The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1892-01-29
In WOMAN'S BEHALF.
CONDUCTING A HOUSEHOLD.
A Business In Which Many American Girls
Are Badly Deficient. 49,

A Business In Which Many American Girls
Are Badly Deficient. s
There are very few callings in which
a member of the servant class can make
a dollar and quarter or dollar and
half a day, with board and lodging.
But the source from which house SER
wants have usually been recruited
young females-appears to have dried
up As a rule, young women in San
Francisco will not go out as house serv-
ants. They prefer to work as shop
girls or operatives in factories. The re-
Enumeration is less, but the freedom is
greater, and the girls want to have the
privilege of taking a day off if they
please. It may be bad Judgment, but
it is a question which the girls have the
right to decide for themselves The
anomaly is not confined to San Fran
cisco In the eastern cities the same
complaint of a scarcity of female help
is constantly heard. The wages of an
ordinary house servant-who is not
skilled eook-bave risen in New York
and Chicago, within the past twenty
years. from three dollars a week TO
twenty dollars a month; and, even at
this price. il is difficult to get a really
good servant In the east the ranks of
house servants have usually been filed
by immigrants from Ireland. Germany
and Scandinavia: but as the country
fills up. this supply proves inadequate
to meet the demand. As to girls born
on the soil, in the east, as here, girls
prefer close, unhealthful work in shops
and factories at low wages-which in
wolves poor food and poor quarters-.o
healthful occupation in households,
where their food would be abundant
and nutritious and their lodging COM
Portable.
A corner in house-servants impends
in the cities on both sides of the conti-
nent. No such crisis has ever occurred in
Europe. All over the continent the
children of the poor go out cheerfully
to service: there is no country which
needs TO import its servants from
abroad. and the business of the house
hold service has been so reduced to a
system that the native servants are
generally very efficient. That may
come to pass in this country also, if
ever the general conditions of life in
the United States assimilate to those
which prevail in Europe. In the mean
time. the evils of the present situation
would be mitigated if our women. both
in high and low station, educated
themselves better in the practical bust
ness of conducting a household In
this community, girls marry with
out the remotest notion how TO manage
a house or cook a meal They can not
even clean a room or judge when it
has been properly cleaned They are
generally ignorant of the first princi-
pies of ventilation and sanitary drain
age. As to cooking, there is hardly a
girl whom one meets in society" who
can grill a chop or make an omelet-
And their ignorance is diffused through
the poorer class A girl who has had
no experience in household work is alb
solutely useless IL is discomfort TO
occupy the rooms of which she has
charge; it is death to eat the food she
cooks
To make the girl earn her wages, she
must be taught her business from the
ground up: and if her mistress does not
know how to cook or how to keep a
room in order. how can she teach the
maid? II a young woman of good fam
ily marrrs a merchant, he generally
knows how his subordinates should
trans act his business; if she marries a
lawyer. he understands how his clerks
should conduct the affairs of his law
office: if she marries private gentle
man of means aud leisure, he knows
how his fortune should be managed.
But the young woman Of good family
rarely knows anything at all of her
part of partnership-to-wlt, the man
aging of the household-and many
young women OF good family are prone
TO say. with gentle pride, that they
know absolutely nothing Of cooks or
cookery. Cooking-schools have long
teen in operation here, but they seem
to be indifferently patronized The
use of the bake oven and the gridirou
are as much lost arts as ever-both in
the highest and lowest orders of society.
And so it comes to pass that, with the
hest things to eat in the world, Ameri-
cans get the poorest eating of any first
class nation. San Francisco Argonaut.