But what can I do?
Try putting all the laundry-work out of the house; take up the carpets, paint the floors, put down rugs and send these out of the house to be cleaned, or clean house with a vacuum cleaning-machine; reduce useless work and incidentally add to the attractiveness of your house by taking down portières and paying storage on half of the bric-à-brac; buy ice-cream and cake and all “extras” at the woman’s exchange. These additional expenses will materially reduce your subscriptions to half-orphan asylums and to vacation funds for the indigent. What if this course saves you from hotel existence and enables others to keep their homes intact and to pay for their own vacations?
Substitute praise for constant censure and the principle of coöperation for that of “giving orders;” see that the daily paper is on the kitchen-table before it is a week old and that the magazines are promptly supplied; encourage the singing-class, the flower-bed, basket-making, bead-work, in-door evening games, and out-of-doors recreation; at least make the effort to give in some form a new and wholesome interest to lives that may have been repressed and mentally starved. Friends may smile and call the plan quixotic. What if it encourages self-respect in the employee and therefore respect for his work?
Consider the kitchen with its accompanying rooms in the light of an economic plant. Give the same careful attention to its arrangement and equipment that the owner of a manufacturing establishment gives to the fitting-up of a new factory with all the latest labor-saving contrivances and facilities for work; study the plumbing and the water-supply with the zest of a scientific investigator and select the cooking- and baking-utensils with the interest of an artist. This course may curtail expenditures for the “den” and the relinquishment of the “cosy corner.” What if thereby your house and home gain in unity for employer as well as for employee?
Abandon the attempt to maintain a Waldorf-Astoria style of living on a fifteen-hundred-dollar salary; abandon it, if you have the income to maintain it, if in maintaining it you are putting temptation in the path of a weaker friend and neighbor. This may reduce your calling-list by two hundred names. What if you gain thereby peace of mind and a contented household?
Establish household settlements among the cottagers at Newport, in the vicinity of Central Park, on Riverside Drive, Commonwealth Avenue, Euclid Avenue, and the North Shore Drive. What if successful settlement work in these localities should enable the families of millionaires to bridge the impassable chasm that now separates the dining-room from the butler’s pantry and the reception-room from the linen-closet?
Will these temporary devices remove all friction in the running of my household machinery?
No, they will probably not even lessen it. But these and similar expedients may be of benefit to you, inasmuch as they may help you to carry out the commendable advice of Charles Reade, “Put yourself in his place.” They may also be of benefit to your granddaughter in enabling her to be a member of that ideal trades-union—that between employer and employee.