The Newberry herald and news. (Newberry, S.C.) 1884-1903, 1891-02-12
A Question OF Cooks.
1Greenville News

Greenville News
1t is safe to say that in any gathering
of three or more women Of the fair cir
cumstances ranging from fairly good to
afiuent anywhere in this country the
talk among them will drift, no matter
where it starts, within forty minutes Of
conversation to the servant question.
It is an old social joke now that the
servant question has fairly supplanted
the weather as stock subject of con-
versation, but the question's converse
tional value goes beyond that. The
weather is utilized only when other
things have failed. It opens up dis
course as the preliminary sparring and
feinting begins set fight or as the
overture precedes the rising of the cur
tains; or else it is desperately seized
upon when the people present have
persistenly failed to get together, and
when after series Of fitful breezes,
brief freezes and temporary thaws a
dreadful dead calm has set in and some
thing has to be done to maintain at
least an appearance of action. The SER
want question, however, is not make
shift. 1t has become a necessity. It
lures the feminine thought and con-
verse as the maelstrom draws the skif
or the magnet attracks the needle. It
is not refuge from silence, but an in
evitable result of the interchanges Of
the experiences, observations, hopes,
ideas and thoughts of womankind.
Women who employ servants discuss
them with moaning and bitterness and
recitations of unhappy experiences and
perpetual wishes to be delivered from
the bondage Of them, while those who
are too poor or too thrifty to hire any
envy the supposed happiness and ease
of those who are plagued by dozen.
So goes the world. Nobody is satisfied.
Millions of dollars and elevation Of
social and official position do not seem
to give relief from the servitude to ser
vitors. The Northern newspapers have
followed the women in invariable aud
protracted consideration of the matter
and are filed with doleful evidences
that there is no hope for Improvement.
Mrs. Senators Sherman, Stewart and
Stamford, each of whom is equipped
with millionaire husband, echo the
complaints and lamentations of the
great danes Of Murray Hill whose
wealth can command everything in the
world but satisfactory service from their
hirelings. Mrs. Sherman had twenty
years of comparative happiness in the
possession Of an cid black family cook
secured from Virginia farily just
after the war, but since the retirement
of that inestimable blessing from active
service, has been in q condition of do
mestic anarchy very little better and in
some respects good deal worse than
that of the ordinary housewife who
struggles year in and out with relays,
substitutions and experiments in cook
and combined nurse and housemaids.
Mrs. Stanford imperils the political
prospects of her husband by confessing
to Chinese cook. No doubt the aver
age man would surrender honors or
possessions or anything short of his
everlasting salvation to secure peace in
his kitchen. In the matter Of house
maids, maids, coachmen, buffers, scull-
ions, grooms, walters and footmen, the
California Senator is as seriously in
volved as his neighbors. The investi-
cation develops the fact that even Cen
eral Grant, during his occupancy of the
White House, while he was dictator Of
great party, commander in chief of
the army and navy Of the worlds
greatest country and master Of legisla-
ton was bewildered and bafled by the
complicated deviltries of his "help"
and found it an unceasing burden upon
his soul. The Hayes family while it
was the chief one in the land was re-
duced to the humiliating necessity of
having the duties Of the Presidents
valet and Mrs. Presidents maid per-
formed by enc person Of African de-
scent and masculine gender, finding it
impossible to secure by love or money
or influence female Of any color or
age who could simultaneously refrain
from picking and stealing, from "sass-
ing" her alleged mistress and from
neglecting her supposed work.
Exaggerated independence" the Ia
dies who seem to have thought and ex-
perienced most severely in the matter
say is the trouble. There is prejudice
among the American people Of all
classes against servile work. The men
prefer to earn their living by doing
harder work for less wages outside OF
domestic employment and liveries and
have the same preferences for their
wives and daughters. Experiments
have been tried over and over again by
importing families and colonies Of
English, German, Irish and Swiss
people for use as servants, but they
have always brought up their children
for other occupations and declined to
allow them o go "in service" on any
terms. The result is that, as rule,
the kind of people who can be hired as
domestics is the kind that nobody
wants-the kind without ambition OF
character or industry and where, here
and there, a good servant is secured be
or she is held on to as worth nearly
full weight in gold and kept out Of the
poorl-at nlooo IT tho ;Dfallipanne office