Wanted: a Young Woman to Do Housework | Page 7

have special
meals prepared for them and served in a dining-room of their own at
hours which do not conflict with the meals of the family. But this does
not always meet with gratitude or even due appreciation; the disdainful
way in which Bridget often complains of the food too generously
provided for her is well known.
A chambermaid came one day to her employer and said she did not

wish to complain but thought it better to say frankly that she was not
satisfied with what she was getting to eat in her house: she wanted to
have roast beef for dinner more often, at least three or four times a
week, for she did not care to eat mutton, nor steak, and never ate pork,
nor could she, to quote her own words "fill up on bread and vegetables
as the other girls did in the kitchen."
Then, and only then, did her employer wake up with a start to the
realization of the true position every housewife occupies in the eyes of
her household employees. They evidently regard her in the light of a
caterer; she does the marketing not only for her family but for them too.
She pays a cook high wages, not only to cook meals for herself and
family, but for her employees also.
For the first time in her life, this housewife asked herself the following
questions: Why should she allow her household employees to live in
her house? Why should she consent to board them at her expense? Why
should she continue to place at their disposal a bedroom each, a private
bathroom, a sitting room or a dining room? Why should she allow them
to make use of her kitchen and laundry to do their own personal
washing, even providing them with soap and starch, irons and an
ironing board, fuel and gas? Why should she do all this for them when
no business employer, man or woman, ever does it? Was it simply
because her mother, her grandmother, her great-grandmother had been
in the habit of doing it?
This awakening was the beginning of the end of all the trouble and
expense which she had endured for so many years in connection with
the boarding and lodging of her "servants." To-day she has no
"servants"; she has household employees who come to her house each
day, just as other employees go each day to their place of employment.
They take no meals in her house, and her housekeeping expenses have
diminished as much as her own comfort has increased. Her employees
are better and more efficient than any she ever had under the old régime,
and nothing could persuade her to return to her former methods of
housekeeping.
The cost of providing meals for domestic employees varies according

to the mode of living of each individual family, and of late it has been
the subject of much discussion. Some important details, however, seem
to be generally overlooked, for the cost of the food is the only thing
usually considered by the average housewife. To this first expense must
be added the cost of pots and pans for cooking purposes; even under
careful management, kitchen utensils are bound to wear out and must
be replaced. Then there is the cost of the extra fuel or gas or electricity
required to cook the food, nor must one forget to count the extra work
of the cook to prepare the meals, and of the kitchen maid or of some
other maid to wash up the dishes after each meal served to employees.
There is also the expense of buying kitchen plates and dishes, glasses,
cups and saucers, knives and forks, etc. Every housewife is in the habit
of providing kitchenware for the use of her employees.
The total sum of all these items would astonish those who think that the
actual expense of giving meals to household employees is not a very
great one and is limited to the cost of the food they eat; even this last
expense is considerably augmented by the careless and wasteful way in
which provisions are generally handled by those who do not have to
pay for them. When ways and means are discussed among housewives
to reduce the present "high cost of living," it would be well to advise all
women to try the experiment of having their household employees live
outside their place of employment. The result from an economic point
of view alone is amazing, and the relief it brings the housewife who is
no longer obliged to provide food and sleeping accommodations for her
employees is so great that one wonders why she has been willing to
burden herself with these responsibilities for so many years.
There was once a time when women did