Part 4
It is not strange that the novice still believes that housekeeping can be learned only by experience, nor, on the other hand, is it any more strange that in the effort to gain this experience she too often breaks down in health, or gives up the attempt and resorts to boarding. The cooking-school and the class in domestic economy, when taught in connection with a dozen other subjects, will not solve the question for her.
While the mistress is unskilled in work, the maid will be unwilling to work. Bridget does not suspect that she does not rise to the social position to which she aspires because her conversation is ungrammatical, perhaps even vulgar, her manner insolent, her spirit rebellious, her dress untidy and devoid of taste. She attributes her ill success to the work in which she is engaged. The facts most obvious to her are that her mistress does not understand practical housework, yet is socially her superior. She at once draws the conclusion that house service is degrading. She tries to escape to other work less remunerative but more satisfactory, and if she is unsuccessful, returns to house-service, determined to secure every possible privilege. She will not spend even three months’ time, or pay a nominal sum to learn housework, as a trade or profession. The training-school for domestic servants is a failure because they will not attend it.
It is said that the only way to strike at the root of all these difficulties is to dignify labor; the practical question is, how this is to be accomplished. In the light of all that has been done to attain this end, and the reasons for the comparative failure which has followed, may we not say that one great difficulty has been the fact that reform has begun at the wrong end? unless the chasm has been bridged between kitchen and parlor we cannot dignify labor in the kitchen alone. All true reform must begin at the top. This has been the experience of every great movement that has looked toward the improvement of mankind.
But what is the relation that college women bear to these problems of the household? They cannot revolutionize society, nor would they if they could. They cannot bring about any reform either in mistress or in maid. It may be answered truly that they can do but little. They are few in numbers--and they cannot assume the ability to settle questions with which previous generations of women have not been able to grapple. But are they justified in shielding themselves behind these excuses and in refusing to look the question squarely in the face? Women have proved themselves equal both mentally and physically to a college course, but if their training does not lead them to assist in the discussion of some of these vexed questions pertaining to the welfare of society, it may seriously be asked whether the higher education of women is worth all that it has cost. A statement as to what college women are now doing may perhaps be of help in answering what can be done.
A few years since a carefully prepared paper read before the Association of Collegiate Alumnæ, showed that of the 2619 women graduates of the fourteen colleges then represented in the association, thirty-eight per cent were married, thirty-six per cent were teaching, five per cent were engaged in other occupations and professions, and twenty per cent were “at home,” that is engaged in no occupation for remuneration. Those married and at home, to whom the subject of domestic science is presumably of most interest, form fifty-nine per cent of the whole number, while the forty-one per cent engaged in teaching and other occupations are certainly not indifferent to it. With trained mind and a realization that opportunity has brought responsibility, most often in a position where domestic affairs are those most prominently before her, the woman who is a college graduate is especially well situated to turn her attention to this subject.
What can she do? She can prove, as she is proving, that her college education has not unfitted her for domestic pursuits. Before the college door was opened to them, the education of women was largely a matter of information and accomplishment. Within two generations systematic training has been substituted for the acquisition of information and the advantage of this change should be seen first in improved methods of domestic work. The college graduate who is married or who is at home can prove more effectually than any other class of graduates the practical utility of college education for women. She can prove how puerile is the assertion that the average girl does not need a thorough course of technical study, because her household duties will not demand a knowledge of these subjects. The lawyer forgets his science, the business-man his classics, the theologian his mathematics, and the physician his metaphysics, yet each proves daily the value of these studies. So the college woman brings into every-day life, and may bring still more, the evidences of the advantage to her of a college course. She may go further, and show that resources within herself enable her to rise above much of the inevitable drudgery of household work, and thus overcome, in a measure, the common distaste for routine duties.
The college woman can do much by way of discussion. The love of study fostered by her college course shows itself after graduation in the formation of clubs and societies for literary work. There is scarcely a town that has not from one to a dozen, and there are few college women who have not belonged to one or more. There is a tendency, too, for college women to organize among themselves select classes for the pursuit of favorite studies. All of these clubs are valuable up to a certain point in giving help through association, but in too many cases they seem examples of misdirected effort. Their great numbers show that women have time and interest to give to intellectual matters. Cannot college women divert a part of this zeal from the discussion, for example, of the tulip mania in Holland, into the channels of social and domestic science? No company of political economists will ever work out for women “the servant-girl problem,” or make possible for women to learn systematic housekeeping. The college woman can do something--not everything--by showing that these subjects deserve consideration; that their proper place on the programme of the women’s club is not the closing half-hour of informal conversation, but the post of honor as one of the chief subjects of thought and study. But she need not wait for the movements of the literary club; she can herself organize a society whose sole purpose shall be the discussion of ways and means to lessen the friction in the ordinary household between mistress and maid, to remedy the scarcity of competent help, to relieve the overburdened housewife, a society which shall attempt to understand the “saleslady” situation, and to study the causes of the prejudice that still clings to household service as well as the means of removing it. She can help to show women that it is a matter of more vital interest to themselves and to society as a whole to discuss these topics than to seek after information that may not be worth the acquisition.
There is another phase of the question the thoughtful consideration of which the college woman can urge. She can at least make the attempt--her prospects of success may seem dubious--to bring before her sisters the subject of the wise expenditure of money. Women have bequeathed fortunes for every object from the endowment of theological seminaries to the establishment of a hospital for invalid cats; they have multiplied buildings and apparatus that language and science might be taught according to the Presbyterian, the Baptist, or the Methodist creed. The college woman may at least suggest that a long-felt want has been that of a polytechnic, an institution where the college graduate can learn household science as a serious profession, as an advocate or physician studies the principles of law and medicine. Such an institution, requiring a college degree for admission, and providing in a two years’ course for instruction in sanitary science, physiology and hygiene, the care of the sick, cooking, marketing, the care of the house, sewing, the principles of the kindergarten, artistic house-furnishing, domestic economy, and such other subjects as belong distinctively to the care of the house and home, would certainly have for a few years a limited number of students. An examination, however, of all that has been done and of the underlying principles leads to the conclusion that more could ultimately be done in this way than in any other to dignify that part of labor connected with domestic occupations. It would most certainly not do everything--no one thing could do that--but it would do much.
In a word, the relation of college women to the question of domestic science is first of all the duty of recognizing the importance of the subject itself, and of its special importance to them as college women; and second, a duty of examination, of discussion, of intelligent study, of appeal to public sentiment, of effort to secure at no distant day the establishment of a technical school of domestic science which shall in no sense be a substitute for collegiate and academic training, but shall be built upon such training as its most secure foundation. The present strain coming upon the majority of women is too great to be much longer borne. Relief must come, either in improved facilities for individual work, or in coöperative enterprises. The home must be preserved, and at the same time household work must be reduced to a minimum. College women owe it to themselves and to society to do their part toward attaining this end.
FOOTNOTE:
[10] _Bulletin Inter-Municipal Research Committee_, Nov. 1905.
SAIREY GAMP AND DORA COPPERFIELD
A wholesome corrective for the impatience with which we are wont to regard the lack of progress made in regard to all matters which concern the house and home was found at a recent International Health Exposition held in New York City. In one section was arranged an old-time sick-room, presided over by Sairey Gamp. The clock on the mantel pointed to the hour of midnight, and the patient was presumably sleeping, but on a feather bed, under heavy comfortables, with thick draperies hanging about the large high-post bedstead. On a table by the bedside were the remedies administered,--paregoric, salts, castor-oil, goose-grease, and other tradition-honored medicines. Another table bore the remains of the patient’s supper,--fried ham, bread and butter, cucumbers, and milk. Sairey herself reposed in an armchair, flanked, on one side, by the empty gin-bottle, and, on the other, by a pot of tea.
In a neighboring booth was found a motley collection of old-time remedies. It comprised elderberry flowers for pleurisy, honey for insomnia, hornet’s-nest tea for colds, baking-soda for the stomach and for bee-stings, cold potatoes for burns, and hot potatoes for ear-aches, cobwebs for hemorrhage, a cat’s skin for pneumonia, to be applied while the animal was still warm, and bags of camphor and assafœtida to be worn around the neck for protection against disease. All of these remedies are within the recollection of most persons who have not yet passed middle life.
These two booths were the text from which the silent sermon of comparison was preached by the eighty booths containing the educational exhibits of the training-schools for nurses and of many modern hospitals. The old-time sick-room has given place to one not only attractive to the eye, but furnished with every scientific appliance for the prevention as well as for the cure of disease. In place of Mrs. Gamp is the trained nurse of to-day, attractive in dress, agreeable in manner, intelligent in mind, scientific in methods of work, a friend and a companion, as well as a staff and a dependence. The contrast could not be more world-wide. Yet the time required to revolutionize methods of caring for the sick has been scarcely more than thirty years. The exhibit shown of a ward in Bellevue Hospital, in 1872, is almost as far removed from a modern hospital ward of to-day as it is from Mrs. Gamp.
What is the explanation of the transformation of Mrs. Gamp into the trained nurse, and of the evolution of the modern hospital and the modern sick-chamber from the old-time crude, semi-barbarous methods of treatment?
The secret of it all lies in the one word,--investigation. Investigation is the product of training, of education, of an eager and absorbing desire for knowledge, of minds open to conviction and ready to hold the judgment in suspense until it can be based on facts. The steps in the process of the evolution are equally clear. Given an investigating spirit, it follows that every investigator must work with singleness of purpose, in his search for facts, that is, for truth; and that this truth, when found, is to be held, not as a personal acquisition, but as a good to be shared with all. Thus progress is made, not through the individual efforts of isolated investigators, who are working along parallel lines, but it is made by geometrical progression, because each investigator is able to take, as a starting-point, the goal reached by his predecessor, and because he knows that he is coöperating with all other investigators to secure the same end. Everywhere to-day scientists appreciate the fact that progress in science is conditioned on scientific investigation. They also appreciate the fact that this progress can be made only as each investigator shares in the results obtained by every other investigator. Every scientific discovery made by one scientist becomes the common property of all. In this apparently simple fact lies the explanation of the disappearance of Sairey Gamp.
“Martin Chuzzlewit” was published six years before the first part of “David Copperfield” was issued. But while Mrs. Gamp has become but a name, Dora Copperfield is still with us, and he would be a rash prophet who would venture to predict the times and the seasons that wait upon her going.
Why does Dora Copperfield still tarry? Again the explanation is not far to seek. The household has not yet become a field for investigation. It resents intrusion into its domain and regards investigators as Paul Prys. It is sensitive to criticism, and it considers a suggestion of change as an unwarrantable interference with its affairs, and as an attack on it by outsiders. It does not take kindly to new ideas, and it often rejects them on _a priori_ grounds, not because experiment has proved them wrong. Clothed in a mantle of virtue, it feels itself above criticism, because the home is of divine origin.
Yet although intuition and instinct have so long been made to play the part in the household that ought to be taken by scientific investigation, it is not unreasonable to believe that a change must in time come. It is not many years since illness was attributed to divine interposition, which to-day is known to be the result of impure water, defective drainage, insufficient nourishment, or lack of ventilation. We must in time, although the specific time cannot be predicted, come to believe that women’s minds have been given them to use, and that nowhere can they be used more effectively than in the organization and management of a household.
This comparison has been suggested, because the question is so often asked: Why can we not have trained domestics as we have trained nurses? The answer must be that, in the present condition of affairs, the resemblance between nurses and domestics is only superficial. The trained nurse is the product, not of the family that has suffered from the lack of such trained service, but of the discovery by the medical profession that its labors must be ineffectual if orders are not carried out by those who understand the reasons why these orders are given. The more rapid the advance in scientific investigation made in the medical world, the more rapid the advance made in all grades of service connected with the medical profession. Pressure is exerted from above and works downwards. More and more the subject of health becomes one of the prevention, rather than of the cure, of ill health. The distance between physician and nurse and nurse and patient grows less as each understands better the function each has to perform in securing good health.
Some parts of the household have already been put on a scientific basis. It is to-day protected from impure water-supply, from defective drainage, from poisonous foods, from contagious diseases, but not through the efforts of the household itself. These benefits it has reaped through the labors of scientific experts who, through unwearied investigation, have discovered the means of preventing certain large classes of diseases. Sanitary engineering and sanitary chemistry have become professions through the work of scientific investigators. When housekeepers, through scientific investigation, have made a profession of housekeeping, then, and not till then, will trained service in the household be possible.
It is very easy to see why progress in the household has up to this time been so slow, and why it has, for the most part, been made through forces exerted from without rather than from within. But the Chinese wall that has so long surrounded it is giving way, and the signs of the times point to another international exposition, when, side by side with Mrs. Gamp and the trained nurse, will be found Dora Copperfield and the new home,--the product of the trained minds of scientific investigators.
ECONOMICS AND ETHICS IN DOMESTIC SERVICE
The cynic observed yesterday that the interests of womankind were confined to the three D’s--Dress, Disease, and Domestics. To-day the bicycle has become a formidable competitor of dress and promises to do its part toward settling some of the disputed questions in regard to the rival it has partially supplanted. Biology is wrestling with disease, and bids fair to be the victor. Domestics still hold the field, but if business methods are introduced into the household, as it seems inevitable will be the case, the interests of women will have passed on and upward from the three D’s to the three B’s, and the cynic will be forced to turn his attention from woman to a more fruitful field.
It is not indeed strange that the old conception of household service should have yielded so slowly its place in the thoughts of women. The whole subject of economic theory of which it is but a part is itself a recent comer in the field of discussion; it was scarcely more than a century and a quarter ago that Adam Smith wrote his “Wealth of Nations” and gave a new direction to economic thought.
As a result of these economic studies of the present century something has already been done to improve industrial conditions outside of the household. They have led to improved factory legislation, to better relations between employer and employee, to wide discussion of the principles on which business is conducted, but what has been accomplished has been brought about through an unrest and an agitation that have often brought disaster in their train.
From this general economic discussion the household has been in the main cut off, largely because it has been considered as belonging to the domain of sentiment rather than of business, because the household has shrunk from all agitation and discussion of the questions with which it is immediately concerned, because it has refused to see that progress is conditioned on this agitation and discussion, because it has cried “Peace, peace, when there was no peace.” It is this very aloofness that constitutes to-day the most serious obstacle in the way of any improvement in domestic service--the failure on the part of men and women everywhere to recognize that the occupation is governed by economic law, that it is bound up inextricably with every other phase of the labor question, and that the initial step toward improvement must be the recognition of this fact. Housekeepers everywhere resent what they deem interference with their personal affairs; they betray an ill-concealed irritation when the economic side of the question is presented to them, and they believe, if their own household machinery runs smoothly, that no friction exists anywhere and that their own responsibility has ceased. Nothing to-day is so characteristic of women as a class as their inability to assume an impersonal attitude toward any subject under discussion, while in methods of work they are prone to work from day to day and seldom plan for results to be reached years after a project has been set on foot.
This means that before any improvement in household affairs can come, the attitude of mind with which they are approached must undergo a radical change; both men and women must recognize the analogy between domestic service and other forms of labor, and must work, not for more competent cooks and parlor-maids in their individual households, not for any specific change for the better to-morrow, but for improvements in the system--improvements, the benefits of which will be reaped not by this but by subsequent generations. It is a fact from which we cannot escape that domestic service has been affected by historical and economic development, that it is to-day affected by economic conditions, that it must in the future be in like manner affected by them. That we do not all see these facts does not in the least alter their existence. Nothing is so inexorable as law. Law works itself out whether recognized or not. If we accept the workings of the law and aid in its natural development, peace and harmony result; if we resist the action of law and struggle against it, we do not stay its progress but we injure ourselves as the bird that beats its wings against prison-bars. “Delhi is far,” said the old king of Delhi when told that an enemy had crossed his border. “Delhi is far,” he answered when told that the enemy was in sight. “Delhi is far,” he repeated when the enemy was at the gate. “Delhi is far,” he still repeated when the sword of the enemy was at his throat.
Yet certainly we may hope that another view is coming to prevail, and that housekeepers will not shrink from the storm and stress period that is the inevitable accompaniment of discussion of household affairs, but will bring the courage of their convictions to bear on the discussion of the problem. It is indeed encouraging to find so many of them beginning their studies of household affairs, not with a proposal of remedies that may chance to meet the disease, but with a recognition of the existence of a great question to be investigated, with a determination to understand the problem.
What is the problem that is presented to the housekeeper? To have a healthy, happy, virtuous and useful household. What are some of the external conditions necessary to such a household? Palatable, nourishing food, regularity of meals, prompt and efficient service. With what tools has the young housekeeper heretofore been expected to grapple with the problem in her own home? Instinct, intuition, love of home, the cardinal virtues, especially meekness and humility, orthodox views in regard to the relation of the housekeeper to her home, and a belief that personal experience, however restricted, is an infallible guide.