There are two things which each woman can do toward solving this problem; one is to find out all she can about it in general, and the other is to deal as wisely and calmly as she may with the particular servant or servants in her care.

One of the most obvious things about the situation is that there is something very much the matter. Listen for only a few minutes to a group of women talking about their servants and you will hear a most disheartening list of complaints. Discount this list somewhat on the grounds that people are inclined to magnify their troubles, and then consider how it compares with the complaints made of the "hands" in a factory or in a mill. There will be many points of likeness and identity, but in such a comparison one serious difference between the problem of domestic service and other labour problems cannot fail to become apparent. This difference is that each domestic servant comes into individual and personal relation with her employer and lives in her employer's home, distinctly affecting with her disposition and behaviour the family life.

One can vividly realize the peculiar troubles which can arise from this situation by picturing the anxieties and annoyances that the superintendent of a mill or a factory would suffer if he were suddenly required to become the head of a lodging house for his employees.

Our situation is not quite so serious in regard to numbers as his would be, but, none the less, we have constantly to take into our homes women who differ from ourselves in nationality, class, education, personal habits, tastes, standards—in fact, in so many things that a daily and unavoidable relationship is most difficult and irksome.

Nor are the trials of this relationship entirely borne by the mistress. Is it not a fact to be considered deeply, not to say humbly, that girls prefer to work in factories and stores for poor wages and to live in wretched lodging houses, rather than to receive good wages and live in our homes? What is there in this relationship of domestic service which the workers on their side so much dislike?

Also, a maid feels the incongruity we have mentioned between the family in which she lives and herself. A maid-of-all-work, especially, can hardly fail to be very lonely. The lack of fixed work hours in this service deprives the maid of personal liberty and of any protection from unreasonable demands. From morning till night and from night till morning she is at the mercy of the whims and temper of another woman. She knows that in this occupation she will be ranked lower socially than her acquaintances who do not "live out." She knows, also, how little respect her work commands even from those who are benefited by it. Even the kindest of us sometimes say, "She looks like a cook" or, "I feel as if I were dressed for the intelligence office." If we speak like that of an occupation, is it surprising that women wish to avoid it?

It is not hard to deduce from the complaints made on both sides that the problem of domestic service is a problem of personal relationship. Its solution then depends upon the discovery of a possible and wise relation between mistress and maid, which it will become the general purpose to establish and preserve.

At least two alternatives lie already before those who would discover this relationship. One is to recognize and endeavour to perfect the system of domestic service which has been for centuries in use; the other is to develop and establish a new system which lies as a possibility in the minds of many people and has been sporadically tried. For convenience, I shall name these two and call the first, the patriarchal system, the second, the business system.

The patriarchal system of domestic service has been in use some time. It probably began when the first woman brought the first man his food for love's sake. Then one day she was ill or the baby needed her and she asked some other woman to take it to him for the sake of neighbourliness. Then perhaps in a time of dearth it occured to an impoverished woman to serve another for the sake of food and clothes—and so it all began.

Up to a very recent time servants were often permanent members of the household. The phrase "a family servant" and a very few representatives of the class are still with us. The relation between such servants and their masters and mistresses was a personal and moral one. At its best, the servant gave time, work, strength, loyalty and love, for life; the master and mistress gave food, clothes, shelter, protection, nursing, affection and a home, for life.

One cannot say how widely this ideal prevailed, but certainly it once existed in thought and fact as it does not now. Times have changed, have they not? And changed so quickly that we hardly know just where we are in regard to servants. Servants on the one side, masters and mistresses on the other side, have dropped the responsibility out of their relationship and yet they fondly expect other things to remain unchanged. One woman complains that her servants are "disrespectful," another that they are "ungrateful," another that "they do not care anything about her." Suppose a servant should suddenly turn and ask us, "Do you care anything about me? Do you know about my childhood? Do you know how many brothers and sisters I have, and whether my father and mother are yet alive? Do you know what things make me glad or gay, what interests or hopes I have? If I am faithful to you, will you teach me and help me in my ignorance and my sins, and at last protect my helpless old age?"

If your cook should suddenly turn on you with these questions—on you, who own to having fifteen cooks in two months, or even on you who grieve because servants are not respectful, would not either of you discharge her at once and say you were "never so insulted in your life?"

And yet if the patriarchal system of domestic service is to work, we must be able to answer earnestly, "yes," to these questions, and the servant on her side must make the family life and interests her chief concern. She must be like "Black Lize" who lies buried at the feet of her mistress in a northern cemetery, and who told some of her people that she did not leave "the family" after the war as they had done, she "stayed, and put up with things."

Or she must be like two Irish saints whom I know, devout women each consecrated to the service of a family. One hears their feet on the stairs at five in the morning going out to Church, and again going up to bed late at night after the last young mistress is undressed and comfortably at rest. They live here or there as others choose; they go out or stay in, sleep or stay awake, wait long or hurry madly as other people wish; they are the chosen companions of the ill, the sad and the difficult members of the family; they have given up their own family ties to share the fate of another family; they have no end in life except to serve.

This patriarchal system asks a good deal of mere human creatures, does it not? And one cannot say positively what the business system will ask because it has not been tried, but it seems probable that it would ask as much only in different ways.

It is time, though, to consider what the requirements of the business system might be, because many people think that domestic service will before long undergo some such change as has come over the professions of teaching and nursing in the last half-century. Any one who will read the novels of Miss BrontÉ and of Miss Austen, of Thackeray and of Dickens with special attention to the governesses and nurses they contain, is likely to feel surprise, however well he may know the histories of these professions.

Particularly consider "Shirley" for governesses and "Martin Chuzzlewit" for nurses and then picture the teachers and nurses of to-day, and it will not be hard to believe that in fifty years the profession of domestic service may also be so changed in status that no woman will feel it a social descent to employ herself therein.

What will the relation between worker and employer be then, and what will be required of each?

The relation would doubtless be that of a business contract such as one has with a teacher, a typewriter or a nurse. The employer could not ask for respect, but for business courtesy; she could not expect gratitude, but rather skilled service for value received. Her responsibility for her employee would consist in paying her wages, in providing her with "sanitary surroundings," in requiring only a definite number of hours of work from her, and in regarding her with the same sort of human consideration which is used toward other wage earners. In all probability these things would be required of the housekeeper by law, as they are in greater or less degree required now of employers of labour. Women would have to know more about housekeeping than many do now, to be able to direct professional workers. They would have to give up using the word servant and the manner and feeling which sometimes go with it, or their employee would probably seek another position.

The employee would not be a member of the household; she would usually sleep out of the house and come in for work hours, she would not take her meals with the family any more than she does now but it would be for the same reason that your husband's superintendent or secretary does not go out to lunch with him. She would expect the wages which were customary for her training and work hours. She would not be expected to have any especial attachment for her employers other than that arising from the fact that they fulfilled their business contracts and treated her courteously. She could not expect to have incompetency ignored, nor to learn her business from those who were paying her the wages of a skilled worker.

Would you like these requirements any better than those of the patriarchal system?

These are just two sketches of the possibilities of an old system and of the probabilities of a new one.

The problem, as you must personally meet it, unsolved, unclassified, little understood and a good deal discouraging is even now perhaps getting dinner in the kitchen. Probably the best plan for dealing with her at present is to use a little of both systems. It is wise to be very business-like about some things. "Days out," for instance, ought not to be interfered with except in case of family calamity. If the maid chooses to spend them at home, they should be as much hers as if she had gone out. Sanitary surroundings are another thing. I hope that if I looked into your maids' room I should not see that there was no light, no heat, a double bed for two maids who are strangers to each other and the most meagre washing conveniences. It is useless to say that it is better than their homes, it is not their homes, it is your home. When an inspector goes to see about factory conditions, he does not say, "It's well enough, it's as good as their homes." Another thing about which we should be business-like is the matter of hours. We should be as particular that our maids do not work sixteen hours as if we had a Trades' Union compelling us to be. A business-like point-of-view would also preserve us from despising a necessary and useful occupation. I have mentioned the careless way we speak of it sometimes, but what I think really matters more, is that some women would rather put up with lying, stealing, and immorality in a maid than take the risk of having to do her work. On the maid's "day out," likewise, some of us do as little of her work and do it as slightingly as we can, and she knows it.

But we shall need the patriarchal method in dealing with maids personally. They are of many nationalities; they are untrained, untaught; they have different customs, different manners, often different feelings from ourselves. We shall need much knowledge and human sympathy to understand them; much patience and quietness to teach them. We shall have to explain things which are new to them a great many times and very simply. We shall have to tell them definitely a few things which we require, and we must keep them and ourselves faithfully to these requirements. We must not lose our tempers with them because this lessens our authority, and besides, it is inexcusable to lose one's temper with a subordinate. We must not expect sympathy from them in the trouble they give us. We shall not get it any more than we would get such sympathy from children in school.

It is sometimes a help over a puzzling place to remember that this work has a resemblance to the work of teaching. There is required of us the same willingness to wait long for results, the same patience with ignorance and clumsiness and defectiveness, the same quiet firmness toward carelessness and insolence.

Many teachers have to begin to teach when they still know very little. They learn as they work, and so can housekeeper teachers. If the cook knows more about her work than you do, by all means learn from her and take her advice often, but do not allow her on this account to rule the household, or to decide about family arrangements which are not in her department.

Do you know that letter of Saint Paul's written to his friend Philemon on behalf of a runaway slave? It is an irresistible letter. Such a mingling of loving confidence and insistent authority is hardly to be found elsewhere. And also, with a little thinking, a little putting together piece by piece, one gets a whole, vivid dramatic story from this letter.

But its importance to us is that it is a letter written about a servant, and has more in it than people have yet been able to put into practice, though they have made a little progress in about nineteen hundred years.