Some parts of the household have already been put on a scientific basis. It is to-day protected from impure water-supply, from defective drainage, from poisonous foods, from contagious diseases, but not through the efforts of the household itself. These benefits it has reaped through the labors of scientific experts who, through unwearied investigation, have discovered the means of preventing certain large classes of diseases. Sanitary engineering and sanitary chemistry have become professions through the work of scientific investigators. When housekeepers, through scientific investigation, have made a profession of housekeeping, then, and not till then, will trained service in the household be possible.
It is very easy to see why progress in the household has up to this time been so slow, and why it has, for the most part, been made through forces exerted from without rather than from within. But the Chinese wall that has so long surrounded it is giving way, and the signs of the times point to another international exposition, when, side by side with Mrs. Gamp and the trained nurse, will be found Dora Copperfield and the new home,—the product of the trained minds of scientific investigators.
ECONOMICS AND ETHICS IN DOMESTIC SERVICE
The cynic observed yesterday that the interests of womankind were confined to the three D’s—Dress, Disease, and Domestics. To-day the bicycle has become a formidable competitor of dress and promises to do its part toward settling some of the disputed questions in regard to the rival it has partially supplanted. Biology is wrestling with disease, and bids fair to be the victor. Domestics still hold the field, but if business methods are introduced into the household, as it seems inevitable will be the case, the interests of women will have passed on and upward from the three D’s to the three B’s, and the cynic will be forced to turn his attention from woman to a more fruitful field.
It is not indeed strange that the old conception of household service should have yielded so slowly its place in the thoughts of women. The whole subject of economic theory of which it is but a part is itself a recent comer in the field of discussion; it was scarcely more than a century and a quarter ago that Adam Smith wrote his “Wealth of Nations” and gave a new direction to economic thought.
As a result of these economic studies of the present century something has already been done to improve industrial conditions outside of the household. They have led to improved factory legislation, to better relations between employer and employee, to wide discussion of the principles on which business is conducted, but what has been accomplished has been brought about through an unrest and an agitation that have often brought disaster in their train.