WHY IS THE SERVANT PROBLEM A PROBLEM?

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 88, 15 April 1911, Page 14

WHY IS THE SERVANT PROBLEM A PROBLEM?

''Girls 'swarm for any vacancy in shops and offices and even, in milte. The pay is inadequate, the conditions surrounding the workers are usually abominable, the dangers to health and character are terrible, but still the kitchen is deserted, and these and other places of employment are thronged. Why is it?" asks the New York Evening Post. "Tho answer lies in that one word, 'servant.' It is a social question, and nothing else. Society does not scorn a stenographer, or a clerk, or even a mill-hand. Society looks down upon a 'kitchen girl.' Society brands a 'domestic.' A girl is 'Miss' everywhere else, but once enter a kitchen and she is 'Mary,' or 'Katy.' She has entorod a low caste, and onco in it, the shame of it attaches to her all the rest of her life. This is false, miserably false, and absurd, but it is the fact. Women are the chief sufferers from it, and they alone have created the condition. As they have created it, they alone can change it. Workers in kitchens do not want any privilege not accorded to other workers. They do not wish to be considered 'one of the family' any more than the office stenographer wishes to intrude into her employer's family life. But- they do not wish to be placed in a class by themselves, apart from the rest of the world's workers."

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