The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1895-03-06
Which Shall 1t Be?

In paper III Scribners Magazine
Robert Grant touches on vital ques-
ton in American social life. 1t is
whether i'll the matter of servants the
United States is going to follow dead
in the wake of the old European ooun-
tries, with their rigid social caste sys-
tenn. He declares, what is plain to all,
that the American woman of means
and standing is doing at present all she
possibly can to work this country over
on the European social system. If she
succeeds, we shall have in 25 years IAN
enormous ducking and scraping, fee
seeking, livery wearing servant class,
and we shall have no social equality at
all If that is what the American mis-
tress is aiming at, it would have been
better if our ancestors had never come
to America at all. 1t was not worth
while The European social system was
much better in Europe than it ever can
be in America.
In 90 years Mr. Grant thinks we shall
have a reproduction Of the typical serv-
ant class of Europe, or else we must
change the conditions Of domestic serv-
ioe-ohange them SO that condescension
and servility vanish and the contract Of
service becomes like the other contracts
of employment between man and man
and man and woman.
There will probably be way out
which does not seem to have occurred
to Mr. Grant. The discovery OF new
machines and methods, the application
of electricity to household tasks, the
growth of cooperative Housekeeping,
will revolutionize domestic work so eff
fectually that the servant girl as now
known will no longer be needed. Half
the labor that used to be performed IN
the home has already been RELOCATED to
the factory. Nobody is ashamed to work
in factory or in place where work is
done by wholesale away from home. It
is the thought of being in some meas
ure a slavish body servant that is dis
tasteful, and no freeborn American
woman can be blamed for cherishing
such aversion. But the housekeeping OF
the future will do away with domestic
slavery, send most of the tasks out OF
the house to be performed, and make
what remains so light, dainty and 8s-
thetio that it will be pleasure to per-
form it even for the daughters of the
house.
It is agreeable to know that Mr..
Grant does not blame the freeborn
American woman for this dislike OF do
mestio service. But what he thinks in
his heart of a large and increasing class
of Young women in this country is set
forth in vigorous words. If, after read
ing the following, 100, 600 girl clerks do
not fly into the authors hair, it he has
any, then they are better tempered than
they impress the average customer at a
dry goods store as being-that's all;
Even that shrir voiced, banged, bangled'
impertinent, slangy, vulgar product OF our
mammoth retail dry goods system, who seems
to believe herself a pattern Of ladyike be-
havior, is aware in her heart that she does not
know how to behave and yearns to resemble
the well bred woman whom she daily Insults
But the happiness of her life, and Its mann
snring. too, lies in the consciousness that she
is free to become the first Lady IN the lsno,
and that she herself is to be her sole critic and
detractor Why is she not right in refusing to
sacrifice her independence? Why should she
sell her birthright for mess of pottager
The Crimson Cliffs.
One of the most conspicuous land