Yet these Woman"s Rights Conventions are a protest against many former absurd, unreasonable ideas--the mere physical and culinary idea of womanhood as connected only with puddings and shirt-b.u.t.tons, the unjust and unequal burdens which the laws of harsher ages had cast upon the s.e.x. Many of the women connected with these movements are as superior in every thing properly womanly as they are in exceptional talent and culture. There is no manner of doubt that the sphere of woman is properly to be enlarged. Every woman has rights as a human being which belong to no s.e.x, and ought to be as freely conceded to her as if she were a man,--and first and foremost, the great right of doing any thing which G.o.d and nature evidently have fitted her to excel in. If she be made a natural orator, like Miss d.i.c.kinson, or an astronomer, like Mrs. Somerville, or a singer, like Grisi, let not the technical rules of womanhood be thrown in the way of her free use of her powers.
Still, _per contra_, there has been a great deal of crude, disagreeable talk in these conventions, and too great tendency of the age to make the education of woman anti-domestic. It seems as if the world never could advance, except like ships under a head-wind, tacking and going too far, now in this direction, and now in the opposite. Our common-school system now rejects sewing from the education of girls, which very properly used to occupy many hours daily in school a generation ago. The daughters of laborers and artisans are put through algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and the higher mathematics, to the entire neglect of that learning which belongs distinctively to woman. A girl of ten can not keep pace with her cla.s.s, if she gives any time to domestic matters; and accordingly she is excused from them all during the whole term of her education. The boy of a family, at an early age, is put to a trade, or the labors of a farm; the father becomes impatient of his support, and requires of him to take care for himself. Hence an interrupted education--learning coming by s.n.a.t.c.hes in the winter months or in the intervals of work.
As the result, the young women in some of our country towns are, in mental culture, much in advance of the males of the same household; but with this comes a physical delicacy, the result of an exclusive use of the brain and a neglect of the muscular system, with great inefficiency in practical domestic duties. The race of strong, hardy, cheerful girls, that used to grow up in country places, and made the bright, neat, New-England kitchens of old times--the girls that could wash, iron, brew, bake, harness a horse and drive him, no less than braid straw, embroider, draw, paint, and read innumerable books--this race of women, pride of olden time, is daily lessening; and in their stead come the fragile, easily-fatigued, languid girls of a modern age, drilled in book-learning, ignorant of common things. The great danger of all this, and of the evils that come from it, is, that society, by and by, will turn as blindly against female intellectual culture as it now advocates it, and having worked disproportionately one way, will work disproportionately in the opposite direction.
Domestic service is the great problem of life herein America; the happiness of families, their thrift, well-being, and comfort, are more affected by this than by any one thing else. The modern girls, as they have been brought up, can not perform the labor of their own families as in those simpler, old-fashioned days; and what is worse, they have no practical skill with which to instruct servants, who come to us, as a cla.s.s, raw and untrained. In the present state of prices, the board of a domestic costs double her wages, and the waste she makes is a more serious matter still.
Many of the domestic evils in America originate, in the fact that, while society here is professedly based on new principles which ought to make social life in every respect different from the life of the Old World, yet these principles have never been so thought out and applied as to give consistency and harmony to our daily relations.
America starts with a political organization based oh a declaration of the primitive freedom and equality of all men. Every human being, according to this principle, stands on the same natural level with every other, and has the same chance to rise according to the degree of power or capacity given by the Creator. All our civil inst.i.tutions are designed to preserve this equality, as far as possible, from generation to generation: there is no entailed property, there are no hereditary t.i.tles, no monopolies, no privileged cla.s.ses--all are to be as free to rise and fall as the waves of the sea.
The condition of domestic service, however, still retains about it something of the influences from feudal times, and from the near presence of slavery in neighboring States. All English literature of the world describes domestic service in the old feudal spirit and with the old feudal language, which regarded the master as belonging to a privileged cla.s.s and the servant to an inferior one. There is not a play, not a poem, not a novel, not a history, that does not present this view. The master"s rights, like the rights of kings, were supposed to rest in his being born in a superior rank. The good servant was one who, from childhood, had learned "to order himself lowly and reverently to all his betters." When New-England brought to these sh.o.r.es the theory of democracy, she brought, in the persons of the first pilgrims, the habits of thought and of action formed in aristocratic communities.
Winthrop"s Journal, and all the old records of the earlier colonists, show households where masters and mistresses stood on the "right divine"
of the privileged cla.s.ses, howsoever they might have risen up against authorities themselves.
The first consequence of this state of things was a universal rejection of domestic service in all cla.s.ses of American-born society. For a generation or two there was, indeed, a sort of interchange of family strength,--sons and daughters engaging in the service of neighboring families, in default of a sufficient working-force of their own, but always on conditions of strict equality. The a.s.sistant was to share the table, the family sitting-room, and every honor and attention that might be claimed by son or daughter. When families increased in refinement and education so as to make these conditions of close intimacy with more uncultured neighbors disagreeable, they had to choose between such intimacies and the performance of their own domestic toil. No wages could induce a son or daughter of New-England to take the condition of a servant on terms which they thought applicable to that of a slave. The slightest hint of a separate table was resented as an insult; not to enter the front door, and not to sit in the front parlor on state occasions, was bitterly commented on as a personal indignity.
The well-taught, self-respecting daughters of farmers, the cla.s.s most valuable in domestic service, gradually retired from it. They preferred any other employment, however laborious. Beyond all doubt, the labors of a well-regulated family are more healthy, more cheerful, more, interesting, because less monotonous, than the mechanical toils of a factory; yet the girls of New-England, with one consent, preferred the factory, and left the whole business of domestic service to a foreign population; and they did it mainly because they would not take positions in families as an inferior laboring-cla.s.s by the side of others of their own age who a.s.sumed as their prerogative to live without labor.
"I can"t let you have one of my daughters," said an energetic matron to her neighbor from the city, who was seeking for a servant in her summer vacation; "if you hadn"t daughters of your own, may be I would; but my girls are not going to work so that your girls may live in idleness."
It was vain to offer money. "We don"t need your money, ma"am; we can support ourselves in other ways; my girls can braid straw, and bind shoes, but they are not going to be slaves to any body."
In the Irish and German servants who took the place of Americans in families, there was, to begin with, the tradition of education in favor of a higher cla.s.s; but even the foreign population became more or less infected with the spirit of democracy. They came to this country with vague notions of freedom and equality, and in ignorant and uncultivated people such ideas are often more unreasonable for being vague. They did not, indeed, claim a seat at the table and in the parlor, but they repudiated many of those habits of respect and courtesy which belonged to their former condition, and a.s.serted their own will and way in the round, unvarnished phrase which they supposed to be their right as republican citizens. Life became a sort of domestic wrangle and struggle between the employers, who secretly confessed their weakness, but endeavored openly to a.s.sume the air and bearing of authority, and the employed, who knew their power and insisted on their privileges.
From this cause domestic service in America has had less of mutual kindliness t.i.tan in old countries. Its terms have been so ill- understood and defined that both parties have a.s.sumed the defensive; and a common topic of conversation in American female society has often been the general servile war which in one form or another was going on in their different families--a war as interminable as would be a struggle between aristocracy and common people, undefined by any bill of rights or const.i.tution, and therefore opening fields for endless disputes.
In England, the cla.s.s who go to service _are_ a cla.s.s, and service is a profession; the distance between them and their employers is so marked and defined, and all the customs and requirements of the position are so perfectly understood, that the master or mistress has no fear of being compromised by condescension, and no need of the external voice or air of authority. The higher up in the social scale one goes, the more courteous seems to become the intercourse of master and servant; the more perfect and real the power, the more is it veiled in outward expression--commands are phrased as requests, and gentleness of voice and manner covers an authority which no one would think of offending without trembling.
But in America all is undefined. In the first place, there is no cla.s.s who mean to make domestic service a profession to live and die in. It is universally an expedient, a stepping-stone to something higher; your best servants always have some thing else in view as soon as they have laid by a little money; some form of independence which shall give them a home of their own is constantly in mind. Families look forward to the buying of landed homesteads, and the scattered brothers and sisters work awhile in domestic service to gain, the common fund for the purpose; your seamstress intends to become a dressmaker, and take in work at her own house; your cook is pondering a marriage with the baker, which shall transfer her toils from your cooking-stove to her own.
Young women are eagerly rushing into every other employment, till feminine trades and callings are all over-stocked. We are continually harrowed with tales of the sufferings of distressed needle-women, of the exactions, and extortions practiced on the frail s.e.x in the many branches of labor and trade at which they try their hands; and yet women will encounter all these chances of ruin and starvation rather than make up their minds to permanent domestic service.
Now, what is the matter with domestic service? One would think, on the face of it, that a calling which gives a settled home, a comfortable room, rent-free, with fire and lights, good board and lodging, and steady, well-paid wages, would certainly offer more attractions than the making of shirts for tenpence, with all the risks of providing one"s own sustenance and shelter.
Is it not mainly from the want of a definite idea of the true position of a servant under our democratic inst.i.tutions that domestic service is so shunned and avoided in America, and that it is the very last thing which an intelligent young woman will look to for a living? It is more the want of personal respect toward, those in that position than the labor incident to it which repels our people from it. Many would be willing to perform these labors, but they are not willing to place themselves in a situation where their self-respect is hourly wounded by the implication of a degree of inferiority, _which does not follow any kind of labor or service in this country but that of the family_.
There exists in the minds of employers an unsuspected spirit of superiority, which is stimulated into an active form by the resistance which democracy inspires in the working-cla.s.s. Many families think of servants only as a necessary evil, their wages as exactions, and all that is allowed them as so much taken from the family; and they seek in every way to get from them as much and to give them as little as possible. Their rooms are the neglected, ill-furnished, incommodious ones--and the kitchen is the most cheerless and comfortless place in the house.
Other families, more good-natured and liberal, provide their domestics with more suitable accommodations, and are more indulgent; but there is still a latent spirit of something like contempt for the position.
That they treat their servants with so much consideration seems to them a merit ent.i.tling them to the most prostrate grat.i.tude; and they are constantly disappointed and shocked at that want of sense of inferiority on the part of these people which leads them to appropriate pleasant rooms, good furniture, and good living as mere matters of common justice.
It seems to be a constant surprise to some employers that servants should insist on having the same human wants as themselves. Ladles who yawn in their elegantly furnished parlors, among books and pictures, if they have not company, parties, or opera to diversify the evening, seem astonished and half indignant that cook and chambermaid are more disposed to go out for an evening gossip than to sit on hard chairs in the kitchen where they have been toiling all day. The pretty chambermaid"s anxieties about her dress, the minutes she spends at her small and not very clear mirror, are sneeringly noticed by those whose toilet-cares take up serious hours; and the question has never apparently occurred to them why a serving-maid should not want to look pretty as well as her mistress. She is a woman as well as they, with, all a woman"s wants and weaknesses; and her dress is as much to her as theirs to them.
A vast deal of trouble among servants arises; from impertinent interferences and petty tyrannical enactions on the part of employers.
Now, the authority of the master and mistress of a house in regard to their domestics extends simply to the things they have contracted to do and the hours during which they have contracted to serve; otherwise than this, they have no more right to interfere with them in the disposal of their time than with any mechanic whom they employ. They have, indeed, a right to regulate the hours of their own household, and servants can choose between conformity to these hours and the loss of their situation; but, within reasonable limits, their right to come and go at their own discretion, in their own time, should be unquestioned.
If employers are troubled by the fondness of their servants for dancing, evening company, and late hours, the proper mode of proceeding is to make these matters a subject of distinct contract in hiring. The more strictly and perfectly the business matters of the first engagement of domestics are conducted, the more likelihood there is of mutual quiet and satisfaction in the relation. It is quite competent to every housekeeper to say what practices are or are not consistent with the rules of her family, and what will be inconsistent with the service for which she agrees to pay. It is much better to regulate such affairs by cool contract in the outset than by warm altercations and protracted domestic battles.
As to the terms of social intercourse, it seems somehow to be settled in the minds of many employers that their servants owe them and their family more respect than they and the family owe to the servants. But do they? What is the relation of servant to employer in a democratic country? Precisely that of a person who for money performs any kind of service for you. The carpenter comes into your house to put up a set of shelves--the cook comes into your kitchen to cook your dinner.
You never think that the carpenter owes you any more respect than you owe to him because he is in your house doing your behests; he is your fellow-citizen, you treat him with respect, you expect to be treated with respect by him. You have a claim on him that he shall do your work according to your directions--no more.
Now, I apprehend that there is a very common notion as to the position and rights of servants which is quite different from this. Is it not a common feeling that a servant is one who may he treated with a degree of freedom by every member of the family which he or she may not return?
Do not people feel at liberty to question servants about their private affairs, to comment on their dress and appearance, in a manner which they would feel to be an impertinence, if reciprocated? Do they not feel at liberty to express dissatisfaction with their performances in rude and unceremonious terms, to reprove them in the presence of company, while yet they require that the dissatisfaction of servants shall be expressed only in terms of respect? A woman would not feel herself at liberty to talk to her milliner or her dress-maker in language as devoid of consideration as she will employ toward her cook or chambermaid. And yet both are rendering her a service which she pays for in money, and one is no more made her inferior thereby than the other. Both have an equal right to be treated with courtesy. The master and mistress of a house have a right to require courteous treatment from all whom their roof shelters; but they have no more right to exact it of servants than of every guest and every child, and they themselves owe it as much to servants as to guests.
In order that servants may be treated with respect and courtesy, it is not necessary, as in simpler patriarchal days, that they sit at the family-table. Your carpenter or plumber does not feel hurt that you do not ask him to dine with you, nor your milliner and mantua-maker that you do not exchange ceremonious calls and invite them to your parties. It is well understood that your relations with them are of a mere business character. They never take it as an a.s.sumption of superiority on your part that you do not admit them to relations of private intimacy. There may be the most perfect respect and esteem and even friendship between then and you, notwithstanding. So it may be in the case of servants. It is easy to make any person understand that there are quite other reasons than the a.s.sumption of personal superiority for not wishing to admit servants to the family privacy.
It was not, in fact, to sit in the parlor or at the table in themselves considered, that was the thing aimed at by New--England girls; these were valued only as signs that they were deemed worthy of respect and consideration, and, where freely conceded, were often in point of fact declined.
Let servants feel, in their treatment by their employers and in the atmosphere of the family, that their position is held to be a respectable one; let them feel, in the mistress of the family, the charm of unvarying consideration and good manners; let their work- rooms be made convenient and comfortable, and their private apartments bear some reasonable comparison in point of agreeableness to those of other members of the family, and domestic service will be more frequently sought by a superior and self-respecting cla.s.s. There are families in which such a state of things prevails; and such families, amid the many causes which unite to make the tenure of service uncertain, have generally been able to keep good permanent servants.
There is an extreme into which kindly disposed people often run with regard to servants which may be mentioned here. They make pets of them.
They give extravagant wages and indiscreet indulgences, and, through indolence and easiness of temper, tolerate neglect of duty. Many of the complaints of the ingrat.i.tude of servants come from those who have spoiled them in this way; while many of the longest and most harmonious domestic unions have sprung from a simple, quiet course of Christian justice and benevolence, a recognition of servants as fellow-beings and fellow-Christians, and a doing to them as we would in like circ.u.mstances that they should do to us.
The mistresses of American families, whether they like it or not, have the duties of missionaries imposed upon them by that cla.s.s from which our supply of domestic servants is drawn. They may as well accept the position cheerfully, and, as one raw, untrained hand after another pa.s.ses through their family, and is instructed by them in the mysteries of good house-keeping, comfort themselves with the reflection that they are doing something to form good wives and mothers for the republic.
The complaints made of Irish girls are numerous and loud; the failings of green Erin, alas! are but too open and manifest; yet, in arrest of judgment, let us move this consideration: let us imagine our own daughters between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four, untaught and inexperienced in domestic affairs as they commonly are, shipped to a foreign sh.o.r.e to seek service in families. It may be questioned whether, as a whole, they would do much better. The girls that fill our families and do our house-work are often of the age of our own daughters, standing for themselves, without mothers to guide them, in a foreign country, not only bravely supporting themselves, but sending home in every ship remittances to impoverished friends left behind. If our daughters did as much for us, should we not be proud of their energy and heroism?
When we go into the houses of our country, we find a majority of well-kept, well-ordered, and even elegant establishments, where the only hands employed are those of the daughters of Erin. True, American women have been their instructors, and many a weary hour of care have they had in the discharge of this office; but the result on the whole is beautiful and good, and the end of it, doubtless, will be peace.
Instead, then, of complaining that we can not have our own peculiar advantages and those of other nations too, or imagining how much better off we should be if things were different from what they are, it is much wiser and more Christian-like to strive cheerfully to conform to actual circ.u.mstances; and, after remedying all that we can control, patiently to submit to what is beyond our power. If domestics are found to be incompetent, unstable, and unconfirmed to their station, it is Perfect Wisdom which appoints these trials to teach us patience, fort.i.tude, and self-control; and if the discipline is met in a proper spirit, it will prove a blessing rather than an evil.
But to judge correctly in regard to some of the evils involved in the state of domestic service in this country, we should endeavor to conceive ourselves placed in the situation of those of whom complaint is made, that we may not expect from them any more than it would seem right should be exacted from us in similar circ.u.mstances.
It is sometimes urged against domestics that they exact exorbitant wages. But what is the rule of rect.i.tude on this subject? Is it not the universal law of labor and of trade that an article is to be valued according to its scarcity and the demand? When wheat is scarce, the farmer raises his price; and when a mechanic offers services difficult to be obtained, he makes a corresponding increase of price. And why is it not right for domestics to act according to a rule allowed to be correct in reference to all other trades and professions? It is a fact, that really good domestic service must continue to increase in value just in proportion as this country waxes rich and prosperous; thus making the proportion of those who wish to hire labor relatively greater, and the number of those willing to go to service less.
Money enables the rich to gain many advantages which those of more limited circ.u.mstances can not secure. One of these is, securing good servants by offering high wages; and this, as the scarcity of this cla.s.s increases, will serve constantly to raise the price of service.
It is right for domestics to charge the market value, and this value is always decided by the scarcity of the article and the amount of demand. Right views of this subject will sometimes serve to diminish hard feelings toward those who would otherwise be wrongfully regarded as unreasonable and exacting.
Another complaint against servants is that of instability and discontent, leading to perpetual change. But in reference to this, let a mother or daughter conceive of their own circ.u.mstances as so changed that the daughter must go out to service. Suppose a place is engaged, and it is then found that she must sleep in a comfortless garret; and that, when a new domestic comes, perhaps a coa.r.s.e and dirty foreigner, she must share her bed with her. Another place is offered, where she can have a comfortable room and an agreeable room-mate; in such a case, would not both mother and daughter think it right to change?
Or suppose, on trial, it was found that the lady of the house was fretful or exacting and hard to please, or that her children were so ungoverned as to be perpetual vexations; or that the work was so heavy that no time was allowed for relaxation and the care of a wardrobe; and another place offers where those evils can be escaped; would not mother and daughter here think it right to change? And is it not right for domestics, as well as their employers, to seek places where they can be most comfortable?
In some cases, this instability and love of change would be remedied, if employers would take more pains to make a residence with them agreeable, and to attach servants to the family by feelings of grat.i.tude and affection. There are ladies, even where well-qualified domestics are most rare, who seldom find any trouble in keeping good and steady ones. And the reason is, that their servants know they can not better their condition by any change within reach. It is not merely by giving them comfortable rooms, and good food, and presents, and privileges, that the attachment of domestic servants is secured; it is by the manifestation of a friendly and benevolent interest in their comfort and improvement. This is exhibited in bearing patiently with their faults; in kindly teaching them how to improve; in showing them how to make and take proper care of their clothes; in guarding their health; in teaching them to read if necessary, and supplying them with proper books; and in short, by endeavoring, so far as may be, to supply the place of parents. It is seldom that such a course would fail to secure steady service, and such affection and grat.i.tude that even higher wages would be ineffectual to tempt them away. There would probably be some leases of ungrateful returns; but there is no doubt that the course indicated, if generally pursued, would very much lessen the evil in question.
When servants are forward and bold in manners and disrespectful in address, they may be considerately taught that those who are among the best-bred and genteel have courteous and respectful manners and language to all they meet: while many who have wealth, are regarded as vulgar, because they exhibit rude and disrespectful manners. The very term _gentle man_ indicates the refinement and delicacy of address which distinguishes the high-bred from the coa.r.s.e and vulgar.
In regard to appropriate dress, in most cases it is difficult for an employer to interfere, _directly_, with comments or advice. The most successful mode is to offer some, service in mending or making a wardrobe, and when a confidence in the kindness of feeling is thus gained, remarks and suggestions will generally be properly received, and new views of propriety and economy can be imparted. In some cases it may be well for an employer who, from appearances, antic.i.p.ates difficulty of this kind, in making the preliminary contract or agreement to state that she wishes to have the room, person, and dress of her servants kept neat and in order, and that she expects to remind them of their duty, in this particular, if it is neglected. Domestic servants are very apt to neglect the care of their own chambers and clothing; and such habits have a most pernicious influence on their well-being and on that of their children in future domestic life. An employer, then, is bound to exercise a parental care over them, in these respects.
There is one great mistake, not unfrequently made, in the management both of domestics and of children, and that is, in supposing that the way to cure defects is by finding fault as each failing occurs. But instead of this being true, in many cases the directly opposite course is the best; while, in all instances, much good judgment is required in order to decide when to notice faults and when to let them pa.s.s unnoticed. There are some minds very sensitive, easily discouraged, and infirm of purpose. Such persons, when they have formed habits of negligence, haste, and awkwardness, often need expressions of sympathy and encouragement rather than reproof. They have usually been found fault with so much that they have become either hardened or desponding; and it is often the case, that a few words of commendation will awaken fresh efforts and renewed hope. In almost every case, words of kindness, confidence, and encouragement should be mingled with the needful admonitions or reproof.
It is a good rule, in reference to this point, to _forewarn_ instead of finding fault. Thus, when a thing has been done wrong, let it pa.s.s unnoticed, till it is to be done again; and then, a simple request to have it done in the right way will secure quite as much, and probably more, willing effort, than a reproof administered for neglect. Some persons seem to take it for granted that young and inexperienced minds are bound to have all the forethought and discretion of mature persons; and freely express wonder and disgust when mishaps occur for want of these traits. But it would be far better to save from mistake or forgetfulness by previous caution and care on the part of those who have gained experience and forethought; and thus many occasions of complaint and ill-humor will be avoided.
Those who fill the places of heads of families are not very apt to think how painful it is to be chided for neglect of duty or for faults of character. If they would sometimes imagine themselves in the place of those whom they control, with some person daily administering reproof to them, in the same _tone and style_ as they employ to those who are under them, it might serve as a useful cheek to their chidings.
It is often the ease, that persons who are most strict and exacting and least able to make allowances and receive palliations, are themselves peculiarly sensitive to any tiling which implies that they are in fault. By such, the spirit implied in the Divine pet.i.tion, "Forgive us our trespa.s.ses as we forgive those who trespa.s.s against us," needs especially to be cherished.
One other consideration is very important. There is no duty more binding on Christians than that of patience and meekness under provocations and disappointment. Now, the tendency of every sensitive mind, when thwarted in its wishes, is to complain and find fault, and that often in tones of fretfulness or anger. But there are few servants who have not heard enough of the Bible to know that angry or fretful fault-finding from the mistress of a family, when her work is not done to suit her, is not in agreement with the precepts of Christ. They notice and feel the inconsistency; and every woman, when she gives way to feelings of anger and impatience at the faults of those around her, lowers herself in their respect, while her own conscience, unless very much blinded, can not but suffer a wound.
In speaking of the office of the American mistress as being a missionary one, we are far from, recommending any controversial interference with the religious faith of our servants. It is far better to incite them to be good Christians in their own way than to run the risk of shaking their faith in all religion by pointing out to them what seem to us the errors of that in which they have been educated. The general purity of life and propriety of demeanor of so many thousands of undefended young girls cast yearly upon our sh.o.r.es, with no home but their church, and no shield but their religion, are a sufficient proof that this religion exerts an influence over them not to be lightly trifled with.
But there is a real unity even in opposite Christian forms; and the Roman Catholic servant and the Protestant mistress, if alike possessed by the spirit of Christ, and striving to conform to the Golden Rule, can not help being one in heart, though one go to ma.s.s and the other to meeting.