Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1916-02-01
THE VANISHING DOMESTIC.

lHE DUNES lIS.
A momentous effect of the war that
has been very little noticed is the de-
crease of the American servant to the
point where that rare and valuable
creature seems to be seriously threat.
ened with extinction. This is not
fanciful. Careful students of the sit
uation are predicting that the all
around household mental will have to
be replaced by skilled workers in vari-
Gus lines. Instead of having one maid
to muss through all of your work,
from cooking to window-washing, you
will be visited regularly by expert
cooks, bedmakers, laundrymen. dish
washers, doornob-polishers. There is
today in Washington, ID. c., a man who
makes quite a remunerative profession
of washing pet dogs for society wom-
en-. He shows the possibilities of
specialization in demostic service.
Reduced immigration is the princi-
pal cause of this shortage in help. 1t
is estimated that Y per cent fewer
servants came into the United States
last year than the year before. En-
ployment agencies cannot fill their
orders. Clumsy Scandinavian peasant
girls, unable to speak a word of Eng
lish, are literally received at Ellis
Island with open arms and offered
salaries that make their jaws drop and
their eyes widen. Very few Of them
ever get as far west as Chicago.
Female help is scarce, but male
servants are almost unattainable.
Never before has there been such a
shortage of Wallets and buffers. Gouty
old gentlemen are forced to dress
themselves, and persons who have al
ways considered a butler as much a
necessity as a tooth brush are now
opening their own doors. 1t is esti-
mated that there are less than half as
many buffers and Wallets in New York
today as there we're a year ago. One
employment agency, which specializes
in real English buffers, had orders for
five hundred this season and only Sc
cured five, though it usually has a
thousand names on it's registers. With
CONSUMPTION threatened, the prospect
of a new supply is anything but bright.
Nearly all of these aliens who have
been American servants have gone
back to the service of their father
lands. Not only are buffers and val
els fighting in the ranks, but thousands
of French maids are wearing the mi
form OF the Red Cross.
Many of these American servants
have gone to the battle line with the
help and sympathy of their American
employers. At least n New York
society woman is still paying the
wages of her five servants who are
now on the battlefield and in the hos
pitfalls. In the absence of the butler,
the daughter Of the house opens the
door for her guests.
Persons who keep large town houses
and insist upon the full quota of serv-
ants, are having a hard time. They
are paying fabulous prices for ex-
tremely poor servants, who have al
ways the choice of any number of
other positions.
Far more serious though less pic
turesque than the shortage of servants
among the wealthy is the difficulty the
average housewife experiences in get
ting a maid of ell work. This is
especially true in the north and west,
where there are few colored servants
and immigrant peasant girls have had
almost a monopoly of domestic serv-
ice. The German girls who formerly
came over in considerable numbers,
are now almost un~obtainable and few
err of other nationalities come every
month. The advance in wages has
forced many an American woman to
do her own Homework.
The most striking feature of this
scarcity of domestic help is that there
are thousands of American men and
women who need the money and could
do the work. Unemployment is a
problem in nearly all Of our cities
which the return of prosperity has not
the way of wearing apparel. They