Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework written by C. Helene Barker
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C. Helene Barker >> Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework
There are many ways of regulating the housework, as will be seen in the
schedules at the end of this book, in order to give one day of freedom
each week to household employees without causing much inconvenience to
the housewife. By continuing to refuse this privilege to women employed
in domestic labor, housekeeping is becoming more and more complicated.
Already it is such a common occurrence in some cities and in many parts
of the country, not to find any woman willing to do housework, that
many housewives are beginning to think that their future comfort in all
household matters will depend entirely upon new labor saving devices and
upon the help of the community rather than upon the increased knowledge
and skill of domestic employees.
There exists a prevailing impression, too, that housework has lost its
dignity, and that at this period of the world's social history, it is
impossible to restore it for women have stepped above it. But this is
not true. The fact is that housework has remained stationary while other
work has gained in freedom and dignity. Without noisy protestations, or
indignant speeches delivered in public, women have slowly and silently,
one by one, deserted housework as a career on account of the narrowing,
servile, and unjust conditions inseparable from it at the present day.
Let these conditions be removed and new regulations based upon modern
business principles take their place, and then it will be seen that
housework has never lost its dignity, and the very women who abandoned
it will be the first to choose it again as a means of earning their
livelihood.
As a proof of this, the following experience may be cited of a New Work
woman who wished to obtain a domestic employee for general housework.
She went to several employment agencies and at the end of a week she
had seen four applicants; three were foreigners and spoke English so
brokenly that they could never have been left in charge of a telephone.
Not one of the four was worth considering after investigating their
references, and these were the only women she could find willing to do
general housework. Upon the advice of a friend, the perplexed housewife
advertised in one of the daily newspapers, but only a few women applied
for the position and these were far from being satisfactory. She then
inserted another advertisement expressed in the following words:
"Wanted: a young woman to help with housework, eight hours a day, six
days a week, sleep home. Apply by letter only."
This last clause was added to prevent any one from applying for the
position who could not write English, as it was absolutely necessary
that the person engaged to do the housework should be capable of
attending correctly to the telephone. On the same day the advertisement
appeared, eighty-five applications by letter were received, and twenty
more came the following day. All who wrote expressed their willingness
to fill the position of a domestic employee and to do anything in
the way of housework under the new conditions specified in the
advertisement. Only one stated she would do no washing. Many who replied
to this advertisement had occupied positions, which according to the
present standard, were far superior to housework; many, too, were
married women, experienced in all household work, and most anxious to
accept a position in a private family, a position that did not break up
their own home life.
The housewife was bewildered by the unexpected result of her
advertisement: the tables were turned at last. Instead of being one of
many looking in vain for a good domestic employee, she found that she
had now the advantage of being able to choose from more than a hundred
applicants one who would best suit her own peculiar needs.
The same advertisement has been inserted at different times and has
always brought the same remarkable result: from one hundred to one
hundred and sixty answers each time. It is true that all who present
themselves may not be efficient, but efficiency speedily comes to the
front when upon it alone depends a desirable position.
Two very important facts came to light through the help of this
advertisement; one was to find so many women eager to do housework when
it was limited to eight hours a day and six days a week, and the other
was to hear that they were willing to board and lodge themselves, as
well as work, for the same wages that "servants" are accustomed to
receive, although to the latter the housewife invariably gives gratis
all food and sleeping accommodations. These two facts alone prove beyond
a doubt that by applying business principles to housework all objections
to it as a means of earning a livelihood are removed.
It is quite likely that for a time the old fashioned "mistress," and the
old fashioned "servant" will continue to cling to past customs; but once
it is proved that domestic labor limited to eight hours a day and six
days a week, brings a better, more intelligent, more efficient class of
employees to the home, the most obdurate employer will change her mind.
No legislation is needed. If all who are trying to solve the "servant
question" will begin to practice the new plan in their own homes, the
future will take care of itself and the old ways will die a natural
death.
THE OBSERVANCE OF LEGAL HOLIDAYS IN THE HOME
The pleasure brought by the advent of a holiday into the lives of
the working people can hardly be overestimated, and it is doubtful
if holidays would ever have become legalized had they not proved of
distinct value to the masses. To have one day each week free from the
steady grind of one's dally work is a great relief, but to have a
holiday is something still better, for it usually means a day set apart
for general rejoicing.
Why do all housewives persistently disregard the right of the household
employee to have legal holidays? The reason generally brought forward
is that many families need their employees more on a holiday than on
any other day. In many cases this is quite true on account of family
reunions or the entertaining of friends, but very often the housewife
could easily dispense with the services of her employees on a holiday.
She does not do it, however, or only occasionally, because it is not the
custom to grant holidays to women who work in private homes.
If it be impossible, on account of the exigencies of home life, to grant
all legal holidays to household employees, there are many different ways
of planning the housework so that other days may be given instead.
Sometimes the day before or the day after a holiday will give as much
pleasure as the day itself. A woman who is at the head of a home has
many opportunities of coming into close contact with her employees; she
can easily ascertain their wishes in this respect and act accordingly.
It is more the fact of being entitled to a holiday than to have it on
a certain day that ought to be emphasized.
Domestic employees would be benefited by having these extra days of
liberty, just as much as all other employees. A trial is all that is
necessary to show how much better a household employee will work after
having a holiday. She returns to her duties with renewed strength
and the knowledge that she is no longer forced to play the role of
Cinderella gives her a fresh interest in life. Unfortunately the
housewife has been accustomed for so many years to have her "servants"
work for her all day long on every day of the week, with only a few
hours off duty "on every other Sunday and on every other Thursday," that
she is rather inclined to resent such an innovation as the observance
of legal holidays in domestic labor. She fails to perceive that by her
present attitude she shows herself in a very unfavorable light as an
employer, for the lack of holidays is decidedly one of the reasons for
which housework is shunned to-day.
Business men have evolved a satisfactory and workable plan by which
their employees are neither overworked nor deprived of all legal
holidays, although frequently the work they are engaged in can not be
suspended day or night even for an hour.
It remains for women of the leisure class, and to this class belong all
those who can afford to pay to have their housework done for them, to
adopt a similar plan in their homes.
EXTRA PAY FOR OVERTIME
When the plan for limiting housework to eight hours a day is discussed
for the first time, the following question invariably arises: What is
to be done when anything unusual happens to break the routine of the
regular work, as for instance, when sickness occurs, when friends arrive
unexpectedly, when a dinner party is given?
Sickness, of course, is unavoidable, but as a rule a trained nurse or
an extra household assistant is called in to help. Many times, however,
this is not absolutely necessary, or perhaps the family can not afford
to have outside help, and the extra work caused by sickness usually
falls upon the domestic employee whose hours of labor are more or less
prolonged in consequence. What ought to be done in such an event?
There is but one answer: Work that can not be accomplished within the
regular working hours already agreed upon should be paid for as
"overtime."
When it is a question of work being prolonged beyond the eight hours a
day by the entertaining of friends, one can only say that this ought not
to happen if the housewife planned her working schedule carefully. She
alone is responsible for her social engagements; she alone can make a
schedule that will enable her to have her friends come to luncheon or
dinner without prolonging the day's work beyond the hours agreed upon
between herself and her employees.
When friends arrive unexpectedly, however, or when a dinner party or
a big social function takes place in the home, an eight hour schedule
may be the cause of great inconvenience, unless a previous agreement
has been made to meet just such occasions. It is certain that some
compensation is due to all domestic employees for the extra long hours
of work caused by unusual events in the home life of their employers,
and many ways have been devised already to remunerate them.
In modern social life a custom of long standing still exists which makes
it almost compulsory for this remuneration to come out of the pocket,
not of the hostess, but of her guests. The unfortunate custom of giving
"tips" is not generally criticised very openly, but when viewed in the
light of reason and justice, it seems to be a very poor way of trying to
remove one of the present hardships connected with domestic labor. Why
should the housewife depend upon the generosity of her guests to help
her pay her household employees? She never demurs at the extra expense
entailed in giving luncheons and dinners in her friends' honor, nor in
taking them to places of interest and amusement. Why then should she
object to giving a little more money to her household employees upon
whose work the success of her hospitality so largely depends?
There are many women who entertain extensively, but they never
recompense a household employee for any extra work that may be demanded
from her on that account. They consider themselves fully justified in
exacting extra long hours of work because of the high wages they pay,
especially as it frequently happens that while the work is more on some
days, it is less on others, and they think in consequence that their
employees have no cause for complaint.
It is a mistake, however, to think that an employee who is obliged
to be on duty and has little or nothing to do on one day, is really
compensated for the extra hours of work she has been compelled to give
on other days. A saleswoman who on certain days has no customers or only
a few, is just as much "on duty" as if her work filled all her time, and
it is the same with a domestic employee. Indeed it is generally conceded
to be more irksome to remain idle at one's post than to be actively
engaged in work.
But on the other hand, there are many housewives who feel that they
ought to give their employees more pay for extra work especially when it
is connected with the entertaining of friends, and the following ways of
rewarding them have been tried with more or less success.
One plan that gained favor with several families was to give ten cents
to the cook and ten cents to the waitress every time a guest was invited
to a meal: ten cents for each guest. At the end of a month the ten cent
pieces had amounted to quite a sum of money.
Another plan that was tried in a small family was to give fifty cents to
the cook and fifty cents to each of the two waitresses for every dinner
party that took place, regardless of the number of guests. Still another
plan was to give at the end of the month, a two dollar, five dollar, or
ten dollar bill to an employee who had given many extra hours of
satisfactory work to her employer.
All these plans are good in a certain sense, inasmuch as they show
that women are awakening to the realization that some compensation is
due to household employees for the extra long hours of work frequently
unavoidable in family life. But unfortunately these plans lack
stability, for they depend altogether upon the generosity and kindness
of different employers, instead of upon a just and firmly established
business principle.
And now comes the question: What method of payment for overtime will
produce a permanently satisfactory result?
The only one that appears just and is applicable to all cases is to pay
each employee one and a half times as much per hour for extra work as
for regular work. In this way each employee is paid for overtime in just
proportion to the value of her regular services. For instance, when a
household employee receives $20, $30, or $40 per month, that is to say
$5, $7.50, or $10 per week, for working eight hours a day and six days
a week, she is receiving approximately 10, 15, or 20 cents per hour for
her regular work. By giving her one and one half times as much for extra
work, she ought to receive 15, 22-1/2, or 30 cents per hour for every
hour she works for her employer after the completion of her regular
eight hours' work.
This plan has never failed to bring satisfaction, and it has the
advantage of placing the employer and the employee on an equally
delightful footing of independence. The performance of extra work is no
longer regarded as a matter of obligation on one side, and of concession
on the other, but as a purely business transaction.
Some housewives fear that the regular work would be intentionally
prolonged beyond all measure if it became an established rule to pay
extra for work performed overtime. This could be easily checked,
however, by paying extra only for work that was necessitated by unusual
events in the family life.
In families where only one employee is kept, naturally the occasions for
asking her to work overtime arise more frequently than in families where
there are two or more employees, especially if there be small children
in the family. Yet these occasions need not come very often, if the
housewife bears in mind that even with only one employee, she has eight
hours every day at her own disposal; she ought to plan her outside
engagements accordingly. Her liberty from household cares during
these eight hours can only be gained though by having efficient and
trustworthy assistants in her home, and she can never obtain these
unless she abandons her old fashioned methods of housekeeping. She must
grant to household employees the same rights and privileges given to
business employees; she must apply business principles to housework.
A great power lies in the hands of the modern housewife, a power as yet
only suspected by a few, which, if properly wielded, can raise housework
from its present undignified position to the place it ought to occupy,
and that is in the foremost rank of manual labor for women.
PART III
EIGHT HOUR SCHEDULES IN THE HOME
Eight hour schedules for one employee.
Eight hour schedules for two employees.
Eight hour schedules for three employees.
EIGHT HOUR SCHEDULES FOR ONE EMPLOYEE
The schedules given in the following pages have been in actual practice
for a sufficient length of time to prove that they can be relied on to
produce satisfactory results, although no doubt many housewives will
find that some of them must be modified to meet special requirements in
their homes.
Two very important points must always be borne in mind in order to
obtain the greatest advantage from an eight hour schedule, especially in
families where only one employee is engaged to do the housework.
The first point is this: the housewife ought only to make her working
schedule _after_ she has carefully studied her own comfort and
convenience in regard to the hours she considers the most important of
the day for her to have help in her housework.
The second point is for the housewife to reserve for herself the entire
freedom of the eight hours during which her employee is on duty, for
then she can place, or she ought to be able to, the full responsibility
of the housekeeping upon her employee.
By adhering strictly to these two points, the housewife will soon
perceive that she can dispense with the services of her employee for the
remaining hours of the day without much inconvenience to herself or her
family. She may even find it more pleasant than otherwise to be relieved
from the sight and sound of household work, for at least a few hours a
day, when she is in her own home.
Possibly the housewife who has but one employee will not accept with
alacrity the proposition of allowing her to be off duty for an entire
day once a week, for unless she be willing to do the necessary work
herself on that day, she must engage a special person to take the place
of her regular employee. But many families engage a woman to come once a
week to help with the washing and house-cleaning, especially when they
have only one household employee. If this woman came on the day the
regular employee was away, she could relieve the housewife of all the
housework that could not be postponed until the next day.
SCHEDULE NO. I
When only one employee is engaged in a private home, her services are
needed more at meal time than at any other time of the day, especially
if small children are in the family. As the hours for the three
principal meals are about the same everywhere, the following schedule is
a very useful one.
From 7 A.M. to 10 A.M. 3 hours
From 12 M. to 3 P.M. 3 hours
From 6 P.M. to 8 P.M. 2 hours
-------
8 hours
In the morning from seven to ten o'clock, the employee had ample time
to prepare and serve breakfast and wash up the dishes afterwards, and
do the chamberwork. The three hours from noon until three o'clock were
filled with duties that varied considerably each day. Luncheon was
served at one o'clock; it was but a light meal easy to cook and easy to
serve, therefore the time from two to three o'clock was usually devoted
to ironing, or mending, or cleaning silver, or polishing brasses, or
preparing some of the dishes in advance either for dinner that evening
or for luncheon the next day. Two hours were sufficient to cook and
serve dinner and wash up the dishes afterwards. A woman came once a
week, on the day the employee was off duty, to do the family washing and
assist with the general housework. She also did some of the ironing; the
rest of the ironing was done the next day by the regular employee.
This schedule has been tested, not merely once for a few months, but
several times, and not with the same employee, but with different
employees, and it has always been most satisfactory.
It may seem doubtful to those who have never had their housework done on
schedule time that the work can be completed in the time stated, but the
greatest incentive that an employee can have to work quickly and well,
is to know that her position is as good as any she can find elsewhere,
and that when her work is over she is free to do exactly as she pleases
with the remainder of her time.
SCHEDULE NO. II
The following schedule is very different from the preceding one,
inasmuch as the housewife did not consider it necessary for her
employee to be on duty in the middle of the day. There were no children
in this family and as the housewife was alone in the day time, she very
frequently went out for luncheon. She concluded therefore that it was
the best time of the day for her to dispense with the services of her
employee, whose working hours were arranged thus:
From 7:30 A.M. to 11:30 A.M. 4 hours
From 4:30 P.M. to 8:30 P.M. 4 hours
-------
8 hours
By half past eleven in the morning, all the usual housework was
finished, and the employee went home; she returned at half past four in
the afternoon, in time to attend to five o'clock tea and dinner. Once a
week, on alternate Saturdays and Sundays, she had a "day of rest." On
these days the housewife got breakfast ready herself, after which she
did as much or as little of the regular work as she chose. It is not
difficult to reduce housework to a minimum on special occasions. The
family, which was a small one, consisting of three adults, usually went
out to dinner on these alternate Saturdays and Sundays.
SCHEDULE NO. III
In this schedule, the employee's work is divided into two periods, with
one hour for rest between. The family consisted of a man and his wife,
who lived in an apartment. The hours of work were as follows:
From 12 M. to 3 P.M. 3 hours
From 4 P.M. to 9 P.M. 5 hours
-------
8 hours
The housewife was very fond of entertaining, and she chose an employee
who was an excellent cook and a very good waitress. In consequence she
was able to place the entire responsibility of luncheons and dinners on
her, and on days when no guests were present all the house-cleaning was
done. As the employee did not report on duty before noon, the housewife
was obliged to get breakfast herself. However this was a very simple
matter, for her employee always set the table for breakfast the night
before. The next morning it was very easy for the housewife, with the
aid of an electric heater on the breakfast table, to heat the cereal,
boil the water for the coffee, and broil the bacon or scramble the eggs,
or indeed to prepare any of the usual breakfast dishes.
The employee did all the washing, ironing and mending each week, and
although she came to her work only at noon, she accomplished as much
work during her eight hours as if she began earlier in the day.
SCHEDULE NO. IV
Many schedules were tried before a really satisfactory one was finally
chosen for a family of six: mother, father, four small children. The
eldest child was seven years old, and there was only one household
employee to help with the work. They lived in the country, and breakfast
had to be served promptly at 7:30 A.M., on account of taking the early
morning train to town.
Naturally, with only one employee, the housewife was compelled to do
some of the housework herself, and until the following schedule was
adopted, she had been in the habit of rising early, dressing the
children, and getting breakfast ready herself. Her employee arrived
later in the day and remained until after dinner at night. The comfort
and general welfare of the mother were increased to such a remarkable
degree by the new schedule, however, that it is well worth special
attention.
The hours were as follows:
From 6:30 A.M. to 10:30 A.M. 4 hours
From 11:30 A.M. to 3:30 P.M. 4 hours
-------
8 hours
Immediately upon arriving at the house, the employee went to the
children and took complete charge of all of them. The two oldest dressed
themselves, but of course the other two required help. After dressing
them, she prepared breakfast. The cereal was always cooked the day
before, and as a gas stove was used for cooking purposes, it was not
hard to have breakfast ready promptly every morning at 7:30. Then the
employee, having had her own breakfast before leaving her home, worked
steadily until 10:30 A.M. During this time, the only work the mother
felt she ought to do was to go out with her two youngest children; the
other two went to school. She was always home again by 10:30, when her
employee stopped working. The employee lived too far away to go home for
lunch, and as there was no place in the neighborhood where she could go
for lunch, she always brought it with her and ate it in her employer's
house. During the hour she was off duty, the mother attended to some
household duties herself, and she also bathed the two children, and put
them to bed for their morning nap.
At 11:30, her employee reappeared on duty, and took full charge of the
house and children until 3:30 P.M.; her work for the day was then over
and she went home.