THE UNPOPULAR KITCHEN.
FROM the housekeeper's narrow point of view it is perhaps admissible to speak of the difficulty of obtaining suitable household help as an evil; but when a little more perspective is taken, this great want of the kitchen is seen to be a necessary feature of our vigorous and hasty growth as a nation.
When we were young and rustic and simple we had no "servant-girl problem" to puzzle over. Then help was obtainable at the house of some neighbor who happened to have a surplus of daughters, no one deeming that she who left her father's roof lost any prestige by the act.
But this system, which governed the wants of a thriving and industrious people, has passed away or been relegated to far-outlying rural districts. With the rapid increase of wealth, houses enlarged and multiplied, and luxurious and fashionable habits grew upon us, till the demand for household help greatly exceeded the supply. The result was inevitable. We had to accept the only help that offered, the pressure being such that few could afford to draw the line at skilfulness or efficiency. So the tidy American kitchen passed into the keeping of the ignorant and untrained immigrant, with whom the daughters of American farmers and mechanics could not and would not affiliate, and domestic service grew to mean to the American girl the very lowest step of the social ladder.
The general ignoring by writers on domestic science of this gulf which was, so to speak, fixed between kitchen and parlor in the early part of our national life lies at the bottom of much of the fruitless discussion on this subject; fruitless, because the poor American girl, as appreciative of social advantages as her richer sister, is not to be driven into undesirable and unpromising employment by any specious argument based on the supposition that life is a mere question of bread. Life—our glowing, plastic American life—is to her what it is to others,—the scene of a struggle for place. To the persistent question, Why do you prefer the starvation wages of shop or factory to well-paid domestic service? she answers, and answers pertinently, For the same reason that a millionaire's daughter chooses to marry a bankrupt nobleman instead of a wealthy butcher or tradesman. And while there may be those who will say that in both instances there is deviation from sound sense and a wholesome view of life, it must be admitted, nevertheless, even by the most radical, that the error, such as it is, con-
