“The question is very different now from what it was forty years ago.”
“The problem in this place grows more perplexing every year.”
“Many housekeepers here are between the Scylla and Charybdis of trying to tolerate wretched, inefficient servants, and the impossibility of getting along with them.”
[238] “In advertising recently for a general housework girl twelve answered the advertisement. Advertising the same week for my former servant, twenty-two ladies applied personally and twelve others wrote that a girl was wanted. Although I told each of the twenty-two that if the girl were even fair I would keep her myself, only two hesitated on that account to try to secure her.”
The report of a large employment bureau for the year 1889 is as follows:
| Number of employers registered | 1,512 |
| Number of employees registered | 1,541 |
| Number of employers supplied with servants | 1,366 |
| Number of employees supplied with situations | 1,375 |
The number of employees registered exceeds the number of employers, but many register who are incompetent to fill the position they seek, and therefore many employers are without servants. The bureau regrets “its inability at times to supply with competent help the large number of patrons.”
Another bureau reports 2,659 applications from employers, only 2,099 of which could be filled.
Still another bureau filling about three thousand positions annually reports that at times it has had six hundred applications from employers in excess of the number that could be filled with competent applicants for work.
The domestic employment bureau connected with the Boston Young Women’s Christian Association reports for the year ending 1890: