66 
House & Garden- 
THE DISAPPEARING SERVANT PROBLEM 
IF hie h Has Disappeared Because Servants Have Disappeared—How This Happened 
and JFhai American JFomen Can Do About It 
A STRIKE is on in this country about 
which the newspapers as yet print few 
headlines. America has scarcely awak¬ 
ened to the seriousness of its march, but gradu¬ 
ally, the inroads of its advance are beginning 
to be felt. 
For more than ten years, without organiza¬ 
tion, w'ithout voicing demands, without form¬ 
ing a union, the domestic workers—whom we 
liave been calling “servants” but whom our 
fathers and mothers referred to as the “hired 
help”—have been walking out on their em¬ 
ployers. Suddenly, from one end of the United 
States to the other, home-managers are star¬ 
ing at empty kitchens, at vacant laundries, and 
at unmade beds. 
'I'he “servant problem” has ceased to e.xist; 
there are no servants. 
Perhaps, on second thought, that last asser¬ 
tion is not quite accurate. There are a few 
servants, but they actually emphasize the acute 
state of affairs into which the home-help situa¬ 
tion has fallen. The servants who still remain 
are, for the most part, older women who have 
been so long in service that they “have the 
habit” and would be lost in a factory or in a 
store, or are so old that they could not compete 
for an industrial job. Add to them a few of 
the foreign born girls who were trained in 
domestic service in their own countries, and a 
larger element of girls who are content for the 
time being to “work out”, but who are gradu¬ 
ally being absorbed into the industrial life of 
the factory, the hotel and the department store. 
Indeed, the character and capability of the 
servant market today can be gauged accurately 
by the 1919 report from the New York intelli¬ 
gence agencies whicli states that the average 
length of time their applicants remained in 
a home was fourteen days! 
T his silent strike began when .America 
started to be prosperous, and the home as 
a business was neglected for the bridge table 
as a relaxation. Then it was that the “hired 
girl” became the “maid” and the “hired help” 
referred to as “servants”. The writer can re¬ 
member when, as a little girl, she sat fof- hours 
in a great kitchen and listened to stories from 
the lips of quiet-voiced Irish girls, and heard 
songs sung in the accent of New England val¬ 
leys. They were the “hired girls” and still 
carried the dignity and the self-respect that 
went hand in hand with the pioneering spirit 
which America had not yet sold to her in¬ 
creasing money bags. They were 
also “American”, and had not yet 
given place to the Slavic immi¬ 
grant. 
Yet at that time the spirit of 
revolt was stirring. The depart¬ 
ment store and its bargain counters 
were being talked about, and here 
and there factories were offering 
inducements and the status of the 
domestic helper was being ex¬ 
amined through the wrong end of 
the opera glass. 
In 1910 the census figures show 
that of the twenty million homes 
in the United States 1,600,000 em¬ 
ployed some kind of “domestic 
L. K. C. OLDS 
help” and that 1,900,000 women were engaged 
in “domestic service”. This figures about one 
servant to a family. The 1920 census figures, 
now being analyzed, will show a startling 
change in ten years. 
T he war, of course, was the final and most 
impelling factor in this walkout of the 
liired girl. Suffrage had something to do with 
it, but the greatest agent which played into 
the hands of the social discontent of the do¬ 
mestic helper was the call of the store and the 
factory. It was to this that the war opened 
wide the gate. In the war woman found her¬ 
self. Suffrage had given her impetus and 
confidence. War showed her the way to place, 
to pay and to permanence. The servant of 
A-esterday who cooked the dinner while we 
jdayed bridge, who dressed the children while 
we danced at the cabaret, who made the beds 
while we attended the lecture on Parenthood 
in Patagonia and Its Needs, is today earning 
her $25 in a silk glove factory, or behind a 
counter or running an elevator in our hus¬ 
band’s office building. She Avill never return 
to the range, or the nursery or the coverlet 
again—as a servant. 
So let us make up our minds to it once and 
for all. The “servant problem” is wdped off 
the blackboard. It is no more. And this be¬ 
ing so, W’here are we, and what are we going 
to do about it? 
T he responsibility comes home to the Amer¬ 
ican w’omen. Yet we are not wholly to 
blame for the condition which has befallen us. 
We were the victims of a period whose values 
w-ere figured wrong side up, like inverted pyra¬ 
mids balancing for a time, but bound to fall. 
They have fallen, and they must be set up 
again. This time let us face the values hon¬ 
estly and set them up four-squared to last and 
to endure. 
Did you ever ask your husband why he has 
so little trouble in his office with the stenog¬ 
rapher or salesgirl supply? It is true that in 
these tw'o occupations there is a shifting ele¬ 
ment, but it is by no means as serious as in the 
domestic class. The answer to this question 
goes to the ver}^ root of our home-help diffi¬ 
culty. 
The stenographer is proud of her work. 
The salesgirl in the big department store is 
proud of her position. The factory worker 
is proud of her skill. She shares that most 
pow^erful and most subtle of mass forces, class 
consciousness. 
The hired girl never had a chance to de¬ 
velop any class consciousness. She was looked 
down upon, she did what we refused to do. 
ourselves. And now, by one of those gigantic 
strokes of irony in which history delights, she, 
the neglected, the despised, is quietly and with 
the dignity of silence and the glacier, working 
upon the American home the reform which we 
home-managers must undergo if the home is 
to be kept safe for democracy. 
B e fair to the hired girl and to the arbitrary 
cook. She may have seemed impudent; 
perhaps she Avas ignorant; maybe she Avas in¬ 
efficient. These three adjectives represent the 
standard reasons given for discharging her. 
But was she wholly to blame? 
Did we know more than she about the things 
\Ne hired her to do for us? 
Did anybody train her as a stenographer 
is trained, or as a salesgirl is educated nowa¬ 
days in her job? 
The solution of the problem lies in spe¬ 
cialized education. Not only the home-maker 
must be taught but the whole business of do¬ 
mestic education must be put on a practical 
basis. 
A few years ago a far-sighted and wise 
group of idealists suggested and were ready to 
supply the capital for endowing a department 
of domestic engineering in one of our great 
Eastern technical schools. Their idea Avas to 
educate domestic experts Avith the same sure¬ 
ness of aim, thoroughness and knowledge as 
electrical or construction engineers are edu¬ 
cated, and then to let them apply their train¬ 
ing to the economy and construction of the 
home in the same measure as the electrical 
expert applies his training to wiring a Wool- 
Avorth building or a construction engineer to. 
bridging the St. LaAvrence. 
That was an idea of yesterday, yet unful¬ 
filled today. Subsequent developments have 
proved it sound. Only the other day I listened 
to the suggestion that, if the women voters of 
America wish it, they can establish a national 
compulsory training course in home service for 
young women on a plan similar to the proposed 
system of compulsory military training for our 
young men! 
All this is for tomorroAV. Today’s situation 
demands that something be done. What can 
Ave do? The servant problem is ended for 
the servant has departed. 
I cannot tell you how to pro¬ 
cure the unprocurable. A million¬ 
aire AAdth the AA'ealth of the Indies 
may be able to hire a butler, a chef, 
and a retinue of retainers; some do. 
But princely wages pile up a fear¬ 
ful overhead — and then fail to 
guarantee permanent service. The 
home-manager of moderate income 
is helpless. But Ave can do this: 
We can think seriously of this 
great and pressing problem, and by 
so doing hasten its solution. 
There are already a few long- 
range thinkers and organizations 
{Continued on page 82) 
