Part 2

It was early recognized that some of the most difficult factors of the problem concerned the intelligence office, and investigations on a somewhat limited scale were carried on in several cities; but, largely owing to political considerations, it was not deemed advisable to publish the results. The most thorough and systematic investigation undertaken in this direction has been that of Miss Frances A. Kellor, whose “Out of Work,” based on a study of more than seven hundred agencies, has laid bare the evils of the present system of securing new employees, as seen by employer, employee, and manager of the agency. A body of facts has thus been made available that must prove of the highest service in any attempt to cope with the notorious evils attending many agencies.

The state bureaus of labor have in several instances done valiant service to the cause through the official investigations carried on. As far back as 1872 the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor devoted four and a half pages of its annual report to domestic labor. But the first real investigation of the subject made by a state bureau of labor was probably that undertaken by the Minnesota Bureau in 1890. This has been followed by special investigations in other states,--notably Kansas and Michigan,--and in Canada. Moreover, it must be remembered that many bureaus, while making no special investigation of domestic service, have incidentally considered the subject in connection with their investigations of general labor questions. Most of all is encouragement to be found in the comprehensive investigation recently carried on under the direction of the Industrial Commission.

These investigations enumerated have been of a severely scientific, statistical nature, and have been carried on by state or national organizations. But other studies no less important have been made by organizations of a purely private or of a semi-public character. Notable among these has been the Association of Collegiate Alumnæ, several branches of which have been most active in making studies of domestic service, both as a special field for investigation and also in connection with the larger subjects of home economics and domestic science. Students in colleges and universities have made special studies in the same field, and in some instances have made distinct contributions to the subject. This work has been of most value, however, in the indication it has given of a desire on the part of college-trained investigators to make domestic service a subject of serious consideration.

Domestic service has been until very recently a field untouched by the statistician and investigator. The studies already made show not so much what has been done as how much yet remains to be done. But the territory is already being occupied. Trained investigators are mapping out the field, workers are at hand, and in a few years we shall have a body of facts that will afford a sufficient basis for scientific deductions in regard to the condition of domestic service in the entire country.

Opinions may honestly differ as to whether it is advisable to substitute in schools and colleges subjects along the line of household affairs for other subjects more properly classed as liberal studies. But it is interesting to note how much has been done in this direction. Courses in household economics have been given in recent years in the state universities of Illinois, Nebraska, Ohio, and Wisconsin, as well as in the Leland Stanford Junior University, while Columbia University through Teachers College has offered similar work.

In many agricultural colleges, and in seminaries and academies like those in Auburndale, Massachusetts, and Painesville, Ohio, there are such courses in the curricula. On the other hand, there can be no question whatever as to the propriety and necessity of introducing, as has already been done, courses in domestic science into the great technical schools, such as Pratt, Drexel, and Armour institutes.

The School of Housekeeping established in Boston in 1897 under the auspices of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union went still further, in that it was not so much a technical school as a more truly genuine professional school for the training of experts in the great profession of housekeeping. The honorable record it made while an independent institution gives reason to believe that, now that it has been merged in Simmons College, it will go on to still greater achievements under the new conditions. The establishment of similar schools elsewhere has been much discussed, while in some places there have been sporadic efforts to establish classes in household training. Indeed, it must be said that in certain classes of fashionable schools it is at this moment the latest fad to have instruction in all household matters, quite is much as in art and music.

Study and investigations have led to organization, and the first association in the field was the National Household Economic Association, formed in 1893, with branches in many states, some of which did admirable work.

The Lake Placid Conference that met first in 1899 is not strictly an organization, but an informal gathering of workers who have discussed the subject particularly on its scientific side, since the attendance has been largely made up of those interested in the educational and scientific side of household economics. Its proceedings give an admirable summary of the latest scientific discussions of the subject.

The most recent as well as the most important of all such organizations has been that of the Inter-Municipal Research Committee formed “for the purpose of studying existing phases of household work, to aid in securing fair conditions for employer and employee, and to place their relations on a sound business basis.” Much has already been accomplished by it, especially in the direction of investigating employment agencies, establishing a bureau of information, and studying the conditions under which colored girls from the South are brought to the North to enter domestic service. Its programme for the future lays out a constantly enlarging sphere of activities.

All these investigations and educational measures have been undertaken in the belief that household employment has its economic side, like other forms of industry. The widespread recognition of this fact has been a most significant advance, since earlier discussions of the subject had considered only the ethical factors involved. But an interesting reversion to the more purely ethical consideration of the question has been seen in the various efforts to follow the injunction of Charles Reade: “Put yourself in his place.” A number of young women have entered domestic service in disguise, and from personal experience have narrated the life of a domestic employee. It may well be questioned whether the actual results reached are commensurate with the effort expended;--the experiment has meant months of unnatural life and strained relationships, and in the end we probably know little more in regard to the condition of domestic employees than could be known by turning the inner light of our own consciousness on our own households and those of our acquaintances. But the experiment has been interesting as indicative of a determined effort to look at the subject from every point of view.

It is not surprising, in view of all the agitation of the question in our own country, to find that a similar interest has been aroused elsewhere. In Germany, that home of conservatism in all domestic affairs, an elaborate statistical investigation has been carried on by Dr. Oscar Stillich, and its results published in an exhaustive work entitled “The Status of Women Domestics in Berlin.”[9] Nor again is it surprising to find that neither official nor domestic Berlin has taken kindly to the investigation, since bureaucracy has in it no place for private initiative, and the _Kinder, Küchen, Kirchen_ theory of domestic life has resented what has been deemed unwarranted interference in private affairs. But it is a matter of congratulation that the author has been of undaunted courage, and that his work stands as a thoroughly scientific investigation, and therefore the most valuable contribution yet made in any country to the theory and condition of domestic service.

Two things of special encouragement must be noted. One is the changing attitude of domestic employees themselves toward their own occupation, and the other is the introduction of men into a field where it has always been held that by divine ordinance women ruled supreme.

The number of domestics who have shown any interest in the question is indeed, as yet, infinitesimal in comparison with the total number in the occupation, but five righteous men shall save the city. Here and there one is found who realizes that domestic employees must be ready to help themselves if help is to come from others, that it is possible for them to improve the conditions of domestic service through their own efforts, that respect for any occupation comes, as those connected with it command respect for it, through their own attitude toward it. This is as yet realized by so few that no appreciable results can be seen with the naked eye, but the leaven is working.

A very welcome and appreciable change has come through the practical interest in the question shown by men. They have lectured and written on the subject, and have listened to the lectures on it given by women. This means that the subject is being recognized by them as worthy of study and discussion and as of importance to all--to men and to women alike--who are interested in the welfare of society. On its practical side also the interest of men is making itself felt. Chafing-dish courses have been opened for men, where they have learned the preparation of the luxuries of the table, as the rough-and-ready experiences of camp-life in summer vacations and in military campaigns have taught them how to prepare the necessities of life. Young men in college and young men living in bachelors’ apartments are proud of their attainments in afternoon teas and chafing-dish suppers, while men trained as nurses learn the preparation of delicacies for the sick. It is true, indeed, that cooking-classes are but indirectly connected with domestic service, but everything that breaks down artificial barriers, and permits the free industrial entrance of both men and women into whatever occupation they prefer, is a direct gain to every line of work. Any one whose attention has been turned in the direction of securing household employees must constantly come in contact with the fact that there is a considerable number of men engaged in household employments for remuneration.

Does this enumeration of the progress of the past ten years seem indeed like an Homeric catalogue of the ships? It may, yet the ships are bound for a definite haven, and must in time enter port.

If one lasting gain of these years has come to be an appreciation of the necessity of diagnosing the disease before prescribing a remedy, it must follow that the remedy prescribed fits the disease. Has it been shown as a result of exhaustive and exhausting investigation that the great barrier to the entrance of competent men and women into domestic employment is the social one,--it follows that efforts are being turned toward leveling this barrier. If we have learned that the loneliness of the life is in sharp contrast to the opportunity for comradeship presented in other industrial pursuits, we have thereby learned to ward against this loneliness by encouraging means of wholesome recreation. When scientific research has disclosed the plague spots in the employment agency and the intelligence office, restrictive legislation has followed. If it has been found that the weak and the ignorant have been taken advantage of by the strong and the knowing, efforts for moral regeneration have been put forth. Since we have realized that in the household, as elsewhere, it is impossible for the blind to lead the blind, technical schools have offered instruction in household affairs to employers of household employees.

Yet when we look over the field still to be reclaimed in the interests of comfortable home life, more than enough causes for discouragement remain. Housekeepers still carry on their households in defiance of all business methods; ignorant women boast that they “have never so much as boiled an egg in their life,” and complain that their cooks will not stay with them; idle women spend their time in playing bridge, and wonder why their maids are discontented; men boast at their tables of their shrewdness in obtaining something for nothing, and cannot understand why petty thieving goes on in their households; society receives the once, twice, and thrice divorced, but draws the social line at the cook and the butler; communities tolerate by the score the places where domestic employees, as others, can find recreation and amusement of every questionable kind, but the communities can yet be counted on one hand where they can obtain genuine, wholesome, attractive recreation; the church, with a few exceptions, is prone to close its doors, except for Sunday and midweek evening service, and to expend its efforts on fine music, with church suppers to foot the bills,--forgetting the poverty of interests in the lives of so many in the community.

But when all has been said, it must be felt that the balance shows much to the credit of domestic service,--a balance due to the capital invested in it through the study of conditions made by both men and women. In no country are these conditions so favorable as they are in America to-day. England has its well-trained, obsequious butler, Germany has its police regulations of servants, France has its chef, Italy has hopeless machines who are “really servants.” America has none of these, but it has men and women who believe that if the future holds for us a solution of the problem it lies, not in the direction of reproducing on American soil the English flunkey, or in the introduction of German governmental control, or in increasing the number of French chefs who shall give us endless varieties of new soups and salads, or yet in crushing all interest in life out of the hearts and souls of those who serve us, as a pitiless fate seems to have done in Italy; but men and women who believe that the solution lies in the path of hard, toilsome investigation, to which students must come without prejudice and with a fearless acceptance of the results of such investigations.

In no country are the conditions of domestic service so hopeful as they are to-day in America, and it is in large part due to our theory of education which has been in practical force for more than a generation. Men and women receive the same school, college, and university training, and this training enables women to order their households, on their mechanical side, in the same systematic way that the business enterprises of men are managed. The result of this is that matters pertaining to the household command the respect as well as the sentimental consideration of men, and that men and women are more and more becoming co-workers in all efforts to secure improvement. Each year the proportion of housekeepers with trained minds increases, and in the same proportion the number increases of housekeepers who make intelligent demands on their employees, who do not encourage poor service by tolerating it, who realize their responsibility to other households, and understand that “every irresponsible mistress makes life more difficult for every other mistress and maid.” It is at least significant that this progress has been made in a country where the education of men and women is precisely the same, and that the least advance has been made in those which arrange a special curriculum for women and which profess to train girls and young women specially for domestic life. America holds that education means for women, as well as for men, intellectual training rather than the accumulation of information without it, and that the value of this is seen, in the case of women, in the intelligent study they are everywhere making of household affairs.

When the vital question in Italy was that of independence from Austria and of unity under an Italian government, Mazzini said, with a sublime appreciation of the principle involved, “Without a country and without liberty, we might perhaps produce some prophets of art, but no vital art. Therefore it was best for us to consecrate our lives to the solution of the problem, ‘Are we to have a country?’” It is possible to have peace and contentment in individual households along with ignorance of the economic laws that govern the household, but there can be no radical reform in domestic service in this or any other country that does not recognize the inseparable connection between domestic service and all other forms of labor, and that does not make this fact its starting-point. If the difficulties in the present situation, which are all too evident, are to be overcome, it can only be by devoting our energies, as did Mazzini in Italy, not so much to temporizing in our households as rather to the slow methods of careful, patient investigation of the conditions without. The immediate gain to ourselves may be slight, but those who come after us may reap the benefits.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _American Journal of Sociology_, I, 556-559, March, 1896. Cf. the chapter entitled “Household Adjustment,” in Miss Addams’s _Democracy and Social Ethics_, 1902.

[2] _The Forum_, August, 1899.

[3] _The Arena_, September, 1898.

[4] _The Atlantic Monthly_, January, 1897.

[5] _Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts_, vol. v.

[6] _American Historical Review_, II, 12, October, 1896.

[7] New Haven, Connecticut, 1901.

[8] Isabel Eaton, “A Special Report on Domestic Service,” in _The Philadelphia Negro_, by W. E. B. Du Bois. Publications of the University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, 1899.

[9] _Die Lage der weiblichen Dienstboten in Berlin_, von Dr. Oscar Stillich. Berlin. 1902.

EDUCATION IN THE HOUSEHOLD

It is reported that a distinguished foreigner was once visiting a well-known woman’s college, and after listening to the explanation of the work carried on there, inquired of its president, “Pardon me, but how does this affect the chances of the young ladies?” Some years since several persons were speaking of the recent marriage of a college woman and the remark was made, “What a pity to have so fine an education wasted in keeping house!” Not long ago a college woman was discussing the education of women with a young German Ph.D., and found that her arguments in its favor were met by her opponent with the triumphant question, “But can these young women cook?”

These three incidents, which could be multiplied in kind indefinitely, are illustrations of the somewhat contradictory but current opinions regarding the mutual relations of education and household affairs. It is apparently the common belief, first, that educated women never marry; second, that if they do marry, their education is wasted; third, that if such women marry and do not consider their education wasted in the household, the education received has at all events given evidence of nothing either useful or practical.

It is not surprising that the mental agility involved in reaching these somewhat diverse conclusions finds its parallel in the remedy usually proposed for alleviating so distressing a condition. If college women never marry, but find when they do marry that their education is wasted because they have not learned in college how to bake bread, then, it is argued, let us have compulsory teaching of domestic science in the public schools and send our daughters to private schools.

The beneficial results of the introduction of domestic science into the public schools would undoubtedly be very great, did any one understand very clearly what is included under the head of domestic science, were any one at present prepared to teach it, and were it quite evident who should study it. At present these difficulties would seem to militate against the widespread introduction of this subject into our educational system.

If it is asked what is meant by domestic science, there is a temptation to make the irrelevant reply that historians, economists, political scientists, and sociologists are still attempting to delimit their respective fields, each claiming that its territory includes that preëmpted by the other three. It is as difficult to define the domain of domestic science as it is that of sociology. Does it include the architectural construction of a house? May it perhaps go back of the construction and include the selection of a site? Does it even involve the principles in the choice of a suitable residential city? Is it possible that behind this lies the question of selecting that state of the Union that is most advantageous? If the problem is to be worked backwards, it must also be worked forwards, and it must be decided whether the interior decoration of a house comes within the jurisdiction of domestic science. Would this comprise instruction in wood-carving, pyrography, china painting, and basketry? But it seems reasonable to pass from the house itself to the activities carried on within it. Should these activities be separated into different classes, such as those pertaining to the care of the house, the preparation of food, the making of clothing, the physical care of children, the instruction of household helpers, the entertainment of guests, the training of husbands and wives? If this or any other classification is made, should domestic science consider one, all, or any combination of these classes?

But one of the tendencies of the time is toward intensive work, and the courses in domestic science should perhaps reflect that tendency. If so, should we not look for courses to be offered in napkin embroidery, Hardanger work, and Mexican drawn work, in the preparation of wheatena, toast water, and flaxseed tea, in the making of cheese fondu, pineapple canapes, and ornamental frosting? Should not the mysteries of thin sauces, medium sauces, and thick sauces be elucidated? If on the other hand the opposite tendency is observable, should we not expect courses in the formal and informal entertainment of guests and the philosophy of a menu, even that of a bill of fare?

The difficulties of the situation are comparable only to those of the Bellman who

“Had only one notion for crossing the ocean, And that was to tingle his bell. He was thoughtful and grave--but the orders he gave Were enough to bewilder a crew. When he cried ‘Steer to starboard, but keep her head larboard!’ What on earth was the helmsman to do?”

But granting that some agreement could be reached as to the content of the term domestic science, there would still remain the question as to how instruction in it could be given. We have learned in nearly every other department of education the extreme difficulty of teaching what we do not know, but we still cling to the superstition that it is possible to teach domestic science in private and public schools when the university has not as yet made the household the subject of scientific or economic investigation. The one or two notable exceptions to this statement do not invalidate its general truth.