THE INDUSTRIAL POSITION OF WOMEN. 391 



of the difficulty incident to finding well-paid work does not come from 

 our domestic servants. The Irish girl finds work from the day of her 

 landing, and begins almost immediately to send remittances of money 

 to her friends at home. The American girl, thrown upon her own re- 

 sources, struggles miserably to keep soul and body together upon the 

 scanty wages of the shop or the factory. Yet so decided is the disin- 

 clination to domestic service, the largest and most profitable field for 

 women to work, that American women have virtually abandoned it. 

 The Irish girls gradually absorb the same distaste, and are less avail- 

 able as they become Americanized. "We already hear the suggestion 

 in favor of the Chinese, that they are needed to supplant the Irish serv- 

 ants, as the Irish have taken the place of Americans. 



Is not the cause of this dislike to be found in the servile nature of 

 domestic service, which renders it necessary to bring in a constant suc- 

 cession of servile labor to fill it ? Is it not just in proportion as women 

 rise above the servile tone of feeling that they become restive in the 

 position, and will sacrifice comfort and pecuniary advantage to escape 

 from it ? Almost every feature of domestic service partakes of this 

 repellent character. On entering it, the woman, like the slave, drops 

 the surname which marks her as a member of a family of a social con- 

 nection, for the personal name which sinks her at once into a rank 

 below that in which social connection is recognized. Reversing the 

 natural order of things, the woman addresses the children and young 

 men of the family by terms of respect implying superiority, while they 

 address her by the familiar name implying inferiority. She abandons 

 family life, having no daily intercourse with her relatives as do out-door 

 workers living in their own homes. She loses her personal freedom, 

 for she is always under the authority of her employer. She can never 

 leave the house without permission ; there is no hour of the day in 

 which she is not at the bidding of her mistress ; there is no time in her 

 life, except the few stated seasons of absence, for which she may not 

 be called to account. Though her accommodations are probably far 

 better than she would have at home, their relative inferiority renders 

 them less acceptable than the poorer quarters in which she shares freely 

 the best there is to have. Every distinction of dress which is a badge 

 of domestic service is universally felt to be derogatory. It is creditable 

 to a man to refuse any domestic position that entails the wearing of a 

 livery, while the uniform of even the lowest ranks of the public ser- 

 vice of the policeman or the postman is assumed with satisfaction. 

 The white cap and apron that become almost a uniform when worn 

 by the graduates of the training-schools for nurses, as the mark of a 

 superior class, are assumed with reluctance as an accompaniment of 

 domestic service. 



Precisely in the degree in which house-work has this character it is 

 shunned. When American women do engage in domestic work out of 

 their own families, it is not the easiest and best-paid positions which 



