The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-01-06
DOMESTIC HELP.

The evolution of our social life has sent
the American girl who was once glad 10
work in the private kitchen, TO the shop,
| the store and the hotel. The growth OF
| modern social life increases rather than
| lessons the demand for domestic help.
/ Mere servants are wanted than were en-
| ployed twenty years ago, but the supply
/ falls rather than rises with the demand.
| The South is better off than the North, for
they have the negroes to help them. The
| American domestic servant III the country
towns forty to fifty years ago always ate
| at the same table with the family and
| considered this privilege the vindication
| of her social equality, and the moment
that a change in the current OF social
civilization threatened TO rob her of her
right, she and all her sisters took flight
to the factory, where they were nearer
slaves than servants, but they satisfied
their silly philosophy of social equality.
OF course at bottom these women were
weak enough to think honest work dis
grace. and were ashamed 70 be called serv-
ants and treated as servants. As rule
people who feel the most ''cut up" by what
they consider "the proud mans con-
tumcly" are really snobs al heart. really of
inferior character, and by their cries and
futtering talk about social station, $50
cial inferiority," prove their inherent want
of self-respect. The nominal superiority
OF any man or woman never yet disqui-
eted anybody who was sincerely conscious
of superiority of morals, intellect and
manners. because with that consciousness
always comes serene self-respect as opposed
to self-conceit. Self-respect is generally
modest, while snobbish self-conceit is self.
assertiye, ignorant and inferior. A man
who really felt as Burns did-that
he was a superior man-did not
tear his hair and curse his fate be-
cause he was not born a lord; he
knew he was born to be something great
deal better than a lord, and when the lords
undertook to snub him at table by seating
him below the SALT" he quietly went
back TO his little farm and his plow and
did some of the best work Of his life. He
could live better without the lords than
the lords could without him, for he had a
beautiful gift of wit and conversational
eloquence that no Scottish lord could
boast. So he did not fret about social
equality or inferiority, for he did not feel
inferior; he felt, talked and believed like a
self-respecting man, the peer of any lord,
in Lowlands or Highlands, far or near. 1t
is the man who whines and howls about
al Il -
really down in the shallow well of his lit
tie mind knows and feels that he is in
ferior; he is ashamed of work ashamed of
his honest calling. 1t is this weak confu-
sion of the idea of the equality of human
ity as to the rights of life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness, with the idea of
social equality that works the very mis-
chief with American industry. The rights
of humanity are invariable, immutable,
irrepressible, absolute, while social equality
concerns things that are the variable, shift
ing, nominal, transitory life of the world.
No more injurious education was ever
taught in this country than that which
has so completely lifted our people above
manual work that today nine-tenths of
our farm laborers and female domestics
are foreigners. The Irish, the Germans, the
Scandinavians, the Hungarians, the
Italians and the Chinese have in turn
built our railroads and canals: the same
classes mine all our coal, iron and copper,
make our streets and do the largest part Of
our agricultural work. So, too, American
women have given over to foreign hands
all domestic service; they have ceased to
make clothing and begin even to desert
the mills, whittier they first flew TO escape
what they called badge of servitude, {"
the cap and apron uniform of the New
England kitchen. The change mas been a
source of decentralization. The reason why
a woman prefers the harder work of a
factory, shop or store to domestic SER
vice is largely because she has more free
dom when her work hours are over. This
larger freedom of existence in cities where
girls do not live in any home circle but
herd together in lodglng-houses and eat
AT restaurants, is not attended by good re-
suits. Nature meant women should lead
sheltered home lives compared with men
lead sheltered lives they gradually become
desexed women in manners, habits and
feeling, and the distance between a de-
sexed woman and demoralzed woman is
so shorE and easy that a good many
women take II.