Yet much is done to mitigate some of the hard features in the lot of the domestic servant. One of the interesting features in the condition of domestic service in Germany is the large number of benefactions organized for the benefit of domestic employees. There are everywhere homes for aged servants,[378] homes for servants out of work,[379] unions for providing servants with recreation,[380] and schools and homes where they are taught household employments.[381]
Yet when all has been said the fact remains that even in Germany the lot of a household employee is a hard one. “Servants hate a dull place worse than a hard one,” and when a place is both dull and hard it has indeed little to commend it. Women in Europe as in America enter domestic service by the line of least resistance, and this explains why in both countries so many are found in the occupation and why so many of these are incompetent in their work and unhappy in their lives.
In one important respect the condition of domestic service in Europe is immeasurably behind that in America. Even more than here domestic service and domestic servants are the targets at which are aimed the satire and the ridicule of literature and the press, and this is not counterbalanced by earnest study of the subject as is the case with us. The question is everywhere discussed in America, not because the difficulties here are greater than they are elsewhere, but because it is coming to be recognized as a part of the great labor problem of the day. If the future holds for us a solution of the problem, it is because we believe it is worthy of historical study and of scientific investigation, and in giving it this recognition we have put it on a higher plane than the one it as yet occupies in Europe.[382]
FOOTNOTES
[1] These schedules are given in [Appendix I].
[2] Partial discussions of the subject can be found in the First Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of Minnesota, pp. 131-196; First Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of Colorado, pp. 344-362; Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics of Kansas, pp. 281-326; Third Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the State of California, pp. 91-94; Fifth Biennial Report of the Department of Statistics, State of Indiana, pp. 173-229. The last is especially full and excellent.
[3] The total number of domestic servants is given as 1,454,791. This does not include launderers and laundresses, paid housekeepers in private families and hotels, or stewards and stewardesses. It excludes also the very large number of persons performing the same duties as domestic servants, but without receiving a fixed compensation.
[4] This estimate is based on the supposition that the average wages paid are $3.00 per week, and that two weeks’ vacation is given with loss of wages. Both of these are probably underestimates, as will be seen farther on. If the wages paid launderers and laundresses are included, and also the fees paid for hotel and restaurant service, $300,000,000 seems a fair estimate for the annual cash wages paid for domestic service.
[5] This estimate supposes the actual cost of board for each employee to be $3.00 per week, which is probably less than would be paid by each employee for table-board of the quality furnished by the employer. It excludes the cost of house-rent furnished, and also fuel and light, all of which are factors to be considered in computing the cost of service received.
[6] It is difficult to estimate the value of the materials of which domestic employees have the almost exclusive control. If the number of domestic servants and launderers and laundresses in private families, hotels, and restaurants is placed at 1,700,000, the number of employees in each family as two, and the number of persons in each family, including servants, as seven, it will be seen that at a rough estimate the food and laundried articles of clothing of six million persons pass through the hands of this class of employees. It was formerly a common saying, “a servant eats her wages, breaks her wages, and wastes her wages.” If this verdict of experience is taken as approximately true rather than as scientifically exact, it will be seen that the actual expense involved in domestic service is probably double that included under the items of wages and support.