Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/558

546 whom she married. Women seeking employment understand perfectly well this feeling, quite unjustifiable I am willing to admit, among mechanics, and it acts as a strong inducement towards factory labor.

I have long ceased to apologize for the views and opinions of working people. I am quite sure that on the whole they are just about as wise and just about as foolish as the views and opinions of other people, but that this particularly foolish opinion of young mechanics is widely shared by the employing class can be easily demonstrated. The contrast is further accentuated by the better social position of the factory girl, and the advantages provided for her in the way of lunch clubs, social clubs, and vacation homes, from which girls performing household labor are practically excluded by their hours of work, their geographical situation, and a curious feeling that they are not as interesting as factory girls.

It is not the object of this paper to suggest remedies; but if the premise in regard to the isolation of the household employé is well taken, and if the position can be sustained that this isolation proves the determining factor in the situation, then certainly an effort should be made to remedy this, at least in its domestic and social aspects. To allow household employés to live with their own families and among their own friends, as factory employes now do, would be to relegate more production to industrial centers administered on the factory system, and to secure shorter hours for that which remains to be done in the household.

It might be possible that the employer of household labor would have to go back, at least during the period of transition, to the original office of "lady," that of "bread giving" to her household. It might be necessary for her to receive the prepared food and drink and serve it herself to her family and guests, but truly that is no hardship, which may be made a grace and a token, and there is no reason why in time the necessary serving at a table should not be done by a trained corps of women as fine as the Swiss men who make the table d'hôte of the European hotel such a marvel of celerity. In the fewer cases