Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/725

 REVIEWS 705

The following chapter, the longest in the book, is devoted to an exceedingly interesting and carefully worked out description of the position of women in various branches of industrial life in the "great industry," in house industry and home work, in trade, in agriculture, in personal and domestic service. The sections on home work and on domestic service are particularly original. Home work, Frau Braun points out, has today little resemblance to its earlier namesake. The growth of home work does not mean a return to the independent producer; it by no means signifies a reversal of the industrial revolu- tion, as charitable ladies among the English aristocracy sometimes imagine. It is rather an unfortunate growth springing from the very stem of factory industry itself. Home work increases because by its means the employer avoids the expense of rent, up-keep, lighting and warming his factory ; because among home workers he can find cheaper and more docile labor; because the very irregularity of the labor is to him an advantage, since when employing it he can increase or decrease his staff at will, without having to take into consideration the item of fixed charges. Home work is, indeed, "a bastard child of the great industry which it has produced with its concubine, grinding poverty."

The question of domestic service is very carefully studied, both from its descriptive and statistical side; wages, board, lodging are discussed, and the picture drawn of the maids' rooms in a German household is very unpleasant. But Frau Braun, like many others who have studied this subject, comes to the conclusion that the greatest drawbacks to domestic service are to be found in its still semi-feudal character, in the lack of free time, and in the moral dangers which, by the statistics of prostitution, she shows undoubtedly exist. Accord- ing to one American reckoning, 47 per cent, of prostitutes had been domestic servants. The remedy, she thinks, is appearing before our eyes, if we would but see it. The gradual removal of much housework from the sphere of the home, as, for example, in the greater employ- ment of steam laundries, is gradually bringing washing, cooking, and cleaning into line with the development of modern industry, and so freeing domestic service from its semi-feudal character. But here, like most other thinkers on the subject, Frau Braun appears to the reviewer too optimistic, when she at the same time believes that the increase of married women's labor is a desirable development. To a large extent the problem of domestic service can be solved as sug- gested ; washing can be transferred to steam laundries ; the use of prepared foods in cooking is increasing ; the employment of experts