The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1901-07-29
Domestic Service in The South
New York Times.

New York Times.
People of the North and West cannot
realize that domestic service in the South
has become a problem. So many negro
servants hail from Virginia and the Caro-
Hnas and sister states that it would seem
as though they We're as plentiful as the
blackberries in midsummer, but house
mold labor has already assumed a phase
which causes great Inconvenience and
grave fears as to the future.
The construction Of the houses and
the odd division of labor call for more
servants than in the homes of any other
part. The kitchen. some twenty-five
yards from the dwelling, keeps heat, dirt,
and flies from the house, but it necessit-
ates cook and a boy or girl to tend
de table, When the mistress tired of
the constant changes in cook and waiter
and of the heavy labor in filing the
gaps when neither can be had, deter
mines to be energetic and managing az
her New England sister, and converts a
room of her dwelling into a "cook room"
and strives to fend for herself she is met
by new trOubIe-fael
The wood fire of common use throws
out an immense heat, coal, when used
is worse. with it's continuous caloric in a
mousse Wnere one chimney serves for sew
eral flues. and thus conducts the heat
through contiguous rooms; gas is prac-
ucally unknown and unavailable a dead
ly fear operates against gasoline the
blue flame coal oil stove is of too recent
manufacture, and there remains only the
two or three burners of coal oil, the most
unsatisfactory of all quick heats In
many of the small towns throughout the
South the appliances of electricity for
household uses are far in advance of
the North, the chief reason being their
more reasonable cost The telephone is
in hundreds of halls in the town houses.
OF ten-mile radius, at rental Of from
$40 to So a year. The bulb sheds it's
light. and the electric fan in the dining
room supplants the darby with the string
manipulating the arrangement of cam
brio and ruff1e hung from the ceiling
but electricity is not yet chained in q
practicable form to the cooking stove
WHAT, then, can a housekeeper do dur
ing the intense and long summers of her
land and why is she Inconvenience in
the regions where special laws of the
state are needed for preventing the ig-
norant voters from rule?
The first and old cause of this incon
venience is the constant desire of far
away markets. l. drive through the
backwoods and house-to-hOuse call at
the cabins quickly shows that the to-be-
hired members of the family are in Bal
timore. Philadelphia, New York, Boston
or "at the Springs" These come back
yearly at protracted meeting time-Aug-
ust and September-with fine clothes and
finer tales of the places from which they
come, tales in many instances largely
exaggerated, so that the negro learns to
look to this PARKWAY service as a gold
mine where the biggest wages are easily
procured in spite of ignorance and lack
OF training, and the exodus keeps up
But the chief cause Of the present diff
Guilty is the factory. 1t is not alone the
big cotton mills of Georgia and Carolina
which have absorbed colored labor. nor
the peanut factories of Suffolk and
Smithf1eld and Petersburg. nor the truck
ing fields, in all of which hundreds of
negro women are employed, but it is also
the innumerable small factories dotted
everywhere through the country. 1t is
the canning factory, where lumber and
building are cheap and vegetables and