What eight million women want

by Rheta Childe Dorr

"One woman," writes Miss Kellor, "planned her new three-story house with the attic windows so high that no one could see out of them. When the architect remonstrated she said: 'Oh, those are for the maids; I don't expect them to spend their time looking out.'"

I remember a young girl who waited on table at a woman's hotel where I made my home. One morning I sent this girl for more cream for my coffee. She was gone some time and I spoke to her a little impatiently when she returned. She was silent for a moment, then she said: "Do you know that every time you send me to the pantry it means a walk of three and a half blocks? This dining-room and the kitchens and pantries are a block apart, and are separated by three flights of stairs. I have counted the distance there and back, and it is more than three blocks."

"But, Kittie," I said to her, "why do you work in a hotel, if it's like that? Why don't you take a place in a private family?"

"I've tried that," said the girl. "I had a place with the —— family," mentioning an historic name. "They had sickness in the family, and they stopped in town all summer. My room was up in the attic, with only a skylight for ventilation. During the day, except for the time I spent sitting on the area steps after nine o'clock, I was waiting on the cook in a hot kitchen. They let me out of the house once every two weeks. Here I have some freedom, at least."

I have told this story to dozens of domestics, many of them from homes of wealth, and they agree that it is a common case. It is very rare, these girls say, to find a mistress who is willing to allow her maids to leave the house except on their days out. They concede certain hours of rest, it is true, but those hours must be spent within doors. "Why, if you went out I should be sure to need you," is the usual explanation.

Imagine a factory girl or a stenographer being required to remain after hours on the chance of being needed for extra work.

There is an aspect to this phase of the servant question which is generally overlooked by employers. This is an isolation from human intercourse to be found in no other industry. When the household employs only one servant the isolation is absolute. The girl is marooned, within full sight of others' happy life. Even when kindness is her portion she is an outsider from the family circle. Important as her function is in the life of the household, she is socially the lowest unit in it.

During the course of a great strike of mill operatives in Fall River, Massachusetts, a few years ago, a considerable group of weaver and spinner girls were induced, by members of the Women's Trade Union League, to take up domestic service until the close of the strike. As the girls were in acute financial distress they agreed to try the experiment. These were mostly American or English girls, some of them above the average of intelligence and good sense.

Housework with its great variety of tasks made severe draughts on the strength of girls accustomed to using one set of muscles. The long hours and the confinement of domestic service affected nerves adjusted to a legal fifty-eight-hour week.

But the girls' real objection to housework was its loneliness. Hardly a single house in Boston, or the surrounding suburbs, where the girls found places, was provided with a servants' sitting room. There was absolutely no provision made for callers. For a servant is supposed not to have friends except on her days out. On those occasions she is assumed to meet her friends on the street.