clean there is no resemblance to the housework of a town or country mansion. There are no schools for these arts,—no apprenticeships for domestic servants to betake themselves to. While no such resources exist, employers have not the right to demand able service in return for pay. Honest service they may claim; but not able service; for the candidate can neither promise (except in some fortunate instances) a good quality of service, nor be blamed for deficiencies.
While there is this difference between this and other kinds of labour, all alike are coming under the rule of change which is governing the relation between employers and the employed. Everywhere the labouring classes are becoming more independent: their compacts wear a different aspect from those of old times: their pay is higher; and the benefits they receive consist more exclusively in pay. It is not the question here whether this change is a good or an evil; or how much of both there may be in it. We are concerned with it only as it affects the footing of servants with their masters and mistresses. The latter are aghast at the wages now asked by servants; and at the same time they complain of the growth of the vices of the kitchen,—sloth, luxury, insolence, wastefulness,—while the incapacity for service seems to be greater than ever. Looking at the bare facts, they are true, in regard to a considerable proportion of the servants of the wealthier classes. The first important point is to beware of judging the general condition of domestic service from one province of it, however considerable; and the next is to see what is to be done. Nothing that can be said or done will affect the rate of wages. That is a settled point. What is to be said about the vices of the servants’ hall? and what about the bad quality of the service?
The most certain thing in the whole matter is that the function of domestic service is now divided into two orders, which are essentially distinct. So much practical unreasonableness and so much domestic uneasiness proceed from these two being confounded, that their distinctive conditions cannot be too carefully pointed out and remembered. One order of service is a domestic relation: the other is a selling and purchase of a particular kind of labour.
Where the old conception is the basis, the respective parties may, on the whole, think themselves fortunate. It has its troubles, and plenty of them, because human capacities and tempers are various: but there is a possibility of a far happier connection than can be looked for in the other case. When the mistress of an old-fashioned household hires a servant, she considers that she is taking a new member into the family; and she usually knows a good deal about the girl or woman before she engages her. Nine times in ten she has to teach and train for some weeks or months before she can enjoy the comfort of good service; and the common complaint is that as soon as the servant has made sure of her improved qualifications she goes away,—“to better herself.” Then she is called “ungrateful,” and the mistress is disheartened at having the whole process to go over again with a new subject. She says, now and then, that she will never train any more girls, or take any but thoroughly qualified servants: but she is pretty sure to go back to the old plan, and, I may add, to succeed at last.
For this purpose she must render it a difficult matter for her maid to “better herself” by change. Some ignorant and conceited women remain convinced to the end of their days that they may gain by higher pretensions: but there are always some who know when they are well off, and see the value of a settled position and a character for steadiness. Between such servants and their employers there is a connection in which high wages do not bear a part. In such households wages do not rise much higher than they were thirty years ago. But then, it is completely understood that long service gives a claim to protection and future assistance, which is at least an equivalent for the excess of pay given for short service. If the employer lives, the old servant keeps her place and wages after it becomes necessary to provide an assistant; or, in her old age, such an addition is made to the income from her savings as enables her to live in some other home. It has always been a great marvel to everybody except the mistresses who pay, how it is that servants have ever sold their labour for such miserable wages as have till now been given. Writers of tracts, and preachers of “contentment” to the poor, are fond of pointing out what a blessed lot is that of the maidservant, with her freedom from personal cares, her good food, clothes and lodging, and her converse with a higher class than her own: but these monitors say nothing of the prospect which lies before the servant, whenever her strength fails, or her sight, or hearing. Till lately, ten guineas a-year were considered good wages for cooks and housemaids, and less for nursemaids, throughout the provinces, and in the commercial parts of London. How is it possible for a woman to dress herself neatly, and bestow a trifle now and then on relation or neighbour, and lay by anything worth speaking of as a resource for old age, out of such a pittance as that? This is so clear now, when we think more than our fathers did of the independence of the working classes, that it is becoming understood that servants must either be admitted to share family ties and claims, or be as well paid as their neighbours of other trades.
The mistress who wishes her servants to settle will remember also that there is much trial on both sides, and that she must lessen her servants’ share to the utmost, or expect to lose them. It is a trial to them to be thrown together, without any choice of their own, to live in one another’s company incessantly, without relief. They are separated, on entering service, from family and friends, and cast among strangers; and they have not the safeguards against strifes and rudeness which are afforded by education and good manners. They are removed from the probability of marriage, and from the natural interests which would have exercised their faculties and affections at home. The fact that a very small proportion of the half-million of our female servants marry points to an arrear of suffering and privation which the preachers and tract distributors should