The most serious disadvantage in domestic service that remains to be considered is the low social position the employment entails at the present time on those who enter it. This shows itself in various ways. The most noticeable is the lack of home privileges. It is true that the domestic employee receives board, lodging, protection, and many incidental privileges in the home of her employer; that these are as a rule better than she could provide for herself elsewhere, and much superior to those which can be secured by women working in shops and factories. But board and lodging do not constitute a home, and the domestic can never be a part of the family whose external life she shares. The case is well stated by an employee who writes:

This appreciation of the difference between being in a family and being a part of it is in direct ratio to the delicacy and sensitiveness of the organization of the employee. An American who can be considered one of the family is the very one who most appreciates the difference between being one of the family and like one of the family. The differences which are most keenly felt are three. The first is the fact that a certain amount of regulation must always be exercised by the employer in regard to the number and character of visitors received by the employee. It is a matter of self-protection, and is sometimes due to the employee as well. It often does not differ in kind or in degree from the care exercised for the other members of the household. The necessity for it is recognized by the better class of employees.[267] Nevertheless the restraint is irksome, the desire for independence not always unreasonable, and the wish for a place in which to receive visitors not surprising.

Another deprivation is the lack of opportunity for receiving or showing in even a slight degree that hospitality which can be accepted and exercised in every other employment involving equal intelligence.[268] The domestic employee can neither accept nor give an invitation to supper; she cannot offer a cup of tea to a caller; she does not ask a friend to remain to dinner, except perhaps at rare intervals a mother or a sister. She has the privilege of using without limit for her own necessities the food purchased by her employer, but she cannot share it without transgressing this privilege. She cannot invite her friends for an afternoon tea to meet a friend from another place, or give a small dinner party or a chafing-dish supper. She can do none of these things the desire for which is so natural and which can be gratified in a small way in almost every other occupation. Even more than this, she is never a sharer in the general social life of the community.[269] She is precluded not by her character but by her condition from exercising those social privileges which are instinctive in all persons.

Another social barrier is the failure of society to recognize the need on the part of the employee of those opportunities for personal improvement so freely accorded to those in other occupations. If she has a taste for music or art she can cultivate it only at the expense of ridicule,[270] while her need of intellectual advantages in a similar way meets with no recognition.[271] If she is refined and cultivated, she must often associate with those who are coarse and ignorant.[272]

But the question of social standing goes farther than this. Not only are social advantages of every kind denied the domestic employee, but the badge of social inferiority is put upon her in characters as unchangeable as are the spots of a leopard. This badge assumes several different forms. The first is the use of the word “servant.”[273] We may prove from etymology that every person who confers a favor on another is his servant. We may present a lawyer’s brief showing to the satisfaction of every local and national court that every employee in the eye of the law is a servant. We may argue from the biblical standpoint and show without a flaw in our chain of reasoning that we are all servants of one another. We may point to the classification of occupations made by the national census bureau and show that clergymen, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and domestic servants are placed together. We may quote to every employee the proudly humble motto of the Prince of Wales, “Ich dien,” and the example of the Pope, who calls himself “the servant of the servants of the Lord.” We may by a social fiction subscribe ourselves a score of times each day, “Your most humble and obedient servant.” We may do all of these things, but just as long as common phraseology restricts the ordinary use of the word to those persons engaged in domestic employments for which they receive a fixed compensation, just so long will arguments prove of no avail and the word “servant” continue to be a mark of social degradation. The efforts of domestic employees to substitute the terms “maid” or “working housekeeper” have as yet in many quarters excited little more than ridicule.

A second mark of social inferiority is the use of the Christian name in address. It may seem a very trifling matter, yet the fact again remains that domestic employees are the only class of workers, except day laborers, who are thus addressed. The weight that is attached to the matter in other walks of life is seen in the policy of more than one well-known newspaper; a strong weapon of attack in encounter with opponents has been the reference by Christian name to those whom the writers wish to consign to political obscurity. In no way does advancement in age and dignity show itself sooner than in the substitution of the surname for the Christian name. The boy shows his sense of growing importance by dropping the Christian name in addressing his companions. In the eyes of the débutante the first card bearing the name “Miss Brown” throws into insignificance many other advantages of the new position. Probably few persons would choose to go through life addressed by even their most intimate friends, aside from kith and kin, as are the class of domestic employees. The use of the Christian name in address undoubtedly grew out of the close family relationship that existed between the employer and the employee, but it has become a badge of social inferiority since it is used alike by strangers and friends. Any person considers himself privileged to use the familiar address towards any employee simply by virtue of the employee’s position. Even more objectionable is the English custom, sometimes affected in America, of dropping the Christian name and using the surname without a title, since it implies social inferiority even more than the familiar address.[274]

A third badge of the position sometimes insisted on is the cap and apron. These are not worn, as are the cap and sleeves of the trained nurse, to indicate the completion of a regular course of scientific training; they are not the uniform of the postman or the policeman, which shows the recognition by national or municipal authorities of superior fitness for the position filled and carries with it somewhat of the prestige of the power the wearer serves; they represent necessarily no attainment on the part of the person wearing them, nor are they, as worn, always the object of laudable ambition. The cap and apron sometimes indicate the rise of the employer in the social scale rather than the professional advance of the employee. The wider the separation in any community between employer and employee, the greater is the tendency to insist on the cap and apron. The same principle is involved when coachmen are not permitted to wear beards and hotel and club waiters are required to sacrifice the moustache.

A fourth badge is the fact that domestic servants are made not only to feel but to acknowledge their social inferiority. Not only deference but even servility of manner is demanded as of no other class, and this in an age when social and family relationships are everywhere becoming more democratic, when reverence and respect for authority are sometimes considered old-fashioned virtues, when even undue freedom of speech and manner are permitted to other classes. The domestic employee receives and gives no word or look of recognition on the street except in meeting those of her own class; she is seldom introduced to the guests of the house, whom she may faithfully serve during a prolonged visit; the common daily courtesies exchanged between the members of the household are not always shown her; she takes no part in the general conversation around her; she speaks only when addressed, obeys without murmur orders which her judgment tells her are absurd, “is not expected to smile under any circumstances,” and ministers without protest to the whims and obeys implicitly the commands of children from whom deference to parents is never expected.

A fifth mark of social inferiority is the fact that domestic employees, especially those connected with boarding houses, restaurants, and hotels, are generally given a fee for every service rendered.

A self-respecting man or woman in any other occupation is insulted by the offer of a fee. The person who through mistake offers a fee to a person belonging to his own station brings upon himself only ridicule and embarrassment. The shop-girl who works for $7 a week spends half an hour in a vain attempt to match for a customer a bit of ribbon; but she would be justly indignant, as would be her employer, if she were offered a fee. In hotels and restaurants, the larger the establishment and the more the price of every article should warrant exemption from such outside dues, the greater is felt to be the pressure for their payment. Nowhere else is the democratic principle “first come first served” so flagrantly violated, and nowhere else would its violation be tolerated. Feeing is a system of begging that cannot be reached by charity organization societies, a species of blackmail levied on all who wish good service, for which there is no legal redress, a European and American form of backsheesh that carries with it the taint of the soil from which it has sprung. It has its origin in snobbishness and it results in toadyism and flunkeyism. It is objectionable because it makes the giver feel as humiliated in giving as the recipient ought to feel in receiving. It puts a price on that kindness and consideration which ought to be the “royal bounty” in connection with every paid service, it destroys genuine sympathy and unselfishness, it creates an eye service and introduces into every branch of domestic service an element of demoralization and degradation that is incalculable. It takes from the person receiving it the option of placing a value on the service rendered by him, and it is the only occupation where fees are given that does not carry with it this privilege. A lawyer or a physician must be the best judge of the value of his services, but the domestic servant takes “what you please.”

One of the results of the system is indicated by a jesting paragraph that recently went the rounds of the daily press to the effect that the porter of the Grand Pacific Hotel, in Chicago, had retired with a fortune of $100,000 accumulated from tips given him by guests of the house,[275] while the men who contributed it were still struggling to keep the wolf from the door. In tipping, as in bribery, the social odium falls on the one who takes the tip or the bribe, not on the one who offers it. The fortune of $100,000, more or less, would not give social position to one who had acquired it through fees. But the fee is at bottom a bribe offered for service for which payment is presumably made by the employer; it is a bribe because it is an additional sum offered for quick service or good service which a waiter will not give without this extra compensation from the person served. As long as this form of bribery prevails, every person who accepts the bribe is socially tainted and no amount of financial success resulting from it can eradicate the taint.

Not only is the fee objectionable in itself, but the manner of giving it is equally so. It is bestowed surreptitiously, as if the giver appreciated the fact that he was doing an insulting thing and was ashamed of it; or it is offered openly with the patronizing manner of one who says, “I have no use for such a trifle; take it, if you wish it.” It is folded in a napkin, tucked under a plate, slipped into the hand of a waiter with a vain attempt to appear unconscious, left ostentatiously on a tray, or contemptuously flung at an attendant. It can be neither given nor received with the self-respect that accompanies any reputable business transaction.

Two excuses for feeing are given. One, “because every one else does it and one feels contemptible if he doesn’t do it,” an easy, good-natured way of disposing of a serious problem. Comparatively few persons are controlled by general principles; each acts according to what seems most convenient at the time being. The second excuse is that employees in hotels and restaurants and porters in drawing-room and sleeping cars are underpaid. This is undoubtedly true, and it will remain true as long as the general public frees the class of hotel, restaurant, and boarding-house proprietors, and palace and sleeping car companies, from the responsibility of paying their own assistants. But the general public also knows that the saleswomen in many large stores work for almost nothing, that street-car conductors and motor men are overworked and underpaid, that school teachers receive but a pittance. The public, however, pursues here a different policy; it puts on “the white list” employers who pay their saleswomen well, it allows street-railway employees to fight out the matter of low wages by strikes or in such other ways as they deem fit, it permits the school teacher to struggle on with a salary of $400 or $500 a year and patronizes a fair held for the benefit of a pension fund. It is difficult to see why this reason for feeing a domestic employee should not hold good in all underpaid employments; that it does not is one reason why those in other occupations do not fall in the social scale. That the public continues to pay directly the employees in this occupation as it does in no other is one explanation of the ill repute it bears among self-respecting wage-earning men and women. Every person has a contempt for another who accepts a fee, and the reproach extends from the individual to every branch of the occupation he represents. No other thing has done more to lower domestic service in the eyes of the public than this most pernicious custom, and every person who fees a domestic employee has by that act done something to degrade what should be an honorable occupation into a menial service.[276]

Another phase of the social question is presented by an employer who writes, “There is something wrong when a young girl servant is sent out in the evening to accompany the daughter or perhaps the mistress and return alone.” If protection is the thought, the maid needs it as much as the mistress; if it is in deference to a social custom, the maid must bitterly resent any custom which demands this distinction between herself and those whom she serves. Another aspect of the same question is suggested when it is realized what veritable dens of iniquity are some of the intelligence offices in large cities, and how difficult it often is for a domestic employee to come in contact with them without becoming contaminated by the touch. These are the things that lead many to believe that “the kitchen has become very like a social Botany Bay.”[277]

It is this social position with its accompanying marks of social inferiority that, more than any other one thing, turns the scale against domestic service as an occupation in the thoughts of many intelligent and ambitious women whose tastes naturally incline them to domestic employments. Professor Arthur T. Hadley has well said in a discussion of comparative wages, “One thing which counts for more and costs more than anything else is social standing.”[278] The social standing maintained by a cash girl on $3 a week which she fears to lose by going into domestic service ought not to be vastly superior to what is within the reach of intelligent cooks earning $10 a week; yet undoubtedly it is; and while this is true the number of intelligent women in domestic service will not increase.[279]

Other objections to domestic service in addition to those enumerated are sometimes made. Some of them arise from misconceptions,[280] others are trivial and do not demand consideration, while others are individual rather than general. These are the disadvantages that tell most strongly against the occupation. They do not include the element of ill-treatment by mistresses or their lack of consideration; or the fact that there is sometimes much in the tone and manner of an employer that is most irritating to a self-respecting person; or that there are occasionally employers who feel that they rise in the social scale in the same proportion that they make employees sensible of inferiority or dependence; or that many mistresses demand more than can be performed; or that some employers are unreasonable, others disagreeable, and still others petulant and fault-finding; or that some “expect perfection at twelve dollars a month and positive genius at thirteen.” These conditions are found, but they are not peculiar to domestic service; the disadvantages discussed are all independent of good or bad personal treatment, they may be modified by the character of the family to whom the service is rendered, but they cannot be removed by any individual employer acting alone, however much he has at heart the interests of his own employee or of domestic employees as a class.

In comparing the advantages and disadvantages of domestic service as an occupation it will be obvious that the advantages are numerous, substantial, and easily recognized; the disadvantages are many, but they are far more subtile, intangible, and far reaching. The advantages are those which the economic woman always sees and which take her from unhealthy tenement houses into country air and sunshine; from overcrowded occupations into one where the demand for workers is and always must be unlimited; from starvation wages to peace and plenty; from long hours of dreary mechanical toil to intelligent work; from failure in an uncongenial occupation to success and prosperity in this; from a life whose sufferings and privations, as yet but half told, have roused the sympathies of all social reformers, to a life of freedom from the sweater, the floor-walker, the officious and vulgar superintendent, the industrial Shylocks of every occupation, to a life of comparative ease and comfort. But while the economic woman, like the economic man, always sees these things, the actual woman looks at another side. She does not understand why work that society calls the most honorable a woman can do when done in her own home without remuneration, becomes demeaning when done in the house of another for a fixed compensation, but she recognizes the fact; she sees that discredit comes not from the work itself but from the conditions under which it is performed, and she does not willingly place herself in these conditions; she sees that a class line is always drawn as in no other occupation; she is willing and glad to pay her life for what seems to her life—excitement, city ways, society of home friends, personal independence which another might call slavery. She does not care for those advantages which another person points out; to her they count as nothing in comparison with the price she must pay for them. Of five hundred and forty employees of whom the question was asked, “Would you give up housework if you could find another occupation that would pay you as well?” one-half answered, “Yes.” Yet the number is very small of those who complain of ill-treatment or lack of consideration on the part of the employer. There is, indeed, often much ground for complaint on this score, but it must be seen that other relationships besides the personal ones are entered into when the relation of employer and employee is established. That which decides the question is not always the economic advantage, not always the personal treatment, but that subtile thing the woman calls life. “Wages, hours, health, and morals” may all weigh in the scale in favor of domestic service, but life outweighs them all. The advantages are such as lead many people to urge domestic service for the daughters of others, the disadvantages are such as incline them to choose any occupation but this for their own daughters.[281]