DOMESTIC SERVICE IN THE UNITED STATES.

Grey River Argus, Volume VIII, Issue 536, 24 June 1869, Page 3

DOMESTIC SERVICE IN THE UNITED STATES.

4 There are scarcely any servants in, America : they are " ladies," " helps,' "companions." You will see an advertisement like this in the papers : — " A colored lady desires an engagement as a laundress." It is not a difference in mere name. The "help" in America has a different position from the servant here. First of alii her wages are higher, In Montreal she gets from Ll6 to L2O a year — an average of about seven dollars a month. In New Yoi'k and Boston she gets from ten to twenty dollars, generally has the run of the larder, and lives like a fightingcock. I found iv some places laundresses and cooks with twenty dollars a month, and with " assistants" at ten. In Newark, when I was there, I was told of an association of servant girls banded together by the resolution that, whatever were their qualifications or disqualifications, nothing should be taken less than ten dollars a month from any one ; and who supported each other resolutely till the individual mistresses gave in. One gentleman declared to me that he had hired three Irish "helps" within aa many weeks, not one of whom seemed to know anything except that she must have ten dollars a month. Again : these girls eat of the same food and share in the same delicacies as the family, and often eat from the same table. The Americans generally go down into what is called the basement to eat ; and as soon as the family has finished, the servants ring the bell again for themselves, sit down at the table which the family has just left, and take their share of the same dishes. I have been in houses, however, where the dining room was not below, but formed an ante-room to the parlor, separated from it by sliding doors, so that after dinner, while we sat in the parlor, we could hear the servants laughing and talking over their dinner in the anteroom which we had just left. In the West they are still more free. I have sat at dinner in hotels where those of the waiters, who are not needed at the time, sat down at the same table with us in their shirt sleeves. Domestic servants have not only their meals in the dining room, but when this room ia in the basement they sometimes claim it as their own. In one family in Brooklyn, where I spent some pleasant days, a servant refused to remain because her mistress sometimes sat in the dining room at other than meal hours. In this and other ways you see the difference between a servant's position there and here. It may be summed up in this way — that servants in America have less work, more pay, better board, and greater independence, Very few of these servants are native Americans, American girls prefer to go into factories, printing and telegraph offices and shops, where, if they can work well, they can get as many dollars a week as a common servant gets in a month, and where they can have more independence. Many of them, like those of the next rank above, qualify for teachers, Amongst the servants, one finds a large number of Scotch and Germans. These, I observed, and was everywhere told, are much prized and sought after, because they can generally do their work well, and at the same time show some respect to their masters and mistresses, But the mass of domestic servants are Irish ; and with all my love for the Irish, and especially for Irish girls, I must say that the mass of the Irish servant girls, so far as I saw and could learn, are very unfavorable specimens of what servants should be, You have sometimes to ring the bell two or three times before they deign to answer. In some houses, indeed, the handle a.t the door rings two bells, one in the lobby and the other in the kitchen, and it seemed to me in such cases that the servants never answered until satisfied from yourrepeated pulls that none of the family up stairs was going to answer for her. Again and again in genteel houses I have seen the master or mistress have to go and answer the door, even when the servant was in. Another very common practice is for the servant, if she does open the door, to go away and leave you to shut it for yourself. In a hundred little things like this you feel the want of that attention and respect which is so beautiful a feature in most of our servants here, and in the best class of servants in America. The idea of the Irish "help" when she goes to America, seems to be aland of liberty and equality; and that liberty means liberty not to do her duty, and that equality means that the mistress is to do half her work. The humbler her position has been in Ireland, the loftier seem to be the airs she assumes in America. One gentleman near Jersey City told me that the first morning after an Irish servant girl had come into the house, he rang the bell for his boots. The girl brought them uncleaned. " Have you not brushed them ?" he said. " No." " Why not ?" "0, I don't brush boots. " " You don't ?" " No. I was never asked to brush boots before." " Wern't you in service in Ireland 1 Hadn't you to brush boots there ?" " No." "Perhaps," said the gentleman, you were in service with people who didn't wear any." The girl threw down the boots, went and packed up her things and left the house. And yet these Irish girls have many excellent qualities. Nothing can be more beautiful than their attachment to the land of their birth and to the friends they have left behind. I found many of these girls, who, with every temptation to spend their money in dress, continued month after month, and year after year, to send every dollar they could spare to support the old people at home in comfort, or who kept their money accumulating till they had saved enough to bring their parents or sisters out to a new and more comfortable home in America. These are not rare cases : they are found everywhere, and this alone might hide a multitude of sins. It is solely in their position as servants that there is so much to find fault with. Even in that position they improve. It is astonishing how fast they pick up information — how soon they begin to acquire the graceful manners of their mistresses, and how their very figure seems to change and their hands to become white and delicate, as if they had been more familiar with kid gloves than kitchen work. They learn, too, to dress with great elegance. I was amused at Brooklyn when a lady told me that, one day when her hat had not come from the dressmaker, the servant offered her the use of hers, assuring her that her former mistress had often availed herself of her wardrobe ; and when I saw how beautiful some of these girls dressed on a Sunday I ceaaed to wonder at it. — By David Macrae,