DOMESTIC  SERVICE






<PRE>
           General Historical Information Prior to 1900

      By domestic service is meant the work done in and about the house to
provide for the physical comfort of its occupants. It includes the labor of
housekeepers, cooks, laundresses, chambermaids, waitresses, nurses,
charwomen, and personal
attendants.

      The condition of household service in different countries varies
according to the remoteness of the countries from the feudal state of
society and industry. Where the social organization remains aristocratic,
there is a class bred more or less definitely to service, at least as to
mental attitude. Where democratic conditions prevail, there is no such
class. Yet the relation between employer and employed in domestic labor,
even in democratic countries, has not resolved itself as it has in other
industries.  In ancient times the work of the household was done by slaves.
In modern times it has been very largely done by the women of the
house-hold, and by women employed by them as helpers. To the former fact is
largely due the stigma of social inferiority attaching to domestic service,
and to the latter its uncertain standing as an industry.
      
The social status of the household servant is everywhere about the
same; but as the democratic form of government is approached the social
inferiority which service involves becomes more and more dreaded and
despised, and the marks of it more abhorrent to the servant. For instance,
it is often difficult to persuade a maid or a nurse in the United States to
wear a cap, and English women servants are beginning to protest against that
badge; while German and French ones seem, on the contrary, rather proud of
their uniforms.
      
	  About the middle of the nineteenth century a change in the state of
affairs throughout the United States began with the flood of immigration.
The famine of 1846 in Ireland, the German Revolution of 1848, and the
conditions preceding and following it, and the treaty of the United States
with China in 1844, loosed upon this country an unprecedented number of
foreigners. Of the Irish and German immigrants, nearly one-half were women.
They entered as "unskilled laborers." The household industries have always
been sought by unskilled labor. In the East these immigrants entered at once
into the serving class. In the West, along the Pacific coast, the Chinese
became the competitors of the natives in household labor, working more
cheaply and more skillfully, and rapidly displacing such Americans as were
engaged in domestic service.

      The women in New England who had in the early days acted as "help" in
their neighbors' homes were entering the recently established factories in
large numbers. In the early times each household had raised not only its own
food products, but its own clothing stuffs as well. The home had been cotton
and woolen mill, dressmaking and tailoring shop. The development of
machinery had taken this class of work out of the house, and many of those
who had been accustomed to do it in the house followed it to the mills.  It
was a more remunerative and more independent occupation than household
labor, even under the free and equal regime. The Northern women were glad to
give over the household labor to the immigrants, but set themselves the
difficult task of adapting European methods to American conditions. With
increased wealth came the desire for display, and the patterning of
household arrangements after foreign usage. The result was that the word
"servant" came again into use, and domestic service sank in the social
scale, while at the same time the immigrants themselves were eagerly
imbibing the democratic ideas of their adopted country.

      Household servants are found mainly in the large cities, partly on
account of the congregation of wealth there, and partly on account of the
servant's rooted objection to the country--an objection which is doubtless
partly due to the foreigner's desire not to be completely isolated from all
her kind as well as from her home.

      The advantages enjoyed by household servants in this country are many.
They are generally lodged more comfortably than they would probably be
otherwise. The wages, considering that lodging, light, heat, board,
car-fare, and expensive dress are not to be provided from them, are much
better than shop and factory wages, and do not compare badly with the
salaries of teachers. On the other hand household servants have practically
no chance to rise in  their occupation; they are isolated, both industrially
and socially. They have almost no personal freedom, and their standing is
regarded as lower than that of other women workers.

Source:  The New International Encyclopaedia
Publisher:  Dodd, Mead and Company--New York
Copyright:  1902-1905   Total of 21 volumes
_________________________________________

Transcribed by Miriam Medina
<a href="/Women/index.html"><font color="red">Return to WOMEN Main</font></a>
<a href="/index.html"><font color="blue">Return to BROOKLYN Main</font></a>