CHAPTER XVII

DOMESTIC SERVICE IN EUROPE

It is apparently a common belief in America that there are no difficulties in domestic service in Europe, as it is an equally common belief in Europe that the difficulties in domestic service are greater in America than in any other country.[333] The judgment in one case is as extreme as it is in the other. It is indeed as unsafe to make a generalization in regard to all the phases of domestic service in Europe as it is to make similar generalizations concerning all sections of America—different countries have their own peculiar problems to meet, and these vary in details as do the problems in different sections of America. Yet a careful examination of the question may lead to the conclusion that the differences in the condition of domestic service in Europe and in America are those of degree rather than those of fundamental principles; that the situation in Europe is modified rather than radically altered by the social and political conditions existing there; that as these conditions in Europe and in America become more alike even these external differences will disappear, and that an ideal form of domestic service exists as yet only in the castles of Spain.

Any consideration of domestic service as it is found in Europe to-day must frankly recognize at the outset that the social and political conditions that affect the question result on the one hand from tradition and long-established customs, and on the other from the social and political unrest that was born of the French Revolution. The past and the present, the present and the future, stability and unrest, blind obedience and personal freedom, aristocracy and democracy, have been and are perpetually at war with each other. Every political revolution that has widened the circle of democracy, every industrial movement that has affected large classes of workers, every modification of national ideals of education, every social change that has shifted the relations of classes to each other, every barrier between nations that has been broken down or that has been put up, has changed the problem of domestic service. In England the tendencies towards social aristocracy on the one hand and political democracy on the other, in Germany the trend towards the exaction of military obedience in every walk in life and the counter influences of the social democratic party, in France the deadening hand of bureaucracy and the opposing unrestrained passions of the multitude, in Italy the inherited prejudice against manual labor and the necessity of gaining a livelihood by means of it,—all these forces so diametrically opposed to each other, and so inevitably coming into collision, are but illustrations of conflicting forces that have entered and that must enter into the question. Political, industrial, educational, and social changes have made England a manufacturing nation, have made Germany one denominated by a military spirit and a military régime, have made Italy a land given over to petty industries, and have emphasized in France the tendency to seek official positions, no matter how small the salary involved, rather than embark on individual enterprises involving initiative. Some changes that have come within scarcely more than a hundred years have been peculiar to a single country, most of them have been shared by all, while not a few have affected America as well as Europe. The changes have often been wrought silently, but they have been none the less effective because they have come unnoticed and unrecognized alike by the employer and by the employed in domestic service.

On the other hand, domestic service is affected by many external conditions that are apparent to the most casual observer. These often vary in the different countries, and often explain in turn some of the conditions that differentiate domestic service in one European country from that in another, as well as domestic service in Europe as a whole from that in America. One illustration is found in the varying types of domestic architecture which grow out of the varying national ideals of home and of social life. The typical English dwelling, whether it is detached, semi-detached, or one of a series, is complete in itself and cut off from all communication with its neighbors. The huge French apartment house containing half a dozen or a dozen families, without an elevator and dominated by its concierge, has an artery in a common stairway leading from the _loge_ of the concierge to the upper floor occupied by all of the domestics in the building. The small apartment house or detached house of the German is isolated, but it is in close proximity to a garden café. The lofty, cheerless, mediæval palace in which the Italian finds his abode is typical of the hardness of life for those serving and those served. These fundamental differences in the material construction of buildings must have an influence on the question of domestic service. Houses arranged perpendicularly as in England, or horizontally as in France and Germany, or located in the air as in Italy, carry with them their own peculiarities of service and of work. Countries where ice is not freely used, and apartment houses without places for storage, make inevitable the daily marketing and purchasing all supplies in small quantities; the delicatessen shop and the garden café simplify the question of the evening meal in Germany; the elimination of breakfast from the daily meals everywhere on the continent reduces to a minimum that problem in domestic service. The isolation of life in one country, the simplicity of life in another, the entire absence of hospitality in still another, all affect the question, sometimes rendering it more simple, sometimes more complex than in America.

Yet when everything has been said, the fact remains that in all essentials the state of domestic service is the same in Europe as in America. Employers on both sides of the Atlantic meet with the same serious difficulties in their efforts to secure competent household employees, and these difficulties find their explanation in precisely the same conditions. They have already been enumerated in the case of the American employer,[334] and the list tallies in every particular with the enumeration of those met by the employer in Europe. It is hard to secure the services of women in the household because they prefer work in factories where the hours of work are definitely prescribed and evenings and Sundays are free; because they prefer work in shops where their individual life is less under control than it is in the household of an employer; because they prefer service in hotels and in large pensions since these give opportunity for specialized work, a life of variety and excitement, and larger wages in the form of fees; because they prefer short engagements with large fees at summer resorts to permanent engagements with moderate wages in families; because the growing spirit of democracy rebels against the inferior social position accorded household employees, even to those whose work is rightly classed as skilled labor. Obtaining help is difficult in small villages because employees prefer the excitement of city life; on the other hand, employers in large cities must meet the competition of shops and factories.

In every country, it is true, there are districts where something of the old patriarchal relationship between master and servant still exists, where service in a household descends from parent to child, where democratic ideas have not penetrated, where, be it said, the railway, the telegraph, and the automobile are as yet unknown. In such districts the question of household service is a simple one. But each year, as these classes become more and more affected by new social and industrial conditions, the perplexities in domestic service increase. Moreover, it must be remembered that every period and every country has its legend of an antecedent time and of a mythical Utopia where ideal service for every one has always been found. These legends concerning service in Europe are entitled to no more credence than are similar legends in America—the time and the place where difficulties in domestic service are not and have not been known are as vanishing points of the compass.

There are, however, certain variations of the problem in Europe and these must be considered.

The European employer of domestic labor is at a distinct advantage in comparison with the employer of such labor in America in that little or no baking is done in the individual household, and washing as a rule is done out of the house,[335] or if done in it, is often made a serious matter like the semi-annual housecleaning,[336] while the continental breakfast of coffee and rolls practically reduces the first meal of the day to a negative quantity.

It is indeed an open question whether the simplification of household work thus secured is not more than counterbalanced by the lack of modern conveniences for doing housework, by the absence of any system of uniform heating and the consequent necessity of carrying fuel to every room that is to be warmed, by the absence of elevators and the hard work thereby entailed on employer and employee alike, and by the necessity apparently encumbent on every member of many households of crocheting endless yards of trimming, working on canvas, and storing away for future use countless piles of household linen. But these are at least variations from our own problem, and both employer and employee in Europe have certain advantages in their work even if these are counterbalanced by corresponding disadvantages.

The employer in Europe, especially in Germany, is at an advantage in being able, indeed often compelled by law, to make a contract specifying the term of service for which the employee is engaged. In Germany[337] contracts are usually made in the city by the quarter, in the country by the year. If the contract is made by the quarter, notice of a change on either side must be given six weeks in advance; if made by the year, three months’ notice must be given; where the contract is made for only a month, notice must be given fourteen days in advance; in all cases notice must be given before twelve o’clock at noon.[338] If an employee is dismissed without due notice before the expiration of the contract, the employer must pay wages and board for the remainder of the time.[339] If an employee leaves without giving the legal notice, he can be brought back by the police and be also subject to fine and imprisonment.[340] Again, it is impossible for a person to engage a servant while in the employ of another without the knowledge and consent of the latter, while any one who entices a servant away from his place is subject to fine and imprisonment.[341]

It must be said, however, that there is another side to the contract. If it protects the employer in reducing to a minimum the chances of his being left without a servant, it also makes his life a burden during the long period that intervenes between the notice and the time when it takes effect. The service given by a servant during this time becomes absolutely perfunctory, while the personal relations become so strained as to render the situation almost intolerable. The temptation besets the housekeeper to “rather bear those ills she has than fly to others that she knows not of,” and thus she often encourages poor work by tolerating it, because she is unwilling to give the necessary notice, endure the still poorer service after it has been given, and in the end incur the risk of getting another servant no more efficient than her predecessor.

Yet undoubtedly this extreme form of government supervision in Germany is successful there. The police officials administer many a wholesome rebuke to both parties to the contract. If an employer is in the habit of changing servants often, that fact is known to the police through the service books and the notifications of change that every employer must make. When, therefore, such an one complains to the police that his servant is impertinent or remiss in some way where he wishes legal redress, the officer will probably advise him not to make the attempt. “You had better not say anything about this, every one knows that you cannot keep a servant long.”[342] If an employee makes too frequent complaint of ill usage at the hands of his employer, he will probably be dismissed with a reprimand for his own shortcomings.

One form of government supervision that has been specially commended in other countries is the German service book. This represents the most complete safeguard that has been devised to protect employers from imposition on the one hand and, on the other, to assist employees in securing places. Every person before going into domestic service must obtain from the police one of these books. A blank page is filled out by the police, giving a description of the person about to enter service. When the first engagement is made, the name of the employer and the date of beginning service are entered in the book and it receives the official stamp. When an employee leaves a place, the date with the reason for leaving and a statement in regard to the character and efficiency of the servant must be entered in the book by the employer and the book then returned to the police. No domestic employee can secure a position in Germany without one of these service books—it is a passport that must be viséd by the government officials and previous employers before he can enter or leave a position, and no passport regulations in any country are more stringent than are these service-book requirements in Germany. It would seem, therefore, that this public statement concerning an employee and the official recognition of it by the police authorities ought to be an unimpeachable recommendation. That this is not the case, however, seems to be the all but universal testimony. The service book is of value in weeding out inefficient employees, whose inefficiency, however, would often be self-evident without the aid of a service book. It is not only true that in this, as in every other form of recommendation, the mistress is anxious to say the best thing possible for a maid to help her in securing another place, but the law compels an employer to go still farther and to say nothing that will prevent an employee from finding employment. If an employer suspects the honesty of an employee, he is not free to state that suspicion in the service book; if he has positive proof of his dishonesty, he must enter legal complaint against the employee; if he has no such evidence, he must not even hint at his suspicions. Moreover, the law goes yet one step farther and compels every employer to believe an employee innocent in every respect until he is proved guilty. Not only is he not free to say that he suspects the honesty of an employee, or to leave out the word “honest,” but he must state positively that the employee _is_ honest.[343] This policy is justified on the ground that it is a necessary protection to the weaker class, but it of necessity impairs the absolute reliability of the testimonials given, and it lessens materially the value of the service book as far as it concerns the employer. Even in Germany with the aid of the strong arm of the law it seems as impossible as it is in other countries to devise any system of recommendations that will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and that will at the same time satisfy the desire of an employer to secure a place for an employee he can himself no longer tolerate and also the claims of an employee to the right to turn a fresh page and try once more to give satisfaction to a new employer. The recommendations of the previous employers of would-be employees must be discounted in Germany as well as in America.

This government regulation of domestic service in Germany is acquiesced in because government regulation extends to other industries and because obedience is man’s first law throughout the empire. In so far as the conditions can be reached by law this regulation seems to be successful. But there are many factors in the problem that cannot be so reached,—infirmities of temper, the visiting soldier, the preference for an easy place, the desire for city life. Here the German housekeeper must depend on her own resources, and her problem is the same as that in every other country.

Another advantage domestic service in Europe has over service in America lies in the large number of men engaged in the employment.[344] The reasons for this are not indeed perhaps directly apparent. But domestic service as an occupation for men must command a higher respect in Europe than in America for two reasons: first, the competition with those belonging to a foreign, or to a so-called inferior race is reduced to a minimum.[345] Household service is performed in France by Frenchmen, in Italy by Italians, and in Germany by Germans. In England it is given in part by Englishmen, but also to a great extent by foreigners, and the invasion of the occupation by those not English by birth may be one explanation why the occupation is falling into ill repute among native-born Englishmen. That the service is better performed by the foreigner than it is by the Englishman explains why employers seek the services of the former rather than those of the latter,[346] and perhaps incidentally why the native-born servant so readily leaves the field to his rival.

Another explanation why domestic service as an occupation for men commands a higher respect in Europe lies in the relatively higher qualifications that men must have. Not only must a man in domestic service have the same qualifications as would be demanded of him in the same occupation here, but he must be able to speak from one to half a dozen languages in addition to his own.[347] Domestic service is for men an occupation, and they make preparation for it as for any other technical trade. They must spend from one to two years in other countries learning the language[348] in order to increase their market value; the position they can command and the wages they can earn depend, other things being equal, on the amount of capital they have invested in themselves. The social restrictions placed on women prevent their going from one country to another in a similar way, and thus men, for this and other reasons, command everywhere the best places, and they probably occupy a relatively higher social position than do men in the same occupation in America.

From the standpoint of the employer one advantage domestic service in Europe has, is that it apparently costs less than it does in America. The money wages paid domestic employees are nominally much lower than in America, apparently ranging from about three dollars a month for an ordinary housemaid to eight dollars a month for an excellent cook,[349] in addition to board and lodging.[350] But these wages are supplemented in a score of ways. A present in money of from five to eight dollars is often given at Christmas or New Year’s, another is given at Easter, and a third on birthdays,[351] while at all times the temper of the cook must be propitiated with gifts of clothing and the housemaid remembered in a similar way.[352] Not only are members of the family expected to make these additions to the nominal wages given, but guests and transient visitors pay similar tribute.[353] Moreover, the butcher, the baker, and the candlestickmaker all increase the monthly stipend of servants by frequent fees given in return for trade secured through them,[354] while no inconsiderable part of the wages received—or taken—comes in the form of profits,[355] perquisites and “gratifications.”[356] Still another factor must be added, the daily allowance for wine or beer, or its money equivalent.[357] In France, according to Weber, men-servants are paid while performing military service,—“it is an act of patriotism and of social solidarity.”[358] In Germany girls in the country sometimes receive part of their wages in the use granted of a small piece of land where they can raise flax. This they spin, weave, and sell, adding thus something to their wages. Compulsory insurance in Germany and in Belgium materially increases the cash wages paid by the employer.[359] It is thus extremely difficult to state with even approximate exactness the amount of wages received by domestics in Europe, since the total amount is affected to such an extent by the variable factors of fees and outside perquisites.[360] It is still more difficult to compute the variations that wages have undergone from a past to the present time.[361]

That the cost of domestic service is in many places in excess of what it should be is indicated by the growing custom among certain classes of employers of demanding as their right a percentage of the fees received,[362] and the protests, as yet unavailing, on the part of the public against the exactions of these fees by either employer or employee.[363] It seems not unreasonable to conclude, in view of all the various ways by which wages are augmented, that they are in reality much greater than their face value indicates, and in many parts of the service greatly in advance of wages in other corresponding occupations.

The question naturally arises whether the value of the service rendered is commensurate with its cost, but it is a question that must remain unanswered in default of any common standard by which service can be gauged.[364] Figaro has answered the question theoretically in the other question put to Count Almaviva, “Measured by the virtues demanded of a servant, does your excellency know many masters worthy of being valets?”[365]

But the wage received sums up as little in Europe as it does in America the subject of domestic service. Even good wages do not altogether compensate for long hours of service,[366] hardness of work[367] and of life,[368] and entire lack of social intercourse.

It is undeniable that the social conditions that surround domestic servants in Europe are harder than in America. They are the survivals of the condition of serfdom, as this was in turn the survival of a preëxisting state of slavery.[369] Literature everywhere testifies to the social chasm that has at all times existed between master and slave, master and servant, mistress and maid, and employer and employee, as it also does to the manifold imperfections of both parties to the domestic contract,[370] while on the stage as well as in the daily press it has been the domestic servant who has always been made the butt of jest and ridicule.[371] “Now, as before and during the Revolution,” says M. Salomon, tersely, “it (the occupation) remains under the ban of society; customs are not changed with laws.”[372] It is true that the domestic servant is often apparently unconscious of the existence of this social ban, and that even when he is conscious of it, he acquiesces in it and accepts it as a part of the social order that he cannot and perhaps would not change, yet this unconsciousness of it does not alter the fact of its existence.

The social disadvantages of domestic service show themselves under the same guise as in America, though often in a much more exaggerated form. In England the existence of a tax on men-servants puts at once a social chasm between the master who pays a tax on luxuries and the servant who is an outward manifestation of that luxury, while the servility of manner that an American finds so exasperating in an English servant is encouraged and even demanded as the birthright inheritance of a well-born Englishman.[373] The servants in their turn enforce among themselves similar social distinctions and the recognition by their fellows of the various grades of social superiority or inferiority[374]—a condition that has its origin partly in a desire to imitate the customs and manners of those above them in the social scale,[375] and partly in the extreme specialization of every form of household work and the resulting inflexibility of all parts of it.[376] It follows that in England “domestic service provides no general bond—perhaps, indeed, rather accentuates class indifferences,” and that, as an occupation, for this and other reasons, “domestic service, though lucrative and in many ways luxurious, is not popular.”[377]

In France, while the relations between employer and employee are much more democratic than in England, the social stigma is put on the household servant, in part because of the traditional character given servants in French literature, in part because the construction of the French apartment house places the rooms of all the servants in the mansard story and thus draws a line of social demarkation between those served and those serving, in part because of the bureaucratic character of society.

In Italy, domestic servants have apparently no social life whatever. This is partially explained by the long hours of work that leave them no opportunity for it; it is in part because women servants never go out in the evening, receive no callers, and are, as it is often explained, “really servants,” in the sense of having no social ambitions; and it is also because manual work in every form is considered degrading, and those who engage in it are under the social ban—a condition that is apparently accepted without outward protest.

Yet much is done to mitigate some of the hard features in the lot of the domestic servant. One of the interesting features in the condition of domestic service in Germany is the large number of benefactions organized for the benefit of domestic employees. There are everywhere homes for aged servants,[378] homes for servants out of work,[379] unions for providing servants with recreation,[380] and schools and homes where they are taught household employments.[381]

Yet when all has been said the fact remains that even in Germany the lot of a household employee is a hard one. “Servants hate a dull place worse than a hard one,” and when a place is both dull and hard it has indeed little to commend it. Women in Europe as in America enter domestic service by the line of least resistance, and this explains why in both countries so many are found in the occupation and why so many of these are incompetent in their work and unhappy in their lives.

In one important respect the condition of domestic service in Europe is immeasurably behind that in America. Even more than here domestic service and domestic servants are the targets at which are aimed the satire and the ridicule of literature and the press, and this is not counterbalanced by earnest study of the subject as is the case with us. The question is everywhere discussed in America, not because the difficulties here are greater than they are elsewhere, but because it is coming to be recognized as a part of the great labor problem of the day. If the future holds for us a solution of the problem, it is because we believe it is worthy of historical study and of scientific investigation, and in giving it this recognition we have put it on a higher plane than the one it as yet occupies in Europe.[382]

FOOTNOTES

[1] These schedules are given in Appendix I.

[2] Partial discussions of the subject can be found in the _First Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of Minnesota_, pp. 131-196; _First Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of Colorado_, pp. 344-362; _Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics of Kansas_, pp. 281-326; _Third Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the State of California_, pp. 91-94; _Fifth Biennial Report of the Department of Statistics, State of Indiana_, pp. 173-229. The last is especially full and excellent.

[3] The total number of domestic servants is given as 1,454,791. This does not include launderers and laundresses, paid housekeepers in private families and hotels, or stewards and stewardesses. It excludes also the very large number of persons performing the same duties as domestic servants, but without receiving a fixed compensation.

[4] This estimate is based on the supposition that the average wages paid are $3.00 per week, and that two weeks’ vacation is given with loss of wages. Both of these are probably underestimates, as will be seen farther on. If the wages paid launderers and laundresses are included, and also the fees paid for hotel and restaurant service, $300,000,000 seems a fair estimate for the annual cash wages paid for domestic service.

[5] This estimate supposes the actual cost of board for each employee to be $3.00 per week, which is probably less than would be paid by each employee for table-board of the quality furnished by the employer. It excludes the cost of house-rent furnished, and also fuel and light, all of which are factors to be considered in computing the cost of service received.

[6] It is difficult to estimate the value of the materials of which domestic employees have the almost exclusive control. If the number of domestic servants and launderers and laundresses in private families, hotels, and restaurants is placed at 1,700,000, the number of employees in each family as two, and the number of persons in each family, including servants, as seven, it will be seen that at a rough estimate the food and laundried articles of clothing of six million persons pass through the hands of this class of employees. It was formerly a common saying, “a servant eats her wages, breaks her wages, and wastes her wages.” If this verdict of experience is taken as approximately true rather than as scientifically exact, it will be seen that the actual expense involved in domestic service is probably double that included under the items of wages and support.

[7] _The Factory System_, Tenth Census, II., 533-537.

[8] A. E. Kennelly, “Electricity in the Household,” _Scribner’s Magazine_, January, 1890; E. M. H. Merrill, “Electricity in the Kitchen,” _American Kitchen Magazine_, November, 1895.

[9] In Massachusetts, in 1885, the number of women employed in manufacturing industries exceeded the number of men in eight towns. These were Dalton, Dudley, Easthampton, Hingham, Ipswich, Lowell, Tisbury, and Upton. _Census of Massachusetts_, II., 176-187.

A weaver in Lawrence, Massachusetts, reported in 1882: “One of the evils existing in this city is the gradual extinction of the male operative.” _Fall River, Lowell, and Lawrence_, p. 10. Reprinted from _Thirteenth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor_, p. 202.

In Massachusetts, in 1875, women predominated in fifteen occupations, eleven of them manufacturing industries. In 1885 there were also fifteen occupations in which women exceeded men in numbers, twelve of them manufacturing. These were manufacturers of buttons and dress-trimmings, carpetings, clothing, cotton goods, fancy articles, hair work, hosiery and knit goods, linen, mixed textiles, silk and silk goods, straw and palm-leaf goods, and worsted goods. _Report of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor_, 1889, pp. 556-557.

[10] George Eliot in _Felix Holt_ speaks of Mrs. Transome as engaged in “a little daily embroidery—that soothing occupation of taking stitches to produce what neither she nor any one else wanted was then the resource of many a well-born and unhappy woman.”

[11] Eddis, p. 63.

[12] DeFoe, _Moll Flanders_, _Colonel Jack_; Mrs. Alpha Behn, _The Widow Ranter_.

[13] Sir Joshua Child, pp. 183-184.

[14] Charles Davenant, II., 3. Velasco, the minister of Spain to England, writes to Philip III. from London, March 22, 1611: “Their principal reason for colonizing these parts is to give an outlet to so many idle and wretched people as they have in England, and thus to prevent the dangers that might be feared from them.” Brown, p. 456.

[15] Force, _Tracts_, I., 19.

[16] _Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, 1661-1668._ Abstracts 101, 772, 791, 858. An admirable discussion of “British Convicts Shipped to American Colonies,” by James D. Butler, is found in _The American Historical Review_, October, 1896.

[17] Eddis says, p. 66, that Maryland was the only colony where convicts were freely imported; but Virginia seems to have shared equally in the importation.

[18] In Pennsylvania and Virginia transported criminals were so numerous that laws were passed to prevent their importation.

[19] William Smith, _History of the Province of New York from its Discovery to the Appointment of Governor Colden in 1762_, pp. 207-210. John Watson, pp. 485-486, quotes from contemporaneous writers in opposition to the practice in Pennsylvania, _circa_ 1750; Hening, II., 509-511.

[20] “It is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of people and wicked, condemned men, to be the people with whom you plant; and not only so, but it spoileth the plantation; for they ever live like rogues, and not fall to work; but be lazy, and do mischief, and spend victuals, and be quickly weary, and then certify over to their country to the discredit of the plantation.” Bacon, _Essays_, _Of Plantations_.

[21] Bruce, I., 606, says that the order of the General Court of Virginia prohibiting the introduction of English criminals after January 20, 1671 (Hening, II., 509-511), was confirmed by a royal order announcing that the importation of Newgate criminals was to cease, and that this rule was to apply to all the Colonies. But the frequent protests against the practice found in other Colonies at a much later date would seem to show that it could not have been generally observed.

[22] Eddis, pp. 71-75.

[23] _Ibid._, pp. 69-71.

[24] Berkeley’s Report, Hening, II., 515. Brantly, in Winsor, III., 545.

[25] “In the year 1730 ... Colonel Josiah Willard was invited to view some transports who had just landed from Ireland. My uncle spied a boy of some vivacity, of about ten years of age, and who was the only one in the crew who spoke English. He bargained for him.”—“Mrs. Johnson’s Captivity” in _Indian Narratives_, p. 130.

[26] Hildreth, III., 395.

[27] Samuel Breck writes under date of August 1, 1817, “I went on board the ship John from Amsterdam, ... and I purchased one German Swiss for Mrs. Ross and two French Swiss for myself.” _Recollections_, pp. 296-297.

[28] _Winthrop Papers_, Pt. VI., p. 387, note.

[29] Barber, _Connecticut Collections_, p. 166.

[30] Scharf, p. 209.

[31] Some improvement was soon seen in Virginia. “There haue beene sent thither this last yeare, and are now presently in going, twelue hundred persons and vpward, and there are neere one thousand more remaining of those that were gone before. The men lately sent, haue beene most of them choise men, borne and bred vp to labour and industry.” _Declaration of the State of the Colonie and Affairs in Virginia_, 1620. Force, III., 5. Hammond in _Leah and Rachel_, p. 7, also speaks of the improvement.

[32] A well-known case was that of Thomas, son of Sir Edward Verney, who at the age of nineteen wished to marry some one of lower rank than himself. He was sent to Virginia to prevent the marriage, not, however, as himself a servant. _Verney Papers, Camden Society Publications_, vol. 56, pp. 160-162.

A niece of Daniel DeFoe is said to have been sent to America as a redemptioner for the same reason.

The Sot-Weed Factor says of a maid in a Maryland inn,

“Kidnap’d and Fool’d, I hither fled, To shun a hated Nuptial Bed, And to my cost already find, Worse Plagues than those I left behind.

These are the general Excuses made by _English_ Women, which are sold or sell themselves to _Mary-land_.” p. 7.

[33] James Annesley when twelve years old was transported to Pennsylvania. His father died soon after, and his uncle succeeded to the peerage. The boy was sold to a planter in Newcastle County, but his title to the peerage was subsequently proved. Anglesea Peerage Trial, Howell, _State Trials_, XVII., 1443-1454.

[34] Neill, _Virginia Carolorum_, p. 108; _The Verney Papers, Camden Society Publications_, vol. 56, pp. 160-162, give a long and detailed account of the method of obtaining and transporting servants.

[35] Neill, _Terra Mariæ_, pp. 201, 202,

“In better Times, e’re to this Land, I was unhappily Trapann’d.”

_Sot-Weed Factor_, p. 6.

A young woman in search of employment was told that by going on board ship she would find it in Virginia, a few miles below on the Thames. Another young woman was persuaded to enter the ship, and was then sold into service. Cited by Bruce, I., 614, from _Interregnum Entry Book_, vol. 106, p. 84, and _British State Papers, Colonial_, vol. XIII., No. 29, 1.

The evil of “spiriting away” both children and adults became so great that in 1664 the Committee for Foreign Plantations interposed, and the Council created the office of Register, charged with the duty of keeping a record of all persons going to America as servants, and the statement that they had voluntarily left England. This act was soon followed by another fixing the penalty of death, without benefit of clergy, in every case where persons were found guilty of kidnapping children or adults. But even these extreme measures did not put an end to the evil; and it is stated that ten thousand persons were annually kidnapped after the passage of the act. Bruce, I., 614-619.

[36] “The Forme of Binding a Servant” is given in _A Relation of Maryland_, pp. 62-63, and reads as follows:

This Indenture _made the ____ day of ____ in the yeere of our Soveraigne Lord King_ Charles, _&c. betweene ____ of the one party, and ____ on the other party_, Witnesseth, _that the said ____ doth hereby covenant promise, and grant to, and with the said ____ his Executors and Assignes, to serve him from the day of the date hereof, untill his first and next arrivall in_ Maryland; _and after for and during the tearme of ____ yeeres, in such service and imployment as the said ____ or his assignes shall there imploy him, according to the custome of the countrey in the like kind. In consideration whereof, the said ____ doth promise and grant, to and with the said ____ to pay for his passing, and to find him with Meat, Drinke, Apparell and Lodging, with other necessaries during the said terme; and at the end of the said terme, to give him one whole yeeres provision of Corne, and fifty acres of Land, according to the order of the countrey. In witnesse whereof, the said ____ hath hereunto put his hand and scale, the day and yeere above written._

_Sealed and delivered in the presence of _____

Neill, _Virginia Carolorum_, pp. 5-7, gives a similar copy. Bruce, II., 2, gives the indenture of one Mary Polly whose master was to “maintain ye sᵈ Mary noe other ways than he doth his own in all things as dyett, cloathing and lodging, the sᵈ Mary to obey the sᵈ John Porter in all his lawful commands within ye sᵈ term of years.”

[37] Hening, I., 257, 1642.

[38] Hening, I., 411, 1655.

[39] _Ibid._, I., 441-442, 1657.

[40] _Ibid._, I., 538-539, 1659.

[41] _Ibid._, II., 113-114, 1661.

[42] _Ibid._, II., 240, 1666.

[43] _Ibid._, 1705, 1748, 1753.

In North Carolina no “imported Christian” was to be considered a servant unless the person importing him could procure an indenture. Iredell, 1741, chap. 24.

In West New Jersey servants over twenty-one without indenture were to serve four years, and all under twenty-one to serve at the discretion of the Court. Leaming and Spicer, 1682, chap. XI.

In Maryland servants without indenture of over twenty-one years of age were to serve five years; if between eighteen and twenty-two, six years; if between fifteen and eighteen, seven years; if under fifteen, until twenty-two years old. Browne, 1692.

[44] Alsop, pp. 57-58.

[45] _Leah and Rachel_, pp. 12, 14.

[46] Neill, _Terra Mariæ_, pp. 201-202.

[47] Howell, _State Trials_, XVII., 1443-1454.

[48] Eddis, pp. 69-70.

[49] Neill, _Virginia Carolorum_, p. 58. Neill adds: “While some of these servants were treated with kindness, others received no more consideration than dumb, driven cattle.”

[50] P. 7.

[51] A negro servant in the family of Judge Sewall died in 1729, and the latter writing of the funeral says: “I made a good Fire, set Chairs, and gave Sack.” _Diary_, III., 394. _The New England Weekly Journal_, February 24, 1729, has a detailed account of the funeral: “A long train followed him to the grave, it’s said about 150 black, and about 50 whites, several magistrates, ministers, gentlemen, etc. His funeral was attended with uncommon respect and his death much lamented.”

[52] She complains of the great familiarity in permitting the slaves to sit at table with their masters “as they say to save time” and adds, “into the dish goes the black hoof, as freely as the white hand.” She relates a difficulty between a master and a slave which was referred to arbitration, each party binding himself to accept the decision. The arbitrators ordered the master to pay 40 shillings to the slave and to acknowledge his fault. “And so the matter ended: the poor master very honestly standing to the award.”—_The Journal of Madame Knight._

[53] John Winter writes from Maine, “I Can not Conceaue which way their masters Can pay yt, but yf yt Continue this rates the servants will be masters & the masters servants.” _Trelawny Papers_, p. 164. John Winthrop makes a similar comment in narrating “a passage between one Rowley and his servant. The master, being forced to sell a pair of oxen to pay his servant his wages, told his servant he could keep him no longer, not knowing how to pay him the next year. The servant answered, he would serve him for more of his cattle. But how shall I do (saith the master) when all my cattle are gone? The servant replied, you shall then serve me, and so you may have your cattle again.” Winthrop gives as a reason for high wages the fact that “the wars in England kept servants from coming to us, so as those we had could not be hired, when their times were out, but upon unreasonable terms, and we found it very difficult to pay their wages to their content, (for money was very scarce).”—_History of New England_, II., 219-220.

[54] Lechford, _Note-book_, p. 107.

[55] Lechford, _Note-book_, p. 81.

[56] Bruce, II., 2.

[57] _Travels_, I., 303-304.

[58] _Recollections_, p. 297.

“Before the Revolution no hired man or woman wore any shoes so fine as calf-skins; course neats leather was their every day wear. Men and women then hired by the year,—men got 16 to 20_l._, and a servant woman 8 to 10_l._ Out of that it was their custom to lay up money, to buy before their marriage a bed and bedding, silver teaspoons, and a spinning-wheel, &c.”—Watson, _Annals_, p. 165.

[59] Hening, III., 451.

[60] _Ibid._, V., 550.

[61] _Ibid._, VI., 359.

[62] Trott, 1736.

[63] Purdon, Act of 1700; Carey and Bioren.

[64] _Body of Liberties_, chap. 88, Laws of 1672; _Laws of the Duke of York_.

[65] Iredell, Acts of 1741, chap. XXIV.

[66] Leaming and Spicer, Acts of 1682, chap. VIII.

[67] _Ibid._, chap. X.

[68] Browne, 1692.

[69] Bacon, 1715.

[70] Force, _Tracts_, III.: “Articles, Lavves, and Orders, Diuine, Politique, and Martiall, for the Colony in Virginea Brittania.”

[71] “All such Bakers as are appointed to bake bread, or what else, either for the store to be giuen out in generall, or for any one in particular, shall not steale nor imbezell, loose, or defraud any man of his due and proper weight and measure, nor vse any dishonest and deceiptfull tricke to make the bread weigh heauier, or make it courser vpon purpose to keepe backe any part or measure of the flower or meale committed vnto him, nor aske, take, or detaine any one loafe more or lesse for his hire or paines for so baking, since whilest he who deliuered vnto him such meale or flower, being to attend the businesse of the Colonie, such baker or bakers are imposed vpon no other seruice or duties, but onely so to bake for such as do worke, and this shall hee take notice of, vpon paine for the first time offending herein of losing his eares, and for the second time to be condemned a yeare to the Gallies, and for the third time offending to be condemned to the Gallies for three yeares.” The same penalties are attached in case cooks or those who dress fish withhold any part of the provision given them. Every minister was to read these laws publicly every Sunday before catechising. Force, _Tracts_, III.: “Articles ... for the Colony in Virginea.”

[72] _Trelawny Papers_, _Collections of Maine Historical Society_, III., 166-168.

[73] _Ibid._, 169.

[74] _Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, Fifth Series, I., 64-67.

[75] _Ibid._, 68.

[76] _Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, Fifth Series, VIII., 427.

[77] _Winthrop Papers_, Pt. VI., 353-354, note.

[78] Trumbull, _Blue Laws_, p. 155.

[79] _Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, Sixth Series, II., 112.

[80] Purdon, _Digest_.

[81] Purdon, _Digest_, Act of 1700. In East New Jersey the privilege was restricted to white servants. Leaming and Spicer, _Acts of East New Jersey, 1682_. In Massachusetts no servant was to be put off for more than a year to another master without the consent of the Court. _Body of Liberties_, § 86, Act of 1672. In New York no servant, except one bound for life, could be assigned to another master for more than one year, except for good reason.—_Laws of the Duke of York._

[82] Iredell, Acts of 1741, chap. XXIV., § 4; Leaming and Spicer, _Acts of East New Jersey, 1682_, chap. XXVI. Any white servant burdened beyond his strength, or deprived of necessary rest and sleep, could complain to the justice of the peace. This officer was empowered, first, to admonish the offending master; second, to levy on his goods to an amount not exceeding ten pounds; and third, to sell the servant’s time. Trott, Act of 1717. In New York and Massachusetts servants were to have convenient time for food and rest.—_Laws of the Duke of York_; Massachusetts, Act of 1672. In Maryland the penalty for insufficient meat, drink, lodging, and clothing, burdens beyond their strength, or more than ten lashes for one offence, was for the first and second offence a fine of not more than a thousand pounds of tobacco, and on the third offence the servant recovered his liberty. Permission to exceed ten lashes could be obtained from the Court, but the master could not inflict more than thirty-nine lashes.—Dorsey, _Laws of 1715_, chap. LXIV.

[83] Trumbull, _Public Records_, p. 263; Massachusetts, Act of 1700; Iredell, Acts of 1741, chap. XXIV. In North Carolina if a master did not use means for the recovery of a servant when ill, and turned him away, he forfeited five pounds for each servant so turned away, and if this was not sufficient the Court was empowered to levy an additional amount. Such servants on their recovery were to have their freedom, provided they had not brought the illness on themselves. In Connecticut if the injury came at the hands of the master or any member of his family, the master was obliged to provide for the maintenance of the servant, even after the expiration of his term of service, according to the judgment of the Court. But if the injury “came by any providence of God without the default of the family of the governor,” the master was released from the obligation of providing for him after his term of service expired. In South Carolina masters turning away sick or infirm servants were to forfeit twenty pounds.

[84] Leaming and Spicer, _East New Jersey_, 1682; _Body of Liberties_, § 87, Act of 1672; _Laws of the Duke of York_. In Maryland the Act of 1692 freed a mulatto girl whose master had cut off both her ears.

[85] _Body of Liberties_, § 85, Act of 1672; _Laws of Connecticut_, 1673.

[86] _Laws of the Duke of York._

[87] Iredell, 1741, chap. XXIV.

[88] Leaming and Spicer, _East New Jersey, 1682_, chap. VIII.

[89] _Instructions of the Crown_, November 16, 1702.

[90] Iredell, 1741, chap. XXIV.

[91] Carey and Bioren, chap. 635.

[92] Trott, Act of 1717.

[93] Act of 1673.

[94] Leaming and Spicer, Act of 1682. This is practically the re-enactment of a similar law in Carteret’s time, 1668, and of the law of 1675.

[95] Iredell, Act of 1741.

[96] Trott, Act of 1717.

[97] Browne, 1692; Dorsey, 1715, chap. XLIV.

[98] Leaming and Spicer, Act of 1682. The Acts of 1682 and 1675 had similar provisions.

[99] Act _circa_ 1784; Trumbull, _Public Records_, 1665-1678.

[100] Trott, Act of 1717.

[101] _Laws of the Duke of York._

[102] Purdon, _Digest_, Act of 1700.

[103] Act of 1704.

[104] Browne, 1692; Dorsey, 1715.

[105] Bacon, 1748.

[106] Browne, 1692; Dorsey, 1715.

[107] Bacon, 1748.

[108] Iredell, Act of 1741.

[109] Carey and Bioren, Act of 1700.

[110] Trumbull, _Public Records_.

[111] Acts of 1692 and 1715.

[112] Act of 1692.

[113] Connecticut, _circa_ 1784; New York, Act of 1672; Maryland, Acts of 1692, 1715.

[114] Iredell, Act of 1741.

[115] Act _circa_ 1784.

[116] Act of 1646.

[117] Trott, 1717; Massachusetts, Act of 1698.

[118] Act of 1646.

[119] Act of 1728.

[120] Iredell, Act of 1741. But corporal punishment was not to deprive the master of such other satisfaction as he might be entitled to by the Act.

[121] Act of 1717.

[122] _Body of Liberties_, § 88, Act of 1672; _Laws of the Duke of York_.

[123] Iredell, 1741.

[124] Leaming and Spicer, Act of 1682.

[125] Purdon, _Digest_, 1700.

[126] Act _circa_ 1784.

[127] Laws of 1672.

[128] Act governing white servants, 1717.

[129] _Laws of the Duke of York._

[130] Browne, 1692; Dorsey, 1715.

[131] Leaming and Spicer, Acts of 1668, 1675; Trott, Act of 1717.

[132] Massachusetts Bay, Act of 1636.

[133] Carey and Bioren, Act of 1721.

[134] Iredell, 1741.

[135] _Ibid._

[136] Laws of 1672.

[137] _Ibid._

[138] Iredell, 1741.

[139] Act of 1636.

[140] Act of 1784.

[141] Neill, _Founders of Maryland_, pp. 77-79, gives the names of eighty servants brought over by Cornwallis between 1634 and 1651; and of these, five became members of the Assembly, one became a sheriff, and two were signers of the Protestant Declaration. Other noteworthy instances are found in Virginia. Neill, _Virginia Carolorum_, p. 297. Sometimes, however, the trail of the serpent remained. R. G., in a treatise published about 1661, says of the burgesses that they “were usually such as went over servants thither, and though by time, and industry, they may have attained competent estates, yet by reason of their poor and mean condition, were unskilful in judging of a good estate, either of church or Commonwealth, or by the means of procuring it.”—_Virginia Carolorum_, p. 290. George Taylor, a Pennsylvania redemptioner, was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

[142] The Sot-Weed Factor describes a quarrel in which one says:

“... tho’ now so brave, I knew you late a Four-Years Slave; What if for Planter’s Wife you go, Nature designed you for the Hoe.”—P. 21.

DeFoe says: “When their Time is expir’d, sometimes before it, (they) get marri’d and settl’d; turn Planters, and by Industry grow rich; or get to be Yearly Servants in good Families upon Terms.”—_Behaviour of Servants_, p. 140.

[143] Elkanah Watson, writing from London in 1782, compares the silent attention given by English servants with the volubility of those in France, and then adds: “In America, our domestic feels the consciousness, that he may in turn become a master. This feeling may, perhaps, impair his usefulness as a servant, but cannot be deprecated, whilst it adds to his self-respect as a man.”—_Men and Times of the Revolution_, pp. 169-170.

[144] Numberless advertisements are found like the following: “An Indian maid about 19 years of Age, brought up from a Child to all sorts of Household work, can handle her Needle very well and Sew or Flower and ingenious about her Work: To be sold on reasonable terms.”—_Boston News Letter_, June 8, 1719.

“An Indian Woman Aged about 30 Years fit for all manner of Household work either for Town or Country, can Sew, Wash, Brew, Bake, Spin, and Milk Cows, to be sold by Mr. Henry Hill.”—_Ibid._, January 4, 1720.

“A Very likely Indian Womans Time for Eleven Years and Five Months to be disposed of; she’s a very good Servant, and can do any Household work, either for Town or Country.”—_Ibid._, March 21, 1720.

“An Indian Woman aged Sixteen Years, that speaks good English; to be sold.”—_Ibid._, February 20, 1715.

“A Stray Spanish Indian Woman named Sarah, Aged about 40 Years taken up, which the Owner may have paying the Charges.”—_Ibid._, January 4, 1720.

[145] “A warr with the Narraganset is verie considerable to this plantation, ffor I doubt whither yt be not synne in vs, hauing power in our hands, to suffer them to maynteyne the worship of the devill which theire paw wawes often doe; 2lie, If vpon a Just warre the Lord should deliuer them into our hands, wee might easily haue men woemen and children enough to exchange for Moores, which wilbe more gaynefull pilladge for vs than wee conceive, for I doe not see how wee can thrive vntill wee gett into a stock of slaves sufficient to doe all our buisines, for our children’s children will hardly see this great Continent filled with people, soe that our servants will still desire freedome to plant for them selues, and not stay but for verie great wages. And I suppose you know verie well how wee shall maynteyne 20 Moores cheaper than one Englishe servant.”—Emanuel Downing to John Winthrop, 1645. _Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, Fourth Series, vol. VI., p. 65.

[146] _Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, Fourth Series, vol. VI., p. 101.

James Russell Lowell commenting on this letter says, “Let any housewife of our day, who does not find the Keltic element in domestic life so refreshing as to Mr. Arnold in literature, imagine a household with one wild Pequot woman, communicated with by signs, for its maid of all work, and take courage. Those were serious times indeed, when your cook might give warning by taking your scalp, or _chignon_, as the case might be, and making off with it into the woods.”—“New England Two Centuries Ago,” in _Among My Books_, I., 263.

[147] Teele, _History of Milton, Massachusetts, 1640-1887_, Journal of Rev. Peter Thatcher, Appendix B, pp. 641-642.

[148] _The Report of a French Protestant Refugee in Boston, 1687_, evidently submitted to guide friends in France thinking of coming to America, says: “You may also own negroes and negresses; there is not a house in Boston, however small may be its means, that has not one or two. There are those that have five or six, and all make a good living.”—Pp. 19-20.

The New England papers, even in the first part of the eighteenth century, are full of advertisements like the following: “A Negro Wench with a Girl Four Years old both born in the Country, used to all Family work on a Farm, to be sold on reasonable Terms.”—_Boston News Letter_, October 5, 1719.

“A very likely young Negro Wench that can do any Household Work to be sold, inquire of Mr. Samuel Sewall.”—_Ibid._, April 9, 1716.

“Lately arrived from Jamaica several Negro boys and girls, to be sold by Mr. John Charnock & Co.”—_Ibid._, May 11, 1719.

Most of the advertisements describe those offered for sale as “very likely,” and add the specially desirable qualification that he or she “speaks good English.” Judge Sewall, in 1700, gives this account of his first protest against negro slavery: “Having been long and much dissatisfied with the Trade of fetching Negros from Guinea; at last I had a strong Inclination to Write something about it; but it wore off. At last reading Bayne, Ephes. about servants, who mentions Blackmoors; I began to be uneasy that I had so long neglected doing anything.”—_Diary_, II., 16.

[149] But it is of interest in passing to note two contemporaneous judgments on the effect of slavery. Elkanah Watson, writing of his journey through the South in 1778, says: “The influence of slavery upon southern habits is peculiarly exhibited in the prevailing indolence of the people. It would seem as if the poor white man had almost rather starve than work, because the negro works.”—_Men and Times_, p. 72.

Thomas Anburey writes, “Most of the planters consign the care of their plantations and negroes to an overseer, even the man whose house we rent, has his overseer, though he could with ease superintend it himself; but if they possess a few negroes, they think it beneath their dignity, added to which, they are so abominably lazy.”—_Travels_, II., 328.

[150] A New England woman writes: “In several instances our ‘help’ was married from our parlor with my sisters for bridesmaids. I correspond with a woman doctor in Florida whose sister was our cook when I was a child, and who shared her sister’s room at our home while she earned her education, alternating work in the cotton mills and going to school.” This is but one illustration of hundreds that have doubtless come within the experience of most persons living in New England fifty years ago.

[151] A visit to many New England burying grounds will illustrate this statement. It was doubtless a survival of the English custom. A curious and interesting collection of epitaphs of servants has been made by Arthur J. Munby.

[152] “... Help, for I love our Yankee word, teaching, as it does, the true relation, and its being equally binding on master and servant.”—J. R. Lowell, _Letters_, I., 105.

[153] Even Americans commented on it. John Watson writes: “One of the remarkable incidents of our republican principles of equality is the hirelings, who in times before the war of Independence were accustomed to accept the names of servants and to be drest according to their condition, will now no longer suffer the former appellation; and all affect the dress and the air, when abroad, of genteeler people than their business warrants. Those, therefore, who from affluence have many dependents, find it a constant subject of perplexity to manage their pride and assumption.”—_Annals_, p. 165.

[154] _Autobiography_, I., 331.

[155] _Society in America_, II., 248.

[156] _Society in America_, II., 245.

[157] _Ibid._, II., 254-255.

It is of interest to contrast this picture of service in America by an Englishwoman with one given a little earlier of service in England by an American. Elkanah Watson writes from London in 1782: “The servants attending upon my friend’s table were neatly dressed, and extremely active and adroit in performing their offices, and glided about the room silent and attentive. Their silence was in striking contrast with the volubility of the French attendants, who, to my utter astonishment, I have often observed in France, intermingling in the conversation of the table. Here, the servant, however cherished, is held at an awful distance. The English servant is generally an ignorant and servile being, who has no aspiration beyond his present condition.”—_Men and Times of the Revolution_, p. 169.

[158] _Democracy in America_, II., 194.

[159] _The Americans in their Moral, Social, and Political Relations_, pp. 236-237.

Thomas Grattan also says, “The native Americans are the best servants in the country.”—_Civilized America_, I., 260.

[160] _A Year’s Residence in the United States_, p. 201.

Charles Mackay also says that “service is called ‘help,’ to avoid wounding the susceptibility of free citizens.”—_Life and Liberty in America_, I., 42.

[161] _Domestic Manners of the Americans_, I., 73.

[162] _Society, Manners, and Politics in the United States_, p. 284.

[163] He adds the interesting facts that cooks usually received $1.50 per week; chambermaids, $1.25; gardeners, $11 per month, and waiters $10 per month.—_Recollections_, pp. 299-300.

[164] _The Englishwoman in America_, pp. 43, 214.

[165] _Civilized America_, I., 256-258.

[166] _Ibid._, I., 259.

[167] _Civilized America_, I., 264.

[168] _Ibid._, I., 269.

[169] _Views of Society and Manners in America_, p. 338.

[170] _Views of Society and Manners in America_, pp. 338-342.

[171] _Arrivals of Alien Passengers and Immigrants in the United States from 1820 to 1890_, pp. 16, 23.

By the _Census of Massachusetts_ for 1885 it is seen that forty-nine per cent of all women in that state of foreign birth are Irish. I., 574-575.

[172] _Ante_, p. 11.

[173] Lowell says of the Irish immigration, “It is really we who have been paying the rents over there [in Ireland], for we have to pay higher wages for domestic service to meet the drain.”—_Letters_, II., 336.

A racy discussion of the influence of the Irish cook in the American household is given by Mr. E. L. Godkin under the title “The Morals and Manners of the Kitchen,” in _Reflections and Comments_, p. 56.

[174] _Arrivals of Alien Passengers and Immigrants in the United States from 1820 to 1890_, pp. 15, 22.

[175] Women constituted 41.8 per cent of the total number of German immigrants arriving here during the twenty-two years ending June 30, 1890; the Irish forming 48.5 per cent.—_Ibid_., p. 11.

[176] The United States Census for 1890 gives the number of domestic servants born in Ireland as 168,993; the number born in Germany was 95,007.

[177] The number of Chinese in domestic service in 1890 was 16,439.

[178] Walker, _Wages_, pp. 376-377.

[179] An illustration of these various changes is seen in the case of one employee, who was born in Ireland, engaged in service in New York, and afterwards drifted to Minnesota, where the report was made.

[180] This is indicated by the various definitions given in early dictionaries. It is a curious fact that _The New World of Words or General English Dictionary_, large quarto, third edition, London, 1671, does not contain the word “servant.” Phillips’ _Universal English Dictionary_, London, 1720, has “_servant_, a man or woman who serves another.” Bailey’s _Dictionary_, London, 1721, 1737, and 1770, defines servant as “one who serves another.” _The Royal Standard English Dictionary_, first American edition, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1788, “being the first work of the kind printed in America,” defines _servant_ as “one who serves.” The second edition, Brookfield, 1804, has “_servant_, one who serves for wages.”

Some interesting illustrations of this early use of the word are found in colonial literature. Thus Thomas Morton in his _New English Canaan_, p. 179, says, “In the month of June Anno Salutis, 1622, it was my chance to arrive in the parts of New England with thirty servants and provisions of all sorts fit for a plantation.”

Governor Bradford in his _History of Plymouth_, pp. 235-236, speaks of “Captaine Wolastone and with him 3. or 4. more of some eminencie, who brought with them a great many servants, with provisions & other implments fit for to begine a plantation.”

A “Narrative concerning the settlement of New England,” 1630, says,

“This yeare there went hence 6 shippes with 1000 people in them to the Massachusetts having sent two yeares before betweene 3 & 400 servants to provide howses and Corne against theire coming, to the charge of (at least) 10,000_l._, these Servants through Idlenes & ill Government neglected both theire building & plantinge of Corne, soe that if those 6 Shippes had not arived the plantation had ben broke & dissolved.”—_Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._, 1860-1862, pp. 130-131.

The same use of the word is found a number of times in the list of the Mayflower passengers.

[181] J. F. D. Smyth says, London, 1784, “However, although I now call this man (a backwoodsman of the Alleghanies) my servant, yet he himself never would have submitted to such an appellation, although he most readily performed every menial office, and indeed every service I could desire.”—_Tour in the United States_, I., 356.

[182] Fanny Kemble writes, “They have no idea, of course, of a white person performing any of the offices of a servant;” then follows an amusing account of her white maid’s being taken for the master’s wife, and her almost unavailing efforts to correct the mistake.—_Journal of a Residence in Georgia_, pp. 44-46.

[183] An illustration of this change is seen in the different definitions given to the word. In the _Royal Standard English Dictionary_, 1813, a servant is “one who attends and obeys another, one in a state of subjection.”

Johnson’s _Dictionary_, London, 1818, gives: “(1) One who attends another and acts at his command; the correlative of master. Used of man or woman. (2) One in a state of subjection.”

Richardson’s _New Dictionary of the English Language_, London, 1838, defines _servant_ as the correlative of _master_.

The American usage was practically the same. The first edition of Webster, 1828, gives: “(1) Servant, a person, male or female, that attends another for the purpose of performing menial offices for him, or who is employed by another for such offices, or for other labor, and is subject to his command. _Servant_ differs from _slave_, as the servant’s subjection to a master is voluntary, the slave’s is not. Every slave is a servant, but every servant is not a slave.”

Worcester, 1860, says of _servant_: “(1) One who serves, whether male or female; correlative of _master_, _mistress_, or _employer_. (2) One in a state of subjection; a menial; a domestic; a drudge; a slave.”

These various definitions all suggest the class association of the terms “servant” and “slave.”

[184] A curious illustration of the social position of servants in Europe is seen in their lack of political privileges.

The French Constitution of 1791 was preceded by a bill of rights declaring the equality and brotherhood of men, but a disqualification for the right of suffrage, indeed, the only one, was “to be in a menial capacity, _viz._, that of a servant receiving wages.” Title III., chap. 1, sec. 2. The Constitution of 1795, after a similar preamble, states that the citizenship is suspended “by being a domestic on wages, attending on the person or serving the house.” Title II., 13, 3. The Constitution of 1799 has a similar disqualification. Title I., art. 5. It is probable that these provisions were intended to punish men who would consent to serve the nobility or the wealthy classes when it was expected that all persons would be democratic enough to serve themselves, not to cast discredit on domestic service _per se_.—Tripier, pp. 20, 105, 168.

During the revolutionary movement in Austria, the Hungarian Diet at its session, in 1847-1848, passed an act providing that the qualification for electors should be “to have attained the age of twenty years; Hungarians by birth or naturalized; not under guardianship, nor in domestic service, nor convicted of fraud, theft, murder, etc.” Act 5, sec. 2.—Stiles, II., 376.

The qualifications for suffrage in England also excluded domestic servants, but there was no discrimination against them as a class.

The Declaration of Independence, declaring all men free and equal in the presence of African slavery, thus has its counterpart in these free constitutions disfranchising domestic servants.

[185] Some of the figures given in this chapter have been taken from advance sheets kindly furnished by the Census Bureau, and hence it is impossible to give in every case page references.

[186] Preface, p. 1, and Appendix I.

[187] The percentage of foreign born as given here differs slightly from that given on page 80, as it includes a small number of Chinese and Japanese.

[188] Arizona, California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Rhode Island.

[189] Colorado, District of Columbia, Illinois, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming.

[190] Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia.

[191] Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia.

[192] _Eleventh Census_, Population, Part I., p. lxxxiii.

[193] _Census of Massachusetts_, 1885, Part II., p. 38.

[194] Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming.

[195] Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont.

[196] New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania.

[197] Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Wisconsin.

[198] Delaware, District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia.

[199] Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Texas.

This classification is made with reference to conditions apparently similar as regards domestic service.

[200] _Eleventh Census_, Occupations, p. 20. It is interesting to note the increasing proportion of women of foreign birth who go into domestic service. The Tenth Census shows that, in 1880, 49.31 per cent of all women of foreign birth employed for pay were engaged in domestic service; thus in ten years an increase of 10.06 per cent was made.

[201] _Census of Massachusetts_, 1885, Part II., pp. xxxvi, xxxviii. In this statement only the number of women engaged in domestic service for remuneration is considered.

[202] _Eleventh Census_, Population, Part I., p. lxxxix.

[203] _Eleventh Census_, Wealth, Debt, and Taxation, Part II., p. 16, Chart.

[204] _Ibid._, p. 59.

[205] _Eleventh Census_, Wealth, Debt, and Taxation, Part II., pp. 376-403.

[206] Brooklyn, Buffalo, Camden, Fall River, Jersey City, Lowell, Newark, Paterson, Rochester, Trenton, Troy.

[207] P. 68.

[208] _Report of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 1885_, pp. 196-312.

[209] In the classification in these two tables the employees in several large boarding houses were omitted. All of those included under the term “nurses” are nurse-maids, with the exception of the few receiving the highest wages.

[210] _Post_, p. 136.

[211] The figures are taken from the annual reports of city superintendents. The attempt was made to find the average salaries in the fifty largest cities, but many cities do not publish in detail the salaries paid. The reports used were those for the year ending in 1889,—the year for which reports were made through the schedules,—with the exception of Paterson, where the report for 1890 was used. Half-day teachers are omitted as far as known. In cities having separate schools for colored and for white children, the teachers in colored schools are included where the salaries paid are the same as those paid in white schools of the same grade,—otherwise they are omitted.

[212] _Fourth Annual Report_, pp. 520-529.

[213] _Ibid._, p. 625.

[214] _Post_, p. 132.

[215] _Report of the Bureau, 1887_, pp. 216-219, 225.

[216] _United States Bureau of Labor, 1887_, pp. 794-797.

[217] More definitely, it numbered 4.85 persons.

[218] Forty-six per cent had kept house longer than this, averaging nearly thirty years; while forty-four per cent had kept house for a shorter period, averaging about eight years and a half. Seventeen reports came from housekeepers of fifty years or more experience.

[219] Seventy per cent reported that they had boarded since marriage; about one third of these had boarded less than the average time, and one half had boarded from one to five years.

[220] This estimate is based on the supposition that a cook is employed at $3.80 per week, a second girl at $3.04, and a man half a week at the rate of 87 cents a day.

[221] Table II, p. 76.

[222] The place of birth of the employees represented by the schedules included the following countries: Australia, Austria, the Azores, Canada, China, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, New Brunswick, Norway, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Poland, Prince Edward’s Island, Russia, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Wales, the West Indies.

[223] _Eleventh Census_, Occupations, p. 122.

[224] An employer in a large city where there is much complaint of the inferior character of the foreign population writes: “A general impression prevails in most foreign families that any girl, no matter how stupid, dishonest, or untidy, can apply for and rightfully accept a position as general servant or housemaid at current prices.” A similar complaint comes from many other employers.

[225] _Tenth Census_, I., 708.

[226] “I went into housework because I was not educated enough for other work.”

“I haven’t education enough to do anything else.”

“I would change my occupation if I knew enough to do anything else.”

[227] This is illustrated by the experience of one housekeeper who frequently does her own work. At these times her ordinary kitchen expenses come within $50 per month. This sum is exclusive of fuel, rent, and water. When employing a servant, the same expenses amount to $80 per month, while if fuel, light, and water were included (rent not being affected) the difference would be still greater.

[228] Yet so great is the demand for help that this is apparently sometimes done. In Milwaukee it is a common thing to see affixed to houses, or standing upright in the dooryard, well-painted signs looking as if ready for frequent use, reading “Girl wanted.”

[229] _Behaviour of Servants_, p. 298.

[230] A lady recently went to an employment bureau, and in answer to her application for “a good cook,” received the reply, “Madam, good cooks are an extinct race.”

One large bureau in Philadelphia reports that the demand for good servants is twenty per cent greater than the supply.

[231] The character of some of the intelligence offices in another city is described by F. Hunt, in _The American Kitchen Magazine_, November, 1895.

[232] An excellent blank is used by the employment bureau connected with the Boston Young Women’s Christian Association. Seven questions are asked the persons to whom the employee has referred:

“(1) How long have you known her?

(2) Is she temperate, honest, and respectable?

(3) Is she neat in her person, and about her work?

(4) Is she of good disposition?

(5) Is she faithful to her work, and is she trustworthy?

(6) In what capacity did she serve you, and how long?

(7) Was she capable and efficient in that capacity?”

The bureau states its aim to be “the recommendation of worthy persons only.” The detailed form of the questions asked is more successful in preventing an evasion of disqualifications, than is the personal recommendation of a general character, which often tells the truth, but not the whole truth.

One large bureau states that it formerly used blank forms, which it sent out with each employee. Employers were asked to fill out these blanks and return them at the end of service, and these were kept on file as recommendations. It was soon found that employers grew lax and would not take the pains to fill them out, and the practice was abandoned.

[233] DeFoe says, “To be a good Master is to be a Master that will do his Servant Justice, and that will make his Servant do him Justice; he may be kind to a Servant, that will let him sleep when he shou’d work, but then he is not just to himself, or a good Governour to his Family.”—_Behaviour of Servants_, p. 293.

[234] Repeated statements like the following are made by employers: “A few wealthy families keep a large number of servants at high wages, which wholly unfits them for general service and moderate wages, and establishes customs and rates which cannot be met by the mass of people with moderate incomes.”

[235] An employer recently engaged a cook at high wages with sufficient recommendations it was supposed. The first dinner (an hour delayed) showed her incapacity, and when questioned more closely it was found that the only domestic work she had ever done was preparing vegetables in a boarding house. When asked why she had engaged as a cook, the reply was, “They told me I could get higher wages if I called myself a cook.” The experience does not seem to be exceptional.

[236] An employer writes: “I find no place on the schedule for stating that my cook and coachman have to-day each given notice of leaving unless the other is discharged.”

[237] “When I began housekeeping in 1870 I had one ‘general housework girl’ who stayed with me nine years. Now I consider myself fortunate to retain a cook or a second girl as many weeks.”

“Thirty years ago I had no difficulty whatever. I do not think my character has changed meantime, or my method of treating servants, or our style of living, yet now it is almost impossible to secure servants.”

“The question is very different now from what it was forty years ago.”

“The problem in this place grows more perplexing every year.”

“Many housekeepers here are between the Scylla and Charybdis of trying to tolerate wretched, inefficient servants, and the impossibility of getting along with them.”

[238] “In advertising recently for a general housework girl twelve answered the advertisement. Advertising the same week for my former servant, twenty-two ladies applied personally and twelve others wrote that a girl was wanted. Although I told each of the twenty-two that if the girl were even fair I would keep her myself, only two hesitated on that account to try to secure her.”

The report of a large employment bureau for the year 1889 is as follows:

Number of employers registered 1,512 Number of employees registered 1,541 Number of employers supplied with servants 1,366 Number of employees supplied with situations 1,375

The number of employees registered exceeds the number of employers, but many register who are incompetent to fill the position they seek, and therefore many employers are without servants. The bureau regrets “its inability at times to supply with competent help the large number of patrons.”

Another bureau reports 2,659 applications from employers, only 2,099 of which could be filled.

Still another bureau filling about three thousand positions annually reports that at times it has had six hundred applications from employers in excess of the number that could be filled with competent applicants for work.

The domestic employment bureau connected with the Boston Young Women’s Christian Association reports for the year ending 1890:

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.

[242] It is of interest to notice some of these occupations. The list includes apparently nearly every form of work in every kind of mill and factory, farm work, cigar-making, sewing, dressmaking, millinery, tailoring, crocheting, lace-making, carpet-making, copying; places as cash girls, saleswomen, nurses, post-office clerks, compositors, office attendants; six have been teachers; others, ladies’ companions, governesses, and matrons. It is of interest, also, to note that the per cent of native born who have been engaged in other occupations is slightly higher than the per cent of foreign born (thirty-one to twenty-five).

[243] One employee writes, “I wanted to see for myself what it was to be a hired girl.”

[244] An employee in Colorado, who receives $35 a month, writes: “I choose housework in preference to any other, principally because for that I receive better pay. The average pay for store and factory girls is eight and nine dollars a week. After paying board and room rent, washing, etc., very little is left, and what is left must be spent for dress—nothing saved.”

“It pays better than other kinds of work.”

“My expenses are less than in any other kind of work.”

“I can make more. I have put $100 in the savings bank in a year and a half. I had first $10 a month, but now I have $12.”

“I can save more.”

“I can earn more without constant change.”

“I can earn more than in anything else ($15 a month), but do not save anything as I support my mother.”

“Any one that is industrious and saving can save a great deal by working at housework.”

“I began to live out when I was thirteen years old, and I am now twenty-seven. I have saved $1600 in that time. At first I had $.50 a week; now I have $3.00. One summer I earned $3.00 a day in the hop-picking season.”

[245] “We are not as closely confined as girls who work in stores, and are usually more healthy.”

“I chose it because I thought it was healthy work.”

“There is no healthier work for women.”

“It is healthier than most other kinds of work I could do.”

“You can have better-cooked food and a better room than most shop-girls.”

[246] “I came to a strange city and chose housework, because it afforded me a home.”

“I am well treated by the family I am with, feel at home and under their protection.”

“Housework fell to my lot and I have followed it up because it has secured me a home.”

“Housework gives me a better home than I could make for myself in any other way.”

“I have more comforts than in other work.”

“I like a quiet home in a good family better than work in a public place, like a shop.”

“When I came to ⸺ and saw the looks of the girls in the large stores and the familiarity of the young men, I preferred to go into a respectable family where I could have a home.”

[247] _The New York Evening Post_, January 11, 1896, cites from _London Truth_ an account of a bill under consideration in the New Zealand Parliament providing that every domestic servant in the colony is to have a half-holiday every Wednesday, and that the employer is to be fined £5 if the domestic is deprived of this privilege. The “half-holiday” practically means that the servant will be entitled to leave of absence from two until ten. Inspectors are to be appointed to enforce the provisions of this measure, if it becomes a law.

[248] “I choose housework as my regular employment for the simple reason that young women look forward to the time when they will have housework of their own to do. I consider that I or any one in domestic employment will make a better housekeeper than any young woman who works in a factory.”

“I think you can learn more in doing housework.”

“It requires both care and study and so keeps our mind in constant thought and care, and ought to be respected.”

[249] “At home I was my mother’s help even when we had a girl of our own, and from childhood had always loved to cook, and learned to do all kinds.”

“My mother was a housekeeper and did most of her own work and taught me how to help her. When my father and mother died, and it became necessary for me to earn my own living, the question was, ‘What can I do?’ The answer was plain—housework.”

“I have a natural love for cooking, and would rather do it than anything else in the world.”

“I like it best, was used to it at home, and it seems more natural-like.”

“I enjoy housework more than anything else.”

“I was a dressmaker several years because my mother thought dressmaking more respectable than going out to work. But I always liked housework better, and when my health broke down I was glad to get a place as parlor maid.”

[250] A successful teacher says: “I have never liked teaching particularly, and would much rather be a good cook.”

A sewing woman says: “I should prefer to do housework, but do not wish to leave my home.”

A teacher says: “I am fond of children, and should like nothing better than to be a nurse-girl, but I will not wear livery.”

[251] _Law of the Domestic Relations_, p. 599.

[252] _Commentaries_, II., 258.

[253] Kent, II., 260-261.

[254] Story, _On Contracts_, II., §§ 1297-1298.

[255] Starkie, _On Slander and Libel_, p. 19.

[256] Story, _On Contracts_, II., § 1304.

[257] Daly, IV., 401.

A good discussion of “The Legal Status of Servant Girls” is given by Oliver E. Lyman, _Popular Science Monthly_, XXII., 803.

[258] An article on the last point is found in the _Boston Herald_, November 23, 1890.

[259] “Housework soon unfits one for any other kind of work. I did not realize what I was doing until too late.”

“I should prefer to housework a clerkship in a store or a place like that of sewing-girl in a tailor-shop, because there would be a possibility of learning the trade and then going into business for myself, or at least rising to some responsible place under an employer.”

“I would give up housework if I could find another position that would enable me to advance instead of remaining in the same rut day after day.”

[260] _Ante_, p. 113.

[261] “You are mistress of no time of your own; other occupations have well-defined hours, after which one can do as she pleases without asking any one.”

[262] “Women want the free use of their time evenings and Sundays.”

“If I could bear the confinement I would go into a mill where I could have evenings and Sundays.”

“Sunday in a private family is usually anything but a day of rest to the domestic, for on that day there are usually guests to dinner or tea or both, which means extra work.”

“I wouldn’t mind working Sundays if it wasn’t for the extra work.”

“I suppose the reason why more women choose other work is, they would rather work all day and be done with it, and have evenings for themselves.”

“Some families have dinner at three o’clock Sundays and lunch at eight or nine, and that makes it very hard for girls.”

[263] “A great many very ignorant girls can get housework to do, and a girl who has been used to neatness and the refinement of a good home does not like to room with a girl who has just come from Ireland and does not know what neatness means.”

“In ⸺ they have much colored help and do not have white help, so the white girls think any other work is better than housework.”

“In California self-respecting girls do not like to work with Chinamen—they do not know how to treat women.”

“Before the introduction of Chinese labor a young girl never lost social caste by doing housework; but since this element came, household service as an occupation has fallen in the social scale.”—_Employer._

“When a native American girl goes out to housework she loses caste at once, and can hardly find pleasure in the foreign immigrants that form the majority of servants, and who make most of the trouble from their ignorance and preconceived notions of America.”—_Employer._

[264] “The reason for dislike of housework is the want of liberty, and the submission which girls have to submit to when they have to comply with whatever rules a mistress may deem necessary. Therefore many girls go into mechanical pursuits, that some of their life may be their own.”

“Girls in housework are bossed too much.”

“There are too many mistresses in the house when the mother and grown-up daughters are all at home.”

“Most of us would like a little more independence, and to do our work as we please.”

“In housework you receive orders from half a dozen persons, in a shop or factory from but one.”

“A man doesn’t let his wife and daughters and sons interfere in the management of his mill or factory—why does a housekeeper let everybody in the house boss?”

[265] A description of domestic service in Japan is of value on this point. “From the steward of your household, to your _jinrikisha_ man or groom, every servant in your establishment does what is right in his own eyes, and after the manner he thinks best. Mere blind obedience to orders is not regarded as a virtue in a Japanese servant; he must do his own thinking, and, if he cannot grasp the reason for your order, that order will not be carried out.” “Even in the treaty ports [Japanese attendants] have not resigned their right of private judgment, but, if faithful and honest, seek the best good of their employer, even if his best good involves disobedience of his orders.”—Alice M. Bacon, _Japanese Girls and Women_, pp. 299, 301.

F. R. Feudge, in _How I Kept House by Proxy_, quotes from her Chinese cook, who said that he could boast of forty years “of study and practice in his profession.” “I am always willing to be told _what_ to do, but never _how_ to execute the order—especially when in that department I happen to know far more than my teachers.”—_Scribner’s Monthly_, September, 1881.

[266] A shrewd young colored woman gives her version, verbally, of the servant question. She lays great stress on her own “bringin’ up,” as “she wa’n’t brung up by trash,” and thinks the average colored girl “only a nigger.” She prefers to live “at service,” but insists upon “high-toned” employers, and “can’t abide common folks.”

[267] “In some families no acquaintance can call on the servant; she may have one or two friends, but the number is always limited, because, says the lady of the house, not without truth, ‘Who wants a dozen strange girls running in and out of one’s back door?’”

[268] “There are reasons why I sometimes feel dissatisfied with doing housework for other people. I would prefer to do work where people would say, supposing they were to give a company, ‘There is Miss So and So, let us invite her.’” This is from an unusually intelligent employee who says she does housework because she likes to do it best, and because a domestic can have better-cooked food and a better-ventilated room than most shop-girls, and who also writes, “Intelligence, brains, and good judgment are essential in getting up a dinner for six or eight.”

[269] One illustration of this social barrier was found in a small manufacturing city. The factory employees, all men and skilled workmen, arranged one winter a series of evening entertainments. Invitations were sent to the self-supporting women in the city, the list including dressmakers, milliners, stenographers, saleswomen, and others, but the social line was drawn at cooks.

[270] A lady was recently about to complete the engagement of a cook, a German girl, when the head of the employment bureau said: “I fear after all that A B will not suit you. You live in a flat, and as she wishes to take violin lessons her practising might annoy you.” The incident was narrated to a company of friends, and created much amusement, until one said, “This shows how unregenerate we are; why should she not take violin lessons?” It is not easy to find an answer.

A gentleman, whose family includes only himself and his wife, writes: “Our maid-of-all-work is a young Swedish girl of eighteen, who recently came to America. Three months ago she said, ‘If I had a musical instrument and a place to practise, I would get a music teacher and stay with you always.’ A few days later my married daughter sent us an organ of sweet tone, which was placed in a small room little used. We gave our maid permission to use it, and she at once secured a teacher. This morning she said: ‘My father writes me if I am on the street much. I write him, No, I enjoy myself better—I practise my music.’ We seem to have solved the domestic question—at least for a time.”

[271] “I should like work where I could come in contact with more people who would be of help to me.”

“A young woman doing housework is shut out from all society, nor can she make any plans for pleasure or study, for her time is not her own.”

“No one seems to think a girl who works out good enough to associate with, except those who are in domestic service themselves.”

“Domestics never have a chance to go to school or study.”

A domestic employee recently went to a public library for a book. The attendant was about to give it to her, thinking from her manner and appearance that she was a teacher in a neighboring school; but when the question was asked and the answer given, “not a teacher, but a housemaid,” the book was withheld, as servants were required to bring recommendations.

[272] “Domestics are not admitted into any society, and are often for want of a little pleasure driven to seek it in company that is often coarse and vulgar.”

“It is very hard for a young, refined woman to give up a pleasant home, and live constantly with ignorant and ill-bred people, as is very often the case where more than one servant is kept.”

[273] “I fairly hate the word ‘servant.’”

“I don’t like to be called a ‘menial.’”

“The girls in shops call us ‘livers-out.’”

“No woman likes to be called a ‘hired girl.’”

“American girls don’t like the name ‘servants.’”

“I know many nice girls who would do housework, but they prefer doing almost anything else rather than be called ‘servants.’”

“Some people call us ‘kitchen mechanics.’”

“I don’t know why we should be called ‘servants’ any more than other people.”

[274] A woman who had been for years a domestic employee left her place on account of sickness, and ultimately opened a small bakeshop. Her former employer called on her one day, and said, “Well, Sarah, how do you like your work?” She replied, “I never thought of it before, but now that you speak, I think the reason I like it so well is because everybody calls me ‘Miss Clark.’”

An employer invited her Sunday-school class to her home to spend an evening. One of the members went into the kitchen to render some assistance, and found there the housemaid, an unusually attractive young woman. The employer said, “Miss M, this is Kate.” The maid, who never before had showed the slightest consciousness of occupying an inferior position, said, under her breath, “I am Miss, too.”

[275] That this jest has a basis of fact in England is evident from the testimony of the footman of the Earl of Northbrook, who some time since stated under oath, in a court of law, that although his regular wages amounted to but $300 annually, yet he received from $2,000 to $2,500 more each year in the shape of tips from the Earl’s guests. “Her Majesty’s Servants,” in the _New York Tribune_, August 23, 1896.

[276] Mr. W. D. Howells has an excellent discussion of the feeing system in _Harper’s Weekly_, May 16, 1896; also, Julia R. Tutwiler in the _American Kitchen Magazine_, April, 1896; still a third is found in the _Outlook_, August 8, 1896.

[277] One illustration of the fact that domestic service is never judged by the same social canons as are other occupations, is seen in the unwillingness shown by a young woman to enter the service of a family having a questionable reputation. Her “squeamishness,” as it was called, excited only laughter in a circle of women, no one of whom would have exchanged calls with the family in question.

[278] _First Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of Connecticut_, 1885, p. 12.

[279] An employer writes: “I recently advertised for a young woman to help me with the children, and be received as one of the family. The forty answers received formed the most pathetic reading I have ever seen. My selection was the daughter of a poor clergyman, and this was the class from which the majority of the answers came. All desired domestic service if unaccompanied with social degradation.”

How conscious many are of this inferior position is seen from a single illustration. An employer recently invited her housemaid to take a boat-ride with her. The maid replied, “I should love to go if you wouldn’t be ashamed to be seen with me.”

[280] This is especially true in the matter of wages where wages and annual earnings are confused, the element of time lost never being considered. The fact is also often overlooked that when a young woman lives at home without paying her board, her family in effect pay a part of her wages and thus enable the employer to pay her low wages, though nominally more than paid in housework. Thus one employee writes: “If girls have homes where their board is given them, they can earn more money on other kinds of work than in housework.”

[281] Domestic service, as seen by the employee, cannot be dismissed without suggesting the fact that as many tragedies in life are found here as elsewhere. One employee had planned to be a teacher, but sudden deafness prevented, and domestic service was all she could do. Another hoped to become a physician, but loss of property prevented her from completing her education. A similar reason prevented another from becoming a trained nurse. One had hoped to be a dressmaker, but it became necessary to earn money at once without serving an apprenticeship. Could the struggles and disappointments in thousands of such lives be known, the household employee would cease to be the butt of jest and ridicule that she sometimes is.

[282] An employer in South Carolina writes: “The difficulty here can only be removed by the importation of competent servants.”

[283] The following table will indicate the preference:

=================+==========+============+============+========== CITY OR STATE | NUMBER | NO | WHITE HELP | NEGROES | EXAMINED | PREFERENCE | PREFERRED | PREFERRED -----------------+----------+------------+------------+---------- Charleston | 259 | 143 | 65 | 51 Louisville | 200 | 104 | 80 | 16 New Orleans | 145 | 103 | 35 | 7 Savannah | 106 | 66 | 26 | 14 Texas | 67 | 31 | 35 | 1 Washington, D.C. | 135 | 61 | 54 | 20 +----------+------------+------------+---------- Total | 912 | 508 | 295 | 109 =================+==========+============+============+==========

The Charleston Employment Bureau advertises, “White help especially in demand.” In Texas the proportion of the foreign born population is larger than in any other of the Southern states, and advertisements from all the leading cities in the state show a decided preference for German or Swedish domestics. One from the _Fort Worth Gazette_ reads, “Wanted—A white woman (German or Swede preferred) as cook in a private family.” This illustrates a large number of “wants.” An employer writes from Austin, “In Texas cities domestic service is furnished by Germans and Swedes to a large extent, and the tendency to employ them is growing.”

[284] “The older generation of negroes who were trained for service have nearly all died, and the survivors are too old to be efficient. The younger negroes are too lazy to be of much use.”—_Brenham, Texas._

“Old colored servants that were trained before the war are now inefficient; the younger ones will not submit to training.”—_Austin, Texas._

“Old trained colored servants are no longer to be had,—younger ones are not well trained, and consequently cannot do first class work. White servants are better trained, but scarce, and therefore independent.”—_Austin, Texas._

“We have 80,000 colored people in the city. The old trained servants of slavery times are mostly passed away, and the younger ones have not been properly trained.”—_Washington, D.C._

“The servants who were trained before ‘freedom’ are too old to do good work, and they are not training their children to be efficient.”—_Anderson, South Carolina._

“The majority of those now seeking domestic service are ignorant, uneducated, untrustworthy.”—_Biloxi, Mississippi._

“Servants have no training.”—_Edgefield, South Carolina._

[285] “One difficulty here is the indifference of our colored servants to what the morrow may bring forth. They are capable of living on a very small amount, and they assist each other during the time unoccupied.”—_Charleston, South Carolina._

“The negroes do not know how to render good service as a rule, and they do not understand the term ‘thorough.’”—_Charleston, South Carolina._

“Colored help have to be very patiently and charitably dealt with.”—_Washington, D.C._

“The difficulty here is the general shiftlessness and liking for changed conditions that is characteristic of the colored race.”—_Austin, Texas._

“There is special difficulty here during the cotton-picking season.”—_Austin, Texas._

“The majority of our servants, who are negroes, are not willing to do steady, faithful work for reasonable wages. Their idea of freedom is to come and go at will, and they expect full wages for light work.”—_Austin, Texas._

“The ease with which subsistence can be obtained in this productive climate and the high wages earned during the cotton-picking season make the labor supply unstable.”—_Austin, Texas._

“The negroes need training, but rarely remain in one place long enough to repay one for the trouble of teaching them.”—_Brenham, Texas._

“The negroes will do well enough if one is willing to overlook carelessness.”—_Johnston, South Carolina._

“The colored servants do not like to be kept at steady employment.”—_Trenton, South Carolina._

“The majority work only as a make-shift, with no idea of remaining.”—_Biloxi, Mississippi._

“The whole colored race is in a transitional period which is full of evils.”—_Marion, Alabama._

“Negroes are very stubborn under harsh treatment, but respond quickly to kind treatment.”—_Crescent City, Florida._

“Most of the negroes are indifferent to improving in any way as long as they have enough to eat, a place to sleep, and clothes to wear.”—_Tallahassee, Florida._

[286] A southern gentleman well known as a student of social science writes in regard to the importation of negroes to the North: “There is nothing to hope from it. I have been reared in the South, and I know the negro well. Speaking as one with no sectional prejudice and with the broadest sympathy for blacks as well as whites, I must tell you that in general negroes will not serve you as well as the Irish, Germans, or Swedes. Personal attachment alone will secure good service from colored people.”

[287] “I must say from my own experience and observation that well-trained Chinese are the very best servants to be had here.”—_San Francisco, California._

“I have grown up with Chinamen in the house, and it seems to me quite revolting and unnatural to have in the heart of the house an alien woman who speaks your language, knows your affairs, is even in a way dependent on your companionship, yet is nothing to you as a friend, and would never be asked even as a guest into the house if it rested on her personal qualities.”—_San Francisco, California._

“Our Chinese cook is an admirable servant, invariably respectful, and does his work beautifully; he has the self-respect to fill every requirement of respectful and obedient behavior that the occasion calls for.”—_San Francisco, California._

“Three Chinese were the most satisfactory servants we ever employed. In a housekeeping experience of nearly fifty years we have employed negro, Norwegian, and Irish servants.”—_San Francisco, California._

[288] “The difficulty can only be removed by repealing the restriction act.”—_Centerville, California_.

“The Chinese have become very independent since the new restriction act.”—_San Francisco, California._

“The restriction act made the Chinese very independent. They thought the stopping of the supply would make those already here able to command higher wages.”—_San Francisco, California._

“One difficulty is the exclusion act.”—_San Francisco, California._

[289] _Co-operative Housekeeping_. The book is now out of print, but the original articles on which it is based can be found in the _Atlantic Monthly_, November, 1868, to March, 1869.

[290] A full account of the plan is given in _Good Housekeeping_, July 19, 1890. It was also described in nearly all of the daily papers during May and June, 1890.

[291] A more complete and possibly more serious account of Mr. Bellamy’s views than that found in _Looking Backward_ is given by him in _Good Housekeeping_, December 21, 1889.

[292] _The New York Tribune_ says of the sewing women in that city: “They are a product of city life; a sort of vitalized machines, fitted only to do a certain mechanical work and disabled for any other industry mainly because they have been fastened to a sewing-machine all their lives.”

[293] “The men of my family would consider it the greatest disgrace if one of the women connected with it were to support herself.”

[294] Mr. Charles Dudley Warner asserts that women teachers have no social position (_Harper’s Monthly_, April, 1895). But his statements can apply only to some of the ultra-fashionable finishing schools in two or three large cities.

[295] It is the testimony of more than one employer that those domestics remain longest in a place and are most content who have a taste for sewing and reading. Those who are wholly dependent for pleasure on excitement and change form of necessity a restless class.

[296] The word “servant” has been used many times in this work, but it has seemed unavoidable in the absence of any other generally recognized term.

[297] It has been suggested that the word “homemaker” be applied to the mistress of the house and “housekeeper” to the employee; “working housekeeper” is often used of an efficient caretaker who does her work without direction; “domestic” and “house helper” seem wholly unobjectionable. It certainly is not necessary in abandoning one objectionable word to adopt another equally so. The Lynn, Massachusetts, papers, for example, advertise under “wants” for a “forelady in stitching room,” “a position as forewoman by a lady thoroughly familiar with all parts of shoe stitching,” “on millinery an experienced saleslady.” In other places one finds “a gentlewoman who desires employment at twenty-five cents an hour.” The public has much to answer for in the misuse of both “servant” and “lady.”

[298] _Japanese Girls and Women_, p. 304.

[299] _Ante_, Chap. II.

[300] This does not refer to ordinary baker’s bread, but to that made according to scientific principles, such as is sold at the New England Kitchen in Boston and by the Boston Health Food Company.

[301] A beginning in this direction has already been made in the case of vegetables canned for winter use. In the canning factories of Western New York an ingenious pea huller is in use which does away with much of the laborious process hitherto necessary. In a trial of speed it was recently found that one machine could shell twenty-eight bushels of peas in twenty minutes. In some of the largest cities the principle has been applied, and this vegetable is delivered ready for use; but such preparation should be made universal and all other vegetables added to the list.

[302] Cited by Bolles, p. 413.

[303] Bolles, p. 130.

[304] The Oriental Tea Company of Boston sends out coffee and guarantees it to maintain a temperature of 150° Fahrenheit for twenty-four hours. The experiment has been tried of sending it from Boston to St. Louis, with the result of maintaining a temperature of 148° at the end of three days.

[305] The women connected with two churches in a city in Indiana have maintained for some time such sales, and they have proved very remunerative. In one city in New Jersey $1,200 was raised in a few weeks to pay a church mortgage. In a Long Island village several hundred dollars was raised for a similar purpose by the women of the church, who took orders for cooking and sewing. In an Iowa city funds were obtained in this way for missionary purposes. In a village of five hundred inhabitants, in Central New York, the women of one of the churches have sold, every Saturday afternoon for eight years, ices and ice-creams, and have cleared annually about seventy-five dollars. In another town, several women of limited incomes began paying their contributions to the church by baking bread and cake for other families, and finding it remunerative continued the work as a means of support. In one Western city an annual sale is held at Thanksgiving time, and about one hundred dollars netted for home missionary purposes.

[306] The Woman’s Exchange, _The Forum_, May, 1892.

[307] Many illustrations of this can be given outside of those connected with the Exchange:

Mrs. A, in Central New York, has made a handsome living by making chicken salad to be sold in New York City.

Mrs. B, in a small Eastern village, has for several years baked bread, pies, and cake for her neighbors, and in this way has supported herself, three children, and a father. She has recently built a separate bakehouse, and bakes from thirty to one hundred loaves daily, according to the season, and other things in proportion. She says she always had a “knack” at baking, and that when she employs an assistant she has nearly every afternoon to herself.

Mrs. C, in a Western city, supports herself, three children, and an invalid husband, by making cake.

Mrs. D makes a good living by selling Saratoga potatoes to grocers.

Mrs. E has cleared $400 a year by making preserves and jellies on private orders.

Mrs. F partially supports herself and family by making food for the sick.

Mrs. G supports a family of five by making jams and pickles.

Mrs. H has built up a large business, employing from three to five assistants, in making cake and salad.

Mrs. I, in a small Eastern city, began by borrowing a barrel of flour, and now has a salesroom where she sells daily from eighty to one hundred dozen Parker House rolls, in addition to bread made in every possible way, from every kind of grain.

Mrs. J, in a small Western city, sells salt-risings bread to the value of $30 a week; and Mrs. K, in the same place, Boston brown bread to the value of $75 a week.

Mrs. L, living on a farm near a Southern city, has built up “an exceedingly remunerative business” by selling to city grocers preserves, pickles, cakes, and pies. “One cause of her success has been the fact that she would allow no imperfect goods to be sold; everything has been of the best whether she has gained or lost on it.”

Mrs. M supports herself by taking orders for fancy cooking.

Mrs. N, living in a large city, sells to grocers baked beans and rolls.

Mrs. O, in New York City, has netted $1,000 a year by preparing mince-meat and making pies of every description.

Mrs. P, in a small village on Lake Superior, has large orders from cities in Southern Michigan for strawberry and raspberry jam.

Mrs. Q, in a country village of five hundred inhabitants, sells thirty loaves of bread daily.

Mrs. R and two daughters last year netted $1,500 (above all expenses except house rent) in preparing fancy lunch dishes on shortest notice, and delicacies for invalids.

Mrs. S puts up pure fruit juices and shrubs.

Mrs. T prepares consommé in the form of jelly ready to melt and serve.

Mrs. U has made a fair income by preparing and selling fresh sweet herbs.

These illustrations can be multiplied indefinitely. They have come to notice in nearly every state in the Union, and in places varying in size from country villages without railroad stations to such cities as Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York.

[308] Mrs. A has for several years gone from house to house at stated times sweeping and dusting rooms containing fine bric-à-brac.

Mr. B cares for all of the lawns of a large number of gentlemen, each of whom pays him a fixed sum for the season in proportion to the size of his grounds.

Mr. C cares for all of the furnaces and clears the walks in a city block.

Mrs. D earns a partial support by arranging tables for lunches and afternoon teas.

Mrs. E washes windows once in two weeks for a number of employers.

Mrs. F takes charge of all arrangements for afternoon teas.

Mrs. G earns $3 a day as a cook on special occasions.

Miss H waits on a table in a boarding house three hours a day.

Miss I distributes the clothes from the laundry in a large city school.

Mrs. J is kept busy as a cook, serving as a substitute in kitchens temporarily vacant.

Mrs. K derives a considerable income from the supervision of party suppers. “Her social position is quite unaffected by it.”

Mrs. L “makes herself generally useful” at the rate of ten cents an hour if regularly employed and twenty cents when serving occasionally.

Mrs. M goes out as a waitress at lunches and dinners.

Mrs. N employs a young man working his way through school to keep wood-boxes and coal-hods filled.

Many college students in cities partially pay their expenses by table service.

Hotels and restaurants frequently send out waiters on special occasions.

One employer writes, “I think a central office in this city at which competent waitresses could be hired by the hour would be largely patronized.”

The Syracuse, New York, Household Economic Club publishes a _Household Register_, giving the names and addresses of all persons in the city who do by the piece, hour, or day all forms of household work. Thirty-five different classes of work are enumerated.

[309] See also article on the “Revival of Hand Spinning and Weaving in Westmoreland,” by Albert Fleming, _Century Magazine_, February, 1889.

[310] One writes, “I find it much better to employ one servant and to hire work by the piece, and to purchase from the Exchange, rather than to employ an extra servant.”

Another housekeeper writes: “I began housekeeping twelve years ago with three servants and had more than enough work for all. I now have two and have not enough work for them, although my family is larger than at first. The change has come from putting work out of the house and hiring much done by the piece.”

A business man writes: “Our family is happier than it ever dared hope to be under the sway of Green Erin. We purchase all baked articles and all cooked meats as far as possible. A caterer is employed on special occasions, and work that cannot be done by the parents, three children, and two aunts, who compose the family, is hired by the hour. Since we signed our Declaration of Independence in 1886, peace has reigned.”

Still another says: “I used to employ a laundress in the house at $4 per week and board. I was also at expense in furnishing soap, starch, bluing, and paid a large additional water tax. Now my laundress lives at home, and does my laundry there for $4 per week, and we are both better satisfied.”

Several small families who do “light housekeeping,” have found that they have in this way been able to live near the business of the men of the family, and thus have kept the family united and intact, as they could not have done had it been necessary to employ servants.

One employee writes, “If more housework were done by the day so that more women could be with their families in the evening, I think it would help matters.”

[311] _Seventeenth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor_, p. 157.

[312] _Profit Sharing between Employer and Employee_, p. 8.

[313] _Methods of Industrial Remuneration_, p. 158.

[314] Schloss, _Methods of Industrial Remuneration_, p. 173.

[315] Gilman, _Profit Sharing_, p. 189.

[316] _Seventeenth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor_, p. 178.

[317] Schloss, _Report on Profit Sharing_, p. 157.

[318] _Ibid._, p. 160.

[319] Schloss, _Report on Profit Sharing_, pp. 158-159.

[320] Schloss, _Methods of Industrial Remuneration_, pp. 173-174.

[321] Schloss, _Report_, p. 158.

[322] Wright, _Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor_, 1886, p. 231.

[323] _Ibid._, p. 172.

[324] This included the purchase of two new labor-saving appliances for the kitchen, costing $5.70. The maid was given the choice of having the new utensils or dividing a surplus; she chose the former.

[325] This included the presence in the family of two guests for two weeks.

[326] One housekeeper reports that she gives her cook five cents for every new soup, salad, made-over dish, or dessert that proves acceptable to the majority of the family. She thus secures variety and economy in the use of materials.

One reports that she has a German cook who understands thoroughly the purchase and use of all household materials. The cook is given a fixed sum each week with which to make purchases, and she keeps whatever sum remains after these have been made. The family report that they have never lived so well, or with so much comfort and so much economy as since the plan has been tried.

Another states that she adds at the end of the month twenty per cent to the wages of her waitress if no article of glass or china has been nicked, cracked, or broken during the time.

These are all variations of the same principle.

[327] An admirable work on _Household Sanitation_ has been published by Miss Marion Talbot and Mrs. Ellen S. Richards.

[328] The work in this direction carried on by Professor W. O. Atwater of Wesleyan University has been of the greatest value, and indicates the lines along which future investigation must be made.

[329] _Letter to the Clergy of the Diocese of New York_, May 15, 1886.

[330] _The Century_, June, 1894.

[331] An excellent classification of standards of work and wages has been drawn up by the committee on Household Economics of the Civic Club of Philadelphia. See Appendix III.

[332] Maria Mitchell, p. 26.

[333] “However grievous the ‘servant problem’ may be in some English households, it sinks into insignificance when compared with the conditions on the other side of the Atlantic.” Alice Zimmern, in _The Leisure Hour_, May, 1899.

[334] _Ante_, chaps. VI., VIII., IX.

[335] This is apparently the case universally in France and in Italy. In Italy, while the washing is always done out of the house, the ironing is often done at home. In Lombardy “a woman of color” washes the colored clothes and flannels, which are kept distinct from the ordinary laundry. On the continent bed linen is often changed only once in two, three, or even four weeks—a custom that has at least the advantage of reducing to a minimum this part of the household work.

“In England it is becoming the rule, except in large households with laundries of their own, and in households managed on narrow means, to send this work out.”—Miss Collet, _Report_, p. 9.

“Washing is put out, as it is now almost impossible to get a girl who will do it.”—Employer, cited by Miss Collet, _Report_, p. 30.

[336] In some parts of Switzerland women come in from outside every six weeks and do all the laundry work of a household for that period.

[337] The legal relations between employer and employee are everywhere prescribed with more or less fulness, but in Germany the laws are very minute in character, while the contract in particular is much more rigid, and it is carried out in much greater detail than elsewhere. The laws for Prussia are given in Posseldt, while a summary for the Empire is given in Braun. Each state has its own laws on the subject, but as far as I have been able to examine them, they are practically the same in principle.

I am indebted to Mrs. John H. Converse for permission to use an exhaustive statement of the legal relations between mistress and maid in England prepared by Mrs. Henry C. Lea of Philadelphia.

Weber, in _Les Usages locaux_, sums up many of the points in French law.

[338] Braun, chaps. VII., XI.

“In England situations are usually subject to a month’s notice on either side.”—Booth, VIII., 221.

No special contract is made in France, with the result that “one changes domestics these days almost as often as political convictions.”—Weber, p. 45.

In Italy, also, no special contract is required, though a servant cannot be turned off without giving him ten days’ notice or a week’s wages.

[339] Posseldt, p. 75. Braun, chap. XIV.

But under many circumstances, specified with great exactness, a servant may be legally dismissed without notice. Posseldt, pp. 64-70, gives a list of nineteen cases where this may be done in Prussia; the laws for Saxony are very similar (pp. 28-30); Braun, chap. XII., gives twenty-one.

[340] Braun, p. 64. In Saxony he is at liberty to choose between returning to his place, paying a fine of 30_M._, or being imprisoned for eight days. _Gesindeordnung für das Königreich Sachsen_, p. 8.

The employee is also privileged under certain conditions to break the contract without notice. Braun, chap. XII., enumerates seven. These are the same in Prussia, Posseldt, pp. 70-74; Schork, p. 38, gives only five for Baden.

[341] The fine in Saxony is a maximum one of 150_M._, and the imprisonment the maximum one of six weeks. _Gesindeordnung_, p. 10.

[342] Weber says, “If you have serious complaints to make, either seek legal redress or say nothing.” Pp. 53-54.

[343] In Italy the servant is protected by very stringent laws punishing slander and defamation.

[344] In England “the majority of adult male indoor domestic servants are in large households employing over six servants.”—Miss Collet, _Report_, p. 23.

“Every English man-servant is apt to consider himself a specialist.... This want of elasticity has led to his gradual disappearance from all except the most wealthy households.”—Booth, VIII., 227.

In Italy cooks are very generally men. In France nearly all domestic work in the provincial hotels is performed by men. In Germany waiters are, as a rule, men.

[345] This competition is not wholly unknown. In a pension in Athens the second waiter, a Greek, left because unwilling to take orders from an Armenian head waiter. French servants sometimes go to the French cantons of Switzerland, and the reverse. The same is true of German and Italian servants who are found in the German and the Italian cantons. But the permanent migration of servants from one country to another, especially on the continent, is very slight. The reason usually given is, “They do not understand the ways of another country and are unhappy in it.”

[346] “Not only will the foreigner work for less wages, but he is better educated and more thoroughly trained. Whilst in this country a waiter’s duties are ‘picked up’ in an irregular way, in Germany or Switzerland the work is properly taught by a regular system of apprenticeship. The knowledge of continental language which the foreigner possesses is found useful, and he has, moreover, a higher reputation than our own countrymen for neatness and civility.”—Booth, VIII., 235.

[347] English, French, and German are universally spoken by waiters in all the large hotels and pensions on the continent. Two or three other languages in addition are often found. One waiter in a very primitive hotel in Olympia, Greece, spoke eight. This can scarcely be considered exceptional. “The waiting staff of the great modern hotels consists mainly of foreigners.”—Booth, VIII., 231-232.

[348] In certain quarters of London the boarding-houses are full of waiters who have come over from the continent to learn English. Many waiters not French by birth took advantage of the Exposition in 1900 to improve their French by going to Paris at that time. It is not unusual for travellers to be asked concerning possible openings in hotels and pensions where waiters would have an opportunity of learning a new language.

[349] For wages in England, see Miss Collet, _Report on the Money Wages of Indoor Domestic Servants_, and Booth, VIII., 217, 221-224, 227-228, 231-235; for wages in France, M. Bienaymé in _Journal de la Société de Statistique de Paris_, November, 1899, and M. Salomon in _La Nouvelle Revue_, February 1, 1886. I have been unable to find satisfactory statistics concerning the wages paid in Germany and in Italy. Numerous inquiries lead me to believe that they are somewhat lower in Italy and in Spain than elsewhere (an English housekeeper residing in Spain for twenty-five years reports that general servants in Spain receive from $1.25 to $2.00 a month, cooks, who are considered “artists,” receiving somewhat more), and that in Germany the variations are not so great as in England in the wages paid in different classes of society. This, however, is but an impression, and the judgment cannot be considered authoritative.

[350] “We understand that the plan of paying board-wages throughout the year instead of providing food is increasing, and is usually at the rate of 16_s._ per week for upper men-servants, 14_s._ for footmen, and 12_s._ to 14_s._ for women-servants.”—Booth, VIII., 230.

“Another disturbing feature in many Irish households is the practice of paying ‘breakfast wages’ in some cases, and ‘full board’ wages in others.”—Miss Collet, _Report_, p. 10.

[351] M. Babeau says that in France as far back as 1692 a good cook expected presents at Easter and on Saint Martin’s day as well as at New Year’s. P. 283.

“To the 600 francs (given a domestic in the fashionable quarters of Paris) must be added gifts and New Year’s presents.”—M. Jules Simon, cited by M. Salomon, p. 549.

“A usually substantial Christmas box is given the waiters in West-End London clubs.”—Booth, VIII., 231.

In Germany, while a servant cannot legally claim presents at Christmas, New Year’s, and similar times (_Welche Rechte und Pflichten haben Herrschaft und Gesinde?_ p. 30), the custom of giving them is universal. “I would not _dare_ to give less than thirty marks at Christmas to the cook and twenty marks to the chambermaid.”—German housekeeper, Dresden.

It is not uncommon in Germany for housekeepers to give presents on the anniversaries of the days their servants come to them, and medals on special anniversaries, as the tenth or twenty-fifth. This explains the custom of the German Housewives’ Society in New York of presenting $10 gold pieces to employees who have served faithfully for two years in the home of a member of the society. _The Evening Post_ (New York), December 12, 1900.

“I always give my cook twenty lire at Christmas and ten lire at the fête of the Madonna.”—Italian housekeeper, Milan.

[352] “I often give a present of two marks between times, pay often for extra service, and give my servants a great deal of cast-off clothing. The head of a factory is not obliged to propitiate the bad temper and sullen moods of his employees with gifts and fees as we housekeepers have to do.”—German housekeeper, Berlin.

“I give my cook a great deal of my husband’s cast-off clothing and the housemaid much of my own.”—Italian housekeeper, Rome.

[353] “I would not think of leaving less than two shillings with the housemaid when I have spent a night in a friend’s house.”—Englishwoman, Cambridge.

“I always leave five shillings with the servant when I spend Sunday with friends, and as she always seems glad to see me when I return I imagine it is enough.”—Englishwoman, London.

The traditional reply ascribed to Hanway (Bouniceau-Gesmon, p. 134) in declining an invitation from an English lord, “I am not rich enough to dine with you,” is typical of what one often hears in England.

“Vails to servants in households where a considerable number of visitors are entertained must be an important item in the real earnings of servants.”—Miss Collet, _Report_, p. 29.

An admirable discussion of the whole subject of fees paid by guests is given by W. J. Stillman in _The Nation_, October 11, 1900. See also _The Nation_, November 8, 1900. Mr. Albert Matthews in _The Nation_, December 13, 1900, cites an extract from the London _Chronicle_ that shows that the custom dates back certainly as far as 1765.

Babeau, pp. 301-302, discusses the abuses of the custom in France, though they are less there than in Italy, and especially in England “where one cannot go out to dine without encountering, on leaving, all the servants drawn up in line and holding out their hands.”

[354] “It is very stupid, but it is generally done.”—German housekeeper, Dresden.

“The cook makes about three marks a month in this way.”—German housekeeper, Berlin.

“The ‘sou in the franc’ that certain tradesmen agree to give servants is not only tolerated, but it is recognized as a right.”—M. G. Salomon, p. 549.

“In the expression ‘theft’ we do not hesitate to include the ‘dancing of the basket’; the ‘sou in the franc’ given by some dealers does not constitute an act of disloyalty on the part of the domestic. It is for the master, if he would escape this tax, to levy it on the tradesmen less clever in advertising, unless he is very sure that the merchant makes the servant this allowance _out of his profits alone_.”—Weber, p. 47.

“In fact, the part taken by our servants in the purchase and use of almost all articles of consumption makes a necessary increase in the wages paid. Thus even before coming to the kitchen, provisions undergo an increase in cost from the fact that they are bought by the mercenary person who attends to the marketing; this does not include customary augmentations, the sou per pound or the sou in the franc, said to be met by the merchant, and certain others which, on account of their constant increase, deserve special mention.”—Bienaymé, pp. 366-367.

“What is done by these servants hired for a limited time? They go to the merchant and impose upon him the law of division of profits. The merchant raises the price, and the stranger buys the article for more than it should cost. These servants even levy a tax upon the eating-house keeper; the livery-stable keeper is obliged to pay them as much as twenty sous a day; these profits have become customary.”—Mercier, V., 156.

Bouniceau-Gesmon, pp. 107-113, cites from an unnamed English author a long account of similar practices in England.

“My cook always gets three lire from the butcher and three from the grocer at Christmas.”—Italian housekeeper.

[355] M. Colletet narrates the story of a young girl from the country who was told of a situation where in addition to her regular wages she could get various profits, such as ashes, old shoes, remnants of bread and meat, and various tidbits.—_Le Tracas de Paris_, p. 229.

M. Babeau, p. 283, cites from Fournier, _Vanités historiques et littéraires_, V., 243-257, the advice of an old servant to a new one as to ways of cheating his master, such as burning much wood in order to have many ashes, saving from articles for the table, etc. It is thus that a cook has been able to lay up enough to buy five large farms, while her husband, the coachman, has on his part saved out of the hay and straw bought for the stables.

“A large number of cooks increase these profits by illicit gains, and the tradesmen themselves, with no other reason than the fear of losing their customers, obligingly wink at, or rather become parties in, this trickery.”—M. Jules Simon, cited by M. Salomon, p. 549.

“The cook either brings short weight or reports paying a higher price than he has paid—he has many dodges. The housekeeper must weigh over again the articles purchased, or go to market to ascertain, if possible, the real price of articles bought, or submit to imposition.”—Housekeeper in Spain.

[356] Under this head come cast-off clothing, skins of animals, bones, tallow, drippings, etc. A. Weber, _Les Usages locaux_, p. 48.

[357] “Beer (or beer money) is allowed at the rate of about one pint a day for women-servants.”—Booth, VIII., 220 (1896).

Miss Collet considers it established that in England the custom of paying beer money is dying out, many employers not only give no beer money but also give no beer. _Report_, p. 29 (1899).

In Italy women-servants are allowed one-half pint of wine per day, and men-servants one pint. The wine is given out each day, or the money equivalent at the end of the month.

[358] _Les Usages locaux_, p. 52.

[359] The laws of insurance against accident, sickness, invalidism, and old age compel the employer to pay one-half the insurance,—about three dollars per year. It is said, however, that as a rule the employer pays the entire amount. It is true this amount is small in families employing but one servant and paying low wages, but where several servants are kept and high wages given the total amount is considerable. On the other hand, the burden is often relatively, though not absolutely, heavier in the family with one servant on low wages, since this means a small income. The amount of insurance varies with the wages, but the wages received by most domestics place them in Class II. The government rates board and lodging received by servants at 350_M._ per annum, and this with the cash wages received puts the insurance at about three dollars annually, an amount slightly in excess of that paid by the employees in Class I. See _Unfallversicherungsgesetz_, _Krankenversicherungsgesetz_, and _Das Reichsgesetz über die Invaliditäts- und Altersversicherung_. Each of the states of the Empire has its own _Gesindeordnung_ and the conditions of insurance are often stated in these.

[360] In France scarcely forty years ago it was considered impossible to ascertain the wages paid domestic servants. _Statistique de la France. Prix et salaires à diverses époques._ Paris, 1863. Cited by M. Gustave Bienaymé in _Journal de la Société de Statistique de Paris_, November, 1899.

[361] M. Bienaymé has attempted, with the aid of information gained through employment bureaus, personal recollections, household expense books, and similar means, to give the wages paid in France since 1815. The results of his investigations seem to show that wages in nearly every branch of domestic service have steadily increased since that time, until now the wages of an ordinary cook are 50 francs per month and a chambermaid the same, while a general servant receives 40 francs per month, the wages of all these classes of house servants having doubled the past sixty years. At the same time the cost of maintenance has also increased. He gives a table showing the increase, or in some cases the decrease, in wages in every branch of domestic service during this period. _Journal de la Société de Statistique de Paris_, November, 1899.

Practically the same estimates are given by M. Georges Salomon in “La Domesticité,” _La Nouvelle Revue_, February 1, 1886. He cites a similar opinion from M. Jules Simon.

Mr. Booth shows a gradual increase in the wages of servants as they grow older or are advanced to better positions, but this does not necessarily show a general increase from year to year. VIII., pt. II., _passim_.

Mr. A. E. Bateman considers it impossible to state, for England, what the movement of wages in domestic service has been. _Journal of the Royal Statistical Society_, LXI., 264-265.

[362] An account of the protest against this on the part of the “Amalgamated Waiters’ Society” is given by the London correspondent of _The Evening Post_ (New York) in the issue of December 10, 1900.

[363] A writer in _Le Matin_ (Paris) of April 15, 1900, urges the formation of a society each member of which shall pledge himself not to give fees.

[364] Mr. William Clarke, in _The Social Future of England_, sums up the character of domestic service in England in saying: “It is true that English middle-class service is bad, and even growing worse, and this will continue so long as factory labor is preferred to domestic service. But there is probably no country where the wealthy can secure such efficient and fairly honest service in the butler, valet, lady’s maid, and housekeeper lines as in England.”—_The Contemporary Review_, December, 1900.

The historical question whether the character of the service has ever been any better than it is at present must also remain unanswered for the same reason. Pandolfini in _Il Governo della Famiglia_ finds the philosophical explanation of poor service in Italy during the fifteenth century in the tendency of servants to seek their own interests rather than those of their masters—an explanation limited by neither time nor place. All literature goes to show that our own age is not alone in finding it difficult to secure those who will “carry the message to Garcia.”

[365] _Barber of Seville_, I., 2.

[366] The employer as a rule commands absolutely the time of the employee; for example, in Germany the employee spends her time in knitting for the family, in working out of doors, or in similar ways. The hours everywhere seemed to me much longer than those required in America, largely owing to the lateness of the evening meal, which is universally dinner in France, Italy, and England.

[367] The lack of elevators in even large apartment houses, the necessity of storing fuel—unless bought in small quantities—in the cellar, the absence of a common heating system, no arrangements for carrying water to every room and the difficulty of securing an adequate supply of hot water, the necessity of daily marketing, the little use of ice, the punctiliousness with which the top box on the top shelf of the closet must be dusted, especially in Germany and in Holland, the endless scrubbing of floors and stairs and polishing of brass and copper, the use of candles and kerosene in private houses and even in large pensions and hotels,—these are but suggestions of ways in which domestic service is much harder than it is in America.

[368] The living accommodations provided for employees seemed to me everywhere distinctly inferior to those provided in America. In London, “as far as possible the men are lodged in the basement, while the women have their rooms at the top of the house. This arrangement, though always desirable, often necessitates two or even three men using the servants’ hall as their bedroom, while another sleeps in the pantry, and another beneath the stairs. Breathing space is restricted and the want of air, and high living, coupled with the absence of hard work or exercise, lead naturally to a demand for some form of stimulant, with the result that numbers of men-servants ultimately take to drink.”—Booth, VIII., 228-229. The sleeping rooms given servants are small and cheerless, hot in summer and cold in winter, while often the only place provided for taking meals is a corner of the kitchen table.

[369] Bouniceau-Gesmon finds a fundamental difference between slavery and domestic service, as indeed there is, and denies that one is the outgrowth of the other, since the two have sometimes existed side by side. _Domestiques et Maîtres_, chap. I. But while the one is bond and the other free, and while the labor performed in both states is the same and should be honorable, the fact remains that the domestic servant has inherited to a great degree the social opprobrium that attached to the slave and the serf.

[370] Gil Blas, Figaro, and Lafleur have long stood as types of the eighteenth century valet. Walter Scott says of the former, “as to respect, it is the last thing which he asks at his reader’s hand.” [_Biographical Memoir of Le Sage._] Both Dean Swift and Daniel DeFoe sharpened their pens with infinite pains in describing the servants of their times. At a later date the pencil of Cruikshank found employment in illustrating Mayhew’s _Greatest Plague in Life_, while _Punch_ for years revelled in the opportunities afforded by “servant-gallism.” Babeau, Bouniceau-Gesmon, and Salomon show similar conditions in France. “Stealing is an infamous thing—it is the sin of a lackey,” remarks a priest to a pupil who confessed a theft. Cited by Babeau, p. 290. “To lie like a lackey” is almost proverbial.

[371] There are indeed many illustrations of servants of an altogether different character—Caleb in _The Bride of Lammermoor_ and Marcel in _The Huguenots_ are types of the faithful servitor who alike in prosperity and in adversity remains constant to the family in whose service he was born. The fact remains, however, that the servant exists as a type in European literature as he does not in that of America.

[372] _La Nouvelle Revue_, February 1, 1886.

[373] “It is, in fact, almost necessary to have an inherited aptitude for the relationship involved—a relationship very similar in some respects to that subsisting between sovereign and subject. From both servant and subject there is demanded an all-pervading attitude of watchful respect, accompanied by a readiness to respond at once to any gracious advance that may be made without ever presuming or for a moment ‘forgetting themselves.’”—Booth, VIII., 225.

[374] “The habits of servants in large houses and the strict observance of etiquette give rise to some very curious customs. There are three grades of servants, named ‘kitchen,’ ‘hall,’ and ‘room,’ after the places in which they take their meals.”—Booth, VIII., 229.

“There is no class less open to democratic ideas than a contented servant class. Compared with them their titled and wealthy employers are revolutionists. They cannot bear change, their minds are saturated with the idea of social grades and distinctions, they will not even live with one another on terms of social equality.”—William Clarke, _Contemporary Review_, December, 1900.

[375] Mercier speaks of establishments where valets and maids had themselves valets and lackeys (XI., 277), and says that generally a lackey in the upper classes takes the name of his master when he goes with other lackeys, as he also adopts his customs, his gestures, his manners, carries a gold watch, and wears lace; a lackey _du dernier ton_ even wears two watches like his master (II., 124).

“The maid of a visitor ranks, of course, with the upper servants. She is addressed not by her own name, but by the surname or title of her mistress.”—Booth, VIII., 230.

[376] “I have four servants in London who do the work two used to do in New York.”—American housekeeper in London. Booth, VIII., 225-230 _passim_.

[377] Booth, VIII., 224.

An interesting illustration of the social stratification in England is suggested by the sermons delivered to servants by the late Master of Balliol. _Sermons_, pp. vii., 348. Lewis Carroll “was always ready and willing to preach at the special service for college servants which used to be held at Christ Church every Sunday evening.”—Collingwood, _Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll_, p. 77.

[378] The home for aged servants in Dresden is under the immediate patronage of the Queen. In 1892, when visited, it had accommodations for fifteen women who must be at least sixty-two years old and give proof of having been a servant before being admitted. It does not apparently differ in principle from a well-conducted old ladies’ home except that its inmates must all have been servants.

[379] There are many of these homes where girls out of employment can have comfortable accommodations at a reasonable rate. One of the most interesting is the “Heimatshaus für Mädchen” in Berlin. In 1892 it was located under the “Stadtbahn” or elevated railroad of the city. Under pressure it could accommodate two hundred and was constantly increasing its facilities. In 1891 five thousand girls had found in it a temporary home. They remained on an average about five days. Each occupant pays 25 pfennigs for lodging, 10 for coffee, 15 for dinner, and 10 for supper. Even at these very low rates the home is self-supporting. The only source of income is the fees paid to the employment bureau carried on in connection with the home. Every employer pays 3 marks when he secures a servant through the bureau, and every employee pays the same when a place is secured. That the class of servants who frequent it have a family likeness to their sisters in America was indicated by the questions overheard asked by would-be servants of prospective employers: “How many children are there in the family?” “How many servants do you keep?” “Is there running water in your flat?” “How many flights up do you live?”

[380] The Sonntags-Verein has its headquarters in Berlin where in 1892 it had twenty-nine unions under its charge, with one hundred and twenty-one in other parts of Germany and six in Russia, England, and Austria. Its work is almost exclusively religious in character, but entertainment is provided consisting of music, games, and reading, and beer or tea is served with bread and butter. About fifteen hundred girls were members of the Berlin branches in 1892. The difficulty of starting and maintaining these unions was very great. The free time of household employees is every other or every third Sunday afternoon, so that attendance is very irregular and interest correspondingly fluctuating. Employers often discourage the attendance of their employees, saying that they need rest rather than recreation, while the girls themselves often prefer the coffee-houses or beer gardens. The _Deutsche Mädchen-Zeitung_ in 1892 had been published twenty-three years in the interests of the Verein and had a circulation of four thousand copies. These, however, were not taken by the girls themselves, but by their employers for them. “The Germans never wish to pay for anything themselves, they wish everything given them,” said a German employer in explanation. The Sonntags-Verein owed its inception to the interest in the class of household employees taken by Frau Banquier Lösche, and since her death, four years ago, the work has been carried on by her daughter.

[381] These usually receive young girls after they have been confirmed,—at about fourteen years of age,—and train them in everything pertaining to the house. They do not naturally at that age go of their own accord, but they are taken by their parents or guardians who often sign a contract, agreeing that the girl will remain in the school at least one or two years, as the case may be. The schools are well attended, and the girls apparently contented.

Edward S. Joynes, in his report on the _Industrial Education of Women in Germany_ (Columbia, S.C., 1896), gives a full description of the training in domestic work given in the regular German industrial schools for girls.

[382] At least two important historical studies of the topic have been made,—one by Mr. Albert Matthews on “The Terms Hired Man and Help,” and one by Mr. James D. Butler on “British Convicts Shipped to American Colonies.” Statistical investigations of the subject have been carried on by the state bureaus of labor in Minnesota, Colorado, and Indiana. The Massachusetts bureau has collated the results of investigations made by the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union of Boston, Miss Isabel Eaton has made an exhaustive study of negro domestic service in the seventh ward of the city of Philadelphia, different branches of the Association of Collegiate Alumnæ have carried on valuable local inquiries into the question, while the bureau of labor in Washington is about undertaking a comprehensive study of the entire subject. The New York state library has issued a full list of articles and books bearing on the matter, and the city libraries of Providence, Rhode Island, and Salem, Massachusetts, have published similar lists. In view of these facts it seems not unreasonable to make the above claim.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I

SCHEDULE NO. I.—EMPLOYERS

STATISTICS OF DOMESTIC SERVICE

The graduates of Vassar College, Classes of ’88 and ’89, desire to collect statistics in regard to the subject of domestic service, and ask your assistance.

The work has grown out of a belief that a knowledge of some of the actual conditions of such service, as viewed from the standpoint of both employer and employee, is essential to an intelligent discussion of this question. It is hoped to tabulate the results obtained, showing the average wages paid in each occupation, the length of time employed, etc. The statistics, to be of value, must represent the experiences of many housekeepers in many localities, and the co-operation of all who are interested in the subject is earnestly solicited. Three schedules are sent you upon which to supply information.

SCHEDULE NO. I.—For Employers (mistresses of households).

SCHEDULE NO. II.—For Employees (domestic servants of all kinds).

SCHEDULE NO. III.—For Educational Statistics (from teachers, etc., in the kinds of schools specified).

These schedules are sent to all housekeepers and their employees who can be communicated with by the members of the Classes of ’88 and ’89 and the Department of History.

Will you please fill out the following blank and return it to the person sending it to you, or to the address given below? Please complete all the columns relating to each person in your employ.

Only estimates can be given in reply to Questions 7, 10, and 12.

If any question—as No. 17—is not applicable to you, this sign—X—may be used.

A prompt reply will be considered as a special favor.

_All personal information will be treated as confidential._ The name is asked as a guarantee of good faith, to avoid sending duplicates, and to render possible further correspondence in regard to special points of experience. It may, however, be omitted if desired.

Please return to—DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, VASSAR COLLEGE, POUGHKEEPSIE, N. Y.

December 1, 1889.

I Number engaged in each occupation II Place of birth. If foreign born, state the number of years each employee has resided in this country. III Time in your employ IV Paid by the day, week, or month V Amount VI With or without board VII Actual working hours per day VIII Time allowed each week IX Vacation time allowed during year X With or without loss of wages

============+=================+=================+======================= | NUMBER ETC. | WAGES | LABOR ------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- OCCUPATIONS | I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | VIII| IX | X ------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- WOMEN | | | | | | | | | | GENERAL | | | | | | | | | | SERVANTS | | | | | $ | | | | | ------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- SECOND GIRLS| | | | | $ | | | | | ------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- COOKS AND | | | | | | | | | | LAUNDRESSES| | | | | $ | | | | | ------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- COOKS | | | | | $ | | | | | ------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- LAUNDRESSES | | | | | $ | | | | | ------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- CHAMBERMAIDS| | | | | | | | | | AND | | | | | | | | | | WAITRESSES | | | | | $ | | | | | ------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- CHAMBERMAIDS| | | | | $ | | | | | ------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- WAITRESSES | | | | | $ | | | | | ------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- NURSES | | | | | $ | | | | | ------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- SEAMSTRESSES| | | | | $ | | | | | ------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- | | | | | $ | | | | | ------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- | | | | | $ | | | | | ------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- MEN | | | | | | | | | | BUTLERS | | | | | $ | | | | | ------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- COACHMEN AND| | | | | | | | | | GARDENERS | | | | | $ | | | | | ------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- COACHMEN | | | | | $ | | | | | ------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- GARDENERS | | | | | $ | | | | | ------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- | | | | | $ | | | | | ------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- | | | | | $ | | | | | ============+=====+=====+=====+=====+=====+=====+=====+=====+=====+=====

1. Name of Employer, ____

2. Post Office, ____ 3. County, ____

4. State, ____ 5. Date, ____

6. Do you live in a city, in a town, or in the country? ____

7. Estimated present population of city or town, ____

8. Leading industries of city or town, ____

9. Are women and girls employed in these industries? ____

10. Estimated total number so employed, ____

11. Are women and girls employed as clerks? ____

12. Estimated total number so employed, ____

13. Length of time you have been housekeeping, ____

14. Total number of domestic servants employed during that time, ____

15. Length of time without servants, ____

16. Length of time you have boarded, ____

17. Length of time you have boarded since marriage, ____

18. Number of persons in your family, ____

19. Name any special privileges granted your servants, such as single rooms, the use of a sitting-room, etc., ____

20. Have you paid, as a rule, higher or lower wages this year than last year, and in what branches of occupation, respectively? ____

21. Nature of the service rendered. Is it “Excellent,” “Good,” “Fair,” or “Poor”? Please specify by kinds of employment, ____

22. Have you found it difficult to obtain good domestic servants? ____

23. What explanation of the difficulty can you give? ____

24. How do you think the difficulty can be lessened or removed? ____

SCHEDULE NO. II.—EMPLOYEES

STATISTICS OF DOMESTIC SERVICE

1. Name, ____

2. Place of birth, ____

3. Present residence (city or town, and state), ____

4. Name of present employer, ____

5. Present occupation, ____

6. Years of service in present occupation, ____

7. Years of service with present employer, ____

8. Number of previous employers (domestic occupations), ____

9. Whole number of years engaged in domestic occupations, ____

10. Present wages received, per week, $____; per month, $____

11. Highest wages received from previous employers, per week, $____; per month, $____

12. Lowest wages received from previous employers, per week, $____; per month, $____

13. Have you ever had any regular employment other than housework? ____

14. Name such kinds of employment, ____

15. Highest wages received in other than domestic occupations, per week, $____; per month, $____

16. Lowest wages received in other than domestic occupations, per week, $____; per month, $____

17. Why do you choose housework as your regular employment? ____

18. What reasons can you give why more women do not choose housework as a regular employment? ____

19. Would you give up housework if you could find another occupation that would pay you as well? ____

NOTE.—All personal information will be treated as confidential.

Please return the Schedule to the person giving it to you, or to—

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, VASSAR COLLEGE, POUGHKEEPSIE, N. Y.

December 1, 1889.

SCHEDULE NO. III.—SCHOOLS, ETC.

STATISTICS OF DOMESTIC SERVICE

SCHOOLS FOR TRAINING DOMESTIC SERVANTS

1. City or Town, and State, ____

2. Number of such schools, ____

3. How supported, ____

4. Number that can be accommodated at the present time, ____

5. Present number in attendance, ____

6. Greatest number ever in attendance, ____

7. Total number in attendance since organization, ____

PUBLIC SCHOOLS WHERE HOUSEHOLD EMPLOYMENTS ARE TAUGHT

8. City or Town, and State, ____

9. Number of such schools, ____

10. Kinds of employment taught, ____

11. Is instruction compulsory or optional? ____

12. Is the object of such instruction technical or general? ____

13. Present number receiving such instruction, ____

PRIVATE SCHOOLS WHERE HOUSEHOLD EMPLOYMENTS ARE TAUGHT

14. Names of schools, ____

15. City or Town, and State, ____

16. Present number receiving such instruction, ____

WOMEN’S EXCHANGES, ETC.

17. Please give, below, instances with which you are acquainted of

1. Women’s exchanges.

2. Co-operative housekeeping.

3. Food prepared at home for sale outside.

4. Housework, not including ordinary day labor or sewing done by persons other than regular servants,

and state also how far the results in these cases have been remunerative, ____

Name, ____

Address, ____

Please return the Schedule to the person giving it to you, or to

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, VASSAR COLLEGE, POUGHKEEPSIE, N. Y.

December 1, 1889.

APPENDIX II

The following table shows the geographical distribution of the replies received to the schedules sent out.

================================================================= | NUMBERS +------------------------------------------- STATES | CITIES AND TOWNS | EMPLOYERS | EMPLOYEES | REPRESENTED | | ---------------------+------------------+-----------+------------ Alabama | 2 | 2 | 11 California | 13 | 30 | 76 Colorado | 2 | 2 | 2 Connecticut | 18 | 37 | 86 District of Columbia | 1 | 13 | 32 Florida | 3 | 3 | 8 Illinois | 27 | 58 | 146 Indiana | 11 | 45 | 94 Iowa | 14 | 38 | 68 Kansas | 4 | 6 | 9 Kentucky | 2 | 5 | 9 Louisiana | 2 | 2 | 2 Maine | 4 | 6 | 6 Maryland | 1 | 5 | 16 Massachusetts | 53 | 199 | 486 Michigan | 21 | 45 | 80 Minnesota | 5 | 6 | 12 Mississippi | 1 | 1 | 1 Missouri | 4 | 26 | 90 Nebraska | 4 | 12 | 21 Nevada | 1 | 2 | 2 New Hampshire | 5 | 5 | 6 New Jersey | 16 | 42 | 126 New York | 58 | 231 | 606 North Carolina | 2 | 2 | 2 Ohio | 10 | 30 | 81 Pennsylvania | 18 | 58 | 202 Rhode Island | 4 | 8 | 32 South Carolina | 8 | 23 | 94 South Dakota | 2 | 2 | 2 Tennessee | 1 | 1 | 3 Texas | 5 | 31 | 72 Utah | 1 | 2 | 4 Vermont | 3 | 3 | 8 Virginia | 2 | 3 | 9 Washington | 2 | 2 | 3 Wisconsin | 9 | 19 | 38 ---------------------+------------------+-----------+------------ Total | 339 | 1005 | 2545 =================================================================

APPENDIX III

The following circular letter was sent out in November, 1895, to the members of the Civic Club of Philadelphia:

_The Committee on Household Economics to the Members of the Civic Club_:

The following standards of work and wages are submitted by the Committee on Household Economics to the members of the Civic Club for their consideration, with a view to taking some action on the subject during the next season.

If any amendments or additions suggest themselves to the members of the Club, will they please note them in the blank space left for that purpose, and send the paper to the Chairman of the Household Economics at the address given below?

In case an applicant for service fails to come up to these standards, the employer agrees to furnish instruction in the points of failure, the employee agreeing to share half the expense of such instruction by accepting a corresponding reduction of weekly wages until skill is attained. It is understood, of course, that the employer furnishes the proper materials and utensils for the performance of the labor.

STANDARDS OF WORK AND WAGES IN HOUSEHOLD LABOR

COOKS AT $3.50 OR $4.00 PER WEEK

Must understand care of range or stove. Must understand care of sinks and drains. Must understand care of kitchen, cellar, and ice-chest. Must understand care of utensils. Must understand making bread, biscuit, muffins, and griddle cakes. Must understand making soup stock. Must understand roasting, boiling, and broiling meats. Must understand dressing and cooking poultry. Must understand cooking eggs, fish, and oysters. Must understand cooking vegetables, fresh or canned. Must understand making tea and coffee. Must understand making plain desserts.

WAITRESSES AT $3.00 OR $3.50 PER WEEK

Must understand care of dining-room. Must understand care of silver, glass, and china. Must understand care and attention in waiting on the table. Must understand care of parlor and halls. Must understand answering the door-bell properly.

CHAMBERMAIDS AT $3.00 OR $3.50 PER WEEK

Must understand care of bedrooms. Must understand care of beds and bedding. Must understand sweeping and dusting. Must understand care of toilet and bath-rooms. Must understand care of hard-wood floors.

CHILD’S NURSE AT $3.00 OR $3.50 PER WEEK

Must understand washing, dressing, and feeding of children. Must understand general care of the health and well-being of children.

LAUNDRESS AT $3.50 OR $4.00 PER WEEK

Must understand washing and ironing. Must understand general care of bed- and table-linen and clothes.

SEAMSTRESS AT $3.50 OR $4.00 PER WEEK

Must understand plain sewing. Must understand mending and darning. Must understand use of sewing machine.

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INDEX

Advertisements of Indian servants in colonial times, 49, n.

Aladdin oven, 215.

Alsop, George, on condition of redemptioners in Maryland, 25.

American Economic Association, assistance of, in obtaining statistics, preface, vii.

American domestic employees, dislike of, of competition with foreign born and negro elements, 147.

American Statistical Association, assistance of, in obtaining statistics, preface, vii.

Anburey, Thomas, on effect of slavery upon people of the South, 52, n.

Anti-slavery agitation, new occupations for women opened by, 11, 12.

Apartment house, a necessary evil at the present time, 191, 229.

Aristocracy, yielding of, to democracy, 227.

Arusmont, Madame d’, on influence of democratic spirit upon domestic employees in America, 60.

Atwater, W. O., investigations of, in chemistry of foods, 261, n.

Australia, domestic service in, 128, n.

Babeau, A., _Les artisans et les domestiques d’autrefois_, 289, n., 290, n., 291, n., 296, n.

Bacon, Alice M., on domestic service in Japan, 148, n., 209.

Bacon, Francis, protest of, against transportation of convicts to America, 18, 19, n.

Bakers, colonial laws in Virginia to punish pilfering of, 32, n.

Baking done out of the house in Europe, 280.

Bateman, A. E., on wages in domestic service in England, 294, n.

Batman, Margery, wages of, 29.

Bellamy, Edward, on co-operative housekeeping, 192.

Berlin, Heimatshaus für Mädchen, 300, n.; Sonntags-Verein, 300, n.

Bienaymé, G., _Le Coût de la vie à Paris_, 288, n., 291, n., 293, n.

Billon, M., on benefit of profit sharing, 238.

Bird, Isabella, on difficulty of procuring good servants, 58, 59.

Boarding, co-operative, 191, 192.

Booth, Charles, on domestic service in London, 128, n., 282, n., 286, n., 287, n., 289, n., 292, n., 294, n., 298, n., 299, n.

Boston, poor service in 1636 in, 35.

Boston, negro servants in, about 1700, 51, n.

Boston Health Food Company, bread made by, 213, n.

Boston Oriental Tea Company, 216.

Boston Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, 126, n.

Boston Young Women’s Christian Association, employment bureau of, 116, n., 126, n.

Bouniceau-Gesmon, _Domestiques et maîtres_, 290, n., 291, n., 296, n.

Braddon, M. E., on domestic service in England, 128.

Bradford, Governor, his use of word “servant,” 69, n.

Braun, Otto, on legal relations between employer and employee in Germany, 281, n., 282, n.

Bread, made better and more scientifically out of the home, 213.

Breck, Samuel, purchase of redemptioners by, 20, n.; on wages paid to redemptioners by, 29; on scarcity of good servants, 1817, 58.

Bruce, P. A., on legal prohibition of introduction of English criminals into colonies, 19, n.

Bulley, Amy, on domestic service in England, 128.

Bushill, Mr., of Coventry, England, on benefit of profit sharing, 238.

Butler, James D., on “British Convicts Shipped to American Colonies,” 18, n., 302, n.

Butlers, average wages of, statistics, 89, 94-96.

Cambridge, Mass., Co-operative Housekeeping Association, 187, 188.

Camping, prevalence of, has increased demand for prepared articles of food, 216.

Canadians, Irish in factories displaced by, 11; number of, in the United States, 78; in domestic service, 79.

Cap and apron, as badge of servitude, 157, 210; not mark of attainment or desire for neatness, 157, 209; not necessarily badge of servitude, 209, 210; regulations for wearing should be reasonable, 210.

Carroll, Lewis, on preaching to servants, 299, n.

Caterers, services of, growing in demand, 217.

Chambermaids, average wages of, statistics, 89, 94-97.

Chambermaids and waitresses, average wages of, statistics, 89, 94-96.

Charleston, S.C., Employment Bureau, 173, n.

Cheese, manufacture of, transferred from home to factories, 215.

Chevalier, Michel, on Sunday privileges of servants, 1839, 58.

Child, Sir Joshua, on benefit to England of shipping convicts to America, 17.

Chinese, in domestic service, number of, 64, n.; have lowered its social position, 147, n.

Chinese domestics, character of service, 176, n.

Chinese immigration, 64.

Chinese treaty, 1844, effect on domestic service in America, 64.

Choremen, average wages of, statistics, 89, 95, 96.

Christian name, use of, in case of domestic employees, 156; applied to no other class of workers, 156; implies lack of dignity, 156; allows unpleasant familiarity, 156; custom should be abandoned or modified, 209.

Church sales of articles of food, 217.

Cities, majority of foreign born found in, 77, 78; majority of domestic employees found in, 83; manufacturing, have smallest relative number of domestic employees, 84.

City life, attraction of, for domestic employees, 83.

Clarke, William, on domestic service in England, 294, n., 298, n.

Clothing, men’s, manufacture of, transferred from the home to business houses, 215.

Clothing, women’s, increase of its manufacture outside the home, 213, 216.

Clubs and societies, among domestic employees, 207.

Coachmen, average wages of, statistics, 89, 94-96.

Coachmen and gardeners, average wages of, statistics, 89, 94-96.

Cobbett, William, on self-respect of servants in America, 1828, 57, 58.

Coffee, roasting of, transferred from the kitchen to business firms, 214.

Coffee, sent hot from Boston to St. Louis, 216, n.

College students, experiments of, in co-operative boarding, 191.

College students, table service performed by, 142.

Collet, C. E., on domestic service in England, 280, n., 286, n., 288, n., 289, n., 290, n., 292, n.

Colletet, F., _Le Tracas de Paris_ quoted, 291, n.

Colonial laws, regarding servants, 22-48; law in Virginia binding servants coming without indenture, 23, 24; in North Carolina, 24, n.; in Maryland, 25, n.; in West New Jersey, 25, n.; laws regulating wages, 30, 31; to prevent pilfering on part of servants, 32; laws not specifically for household employees, but for all servants, 37; law to protect servants against ill-treatment from masters, 38-40; to protect masters, 40-46; latter more specific, 40; relate chiefly to runaways, 40; penalties for harboring runaways, 41-43; rewards for capture of runaways, 43, 44; means for prevention of runaways, 44; laws for infliction of corporal punishment upon servants, 45; for prevention of bartering with servants, 45, 46; examples of laws placing oppressive restrictions upon servants, 47; laws to prohibit freeing servants, 47, 48.

Colonial period of domestic service, see Domestic service.

Colored servants, see Negro domestic employees, Negro slaves.

Competition of other industries with domestic service, 68.

Compulsory insurance adds to wages in Germany and in Belgium, 292.

Concentration of capital and labor, an industrial tendency, 194.

Connecticut, redemptioners in, 20, 28; instances of troubles with servants in colonial times, 36; colonial law protecting servants against injury from master, 39, n.; fixing penalties upon those who harbored runaways, 42; fixing reward for capturing runaways, 44; allowing corporal punishment, 45; to prevent barter with servants, 46; to prevent freeing of servants, 48.

Contracts, system of, in Germany, 281-283.

Convicts, transported, among the early colonial settlers, 17, 18; as servants, 19; term of service, 19. See also Redemptioners.

“Cook,” as an appellation unobjectionable, 208.

Cooks, average wages of, statistics, 89, 94-97; receive highest wages, 90; give better satisfaction than general servants, 91; social ostracism of, instance, 153, n.; as skilled workers, should not be called “servants,” 208.

Cooks and laundresses, average wages of, statistics, 89, 94-96.

Co-operation, an industrial tendency, 196.

Co-operation, in the family _versus_ co-operation with other families, 232.

Co-operation, unconscious, characteristic of modern industry, 212; allowed to operate by having work done out of the house, 226.

Co-operative boarding, 191, 192; benefits of, 192.

Co-operative housekeeping, 186-193; Mrs. Peirce’s description of, 186, 187; advantages, 187; Rochdale Pioneers, 187; Cambridge, Mass. Co-operative Housekeeping Association, 187, 188; weak points, 188-191; does not allow for weaknesses of human nature, 188-190; practical difficulties in serving food, 190; not desired by majority, 190, 191; “The Roby,” 191; experiments usually co-operative boarding, simply, 191; Mr. Bellamy’s scheme of, 192.

Corporal punishment of servants, colonial laws concerning, 45.

Cost of living as affected by specialization of household employments, 230.

Darwin, Mrs. E. W., on domestic service in England, 128, n.

Davenant, Charles, on England’s good fortune in being able to ship convicts to America, 17.

DeFoe, Daniel, _Behaviour of Servants_, 48, n., 114, 115, 120, n., 128.

Delaware, colonial law fixing reward for capturing runaways, 44.

Democratic spirit, prevalence of, in early part of century, 61; characteristic of native born servants of early part of century, 61; revival of, 66, 228.

Desserts, prepared out of the house, 214.

District of Columbia, largest number of domestics employed in, 82.

Division of labor, see Labor, division of.

“Domestic” recommended as substitute for “general servant,” 207.

Domestic employees in early New England, native born and of high character, 11; their self-respect, 49, n.

Domestic employees in colonial period, see also Convicts, transported, Freewillers, Indians, Negroes, Redemptioners.

Domestic employees, number of, in the United States by latest census, 3; average wages paid, 3, n., 88, 90-98; average cost of board for each, 4, n.; demand for, greater than supply, 14, 125; democratic spirit of, at the North, 54-60; in early part of century, difficult to procure, 56, 58, 61; democratic spirit of, a subject of complaint, 59; compared with domestic employees in Europe, 59; causes of democratic spirit, 61; negro slaves at the South, 61; changes in kind among, between 1850 and 1870, 62; introduction of Irish, 62; of Germans, 63; of Chinese, 64; a new social and a new economic element introduced by foreign born domestic employees, 64, 65; change in kind at the South through abolition of slavery, 65; lack of political privileges of, in Europe, 72, n.; mostly of foreign birth, 74-77; geographical distribution of, in the United States, 76; number of Irish, 79; number of German, 79; number of English, 79; number of Canadian, 79; number of Swedish and Norwegian, 79; few in agricultural and thinly settled states, 80; relative number large in states containing large cities, 80; smallest relative number in Oklahoma, 81; greatest relative number in District of Columbia, New York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, 82; relative number unaffected by aggregate wealth of state, 82; affected by per capita wealth of state, 82; high relative number in cities, 83; relative number most affected by prevailing industry, 84, 87, 88; relative number small in manufacturing towns, 84; relative number large in the South, 84; foreign born receive higher wages than native born, 91, 92; savings, 102, 103; small number of unemployed, 104, 105; number in average family, 107; nationalities represented in schedules forming basis of this work, 108, n.; foreign born an extraneous element difficult to assimilate into household, 109; brief tenure of service, 109-112; ignorance of, 112, 113; dislike of occupation, 127; industrial independence of, 130; other occupations engaged in, 130, n.; reasons for entering service, 131; special privileges given, 133, 134; hours of work, 143; _disadvantages_—_social deprivations_, 152-154; enforced loneliness, 154, n.; obnoxious term “servant,” 156; address by Christian name, 156; wearing of livery, 157; servility of manner expected, 158; ignored socially, 158; required to obey absurd orders, 158; degraded by offering of fees, 158-162; often required to go out at night unprotected, 162; exposed to contamination in intelligence offices, 162; do not care to be treated as members of the family, 170-172; desire opportunity to live their lives in their own way, 172; their demand for more social opportunities reasonable, 206; demand cannot be met in private home, 206; solitary instruction unsatisfactory, 206; social opportunities more satisfactory if provided by them than for them, 207; taken from the home of employer through specialization of household employments, 213-234; independence of, secured through specialization of household employments, 228; moral education acquired through profit sharing, 247; benefactions for, in Germany, 300. See also Hours of work, Wages.

Domestic employments, see Household employments.

Domestic service, “the great American question,” 1; discussed frequently, in a popular manner, 1; has been omitted from economic discussion, 2; omitted from theoretical discussion, 2; reasons—capital not involved, 2; no combinations formed, 2; products of labor transient, 2; omitted from official statistics because of no demand by public for its investigation, 2, 3; references to partial discussions, 3, n.; subject has not been considered historically, 3; an important question, considering numbers involved, 3; nature of, has been regarded as personal only, 4; regarded as an isolated form of industry, 5; difficulties in domestic service due partly to incomplete division of labor, 15; three phases of, in America, 16; in the colonial period, 16-53; implied social inferiority even more than now, 53; unsatisfactory to both master and servant, 53; accompanied by definite legal exactions, 53; in New England, early part of century, 54; described by Harriet Martineau, 55, 56; since 1850, 62-68; at the North, change of personnel from native born to foreign, 62-65; at the South, no change till later, 62; causes of change—Irish famine, 62, 63; German Revolution, 63, 64; treaty between United States and China, 1844, 64; effect of change, lowering of social status, 65; at the South, condition changed with abolition of slavery, 65; foreign born domestics introduced, 65; the employment as affected by development of material resources, 66, 67; mobility of, 67-69; new rival occupations to compete with, 68; changes indicated by history of “servant,” 69-71; _economic phases of domestic service_, 74-106; the occupation includes more foreign born women than any other occupation, 77; includes majority of foreign born wage-earning women, 77; employees prefer city to country life, 77, 78, 83; nationalities most represented, 79; effect of aggregate wealth of state upon number, 82, 83; statistics representing effect of locality, 85; effect of per capita wealth, 86-88; effect of prevailing industry greatest, 87; character of service rendered, 91; wages higher than average wages in other occupations, 93; average annual earnings, 98; remuneration compared with that in teaching, 101, 102; wage limit sooner reached, 103, 104; offers constant occupation and least loss of time, 104, 105; free from strikes and combinations, 105; conforms to economic conditions, 106; _difficulties of employer_, 107-129; not confined to America, 128, 129; cannot be remedied without economic treatment, 129, 264; _advantages in domestic service_, 130-139; reasons given for entering, 131; high wages, 132; healthful occupation, 132; externals of a home, 133; free hours and vacations without loss of wages, 134-136; useful training, 137; the employment congenial to many, 137; legal protection in, 138; legal rights—freedom from physical punishment, sufficient food, support during illness, good character, wages, damages for discharge, 138; advantages are inherent in the occupation, 139; summed up, are those of “wages, hours, health, and morals,” 139; advantages unavailing to attract, 139; _industrial disadvantages_, 140-150; independent of personal relationship, 140; list of reasons given for not entering service, 140, 141; little chance for promotion, 141; lack of stimulus for the efficient and ambitious, 141, 142; “housework never done,” 142, 143; lack of organization in housework, 143; irregularity of working hours, 143-146; limited free time, 146; in case of Americans, competition with foreign born and negroes, 146, 147; strictures on personal independence, 147-149; summary of industrial disadvantages, 149, 150; _social disadvantages_, 151-166, 204-211, 266, 267; no real home life for employees, 151; being _in_ a family and not _of_ it, 152; regulations in regard to visitors necessary, 152; lack of opportunity to receive or give hospitality, 152; exclusion from general social life of community, 153; deprivation of opportunities for personal improvement, 153, 154; appellation of “servant,” 155; use of Christian name in address, 156; requirement of livery, 157; requirement of servility of manner, 158; custom of offering fees, 158-162; lack of protection and exposure to vice, 162; discrimination according to ordinary social standards not expected, 193, n.; social inferiority weighs more than anything else against the employment, 163; other disadvantages, 164; advantages and disadvantages compared, 165; latter outweigh former, 166; remedies adapted to nature of difficulties required, 168; no panacea, 168; reform must be in line with industrial progress, 168; must be an evolution, 168; cannot be immediate, 168, 169; real problem of domestic service, 198; the subject neglected by economic students and writers, 199; its importance underestimated in public sentiment, 200, 201; improvement dependent on wider general education and more scientific investigation, 203; social disadvantages can be removed or modified, 204; removal of social barriers will remove social ban, 211; improvement impossible, till housekeeping as a profession advances, 254; improvement hindered by partial treatment of labor question, 264; by conservatism of many women, 264, 265; by tendency of women toward aristocracy, 265; by tendency to display of wealth, 265, 266; responsibility of introducing improvement rests on all, 266; investigation and discussion will result in removal of social stigma, 266, 267; in removal of work and worker from home of employer, 267; in placing the employment on a business basis, 268; in readjustment of work of both men and women, 270; suggestions as to means of attaining results, 273; a subject of serious study and investigation in America, 302. See also Convicts, transported, Freewillers, Redemptioners, Remedies, Wages.

Domestic service in Europe, 275-302; compared with domestic service in America, 275; affected by social and political conditions, 276; affected by domestic architecture, 277; affected by domestic and social customs, 278; presents practically the same problems as in America, 278-280; _advantages_, 280-294, 300; baking and washing done out of the house, 280; requirement of more work in other ways counterbalances this advantage, 281; system of contracts in Germany, 281-283; German service-books, 284-286; large number of men employees, 286-288; comparative freedom from foreign competition, 286-287; the result a greater respect among employees for the occupation, 287-288; apparent cheapness to the employer is deceiving, 288; low wages supplemented by gifts, fees, “beer-money,” special privileges, compulsory insurance, 289, 292; _disadvantages_, 295-302; long hours of service, 295, n.; hardness of work, 295, n.; hardness of life, 295, n.; social disadvantages, 296-299; inherits stigma of slavery and serfdom, 296, n.; tax on men servants in England, 297; requirement of servility, 297; rigid class distinctions of employees observed by themselves, 298; condition in France, 299; condition in Italy, 299; disadvantages partly mitigated in Germany by various benefactions, 300; branded by ridicule in literature and the press, 301; the subject given no earnest study, 302.

Domestic system, see Home manufactures.

Dresden, home for aged servants in, 300, n.

Dudley, Mrs. Mary Winthrop, description of a refractory servant by, 35.

Earnings of domestic employees, 98. See also Wages.

Economic discussion of domestic service neglected, 2, 199.

Economic gains from specialization of household employments, 229.

Economic laws, disregard of, by employers of domestic service, 117-122.

Economic phases of domestic service, 74-106.

Economic tendencies, see Industrial tendencies.

Education, views of effect of, on domestic service, 179.

Education in household affairs, 251-262.

Electricity in the household, 9, 232.

“Employer,” use of, for “master” and “mistress,” 207.

Employers, their personal point of view, 4; difficulties of, 107-129; assimilation into household of foreign and ignorant employees, 109; restlessness of domestic employees, 109-112; ignorance of domestic employees, 112, 113; the choice of a domestic a lottery, 114-117; general disregard among employers of economic principles, 117-122; individual irresponsibility of employers, 121, 122; difficulties of, increasing, 125, n.; fewer under certain conditions, 126; difficulties also in England, Germany, and France, 127; due to a defective and antiquated system, 129; individual standpoint of many employers, 170; each responsible to all, 266. See also Housekeepers.

Employment Bureau, unsatisfactory, 115-117; application of profit sharing to, 244.

Employments of men and women need readjustment, 270-272.

England, domestic service in, unsatisfactory, 127, 128.

English custom of using surname for domestics, 157.

English in the United States, number of, 78; in domestic service, number of, 79.

Ethics of domestic service given too exclusive attention, 167.

Evans, Elizabeth, wages of, 28.

Extravagance of domestics checked through system of profit sharing, 241, 242.

Extravagant habits acquired in domestic service, 150.

Factory system, substituted for the domestic system, 8-15; agencies which brought about, 8; released labor from the home, 10; changed personnel of domestic service, 11; diverted labor into other channels, 11, 12; made some labor idle, 12; produced social prejudice against labor of women for remuneration, 12, 14; mobility of labor introduced by, 67.

Faithful, Emily, on domestic service in England, 128, n.

Family, average, 107.

Family life marred by introduction of domestics, 171, 172.

Fancy work, as result of idle labor, 12; George Eliot on, 12, n.; “intellectual fancy work,” 13.

Feeing, 158-162; effects of, 159; humiliates giver and receiver, 159; creates eye service, 159; degrades and demoralizes, 159; excuses offered for, 161, 162; feeing of a few, brands all domestics as a class, 162, 245; abolition of feeing, 210; abolished through adoption of profit sharing, 244, 245.

Fees, offered to no other class of workers, 159; undemocratic, 159; brand the recipient socially, 160; are bribes, 160; objectionable manner of giving, 160, 161; given to eke out wages of underpaid employees, 161; same principle not practised in regard to other underpaid employments, 161; established customs in regard to them in Europe, 290-291.

Feudge, F. R., Chinese cook quoted by, 148, n.

Flats, custom of living in, makes it desirable to dispense with domestics, 227, 229.

Food, list of articles of, whose preparation outside the home is increasing, 213; preparation of, out of the house for final application of heat, 214, 215, 219, 220; prepared for church and missionary sales, 217, n.; in some cases better if prepared in small quantities, 232.

Foods, chemistry of, 261.

France, domestic service in, unsatisfactory, 129.

Free laborers, indented servants at the North supplanted by, 54.

Freewillers, 19.

French constitutions, 1795 and 1799, right of suffrage denied servants by, 72, n.

Frethorne, Richard, sufferings of indented servants described by, 27.

Fruits, canned, preparation of, outside the home increasing, 213.

Fruits better canned where they grow than after transportation, 220, 221.

Gallatin, Albert, on change from home to factory manufacture of clothing materials, 215.

Gardeners, average wages of, statistics, 89, 94-96.

Gardeners, see Coachmen.

Gas, natural, use of, in the household, 9.

General servant, average wages of, statistics, 89, 94-97.

German immigration, 63.

German redemptioners, 20, 21.

German revolution, 1848, effect of, on domestic service in America, 63.

German service-books, their introduction proposed, 178; their advantages and disadvantages, 284-286.

Germans in the United States, number of, 78; in domestic service, number of, 64, n., 79.

Germany, domestic service in, unsatisfactory, 128, 129; legal relations in, between employer and employee, 281-286; system of contracts in, 281-283; benefactions for domestic employees in, 300.

Gifts supplement low wages in Europe, 289, 290.

Gilman, Nicholas Payne, on modern industry, 189; on profit sharing, 236, 238, 241, 242.

Godkin, E. L., on influence of the Irish cook, 63, n.

Golden rule, application of, inadequate to reform domestic service, 169.

Grattan, Thomas, in praise of American servants, 57, n.; on scarcity of “help,” 59, 60.

Grund, F. J., on self-respect of American servants, 57.

Hadley, A. T., on social standing in occupations, 163.

Hammond, J., _Leah and Rachel_, 21, n., 25, 26.

Harvard University Memorial Hall, boarding at, 249.

“Help,” 55, 57, 59, 60, 61, 65, 70.

Higginson, Col. Thomas, on children’s dislike of history, 205.

Holidays and half-holidays, 134, 135, 145.

Home industries which are now obsolete, 9, 215, 216.

Home instruction in household affairs inadequate, 258, 259.

Home life secured through specialization of household employments, 220, 226, 228.

Home life, lack of, in domestic service, 151.

Home-made bread, 213.

Home-made men’s clothing the rule in 1810, 215.

Home-made cheese formerly common, 215.

“Homemaker” suggested for “mistress,” 208, n.

Home manufacture of articles of food and clothing decreasing, 213.

Home manufactures superseded by factory system, 8, 215, 216; may be revived by introduction of electricity into household, 232.

Hotel service, the only kind offering chance of promotion, 141; advantages of profit sharing in—waste avoided, 244; feeing abolished, 244, 245.

Hours, free, in domestic service, 134, 145, 146.

Hours of work, varied and irregular, 143-146; statistics, 144.

Housecleaning, done by specialists, 224.

Household affairs, education in, 251-262; information regarding conduct of, difficult to obtain, 251, 252; one cause of slow progress, 252; kinds of information needed in conduct of, 252, 253; supplementary special education needed still more, 253; university education in, 259-262; results of, removal of social stigma from domestic service, 266, 267; removal of work and worker from house, 267, 268; placing of domestic service on business basis, 268.

Household employments, isolation of, 5; changes introduced by inventions, 7, 9; lightened by modern improvements, 9; preferred to other kinds of occupation, 137; avoided on account of disadvantages, 140, 141; mistaken idea that results are transient, 142, 143; the only employments not officially investigated, 198; importance of, must be better appreciated, 199, 200, 202; performed without remuneration, honored, performed for remuneration, scorned, 202; _specialization of household employments_, 212-234; preparation of food, 213-221; takes work from home, 213-234; opens new occupation to women, 218; practical instances, 219, n., 220, n., 224, n., 233, n.; the transference need not lessen individuality of the home, 221, 222; laundry work, 222, 223; housecleaning, sweeping, care of rooms, etc., 224; marketing, 225; specialization would attract more able women, 226, 227; would reduce house rent, 228; would raise standard of work, 228; would make discrimination possible between skilled and unskilled labor, 228; a flexible system of co-operation, 229; adapted to “apartments,” 229; would lessen monotony of life of employee, 229; would change personal relation of employer and employee into a business relation, 229; would elevate drudgery to forms of distinct occupation, 229; economic gains from, 229; objections raised to, 230, 231; found successful by those who have tried it, 233; household employments as taught in schools, mechanical, 259; must receive their due respect, 270.

Household sanitation, 261, n.

“Housekeeper,” as substitute for “general servant,” 207, 208, n.

“Housekeeper, Working,” as substitute for “servant,” 156.

Housekeepers, average wages of, statistics, 94-96; reluctance of some to express dissatisfaction, 124; convention of, of little avail, 179; need of technical and scientific training, 200; need of information and education, 253, 254; conservatism of many, 264, 265; responsibility of each to all, 266. See also Employers.

Housekeeping, small advance made in profession of, 254; reasons for, 254-258; belief that instinct supplies the knowledge, 254-256; belief that men have no active interest in it, 256, 257; that all women have an interest and need no training, 257, 258; home instruction in, inadequate, 258, 259; university education needed, 259-262; co-operative, see Co-operative housekeeping.

Housework, see Household employments.

Howells, W. D., on feeing, 162, n.

Hygienic advantage in having vegetables prepared out of the house, 214.

Idle labor, 10, 12, 270.

Idleness forced upon women, 202.

Improvement, enlarged opportunities for personal, 197.

Indented servants, see Redemptioners.

Indenture, form of, 22, 23, n.; included time of service, nature of service and compensation, 22; cases without, provided for by law, 23; law of, in Virginia, 23, 24.

_Indian Narratives_, 20, n.

Indian servants not allowed to travel without a pass, 44.

Indians as servants in New England, 49-51; advertisements of, 49, n., 50, n.

Industrial changes affecting domestic service in early part of century, 66, 67.

Industrial tendencies—concentration of capital and labor, 194; specialization of work, 195; association and combination of workers, 195; increase of technical training, 195; co-operation, profit sharing, 196; entrance of women into business occupations, 196; estimate of work for its quality rather than for its kind, 197; official investigation of business relations, 197, 198.

Industries, interdependence of, 15; some which are now obsolete, 215, 216.

Insurance, Compulsory, see Compulsory insurance.

Intelligence office, see Employment bureau.

Inventions of the 18th century, co-operating influences with, producing factory system, 8; effect of, on household employments, 10-15.

Irish famine, 1846, effect of, on domestic service in America, 62.

Irish immigration, 62.

Irish immigration in Connecticut, 1764, 20; in Massachusetts, 1718, 20.

Irish in the United States, number of, 64, n., 78; in domestic service, 79.

Japan, domestic service in, 148, n.

Japanese custom of addressing employees, 209.

Johnson, Mrs., _Captivity_, 20, n.

Joynes, E. S., on training in domestic work in Germany, 301, n.

Kalm, Peter, on wages in Pennsylvania, 1748, 29.

Kemble, Fanny, on experience of her white maid in the South, 70, n.

Kent, Chancellor, on legal relation of masters and servants, 138.

Kitchen gardens, object and experience of, 185.

Knight, Madame, on treatment of servants in 1704, 28.

Labor, division of, in women’s work, caused by factory system, 11; has resulted in unequal distribution of work, 13, 14; in household employments only partially accomplished, 15; characteristic of modern industry, 212; results in greater variety of products, 222.

Labor of women more productive through specialization of household employments, 231, 232.

Labor question, domestic service a part of, 129, 264.

Laundresses, average wages, statistics, 89, 94-97. See also Cooks.

Laundry work, better done out of the house, 222, 223; done out of the house in Europe, 280.

Laws protecting domestic employees, 138.

Laws, colonial, see Colonial laws.

Leclaire, M., on knowledge of the workman, 200.

_Leclaire, Maison_, 237.

Legal relations between employer and employee in Europe, 281-286.

Legal status of domestic employees, 138.

Levasseur, M., on proportion of failures among business firms, 245.

Library strictures in regard to domestic employees, 154, n.

Licenses for domestic employees, 177, 178.

Livery, absence of, in early times at the North, 57, 61. See also Cap and apron.

Living, cost of, affected by specialization of household employments, 230.

London, domestic service in, 128, n.

London South Metropolitan Gas Company, profit sharing in, 239.

Lowell, J. R., on Indian servants, 51, n.; on “help,” 55; on influx of Irish domestic employees, 63.

Lyman, O. E., on legal status of domestic employees, 138, n.

Mackay, Charles, on “help,” 58, n.

“Maid” as substitute for “servant,” 156; unobjectionable, 208.

Maid-of-all-work, present requirements of, 228.

Maine, high wages of redemptioners in, 28, n.; instance related by John Winter of unsatisfactory service in, 33, 34.

Maine, Sir Henry Sumner, on equality, 211.

_Maison Leclaire_, 237.

Manufacturing industries, number of women in, in Massachusetts, 10, n.; women employees in, largely outnumber men, 10, n.; greater demand for servants created by increase of, 11; manufacturing industries utilize ignorant labor, 14; relative number of domestic employees diminished by, 87.

Marketing, made a specialty by one person for many families, 225, 226.

Martineau, Harriet, on democratic condition of service in America, 55, 56.

Maryland, transported convicts in, 18; freewillers in, 19; redemptioners in, 21, 25; colonial law regulating wages of redemptioners in, 31; to protect servants in, 38, n.; concerning runaways in, 41; concerning those who harbored runaways in, 43; fixing reward for capturing runaways in, 44; preventing barter with servants in, 46; redemptioners who rose to distinction in, 48, n.

Massachusetts, number of women in manufacturing industries in, 10, n.; redemptioners in, 20; colonial law concerning wages of redemptioners in, 30; to protect servants in, 38, n.; in regard to punishment of servants in, 45; to prevent barter with servants in, 46; debarring servants from holding public office in, 47; concerning wearing apparel of servants in, 47; prohibiting setting servants free in, 47; proportion of foreign born domestic employees in, 77; large relative number of domestic employees in, 82.

Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, returns from schedules collated by, preface, ix, x.

“Master,” as a term should be abolished, 207.

Matthews, Albert, on fees, 290, n.; _The Terms Hired Man and Help_, 302, n.

Meats, stuffed, delivered ready for final application of heat, 214.

Men as domestic employees in Europe, 286-288.

Mercier, L. S., on profits made by servants in France, 291, n.; on class distinctions among domestic employees, 298, n.

Michigan, University of, women graduates of, assistance of, in obtaining statistics, preface, vii.

“Mistress,” as an appellation should be abolished, 207.

Mitchell, Maria, on woman’s work, 272.

Mobility of labor made possible, 67; developed to an inconvenient extent, 68.

Morton, Thomas, use of word “servant,” 69, n.

Munby, A. J., _Epitaphs of Servants_, 55, n.

Music lessons, desire for, ridiculed, 153, n.; of a domestic, 154, n.

Negro domestic employees, their increase at the North a doubtful remedy for difficulties, 172-175; unsatisfactory service of, in the South, 173-175; deteriorating, 174, n.; character of employees, 175, n.

Negro slavery, influence of, on people of the South, 1778, 52, n.

Negro slaves, not allowed to travel without pass, 44; in colonial Boston, 51, n.; in the South, 51, 52.

Neill, E. D., on character of redemptioners, 48, n.

New England, redemptioners in, 20; high character of domestic employees in early, 54, 57. See also Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island.

New England Kitchen, Boston, bread made at, 214.

New Jersey, colonial law regulating wages in, 31; to protect servants in, 38, n., 40; concerning runaways in, 41; concerning those who harbored runaways in, 42; to prevent barter with servants in, 46; large relative number of domestic employees in, 82.

New York, colonial law concerning wages of redemptioners in, 30; to protect servants in, 38, n., 39; concerning those who harbored runaways in, 42; regarding punishment of servants in, 45; preventing barter with servants in, 46; large relative number of domestic employees in, 82.

New Zealand, law providing half-holiday discussed, 135, n.

North, the, introduction into, of more negro domestics a doubtful remedy, 172-175.

North Carolina, colonial law regulating wages of redemptioners in, 30, 31; to protect servants in, 38, n., 39, 40; concerning runaways in, 41; fixing reward for capturing runaways in, 43; regarding corporal punishment of servants in, 45; to prevent barter with servants in, 45; to punish feigning of illness or carrying of arms in, 47; prohibiting setting a servant free in, 47.

Northbrook, Earl of, footman of, tips received by, 160, n.

Norwegians, in the United States, see Swedes and Norwegians.

Oklahoma, fewest domestics employed in, 81.

Organization in household employments, lack of, an industrial disadvantage, 143.

Oriental Tea Company, Boston, 216, n.

_Outlook_, on feeing, 162, n.

Parlor maids, average wages of, statistics, 90, 97.

Pea-sheller, 214, n.

Peace Dale Manufacturing Company, 238.

Peirce, Mrs., on co-operative housekeeping, 186-188.

Pennsylvania, transported convicts in, 18, n.; wages of redemptioners in, 29; colonial law regulating wages of redemptioners in, 30; purpose of Act of 1700 regarding servants in, 37; colonial law to protect servants in, 40; regarding runaways in, 41; fixing reward for capturing runaways in, 43; to prevent barter with servants in, 46; forbidding innkeepers to trust servants in, 47.

Personal relation between employer and employee usually alone regarded, 4, 167; changed to business relation through specialization of household employments, 229.

Philadelphia Civic Club, classification of wages by, 268, n.

Placid Club, profit sharing at, 249.

Polly, Mary, indenture of, 23, n., 29.

Poor whites descendants of redemptioners, 49.

Porter, hotel, instance of a fortune acquired by, in fees, 160.

Porters, railway, profit sharing, in case of, advantages—waste avoided, 244; feeing abolished, 244, 245.

Posseldt, H., on legal relations between employer and employee in Prussia, 281, n., 282, n.

Potter, Bishop, on luxury, 265.

Privileges, special, kinds given to employees, 133, 134.

Profit sharing, an industrial tendency, 196; defined, 236, 237; history of, 237; benefits of, in its trial elsewhere, 237-242; advantages—develops “group of industrial virtues,” 237; lessons worry, 238; checks waste, 238; identifies interest of employer and employee, 238, 239, 247; not a loss to employer, 239; applied to domestic service, 240-250, 268, 269; secures economy of time, material, appliances, 240, 241; application, methods of, 242-244; in case of hotel employees and railway porters, 244, 245; advantages—waste avoided, feeing abolished, 244, 245; objections raised to, 245-247; instances of its trial given, 248-250.

Promotion in domestic service rare except in hotels, 141.

Public schools said to over-educate domestics, 179; introduction of housework into, advocated by some, 179.

Recommendations of domestic employees unsatisfactory, 114, 115.

Redemptioners, 19-49; term of service, 19; probably outnumbered transported convicts, 20; more in Southern and Middle colonies than in New England, 20; of English, German, and Irish birth, 20; not always from lower classes, 21; methods by which they were obtained and transported, 22; “spirited away,” 22, n.; form of indenture, 22, 23, n.; easy life of some described by Alsop, 25; unenviable condition of majority, 25-28; wages of, 28-31; high in New England, 28; generally low, 28; poor quality of their service, 31-36; colonial laws concerning their relation to masters, 38-48; legal protection, 38-40; legal precaution against their escape, 40, 41; legal punishment for harboring any who escaped, 41, 42; legal reward for their capture when escaped, 43, 44; laws to prevent their escape, 44; discomforts and hard treatment, 44; laws for corporal punishment, 45; laws to prevent barter with, 45, 46; restricted by minute and oppressive laws, 47; laws to prevent their being set free, 47, 48; a few rose to high social position, 48; supplanted by free laborers at the North, 54; supplanted by negro slaves at the South, 54. See also Colonial laws, Indenture, names of colonies.

Remedies, doubtful, 167-193; many proposed, 167; why ineffective, 167; application of golden rule inadequate, 169; application of intelligence not sufficient, 170; receiving employee into family unsatisfactory, 170-172; bringing negroes to the North, of doubtful benefit, 172-175; importation of Chinese domestics would tend to drive out European domestics, 176, 177; licenses, not applicable, 177, 178; German service books, not feasible, 178; abolition of higher grades of public schools, 179; introduction of housework into public schools, 179; “Servant Reform Association,” 179, 180; training schools do not promise success, undemocratic, 180-186; co-operative housekeeping, 186-193; causes of its failure, 193. See also Co-operative housekeeping, Training schools.

Remedies, possible, must have historical and economic basis, 193, 194; general principles, 194-203; must be in line with industrial tendencies, 194; cannot be immediate in effect, 199; creation of social opportunities, 206, 207; abolition of term “servant,” 207, 208; disuse or less free use of Christian name, 209; reasonable regulations for wearing cap and apron, 210; relinquishment of demand for servility of manner, 210; abolition of fees, 210; specialization of household employments, 212-234; measures must conform to principles of division of labor and unconscious co-operation, 212; practice of putting work out of the house, 213-234, 267, 268; removing worker from the house, 213-234, 267, 268; education in household affairs, 251-262; improvement must be an evolution, 273. See also Industrial tendencies, Profit sharing.

Rents, possible lessening of, through removal of necessity for laundries in individual homes, 223.

Rhode Island, colonial laws concerning those who harbored runaways, 43; for corporal punishment of servants, 45.

Richards, Mrs. Ellen S., and Talbot, Marion, _Household Sanitation_, 261, n.

“The Roby,” 191.

Rochdale Pioneers, 187.

Rowe, C. J., on domestic service in Australia, 128, n.

Runaways, legal punishment of, 41; legal punishment of those harboring, 42, 43; legal rewards for capturing, 44.

Salomon, G., on domestic service in France, 288, n., 289, n., 291, n., 292, n., 293, n., 296, n.

Sanitation, household, 261, n.

Savings of domestic employees, 103.

Schloss, D. F., on profit sharing, 237-239.

Schouler, James, on relation of master and servant, 138.

Seamstresses, average wages of, statistics, 89, 94-97.

Second girl, average wages of, statistics, 89, 94-97.

“Servant,” as an appellation, 57, 58, 69-72, 155, 208; history of its use in America, 69-71; term offensive to American employees, 72; not demeaning in itself, 155; may be applied to any one, 155; ordinary usage restricted to one who does housework for wages, 155; protests against the term, 155, n.; as used at present will continue to be a mark of social degradation, 155, 156; should be abolished, 207.

“Servant Reform Association,” 179, 180.

Service books, see German service books.

Servility of manner, absence of, at the North, in early colonial period, 61; required of domestics, 158; an anomaly in a democratic country, 210.

Sewall, Judge, description by, of funeral of his negro servant, 27, n.; protest of, against negro slavery, 52, n.

Sewing women of New York City, 199, n.

Slavery, abolition of, opened competition in domestic service between negroes and foreign born, 65; abolition of, assisted in making labor mobile, 67.

Smyth, J. F. D., on use of term “servant,” 70, n.

Social condition of domestic service, improvement in, see Remedies, possible.

Social disadvantages of domestic service, see Domestic service, social disadvantages.

Social opportunities for domestics, the demand for more, reasonable, 206; cannot be met in private home, 206.

Social position of different occupations changes, 205, 266, 267.

Social stigma attached to domestic service, its greatest disadvantage, 163.

_Sot-Weed Factor_, 21, n., 22, n., 27, 48, n.

South Carolina, colonial law regulating wages of redemptioners, 30; to protect servants, 40; concerning runaways, 41; concerning those who harbored runaways, 42; concerning punishment of servants, 45; to prevent barter with servants, 46; difficulty of obtaining good domestics in, 173, n.

Specialization of labor, an industrial tendency, 195.

Specialization of household employments, see Household employments.

Spinning, revival of, as home industry in Westmoreland, 232, n.

Statistics, basis of, for this work, obtained through distribution of schedules, preface, vii-xi.

Stephen, Sir James, on civil service reform, 274.

Stillman, W. J., on fees, 290, n.

Suffrage, right of, denied domestic servants in Europe, 72, n.

Sunday, free hours on, in domestic service, 134, 146, 147.

Sunday privileges of domestics in early part of century, 58.

Swedes and Norwegians in the United States, number of, 78; number in domestic service, 79.

Syracuse, N. Y., Household Economic Club, 225, n.

Table service an art, 142; may be performed by specialist, 224.

Talbot, Marion, and Richards, Mrs. Ellen S., _Household Sanitation_, 261, n.

Taylor, George, signer of the Declaration of Independence, a Pennsylvania redemptioner, 48, n.

Tea Company, Oriental, Boston, 216, n.

Teachers, wages of, compared with wages of domestics, 99-102; salaries of, statistics, 99, 100.

Technical training, demand for, an industrial tendency, 195.

Texas, preference in, for German and Swedish domestics, 173, n.

Thatcher, Rev. Peter, Indian servant of, 51.

Tips, see Feeing.

Tocqueville, A. de, on democratic condition of service in America, 57.

Training schools for domestics, 180-186; possible benefits from, 180, 181; demand for, from employers, 181; scheme for their establishment in connection with World’s Fair, 1893, 181; few established and those unsuccessful, 181; reasons for their failure, 182-186; admit pupils too young, 182; course too short, 182; attendance not voluntary, 182, 183; ignorance of employers, 183; not analogous to training schools for nurses, 183, 184; methods superficial, 184, 185; undemocratic, 185, 186.

Trollope, Mrs., on difficulty in obtaining servants, 58.

Troy, N. Y., laundries, 223.

Tutwiler, Julia R., on feeing, 162, n.

Unconscious co-operation, characteristic of modern industry, 212.

Unemployed, number of, among domestic employees, very small, 104, 105.

University education in household affairs needed, 259-262, 269.

Vacations, of domestic employees, 135, 136.

Valet, the, in literature, 296, n.

Vassar College, Associate Alumnæ of, assistance of, in obtaining statistics, preface, vii; Classes of 1888 and 1889, assistance of, in obtaining statistics, preface, vii.

Vegetables, preparation of, for cooking, 214; canning of, 214, n.

Verney, Thomas, a redemptioner, 21, n.

Virginia, transported convicts in, 18; General Court of, prohibits introduction of English criminals, 19, n.; redemptioners in, 21, n., 23, 25, 27, 48, n.; colonial law of indenture in, 23, 24; laws binding servants not indented in, 23, 24; law regulating wages of redemptioners in, 30; to punish pilfering of bakers in, 32, n.; fixing reward for capturing runaways in, 44.

Wages in domestic service, total aggregate paid, 3, n.; average paid in 1817, cited by Breck, 58, n.; present average of, statistics, 88, 90, 94-97; by geographical sections, 88; by occupations, statistics, 90, 94-97; highest for skilled labor, 89; higher paid to foreign born than to native born, 91, 92; higher paid to men than to women, 92; tending to increase, 93; exceed average wages in other occupations, 93; compared with wages of teachers, 99-102; maintained without strikes, 105; conform to economic laws, 106; in average family, 108; underrated in popular estimate, 164, n.; not officially investigated as are wages in other occupations, 198; wages paid in Europe, 288-294.

Wages of redemptioners, 28-31.

“Waitress,” as an appellation unobjectionable, 208.

Waitresses, average wages of, statistics, 89, 94-97. See also Chambermaids.

Warner, Charles Dudley, on social position of teachers, 205, n.

Washing, see Laundry work.

Waste lessened through profit sharing, 240, 241, 243, 244, 246.

Watson, Elkanah, on self-respect of domestic employees in America, 1782, 49, n.; on effect of slavery upon people of the South, 52, n.; on high character of service in America, 56, n.

Watson, John, on increase of democratic spirit in servants, 55, n.

Weaving, transferred from home to factories, 215; revival of, as home industry in Westmoreland, 232, n.

Weber, A., on domestic service in France, 281, n., 282, n., 283, n., 291, n., 292, n.

Winter, John, on high wages of redemptioners in Maine, 28, n.; description of an unprofitable servant, 33, 34.

Winthrop, John, on high wages demanded by servants in New England, 28, n.

Winthrop, John, Jr., complaint of his Irish servant, 1717, 36.

Winthrop, Wait, complaint of his “black Tom,” 1682, 35.

Woman’s Exchanges, articles offered for sale at, better but more expensive, 213; high standard for work maintained by, 217; management of, should be put on business basis, 217; new occupation for women opened by, 218.

Women, as affected by the release of labor from the home through introduction of factory system, 10-13; number of, in manufacturing industries, 10, n.; new opportunities for, about 1830, 12; unwillingness of many to work for remuneration, a hindrance, 14, 202, 272; progress of, hindered by their failure to put a just money value on their services, 14; foreign born wage-earning, majority of, domestic employees, 77; wages of, in domestic service lower than wages of men, 92; entrance of, into business occupations, 196; can engage in many more occupations than formerly without social ostracism, 205; new occupation opened through Woman’s Exchange, 218; new opportunities through specialization of household employments, 226, 227, 232; their release from certain kinds of work through specialization of household employments, 231; opportunity thus opened to specialize in some branch of work on a business basis, 231, 232; conservatism of many, a hindrance to improvement in domestic service, 264, 265; tendency of many toward aristocracy, a hindrance to improvement, 265; work of, needs readjustment, 270-273.

Work, standard of, improved by requirements of Woman’s Exchanges, 217, 218.

“Working housekeeper,” as substitute for “servant,” 156.

World’s Fair, 1893, efforts in connection with, to establish national training schools for domestic employees, 181.

Wright, Mr. Carroll D., on agencies producing change from domestic to factory system, 8; on profit sharing, 236, 237, 240.

Zimmern, Alice, on domestic service in America, 275, n.

DOMESTIC SERVICE

BY

LUCY MAYNARD SALMON

Press Comments on the First Edition

“This is an admirable analysis of the difficulties, advantages, and disadvantages of domestic service, with illustrations and statistics drawn from a careful investigation by the author and from government reports. The book should be carefully studied by all who believe that the family is the primary agency for social reform and progress, and that public health and happiness wait for the advancement of the industrial methods.”—_The Dial_ (Chicago).

“Lucy Maynard Salmon has made a scientific, and we think a thorough, study of the perplexing problem so often called ‘the servant question.’ The result is more than satisfactory, and if her book ‘Domestic Service’ is read as widely as it deserves to be read, there ought to be, in the near future, a far greater number of happy housekeepers and contented servants than exist at present.”—_Mail and Express_ (New York).

“Intelligent women who are ambitious to excel in the management of the home will find this volume interesting and helpful.”—_Home Journal_ (New York).

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK