Domestic service has been called “the great American question.” If based on the frequency of its discussion in popular literature, foundation for this judgment exists. Few subjects have attracted greater attention, but its consideration has been confined to four general classes of periodicals, each treating it from a different point of view. The popular magazine article is theoretical in character, and often proposes remedies for existing evils without sufficient consideration of the causes of the difficulty. Household journals and the home departments of the secular and the religious press usually treat only of the personal relations existing between mistress and maid. The columns of the daily press given to “occasional correspondents” contain narrations of personal experiences. The humorous columns of the daily and the illustrated weekly papers caricature, on the one side, the ignorance and helplessness of the housekeeper, and, on the other side, the insolence and presumption of the servant. In addition to this, in many localities it has passed into a common proverb that, among housekeepers, with whatever topic conversation begins, it sooner or later gravitates towards the one fixed point of domestic service, while among domestic employees it is none the less certain that other phases of the same general subject are agitated.

This popular discussion, which has assumed so many forms, has been almost exclusively personal in character. A somewhat different aspect of the case is presented when the problem is stated to be “as momentous as that of capital and labor, and as complicated as that of individualism and socialism.” This statement suggests that economic principles are involved, but the question of domestic service has been almost entirely omitted, not without reason, from theoretical, statistical, and historical discussions of economic problems. It has been omitted from theoretical discussions mainly because: (1) the occupation does not involve the investment of a large amount of capital on the part of the individual employer or employee; it therefore seems to be excluded from theoretical discussions of the relations of capital, wages, and labor; (2) no combinations have yet been formed among employers or employees; it is therefore exempt from such speculations as are involved in the consideration of trusts, monopolies, and trade unions; (3) the products of domestic service are more transient than are the results of other forms of labor; this fact must determine somewhat its relative position in economic discussion. Its exclusion, as a rule, from the statistical presentations of the labor question is also not surprising. The various bureaus of labor, both national and state, consider only those subjects for the investigation of which there is a recognized demand. They are the leaders of public opinion in the accumulation of facts, but they are its followers as regards the choice of questions to be studied. Public opinion has not yet demanded a scientific treatise on domestic service, and until it does the bureaus of labor cannot be expected to supply the material for such discussion.[2] Again, it is not surprising that the historical side of the subject has been overlooked, since household employments have been passive recipients, not active participants, in the industrial development of the past century. Yet it must be said that this negative consideration of the subject by theoretical, practical, and historical economists, and the positive treatment accorded it by popular writers, seems an unfair and unscientific disposition to make of an occupation in which by the Census of 1890 one and a half millions of persons are actively engaged,[3] to whom employers pay annually at the lowest rough estimate in cash wages more than $218,000,000,[4] for whose support they pay at the lowest estimate an equal amount,[5] and through whose hands passes so large a part of the finished products of other forms of labor.[6]

It is not difficult, however, to find reasons, in addition to the specific ones suggested, for this somewhat cavalier treatment of domestic service. The nature of the service rendered, as well as the relation between employer and employee, is largely personal; it is believed therefore that all questions involved in the subject can be considered and settled from the personal point of view. It follows from this fact that it is extremely difficult to ascertain the actual condition of the service outside of a single family, or, at best, a locality very narrow in extent, and therefore that it is almost impossible to treat the subject in a comprehensive manner. It follows as a result of the two previous reasons that domestic service has never been considered a part of the great labor question, and that it has not been supposed to be affected by the political, social, and industrial development of the past century as other occupations have been.

These various explanations of the failure to consider domestic service in connection with other forms of labor are in reality but different phases of a fundamental reason—the isolation that has always attended household service and household employments. From the fact that other occupations are largely the result of association and combination they court investigation and the fullest and freest discussion of their underlying principles and their influence on each other. Household service, since it is based on the principle of isolation, is regarded as an affair of the individual with which the public at large has no concern. Other forms of industry are anxious to call to their assistance all the legislative, administrative, and judicial powers of the nation, all the forces that religion, philanthropy, society itself can exert in their behalf. The great majority of housekeepers, if the correspondent of a leading journal is to be trusted, “do not require outside assistance in the management of their affairs, and consequently resent any interference in the administration of their duties.”

The question must arise, however, in view of the interdependence of all other forms of industry, whether it is possible to maintain this perfect separation with regard to any one employment, whether household employments are justified in resenting any intrusion into their domain, whether the individual employer is right in considering household service exclusively a personal affair. An answer to the question may be of help in deciding whether the difficulties that are found in the present system of domestic service arise in every case necessarily from the personal relations which exist between employer and employee, or are largely due to economic conditions over which the individual employer has no control. Still further, the conclusions reached must determine somewhat the nature of the forces to be set in motion to lessen these difficulties.