The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1910-12-20
EVENING CHAT
By RUTH CAMERON.

I read a little news item the other
day tucked away on back page with
only six point headline that I'd like
to have seen displayed double column
on the first page and with 40 point
headline.
This was the substance of it. Mrs.
o. H. Howard of st. Louis wife Of the
president of the Commonwealth Steel
company, gave the use of her mansion
and personally acted as general direc-
tor at the wedding of her maid Martha
Snitzmeir and her gardener Daniel
Figart.
Please notice the last part of that
paragraph. Mrs. Howard didn't just
give her house and betake herself in
dignified and touch me-not fashion to
some other place until the affair was
over. She gave herself as well as the
home.
Nor did she think that just to have
her wedding in such place must be
sufficiently dazzling to a girl who other
wise would be married from some hum
BILE apartment. She carried through the
whole wedding in the style in which
she would have, had the girl been her
cousin or personal friend The cere-
mony took place, the item informs US,
''amid profusion of yellow chrysanthe-
NUNS in the magnifcently appointed
drawing room,' and again Ito the
strains of Mendelssoan's wedding march
played by an ingeniously concealed me-
ctlaHlSul Oh d HQSC > SiOoA
in the reception hall, the wedding party
descended from the second floor by the
grand staircase"
wish 1 might thank Mrs. Howard
personally for that wedding. 1 think
she deserves as great praise as If she
had written a wise and wonderful book
on how to solve the servant problem.
AS a matter of fact that is what she
has done, only, instead of writing her
book, she has lived it.
=, Of On On
the maids side of the servant problem
1 asked a great many girls to tell me
their opinion as to the reason why it
harder to keep good help than it used
to be. And one of the most common
answers was 1.-The women are different
than they used to be. Most of them
seem to be trying all the time to show
US how superior they are and that we
aren't anything but the dirt under their
feet"
one of the women at the head of a
big intelligence office put it this way,
IF the nnistresses were more human
and treated their girls like human be-
ings instead of as machines to get the
most possible work out of, there
wouldn't be any servant problem at
ALL
Mary was really very disagreeable
about changing her day this week. l
heard a young matron say recently,
'she said she had an engagement. the
1Ocd! suppose Sde O1As OOOAOA SAAS
put it off?''
Now Mary is housemaid but at the
same time she is a normal young CIR!
and very much in love with nice
young man. This particular Thursday
he was going to take her to the thea
ter Naturally she resented having her
| day off changed.
The young matron is at bottom very
kind hearted person and I'm sure that
if she had stopped to think of Mary as
a young girl in love she would not
have asked her to make this sacrifice
But she didn't. She just thought of her
as an automatic machine guaranteed to
deliver just so much service, and she
didn't see why it should matter that
she received that service one day in
stead of another.
Perhaps it's queer but whenever
see a clash like that always think OF
! Shylock's speech in the Merchant OF
Venice.
You remember-"Hath not a Jew
eyes, hath not a Jew hands, organs
dimensions senses, affections, passions?
fed with the same foods, hurt with the
same weapons, subject to the same dis
eases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same sum-
mer and winter as the Christian is?''
Substitute "maid'' and mistress" for
Jew" and Christian" and ashamed
as 1 am to say i'll think you have a
reminder that very modern mistresses
!