| Orders registered | 2,120 |
| Orders filled | 1,753 |
[239] “Our committee have been greatly puzzled to know how to supply the constantly increasing demand for good and efficient workers in small households, where fair compensation is offered for moderate requirements. This demand is great in the city, but more so in the suburbs and country. It is very difficult to find a woman willing to take service in a family living out of sight of Boston Common. It is still more difficult to find any one who will go twenty miles into the country.”—Report of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, Boston, 1888, p. 29.
One employer in an inland city of twenty-five thousand inhabitants, who has a family of eight, and employs sixteen servants, writes: “It is impossible here to secure competent servants.”
Another employer, employing thirteen servants, in a city of twelve thousand, writes: “It is very difficult to secure servants, since women here prefer to work in the factories.”
One employer with seven servants and a family of two, in a large manufacturing city, says: “It is impossible to find well-trained employees.”
[240] “This is the first time this question has been put to me directly, and I frankly answer, Yes—to-morrow, if an opportunity were offered me. For years it has been my wish to find employment of some kind which would keep me from being a servant. Mrs. X has been very kind to me, and tried to find me other work; but, of course, a girl who has been in a kitchen for so long (thirteen years) is inexperienced in different work. Nevertheless, I have met girls who had no better education than I, and now hold high and respectable positions and make a fair living.”
A colored man, who has been a cook for forty years, replies with some caution: “I don’t know, unless the other work was in sight. Can’t say, unless somebody had done offered me another job, and I could look into it.”
[241] See articles by Mrs. Ellen W. Darwin, The Nineteenth Century, August, 1890; Miss Amy Bulley, Westminster Review, February, 1891; Miss Emily Faithful, North American Review, July, 1891; C. J. Rowe, Westminster Review, November, 1890, on the question in the Australian colonies.
“If things go on much longer in the present state, we shall have to introduce the American fashion, and live in huge human menageries.”—M. E. Braddon.
An admirable scientific presentation of the subject of domestic service in London is given by Charles Booth and Jesse Argyle in Life and Labour of the People in London, Vol. VIII.