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The Management Of Help (All families whose style)

In all families whose style of living demands help in the household duties, the management of servants is the great American puzzle. "Girls" come and go like the seasons, sometimes with the weeks. The one who is "such a treasure" to-day, packs her trunk and leaves her mistress in the lurch tomorrow, or, if she happens to have a conscience and works on faithfully, she becomes the mistress and runs the household in her own way, her employer living in mortal fear of offending and losing her. This state of things is due partly to the fact that all girls who go out to service, do so as a make-shift until they marry or obtain some more congenial work. Few of them have any ambition to do their work well, and few ever dream of making themselves a necessity in the family, becoming a part of it, sharing its joys and sorrows, and so establishing that honorable and close relation which exists between servants and families in Europe. Here, it is so much work for so much pay, and no bond of sympathy or attachment is allowed to spring up on either side. Another cause is the fact that too many American women, who ought to know better, regard work as degrading, instead of positively elevating and ennobling when it is well and conscientiously done. Is it wonderful that "girls" catch something of this vicious sentiment, and that it poisons their minds with false views of life, until they look upon their work as brutal drudgery, and strive to do as little of it as they possibly can and collect their wages?

Perhaps the reason why girls prefer situations in stores, or shops, or even factories, to housework, is that their work there is confined to certain hours, after which they are free, and it is quite possible that an arrangement which would give the domestic certain hours of the day for her own, would work a reform; or still better, certain reasonable tasks might be allotted her to do after which she would be free.

The fixed wages which prevail in most cities and towns offer no inducement for the "girl" to try to become skillful or expert at her work. Among men the best, neatest, and most skillful workman commands the largest pay, but the "girl" who is a superior cook, or maid of all work, gets only the same wages paid to a bungler who lives next door. Such a thing as a combination among ladies who employ help, to grade wages and protect each other from the imposition of untidy, dishonest, or indolent "girls," has never been made, and perhaps, indeed, it is no more called for than a combination of "girls" to protect themselves from lazy, tyrannical, or too exacting mistresses. Certain it is that the whole system by which domestics are hired and serve is demoralized beyond any speedy reform. All that any individual (418)