Yet this view of the subject does not diminish, it rather increases, individual responsibility. Sir James Stephen said, when civil-service reform was first agitated in England, that a moral revolution was necessary in that country before the reform sought could become an accomplished fact. For a reform in domestic service a moral revolution is everywhere needed, bringing with it to every person an appreciation of his responsibility to all connected with the employment, whether employer or employee.
Reforms begin at the top, revolutions at the bottom. It rests with the men and women of the so-called upper classes, whether raised to their position by birth, wealth, intellect, education, or opportunity, to work out in the best way a satisfactory solution of the vexed question of domestic service.
CHAPTER XVII
DOMESTIC SERVICE IN EUROPE
It is apparently a common belief in America that there are no difficulties in domestic service in Europe, as it is an equally common belief in Europe that the difficulties in domestic service are greater in America than in any other country.[333] The judgment in one case is as extreme as it is in the other. It is indeed as unsafe to make a generalization in regard to all the phases of domestic service in Europe as it is to make similar generalizations concerning all sections of America—different countries have their own peculiar problems to meet, and these vary in details as do the problems in different sections of America. Yet a careful examination of the question may lead to the conclusion that the differences in the condition of domestic service in Europe and in America are those of degree rather than those of fundamental principles; that the situation in Europe is modified rather than radically altered by the social and political conditions existing there; that as these conditions in Europe and in America become more alike even these external differences will disappear, and that an ideal form of domestic service exists as yet only in the castles of Spain.
Any consideration of domestic service as it is found in Europe to-day must frankly recognize at the outset that the social and political conditions that affect the question result on the one hand from tradition and long-established customs, and on the other from the social and political unrest that was born of the French Revolution. The past and the present, the present and the future, stability and unrest, blind obedience and personal freedom, aristocracy and democracy, have been and are perpetually at war with each other. Every political revolution that has widened the circle of democracy, every industrial movement that has affected large classes of workers, every modification of national ideals of education, every social change that has shifted the relations of classes to each other, every barrier between nations that has been broken down or that has been put up, has changed the problem of domestic service. In England the tendencies towards social aristocracy on the one hand and political democracy on the other, in Germany the trend towards the exaction of military obedience in every walk in life and the counter influences of the social democratic party, in France the deadening hand of bureaucracy and the opposing unrestrained passions of the multitude, in Italy the inherited prejudice against manual labor and the necessity of gaining a livelihood by means of it,—all these forces so diametrically opposed to each other, and so inevitably coming into collision, are but illustrations of conflicting forces that have entered and that must enter into the question. Political, industrial, educational, and social changes have made England a manufacturing nation, have made Germany one denominated by a military spirit and a military régime, have made Italy a land given over to petty industries, and have emphasized in France the tendency to seek official positions, no matter how small the salary involved, rather than embark on individual enterprises involving initiative. Some changes that have come within scarcely more than a hundred years have been peculiar to a single country, most of them have been shared by all, while not a few have affected America as well as Europe. The changes have often been wrought silently, but they have been none the less effective because they have come unnoticed and unrecognized alike by the employer and by the employed in domestic service.
On the other hand, domestic service is affected by many external conditions that are apparent to the most casual observer. These often vary in the different countries, and often explain in turn some of the conditions that differentiate domestic service in one European country from that in another, as well as domestic service in Europe as a whole from that in America. One illustration is found in the varying types of domestic architecture which grow out of the varying national ideals of home and of social life. The typical English dwelling, whether it is detached, semi-detached, or one of a series, is complete in itself and cut off from all communication with its neighbors. The huge French apartment house containing half a dozen or a dozen families, without an elevator and dominated by its concierge, has an artery in a common stairway leading from the loge of the concierge to the upper floor occupied by all of the domestics in the building. The small apartment house or detached house of the German is isolated, but it is in close proximity to a garden café. The lofty, cheerless, mediæval palace in which the Italian finds his abode is typical of the hardness of life for those serving and those served. These fundamental differences in the material construction of buildings must have an influence on the question of domestic service. Houses arranged perpendicularly as in England, or horizontally as in France and Germany, or located in the air as in Italy, carry with them their own peculiarities of service and of work. Countries where ice is not freely used, and apartment houses without places for storage, make inevitable the daily marketing and purchasing all supplies in small quantities; the delicatessen shop and the garden café simplify the question of the evening meal in Germany; the elimination of breakfast from the daily meals everywhere on the continent reduces to a minimum that problem in domestic service. The isolation of life in one country, the simplicity of life in another, the entire absence of hospitality in still another, all affect the question, sometimes rendering it more simple, sometimes more complex than in America.
Yet when everything has been said, the fact remains that in all essentials the state of domestic service is the same in Europe as in America. Employers on both sides of the Atlantic meet with the same serious difficulties in their efforts to secure competent household employees, and these difficulties find their explanation in precisely the same conditions. They have already been enumerated in the case of the American employer,[334] and the list tallies in every particular with the enumeration of those met by the employer in Europe. It is hard to secure the services of women in the household because they prefer work in factories where the hours of work are definitely prescribed and evenings and Sundays are free; because they prefer work in shops where their individual life is less under control than it is in the household of an employer; because they prefer service in hotels and in large pensions since these give opportunity for specialized work, a life of variety and excitement, and larger wages in the form of fees; because they prefer short engagements with large fees at summer resorts to permanent engagements with moderate wages in families; because the growing spirit of democracy rebels against the inferior social position accorded household employees, even to those whose work is rightly classed as skilled labor. Obtaining help is difficult in small villages because employees prefer the excitement of city life; on the other hand, employers in large cities must meet the competition of shops and factories.
In every country, it is true, there are districts where something of the old patriarchal relationship between master and servant still exists, where service in a household descends from parent to child, where democratic ideas have not penetrated, where, be it said, the railway, the telegraph, and the automobile are as yet unknown. In such districts the question of household service is a simple one. But each year, as these classes become more and more affected by new social and industrial conditions, the perplexities in domestic service increase. Moreover, it must be remembered that every period and every country has its legend of an antecedent time and of a mythical Utopia where ideal service for every one has always been found. These legends concerning service in Europe are entitled to no more credence than are similar legends in America—the time and the place where difficulties in domestic service are not and have not been known are as vanishing points of the compass.