THE CASE OF SERVANTS



XXV.

THE CASE OF SERVANTS.

Although in earlier ages the highest born, wealthiest, and proudest
ladies were skilled in the simple labors of the household, the advance
of society toward luxury has changed all that in lands of aristocracy
and classes, and at the present time America is the only country where
there is a class of women who may be described as _ladies_ who do their
own work. By a lady we mean a woman of education, cultivation, and
refinement, of liberal tastes and ideas, who, without any very material
additions or changes, would be recognized as a lady in any
circle of the Old World or the New.

The existence of such a class is a fact peculiar to American society,
a plain result of the new principles involved in the doctrine of
universal equality.

When the colonists first came to this country, of however mixed
ingredients their ranks might have been composed, and however imbued
with the spirit of feudal and aristocratic ideas, the discipline of
the wilderness soon brought them to a democratic level; the gentleman
felled the wood for his log-cabin side by side with the plowman, and
thews and sinews rose in the market. "A man was deemed honorable in
proportion as he lifted his hand upon the high trees of the forest."
So in the interior domestic circle. Mistress and maid, living in a
log-cabin together, became companions, and sometimes the maid, as the
one well-trained in domestic labor, took precedence of the mistress.
It also became natural and unavoidable that children should begin to
work as early as they were capable of it.

The result was a generation of intelligent people brought up to labor
from necessity, but devoting to the problem of labor the acuteness of
a disciplined brain. The mistress, outdone in sinews and muscles by
her maid, kept her superiority by skill and contrivance. If she could
not lift a pail of water, she could invent methods which made lifting
the pail unnecessary,--if she could not take a hundred steps without
weariness, she could make twenty answer the purpose of a hundred.

Slavery, it is true, was to some extent introduced into New England,
but it never suited the genius of the people, never struck deep root
or spread so as to choke the good seed of self-helpfulness. Many were
opposed to it from conscientious principle--many from far-sighted
thrift, and from a love of thoroughness and well-doing which despised
the rude, unskilled work of barbarians. People, having once felt the
thorough neatness and beauty of execution which came of free, educated,
and thoughtful labor, could not tolerate the clumsiness of slavery.

Thus it came to pass that for many years the rural population of
New-England, as a general rule, did their own work, both out-doors and
in. If there were a black man or black woman or bound girl, they were
emphatically only the _helps_, following humbly the steps of master and
mistress, and used by them as instruments of lightening certain portions
of their toil. The master and mistress, with their children, were the
head workers.

Great merriment has been excited in the old country because, years
ago, the first English travelers found that the class of persons by
them denominated servants, were in America denominated _help_,
or helpers. But the term was the very best exponent of the state of
society. There were few servants, in the European sense of the word;
there was a society of educated workers, where all were practically
equal, and where, if there was a deficiency in one family and an excess
in another, a _helper_, not a servant in the European sense, was
hired. Mrs. Brown, who has several sons and no daughters, enters into
agreement with Mrs. Jones, who has several daughters and no sons. She
borrows a daughter, and pays her good wages to help in her domestic
toil, and sends a son to help the labors of Mr. Jones. These two young
people go into the families in which they are to be employed in all
respects as equals and companions, and so the work of the community
is equalized. Hence arose, and for many years continued, a state of
society more nearly solving than any other ever did the problem of
combining the highest culture of the mind with the highest culture ofthe
muscles and the physical faculties.

Then were to be seen families of daughters, handsome, strong women,
rising each day to their in-door work with cheerful alertness--one to
sweep the room, another to make the fire, while a third prepared the
breakfast for the father and brothers who were going out to manly
labor: and they chatted meanwhile of books, studies, embroidery;
discussed the last new poem, or some historical topic started by graver
reading, or perhaps a rural ball that was to come off next week. They
spun with the book tied to the distaff; they wove; they did all manner
of fine needle-work; they made lace, painted flowers, and, in short,
in the boundless consciousness of activity, invention, and perfect
health, set themselves to any work they had ever read or thought of.
A bride in those days was married with sheets and tablecloths of her
own weaving, with counterpanes and toilet-covers wrought in divers
embroidery by her own and her sisters' hands. The amount of fancy-work
done in our days by girls who have nothing else to do, will not equal
what was done by these who performed, besides, among them, the whole
work of the family.

In those former days most women were in good health, debility and
disease being the exception. Then, too, was seen the economy of daylight
and its pleasures. They were used to early rising, and would not lie
in bed, if they could. Long years of practice made them familiar with
the shortest, neatest, most expeditious method of doing every household
office, so that really for the greater part of the time in the house
there seemed, to a looker-on, to be nothing to do. They rose in the
morning and dispatched husband, father, and brothers to the farm or
woodlot; went sociably about, chatting with each other, skimmed the
milk, made the butter, and turned the cheeses. The forenoon was long;
ten to one, all the so-called morning work over, they had leisure for
an hour's sewing or reading before it was time to start the dinner
preparations. By two o'clock the house-work was done, and they had the
long afternoon for books, needle-work, or drawing--for perhaps there
was one with a gift at her pencil. Perhaps one read aloud while others
sewed, and managed in that way to keep up a great deal of reading.

It is said that women who have been accustomed to doing their own work
become hard mistresses. They are certainly more sure of the ground
they stand on--they are less open to imposition--they can speak and
act in their own houses more as those "having authority," and therefore
are less afraid to exact what is justly their due, and less willing
to endure impertinence and unfaithfulness. Their general error lies
in expecting that any servant ever will do as well for them as they
will do for themselves, and that an untrained, undisciplined human
being ever _can_ do house-work, or any other work, with the neatness and
perfection, that a person of trained intelligence can.

It has been remarked in our armies that the men of cultivation, though
bred in delicate and refined spheres, can bear up under the hardships
of camp-life better and longer than rough laborers. The reason is,
that an educated mind knows how to use and save its body, to work it
and spare it, as an uneducated mind can not; and so the college-bred
youth brings himself safely through fatigues which kill the unreflective
laborer.

Cultivated, intelligent women, who are brought up to do the work of
their own families, are labor-saving institutions. They make the head
save the wear of the muscles. By forethought, contrivance, system, and
arrangement they lessen the amount to be done, and do it with less
expense of time and strength than others. The old New-England motto,
_Get your work done up in the forenoon_, applied to an amount of
work which would keep a common Irish servant toiling from daylight to
sunset.

A lady living in one of our obscure New-England towns, where there
were no servants to be hired, at last, by sending to a distant city,
succeeded in procuring a raw Irish maid-of-all-work, a creature of
immense bone and muscle, but of heavy, unawakened brain. In one
fortnight she established such a reign of Chaos and old Night in the
kitchen and through the house that her mistress, a delicate woman,
encumbered with the care of young children, began seriously to think
that she made more work each day than she performed, and dismissed
her. What was now to be done? Fortunately, the daughter of a neighboring
farmer was going to be married in six months, and wanted a little ready
money for her _trousseau_. The lady was informed that Miss So-and-so
would come to her, not as a servant, but as hired "help." She was fain
to accept any help with gladness.

Forthwith came into the family-circle a tall, well-dressed young person,
grave, unobtrusive, self-respecting, yet not in the least presuming,
who sat at the family table and observed all its decorums with the
modest self-possession of a lady. The new-comer took a survey of the
labors of a family of ten members, including four or five young
children, and, looking, seemed at once to throw them into system;
matured her plans, arranged her hours of washing, ironing, baking, and
cleaning; rose early, moved deftly; and in a single day the slatternly
and littered kitchen assumed that neat, orderly appearance that so
often strikes one in New England farm-houses. The work seemed to be
all gone. Every thing was nicely washed, brightened, put in place, and
staid in place; the floors, when cleaned; remained clean; the work was
always done, and not doing; and every afternoon the young lady sat
neatly dressed in her own apartment, either quietly writing letters
to her betrothed, or sewing on her bridal outfit. Such is the result
of employing those who have been brought up to do their own work. That
tall, fine-looking girl, for aught we know, may yet be mistress of a
fine house on Fifth Avenue; and if she is, she will, we fear, prove
rather an exacting mistress to Irish Bridget; but she will never be
threatened by her cook and chambermaid, after the first one or two
have tried the experiment.

Those remarkable women of old were made by circumstances. There were,
comparatively speaking, no servants to be had, and so children were
trained to habits of industry and mechanical adroitness from the cradle,
and every household process was reduced to the very minimum of labor.
Every step required in a process was counted, every movement calculated;
and she who took ten steps, when one would do, lost her reputation for
"faculty." Certainly such an early drill was of use in developing the
health and the bodily powers, as well as in giving precision to the
practical mental faculties. All household economies were arranged with
equal niceness in those thoughtful minds. A trained housekeeper knew
just how many sticks of hickory of a certain size were required to
heat her oven, and how many of each different kind of wood. She knew
by a sort of intuition just what kinds of food would yield the most
palatable nutriment with the least outlay of accessories in cooking.
She knew to a minute the time when each article must go into and be
withdrawn from her oven; and if she could only lie in her chamber and
direct, she could guide an intelligent child through the processes
with mathematical certainty.

It is impossible, however, that any thing but early training and long
experience can produce these results, and it is earnestly to be wished
that the grandmothers of New-England had written down their experiences
for our children; they would have been a mine of maxims and traditions
better than any other "traditions of the elders" which we know of.

In this country, our democratic institutions have removed the
superincumbent pressure which in the Old World confines the servants
to a regular orbit. They come here feeling that this is somehow a land
of liberty, and with very dim and confused notions of what liberty is.
They are very extensively the raw, untrained Irish peasantry, and the
wonder is, that, with all the unreasoning heats and prejudices of the
Celtic blood, all the necessary ignorance and rawness, there should
be the measure of comfort and success there is in our domestic
arrangements.

But, as long as things are so, there will be constant changes and
interruptions in every domestic establishment, and constantly recurring
interregnums when the mistress must put her own hand to the work,
whether the hand be a trained or an untrained one. As matters now are,
the young housekeeper takes life at the hardest. She has very little
strength,--no experience to teach her how to save her strength. She
knows nothing experimentally of the simplest processes necessary to
keep her family comfortably fed and clothed; and she has a way of
looking at all these things which makes them particularly hard and
distasteful to her. She does not escape being obliged to do house-work
at intervals, but she does it in a weak, blundering, confused way,
that makes it twice as hard and disagreeable as it need be.

Now, if every young woman learned to do house-work, and cultivated her
practical faculties in early life, she would, in the first place, be
much more likely to keep her servants, and, in the second place, if
she lost them temporarily, would avoid all that wear and tear of the
nervous system which comes from constant ill-success in those
departments on which family health and temper mainly depend. This is
one of the peculiarities of our American life, which require a peculiar
training. Why not face it sensibly?

Our land is now full of motorpathic institutions to which women are
sent at a great expense to have hired operators stretch and exercise
their inactive muscles. They lie for hours to have their feet twigged,
their arms flexed, and all the different muscles of the body worked
for them, because they are so flaccid and torpid that the powers of
life do not go on. Would it not be quite as cheerful, and a less
expensive process, if young girls from early life developed the muscles
in sweeping, dusting, starching, ironing, and all the multiplied
domestic processes which our grandmothers knew of? A woman who did all
these, and diversified the intervals with spinning on the great and
little wheel, did not need the gymnastics of Dio Lewis or of the Swedish
Movement Cure, which really are a necessity now. Does it not seem poor
economy to pay servants for letting our muscles grow feeble, and then
to pay operators to exercise them for us? I will venture to say that
our grandmothers in a week went over every movement that any gymnast
has invented, and went over them to some productive purpose too.

The first business of a housekeeper in America is that of a teacher.
She can have a good table only by having practical knowledge, and tact
in imparting it. If she understands her business practically and
experimentally, her eye detects at once the weak spot; it requires
only a little tact, some patience, some clearness in giving directions,
and all comes right.

If we carry a watch to a watchmaker, and undertake to show him how to
regulate the machinery, he laughs and goes on his own way; but if a
brother-machinist makes suggestions, he listens respectfully. So, when
a woman who knows nothing of woman's work undertakes to instruct one
who knows more than she does, she makes no impression; but a woman who
has been trained experimentally, and shows she understands the matter
thoroughly, is listened to with respect.

Let a woman make her own bread for one month, and, simple as the process
seems, it will take as long as that to get a thorough knowledge of all
the possibilities in the case; but after that, she will be able to
command good bread by the aid of all sorts of servants; in other words,
will be a thoroughly prepared teacher.

Although bread-making seems a simple process, it yet requires delicate
care and watchfulness. There are fifty ways to spoil good bread; There
are a hundred little things to be considered and allowed for, that
require accurate observation and experience. The same process that
will raise good bread in cold weather will make sour bread in the heat
of summer; different qualities of flour require variations in treatment
as also different sorts and conditions of yeast; and when all is done,
the baking presents another series of possibilities which require exact
attention.

A well-trained mind, accustomed to reflect, analyze, and generalize,
has an advantage over uncultured minds even of double experience. Poor
as your cook is, she now knows more of her business than you do. After
a very brief period of attention and experiment, you will not only
know more than she does, but you will convince her that you do, which
is quite as much to the purpose.

In the same manner, lessons must be given on the washing of silver and
the making of beds. Good servants do not often come to us; they must
be _made_ by patience and training; and if a girl has a good disposition
and a reasonable degree of handiness, and the housekeeper understands
her profession, a good servant may be made out of an indifferent one.
Some of the best girls have been those who came directly from the ship,
with no preparation but docility and some natural quickness. The hardest
cases to be managed are not of those who have been taught nothing, but
of those who have been taught wrongly--who come self-opinionated, with
ways which are distasteful, and contrary to the genius of one's
housekeeping. Such require that their mistress shall understand at least
so much of the actual conduct of affairs as to prove to the servant that
there are better ways than those in which she has been trained.

So much has been said of the higher sphere of woman, and so much has
been done to find some better work for her that, insensibly, almost
every body begins to feel that it is rather degrading for a woman in
good society to be much tied down to family affairs; especially since
in these Woman's Rights Conventions there is so much dissatisfaction
expressed at those who would confine her ideas to the kitchen and
nursery.

Yet these Woman's Rights Conventions are a protest against many former
absurd, unreasonable ideas--the mere physical and culinary idea of
womanhood as connected only with puddings and shirt-buttons, the
unjust and unequal burdens which the laws of harsher ages had cast
upon the sex. Many of the women connected with these movements are as
superior in every thing properly womanly as they are in exceptional
talent and culture. There is no manner of doubt that the sphere of
woman is properly to be enlarged. Every woman has rights as a human
being which belong to no sex, and ought to be as freely conceded to
her as if she were a man,--and first and foremost, the great right of
doing any thing which God and nature evidently have fitted her to excel
in. If she be made a natural orator, like Miss Dickinson, or an
astronomer, like Mrs. Somerville, or a singer, like Grisi, let not the
technical rules of womanhood be thrown in the way of her free use of
her powers.

Still, _per contra_, there has been a great deal of crude, disagreeable
talk in these conventions, and too great tendency of the age to make the
education of woman anti-domestic. It seems as if the world never could
advance, except like ships under a head-wind, tacking and going too far,
now in this direction, and now in the opposite. Our common-school system
now rejects sewing from the education of girls, which very properly used
to occupy many hours daily in school a generation ago. The daughters of
laborers and artisans are put through algebra, geometry, trigonometry,
and the higher mathematics, to the entire neglect of that learning which
belongs distinctively to woman. A girl of ten can not keep pace with her
class, if she gives any time to domestic matters; and accordingly she is
excused from them all during the whole term of her education. The boy of
a family, at an early age, is put to a trade, or the labors of a farm;
the father becomes impatient of his support, and requires of him to take
care for himself. Hence an interrupted education--learning coming by
snatches in the winter months or in the intervals of work.

As the result, the young women in some of our country towns are, in
mental culture, much in advance of the males of the same household;
but with this comes a physical delicacy, the result of an exclusive
use of the brain and a neglect of the muscular system, with great
inefficiency in practical domestic duties. The race of strong, hardy,
cheerful girls, that used to grow up in country places, and made the
bright, neat, New-England kitchens of old times--the girls that could
wash, iron, brew, bake, harness a horse and drive him, no less than
braid straw, embroider, draw, paint, and read innumerable books--this
race of women, pride of olden time, is daily lessening; and in their
stead come the fragile, easily-fatigued, languid girls of a modern
age, drilled in book-learning, ignorant of common things. The great
danger of all this, and of the evils that come from it, is, that
society, by and by, will turn as blindly against female intellectual
culture as it now advocates it, and having worked disproportionately
one way, will work disproportionately in the opposite direction.

Domestic service is the great problem of life herein America; the
happiness of families, their thrift, well-being, and comfort, are more
affected by this than by any one thing else. The modern girls, as they
have been brought up, can not perform the labor of their own families
as in those simpler, old-fashioned days; and what is worse, they have
no practical skill with which to instruct servants, who come to us,
as a class, raw and untrained. In the present state of prices, the
board of a domestic costs double her wages, and the waste she makes
is a more serious matter still.

Many of the domestic evils in America originate, in the fact that,
while society here is professedly based on new principles which ought
to make social life in every respect different from the life of the
Old World, yet these principles have never been so thought out and
applied as to give consistency and harmony to our daily relations.
America starts with a political organization based oh a declaration
of the primitive freedom and equality of all men. Every human being,
according to this principle, stands on the same natural level with
every other, and has the same chance to rise according to the degree
of power or capacity given by the Creator. All our civil institutions
are designed to preserve this equality, as far as possible, from
generation to generation: there is no entailed property, there are no
hereditary titles, no monopolies, no privileged classes--all are to
be as free to rise and fall as the waves of the sea.

The condition of domestic service, however, still retains about it
something of the influences from feudal times, and from the near
presence of slavery in neighboring States. All English literature of
the world describes domestic service in the old feudal spirit and with
the old feudal language, which regarded the master as belonging to a
privileged class and the servant to an inferior one. There is not a
play, not a poem, not a novel, not a history, that does not present
this view. The master's rights, like the rights of kings, were supposed
to rest in his being born in a superior rank. The good servant was one
who, from childhood, had learned "to order himself lowly and reverently
to all his betters." When New-England brought to these shores the
theory of democracy, she brought, in the persons of the first pilgrims,
the habits of thought and of action formed in aristocratic communities.
Winthrop's Journal, and all the old records of the earlier colonists,
show households where masters and mistresses stood on the "right divine"
of the privileged classes, howsoever they might have risen up against
authorities themselves.

The first consequence of this state of things was a universal rejection
of domestic service in all classes of American-born society. For a
generation or two there was, indeed, a sort of interchange of family
strength,--sons and daughters engaging in the service of neighboring
families, in default of a sufficient working-force of their own, but
always on conditions of strict equality. The assistant was to share
the table, the family sitting-room, and every honor and attention that
might be claimed by son or daughter. When families increased in
refinement and education so as to make these conditions of close
intimacy with more uncultured neighbors disagreeable, they had to
choose between such intimacies and the performance of their own domestic
toil. No wages could induce a son or daughter of New-England to take
the condition of a servant on terms which they thought applicable to
that of a slave. The slightest hint of a separate table was resented
as an insult; not to enter the front door, and not to sit in the front
parlor on state occasions, was bitterly commented on as a personal
indignity.

The well-taught, self-respecting daughters of farmers, the class most
valuable in domestic service, gradually retired from it. They preferred
any other employment, however laborious. Beyond all doubt, the labors
of a well-regulated family are more healthy, more cheerful, more,
interesting, because less monotonous, than the mechanical toils of a
factory; yet the girls of New-England, with one consent, preferred the
factory, and left the whole business of domestic service to a foreign
population; and they did it mainly because they would not take positions
in families as an inferior laboring-class by the side of others of
their own age who assumed as their prerogative to live without labor.

"I can't let you have one of my daughters," said an energetic matron
to her neighbor from the city, who was seeking for a servant in her
summer vacation; "if you hadn't daughters of your own, may be I would;
but my girls are not going to work so that your girls may live in
idleness."

It was vain to offer money. "We don't need your money, ma'am; we can
support ourselves in other ways; my girls can braid straw, and bind
shoes, but they are not going to be slaves to any body."

In the Irish and German servants who took the place of Americans in
families, there was, to begin with, the tradition of education in favor
of a higher class; but even the foreign population became more or less
infected with the spirit of democracy. They came to this country with
vague notions of freedom and equality, and in ignorant and uncultivated
people such ideas are often more unreasonable for being vague. They
did not, indeed, claim a seat at the table and in the parlor, but they
repudiated many of those habits of respect and courtesy which belonged
to their former condition, and asserted their own will and way in the
round, unvarnished phrase which they supposed to be their right as
republican citizens. Life became a sort of domestic wrangle and struggle
between the employers, who secretly confessed their weakness, but
endeavored openly to assume the air and bearing of authority, and the
employed, who knew their power and insisted on their privileges.

From this cause domestic service in America has had less of mutual
kindliness titan in old countries. Its terms have been so ill-
understood and defined that both parties have assumed the defensive;
and a common topic of conversation in American female society has often
been the general servile war which in one form or another was going
on in their different families--a war as interminable as would be a
struggle between aristocracy and common people, undefined by any bill
of rights or constitution, and therefore opening fields for endless
disputes.

In England, the class who go to service _are_ a class, and service
is a profession; the distance between them and their employers is so
marked and defined, and all the customs and requirements of the position
are so perfectly understood, that the master or mistress has no fear
of being compromised by condescension, and no need of the external
voice or air of authority. The higher up in the social scale one goes,
the more courteous seems to become the intercourse of master and
servant; the more perfect and real the power, the more is it veiled
in outward expression--commands are phrased as requests, and gentleness
of voice and manner covers an authority which no one would think of
offending without trembling.

But in America all is undefined. In the first place, there is no class
who mean to make domestic service a profession to live and die in. It
is universally an expedient, a stepping-stone to something higher;
your best servants always have some thing else in view as soon as they
have laid by a little money; some form of independence which shall
give them a home of their own is constantly in mind. Families look
forward to the buying of landed homesteads, and the scattered brothers
and sisters work awhile in domestic service to gain, the common fund
for the purpose; your seamstress intends to become a dressmaker, and
take in work at her own house; your cook is pondering a marriage with
the baker, which shall transfer her toils from your cooking-stove to
her own.

Young women are eagerly rushing into every other employment, till
feminine trades and callings are all over-stocked. We are continually
harrowed with tales of the sufferings of distressed needle-women, of
the exactions, and extortions practiced on the frail sex in the many
branches of labor and trade at which they try their hands; and yet
women will encounter all these chances of ruin and starvation rather
than make up their minds to permanent domestic service.

Now, what is the matter with domestic service? One would think, on the
face of it, that a calling which gives a settled home, a comfortable
room, rent-free, with fire and lights, good board and lodging, and
steady, well-paid wages, would certainly offer more attractions than
the making of shirts for tenpence, with all the risks of providing
one's own sustenance and shelter.

Is it not mainly from the want of a definite idea of the true position
of a servant under our democratic institutions that domestic service
is so shunned and avoided in America, and that it is the very last
thing which an intelligent young woman will look to for a living? It
is more the want of personal respect toward, those in that position
than the labor incident to it which repels our people from it. Many
would be willing to perform these labors, but they are not willing to
place themselves in a situation where their self-respect is hourly
wounded by the implication of a degree of inferiority, _which does
not follow any kind of labor or service in this country but that of
the family_.

There exists in the minds of employers an unsuspected spirit of
superiority, which is stimulated into an active form by the resistance
which democracy inspires in the working-class. Many families think of
servants only as a necessary evil, their wages as exactions, and all
that is allowed them as so much taken from the family; and they seek
in every way to get from them as much and to give them as little as
possible. Their rooms are the neglected, ill-furnished, incommodious
ones--and the kitchen is the most cheerless and comfortless place in
the house.

Other families, more good-natured and liberal, provide their domestics
with more suitable accommodations, and are more indulgent; but there
is still a latent spirit of something like contempt for the position.
That they treat their servants with so much consideration seems to
them a merit entitling them to the most prostrate gratitude; and they
are constantly disappointed and shocked at that want of sense of
inferiority on the part of these people which leads them to appropriate
pleasant rooms, good furniture, and good living as mere matters of
common justice.

It seems to be a constant surprise to some employers that servants
should insist on having the same human wants as themselves. Ladles who
yawn in their elegantly furnished parlors, among books and pictures,
if they have not company, parties, or opera to diversify the evening,
seem astonished and half indignant that cook and chambermaid are more
disposed to go out for an evening gossip than to sit on hard chairs
in the kitchen where they have been toiling all day. The pretty
chambermaid's anxieties about her dress, the minutes she spends at her
small and not very clear mirror, are sneeringly noticed by those whose
toilet-cares take up serious hours; and the question has never
apparently occurred to them why a serving-maid should not want to look
pretty as well as her mistress. She is a woman as well as they, with,
all a woman's wants and weaknesses; and her dress is as much to her
as theirs to them.

A vast deal of trouble among servants arises; from impertinent
interferences and petty tyrannical enactions on the part of employers.
Now, the authority of the master and mistress of a house in regard to
their domestics extends simply to the things they have contracted to
do and the hours during which they have contracted to serve; otherwise
than this, they have no more right to interfere with them in the
disposal of their time than with any mechanic whom they employ. They
have, indeed, a right to regulate the hours of their own household,
and servants can choose between conformity to these hours and the loss
of their situation; but, within reasonable limits, their right to come
and go at their own discretion, in their own time, should be
unquestioned.

If employers are troubled by the fondness of their servants for dancing,
evening company, and late hours, the proper mode of proceeding is to
make these matters a subject of distinct contract in hiring. The more
strictly and perfectly the business matters of the first engagement
of domestics are conducted, the more likelihood there is of mutual
quiet and satisfaction in the relation. It is quite competent to every
housekeeper to say what practices are or are not consistent with the
rules of her family, and what will be inconsistent with the service
for which she agrees to pay. It is much better to regulate such affairs
by cool contract in the outset than by warm altercations and protracted
domestic battles.

As to the terms of social intercourse, it seems somehow to be settled
in the minds of many employers that their servants owe them and their
family more respect than they and the family owe to the servants. But
do they? What is the relation of servant to employer in a democratic
country? Precisely that of a person who for money performs any kind
of service for you. The carpenter comes into your house to put up a
set of shelves--the cook comes into your kitchen to cook your dinner.
You never think that the carpenter owes you any more respect than you
owe to him because he is in your house doing your behests; he is your
fellow-citizen, you treat him with respect, you expect to be treated
with respect by him. You have a claim on him that he shall do your
work according to your directions--no more.

Now, I apprehend that there is a very common notion as to the position
and rights of servants which is quite different from this. Is it not
a common feeling that a servant is one who may he treated with a degree
of freedom by every member of the family which he or she may not return?
Do not people feel at liberty to question servants about their private
affairs, to comment on their dress and appearance, in a manner which
they would feel to be an impertinence, if reciprocated? Do they not
feel at liberty to express dissatisfaction with their performances in
rude and unceremonious terms, to reprove them in the presence of
company, while yet they require that the dissatisfaction of servants
shall be expressed only in terms of respect? A woman would not feel
herself at liberty to talk to her milliner or her dress-maker in
language as devoid of consideration as she will employ toward her cook
or chambermaid. And yet both are rendering her a service which she
pays for in money, and one is no more made her inferior thereby than
the other. Both have an equal right to be treated with courtesy. The
master and mistress of a house have a right to require courteous
treatment from all whom their roof shelters; but they have no more
right to exact it of servants than of every guest and every child, and
they themselves owe it as much to servants as to guests.

In order that servants may be treated with respect and courtesy, it
is not necessary, as in simpler patriarchal days, that they sit at the
family-table. Your carpenter or plumber does not feel hurt that you
do not ask him to dine with you, nor your milliner and mantua-maker
that you do not exchange ceremonious calls and invite them to your
parties. It is well understood that your relations with them are of
a mere business character. They never take it as an assumption of
superiority on your part that you do not admit them to relations of
private intimacy. There may be the most perfect respect and esteem and
even friendship between then and you, notwithstanding. So it may be
in the case of servants. It is easy to make any person understand that
there are quite other reasons than the assumption of personal
superiority for not wishing to admit servants to the family privacy.
It was not, in fact, to sit in the parlor or at the table in themselves
considered, that was the thing aimed at by New--England girls; these
were valued only as signs that they were deemed worthy of respect and
consideration, and, where freely conceded, were often in point of fact
declined.

Let servants feel, in their treatment by their employers and in the
atmosphere of the family, that their position is held to be a
respectable one; let them feel, in the mistress of the family, the
charm of unvarying consideration and good manners; let their work-
rooms be made convenient and comfortable, and their private apartments
bear some reasonable comparison in point of agreeableness to those of
other members of the family, and domestic service will be more
frequently sought by a superior and self-respecting class. There are
families in which such a state of things prevails; and such families,
amid the many causes which unite to make the tenure of service
uncertain, have generally been able to keep good permanent servants.
There is an extreme into which kindly disposed people often run with
regard to servants which may be mentioned here. They make pets of them.
They give extravagant wages and indiscreet indulgences, and, through
indolence and easiness of temper, tolerate neglect of duty. Many of
the complaints of the ingratitude of servants come from those who have
spoiled them in this way; while many of the longest and most harmonious
domestic unions have sprung from a simple, quiet course of Christian
justice and benevolence, a recognition of servants as fellow-beings
and fellow-Christians, and a doing to them as we would in like
circumstances that they should do to us.

The mistresses of American families, whether they like it or not, have
the duties of missionaries imposed upon them by that class from which
our supply of domestic servants is drawn. They may as well accept the
position cheerfully, and, as one raw, untrained hand after another
passes through their family, and is instructed by them in the mysteries
of good house-keeping, comfort themselves with the reflection that
they are doing something to form good wives and mothers for the
republic.

The complaints made of Irish girls are numerous and loud; the failings
of green Erin, alas! are but too open and manifest; yet, in arrest of
judgment, let us move this consideration: let us imagine our own
daughters between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four, untaught and
inexperienced in domestic affairs as they commonly are, shipped to a
foreign shore to seek service in families. It may be questioned whether,
as a whole, they would do much better. The girls that fill our families
and do our house-work are often of the age of our own daughters,
standing for themselves, without mothers to guide them, in a foreign
country, not only bravely supporting themselves, but sending home in
every ship remittances to impoverished friends left behind. If our
daughters did as much for us, should we not be proud of their energy
and heroism?

When we go into the houses of our country, we find a majority of
well-kept, well-ordered, and even elegant establishments, where the
only hands employed are those of the daughters of Erin. True, American
women have been their instructors, and many a weary hour of care have
they had in the discharge of this office; but the result on the whole
is beautiful and good, and the end of it, doubtless, will be peace.

Instead, then, of complaining that we can not have our own peculiar
advantages and those of other nations too, or imagining how much better
off we should be if things were different from what they are, it is
much wiser and more Christian-like to strive cheerfully to conform to
actual circumstances; and, after remedying all that we can control,
patiently to submit to what is beyond our power. If domestics are found
to be incompetent, unstable, and unconfirmed to their station, it is
Perfect Wisdom which appoints these trials to teach us patience,
fortitude, and self-control; and if the discipline is met in a proper
spirit, it will prove a blessing rather than an evil.

But to judge correctly in regard to some of the evils involved in the
state of domestic service in this country, we should endeavor to
conceive ourselves placed in the situation of those of whom complaint
is made, that we may not expect from them any more than it would seem
right should be exacted from us in similar circumstances.

It is sometimes urged against domestics that they exact exorbitant
wages. But what is the rule of rectitude on this subject? Is it not
the universal law of labor and of trade that an article is to be valued
according to its scarcity and the demand? When wheat is scarce, the
farmer raises his price; and when a mechanic offers services difficult
to be obtained, he makes a corresponding increase of price. And why
is it not right for domestics to act according to a rule allowed to
be correct in reference to all other trades and professions? It is a
fact, that really good domestic service must continue to increase in
value just in proportion as this country waxes rich and prosperous;
thus making the proportion of those who wish to hire labor relatively
greater, and the number of those willing to go to service less.

Money enables the rich to gain many advantages which those of more
limited circumstances can not secure. One of these is, securing good
servants by offering high wages; and this, as the scarcity of this
class increases, will serve constantly to raise the price of service.
It is right for domestics to charge the market value, and this value
is always decided by the scarcity of the article and the amount of
demand. Right views of this subject will sometimes serve to diminish
hard feelings toward those who would otherwise be wrongfully regarded
as unreasonable and exacting.

Another complaint against servants is that of instability and
discontent, leading to perpetual change. But in reference to this, let
a mother or daughter conceive of their own circumstances as so changed
that the daughter must go out to service. Suppose a place is engaged,
and it is then found that she must sleep in a comfortless garret; and
that, when a new domestic comes, perhaps a coarse and dirty foreigner,
she must share her bed with her. Another place is offered, where she
can have a comfortable room and an agreeable room-mate; in such a case,
would not both mother and daughter think it right to change?

Or suppose, on trial, it was found that the lady of the house was
fretful or exacting and hard to please, or that her children were so
ungoverned as to be perpetual vexations; or that the work was so heavy
that no time was allowed for relaxation and the care of a wardrobe;
and another place offers where those evils can be escaped; would not
mother and daughter here think it right to change? And is it not right
for domestics, as well as their employers, to seek places where they
can be most comfortable?

In some cases, this instability and love of change would be remedied,
if employers would take more pains to make a residence with them
agreeable, and to attach servants to the family by feelings of gratitude
and affection. There are ladies, even where well-qualified domestics
are most rare, who seldom find any trouble in keeping good and steady
ones. And the reason is, that their servants know they can not better
their condition by any change within reach. It is not merely by giving
them comfortable rooms, and good food, and presents, and privileges,
that the attachment of domestic servants is secured; it is by the
manifestation of a friendly and benevolent interest in their comfort
and improvement. This is exhibited in bearing patiently with their
faults; in kindly teaching them how to improve; in showing them how
to make and take proper care of their clothes; in guarding their health;
in teaching them to read if necessary, and supplying them with proper
books; and in short, by endeavoring, so far as may be, to supply the
place of parents. It is seldom that such a course would fail to secure
steady service, and such affection and gratitude that even higher wages
would be ineffectual to tempt them away. There would probably be some
leases of ungrateful returns; but there is no doubt that the course
indicated, if generally pursued, would very much lessen the evil in
question.

When servants are forward and bold in manners and disrespectful in
address, they may be considerately taught that those who are among the
best-bred and genteel have courteous and respectful manners and language
to all they meet: while many who have wealth, are regarded as vulgar,
because they exhibit rude and disrespectful manners. The very term
_gentle man_ indicates the refinement and delicacy of address which
distinguishes the high-bred from the coarse and vulgar.

In regard to appropriate dress, in most cases it is difficult for an
employer to interfere, _directly_, with comments or advice. The
most successful mode is to offer some, service in mending or making
a wardrobe, and when a confidence in the kindness of feeling is thus
gained, remarks and suggestions will generally be properly received,
and new views of propriety and economy can be imparted. In some cases
it may be well for an employer who, from appearances, anticipates
difficulty of this kind, in making the preliminary contract or agreement
to state that she wishes to have the room, person, and dress of her
servants kept neat and in order, and that she expects to remind them
of their duty, in this particular, if it is neglected. Domestic servants
are very apt to neglect the care of their own chambers and clothing;
and such habits have a most pernicious influence on their well-being
and on that of their children in future domestic life. An employer,
then, is bound to exercise a parental care over them, in these respects.

There is one great mistake, not unfrequently made, in the management
both of domestics and of children, and that is, in supposing that the
way to cure defects is by finding fault as each failing occurs. But
instead of this being true, in many cases the directly opposite course
is the best; while, in all instances, much good judgment is required
in order to decide when to notice faults and when to let them pass
unnoticed. There are some minds very sensitive, easily discouraged,
and infirm of purpose. Such persons, when they have formed habits of
negligence, haste, and awkwardness, often need expressions of sympathy
and encouragement rather than reproof. They have usually been found
fault with so much that they have become either hardened or desponding;
and it is often the case, that a few words of commendation will awaken
fresh efforts and renewed hope. In almost every case, words of kindness,
confidence, and encouragement should be mingled with the needful
admonitions or reproof.

It is a good rule, in reference to this point, to _forewarn_ instead of
finding fault. Thus, when a thing has been done wrong, let it pass
unnoticed, till it is to be done again; and then, a simple request to
have it done in the right way will secure quite as much, and probably
more, willing effort, than a reproof administered for neglect. Some
persons seem to take it for granted that young and inexperienced minds
are bound to have all the forethought and discretion of mature persons;
and freely express wonder and disgust when mishaps occur for want of
these traits. But it would be far better to save from mistake or
forgetfulness by previous caution and care on the part of those who have
gained experience and forethought; and thus many occasions of complaint
and ill-humor will be avoided.

Those who fill the places of heads of families are not very apt to
think how painful it is to be chided for neglect of duty or for faults
of character. If they would sometimes imagine themselves in the place
of those whom they control, with some person daily administering reproof
to them, in the same _tone and style_ as they employ to those who
are under them, it might serve as a useful cheek to their chidings.
It is often the ease, that persons who are most strict and exacting
and least able to make allowances and receive palliations, are
themselves peculiarly sensitive to any tiling which implies that they
are in fault. By such, the spirit implied in the Divine petition,
"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against
us," needs especially to be cherished.

One other consideration is very important. There is no duty more binding
on Christians than that of patience and meekness under provocations
and disappointment. Now, the tendency of every sensitive mind, when
thwarted in its wishes, is to complain and find fault, and that often
in tones of fretfulness or anger. But there are few servants who have
not heard enough of the Bible to know that angry or fretful
fault-finding from the mistress of a family, when her work is not done
to suit her, is not in agreement with the precepts of Christ. They
notice and feel the inconsistency; and every woman, when she gives way
to feelings of anger and impatience at the faults of those around her,
lowers herself in their respect, while her own conscience, unless very
much blinded, can not but suffer a wound.

In speaking of the office of the American mistress as being a missionary
one, we are far from, recommending any controversial interference with
the religious faith of our servants. It is far better to incite them
to be good Christians in their own way than to run the risk of shaking
their faith in all religion by pointing out to them what seem to us
the errors of that in which they have been educated. The general purity
of life and propriety of demeanor of so many thousands of undefended
young girls cast yearly upon our shores, with no home but their church,
and no shield but their religion, are a sufficient proof that this
religion exerts an influence over them not to be lightly trifled with.
But there is a real unity even in opposite Christian forms; and the
Roman Catholic servant and the Protestant mistress, if alike possessed
by the spirit of Christ, and striving to conform to the Golden Rule,
can not help being one in heart, though one go to mass and the other
to meeting.

Finally, the bitter baptism through which we have passed, the life-blood
dearer than our own which has drenched distant fields, should remind
us of the preciousness of distinctive American ideas. They who would
seek in their foolish pride to establish the pomp of liveried servants
in America are doing that which is simply absurd. A servant can never
in our country be the mere appendage to another man, to be marked like
a sheep with the color of his owner; he must be a fellow-citizen, with
an established position of his own, free to make contracts, free to
come and go, and having in his sphere titles to consideration and
respect just as definite as those of any trade or profession whatever.

Moreover, we can not in this country maintain to any great extent large
retinues of servants. Even with ample fortunes, they are forbidden by
the general character of society here, which makes them cumbrous and
difficult to manage. Every mistress of a family knows that her cares
increase with every additional servant. Two keep the peace with each
other and their employer; three begin a possible discord, which
possibility increases with four, and becomes certain with five or six.
Trained housekeepers, such as regulate the complicated establishments
of the old world, form a class that are not, and from the nature of
the case never will be, found in any great numbers in this country.
All such women, as a general thing, are keeping, and prefer to keep,
houses of their own.

A moderate style of housekeeping, small, compact, and simple domestic
establishments, must necessarily be the general order of life in
America. So many openings of profit are to be found in this country,
that domestic service necessarily wants the permanence which forms so
agreeable a feature of it in the old world.

This being the case, it should be an object in American to exclude
from the labors of the family all that can, with greater advantage,
be executed out of it by combined labor.

Formerly, in New England, soap and candles were to be made in each
separate family; now, comparatively few take this toil upon them. We
buy soap of the soap-maker, and candles of the candle-factor. This
principle might be extended much further. In France, no family makes
its own bread, and better bread can not be eaten than can be bought
at the appropriate shops. No family does its own washing; the family's
linen is all sent to women who, making this their sole profession, get
it up with a care and nicety which can seldom be equaled in any family.

How would it simplify the burdens of the American housekeeper to have
washing and ironing day expunged from her calendar! How much more
neatly and compactly could the whole domestic system be arranged! If
all the money that each separate family spends on the outfit and
accommodations for washing and ironing, on fuel, soap, starch, and the
other requirements, were united in a fund to create a laundry for every
dozen families, one or two good women could do in first rate style
what now is very indifferently done by the disturbance and
disarrangement of all other domestic processes in these families.
Whoever sets neighborhood laundries on foot will do much to solve the
American housekeeper's hardest problem.

Again, American women must not try with three servants to carry on
life in the style which in the old world requires sixteen; they must
thoroughly understand, and be prepared _to teach_, every branch
of housekeeping; they must study to make domestic service desirable,
by treating their servants in a way to lead them to respect themselves
and to feel themselves respected; and there will gradually be evolved
from the present confusion, a solution of the domestic problem which
shall be adapted to the life of a new and growing world.