It has been seen that any measure looking towards a lessening of the difficulties that stand in the way of securing at all times and in all places competent domestic employees, must fail of its object if it does not take into consideration economic history, economic conditions, and economic tendencies. Economic history has shown the remarkable effect of inventive genius and business activity on all household employments, and through them on domestic service; a study of economic conditions has shown the nature of the perplexities surrounding both employer and employee. What are the social and economic tendencies in accordance with which relief from present difficulties must be sought?
The first industrial tendency to be noted is that toward the concentration of capital and labor in large industrial enterprises. Not only have the factory and the mill superseded the individual system of manufactures, but the growth of “bonanza farms” and the increasing number of tenant farms show the same tendency in agriculture; the trust is the resort of wholesale business houses; the department stores of the day are driving out of the retail business circles the smaller houses of a generation ago; the pool may be considered an illustration of the same tendency at work in transportation industries.
A second tendency, forming the converse of the preceding one, is towards specialization in every department of labor. Adam Smith’s famous illustration of this principle—that he found ten persons able to make nearly five thousand pins in a day, while each person working alone could make but one pin—can be seen in every department of work except in the household. Everywhere the field of labor has been narrowed in order to secure the largest and best results.
A third tendency, growing out of these two, is towards the association and combination for mutual benefit of persons interested in special lines of work. Nearly every class of employers has its own special organization; the associated press, associated charities, local, state, and national educational associations, and associations of learned societies, show the influence of organization in other departments; nearly every class of employees also has its trade union or mutual benefit association; everywhere, except in the household, mutual interests are drawing together for protection, for consultation, for economy of forces and resources, for a score of reasons, those engaged in the same activities.
A fourth tendency is the result of the specialization of labor in its higher forms. As all industries become more highly organized, greater preparation for work is required wherever labor ceases to be purely mechanical. Trade schools, technical schools, and schools for training in special work are everywhere demanded, and the demand must in time be fully met. While specialization is the end, special training must be the means to accomplish it.
A fifth tendency is towards a realization of the fact that all who share in industrial processes should participate in the benefits resulting from their work, that “perpendicular” rather than “horizontal divisions” in labor should be the aim in all industry. This is seen in the various efforts made to introduce productive and distributive co-operation, profit sharing, and other measures intended to give employees a share in the results of their labors, and thus to take a personal interest in their work.
A sixth tendency is towards greater industrial independence on the part of women. This is an inevitable result of the substitution of the factory for the domestic system of manufactures, and of the entrance of women into all industrial pursuits at the time of the Civil War, as well as of the inherent demand in every person for some opportunity for honorable work. A comparison of the different census reports shows that the percentage of women engaged in remunerative occupations increases faster than the percentage of men so engaged. Massachusetts shows a larger percentage than any other state of women occupied in business industry, while the investigations of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor show that the marriage rate and the birth rate in that state are both increasing. The facts and conditions do not seem to show that the tendency is incompatible with home life.
One other semi-social and industrial tendency must be noted. It is the result of that systematic study of social conditions seen in the evolution of the principles that the best way to help a person is to help him to help himself, and that reasonable measures aim at the amelioration of some of the conditions under which work is performed, not at the cessation of the work itself. The application of these principles has led to wiser charities, to the Chautauqua movement, to university extension, to working-girls’ clubs, to enlarged opportunities everywhere for every class. These movements springing up in every locality mean that every individual is to have the opportunity of making the most of himself possible, and that the responsibility of so doing is to rest with him, not with society; they mean that ultimately the position in society of every person is to depend not on his occupation, but on the use he has made of these increasing opportunities for self-help and self-improvement; they mean that in time all social stigma will be removed from every occupation and work judged by its quality rather than by its nature; that in time, for example, a first-class cook will receive more honor than a second-class china decorator, or a third-rate teacher.
One general tendency in all business circles must also be mentioned—that towards increasing publicity in all business matters. It is coming to be recognized that society has the right to know certain general and even specific facts in regard to the conduct of affairs formerly guarded in jealous privacy by the individual. The National Census Bureau requires, for the benefit of society, an answer to a large number of personal questions, and the requirement is resisted only by the most ignorant. The state bureaus of labor have legal authority to obtain information in regard to the management of business enterprises which they wish to investigate. The salaries of all public employees are officially published, and legal inquiry is instituted when the expenses of such employees largely exceed the salary received. The number of joint-stock companies is increasing, and these companies are legally bound to render full and exact accounts of all receipts and expenditures. The Chinese wall of absolute privacy is practically retained only with reference to household occupations.
If then the question in domestic service is this: How can the supply of domestic servants be increased, or how can the demand for them be lessened? the only answer must be, by bringing household employments and household service into the current of these and other industrial and social tendencies. To state the case in detail, the problem is not so much how to improve the personal relationship between the employer and the employee as it is to decrease this relationship; not how to increase the number of household drudges, but to decrease the amount of household drudgery; not how to do more for domestics, but how to enable them to do more for themselves; not how to merge the individual home into the co-operative home or boarding house, but how to keep it still more intact by taking out of it as far possible that extraneous element—the domestic employee; not how to restore the old household system, but how to bring about adaptation to present conditions; not so much how to persuade more persons to go into domestic service, as to use to better advantage the time and strength of those already engaged in it; not how to induce sewing women in the tenement houses of New York City to engage in work for which they have neither the physical nor the intellectual qualifications,[292] but how to utilize the idle labor in boarding houses and in the homes of the so-called middle and upper classes.
The statement cannot be made with too great emphasis that no plan can be suggested that will enable a housekeeper whose inefficient employee leaves to-day to secure a better one to-morrow; a complicated social malady of long standing demands time and patience to work a cure or even a relief. Two classes of measures, however, looking towards an improvement in the character of the service can be suggested, the first general, the second specific. It is believed that both classes will conform to the general industrial and social tendencies enumerated.
In the first place there must be a truer conception on the part of both men and women of the important place that household employments occupy in the economy of the world. The utter neglect of the subject by economic students and writers must give place to a scientific investigation of an employment which is at least wealth-consuming if not wealth-producing. A very large part of the wealth produced in the world is consumed in the household, yet neither those who produce nor those who consume know on what principles it is done. Time-saving and labor-saving devices are made at enormous cost for uses in production, while time and strength incalculable are wasted through consumption. In no other occupation is there so much waste of labor and capital; in no other would a fraction of this waste be overlooked. It is idle to complain of poor servants and of poor mistresses so long as domestic service is divorced from general labor questions, and employers everywhere are ignorant of the economic laws, principles, and conditions underlying the household. Men and women might better give to the study of domestic service as an occupation the time and energy that now are absorbed in considering the vices and virtues of individual employees.
This truer conception of the place of household economics considered from the theoretical standpoint will give rise to a more just estimate of their place in a practical way. Those employers who “despise housekeeping,” who “cannot endure cooking,” who “hate the kitchen,” who “will not do menial work,” will come to regard household work in a different light. Indeed, until the members of this class, far too large in numbers, change either their opinion or their occupation, it is hopeless to look for a reform in domestic service. That “dignity of labor” so often prescribed as a panacea for the troubles in the kitchen must first be maintained in the parlor if reform is to come. The simple prescription of the remedy will not effect a cure. “To know the workman,” wrote Leclaire in 1865, “one must have been a workman himself, and above all remember it.” In a similar way the housekeeper must have not only a knowledge of household affairs, but a respect for them, and being presumably better educated and equipped, she must be the one to prove that the interests of employer and employee are the same.
Again, more systematic study of the subject in a general way must remove much of the ignorance, as well as of the aversion, that undoubtedly exists in regard to this occupation. Public sentiment has not yet demanded that when a woman assumes the care of a household she shall possess at least a theoretical knowledge of household affairs; it is deemed sufficient if she acquire it afterward at an enormous cost of time, patience, energy, sometimes even of domestic happiness. But public sentiment will make such demand when the economic functions of housekeeping are understood. Until a larger number of housekeepers understand at least the rudiments of the profession they have adopted, it is to be expected that ignorant and inexperienced employees will waste the substance of their employers, and fail to become skilled laborers, and that able, intelligent, and ambitious girls will be unwilling to enter an occupation in which the employers are as untrained in a scientific way as are the employees. Water cannot rise higher than its source. As long as inefficient service is accepted inefficient service will be rendered; as long as mistresses are ignorant of the difference between rights and extraordinary privileges, employees, like children, will continue to be spoiled by careless indulgence; “as long as women hate kitchen and household cares, and servants know that they know more than their employers, just so long will employers everywhere have eye-servants.”
A different conception must also come in regard to the work of woman, especially where the factor of remuneration is involved. An explanation is still needed for the fact that idleness is practically regarded as a vice in men and a virtue in women;[293] that a young man is condemned by society for saying “the world owes me a living,” while a young woman is praised for her womanliness when she says it by her life; that a wealthy woman must not receive remuneration for services for which compensation would be accepted by a wealthy man or by a poor woman. This does not mean that all women should engage in business enterprises, but that it should be honorable for them to do so, dishonorable for them to be ignorant of all means of self-support, and that they should receive adequate remuneration for all public services performed when men would be paid under the same circumstances. Household employments are too often in effect, though less often than in theory, belittled by both men and women, and they will continue to be until there is the freest industrial play in all occupations for women as well as for men. As long as household employments performed without remuneration are the only occupations for women looked upon with favor by society at large, just so long will this free industrial play be lacking. One effect of this is seen in the case of very many mothers who have been overworked and overburdened by household cares. The pendulum swings to the opposite end of the arc, and they declare that their daughters shall never work at all. The children therefore grow up in idleness and ultimately, when driven to work by necessity, drift into shops and factories. When household employments are removed from the domain of charity and sentiment and put on a business basis, when the interests of women are broadened, when they are better able “to distinguish between infinity and infinitesimals,” there will be a more intelligent understanding of the financial side of woman’s work.
The general remedies therefore must include a wider prevalence of education in the true sense of the word, not its counterfeit, information; that mental education which results in habits of accuracy, precision, and observation, in the exercise of reason, judgment, and self-control, and that education of character which results in the ability constantly to put one’s self in the place of another. There must be scientific training and investigation in economic theory, history, and statistics, especially in their application to the household, and an increased popular knowledge of all scientific subjects concerning the home, those which secure the prevention of economic and material waste in the household as well as those which concern the questions of production for it. The educational forces must “pull from the top” and draw domestic service into the general current of industrial development.