For the benefit of new readers it seems well to explain that this series of articles is not intended for the instruction of experienced housewives. It was started at the special request of a reader who asked for “a little book on housekeeping, for those of us who know nothing at all about it; and put in all the little details that are presumably regarded as too trivial or too obvious to be mentioned in the ordinary books on domestic economy.”

XXI. Hired Help.

It does not seem proper to conclude the present series of articles without touching upon the “servant problem,” but I do not pretend to be able to solve it. It is a problem usually very difficult of solution by the homemaker of small means. If she has but few persons to cater for, and is not the mother of a young family, she is often very much better off without hired help, except for a periodical charwoman. But it is not always indispensable to the woman who has other duties besides housekeeping.

I am not here concerned with the housewife who can afford to keep more than one efficient servant. Indeed, I am hardly concerned with one who can employ a really good “general” at from £20 to £25 per annum. The person I am concerned with is the homemaker who can afford at most to employ an inexperienced young girl at from £10 to £14 per annum.

I will draw the worst side of the picture first, for although it is the worst side it is true enough, as so many harassed housewives know.

The young “general” often comes straight from a council school where domestic economy had no place in the curriculum, and from a home in name only. Such an one is usually slatternly and careless in all her ways, has no idea of personal cleanliness, and regards her “mistress” as, more or less, her natural enemy! She is “in service” only under compulsion, and envies those of her schoolmates whose more fortunate circumstances have enabled them to become “young lady” shop assistants, typists and even elementary school teachers. If she had her choice she would prefer labour in a factory to domestic work; but either a factory is not available, or the girl's parents consider “service” more “respectable” in spite of its hardships. Its hardships? Yes, it is its hardships that account for its peculiar unpopularity. For there are hardships connected with domestic service in small households that do not apply to other forms of much harder labour.

Everyone who is familiar with the small lower middle-class household knows how often the life of the little “general” resembles that of an animal rather than a human being. All day long she drudges in a muddling, inefficient way, continually scolded for her inefficiency yet never really taught how to do anything properly. Her work is never done, for she is always at the beck and call of her employers; yet she lives apart in social isolation, is referred to contemptuously as the “slavey,” and even her food is dispensed to her grudgingly and minus the special dainties bought for Sundays and holidays. This is domestic service at its worst, of course, but the prevalence of such “places” in actual fact is undoubtedly at the root of the young girl's objection to it. How can she help gleaning the impression that such work is “menial,” when her employers more or less openly despise her? Being human, how can she but envy those of her old friends who have their evenings to themselves? What contentment can she find in a life of drudgery unenlightened by intelligent interest in learning how to do something well? What wonder that all her hopes and ambitions become centred in the possession of a “young man,” and that reason—stunted from its birth for lack of room to grow—being entirely absent from her choice, she marries badly and too young, and becomes the mother of a numerous progeny as helpless, hopeless, stunted and inefficient as herself?

Some conscientious women try to remedy this state of things by treating the girls they take into their homes as “one of the family.” This may answer well sometimes, but it has its drawbacks, both for the girl and the “family.” Husband and wife, brother and sister, inevitably find the constant presence of a stranger with whom they have little in common very irksome. While the girl herself is equally conscious of restraint when forced to spend her leisure time with her employers. She would usually infinitely prefer the solitude of the kitchen, if combined with a good fire, a comfortable chair and a story book.

Among the girls I have spoken to on the subject I have not found “socialist” households popular. One girl I met refused to stay in such a place for longer than three days, because she “never had the kitchen to herself.” Another told me that she found it intensely boring to take meals with the family, because she was not interested in the things they talked about.I think that the ultimate solution of the “servant problem” will not be that every woman will do all her own housework, but that domestic work will become, on the one hand, very much simplified and, on the other, will be put on the same footing as teaching, nursing or secretarial work. That we are beginning to move in this direction is evidenced by the coming into existence of schools of domestic economy, to which “ladies” do not disdain to resort for training. This will undoubtedly result in domestic labour becoming a much higher-priced commodity than it is now, the housewife will have to pay at least as much for three hours help per day as she now does for nine hours, but the fact that the help will be skilled, combined with the greater simplicity of housework, will surely more than compensate for this.

But what is the homemaker of limited means, who must have some help, to do under present conditions? This we must consider next month.

Florence Daniel.