IX.
IDEALS OF BETTERMENT.
In view of the general purpose of this investigation, it is proper to discuss in conclusion the question of the improvement of Philadelphia Negro domestic service. In the first place, what remedies or improvements in domestic service have already been tried with any measure of success? The answer to this question should indicate the lines along which progress may be expected.
The only two scientific studies of the subject up to the present time, are those of Mr. Charles Booth and of Miss Salmon, who in 1897 published her 300-page book entitled "Domestic Service." Mr. Booth's treatment of the subject is purely statistical, simply stating and grouping facts; it has no theory of betterment to offer. But Miss Salmon, besides giving statistics of American domestic service, also treats the question in its historical aspects and considers it philosophically and practically, with an eye to its probable future development and to possible remedies for present difficulties.
Hence the best, perhaps the only answer, to the above question now to be found in print is that given by Miss Salmon in the closing chapters of her book; and a brief abstract of those chapters is therefore given here, with her permission.
Before suggesting any plan of betterment, Miss Salmon enumerates and discards various "doubtful remedies," such as the removal of all difficulties by the application of the golden rule, employing the system of service books in vogue in Germany, introducing domestic training in the public schools, and other methods. All these plans fail, says the author, because they assume that the adjustment to be made is a purely personal one, whereas larger relations—political, economic, industrial and social—are, in point of fact involved; and she believes that reform in domestic service, if it is to succeed, "must be accomplished along the same general economic lines as are reforms in other great departments of labor." She shows that domestic service, though apparently isolated from other departments of
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