Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework: Business principles applied to houseworkBarker, C. Hélène
General
Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework: Business principles applied to housework
Barker, C. Hélène
Home economics; Household employees
Why does she not adopt the methods of the business man in dealing with
his employees? The advisability of having household employees live
outside their place of employment is so apparent that it ought to appeal
to every one. There would be no longer the necessity of putting aside
and of furnishing certain rooms of the house for their accommodation:
a practice which in the majority of families is quite a serious
inconvenience and always an expense. In small homes where only one maid
is kept, it may not make much difference to give up one room to her, but
where several employees are needed, it means very often that many rooms
must be used as sleeping apartments for them, frequently too a sitting
room or a special dining room is given them. This is not all, for the
rooms must be furnished and kept clean and warm, and supplied with an
unlimited amount of gas and electricity. In many families the boarding
and lodging of household employees cause as much anxiety and expense to
the housewife as to provide for her own family.
And why does she do it? Why does she consent to take upon herself so
much extra trouble for nothing? For, although she offers good food and
a bed besides excellent wages to all who work for her, she is the most
poorly served of all employers to-day.
In the great feudal castles of the Middle Ages it was not deemed
safe for women to venture forth alone, even in the daytime, and so
those engaged in housework were naturally compelled to live under their
Master's roof, eating at his table and sitting "below the salt." But
the Master and the Serf of feudal times disappeared long ago, only the
Mistress and her "servants" remain.
To-day, however, "servants" no longer sit at their employer's table;
they remain in the kitchen, where as a rule they are given to eat what
is left from the family meals. Some housewives, from motives of kindness
and consideration for the welfare of those in their employ, have special
meals prepared for them and served in a dining-room of their own at
hours which do not conflict with the meals of the family. But this does
not always meet with gratitude or even due appreciation; the disdainful
way in which Bridget often complains of the food too generously provided
for her is well known.
A chambermaid came one day to her employer and said she did not wish to
complain but thought it better to say frankly that she was not satisfied
with what she was getting to eat in her house: she wanted to have roast
beef for dinner more often, at least three or four times a week, for she
did not care to eat mutton, nor steak, and never ate pork, nor could
she, to quote her own words "fill up on bread and vegetables as the
other girls did in the kitchen."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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