Is it not time that we ceased to cherish such vulgar ideas?
War, tragic and terrible, is bringing home to us the fact that we should honour the women who can and will work, and despise those who exist merely as parasites on the labour of their fellow-beings.
The educated woman who desires to earn her living has a great chance before her. Let her do for the domestic worker what an earlier generation of women did for the sick-nurse. As domestic workers, educated women will be of incalculable value to the nation, and they can secure for themselves well-paid, healthy work under reformed conditions.
Domestic Training Colleges.
To bring about this change, first of all we need to establish domestic training colleges, run on somewhat the same lines as the Norland Nurses' Institute, where girls of good education may learn their work and obtain certificates and character sheets. These institutions should provide accommodation for members on holiday or when changing their situations. They should also demand for their members a fixed scale of wages, a reasonable standard of food and accommodation, and free time. The workers should wear the uniform of the institution. Well-trained girls could demand high wages, and employers could afford to give them to conscientious, capable workers, who would neither break nor spoil nor waste, and who would disdain to practise the small dishonesties by which the servant often augments her wages.
But if the educated woman worker is ready to do her part in the scheme, her prospective employer must realise that she, too, has a duty to perform. It rests with her so to arrange the work of her household that the positions she has to offer shall appear desirable to the class of woman she desires to employ.
What the Servant Dislikes.
To sum up the situation, the scarcity of domestic servants is accounted for by the dislike of girls who have to earn a living for a life which entails long hours, little freedom, and which carries with it something of social stigma.
The shop-girl, the clerk, the tea-room waitress are "young ladies."
They are known as Miss Jones or Miss Smith. The servant is a servant, a "slavey," a "skivvy," a "Mary Jane." A young man of the superior working class prefers to walk out with a young lady, and the servant knows this and resents it. Even if a girl goes into a factory, she may work harder than the servant and in many cases under less pleasant conditions, but she is free in the evening, on Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday, and she lives amongst her equals. She does not inhabit "servants' bedrooms," and eat "kitchen butter," and drink "kitchen tea." The tea that she does drink may be inferior, but at all events it is as good as that consumed by other members of her world.