Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-05-26

questions that affect domestic service, the
maids have the right it. At least stwhether
they have the right of it or not, the serious
differences that continually arise in private
households do not involve the matter OF
lodgment or of hard work, but spring from
personal restraint and long hours. A servant
may be willing to sleep in hole and De
without light and air, and to work Ike
locomotive by day, but she wants her even
ings free. She cannot see when her work IS
over why she should sit in an apartment
kitchen alone until bed time.
In France they manage the servant ques-
ton better, at least in this respect. French
apartment houses are built around court.
In what is called hotel bourgeois the
apartments are owned by those who live in
them, and the servants lite is kept per-
fectly distinct. The servants entrance is
by a private stairway in the rear Of the
court. The main apartment connects with
this division by single door. When the
labor of the day is over this door is locked.
The servant cannot enter 1t, but the servant
is free. When she goes out and when she
comes in is of no consequence to anybody
valued than wages. And it accounts for
the fidelity and long service that French
servants give.
In the French apartments that are let the
servants rooms are IN the mansard. And
the results are not quite so admirable. The
social qualities of the French are here un-
loosed; the gossip of each family is private
property. Marketing in France, as every
one knows, is done by the servants, who
keep book and each month receive their
commissions from the trades people. In
these servants quarters there is commu-
nifty of interests, and at the end of the
month the different commissions are appor-
toned equitably. This prevents peaching
on the part of some less fortunate servant in
a family inconveniently small or unwar-
rantably economical.
ABSOLUTE AUTRoCRATs IN FRANCE.
Within their own apartments the servants
are absolutely free, and it would be mis-
tress ofcourage,who would endeavor to visit
them or assert any authority. The servants
self respect would consider itself insulted,
and the proprietor of it would discharge
himself the next morning.
French servants in this country sometimes
enforce this rule on the mistresses. In the
W. Z. Vanderbilt house the only staircase
from the first floor to the basement is through
the buffers pantry. Mrs. Vanderbilt short
ly after they went into the house told a gen.
man who is my informant that one day she
went down into her kitchen, and her French
chef told her if she repeated the offence he
would leave.
This is an extreme case, but it is true that
the great objection to domestic service by
the better and more intelligent class of girls
who work for living is in the personal re-
straints they are subjected to. Numerous
and repeated efforts have been made to in
duce girls who work Tor starvation wages in
factories to go into service. All objections
may be sifted down to two which are sufh-
cient and reasonable.
The first is that the men whom they may
expect to marry will not visit them if they
live out The current phrase is, "a man
will not marry me out of anybody's
kitchen" This puts the blame where it be-
longs-on the men. The desire of the girls
to marry and to marry men who desire to
better themselves in the world will not be
considered unreasonable. The girl may
consider household service honorable, butthe
man does not
MORE FREEDOM NECESSARY.
If servants were allowed more freedom; if
girl, when her work was over, was free to
come and go as she liked, her contract with
her mistress having been fulfilled, men
would not have to seek them in somebody's
kitchen. In that case the objection to do
mestic service by the more capable of work.
ing girls would be removed. With the
knowledge have of working girls, of their
high principles. of their correct lives, of
their fidelity and devotion, 1 do not hesi-
tate to say if these objections could be re-
moved, if larger concessions were made, and
domestic service ranged more within the
provisions of other means of livelihood, this
class of girls would be more likely to enter
it, and in that case the woes of mistresses
would be greatly lessened and the Service
greatly improved.
Domestic service is so much in line with
the ultimate and hoped-for destination OF
working girls as wives and mothers that
there could be no better training than they
would receive in a well-conducted house
hold If they could be led to regard it is
training school for wives instead of bar
r1er to matrimony the intelligence Offices
would be crowded with wide-awake, intelli-
gent, clear-headed girls instead of by the
shiftless, slatternly and incompetent serv-
ants that now, as every mistress will bear
me out, make up the largest part of that
company. MARY GAY HUMPHREYS.