Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework Business principles applied to housework

PART II

BUSI­NESS PRIN­CI­PLES AP­PLIED TO HOUSE­WORK

Liv­ing out­side place of em­ploy­ment. House­work lim­it­ed to eight hours a day. House­work lim­it­ed to six days a week. The ob­ser­vance of le­gal hol­idays. Ex­tra pay for over­time.

LIV­ING OUT­SIDE PLACE OF EM­PLOY­MENT

There are many house­wives who are very much op­posed to the adop­tion of a plan en­abling house­hold em­ploy­ees to live out­side their place of em­ploy­ment. They claim that it is wis­er to keep them un­der con­stant su­per­vi­sion day and night in or­der to pre­vent the in­tro­duc­tion of dis­ease or the ac­qui­si­tion of bad habits.

There is more risk of dis­ease be­ing in­tro­duced in­to the home, and of bad habits be­ing con­tract­ed by al­low­ing one's chil­dren to as­so­ciate with oth­er chil­dren in schools, pub­lic or pri­vate, and by let­ting them play in the streets and pub­lic parks, where they min­gle with more or less un­de­sir­able com­pan­ions, than by hav­ing the house­work per­formed by em­ploy­ees who come each day to their work and re­turn to their homes at night when their du­ties are over. Nev­er­the­less no sen­si­ble par­ents would keep their chil­dren shut up in the house, on­ly al­low­ing them to go out of doors for a few hours once a week, for fear of con­ta­gion or con­tam­ina­tion, and yet this is just what the house­wife has been do­ing for years with her house­hold em­ploy­ees un­der the firm im­pres­sion that she was pro­tect­ing them as well as her­self.

Present statis­tics, how­ev­er, up­on the moral­ity and im­moral­ity of wom­en who be­long to what is at present termed the “ser­vant class,” prove on­ly too clear­ly that the “pro­tec­tion” pro­vid­ed by the em­ploy­er's home does not pro­tect. The shel­ter thus giv­en serves too of­ten to en­cour­age a life of de­cep­tion, es­pe­cial­ly as in re­al­ity the house­wife knows but lit­tle of what takes place “be­low stairs.”

The “ser­vants' quar­ters” are, as a rule, far enough away from the oth­er rooms of the house for much to tran­spire there with­out the knowl­edge of the “mis­tress of the house,” but who has not heard her com­plain of the mis­con­duct of her em­ploy­ees? Startling dis­cov­er­ies have been made at the most un­ex­pect­ed times and from the most un­ex­pect­ed quar­ters. One la­dy found her maid was in the habit of go­ing out at night af­ter the fam­ily had re­tired, and leav­ing the front door un­locked in or­der to re­gain ad­mit­tance in the ear­ly morn­ing with­out arous­ing the fam­ily. An­oth­er house­wife dis­cov­ered one day that her cook's hus­band, whose ex­is­tence un­til then was un­known, had been com­ing for sev­er­al months to her house for his din­ner. Ev­ery house­hold­er finds that in the late evening her “ser­vants” en­ter­tain their nu­mer­ous “cousins” and friends at her ex­pense. More­over, they do not hes­itate to use the best chi­na, glass, and sil­ver for spe­cial par­ties and draw up­on the house­hold sup­plies for the choic­est meats and wines. And be­cause they can­not go out in the day time, it is not un­usu­al to find some friend or rel­ative comes to spend the en­tire day with them, and in con­se­quence the house­wife not on­ly feeds her “help” but a string of hang­ers-​on as well. Why should she be sur­prised that she does not get an ad­equate re­turn for the amount of mon­ey she spends? And these things take place, not on­ly dur­ing the tem­po­rary ab­sence of the em­ploy­er, but even while she is sit­ting peace­ful­ly in the li­brary and lis­ten­ing to a par­lor lec­ture on the re­la­tions of cap­ital and la­bor.

Wom­en say tear­ful­ly or brave­ly on such oc­ca­sions: “What can be done to make ser­vants bet­ter? They are get­ting worse ev­ery day.” And the house­wife (one might al­most call her by Samuel Pepys's pleas­ing phrase, “the poor wretch”) then pours out to any sym­pa­thet­ic ear end­less recitals of ag­gra­vat­ing, wor­ry­ing, nerve-​rack­ing ex­pe­ri­ences. In­stead of putting an end to such a re­gret­table state of af­fairs that would nev­er be tol­er­at­ed by any busi­ness em­ploy­er, she seems con­tent to be­wail her fate and clings still more stead­fast­ly to ob­so­lete meth­ods.

Why does she not adopt the meth­ods of the busi­ness man in deal­ing with his em­ploy­ees? The ad­vis­abil­ity of hav­ing house­hold em­ploy­ees live out­side their place of em­ploy­ment is so ap­par­ent that it ought to ap­peal to ev­ery one. There would be no longer the ne­ces­si­ty of putting aside and of fur­nish­ing cer­tain rooms of the house for their ac­com­mo­da­tion: a prac­tice which in the ma­jor­ity of fam­ilies is quite a se­ri­ous in­con­ve­nience and al­ways an ex­pense. In small homes where on­ly one maid is kept, it may not make much dif­fer­ence to give up one room to her, but where sev­er­al em­ploy­ees are need­ed, it means very of­ten that many rooms must be used as sleep­ing apart­ments for them, fre­quent­ly too a sit­ting room or a spe­cial din­ing room is giv­en them. This is not all, for the rooms must be fur­nished and kept clean and warm, and sup­plied with an un­lim­it­ed amount of gas and elec­tric­ity. In many fam­ilies the board­ing and lodg­ing of house­hold em­ploy­ees cause as much anx­iety and ex­pense to the house­wife as to pro­vide for her own fam­ily.

And why does she do it? Why does she con­sent to take up­on her­self so much ex­tra trou­ble for noth­ing? For, al­though she of­fers good food and a bed be­sides ex­cel­lent wages to all who work for her, she is the most poor­ly served of all em­ploy­ers to-​day.

In the great feu­dal cas­tles of the Mid­dle Ages it was not deemed safe for wom­en to ven­ture forth alone, even in the day­time, and so those en­gaged in house­work were nat­ural­ly com­pelled to live un­der their Mas­ter's roof, eat­ing at his ta­ble and sit­ting “be­low the salt.” But the Mas­ter and the Serf of feu­dal times dis­ap­peared long ago, on­ly the Mis­tress and her “ser­vants” re­main.

To-​day, how­ev­er, “ser­vants” no longer sit at their em­ploy­er's ta­ble; they re­main in the kitchen, where as a rule they are giv­en to eat what is left from the fam­ily meals. Some house­wives, from mo­tives of kind­ness and con­sid­er­ation for the wel­fare of those in their em­ploy, have spe­cial meals pre­pared for them and served in a din­ing-​room of their own at hours which do not con­flict with the meals of the fam­ily. But this does not al­ways meet with grat­itude or even due ap­pre­ci­ation; the dis­dain­ful way in which Brid­get of­ten com­plains of the food too gen­er­ous­ly pro­vid­ed for her is well known.

A cham­ber­maid came one day to her em­ploy­er and said she did not wish to com­plain but thought it bet­ter to say frankly that she was not sat­is­fied with what she was get­ting to eat in her house: she want­ed to have roast beef for din­ner more of­ten, at least three or four times a week, for she did not care to eat mut­ton, nor steak, and nev­er ate pork, nor could she, to quote her own words “fill up on bread and veg­eta­bles as the oth­er girls did in the kitchen.”

Then, and on­ly then, did her em­ploy­er wake up with a start to the re­al­iza­tion of the true po­si­tion ev­ery house­wife oc­cu­pies in the eyes of her house­hold em­ploy­ees. They ev­ident­ly re­gard her in the light of a cater­er; she does the mar­ket­ing not on­ly for her fam­ily but for them too. She pays a cook high wages, not on­ly to cook meals for her­self and fam­ily, but for her em­ploy­ees al­so.

For the first time in her life, this house­wife asked her­self the fol­low­ing ques­tions: Why should she al­low her house­hold em­ploy­ees to live in her house? Why should she con­sent to board them at her ex­pense? Why should she con­tin­ue to place at their dis­pos­al a bed­room each, a pri­vate bath­room, a sit­ting room or a din­ing room? Why should she al­low them to make use of her kitchen and laun­dry to do their own per­son­al wash­ing, even pro­vid­ing them with soap and starch, irons and an iron­ing board, fu­el and gas? Why should she do all this for them when no busi­ness em­ploy­er, man or wom­an, ev­er does it? Was it sim­ply be­cause her moth­er, her grand­moth­er, her great-​grand­moth­er had been in the habit of do­ing it?

This awak­en­ing was the be­gin­ning of the end of all the trou­ble and ex­pense which she had en­dured for so many years in con­nec­tion with the board­ing and lodg­ing of her “ser­vants.” To-​day she has no “ser­vants”; she has house­hold em­ploy­ees who come to her house each day, just as oth­er em­ploy­ees go each day to their place of em­ploy­ment. They take no meals in her house, and her house­keep­ing ex­pens­es have di­min­ished as much as her own com­fort has in­creased. Her em­ploy­ees are bet­ter and more ef­fi­cient than any she ev­er had un­der the old regime, and noth­ing could per­suade her to re­turn to her for­mer meth­ods of house­keep­ing.

The cost of pro­vid­ing meals for do­mes­tic em­ploy­ees varies ac­cord­ing to the mode of liv­ing of each in­di­vid­ual fam­ily, and of late it has been the sub­ject of much dis­cus­sion. Some im­por­tant de­tails, how­ev­er, seem to be gen­er­al­ly over­looked, for the cost of the food is the on­ly thing usu­al­ly con­sid­ered by the av­er­age house­wife. To this first ex­pense must be added the cost of pots and pans for cook­ing pur­pos­es; even un­der care­ful man­age­ment, kitchen uten­sils are bound to wear out and must be re­placed. Then there is the cost of the ex­tra fu­el or gas or elec­tric­ity re­quired to cook the food, nor must one for­get to count the ex­tra work of the cook to pre­pare the meals, and of the kitchen maid or of some oth­er maid to wash up the dish­es af­ter each meal served to em­ploy­ees. There is al­so the ex­pense of buy­ing kitchen plates and dish­es, glass­es, cups and saucers, knives and forks, etc. Ev­ery house­wife is in the habit of pro­vid­ing kitchen­ware for the use of her em­ploy­ees.

The to­tal sum of all these items would as­ton­ish those who think that the ac­tu­al ex­pense of giv­ing meals to house­hold em­ploy­ees is not a very great one and is lim­it­ed to the cost of the food they eat; even this last ex­pense is con­sid­er­ably aug­ment­ed by the care­less and waste­ful way in which pro­vi­sions are gen­er­al­ly han­dled by those who do not have to pay for them. When ways and means are dis­cussed among house­wives to re­duce the present “high cost of liv­ing,” it would be well to ad­vise all wom­en to try the ex­per­iment of hav­ing their house­hold em­ploy­ees live out­side their place of em­ploy­ment. The re­sult from an eco­nom­ic point of view alone is amaz­ing, and the re­lief it brings the house­wife who is no longer obliged to pro­vide food and sleep­ing ac­com­mo­da­tions for her em­ploy­ees is so great that one won­ders why she has been will­ing to bur­den her­self with these re­spon­si­bil­ities for so many years.

There was once a time when wom­en did not go out alone to eat in a restau­rant, but to-​day one sees about as many wom­en as men eat­ing their mid­day meal in pub­lic. If wom­en en­gaged in gen­er­al busi­ness prove them­selves thus ca­pa­ble of self care, there seems to be no rea­son why house­hold em­ploy­ees, who of­ten re­ceive high­er wages than shop girls and stenog­ra­phers, should not be able to do the same. They would en­joy their meals more out­side, al­beit the food giv­en them in their em­ploy­er's house is un­doubt­ed­ly of a bet­ter qual­ity; the change of sur­round­ings and the op­por­tu­ni­ty of meet­ing friends, of leav­ing their work be­hind them, would com­pen­sate them. In any event, it is clear­ly proved by the scarci­ty of wom­en ap­ply­ing for po­si­tions in pri­vate hous­es that these two ad­van­tages on­ly to be ob­tained in do­mes­tic la­bor--board and lodg­ing--do not at­tract the work­ing wom­an of the present day.

The joy of eat­ing the bread of in­de­pen­dence is an old and deeply root­ed feel­ing. There is an an­cient fa­ble of AE­sop about the Dog and the Wolf which por­trays this sen­ti­ment in a very quaint and de­light­ful man­ner. (Sir Roger l'Es­trange's trans­la­tion.)

THE DOG AND THE WOLF

There was a Hagged Car­rion of a _Wolf_, and a Jol­ly Sort of a Gen­tile _Dog_, with Good Flesh up­on's Back, that fell in­to Com­pa­ny to­geth­er up­on the King's High-​Way. The _Wolf_ was won­der­ful­ly pleas'd with his Com­pan­ion, and as In­quis­itive to Learn how be brought him­self to That Blessed State of Body. Why, says the _Dog_, I keep my Mas­ter's House from Thieves, and I have very Good Meat, Drink, and Lodg­ing for my pains. Now if you'll go along with Me, and do as I do, you may fare as I fare. The _Wolf_ Struck up the Bar­gain, and so away they Trot­ted to­geth­er: But as they were Jog­ging on, the _Wolf_ spy'd a Bare Place about the _Dog's_ Neck where the Hair was worn off. Broth­er (says he) how comes this I prethee? Oh, That's Noth­ing, says the _Dog_, but the Fret­ting of my _Col­lar_ a lit­tle. Nay, says T'oth­er, if there be a _Col­lar_ in the Case, I know Bet­ter Things than to sell my Lib­er­ty for a Crust.

THE MORAL

...'Tis a Com­fort to have Good Meat and Drink at Com­mand, and Warm Lodg­ing: But He that sells his Free­dom for the Cram­ming of his Bel­ly, has but a Hard Bar­gain of it.

In mod­ern busi­ness en­ter­pris­es, there is hard­ly a sin­gle in­stance of an em­ploy­er who is will­ing to board his em­ploy­ees, nor would he con­sid­er for a mo­ment the propo­si­tion of al­low­ing them to re­main at their place of em­ploy­ment all night and of pro­vid­ing sleep­ing ac­com­mo­da­tions for them. Nei­ther in con­sid­er­ation of ben­efit­ing them, nor with the view of ben­efit­ing him­self by thus mak­ing sure of hav­ing them on hand for work ear­ly the next morn­ing, would he ev­er con­sent to such an ar­range­ment. When he needs some one to watch over his in­ter­ests in the night time, he en­gages a night watch­man, a very much more eco­nom­ical plan than to pro­vide lodg­ing for all his em­ploy­ees.

Why should the house­wife be the on­ly em­ploy­er to as­sume the bur­den of a dou­ble re­spon­si­bil­ity to­ward her em­ploy­ees? Per­haps in the coun­try, where it might be im­pos­si­ble for them to live out­side her home, such a ne­ces­si­ty might arise, but in cities and sub­ur­ban towns, there is ab­so­lute­ly no valid rea­son why house­hold em­ploy­ees should sleep, eat, and live un­der their em­ploy­er's roof. It is a cus­tom on­ly, and tru­ly a cus­tom that would be “more hon­ored in the breach than in the ob­ser­vance.”

HOUSE­WORK LIM­IT­ED TO EIGHT HOURS A DAY

In the home wom­an's work is said to be nev­er end­ed. If this be true, it is the fault of the wom­an who plans the work, for in all the po­si­tions of life, work can be car­ried on in­def­inite­ly if bad­ly planned.

It is the es­sen­tial the­sis of this lit­tle vol­ume that the do­mes­tic la­bor of wom­en should be lim­it­ed to a fixed num­ber of hours per day in pri­vate hous­es.

It is not un­usu­al at the present day for a wom­an to work twelve, or four­teen hours a day, or even longer, when she earns her liv­ing as a house­hold em­ploy­ee. A man's men­tal and phys­ical forces be­gin to wane at the end of eight, nine, or ten hours of con­stant ap­pli­ca­tion to the same work, and a wom­an's strength is not greater than a man's. The truth of the propo­si­tion, ab­stract­ly con­sid­ered, has been long ac­knowl­edged and nowa­days re­quires no ar­gu­ment.

When a wom­an ac­cepts a po­si­tion in busi­ness, she is told ex­act­ly how many hours a day she must work, but when a wom­an is en­gaged to fill a do­mes­tic po­si­tion in a fam­ily, the num­ber of hours she is ex­pect­ed to give her em­ploy­er is nev­er spec­ified. She is sim­ply told that she must be on du­ty ear­ly in the morn­ing be­fore the fam­ily aris­es, and that she may con­sid­er her­self off du­ty as soon as the fam­ily for whom she is work­ing has with­drawn for the night. Is it sur­pris­ing that un­der such con­di­tions work­ing wom­en are not very en­thu­si­as­tic over the do­mes­tic propo­si­tion to-​day?

A house­hold em­ploy­ee ought to have her hours of work as clear­ly de­fined as if she were a busi­ness em­ploy­ee, and there is no rea­son why the eight-​hour la­bor law could not be ap­plied as suc­cess­ful­ly to house­work as to any oth­er en­ter­prise.

Work in busi­ness is gen­er­al­ly di­vid­ed in­to two pe­ri­ods. Yet this di­vi­sion can not al­ways be ef­fect­ed, and in rail­road and steamship po­si­tions, in post of­fices, up­on trol­ley lines, in ho­tels, in hos­pi­tals, and in oth­er cas­es too nu­mer­ous to men­tion, where work must fol­low a con­tin­uous round, the work­ing hours are di­vid­ed in­to more than two pe­ri­ods, ac­cord­ing to the na­ture of the work and the in­ter­ests of the em­ploy­er, not how­ev­er ex­ceed­ing a fixed num­ber of hours per day or per week.

It would be far bet­ter for the house­wife as well as for her em­ploy­ees, if the house­work were lim­it­ed in a sim­ilar way. But with the in­tro­duc­tion of the eight-​hour law in the home, cer­tain new con­di­tions would have to be rigid­ly en­forced in or­der to en­sure suc­cess.

First­ly, the em­ploy­ee should be made to un­der­stand that dur­ing the eight hours of work agreed up­on, she must be en­gaged in ac­tu­al work for her em­ploy­er.

Sec­ond­ly, when an em­ploy­ee is off du­ty, she should not be al­lowed to re­main with or to talk to the oth­er em­ploy­ee or em­ploy­ees who are still on du­ty. When her work is fin­ished, she ought to leave her em­ploy­er's house. The non-​ob­ser­vance of ei­ther of these two points pro­duces a de­mor­al­iz­ing ef­fect.

Third­ly, a gen­er­al knowl­edge of cook­ing, and serv­ing meals, of clean­ing and tak­ing prop­er care of the rooms of a house, of at­tend­ing cor­rect­ly to the tele­phone and the door bell, of sewing, of wash­ing and iron­ing, and of tak­ing care of chil­dren, should be in­sist­ed up­on from all house­hold em­ploy­ees.

There are many house­wives who will state that this last con­di­tion is im­pos­si­ble, that it is ask­ing too much from one em­ploy­ee; and since it is hard to-​day to find a good cook, it will be still hard­er to find one who un­der­stands oth­er house­hold work as well. But those who jump to these con­clu­sions have nev­er tried the ex­per­iment. It is not on­ly pos­si­ble but prac­ti­ca­ble.

Judg­ing from the or­di­nary in­tel­li­gence dis­played by the av­er­age cook and house­maid in the ma­jor­ity of pri­vate homes to-​day, it ought not to seem in­cred­ible that the du­ties of both could be eas­ily mas­tered by young wom­en of or­di­nary abil­ity. A wom­an who knows how to pre­pare and cook a meal, may eas­ily learn the cor­rect way of serv­ing it, and the pos­ses­sion of this knowl­edge ought not to pre­vent her from be­ing ca­pa­ble of sweep­ing a room, or mak­ing a bed, or tak­ing care of chil­dren.

It is above all in fam­ilies where on­ly a few em­ploy­ees are kept, that the house­wife will quick­ly re­al­ize how much it is to her im­me­di­ate ad­van­tage to em­ploy wom­en who know how to do all kinds of house­work, in­stead of hav­ing those who make a spe­cial­ty of one par­tic­ular branch.

The spe­cial­iza­tion of work in pri­vate hous­es has been car­ried to such an ex­treme that it has be­come one of the great­est draw­backs to suc­cess­ful house­keep­ing in small fam­ilies. Un­der this sys­tem of spe­cial­iza­tion, a house­hold em­ploy­ee is not ca­pa­ble in emer­gen­cy of tak­ing up sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly the work of an­oth­er. Even if she be able to do it, she of­ten pro­fess­es ig­no­rance for fear it may pro­long her own hours of la­bor, or be­cause, as she some­times frankly ad­mits, she does not con­sid­er it “her place.” The cham­ber­maid does not know how to cook, the cook does not know how to do the cham­ber­work, the wait­ress, in her turn, can do nei­ther cook­ing nor cham­ber­work, and the an­noy­ance to the whole fam­ily caused by the tem­po­rary ab­sence of one of its reg­ular em­ploy­ees is enough to spoil for the time be­ing all the tra­di­tion­al com­forts of home.

In ho­tels and pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions, and in large pri­vate es­tab­lish­ments, where the work de­mands a nu­mer­ous staff of em­ploy­ees, the spe­cial­iza­tion of the work is the on­ly means for its suc­cess­ful ac­com­plish­ment, but in the av­er­age home re­quir­ing from one to four or five em­ploy­ees no sys­tem could be worse from an eco­nom­ic point of view, nor less con­ducive to the com­fort of the fam­ily.

Spe­cial­iza­tion pro­duces an­oth­er bad ef­fect, for it pre­vents the ex­is­tence of the feel­ing of equal­ity among em­ploy­ees in the same house. Each “spe­cial­ist” speaks rather dis­parag­ing­ly of the oth­er's work, re­gard­less of the rel­ative po­si­tion her own spe­cial “art” may oc­cu­py to the un­prej­udiced mind.

An amus­ing in­stance of this was re­cent­ly shown at a coun­try place near New York, when “the la­dy of the manor” asked a friend to send some one down from the city to help with the house­work dur­ing the tem­po­rary ab­sence of her maid. The friend could not find any one at the do­mes­tic em­ploy­ment agen­cies will­ing to go, but at last through the Char­ity Or­ga­ni­za­tion So­ci­ety, she heard of a wom­an tem­porar­ily out of em­ploy­ment, who had been fre­quent­ly em­ployed as scrub­wom­an on the va­ca­tion piers. When the work was of­fered her, she ac­cept­ed it im­me­di­ate­ly. Ar­riv­ing at her new em­ploy­er's house, she be­gan at once to scrub the floors, and when the work was com­plet­ed, she sat on a chair and took no fur­ther no­tice of any­thing. The next day, hav­ing no more floors to scrub, the same gen­er­al lack of in­ter­est was man­ifest­ed. She was asked to wash the dish­es af­ter din­ner. She replied that she was not used to “dish­wash­ing,” and did not know how to do it. She was per­suad­ed, how­ev­er, to make the at­tempt, but per­formed her new task very re­luc­tant­ly. The fol­low­ing morn­ing she said she felt “lone­ly” and would re­turn at once to the city. As the train came in sight to bear her back to her ac­cus­tomed sur­round­ings, she gave a snort of re­lief, and ex­claimed: “I'm a scrub­wom­an, I am. I ain't go­ing to do no fan­cy dish­wash­ing, no, not for no one; I'm a scrub­wom­an.” And she clam­bered up in­to the train with the alacrity of a wom­an whose dig­ni­ty had re­ceived a hard blow.

The above il­lus­tra­tion is typ­ical of the spir­it sub­ject­ed to the sys­tem of spe­cial­iza­tion, and shows how un­wise it is to en­cour­age it in the home where all branch­es of house­work could be eas­ily made in­ter­change­able.

Un­der the new sys­tem of lim­it­ing house­work to eight hours a day, the house­wife must in­sist that all ap­pli­cants be will­ing and able to per­form any part of the house­work she may as­sign, and their du­ties ought not to be spec­ified oth­er­wise than by the term HOUSE­WORK. The em­ploy­ee who re­fus­es to wait on the ta­ble dur­ing the ab­sence of the wait­ress, or to cook, or to do the laun­dry work, or to an­swer the tele­phone, or to car­ry pack­ages from her em­ploy­er's au­to­mo­bile to the li­brary, be­cause she does not con­sid­er it “her place to do these things,” should be in­stant­ly dis­charged.

These very im­por­tant con­di­tions be­ing un­der­stood and con­ced­ed, the choice and ar­range­ment of the eight hours' work must nec­es­sar­ily lie with each in­di­vid­ual house­wife. Each fam­ily is dif­fer­ent and has dif­fer­ent claims up­on its time. The “rush hours” of so­cial life are some­times in the evening, and some­times in the af­ter­noon, and again in some fam­ilies, es­pe­cial­ly where there are small chil­dren, the break­fast hour seems the most com­pli­cat­ed of the day. All these de­tails have to be care­ful­ly thought of when mak­ing an eight hour sched­ule. At the end of this book a set of sched­ules is placed. Any in­tel­li­gent house­wife can un­der­stand them, im­itate them, and in many in­stances im­prove them. They are mere­ly giv­en as el­emen­tary ex­am­ples.

Ac­cord­ing to the num­ber of em­ploy­ees she en­gages, the house­wife will have eight, six­teen, or twen­ty-​four hours of work to dis­tribute among them, and to meet her pe­cu­liar needs she will find it nec­es­sary at the out­set to de­vote some hours to a sat­is­fac­to­ry scheme. Af­ter test­ing sev­er­al, she will prob­ably have to be­gin all over again be­fore she fi­nal­ly suc­ceeds in evolv­ing one that is avail­able. But the prob­lem is in­ter­est­ing in it­self, and al­ways ad­mits of a so­lu­tion.

It may not be amiss to make this fi­nal sug­ges­tion for the wom­an who is will­ing to give the new plan a fair tri­al: she should fol­low the ex­am­ple of the busi­ness man when he is in need of new em­ploy­ees, and ad­ver­tise for help, stat­ing hours of work, and re­quest­ing that all ap­pli­ca­tions be made by let­ter. This dis­pos­es rapid­ly of the il­lit­er­ate, and in the ma­jor­ity of cas­es, a wom­an who writes a good, leg­ible, and ac­cu­rate hand, is more apt to be ef­fi­cient in her work than one who sends in a dirty, care­less, ill-​ex­pressed and bad­ly spelled ap­pli­ca­tion. Through ad­ver­tis­ing one comes in­to touch with many wom­en it would be im­pos­si­ble to reach oth­er­wise. It is al­so the most ad­van­ta­geous way of bring­ing the em­ploy­er and em­ploy­ee to­geth­er, inas­much as it dis­pens­es en­tire­ly with the ser­vices of a third per­son, who, nat­ural­ly can not be ex­pect­ed to of­fer gra­tu­itous ser­vice.

The plan of lim­it­ing house­work to eight hours a day is not an idle the­ory; it has been in suc­cess­ful op­er­ation for sev­er­al years. Yet it is not easy to change the habit of years. There are many house­wives who would loud­ly de­clare it im­pos­si­ble to con­form to such busi­ness rules in the house­hold; and many of the old­er gen­er­ation of cooks and house­maids would agree. But when such a plan has been gen­er­al­ly adopt­ed, the do­mes­tic la­bor prob­lem will be solved, and it does not ap­pear that in the present state of so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion, it can be solved in any oth­er way.

HOUSE­WORK LIM­IT­ED TO SIX DAYS A WEEK

Un­der the present sys­tem of house­keep­ing, there is not one day out of the three hun­dred and six­ty-​five that a do­mes­tic em­ploy­ee has the right to claim as a day of rest, not even a le­gal hol­iday.

It is re­mark­able that this fact, show­ing so forcibly one of the great­est dis­ad­van­tages con­nect­ed with house­work, should at­tract so lit­tle at­ten­tion. No one seems to care about the fate of the “ser­vant girl,” as she is so of­ten dis­dain­ful­ly called. Dur­ing six days of the week she works on the av­er­age four­teen hours a day, but no one stops to no­tice that she is tired. On the sev­enth day, in­stead of rest­ing as ev­ery oth­er em­ploy­ee has the right to do, her work is mere­ly re­duced to nine, eight, or per­haps sev­en hours; and yet she needs a day of rest as much as ev­ery oth­er wom­an who earns her bread. The rights of the do­mes­tic em­ploy­ee are ig­nored on all sides ap­par­ent­ly. In pub­lic demon­stra­tions of dis­sat­is­fac­tion be­tween em­ploy­ers and em­ploy­ees the most op­pressed class of the work­ing peo­ple--the wom­en who do house­work--has nev­er yet been rep­re­sent­ed.

This is prob­ably due to two caus­es: the first is be­cause wom­en dis­sat­is­fied with house­work are rapid­ly find­ing po­si­tions in busi­ness where they en­joy rights and priv­ileges de­nied them in do­mes­tic la­bor; and the sec­ond is be­cause the great ma­jor­ity of wom­en en­gaged in house­work are for­eign-​born. These wom­en learn quick­ly to un­der­stand and speak En­glish, but they do not of­ten read and write it, and as they are kept in close con­fine­ment in their em­ploy­er's house, they have rarely the op­por­tu­ni­ty of hear­ing about the eman­ci­pa­tion of the mod­ern work­ing wom­an. Most of them are of a very hum­ble ori­gin, and be­ing de­barred from busi­ness po­si­tions on ac­count of their ig­no­rance and in­ex­pe­ri­ence, they are thank­ful to earn mon­ey in any kind of em­ploy­ment re­gard­less of the length of work­ing hours.

Their chil­dren, how­ev­er, who are Amer­ican born and en­joy bet­ter ed­uca­tion­al ad­van­tages, do not fol­low in their foot­steps when the time comes for them to earn their liv­ing. They be­come stenog­ra­phers, type­writ­ers, dress­mak­ers, milliners, shirt waist mak­ers, cash-​girls, saleswom­en, etc.; in fact any oc­cu­pa­tion where work is lim­it­ed to a fixed num­ber of hours a day and con­fined to six days a week, is con­sid­ered more de­sir­able than house­work. The re­sult is that the house­wife is com­pelled to take for her em­ploy­ees on­ly those who are re­ject­ed by ev­ery oth­er em­ploy­er; the ca­pa­ble, in­de­pen­dent, in­tel­li­gent Amer­ican wom­an is hard­ly ev­er seen in do­mes­tic ser­vice.

In Wash­ing­ton, D.C., a law (the La Fol­lette Eight Hour Law for Wom­en in the Dis­trict of Columbia) was re­cent­ly passed lim­it­ing to eight hours a day and six days a week prac­ti­cal­ly all work in which wom­en are in­dus­tri­al­ly em­ployed; “ho­tel ser­vants” are in­clud­ed un­der the pro­vi­sions of this law, but “do­mes­tic ser­vants in pri­vate homes” are ex­press­ly ex­clud­ed.

If this new law be con­sid­ered a just and hu­mane mea­sure for wom­en who are busi­ness em­ploy­ees, and if busi­ness hous­es be com­pelled to ob­serve it, one nat­ural­ly won­ders why it should not prove to be an equal­ly just and hu­mane law for wom­en who work in pri­vate fam­ilies, and why should not the home be com­pelled to ob­serve it too? In­stead of be­ing a bar­ri­er to progress, the home ought to cooeper­ate with the state in the en­force­ment of laws for the ame­lio­ra­tion of the con­di­tion of work­ing wom­en. The home, be­ing presid­ed over by a wom­an, pre­sum­ably of some ed­uca­tion and in­tel­li­gence, should be a most fit­ting place in which to ap­ply a law de­signed to pro­tect wom­en against ex­ces­sive hours of la­bor.

Why should house­work in pri­vate homes be an ex­cep­tion to all oth­er work? Is it be­cause some house­wives say, in self jus­ti­fi­ca­tion and fre­quent­ly with­out an ac­cu­rate knowl­edge of what it is to do house­work week af­ter week with­out one day's re­lease, that house­work is eas­ier than oth­er work? Is it eas­ier? Is it not some­times hard­er? How­ev­er, it is not a ques­tion of house­work be­ing hard­er or eas­ier than oth­er work, but of the de­sir­abil­ity of hav­ing it lim­it­ed to eight hours a day and six days a week. Why should the house­wife be al­lowed to re­main in such a state of ap­athy in re­gard to the phys­ical wel­fare of her house­hold em­ploy­ees?

“Six days shalt thou la­bor” has all the sanc­tion of scrip­ture, of morals, and of com­mon ex­pe­ri­ence. It is on­ly fair that wom­en who work in pri­vate fam­ilies should have one day out of sev­en as a day of rest, even as their more for­tu­nate sis­ters in the busi­ness world. If by adopt­ing such a law in the home the house­wife found that her work was per­formed far more ef­fi­cient­ly and will­ing­ly than at present, would it not be as much to her ad­van­tage as to the ad­van­tage of those she em­ploys to lim­it the hours of house­hold la­bor to six days a week? Many house­wives may ob­ject to this propo­si­tion inas­much as the work in a home can not be sus­pend­ed even for a day. But when two or more em­ploy­ees work in a pri­vate home, it is very easy to plan the house­work so that each em­ploy­ee may have a dif­fer­ent day of the week as a “day of rest,” with­out the com­fort of the fam­ily be­ing dis­turbed by the tem­po­rary ab­sence of one of the em­ploy­ees. It is on­ly in fam­ilies where one em­ploy­ee is kept that it may make a very se­ri­ous dif­fer­ence to the house­wife when her “maid-​of-​all-​work” is away for one en­tire day each week. Nev­er­the­less the com­fort of an em­ploy­er ought not to out­weigh jus­tice to an em­ploy­ee.

There are many ways of reg­ulat­ing the house­work, as will be seen in the sched­ules at the end of this book, in or­der to give one day of free­dom each week to house­hold em­ploy­ees with­out caus­ing much in­con­ve­nience to the house­wife. By con­tin­uing to refuse this priv­ilege to wom­en em­ployed in do­mes­tic la­bor, house­keep­ing is be­com­ing more and more com­pli­cat­ed. Al­ready it is such a com­mon oc­cur­rence in some cities and in many parts of the coun­try, not to find any wom­an will­ing to do house­work, that many house­wives are be­gin­ning to think that their fu­ture com­fort in all house­hold mat­ters will de­pend en­tire­ly up­on new la­bor sav­ing de­vices and up­on the help of the com­mu­ni­ty rather than up­on the in­creased knowl­edge and skill of do­mes­tic em­ploy­ees.

There ex­ists a pre­vail­ing im­pres­sion, too, that house­work has lost its dig­ni­ty, and that at this pe­ri­od of the world's so­cial his­to­ry, it is im­pos­si­ble to re­store it for wom­en have stepped above it. But this is not true. The fact is that house­work has re­mained sta­tion­ary while oth­er work has gained in free­dom and dig­ni­ty. With­out noisy protes­ta­tions, or in­dig­nant speech­es de­liv­ered in pub­lic, wom­en have slow­ly and silent­ly, one by one, de­sert­ed house­work as a ca­reer on ac­count of the nar­row­ing, servile, and un­just con­di­tions in­sep­ara­ble from it at the present day. Let these con­di­tions be re­moved and new reg­ula­tions based up­on mod­ern busi­ness prin­ci­ples take their place, and then it will be seen that house­work has nev­er lost its dig­ni­ty, and the very wom­en who aban­doned it will be the first to choose it again as a means of earn­ing their liveli­hood.

As a proof of this, the fol­low­ing ex­pe­ri­ence may be cit­ed of a New Work wom­an who wished to ob­tain a do­mes­tic em­ploy­ee for gen­er­al house­work. She went to sev­er­al em­ploy­ment agen­cies and at the end of a week she had seen four ap­pli­cants; three were for­eign­ers and spoke En­glish so bro­ken­ly that they could nev­er have been left in charge of a tele­phone. Not one of the four was worth con­sid­er­ing af­ter in­ves­ti­gat­ing their ref­er­ences, and these were the on­ly wom­en she could find will­ing to do gen­er­al house­work. Up­on the ad­vice of a friend, the per­plexed house­wife ad­ver­tised in one of the dai­ly news­pa­pers, but on­ly a few wom­en ap­plied for the po­si­tion and these were far from be­ing sat­is­fac­to­ry. She then in­sert­ed an­oth­er ad­ver­tise­ment ex­pressed in the fol­low­ing words: “Want­ed: a young wom­an to help with house­work, eight hours a day, six days a week, sleep home. Ap­ply by let­ter on­ly.”

This last clause was added to pre­vent any one from ap­ply­ing for the po­si­tion who could not write En­glish, as it was ab­so­lute­ly nec­es­sary that the per­son en­gaged to do the house­work should be ca­pa­ble of at­tend­ing cor­rect­ly to the tele­phone. On the same day the ad­ver­tise­ment ap­peared, eighty-​five ap­pli­ca­tions by let­ter were re­ceived, and twen­ty more came the fol­low­ing day. All who wrote ex­pressed their will­ing­ness to fill the po­si­tion of a do­mes­tic em­ploy­ee and to do any­thing in the way of house­work un­der the new con­di­tions spec­ified in the ad­ver­tise­ment. On­ly one stat­ed she would do no wash­ing. Many who replied to this ad­ver­tise­ment had oc­cu­pied po­si­tions, which ac­cord­ing to the present stan­dard, were far su­pe­ri­or to house­work; many, too, were mar­ried wom­en, ex­pe­ri­enced in all house­hold work, and most anx­ious to ac­cept a po­si­tion in a pri­vate fam­ily, a po­si­tion that did not break up their own home life.

The house­wife was be­wil­dered by the un­ex­pect­ed re­sult of her ad­ver­tise­ment: the ta­bles were turned at last. In­stead of be­ing one of many look­ing in vain for a good do­mes­tic em­ploy­ee, she found that she had now the ad­van­tage of be­ing able to choose from more than a hun­dred ap­pli­cants one who would best suit her own pe­cu­liar needs.

The same ad­ver­tise­ment has been in­sert­ed at dif­fer­ent times and has al­ways brought the same re­mark­able re­sult: from one hun­dred to one hun­dred and six­ty an­swers each time. It is true that all who present them­selves may not be ef­fi­cient, but ef­fi­cien­cy speed­ily comes to the front when up­on it alone de­pends a de­sir­able po­si­tion.

Two very im­por­tant facts came to light through the help of this ad­ver­tise­ment; one was to find so many wom­en ea­ger to do house­work when it was lim­it­ed to eight hours a day and six days a week, and the oth­er was to hear that they were will­ing to board and lodge them­selves, as well as work, for the same wages that “ser­vants” are ac­cus­tomed to re­ceive, al­though to the lat­ter the house­wife in­vari­ably gives gratis all food and sleep­ing ac­com­mo­da­tions. These two facts alone prove be­yond a doubt that by ap­ply­ing busi­ness prin­ci­ples to house­work all ob­jec­tions to it as a means of earn­ing a liveli­hood are re­moved.

It is quite like­ly that for a time the old fash­ioned “mis­tress,” and the old fash­ioned “ser­vant” will con­tin­ue to cling to past cus­toms; but once it is proved that do­mes­tic la­bor lim­it­ed to eight hours a day and six days a week, brings a bet­ter, more in­tel­li­gent, more ef­fi­cient class of em­ploy­ees to the home, the most ob­du­rate em­ploy­er will change her mind.

No leg­is­la­tion is need­ed. If all who are try­ing to solve the “ser­vant ques­tion” will be­gin to prac­tice the new plan in their own homes, the fu­ture will take care of it­self and the old ways will die a nat­ural death.

THE OB­SER­VANCE OF LE­GAL HOL­IDAYS IN THE HOME

The plea­sure brought by the ad­vent of a hol­iday in­to the lives of the work­ing peo­ple can hard­ly be over­es­ti­mat­ed, and it is doubt­ful if hol­idays would ev­er have be­come le­gal­ized had they not proved of dis­tinct val­ue to the mass­es. To have one day each week free from the steady grind of one's dal­ly work is a great re­lief, but to have a hol­iday is some­thing still bet­ter, for it usu­al­ly means a day set apart for gen­er­al re­joic­ing.

Why do all house­wives per­sis­tent­ly dis­re­gard the right of the house­hold em­ploy­ee to have le­gal hol­idays? The rea­son gen­er­al­ly brought for­ward is that many fam­ilies need their em­ploy­ees more on a hol­iday than on any oth­er day. In many cas­es this is quite true on ac­count of fam­ily re­unions or the en­ter­tain­ing of friends, but very of­ten the house­wife could eas­ily dis­pense with the ser­vices of her em­ploy­ees on a hol­iday. She does not do it, how­ev­er, or on­ly oc­ca­sion­al­ly, be­cause it is not the cus­tom to grant hol­idays to wom­en who work in pri­vate homes.

If it be im­pos­si­ble, on ac­count of the ex­igen­cies of home life, to grant all le­gal hol­idays to house­hold em­ploy­ees, there are many dif­fer­ent ways of plan­ning the house­work so that oth­er days may be giv­en in­stead. Some­times the day be­fore or the day af­ter a hol­iday will give as much plea­sure as the day it­self. A wom­an who is at the head of a home has many op­por­tu­ni­ties of com­ing in­to close con­tact with her em­ploy­ees; she can eas­ily as­cer­tain their wish­es in this re­spect and act ac­cord­ing­ly. It is more the fact of be­ing en­ti­tled to a hol­iday than to have it on a cer­tain day that ought to be em­pha­sized.

Do­mes­tic em­ploy­ees would be ben­efit­ed by hav­ing these ex­tra days of lib­er­ty, just as much as all oth­er em­ploy­ees. A tri­al is all that is nec­es­sary to show how much bet­ter a house­hold em­ploy­ee will work af­ter hav­ing a hol­iday. She re­turns to her du­ties with re­newed strength and the knowl­edge that she is no longer forced to play the role of Cin­derel­la gives her a fresh in­ter­est in life. Un­for­tu­nate­ly the house­wife has been ac­cus­tomed for so many years to have her “ser­vants” work for her all day long on ev­ery day of the week, with on­ly a few hours off du­ty “on ev­ery oth­er Sun­day and on ev­ery oth­er Thurs­day,” that she is rather in­clined to re­sent such an in­no­va­tion as the ob­ser­vance of le­gal hol­idays in do­mes­tic la­bor. She fails to per­ceive that by her present at­ti­tude she shows her­self in a very un­fa­vor­able light as an em­ploy­er, for the lack of hol­idays is de­cid­ed­ly one of the rea­sons for which house­work is shunned to-​day.

Busi­ness men have evolved a sat­is­fac­to­ry and work­able plan by which their em­ploy­ees are nei­ther over­worked nor de­prived of all le­gal hol­idays, al­though fre­quent­ly the work they are en­gaged in can not be sus­pend­ed day or night even for an hour.

It re­mains for wom­en of the leisure class, and to this class be­long all those who can af­ford to pay to have their house­work done for them, to adopt a sim­ilar plan in their homes.

EX­TRA PAY FOR OVER­TIME

When the plan for lim­it­ing house­work to eight hours a day is dis­cussed for the first time, the fol­low­ing ques­tion in­vari­ably aris­es: What is to be done when any­thing un­usu­al hap­pens to break the rou­tine of the reg­ular work, as for in­stance, when sick­ness oc­curs, when friends ar­rive un­ex­pect­ed­ly, when a din­ner par­ty is giv­en?

Sick­ness, of course, is un­avoid­able, but as a rule a trained nurse or an ex­tra house­hold as­sis­tant is called in to help. Many times, how­ev­er, this is not ab­so­lute­ly nec­es­sary, or per­haps the fam­ily can not af­ford to have out­side help, and the ex­tra work caused by sick­ness usu­al­ly falls up­on the do­mes­tic em­ploy­ee whose hours of la­bor are more or less pro­longed in con­se­quence. What ought to be done in such an event?

There is but one an­swer: Work that can not be ac­com­plished with­in the reg­ular work­ing hours al­ready agreed up­on should be paid for as “over­time.”

When it is a ques­tion of work be­ing pro­longed be­yond the eight hours a day by the en­ter­tain­ing of friends, one can on­ly say that this ought not to hap­pen if the house­wife planned her work­ing sched­ule care­ful­ly. She alone is re­spon­si­ble for her so­cial en­gage­ments; she alone can make a sched­ule that will en­able her to have her friends come to lun­cheon or din­ner with­out pro­long­ing the day's work be­yond the hours agreed up­on be­tween her­self and her em­ploy­ees.

When friends ar­rive un­ex­pect­ed­ly, how­ev­er, or when a din­ner par­ty or a big so­cial func­tion takes place in the home, an eight hour sched­ule may be the cause of great in­con­ve­nience, un­less a pre­vi­ous agree­ment has been made to meet just such oc­ca­sions. It is cer­tain that some com­pen­sa­tion is due to all do­mes­tic em­ploy­ees for the ex­tra long hours of work caused by un­usu­al events in the home life of their em­ploy­ers, and many ways have been de­vised al­ready to re­mu­ner­ate them.

In mod­ern so­cial life a cus­tom of long stand­ing still ex­ists which makes it al­most com­pul­so­ry for this re­mu­ner­ation to come out of the pock­et, not of the host­ess, but of her guests. The un­for­tu­nate cus­tom of giv­ing “tips” is not gen­er­al­ly crit­icised very open­ly, but when viewed in the light of rea­son and jus­tice, it seems to be a very poor way of try­ing to re­move one of the present hard­ships con­nect­ed with do­mes­tic la­bor. Why should the house­wife de­pend up­on the gen­eros­ity of her guests to help her pay her house­hold em­ploy­ees? She nev­er de­murs at the ex­tra ex­pense en­tailed in giv­ing lun­cheons and din­ners in her friends' hon­or, nor in tak­ing them to places of in­ter­est and amuse­ment. Why then should she ob­ject to giv­ing a lit­tle more mon­ey to her house­hold em­ploy­ees up­on whose work the suc­cess of her hos­pi­tal­ity so large­ly de­pends?

There are many wom­en who en­ter­tain ex­ten­sive­ly, but they nev­er rec­om­pense a house­hold em­ploy­ee for any ex­tra work that may be de­mand­ed from her on that ac­count. They con­sid­er them­selves ful­ly jus­ti­fied in ex­act­ing ex­tra long hours of work be­cause of the high wages they pay, es­pe­cial­ly as it fre­quent­ly hap­pens that while the work is more on some days, it is less on oth­ers, and they think in con­se­quence that their em­ploy­ees have no cause for com­plaint.

It is a mis­take, how­ev­er, to think that an em­ploy­ee who is obliged to be on du­ty and has lit­tle or noth­ing to do on one day, is re­al­ly com­pen­sat­ed for the ex­tra hours of work she has been com­pelled to give on oth­er days. A saleswom­an who on cer­tain days has no cus­tomers or on­ly a few, is just as much “on du­ty” as if her work filled all her time, and it is the same with a do­mes­tic em­ploy­ee. In­deed it is gen­er­al­ly con­ced­ed to be more irk­some to re­main idle at one's post than to be ac­tive­ly en­gaged in work.

But on the oth­er hand, there are many house­wives who feel that they ought to give their em­ploy­ees more pay for ex­tra work es­pe­cial­ly when it is con­nect­ed with the en­ter­tain­ing of friends, and the fol­low­ing ways of re­ward­ing them have been tried with more or less suc­cess.

One plan that gained fa­vor with sev­er­al fam­ilies was to give ten cents to the cook and ten cents to the wait­ress ev­ery time a guest was in­vit­ed to a meal: ten cents for each guest. At the end of a month the ten cent pieces had amount­ed to quite a sum of mon­ey.

An­oth­er plan that was tried in a small fam­ily was to give fifty cents to the cook and fifty cents to each of the two wait­ress­es for ev­ery din­ner par­ty that took place, re­gard­less of the num­ber of guests. Still an­oth­er plan was to give at the end of the month, a two dol­lar, five dol­lar, or ten dol­lar bill to an em­ploy­ee who had giv­en many ex­tra hours of sat­is­fac­to­ry work to her em­ploy­er.

All these plans are good in a cer­tain sense, inas­much as they show that wom­en are awak­en­ing to the re­al­iza­tion that some com­pen­sa­tion is due to house­hold em­ploy­ees for the ex­tra long hours of work fre­quent­ly un­avoid­able in fam­ily life. But un­for­tu­nate­ly these plans lack sta­bil­ity, for they de­pend al­to­geth­er up­on the gen­eros­ity and kind­ness of dif­fer­ent em­ploy­ers, in­stead of up­on a just and firm­ly es­tab­lished busi­ness prin­ci­ple.

And now comes the ques­tion: What method of pay­ment for over­time will pro­duce a per­ma­nent­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry re­sult?

The on­ly one that ap­pears just and is ap­pli­ca­ble to all cas­es is to pay each em­ploy­ee one and a half times as much per hour for ex­tra work as for reg­ular work. In this way each em­ploy­ee is paid for over­time in just pro­por­tion to the val­ue of her reg­ular ser­vices. For in­stance, when a house­hold em­ploy­ee re­ceives $20, $30, or $40 per month, that is to say $5, $7.50, or $10 per week, for work­ing eight hours a day and six days a week, she is re­ceiv­ing ap­prox­imate­ly 10, 15, or 20 cents per hour for her reg­ular work. By giv­ing her one and one half times as much for ex­tra work, she ought to re­ceive 15, 22-1/2, or 30 cents per hour for ev­ery hour she works for her em­ploy­er af­ter the com­ple­tion of her reg­ular eight hours' work.

This plan has nev­er failed to bring sat­is­fac­tion, and it has the ad­van­tage of plac­ing the em­ploy­er and the em­ploy­ee on an equal­ly de­light­ful foot­ing of in­de­pen­dence. The per­for­mance of ex­tra work is no longer re­gard­ed as a mat­ter of obli­ga­tion on one side, and of con­ces­sion on the oth­er, but as a pure­ly busi­ness trans­ac­tion.

Some house­wives fear that the reg­ular work would be in­ten­tion­al­ly pro­longed be­yond all mea­sure if it be­came an es­tab­lished rule to pay ex­tra for work per­formed over­time. This could be eas­ily checked, how­ev­er, by pay­ing ex­tra on­ly for work that was ne­ces­si­tat­ed by un­usu­al events in the fam­ily life.

In fam­ilies where on­ly one em­ploy­ee is kept, nat­ural­ly the oc­ca­sions for ask­ing her to work over­time arise more fre­quent­ly than in fam­ilies where there are two or more em­ploy­ees, es­pe­cial­ly if there be small chil­dren in the fam­ily. Yet these oc­ca­sions need not come very of­ten, if the house­wife bears in mind that even with on­ly one em­ploy­ee, she has eight hours ev­ery day at her own dis­pos­al; she ought to plan her out­side en­gage­ments ac­cord­ing­ly. Her lib­er­ty from house­hold cares dur­ing these eight hours can on­ly be gained though by hav­ing ef­fi­cient and trust­wor­thy as­sis­tants in her home, and she can nev­er ob­tain these un­less she aban­dons her old fash­ioned meth­ods of house­keep­ing. She must grant to house­hold em­ploy­ees the same rights and priv­ileges giv­en to busi­ness em­ploy­ees; she must ap­ply busi­ness prin­ci­ples to house­work. A great pow­er lies in the hands of the mod­ern house­wife, a pow­er as yet on­ly sus­pect­ed by a few, which, if prop­er­ly wield­ed, can raise house­work from its present undig­ni­fied po­si­tion to the place it ought to oc­cu­py, and that is in the fore­most rank of man­ual la­bor for wom­en.