Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-12-14
MuRRAy'S MUSINGS.

A Suggestion That Men Invade the Kitchen
to Do the Work Women Hate So Univer-
sally-A Curious Fact About Photo
graphs-A Southern Mans Talk.
iFRoM STAFF CORRESPONDENT
AN OPTIMISTIC and philanthropical ladyof
New York, who has given considerable at
tention to the higher social problems has sug-
gested and warmly advocates domestic service
for men. This is direct and practical means
of relieving an overcharged labor market and
Of at the same time. materially improving pres
ent unsatisfactory domestic conditions. 1t
will probably not strike a good many married
men who already do kitchen work every day,
as either new novel. While young women
are being trained on every hand to take the
place OF men in the ranks of skilled labor and
the factories, stores and shops are crowded
with female cheap labor at the expense of the
male population, and 10 the great neglect of
tine common requirements of domestic life,
this particular woman wants to know why
should not tbe male overplus flow into the
kitchen, tho laundry. and that other most i'm
portant branch of domestic service known as
general holsework"
The possibilities concealed in this suggestion
are startling. In this city. and in every great
city. in fact. everybody feels the great and un-
ceas1ng friction of stupid and incompetent
domestic service. This friction is aggravated
Dy the TACT that the mistress is worse than the
servant. Men servants are only possib to the
well-to-do and are well paid. Men make the
best cooks, the best laundrymen, the best
''malds of all work" In these days the smart
est girls are put in the mills. factories shops
learn typewriting, stenography, bookkeeping
teaching. etc.-and are practically withdrawn
from domestic life. Only the newly imported,
the old and the stupid and ignorant are lett to
thar
domestic labor. There are not less than 20OO0
males In this city who are well educated who
are doing office drudgery year after year and
who will never do anything else but drag out q
miserable existence, and several thousand
other men who are on the verge of starva-
tlon none of whom are as well off as the
stupid girl IN my kitchen who gets SIS month
and her board. They work twice as hard as
she, and furnish the skill and brains to do that
Work which she does not possess Yet most of
them never have Slo per month over and above
their Dare necessities at any time during the
year. But frst-class servants-good cooks and
laundry women-get from $50 to $50 per month
over and above their board. And they are
hard to get a. any price. This, while the streets
OF New Y ork and other cities, and the roads
all over the country, swarm with male beggars
and tramps and vain seekers after employment
and while countless male toilers work day in
and day out, year after year, for what merely
supports life from hour to hour in hopeless
slavery.
What is there IN this domestic field of labor
which makes women of all grades and condi-
tioDs flee from it as an humiliation and a
shamer There are swell clubs of rich men in
this city whose members are better cooks than
any woman who ever trod shoe leather. The
logic is irresistible Yet while men will marry
and do the housework of helpless wives. most
men would rather starve than go into kitchen
and get up plain meals for pay. AS to getting
out the family washing and ironing-whew!
The same men will drive team, run a horse
car, beg or steal, or do any labor under boss
that treats him like horse, almost uncom-
such
these same factory or shop girls, who knows
about as much about domestic work, and likes
1t about as well as he does, it is in the usual
order of things-he will do it-at the best ac-
cepting the misery of such life as the natural
sequence of matrimony. And if pretty
daughter OF such union should prefer to go to
the dogs rather than wash Dishes it is not to be
wondered at, but is also to be set down as the
usual order of things. For it may be accepted
as fact that the ill-regulated household is the
source OF more unhappiness and crime than all
other sources put together.
A Phlegmatic Mans Hard Work.
THERE is a fieshy and phlegmatic gentleman
In gold glasses at high desk in the office
of the County Clerk of New York county who
passes his official life in about as monotonous a
manner as could we'll be associated with con-
tinuous and trying labor. He is the acknow-
Judgement clerk, administers oaths and has
charge of the county seal. ALL day long, from
carly mOTH I'LL ueWy eve, Oh every Qay OIL the
week, Sundays and legal holidays excepted, he
sits and stands, alternately at this desk and
fills out blank certificates. signs his name in a
cramped, fine hand, affixes the slips with a dab
of mucilage and brings down the lever of the
great seal of the most important county of the
United States upon the document. His oaths
are not loud, but deep and continuous. An
average of 800 certificates per day. sometimes
more and sometimes less, constitute his days
work. At whatever hour in the day you call
upon him you will find from 3or to 20 per-
sons in line in front of his window, papers in
hand, awaiting turn at the big seal and its
calm manipulation.
No matter how many and how eager those in
line he never gets ratified, never Worries His
soft. white, chubby hands do their work in
each case as if it were the last-and whether it
is certificate for $40 pension paper or a deed
for millions of dollars. he rarely raises his eyes
but to rake in the 25 cent fee, or administer
perfunctory oath. Having entered it in little
Dlotter he silently swoops down on the next
paper and goes on with the procession. A more
nervous or fussy man in such q place would
wear himself out in six months.
Why They Leave the South.
A SOUTHERN friend just returned from a
visit to his old home says he can scarcely
understand how an energetic man can longer
live contented in the South. 'No man who left
the South to live in New York." said he, sever
goes back to his old home, but what he is glad
he left it. He could never be induced to go
there never was such general prosperity as
there is to-day. The changes have been for the
betterment of all classes, and there are many
changes. Northern enterprise and Northern
ideas are apparent everywhere gen where
Northern men are to be found. There is
scarcely yestige of the old order of things in
town or country. 1t has been a lovely
season and the cotton boles have come out in
their second bloom. while the second crop of
potatoes and the early peas and other vege-
tables seem to leave nothing to be desired. AT
Savannah a new modern hotel has been erected
and furnishes as good accommodations as can
be found North. The things which make the
South more desirable to live in, however. are
the very things that make 4 Southern man
more contented to live in the North. Why?
Because these very changes have swept away
all the sentiment imbibed with the 'mammy's
milk of childhood. fixed into the mind of
youth and burned into the soul with the hot
iron of war. 1t is more satisfactory to remain
away and cherish the memory of early days
than to go back and realize the cold, hard facts
that there is nothing of the old South left and
if there was it wouldn't be worth remembering,
New York is good enough for me-"
Two Sides to a Mans Face.
uTHERE is an extraordinary dissimiarity be-
tween the two side views of almost
every persons face" says prominent Broad
way photographer. II mean that if 1 should