Wanted: a Young Woman to Do Housework | Page 9

she is expected to
give her employer is never specified. She is simply told that she must
be on duty early in the morning before the family arises, and that she

may consider herself off duty as soon as the family for whom she is
working has withdrawn for the night. Is it surprising that under such
conditions working women are not very enthusiastic over the domestic
proposition to-day?
A household employee ought to have her hours of work as clearly
defined as if she were a business employee, and there is no reason why
the eight-hour labor law could not be applied as successfully to
housework as to any other enterprise.
Work in business is generally divided into two periods. Yet this
division can not always be effected, and in railroad and steamship
positions, in post offices, upon trolley lines, in hotels, in hospitals, and
in other cases too numerous to mention, where work must follow a
continuous round, the working hours are divided into more than two
periods, according to the nature of the work and the interests of the
employer, not however exceeding a fixed number of hours per day or
per week.
It would be far better for the housewife as well as for her employees, if
the housework were limited in a similar way. But with the introduction
of the eight-hour law in the home, certain new conditions would have
to be rigidly enforced in order to ensure success.
Firstly, the employee should be made to understand that during the
eight hours of work agreed upon, she must be engaged in actual work
for her employer.
Secondly, when an employee is off duty, she should not be allowed to
remain with or to talk to the other employee or employees who are still
on duty. When her work is finished, she ought to leave her employer's
house. The non-observance of either of these two points produces a
demoralizing effect.
Thirdly, a general knowledge of cooking, and serving meals, of
cleaning and taking proper care of the rooms of a house, of attending
correctly to the telephone and the door bell, of sewing, of washing and
ironing, and of taking care of children, should be insisted upon from all

household employees.
There are many housewives who will state that this last condition is
impossible, that it is asking too much from one employee; and since it
is hard to-day to find a good cook, it will be still harder to find one who
understands other household work as well. But those who jump to these
conclusions have never tried the experiment. It is not only possible but
practicable.
Judging from the ordinary intelligence displayed by the average cook
and housemaid in the majority of private homes to-day, it ought not to
seem incredible that the duties of both could be easily mastered by
young women of ordinary ability. A woman who knows how to prepare
and cook a meal, may easily learn the correct way of serving it, and the
possession of this knowledge ought not to prevent her from being
capable of sweeping a room, or making a bed, or taking care of
children.
It is above all in families where only a few employees are kept, that the
housewife will quickly realize how much it is to her immediate
advantage to employ women who know how to do all kinds of
housework, instead of having those who make a specialty of one
particular branch.
The specialization of work in private houses has been carried to such an
extreme that it has become one of the greatest drawbacks to successful
housekeeping in small families. Under this system of specialization, a
household employee is not capable in emergency of taking up
satisfactorily the work of another. Even if she be able to do it, she often
professes ignorance for fear it may prolong her own hours of labor, or
because, as she sometimes frankly admits, she does not consider it "her
place." The chambermaid does not know how to cook, the cook does
not know how to do the chamberwork, the waitress, in her turn, can do
neither cooking nor chamberwork, and the annoyance to the whole
family caused by the temporary absence of one of its regular employees
is enough to spoil for the time being all the traditional comforts of
home.

In hotels and public institutions, and in large private establishments,
where the work demands a numerous staff of employees, the
specialization of the work is the only means for its successful
accomplishment, but in the average home requiring from one to four or
five employees no system could be worse from an economic point of
view, nor less conducive to the comfort of the family.
Specialization produces another bad effect, for it prevents the existence
of