Chapter III: Part 3

Yet more than this must be said. The statement that family life cannot be preserved if its members rest their relations on contract ignores the fact that the tendency in family life is precisely in this direction. The wife has her allowance, sons and daughters are given their allowances, financial dealings between members of the same family are becoming more definite and even legal in their character, and the result is not the disintegration of the family as it passes from status to contract, but a greater freedom of the individual members and therefore a more complex and perfect organization of the family relationships.

Another economic difficulty lies in the fact that so much of the service is largely personal in character, and that, therefore, payments are regulated by personal feelings and not by a recognized standard of payment. The result of this is the obnoxious system of fees--a system difficult to be done away with as long as employees expect to receive them. Fees could be abolished by the action of the employers, but as long as they prefer to have their employees paid by other persons--a practice that would be tolerated by no other class of employers--the initiative will not come from them. Fees could be abolished by the action of the individuals disposed to give them, but so long as men selfishly believe that money ought to purchase privileges that are not rights, the initiative will not come from them. Fees could be abolished by the concerted action of employees, but so long as they are ignorant of economic principles and indifferent to the social results of the system, the initiative will not come from them. But one of the hopeful signs of the times is the recent statement that in Paris waiters are coming to appreciate the fact that fees ultimately must mean smaller wages, since employers not only refuse to pay their employees but demand a certain percentage of the fees received. The movement among the waiters to refuse fees and to insist on wages paid by employers is full of promise.

What, then, are the conditions under which improvement in domestic service is possible?

First of all must come that attitude of mind that is willing to recognize not only the impossibility of separating domestic service from other parts of the household life, but still more the impossibility of separating the economic conditions within the household from the economic conditions without, a willingness to give up _a priori_ reasoning in regard to domestic employments and to study the historical and economic development of the household. All superficial treatment of the question must fail of securing the desired results, and all treatment must be superficial that does not rest on the solid basis of economic history and theory.

Granted, then, the existence of economic conditions in the household, the method of procedure is the same as in all other fields of action. In medicine the first step is to diagnose the case; in law, to take evidence; in mathematics, to state the problem; in science, to marshal the facts. No set of _a priori_ principles can be assumed in the household with the expectation that the household will conform to them. Investigation to-day stands at the door of every entrance into a new field and bars the way to any attempt to force a passage without its aid. The household has been slow to accept the inexorable fact that it must demolish its Chinese wall of exclusion and throw open its facts to investigation, but this is the inevitable end.

Next to the household, the most conservative element in society is the school. Yet the school is already yielding to the spirit of the times. It has been pointed out in a recent number of the “Atlantic Monthly”[13] that the profession of teaching, starting with a definite and final code of principles of education, has clung tenaciously to it, and it is but to-day that the occupation is realizing that it can make progress only as progress is made in other fields, and that is through scientific investigation; only to-day is it coming to appreciate that all conclusions to be valid must be based on facts. Every occupation has passed through the same experience and the law of progress that governs all development will work itself out in the household. Minds open to conviction and trained to scientific investigation are the prerequisites for an improved condition in domestic service.

Is it said that this discussion of the subject has dealt only with its economic phases and has ignored the ethical side? Alas, life is everywhere one long protest against a varying standard of ethics. Shall we separate the ethics of household service from the ethics of the shop, the ethics of the factory, the ethics of the professions? Shall we be governed by one code in the family, by another code in the church, by a third code in the school, and a fourth code in the state? Is the subject of ethics to be divided and pigeon-holed in compartments labeled “ethics for domestic service,” “ethics for skilled labor,” “ethics for unskilled labor,” “ethics for employers,” and “ethics for employees?” Who shall separate any question in economics, nay more, any question in life from its ethical phases? Who shall declare that the ethical code for one is not the ethical code for all?

It is said that every book is but the elaboration of a single idea. In a similar way all discussion of domestic service must have its beginning and its end with the idea that no improvement is possible that is not inaugurated by that class in society that sees most clearly the economic as well as the ethical elements involved in it, and that work by the slow methods of careful, patient investigation is the only way by which its difficulties, all too evident, may be lessened, not for ourselves but for those who shall come after us.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] _Works of Swift_, XI, 365-441.

[12] Cited from _Remarks on the Life and Writings of Swift_, p. 179, in _Works of Swift_, XI, 365.

[13] Frederic Burk, _The Training of Teachers_, October, 1897.

“PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE”

To seek wisdom through a _questionnaire_ is a time-honored expedient, while to give wisdom through questions has classic authority. It is therefore immaterial whether it is Experience or Inexperience that may be either seeking wisdom or that may have wisdom to bestow in this interlocution concerning a domestic problem that has already been involved to the _n^{th}_ power.

_What are the causes of our household troubles?_

The causes are in part economic--a household system governed by the same economic laws that govern other industries, but resisting the action of these laws; in part social--the attempt to form a chemical compound of public and political democracy with private and social aristocracy; in part educational--the tradition that marriage acts as a solvent to change every ignorant, inexperienced young woman into an accomplished housekeeper, and that, therefore, mental training is for her a work of supererogation; in part religious--the persistent maintenance of the belief that from the primeval chaos every woman has been foreordained to be a housekeeper, united with the rejection of the parallel belief that every man has been foreordained to be a tiller of the soil.

_But the situation in regard to household help has never been so critical as it is at the present time._

This statement has been found in one form or another in all literature, sacred and profane, from the times of Abraham and Achilles to the story of the last college graduate who has entered domestic service in disguise.

_Other countries do not have the same difficulty._

On the contrary, the difficulty is universal. It may vary somewhat in degree, but fundamentally the problem is the same the world over. Moreover, in no country is there so intelligent an understanding of all its factors as in America, for in no other country is found so great a mass of material for a comprehensive study of the subject. Statistical investigations have been carried on through national, state, and private initiative, and the information asked for has, for the most part, been cheerfully given because of the widespread desire among household employers to coöperate in every way with those undertaking these investigations. Material of every kind, ranging from the scientific accumulations of bureaus of labor to the hysterical deductions of sentimental observers, is all at hand. In Berlin a young man who recently carried on a statistical inquiry in regard to domestic service was nearly mobbed for his presumption--so considered--in attempting to gather information that German housekeepers had guarded as sacredly as Tibet holds the Grand Lama.

_When will our present household difficulty end?_

The difficulty will end when every man is reasonable, when every woman is omniscient, when every child is obedient, when we discover the philosopher’s stone, when we drink of the Pierian spring, when we dig the treasure at the end of the rainbow, when we enter upon our inheritance in Spain, when the east meets the west.

_Meantime?_

Dismiss the cook from your attention for a moment and study the kitchen. Is the baking-table on the opposite side of the room from the baking-utensils, while the baking-materials are kept in the pantry? Does an inventory of the cooking-implements show one article for toasting and broiling, two battered saucepans for preparing a five-course dinner, and a soup-kettle with a cover that does not fit? Is the pump on the left-hand side of the sink? Is the sink three inches too low and in a dark corner where a blank wall is all that meets the eye of the one who works before it? Does the waste-pipe from the ice-chest lead into a pan that must be emptied daily? Must the ashes from the range be carried out of doors every day? Is the range-coal too large and is the kindling-wood green? Does the oven-door refuse to shut tight and has the tea-kettle sprung a leak? Do the unprotected water-pipes freeze with zero weather? Does the chimney fail to draw? The results of these investigations may be the discovery that the household engineer has been expected to run his engine with insufficient fuel. _What if the skillful engineer has made the same discovery?_

Occupy for a week in winter the room of the cook. Does the temperature hover near the freezing-point, while the rest of the house is warm? Is the mattress of husks and are the pillows of hen’s feathers? Does a row of hooks take the place of a closet? Try the room for a week in midsummer. Is the temperature stifling hot? Do flies and mosquitoes find joy in the screenless windows? Are the facilities for bathing a small bowl and a pitcher without a handle on the top of a triangular wash-stand? The two weeks’ vacation in an unknown part of your own home may lead to the traditional _mauvais quart d’heure_. _What if the employee has spent a year under the protecting shelter of your roof?_

Watch for a week the table conversation of your family and its guests. Count the number of times you hear the word “servant,” and remarks in regard to “household drudgery,” “menial service,” “knowing one’s place,” and “superiority to housework.” _What if the household employee has also kept count?_

Imagine that you can accept ten cents from a friend for doing an errand, half a dollar from a guest as he leaves the house and a dollar from another, and can flatter an unwelcome cousin in the hope of getting two dollars at his departure. Criticise mercilessly all of your friends after you have invited them to afternoon tea. Repeat at table all the gossip retailed by officious busy-bodies. Your own self-respect will be lowered. _What if moral deterioration takes place in the kitchen under the same conditions?_

_But what can I do?_

Try putting all the laundry-work out of the house; take up the carpets, paint the floors, put down rugs and send these out of the house to be cleaned, or clean house with a vacuum cleaning-machine; reduce useless work and incidentally add to the attractiveness of your house by taking down portières and paying storage on half of the bric-à-brac; buy ice-cream and cake and all “extras” at the woman’s exchange. These additional expenses will materially reduce your subscriptions to half-orphan asylums and to vacation funds for the indigent. _What if this course saves you from hotel existence and enables others to keep their homes intact and to pay for their own vacations?_

Substitute praise for constant censure and the principle of coöperation for that of “giving orders;” see that the daily paper is on the kitchen-table before it is a week old and that the magazines are promptly supplied; encourage the singing-class, the flower-bed, basket-making, bead-work, in-door evening games, and out-of-doors recreation; at least make the effort to give in some form a new and wholesome interest to lives that may have been repressed and mentally starved. Friends may smile and call the plan quixotic. _What if it encourages self-respect in the employee and therefore respect for his work?_

Consider the kitchen with its accompanying rooms in the light of an economic plant. Give the same careful attention to its arrangement and equipment that the owner of a manufacturing establishment gives to the fitting-up of a new factory with all the latest labor-saving contrivances and facilities for work; study the plumbing and the water-supply with the zest of a scientific investigator and select the cooking- and baking-utensils with the interest of an artist. This course may curtail expenditures for the “den” and the relinquishment of the “cosy corner.” _What if thereby your house and home gain in unity for employer as well as for employee?_

Abandon the attempt to maintain a Waldorf-Astoria style of living on a fifteen-hundred-dollar salary; abandon it, if you have the income to maintain it, if in maintaining it you are putting temptation in the path of a weaker friend and neighbor. This may reduce your calling-list by two hundred names. _What if you gain thereby peace of mind and a contented household?_

Establish household settlements among the cottagers at Newport, in the vicinity of Central Park, on Riverside Drive, Commonwealth Avenue, Euclid Avenue, and the North Shore Drive. _What if successful settlement work in these localities should enable the families of millionaires to bridge the impassable chasm that now separates the dining-room from the butler’s pantry and the reception-room from the linen-closet?_

* * * * *

_Will these temporary devices remove all friction in the running of my household machinery?_

No, they will probably not even lessen it. But these and similar expedients may be of benefit to you, inasmuch as they may help you to carry out the commendable advice of Charles Reade, “Put yourself in his place.” They may also be of benefit to your granddaughter in enabling her to be a member of that ideal trades-union--that between employer and employee.

OUR KITCHEN

Our kitchen is not that of a millionaire; it has not a tiled floor, enameled brick walls or glass shelves; it is not fitted with appliances for cooking by electricity or with automatic arrangements for bringing up coal and sending down ashes. It is a plain, ordinary kitchen, built new six years ago, and attached to an old house to take the place of the former basement kitchen. It was planned by the landlord and the carpenter for unknown tenants, and the general arrangement had to conform to the plan of a house built many years before. If, then, it has been possible, with these usual, every-day conditions to develop a kitchen that possesses convenience of arrangement and unity of purpose, it would seem that similar ends might be obtained in any kitchen, anywhere, by any person, through use of the same means,--careful thought.

We are busy women who have learned, in other lines of work outside the household, the value of order and system, and when we began housekeeping we saw no reason why the application to the kitchen of the same principles that were used in arranging a study or a library should not produce the same ease and joy in the work of the household. If a library, to be of service to those who work in it, must have its books classified according to some clearly recognized principle, would not a kitchen gain in usefulness if some principles of classifying its utensils were employed? If a study-table demands every convenience for work, ought not a kitchen-table to be equally well equipped? If the student can work more effectively in a cool room than in one that is stifling hot, will not a cook produce better results if working in a well-ventilated room? If the librarian needs special equipment, does not the butler need appliances adapted for his work? If the instructor needs the materials for investigation if his work is not to perish of dry rot, should not the houseworker have at hand all the materials needed if her work is to represent progress? If the parlor gains in attractiveness if its colors are harmonious, will not the kitchen gain if thought is given to appropriate decoration?

It was the affirmative answer to these and similar questions that led to the evolution of our kitchen from a state of unadorned newness to its present condition. An indulgent landlord provided a model range, a copper boiler, a porcelain-lined sink, and a double shelf; we have added the gas-stove, the instantaneous water-heater, the electric fan, two double shelves and all the utensils. Thus equipped, what does our kitchen represent?

To answer this question it is necessary to consider its general arrangement. The north side is filled by a window, the range, and the outside door. This with the adjacent east side, we call “the cooking side.” Here are arranged boilers, sauce-pans, broilers, and all implements large or small needed for cooking.

The south side is filled by the door leading into the refrigerator-closet, the baking-table, and the door leading into the butler’s pantry. This we call the “baking side,” for here is the baking-table with its bins for flour and meal, its drawers for baking-spoons, knives and forks, and sliding shelves for baking and for bread-cutting. Above it are various small utensils needed in baking, together with spices, essences, and various condiments. A “kitchen indicator” showing articles needed from the grocer’s hangs at the left of the shelf, a peg at the end holds the household bills, and pegs at the right are for shears, scissors, a pin-cushion, and a cushion for needles used in preparing roasts.

The west side is the “cleaning side.” This side is our special pride and delight, for here on a corner shelf is our electric fan, the drop-leaf table for drying dishes, the porcelain sink with its shining brass faucets, the nickel instantaneous water-heater, and our fine forty-gallon copper boiler. Here above the sink are collected the cleaning-brushes of various kinds, ammonia, borax, scouring-sand, and all cleaning preparations. The sink is set about three inches too low for comfortable use, a fault in sinks almost universal, and to remedy this defect a rack was evolved from four nickel towel-bars joined by connecting metal plates. Lack of wall space required that the shelf on this side of the room should be shared equally between the preparations for cleaning and the kitchen library, while the basket for newspapers and magazines occupies the end of the cleaning-table. But does not cleanliness of mind accompany cleanliness of material equipment?

The outside entry to the kitchen serves, in default of other place, as a cleaning-closet. Here are kept brooms, dusters, scrubbing-brushes, polishing-brushes, dusting-mops and cleaning-mops. Here also, easy of access, is kept the garbage-pail,--three times each week emptied by the city garbage collector and three times each week scrubbed with hot soap-suds.

This is our kitchen as regards its ground plan and its exterior aspect. But the student of history always looks behind the external surface and studies the record; hence our kitchen records a belief in a few principles that seem fundamental in a household.

The first principle is that a kitchen should be absolutely sanitary in all its appointments. This means not only filtered cistern water, a still for distilling water, a porcelain-lined sink, and an abundance of hot water, but it means an absence of cubby-holes and cupboards where articles may be tucked away and accumulate dirt. Everything is in the open, every part of the kitchen is kept spotlessly clean, and we have never seen a rat or a water-bug about the house.

A second belief recorded by our kitchen is that of unity of plan. If the artist places before all else in importance the composition of his picture, if the author believes that his book should be the elaboration of a single idea, if the engineer knows that every part of his engine fits by design into every other part, it would seem clear that the application of the same principle is essential in the household. If the kitchen is to sustain an organic relationship to the other parts of the house it must represent in the arrangement of all its details the same idea of unity of composition that is expressed in a painting, of unity of development that gives life to a book, of unity of design that makes the perfect engine.

A third idea represented in our kitchen is that it must be equipped with every labor-saving device and with every convenience for work, if satisfactory results are to be secured. The first thought of the manufacturer is for the equipment of his manufacturing plant with every modern appliance. Can a perfect product come from imperfect, inadequate means of work in the household? The application of this principle has of necessity involved many experiments,--inventions will not work, or good ones are superseded by better ones, or a new need arises and must be met. Every week sees some article discarded because an improvement on it has been found. In the city of twenty-two thousand inhabitants in which we live automobiles have been used six years and approximately three hundred are now owned there and in the vicinity, but not one can be found of a pattern prior to that of three years ago. If an automobile must be disposed of because it is not of the most recent model, does it seem unreasonable to cast aside a twenty-five cent eggbeater that chafes the hands, a pineapple-snipper that wastes the fruit, an unsightly broken sauce-pan, and a patent water-cooler that will not cool the water?

But man does not live by bread alone, and a kitchen may be sanitary in all its arrangements, it may represent unity of plan, it may have every modern convenience, and yet it may lack the essential of attractiveness. The arts and crafts movement has not yet reached the kitchen, and it is thus almost impossible to secure cooking-utensils of good artistic design and color. But the second-hand store will often furnish a piece of good pottery, brass, or copper that may be utilized in the kitchen and serve the added purpose of increasing its attractiveness.

Yet a kitchen may illustrate all of these principles and still lack those subtle features that establish, unconsciously, some connection between it and its predecessors in other times and in other places. If the theory of evolution has taught us not only in science but in art and in politics and in everything connected with our daily life to look behind the surface and to seek the origins of things, if it has taught us ever to look for the relationship between the present and the past, surely the kitchen must not be excluded from this process of thought. Apparently the work performed there each day has neither connection with the past nor outlook into the future, yet this is but a superficial aspect of the situation. The kitchen of to-day with gas-range and instantaneous water-heater is the direct heir of the kitchen of yesterday with coal-range and copper boiler, and of that of the day-before-yesterday, with open fire and cauldron. An attempt to maintain this connection with the past is sought through the photographs on the walls. Two views of early colonial kitchens give historic continuity with the past, a photograph of the interior of a Dutch kitchen gives a touch of that cosmopolitanism that makes the whole world akin, while that of a famous hotel in New York City places us by prophetic fiction in the class of millionaires.

Such is our kitchen. “Does it pay?” It has paid us.

AN ILLUSTRATED EDITION

It is the day of the illustrated edition, and even more the day of the illustrator. Happy is the author to whom is accorded the honor of an illustrated edition of his latest book. Still happier is he whose facile, practiced pen is called into requisition to illustrate the works of the great artists found in our monthly magazines. Unhappy is the one whose book _no_ artist, even if gifted with imagination, can illustrate, and whose name no publishing house has ever entered on its card catalogue of pen illustrators of artistic sketches. But more fortunate times may await the unillustratable and non-illustrating author. A changing phraseology reflects a new _rapprochement_ between author and artist and a breaking-down of the barriers that once confined each within definite limits. There are even indications that the present positions of author and artist may be reversed and that the non-illustrating author may become quite independent of the previously necessary artist. “Pen pictures,” “sketches in black and white,” “pastels in prose,” all indicate the possibilities open to the author of combining with his own vocation that of the artist whose existence thus becomes unnecessary to his own. Nay more, the unillustratable author may take heart, for as the skillful acrobat learns the feat of walking on his hands, so the literary trickster may achieve the paradox of illustrating works that cannot be illustrated.

This theory has been the result of contemplating on the one hand the impossibility of illustrating a modest book dealing with statistics and equally prosaic facts and of noting on the other hand the popular demand that every book shall be illustrated. How shall man attain unto the unattainable?

A reminiscent mood led the author to blow the dust from the top of her last book, written ten years ago and not yet, unhappily, out of its second edition, and to turn over its half-forgotten pages. She found a passing interest in recalling her conclusions as they were laid bare on the pages of the book, but undreamed-of pleasures took form and shape as she remembered the circumstances under which each page had been written. Nay more, there opened out the vision of the unattainable illustrated edition. A series of pictures passed before her, far more interesting than the book they illustrated, and thus a prosaic work attained a place in that desirable class in which are found all books whose text seems only as a pretext for the artist’s brush.

The first picture was that of the receipt of a letter written in reply to a humble request for information in regard to the number of maids employed in the household, the length of time they had been employed, and similar facts obvious to one’s friends and neighbors. The letter was written on Tiffany’s finest stationery, it bore a crest and a coat of arms so undecipherable as to be a guarantee of its high aristocratic lineage, and its perfume was that of Araby the Blest. But the letter was written in the third person and the information it conveyed was not that which had been sought but the unexpected statement that the inquiry was impertinent and under no consideration whatever could be answered. Alas, the questioner had known that her questions would demand time and thought, but what artist, save the author, could depict the abyss into which the questioner was hurled by the epithet “impertinent?”

The second picture also had a letter in the foreground. The quest for information had led to an appeal to the only authority known to the questioner, but it was to an authority of world-wide reputation, and the unknown questioner hesitated long. Would the great man heed the appeal, even if the questioner could justify herself in making it? But the die was cast and the result was a long, kindly, painstaking letter not only giving in detail all the information sought but also suggesting similar by-paths to be explored. “Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The third picture was that of a woman’s club. The writer had never belonged to a woman’s club, save for a brief period of nominal connection with one, and it had been with much trepidation that she had accepted an invitation to read a paper before one of these organizations. But she wrote an article in which she attempted to show by means of all the facts and arguments at her command that the establishment of training-schools for domestic employees would not and could not remedy household ills. She valiantly read the paper and at the close of the hour one of the company thanked her heartily “for advocating the establishment of training-schools for servants.” Was it the woman, or the club?

The fourth picture is of a large corner room, with low ceiling, facing south and west. Its long table is covered with papers, reports, schedules, and census publications, and here, from early morning until late at night, during the hottest weeks of the early summer, the occupant of the room attempted to work out some of the economic laws governing domestic service. Her fellow occupants of the large building were the numerous maids engaged in cleaning it. Their work also was difficult, but morning tea tided over the time between breakfast and dinner, and work for the day closed at four o’clock. How would an artist portray the question that came each night--what would be the effect of an eight-hour day on economic investigation?

The fifth picture is one of a small room opening on an air-shaft, in a New York hotel. The occupant had arrived late, the hotel was crowded, and no other room was available. But it was not the smallness of the room, or the single window opening on the air-shaft that gave the occupant a chill on a July night,--it was the folding-bed. Her traveling-bag contained a new work on economic history, having a chapter on domestic service, and turning on all the electric lights, she read until daylight, never since quite sure whether it was devotion to history or craven fear of the deadly folding-bed.

The sixth picture is one of a railway carriage in provincial France. The American traveler, in search of information, had attempted to learn from her chance companion in the carriage somewhat of domestic service in France. Much valuable information was politely given, and then the tables were turned. But the interest of the French lady was centred, not in the status of domestic service in America, but in the personal status of her new acquaintance. That she was traveling alone might be accepted, though certainly to be deprecated. But what artist shall show forth the amazement on the face of the French lady when she heard the affirmative answer to her question, “But surely it is not possible that Madame will find no one at the station to meet her?”

The seventh picture is a series of dissolving views that suggest the portrait of a lady standing with her back to the onlooker and gazing at her own face reflected in a mirror opposite. A few months after the book was published, its author, attracted by the title of an article, purchased a new review to while away a railway journey. She read the article--and pondered. It seemed strangely familiar and soon she realized that it was in effect one of the chapters in her own book. It had not even suffered “a sea-change into something rich and strange,” for the illustrations used were the same that the first author had collected from the experiences of her personal friends, and to every one she could have attached a name, as presumably the second author could not do. The second in the series of dissolving views is of a correspondence with a gentleman who had given a course of lectures on domestic service in a remote city. The author of the book had expressed a desire to sit at the feet of Gamaliel and at length secured the loan of the manuscript from which the lectures were given. Probably a sea-change was not to be looked for in an interior city, and the author of the book rejoiced to find so much community of interest with the author of the lectures. The third in the series of dissolving views was of a certain bibliography. It had appeared in the first number of a new report on household affairs and the author was interested in it as a probable illustration of thought transference. Here was the title of a book she had consulted in the Bibliothèque Nationale and that presumably was not to be found in American libraries. Here was the title of a curious book she had picked up when “bouquinering” on the Quai Voltaire and had added to her private library. This was the title of another curious book found in a great university library,--interesting, but of little value. This was the line-long title of a collection of technical German laws found in Saxony. Here was the title of an old book that had been valued as a family heritage, but of no special importance to any one else. The compiler of the so-called “books of reference” had overlooked the sub-title in the book--“full titles of works referred to in the text”--and had not realized that the use of the word “bibliography” had been demanded by the exigencies of type. To recommend for use as a working bibliography a list of “full titles of works referred to in the text,”--was it perhaps donning an evening dress when starting for the golf-links?

The dissolving views have given the author the greatest pleasure of all the illustrations of the book. There is a favorite jest concerning books that have been read only by the author and the proof-reader. It is indeed true that for the most part an author writes a book to please himself, not to gain readers. But there is a secret joy if two birds can be brought down with the same stone and a reader, other than the proof-reader, be found. The purchase of a book does not necessarily imply that the book is read,--public libraries add the latest new books, private libraries are interested in first editions, and authors buy presentation copies for their friends. But none of these purchasers guarantee that the book purchased will be read. Was it not a cause for open rejoicing that not only one but three readers had been found, and more than that, that these three readers had not only been non-combatants, but had agreed so entirely with the views of the author?

The pleasures of a visit to Europe are often as is the square of the distance from the time of the visit. With the passage of the years, oblivion overtakes the moments when we agonized over the question whether the fee expected by the guide was a shilling or a pound, and the hours when we gazed at the fireless grate; but with each recurring year the realities stand out with greater and growing vividness. Does not the flight of time bring to us all the realization that the real work of our hand is not the one that can be bought at the counter, but the unpurchasable illustrated edition?

THE WOMAN’S EXCHANGE[14]

Few persons whose attention is attracted by the modest sign of the Woman’s Exchange, now found in nearly all our large cities, realize that a new competitor has appeared in the industrial market. Few even of those who have assisted in organizing and carrying on such exchanges know that they have been instrumental in introducing a new factor into economic problems. Yet in spite of unpretentious rooms and unconcern as to economic questions, the Woman’s Exchange has already had an appreciable effect on economic conditions, and must in future play a still more important part.

The history of these organizations belongs, however, to a history of philanthropic work rather than to that of economics. The first Woman’s Exchange, the “Ladies’ Depository Association” of Philadelphia, established in 1833, was founded by persons “who labored earnestly to arouse in the community an interest in the hard and often bitter struggle to which educated, refined women are so frequently exposed when financial reverses compel them to rely upon their own exertions for a support.”[15] In its foundation and its management it was controlled entirely by philanthropic motives; it was to enable women “who had seen better days,” and suffered more from the prejudices of society in regard to woman’s work than from actual poverty, “to dispose of their work without being exposed to the often rough handling of shopkeepers, or to the then mortifying admission of their fancied humiliating condition.” The second exchange, the “New Brunswick, New Jersey, Ladies’ Depository,” founded in 1856, also was purely charitable in its motives, and it restricted its privileges to those who had been in affluent circumstances but were suddenly forced to become self-supporting. The first two exchanges were the product of a generation in which charities of every kind were largely regulated by sympathy alone, and it was twenty years before similar organizations were formed elsewhere. In 1878 the “New York Woman’s Exchange” was begun, and it added a new idea. Its aim was “beneficence, rather than charity,” and it undertook “to train women unaccustomed to work to compete with skilled laborers and those already trained, and to sell the result of their industries.”[16] It came at a time when the organization of charities was first being attempted, and the principle was being slowly evolved that the best way to help an individual is to help him to help himself. Its aim and its management show the influence of the present generation in its study of philanthropy as a social and economic question.

Since 1878, the year which may be taken as the beginning of the period of the Woman’s Exchange, nearly one hundred exchanges have been organized, all, with scarcely an exception, growing out of philanthropic motives, but philanthropy governed by the principles of the present day. The statement of the object of the exchange presented in their constitutions and annual reports will make this clear:

“The object of this Association shall be to aid women by helping
them to help themselves; and in furtherance of this design, to
maintain a depot for a reception and sale of woman’s work, or of
articles in her possession, of which she may wish to dispose,
subject to the approval of an examining committee.” Cincinnati,
Ohio.

“As a means of providing a way for industrious and needy women to
help themselves without neglecting their homes and families, it is
indeed a charity that cannot be too highly estimated and is worthy
of substantial support.” President’s Report, Decatur, Illinois,
1890.

“The prime object of the Woman’s Industrial Exchange of
Minneapolis is: First--To assist women who must maintain
themselves. Second--To assist girls or women to pursue a course of
study as a means of support.” Fourth Annual Report, Minneapolis,
Minnesota, 1888.

“There are few charities that appeal more strongly to public
sympathy than those whose aim is amelioration of the sufferings of
women, for whom the struggle of life is beset by a thousand almost
insurmountable difficulties.” San Francisco, California.

“The object of this Association shall be to maintain in the city
of Little Rock, Arkansas, a place for the reception, exhibition,
and sale of articles, the product and manufacture of industrious
women, and to assist by such means as may be found efficient to
that end said women to turn to personal profit their talent and
industry for earning an honest livelihood; to facilitate a sale
of such articles as the women aforesaid may have or desire to
dispose of; also generally to assist women in their efforts to earn
an honest maintenance by their own industry, by and through such
instrumentalities as the society may find conducive to that end.”
Little Rock, Arkansas.

“In addition to the attainment of the chief object of the exchange,
namely, assisting a needy woman to turn to personal profit whatever
useful talent she may possess, it is also of some moment to have
demonstrated the practicability and possibility of the work in
other directions.” New Orleans, Louisiana, 1888.

“The exchange has, during the past year, been mainly supported by
the exertions and untiring energy of the board of managers. The
ladies in that way have demonstrated the Christian charity that
fills the good woman’s heart when she is able to assist her sister
woman.” President’s Report, Augusta, Georgia, 1891.

“The object of this society is to furnish a depository for the
reception, exhibition, and sale of articles made by ladies
attempting to support themselves.” Stamford, Connecticut.

“The Philadelphia Exchange for Woman’s Work is an institution
formed by a number of women of Philadelphia for the purpose of
helping women to help themselves.” Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
Circular of 1890.

“Among the number of charities which seem to be constantly
increasing in our large city, we must again bring to the notice of
its friends the Woman’s Work Exchange and Decorative Art Society of
Brooklyn.” Annual Report, 1889.

The object of the Woman’s Exchange is thus seen to be charity, not charity pure and simple, but charity having a double end in view. The first and most important aim is the direction into remunerative channels of the work of “gentlewomen suddenly reduced to abject penury,” with the secondary aim of encouraging “the principle of self-help in the minds of girls and women, who in the future, if necessary, will be helpful and not helpless when misfortune comes.” In carrying out its object, the exchange receives under specified conditions all articles coming under the three general classes of domestic work, needle-work, and art-work.

The domestic department includes all forms of food that can be prepared by the consigners in their own homes and sold through the exchange. These articles form a dozen different classes and comprise more than two hundred and fifty varieties. They include every form of bread, pastry, cake, small cakes, cookies, cold meats, salads, soups, special and fancy desserts, preserves, jellies, jams, pickles, sauces, and delicacies for the sick.[17] In the department of needle-work nearly a hundred different articles are enumerated by the different exchanges, and the number is practically without limit, since it includes every form of plain and fancy sewing. The art department is for the special encouragement of decorative art, and its possibilities as well as actual achievements are very great. These three departments are found in all the exchanges, but each exchange, according to its locality and the consequent needs of the community, adds its own special line of work. A few receive scientific and literary work, others arrange for cleaning and mending lace, re-covering furniture, the care of fine bric-à-brac, writing and copying, the preparation of lunches for travelers and picnic parties, and a few take orders for shopping. All the exchanges have connected with them an order department, which is considered an especially satisfactory and remunerative part of their work.

In fulfilling its aim, the exchange thus enters as a competitor into the industrial field, though without consideration on its own part of this side of its work; and it is as an economic factor, rather than as a charitable organization, that it is considered in this chapter. The place it has already won in this field is shown by the fact that there are now in operation about seventy-five exchanges, a few in small places in thinly settled localities having been abandoned, and these are scattered through twenty-three states and the District of Columbia. A few of them are carried on by private enterprise, and make no public report, and several organizations have as yet made no statement of their financial condition. Sixty-six of them, however, receive work from nearly sixteen thousand consigners, to whom they paid last year, according to their last annual reports, a total amount of more than $400,000. The following table shows the amount paid consigners by the ten largest Exchanges:

New York Exchange for Woman’s Work, $51,000
Boston Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, 34,510
Cincinnati Woman’s Exchange, 26,992
San Francisco Woman’s Exchange, 23,372
Baltimore Woman’s Industrial Exchange, 15,500
Philadelphia Exchange for Woman’s Work, 14,562
Columbus Woman’s Exchange, 13,000
Minneapolis Woman’s Industrial Exchange, 12,791
Topeka Ladies’ Exchange, 10,000
Milwaukee Woman’s Industrial Exchange, 9,824

It is of interest also to note the total amount paid to consigners by different exchanges since their organization.

The following table will show this:

New York Exchange for Woman’s Work (12 years), $417,435
Cincinnati Women’s Exchange (8 years), 175,130
New Orleans Christian Woman’s Exchange (10 years), 173,223
Boston Woman’s Educational and Industrial Union (6 years), 148,588
St. Louis Woman’s Exchange (8 years), 55,000
San Francisco Woman’s Exchange (5 years), 50,000
Rhode Island (Providence) Exchange for Woman’s Work (10 years), 48,469
Richmond (Va.) Exchange for Woman’s Work (7 years), 27,324
St. Joseph (Mo.) Exchange for Woman’s Work (6 years), 19,233

The Woman’s Exchange regarded as an economic factor must be considered in three aspects: (1) As a business enterprise; (2) from the point of view of the producer; (3) from the standpoint of the consumer.

Viewed purely as a business enterprise, the exchange is a failure. Having charity to a particular class as its object pure and simple, no other result could be expected. Aside from the few private exchanges that have been started as business ventures, but two or three are self-supporting. That at New Orleans has been self-supporting from its organization, and it has been one of the best organized and most successful of all the associations. Some of the organizations go so far as to say that self-support has never been an object with them.[18] In the great majority of the exchanges a commission of ten per cent is charged on all goods sold, but this sum is inadequate to meet current expenses. The exchange, therefore, relies for its support upon private contributions and the ordinary means adopted by other benevolent organizations for increasing their revenues.

The treasurers’ reports show that part of the funds at command have been derived from charity balls, calico balls, rose shows, chrysanthemum shows, flower festivals, baseball benefits, picnics, excursions, concerts, bazars, lectures, readings, Valentine’s Day cotillon suppers, concert suppers, club entertainments, carnivals, kermesses, sale of cook-books, flower-seeds, and Jenness-Miller goods, and in some instances from raffles.

This fact alone separates the exchange from other business enterprises. Having no capital to invest, it must pursue a hand-to-mouth policy, and employ means for increasing its resources which would never be considered by other business houses. In a few cases where exchanges own their buildings and sublet parts of them, or where they are able to maintain a profitable lunch department, it is possible more nearly to make both ends meet. Under other circumstances the exchange becomes poorer as its business increases, and there is a fresh demand for subscriptions and entertainments to meet current expenses. It is true that the exchange does not wish to be considered a business enterprise and be judged by ordinary business rules, but the fact that it enters the business field as a competitor with other enterprises makes it inevitable that it be judged as a business house, and not as a charitable organization. The persistence with which different exchanges iterate and reiterate the statement that their object is charity “to needy gentlewomen,” and not financial return, is evidence of a consciousness of their present ambiguous position. As long as the exchange undertakes business activities, it cannot escape judgment by business principles.

The exchange has from the first hampered itself with many hard and pernicious conditions. The requirement is universal that all consignments shall be made by women. Valuable industrial competition is thus shut out, and the exclusion of men from the exchange is as unreasonable as the exclusion of women from competition in other occupations. There are many household articles, the product of inventive and artistic talent, which are the handiwork of men and should find place in the exchange.

The second restriction found in the majority of exchanges is that no consignments shall be received except from women who state that they are dependent for entire or partial support on the sale of the articles offered. Some of the early exchanges made at first the additional requirement that the work offered should be by women who had formerly been in affluent circumstances but were rendered self-supporting by changes of circumstances. The latter requirement has now been abolished, and in a few of the more recently organized exchanges, especially in the exchange departments of the Woman’s Educational and Industrial Unions, the requirement of the necessity of self-support has been abandoned. Some exchanges also modify this condition so far as to state that all the proceeds of sales made for those not dependent on their own exertions for support must be appropriated to charitable purposes, and at least one exchange apologizes for accepting articles from young girls who had the necessaries, though not the luxuries, of life, on the ground that since these girls give the results of their work to charity, the exchange is teaching them a valuable lesson.

The principle is a pernicious one, and is never recognized in other enterprises. Just as long as society asks concerning any article “Does the maker need money?” and not “Is it the best that can be made for the price?” just so long a premium is put on mediocre work. It is a question never asked in other kinds of business; the best article is sought, regardless of personal considerations, and it is at least an open question whether in the end the interests of the individuals to be benefited by employment are not thus best served. If the same principle were applied to the legal and medical professions, society would be deprived of the services of many whose help is necessary for the preservation of its best interests. The application of the same principle elsewhere would cause every producer to withdraw from the industrial field as soon as he had gained a competence. The result would often be that as soon as an individual had reached great skill in producing an article, he would be forced to step aside and yield his place to others.

Moreover, society has a right to demand the best that every individual can give it; and just as long as the exchange persistently denies itself and its patrons the benefit of the best work wherever it is found, regardless of money considerations, just so long it will fail to secure the best economic results. It does not indeed concern itself with these results, but it cannot thereby escape them.

But aside from the injurious economic effects in thus limiting production, it places the whole idea of work on a wrong basis. It assumes that work for women is a misfortune, not the birthright inheritance of every individual, and that therefore they are to work for remuneration only when compelled by dire necessity. Moreover, every individual has the same right to work that he has to life itself, and to shut out the rich and the well-to-do from the privilege is as unfair to the individual as it is to society. Indeed, it may be assumed that the members of this class are, as a rule, better qualified for work than are other classes, since wealth has brought opportunities in the direction of education and special training, and society loses in the same proportion as it deprives itself of their services. It is true also that the higher the standard set in any department of work, the greater the improvement in the work of all workers in the same field.

But not only does the exchange deprive itself of positive good in thus refusing to accept the best wherever it is found, regardless of money considerations--it puts upon itself the positive burden of enforcing a questionable condition. “Necessity for self-support” is a relative term; and when the responsibility of the decision is put on the consigner, the danger is incurred on the one side of shutting out from the privilege of the exchange many who are unduly conscientious, and on the other side of encouraging deceit in regard to their necessities on the part of the less scrupulous. The exchange must be ever on the alert to guard against imposition and fraud; and however much it may disclaim the idea, it must to a certain extent make itself the judge of its consigners’ necessities. When this alternative is forced upon it, it must perform a task difficult in proportion to its delicacy, and one that would be resented in the business world as an unwarranted intrusion into private affairs.[19] The exchange by the use of these methods prejudices itself in a business way in the eyes of many who would be valuable consigners.