Wanted: a Young Woman to Do Housework | Page 7

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 r��gime, 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 not go out alone to eat in a restaurant, but to-day one sees about as many women as men eating their midday meal in public. If women engaged in general business prove themselves thus capable of self care, there seems to be no reason why household employees, who often receive higher wages than shop girls and stenographers, should not be able to do the same. They would enjoy their meals more outside, albeit the food given them in their employer's house is undoubtedly of a better quality;