Part 2 (1/2)
A household employee ought to have her hours of work as clearly defined as if she were a business employee, and there is no reason why the eight-hour labor law could not be applied as successfully to housework as to any other enterprise.
Work in business is generally divided into two periods. Yet this division can not always be effected, and in railroad and steams.h.i.+p positions, in post offices, upon trolley lines, in hotels, in hospitals, and in other cases too numerous to mention, where work must follow a continuous round, the working hours are divided into more than two periods, according to the nature of the work and the interests of the employer, not however exceeding a fixed number of hours per day or per week.
It would be far better for the housewife as well as for her employees, if the housework were limited in a similar way. But with the introduction of the eight-hour law in the home, certain new conditions would have to be rigidly enforced in order to ensure success.
Firstly, the employee should be made to understand that during the eight hours of work agreed upon, she must be engaged in actual work for her employer.
Secondly, when an employee is off duty, she should not be allowed to remain with or to talk to the other employee or employees who are still on duty. When her work is finished, she ought to leave her employer's house. The non-observance of either of these two points produces a demoralizing effect.
Thirdly, a general knowledge of cooking, and serving meals, of cleaning and taking proper care of the rooms of a house, of attending correctly to the telephone and the door bell, of sewing, of was.h.i.+ng and ironing, and of taking care of children, should be insisted upon from all household employees.
There are many housewives who will state that this last condition is impossible, that it is asking too much from one employee; and since it is hard to-day to find a good cook, it will be still harder to find one who understands other household work as well. But those who jump to these conclusions have never tried the experiment. It is not only possible but practicable.
Judging from the ordinary intelligence displayed by the average cook and housemaid in the majority of private homes to-day, it ought not to seem incredible that the duties of both could be easily mastered by young women of ordinary ability. A woman who knows how to prepare and cook a meal, may easily learn the correct way of serving it, and the possession of this knowledge ought not to prevent her from being capable of sweeping a room, or making a bed, or taking care of children.
It is above all in families where only a few employees are kept, that the housewife will quickly realize how much it is to her immediate advantage to employ women who know how to do all kinds of housework, instead of having those who make a specialty of one particular branch.
The specialization of work in private houses has been carried to such an extreme that it has become one of the greatest drawbacks to successful housekeeping in small families. Under this system of specialization, a household employee is not capable in emergency of taking up satisfactorily the work of another. Even if she be able to do it, she often professes ignorance for fear it may prolong her own hours of labor, or because, as she sometimes frankly admits, she does not consider it ”her place.” The chambermaid does not know how to cook, the cook does not know how to do the chamberwork, the waitress, in her turn, can do neither cooking nor chamberwork, and the annoyance to the whole family caused by the temporary absence of one of its regular employees is enough to spoil for the time being all the traditional comforts of home.
In hotels and public inst.i.tutions, and in large private establishments, where the work demands a numerous staff of employees, the specialization of the work is the only means for its successful accomplishment, but in the average home requiring from one to four or five employees no system could be worse from an economic point of view, nor less conducive to the comfort of the family.
Specialization produces another bad effect, for it prevents the existence of the feeling of equality among employees in the same house.
Each ”specialist” speaks rather disparagingly of the other's work, regardless of the relative position her own special ”art” may occupy to the unprejudiced mind.
An amusing instance of this was recently shown at a country place near New York, when ”the lady of the manor” asked a friend to send some one down from the city to help with the housework during the temporary absence of her maid. The friend could not find any one at the domestic employment agencies willing to go, but at last through the Charity Organization Society, she heard of a woman temporarily out of employment, who had been frequently employed as scrubwoman on the vacation piers. When the work was offered her, she accepted it immediately. Arriving at her new employer's house, she began at once to scrub the floors, and when the work was completed, she sat on a chair and took no further notice of anything. The next day, having no more floors to scrub, the same general lack of interest was manifested. She was asked to wash the dishes after dinner. She replied that she was not used to ”dishwas.h.i.+ng,” and did not know how to do it. She was persuaded, however, to make the attempt, but performed her new task very reluctantly. The following morning she said she felt ”lonely” and would return at once to the city. As the train came in sight to bear her back to her accustomed surroundings, she gave a snort of relief, and exclaimed: ”I'm a scrubwoman, I am. I ain't going to do no fancy dishwas.h.i.+ng, no, not for no one; I'm a scrubwoman.” And she clambered up into the train with the alacrity of a woman whose dignity had received a hard blow.
The above ill.u.s.tration is typical of the spirit subjected to the system of specialization, and shows how unwise it is to encourage it in the home where all branches of housework could be easily made interchangeable.
Under the new system of limiting housework to eight hours a day, the housewife must insist that all applicants be willing and able to perform any part of the housework she may a.s.sign, and their duties ought not to be specified otherwise than by the term HOUSEWORK. The employee who refuses to wait on the table during the absence of the waitress, or to cook, or to do the laundry work, or to answer the telephone, or to carry packages from her employer's automobile to the library, because she does not consider it ”her place to do these things,” should be instantly discharged.
These very important conditions being understood and conceded, the choice and arrangement of the eight hours' work must necessarily lie with each individual housewife. Each family is different and has different claims upon its time. The ”rush hours” of social life are sometimes in the evening, and sometimes in the afternoon, and again in some families, especially where there are small children, the breakfast hour seems the most complicated of the day. All these details have to be carefully thought of when making an eight hour schedule. At the end of this book a set of schedules is placed. Any intelligent housewife can understand them, imitate them, and in many instances improve them. They are merely given as elementary examples.
According to the number of employees she engages, the housewife will have eight, sixteen, or twenty-four hours of work to distribute among them, and to meet her peculiar needs she will find it necessary at the outset to devote some hours to a satisfactory scheme. After testing several, she will probably have to begin all over again before she finally succeeds in evolving one that is available. But the problem is interesting in itself, and always admits of a solution.
It may not be amiss to make this final suggestion for the woman who is willing to give the new plan a fair trial: she should follow the example of the business man when he is in need of new employees, and advertise for help, stating hours of work, and requesting that all applications be made by letter. This disposes rapidly of the illiterate, and in the majority of cases, a woman who writes a good, legible, and accurate hand, is more apt to be efficient in her work than one who sends in a dirty, careless, ill-expressed and badly spelled application. Through advertising one comes into touch with many women it would be impossible to reach otherwise. It is also the most advantageous way of bringing the employer and employee together, inasmuch as it dispenses entirely with the services of a third person, who, naturally can not be expected to offer gratuitous service.
The plan of limiting housework to eight hours a day is not an idle theory; it has been in successful operation for several years. Yet it is not easy to change the habit of years. There are many housewives who would loudly declare it impossible to conform to such business rules in the household; and many of the older generation of cooks and housemaids would agree. But when such a plan has been generally adopted, the domestic labor problem will be solved, and it does not appear that in the present state of social organization, it can be solved in any other way.
HOUSEWORK LIMITED TO SIX DAYS A WEEK
Under the present system of housekeeping, there is not one day out of the three hundred and sixty-five that a domestic employee has the right to claim as a day of rest, not even a legal holiday.
It is remarkable that this fact, showing so forcibly one of the greatest disadvantages connected with housework, should attract so little attention. No one seems to care about the fate of the ”servant girl,” as she is so often disdainfully called. During six days of the week she works on the average fourteen hours a day, but no one stops to notice that she is tired. On the seventh day, instead of resting as every other employee has the right to do, her work is merely reduced to nine, eight, or perhaps seven hours; and yet she needs a day of rest as much as every other woman who earns her bread. The rights of the domestic employee are ignored on all sides apparently. In public demonstrations of dissatisfaction between employers and employees the most oppressed cla.s.s of the working people--the women who do housework--has never yet been represented.
This is probably due to two causes: the first is because women dissatisfied with housework are rapidly finding positions in business where they enjoy rights and privileges denied them in domestic labor; and the second is because the great majority of women engaged in housework are foreign-born. These women learn quickly to understand and speak English, but they do not often read and write it, and as they are kept in close confinement in their employer's house, they have rarely the opportunity of hearing about the emanc.i.p.ation of the modern working woman. Most of them are of a very humble origin, and being debarred from business positions on account of their ignorance and inexperience, they are thankful to earn money in any kind of employment regardless of the length of working hours.
Their children, however, who are American born and enjoy better educational advantages, do not follow in their footsteps when the time comes for them to earn their living. They become stenographers, typewriters, dressmakers, milliners, s.h.i.+rt waist makers, cash-girls, saleswomen, etc.; in fact any occupation where work is limited to a fixed number of hours a day and confined to six days a week, is considered more desirable than housework. The result is that the housewife is compelled to take for her employees only those who are rejected by every other employer; the capable, independent, intelligent American woman is hardly ever seen in domestic service.
In Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., a law (the La Follette Eight Hour Law for Women in the District of Columbia) was recently pa.s.sed limiting to eight hours a day and six days a week practically all work in which women are industrially employed; ”hotel servants” are included under the provisions of this law, but ”domestic servants in private homes” are expressly excluded.
If this new law be considered a just and humane measure for women who are business employees, and if business houses be compelled to observe it, one naturally wonders why it should not prove to be an equally just and humane law for women who work in private families, and why should not the home be compelled to observe it too? Instead of being a barrier to progress, the home ought to cooperate with the state in the enforcement of laws for the amelioration of the condition of working women. The home, being presided over by a woman, presumably of some education and intelligence, should be a most fitting place in which to apply a law designed to protect women against excessive hours of labor.
Why should housework in private homes be an exception to all other work?