HOUSEHOLD HELP. 361 



German did, that '*a vife is cheaper dan a vomans," and 

 that a mother's love and care can not be duplicated for 

 their children. 



Out-door labor can be supplied readily enough. There 

 are very few colored men who can not plow, chop wood, 

 and readily earn the wages asked, from $15 to $20 a month. 

 But, as we have seen, the in-door work wears a far differ- 

 ent aspect : it is a problem that presses for a solution. 



In Florida are thousands of housekeepers crying out, 

 " Give us servants, or we die !" and in the frozen, crowded 

 North and East are other thousands of intelligent, capable, 

 respectable young women, crying out, ''Give us work, or 

 we die ! " — American girls, the daughters of hard-working 

 farmers or mechanics, who would fain help themselves and 

 their parents if they could, who are quite willing to "go 

 out to service," but whose better educated and more refined 

 tastes shrink from close social contact with the rougher, 

 uneducated, foreign class of servants, who at present have 

 almost a monopoly of such work at the I^orth. 



Now, here in Florida we have just the very homes they 

 are looking for, Avhere the work is not too heavy, and where 

 they would stand " alone in their glory," entirely free from 

 any possible contact with the ordinary Northern servant ; 

 and how more than welcome would be the work of their 

 neat, deft hands to the discouraged, overworked, worn-out 

 housekeeper, who has been compelled to be "all things to 

 every body" in the household. It is just this latter point 

 that makes it so hard : not a wife only, not a mother only, 

 not a chamber-maid only, not a maker and mender of gar- 

 ments only, not the caterer and care-taker only, not the 

 cook and dish-washer only, but all these things combined. 

 But how to bring them together, these two classes, who so 

 sorely need each other, yet are blindly groping in the dark 

 along two diverging roads ? 



