The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-12-08

an oversupply of factory hands, and, at the same time scarcity of domestic help The report stated that minute inyestiga-9 ton had been made, and a great many intelligent young women. who had formerly been domestics, questioned as to their req sons for quitting, and these reasons were not, as supposed, the stigma attached to menial employment, nor the tyranny ande' unrea condolences of some employers. They had plenty of the latter to put up with from tyrannical foreladies,' nor dia they complain of the work being hard, but 1t was invariably the long hours and the almost complete isolation from their own kind. They said that although they were not obliged to work until bedtime, they always had the feeling of being tied to their work in solitary confinement as one girl ex- pressed 1t, and had to ask for leave to go out even when their work for the day was all done.
 :" In summing up results Miss de Graffen- ried gave her conclusion that the problem will never be solved until housework Is put on basis of day labor, like all other lines of work.
 " The writer of this then undertook to ex. pertinent, and advertised for girl to do housework by the day Sixteen girls answered the ad and engaged the first one. Some came out of curiosity. and others said they must have a room in the house, but. three or four were very much disappointed and asked if they might come the next day to see if that girl turned up,' and two actually came, but found Mary installed. She was with us for three and half years, only leaving then because my daughters were old enough to help, so we let the maid go. Mary lived with her parents and came every morning in time to get breakfast. leaving after the dinner dishes were put away.
 - paid her the same as others were re- ceiving for general housework, and gave her every Thursday and every Sunday afternoon out [she was a Sunday school teacherJ. My friends, to whom mentioned the plan, said l never could be sure of her coming in the morning, but she was absent only once, and her father called to tell us she had been taken Ill in the night, and she came in time to get lunch. had had very much worse things than that happen with maids living in the house One woman objected that she wanted to know where her maid was at night which seemed to me rather impossible unless she accompanied her every time she went to a party and stayed over night with friend
 '' am quite aware that there are many families where this plan would not work. but If those who could adjust themselves would try it a number of young women might be drawn in, who are now earning a bare subsistence in stores and factories. and thus relieve the present congestion so that those who must have the maid in the house might find sufficient supply for the decreased demand.
 .' have visions also of some of those women who are doing so much for the well fare of their fellow women taking hold of this idea and formulating some plan for obtaining the interest of employers, and, then perhaps establishing a central homef where the young women who have no home of their own might have their room and the companionship they crave under the motherly protection of good matron.
 " In the 1911 report of the Massachusetts bureau a fact was disclosed which may have a not very remote bearing on the pre- .vailing scarcity. The searchlight was turned on the white slave traffic with the view of determining which class or group of workers furnishes the largest number of victims, and 1t was found that by far the largest proportion is drawn from the domestic servant class.
 KATHERINE W"