnoxious class in society and cannot be met as individuals on the same plane as are other persons of like attainments. It will involve in still other cases the sacrifice of that personal vanity that is gratified by the constant presence of those deemed to be of an inferior station. If employers are willing to yield all of the points now often unconsciously maintained by them in opposition to the teachings of political and industrial history, the social objections that now hold against domestic service as an employment will disappear. Sir Henry Sumner Maine has well said, “The true equality of mankind lies in the future, not in the past.” It is this true equality of the future, not the fictitious equality of the past, that must free domestic service from the social ill-repute it now bears.

CHAPTER XIII
POSSIBLE REMEDIES—SPECIALIZATION OF HOUSEHOLD EMPLOYMENTS

The efforts to remove the social stigma that now brands domestic service will not alone accomplish the desired result. Another means of lessening the difficulties in the modern household is to put all household employments on the same business basis as all employments outside of the household. The principles which lie at the foundation of modern business activities are division of labor and unconscious co-operation. This statement does not mean that both of these principles are carried out perfectly, but that industrial progress has been made and is being made along these lines, that the advance already made by household employments has been in the same direction, and that the reforms proposed for the household that diverge from these lines, however wise in themselves, cannot lead to the best results because they are out of the current of general progress.

In considering the historical phase of the subject, a long list of articles was suggested[299] which were formerly made within the household, but are now made out of the house both better and more cheaply than they could be made at home.

A list can be drawn up of other articles made out of the house, which if made in factories are inferior, and if purchased through the woman’s exchanges, though as well or even better prepared, are more expensive because the demand for such articles made in the homes of others has up to this time been limited. The articles in this transitional state are vegetable and fruit canning, the making of jellies, pickles, and preserves, the baking of bread, cake, and pastry, the preparation of soups, pressed meats, cold meats, ice-cream, and confectionery, condensed, sterilized, and evaporated milk, and the making of butter not yet abandoned in all rural homes. The transitional list also includes the making of underclothes for women and children, which can be made more cheaply out of the house but not always so well; and millinery and dressmaking, which can be done better but at greater expense. There is every indication that all the articles in this transitional state must soon be enumerated among those articles made both better and more cheaply out of the house than within.

A third list can be made of articles that are now seldom if ever manufactured out of the house but which can be made elsewhere. This list includes in the first place bread and cake of every description; it is possible by taking all of this work out of the house to save, considered in the aggregate both as regards the individual and the community, an enormous waste of time and fuel and at the same time to secure through the application of scientific principles articles often more uniform and superior in quality to what can be produced in the home.[300] A second class includes the preparation of all vegetables for cooking. It is not sentiment but economic principle that should release the human hand from performing this part of housework, more purely mechanical and more justly entitled to be called drudgery than any other work carried on in the house. A few years since coffee was roasted in every kitchen. If it has been found that an article requiring such delicate treatment as this can be prepared by business firms better than it can be in the household oven, there can be no serious obstacle in the way of delivering at the door all vegetables ready for cooking.[301] Compensation for the additional cost at first incurred would be found in the hygienic advantage of removing from many cellars the supply of winter vegetables. A third class of articles includes the preparation of all cold meats, half-cooked meats, as croquettes, all stuffed meats, as fowl and game, all “made” dishes, as salads and cold desserts, and the cooking of all articles which need only heating to make ready for use. The careful study of a large number of elaborate menus as well as of more simple bills of fare shows a very small proportion of articles which could not be made out of the house and sent in ready for use or requiring only the application of heat. The Aladdin oven constructed on scientific principles renders the cooking and heating of food a most simple matter. The sending of hot food to individual homes has in no case as far as can be learned proved a success, but the delivery of all articles ready for the final application of heat is possible through business enterprise and scientific experiment.

This partial, although not entire, solution of the problem of domestic service, by taking a large number of servants out of the house and by having a large part of the work now done by them in the house done elsewhere, is in direct line with the progress made in other occupations.

It was estimated by Mr. Gallatin in 1810[302] that two-thirds of the clothing worn in the United States was the product of family manufacturing—then in a flourishing state. During the twenty years following, a part of this family weaving and spinning was transferred to factories, and this transfer created the great factory industry. Its rapid growth was due to the fact that the power loom and the factory took the place of the hand loom and of home manufacturing. A similar change has taken place in the manufacture of cheese. Until about 1830 all cheese was made at home, and in 1860 not more than twenty cheese factories had been built.[303] After that time factories multiplied rapidly, until now practically all cheese is factory made. The demand for ready-made clothing for men was a generation ago very small. It grew out of a demand on the part of sailors, and was increased in large proportions at the time of the Civil War; the manufacture of such articles is now so firmly established in our industrial system that a return to the home system of manufacturing, even in the most isolated and primitive communities, would be as impossible as the revival of the spinning wheel. The demand for ready-made clothing for women is nearly as great and is annually increasing through the facilities offered by all large retail houses for shopping by mail. The tailoress and the maker of shirts have disappeared from the homes of their employers and have set up establishments of their own, or have become responsible to large business houses; the dressmaker and the seamstress are fast following in their footsteps, and the cook must set her face in the same direction.