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Page 27
There are few women so dull that they cannot paste labels on a box, or
do some form of factory work; few so dull that some perplexed
housekeeper will not receive them, at least for a trial, in her
household. Household labor, then, has to compete with factory labor, and
women seeking employment, more or less consciously compare these two
forms of labor in point of hours, in point of permanency of employment,
in point of wages, and in point of the advantage they afford for family
and social life. Three points are easily disposed of. First, in regard
to hours, there is no doubt that the factory has the advantage. The
average factory hours are from seven in the morning to six in the
evening, with the chance of working overtime in busy seasons. This
leaves most of the evenings and Sundays entirely free. The average hours
of household labor are from six in the morning until eight at night,
with little difference in seasons. There is one afternoon a week, with
an occasional evening, but Sunday is seldom wholly free. Even these
evenings and afternoons take the form of a concession from the employer.
They are called "evenings out," as if the time really belonged to her,
but that she was graciously permitting her employee to use it. This
attitude, of course, is in marked contrast to that maintained by the
factory operative, who, when she works evenings is paid for "over-time."
Second, in regard to permanency of position, the advantage is found
clearly on the side of the household employee, if she proves in any
measure satisfactory to her employer, for she encounters much less
competition.
Third, in point of wages, the household is again fairly ahead, if we
consider not the money received, but the opportunity offered for saving
money. This is greater among household employees, because they do not
pay board, the clothing required is simpler, and the temptation to spend
money in recreation is less frequent. The minimum wages paid an adult
in household labor may be fairly put at two dollars and a half a week;
the maximum at six dollars, this excluding the comparatively rare
opportunities for women to cook at forty dollars a month, and the
housekeeper's position at fifty dollars a month.
The factory wages, viewed from the savings-bank point of view, may be
smaller in the average, but this is doubtless counterbalanced in the
minds of the employees by the greater chance which the factory offers
for increased wages. A girl over sixteen seldom works in a factory for
less than four dollars a week, and always cherishes the hope of at last
being a forewoman with a permanent salary of from fifteen to twenty-five
dollars a week. Whether she attains this or not, she runs a fair chance
of earning ten dollars a week as a skilled worker. A girl finds it
easier to be content with three dollars a week, when she pays for board,
in a scale of wages rising toward ten dollars, than to be content with
four dollars a week and pay no board, in a scale of wages rising toward
six dollars; and the girl well knows that there are scores of forewomen
at sixty dollars a month for one forty-dollar cook or fifty-dollar
housekeeper. In many cases this position is well taken economically,
for, although the opportunity for saving may be better for the employees
in the household than in the factory, her family saves more when she
works in a factory and lives with them. The rent is no more when she is
at home. The two dollars and a half a week which she pays into the
family fund more than covers the cost of her actual food, and at night
she can often contribute toward the family labor by helping her mother
wash and sew.
The fourth point has already been considered, and if the premise in
regard to the isolation of the household employee is well taken, and if
the position can be sustained that this isolation proves the determining
factor in the situation, then certainly an effort should be made to
remedy this, at least in its domestic and social aspects. To allow
household employees to live with their own families and among their own
friends, as factory employees now do, would be to relegate more
production to industrial centres administered on the factory system, and
to secure shorter hours for that which remains to be done in the
household.
In those cases in which the household employees have no family ties,
doubtless a remedy against social isolation would be the formation of
residence clubs, at least in the suburbs, where the isolation is most
keenly felt. Indeed, the beginnings of these clubs are already seen in
the servants' quarters at the summer hotels. In these residence clubs,
the household employee could have the independent life which only one's
own abiding place can afford. This, of course, presupposes a higher
grade of ability than household employees at present possess; on the
other hand, it is only by offering such possibilities that the higher
grades of intelligence can be secured for household employment. As the
plan of separate clubs for household employees will probably come first
in the suburbs, where the difficulty of securing and holding "servants"
under the present system is most keenly felt, so the plan of buying
cooked food from an outside kitchen, and of having more and more of the
household product relegated to the factory, will probably come from the
comparatively poor people in the city, who feel most keenly the pressure
of the present system. They already consume a much larger proportion of
canned goods and bakers' wares and "prepared meats" than the more
prosperous people do, because they cannot command the skill nor the time
for the more tedious preparation of the raw material. The writer has
seen a tenement-house mother pass by a basket of green peas at the door
of a local grocery store, to purchase a tin of canned peas, because they
could be easily prepared for supper and "the children liked the tinny
taste."
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