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
The pleasure brought by the advent of a holiday into the lives of
the working people can hardly be overestimated, and it is doubtful
if holidays would ever have become legalized had they not proved of
distinct value to the masses. To have one day each week free from the
steady grind of one's dally work is a great relief, but to have a
holiday is something still better, for it usually means a day set apart
for general rejoicing.
Why do all housewives persistently disregard the right of the household
employee to have legal holidays? The reason generally brought forward
is that many families need their employees more on a holiday than on
any other day. In many cases this is quite true on account of family
reunions or the entertaining of friends, but very often the housewife
could easily dispense with the services of her employees on a holiday.
She does not do it, however, or only occasionally, because it is not the
custom to grant holidays to women who work in private homes.
If it be impossible, on account of the exigencies of home life, to grant
all legal holidays to household employees, there are many different ways
of planning the housework so that other days may be given instead.
Sometimes the day before or the day after a holiday will give as much
pleasure as the day itself. A woman who is at the head of a home has
many opportunities of coming into close contact with her employees; she
can easily ascertain their wishes in this respect and act accordingly.
It is more the fact of being entitled to a holiday than to have it on
a certain day that ought to be emphasized.
Domestic employees would be benefited by having these extra days of
liberty, just as much as all other employees. A trial is all that is
necessary to show how much better a household employee will work after
having a holiday. She returns to her duties with renewed strength
and the knowledge that she is no longer forced to play the rôle of
Cinderella gives her a fresh interest in life. Unfortunately the
housewife has been accustomed for so many years to have her "servants"
work for her all day long on every day of the week, with only a few
hours off duty "on every other Sunday and on every other Thursday," that
she is rather inclined to resent such an innovation as the observance
of legal holidays in domestic labor. She fails to perceive that by her
present attitude she shows herself in a very unfavorable light as an
employer, for the lack of holidays is decidedly one of the reasons for
which housework is shunned to-day.
Business men have evolved a satisfactory and workable plan by which
their employees are neither overworked nor deprived of all legal
holidays, although frequently the work they are engaged in can not be
suspended day or night even for an hour.
It remains for women of the leisure class, and to this class belong all
those who can afford to pay to have their housework done for them, to
adopt a similar plan in their homes.
EXTRA PAY FOR OVERTIME
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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