Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1915-07-26

to cook out Of any other Eventually sba
comes back, works along steadily enousb
perhaps, but can't possibly finish a dav,s
work in three or four hours So as the (
O'Clock whistle blows she departs leaving An
ungodly scattering OF dishes in the ktohan
the drawing room furniture herded in tbs
hall, and upstairs the mattresses turned oyo.
the bottoms Of the beds to air, with instrpo
tions to the family not to try to use the beds
till she gets back in the morning to nx then,
But let us go back to that Moran" Prac-
tlcally the only person who can be persuaded
to become domestcs for the present-dsS
housewife are the main, the halt, the blind
and the "Moran"-ln other words. person.
who would be jolly unpopular anywhere else
In short, as things are now, we are lin
against p1owng and sewing barren soil
against making bricks without straw
Women and girls who can get any other
remunerative employment under Heavsn--
even clerking in our department store base.
ments, which is considerably under Heaven
won't do housewori.
People say that is because wo have mad.
housework He'll. Well, we pretty nearly
have and we need to make 1. considerable
more attractive-but I don't think that iz
the explanation. Waiting on table is no
worse than standing behind @ counter in
ten-cent store selling asbestos mats and cur
tain rods for eight hours every day To
watch the family roast is not a more satanic
imposition on a girl than to have her hang
over a stove In a factory all day, and All
small tin boxes with soft, hot brown stova
polish. No, but call your domestics. vour
hired girls, by that fatal synonym "servantsy
and you have the whole fundamental social
wrong before you in symbol.
Women Want Servants"
No matter what some people may be, the
fact remains that what many men and
women have had, and what as many more
hope to buy with fresh earned fortunes Il
servants, not employees. To be frank, they
want an obsequious creature of their bidding
whose subservience to their commands sets
them off as important persons And the
really immoral part of it is, they will put up
with no end of incompetence in SERVANT
who knows her place"-cant put this case
too strongly, because, you see, this survival
Of an age of rigid class distinction, beside
being violently undemocratic, is stigmatizing
certain labor in an absurdly arbitrary FASH
lon.
When we women can make OF the neces-
sary work that is to be done in our houses
standardized, respected profession, and can
give the hired girl at least as elevated social
position as the ten-cent store clerk now en-.
Joys, we shall have achieved more comfort
and domestic happiness for ourselves and for
"the working girl" (whose determination to
be "the working girl" not "the lower class"
is the most hopeful thing in modern society
than we now produce through any four
dozen of the charities to which we devote our
spare hours and dollars.
We women are not unlike the rest of man
kind in that we never seem able to see a Ak
coming until we are in it. The few rare
ones who look ahead can only howl in the
desert. like all the prophet men. But, then,
this domestic social mess we are in now viii
have been entirely worth while-and after
all, 1t has not been so very terrlble-if in the
end we shall have given the hired girl her
long-denied caste, and II, which is equally
important, we shall have made 1t possible for
the women who do not like houseworS are
not fitted for 1t and can't possibly be sue
cessful at 1t. to go forth and do the things
they are fitted for.
Don't suppose advocate making the hired
girl 'one of the family" 1 fancy she herself
wouldn't be the last to object to that I'M
agine a lawyer or an architect who expected
all the young men in his Office, no matter
how interested he might be in their personal
welfare and development to become mem- .
bers of his family circlel
No doubt in the end women are going to
emerge from all this not only liberated, but
chastened souls In the meantime, however,
do we not live, love and die pretty much as
usual?