Connecticut western news., 1874-01-23
Cooperative Housekeeping.

Mrs. tE. M. King has a paper in the Contemporary Revieso, wherein she solves the "Domestic Servant Ques- tion," and other growing puzzles of so- ciety in two words, namely, "Oo-opera- tive housekeeping. The miseries of mistress and servants grow, she claims, from the false position each holds in. the eyes of the other. The servant complains that she is deprived of lib erty that the mistress cannot in con- science concede, and each -misunder- stands. Either servants must become bona fde slaves, or mistresses must-be prepared to do all service themselves, or, finally, the whole system of domes- tic service must be altered and re- formed. The first is impossible. The second will be conceded equally i'm possible. The reform lies in making servants free workers, and it's method in "not making the home of the em- ployer the home also of the employed" For the present isolated homes and sep arate establishments must be substitu- ted @ system of cooperative house. keeping, with such division of labor as shall make the servant entirely inde- pendent of the will of her employer during 8 certain part of. every day. Mrs. King wishes to begin with two large buildings, costing from :g20,000 to 930, 900 each, one for families having incomes ranging from 9100 to 9500, and another whence houseworkers for the former may be taken. The confed- erated families are to be served for certain number of hours daily by one set of workers, then. by another, the servants being nobody s servants when their hours are over. This it is claimed will of itself insure a better class of servants by putting employment within the reach of good women who can spare half day from their homes, and by in- viting higher grade of women who will no longer be debarred from enter ing service by the petty domestic tyranny of an isolated household. But better service is to be further insured by training.
 Domestic work cannot be organized in the homes of to-day. The amateur worker, whom her husband will not have ether. than an amateur, is in the absurd position of directing profess sionals. A professional cook is the pro- duct of life's study, and 8 skilled houseworker is both born and made a houseworker. Schools will not meet the difficulty. " There can be no schools of cookery where there are no dinners to be eaten. and no schools for housework where there are no house. holds." Two bars to the organization of domestic labor have been that men wish to get the chief part of their housekeeping done for notEing, and that homes have not heretofore been associated. The first view arises from the fallacy that comfort and luxury, the ends of wealth, are not as direct an end as wealth. The association of homes is without prejudice to such as do not wish to be associated, and in effect none of their business, for it affords the only way of giving technical instruction in domestic work, each apprentice doing what she can do without loss or waste until she has learned to do more. The expense of the best mechanical app1i- ances, too heavy for many private house, can be met in the buildings of the association. Sanitary wants can be more thoroughly met. ..
 Mrs. King accepts the fact of grow ing class separation as a mere step in the higher development to be helped forward rather than wept over, and par ticularizes the, social life of women which she is trying to organize on self-sustaining basis. As to children, too, she claims the confederate home offers a solution of the question of their education. The home will be a nursery, kinder -garten, and school room, the division of labor applying In greater or less degree to all having charge of children. The nurses will be ladies skilled to 8 certain degree in medicine, and fitted to be companions or guides to mothers. The children re- main in the home and the visiting methers become social circle of their own. The care will be of the best, and while the child has it's education no mother loses her wages. For govern ment, the representative republican form, each room-holder having a vote, which he or his wife may give. The &C., knowledged danger is that when wo-; mems work is organized, men will take it as they have taken everything that can be done away from "home." The organization must come, and with it freedom or degradation for woman. The safeguards are first, the nature of do- mestic work and second, the associa- ted home itself, wherein men will learn their duties in respect of woman's needs and rights.