39 2 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



they prefer. They are not to be found as nurses, seamstresses, and 

 chambermaids in wealthy families, but rather as the sole workers in 

 small and simple country families, where they have the kitchen to 

 themselves, and the contrast between the social position of themselves 

 and their employers is not so great. 



In all such matters feeling is quicker than reason. Every woman 

 instinctively feels that, in exchanging the position of an outside worker 

 for that of domestic service, she descends one step in the social scale, 

 and approaches one degree nearer to personal servitude. Upon what 

 does this servile nature of domestic service depend ? It is not due 

 simply to difference of wealth and social standing ; that difference 

 exists everywhere between the employer and the employed. It is due 

 to the conditions under which the work is done in the house, each 

 servant dependent upon the mistress in the details of her personal life, 

 doing work more or less undefined in its nature, amount, and time of 

 doing. These conditions imply a direct, perpetual, personal subordi- 

 nation, necessarily servile. It is the absence of these conditions that 

 renders non-domestic work independent, instead of servile. The limi- 

 tation of the work within certain hours, outside of which all subordi- 

 nation or accountability to the employer ceases, the freedom of per- 

 sonal life thus gained, the more defined nature of the work, its larger 

 scale, the numerous woi'kers engaged in it all these characteristics 

 render the relation between employer and employed a business, not a 

 personal one. 



We can only imagine the servile character absent from domestic 

 service in a state of society so simple and homogeneous that the work 

 of each family was done by its own women ; and one in which there 

 were so few women not required at home that they could be absorbed 

 by those families in which there was a paucity of women, and there 

 work upon an equal footing with the wives and daughters. Is there 

 anything in the tendencies of modern life pointing to such a state of 

 society ? Are they not sweeping us in an entirely different direction ? 

 Would it not be more in accordance with the forces shaping modern 

 life to suppose that the problem of domestic service will be solved 

 rather by changing the mode in which domestic work is done, than the 

 relative position of mistress and servant ? Will not such a change be 

 the natural result of a continuance of the process which has already 

 transferred one occupation after another from the sphere of domestic 

 work to that of business organization ? Is it not inevitable that all 

 the material arrangements of life shall ultimately thus be taken pos- 

 session of ? 



There is no reason why what is now done by domestic service should 

 always continue to be so done. As weaving and tailoring have gone, 

 so the making of women's and children's clothing is now going. There 

 is no reason inherent in the nature of things why washing, cooking, 

 mending, etc., should not go also, and be done by business organiza- 



