Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 06.djvu/436

* DOMESTIC SERVICE. 874 DOMESTIC SERVICE. ants were the transported convicts and the re- dvinptioners. The redcniptiouer's services were sold for a term of years to a colonist, either by himself, by one of his creditors, or by the cap- tain of the vessel in which he took passage. In addition to the servants from these two classes, there were slaves, bolli Indian and nejjro. This state of domestic service lasted through the colonial period to the time of the Revolu- tion, when indented service was replaced in the North by free labor, and in the South was en- tirely supiTseded by nen;ro slavery. From the Kevolution until the middle of the nineteenth ecnturj- the servants in the North, except in the great cities, were the social equals of their employers, as is still the case in many pnrts of the West and Middle West. It was in deference to this equality that the use of the word 'servant' was abandoned and that of 'help' substituted. All suj;cestion of sen'itude was abolished. Liveries, even caps, were not worn. The 'help' sat at table with their employers, called the members of the family by their Chris- tian names, and were, in fact, what their name implied — friendly assistants, salaried but inde- pendent. This condition of domestic service in the North lasted almost as long as the patriarchal state of slavery in the South. About the middle of the nineteenth century a change in the slate of alTairs throughout the I'nited States began with the flood of immigra- tion. The famine of 1S4 in Ireland, the (Jer- man Revolution of 1848, and the conditions pre- ceding and following it, and the treaty of the United Stales with China in 1844, loosed upon this countrj- an unprecedented number of for- eigners. Of the Irish and German immigrants, nearly one-half were women. They entered as 'unskilled laborers.' The household industries have always been sought by unskilled labor. In the East these immigrants entered at once into the serving class. In the West, along the Pacific coast, the Chinese became the competitors of the natives in household labor, working more cheap- ly and more skillfully, and rapidly displacing •such .mericans as were engaged in domestic service. These conditions have been somewhat modified by the restrictions on Chinese immigra- tion. The question of domestic service in the South has been a vexed one since the Civil War. The negroes, long held in sen-itude and unaccustomed to think for themselves, were suddenly loosed upon the community, and given the same rights and privileges as the whites, without knowledge of how to use them. The habit of submission did much to restrain them, and their inherent tendencies have prevented them from organizing to any great extent. Many of them have come North to compete with the inmiigrants: but this has had no marked efTeet upon the conditions of domestic service, nor until recently have many white 8er'ants been employed in the South. Those who remained in the South have many of the faults of the slaves, with an independence which makes them insusceptible to control: but time, patience, and education are bettering these conditions. The foreigners in the East found the field ready for them. The women in New England who had in the early days acted as 'help' in their neighbors' homes were entering the recently established factories in large numbers. In the early times each household had raised not only its own food products, but its own clothing slulfs its well. The home had been cotton and woolen mill, dressmaking and tailoring shop. The de- velopment of machinery had taken this class of work out of the house, and many of those who had been accustomed to i!o it in the house fol- lowed it to the mills. It was a more rcnnuiera- tive and more independent occupation than boi«e- hola labor, even under the free and eqi;il re- gime. The Xorlbern women were glad to give over the household labor to the immigrants, but set themselves the diflicult task of adapting European methods to .merican conditions. With increased wealth came the desire for dis|)lay, and the patterning of household arrangements" after foreign usage. The result was that the word 'servant' came again into use, and domestic ser- vice sank in the social scale, while at the same time the immigrants themselves were eagerly imbibing the democratic ideas of their adopted country. The foreigners have remained practically in control of the American kitchen ever since they took possession of it. The eleventh census re- port classifies the domestic scr%'ants employed in the various parts of the I'nited States hy race thus: In the Eastern States 00.89 per cent, of the household servants are foreign or colored ; in the Middle States, oS.'J!) per cent.; in the Southern States, 8.3.23 per cent.: in the liordcr States, 8.,15 per cent.: in the Western States, 40.02 per cent. ; and in the Pacific States. r)2.42 per cent. In only one section of the country, then, do native servants outnumber the foreign and negro. Of the foreigners, the Irish arc the most mnnerous, licing ;t7.r>4 per cent, of the whole number engaged in domestic service, and the Germans are next, being 21.10 (ler cent, of the whole number. In the farming districts of the Northern and ^^'estern States the old conditions of equality above mentioned still prevail. The farmers' wives do their own work, with the help of a 'hired girl.' and the farmer employs for his field work and chores a 'hired man.' Hoth of these are practically members of his family and his social equals, as they are often sons and daugh- ters of his neighbors. Household servants are found mainly in the large cities, partly on ac- count of the congregation of wealth there, and partly on account of the servant's rooted objec- tion to the country — an objection which is doubt- less partly due to the foreigner's desire not to be completely isolated from all her kind as well ns from her home. In the fifty largest cities of the I'nited States, 1S.04 per cent, of the total popu- lation of the country is to be found, and 32. .32 per cent, of the domestic servants nf the enuntry. The wages vary with the region, the Pacific Coast paying much more than the Eastern States, and these in turn more than the Southern States. The average rate paid to household servants on the Pacific Coast is .^4.57 n week, against .$3.60 in the East and .$2.22 in the South. Cooks are the best paid of all domestic servants. In England and on the Continent. wag<'s are much smaller for household labor than in the I'nited States. Four dollars a week, which is lower tlian the Western and onlv a little higher than the Eastern average, is a phenomenally high rate there. In addition, in some parts of the Continent, servants arc not necessarily