Household Administration Part 8

One main difference is, as was noticed earlier, that the household produces use-values, and all other organisations (save some public bodies) exchange-values. Or to put the same thing in another way, the industrial world is run to make a profit; the household, on the contrary, is kept up by the contributions of its members, and exists to provide for them the necessaries and comforts of life. None the less is the work of cooking, cleaning, and serving of real economic value when carried on within the household, as people discover when they have to pay for the organisation of the same services in hotels or boarding-houses.

The second great distinction is that while any other business may expand to meet the demands of a growing market, and as a result of the increasing competency of its organiser and work-people, the household is definitely limited in scope by the numbers of the family included within it. Biscuit-makers or jam-makers, to put the matter concretely, may succeed by skilful management in enlarging their businesses until they supply their goods to hundreds of thousands of people, and earn a large profit by doing so. But the most efficient housekeeper continues all her life to organise and cater for the same number of people, and her reward for her good management does not consist in a raised salary or increased profits. It is, in fact, not pecuniary at all, but is the increased well-being of those whom she serves.

Important consequences follow from these two distinctions, some of them desirable, others the reverse. The household is preserved, as it were, as a little oasis in the midst of the surrounding commercialism. There at least exists no temptation to adulteration or sophistication, or to shoddy work intended to sell but not to last. No housewife would be such a fool as to put alum in the bread baked at home, to use decaying fruit in the tarts, or questionable meat in her pies. She can have no object save to provide the best she can for her family with the means at her disposal. This is an enormous advantage, the value of which it is hardly possible to overrate.

But the absence of profit-making has certain disadvantages. It means that while other economic organisations are being constantly spurred to increasing efficiency by the stimulus of compet.i.tion, the household remains backward. A manufacturer knows to-day that he must use the most up-to-date machinery and employ the most skilled management or be beaten in the race for commercial supremacy. But housekeepers may continue (and do continue) to use old-fashioned ranges or antiquated systems of hot-water heating without any reference to the proceedings of their neighbours. Without doubt it results that new inventions make their way much more slowly in housekeeping than in profit-making industry. How rare, for instance, it is to find properly constructed grates outside very wealthy households. How badly the kitchen, larder, and scullery are planned in relation to one another. In how few cases is any attempt made to utilise electricity for cooking or removing dust, for both of which purposes admirable machines are already on the market.

But there are other factors which also contribute to the backwardness of domestic engineering. The smallness of the household is one. It pays a large hotel, for instance, to buy special machines for cleaning knives, or to instal superheated steam, for washing plates and dishes. But neither the initial expense nor the cost of running could be met out of the funds at the disposal of the small household. Another reason exists in the fact that the average housewife does not distinguish between annual and capital outlay. Unaccustomed to finance, and keeping accounts--if she keeps them at all--in a very amateurish fashion, she fails to understand that capital expenditure, let us say, on one of the little electric vacuum cleaners now on the market might pay for itself in a short time by saving the wages of a charwoman.

(_a_) THE ORGANISATION OF THE HOUSEHOLD AS AFFECTED BY THE HOUSING QUESTION

Then, finally, few people own their houses, and are therefore disinclined to make an outlay which would benefit their successors rather than themselves. Landlords (who are frequently retired tradesmen or elderly ladies depending on the rent of a row of houses for their sole income) are in their turn unprogressive and unenlightened. It is often hard to induce a landlord of the type indicated to consent to structural changes even if carried out at the tenant's expense. The builders of new houses, again, are not, to put it mildly, educated in the best schools of household architecture and domestic engineering. It is true that in some suburbs, largely under the influence of the more competent architects employed by the garden city organisations, a marked improvement in domestic building is noticeable. But only too often the hot-water system is inefficient, the ventilation poor, the grates wasteful, and so on. I have never yet heard of a speculative builder who deliberately planned the laying out of the streets in the area which he was developing in such a way that the living-rooms might have a maximum and the larder and pantries a minimum of sunlight. The new roads are usually all set at right angles to the main street, and the houses rigidly planted square to the roads, regardless of the points of the compa.s.s.

All these factors, acting together, prevent that general improvement in the construction of houses which is noticeable in other branches of industry. Progress does, of course, take place. The pressure exercised by the local health authorities leads to improved drainage and plumbing; lighting, owing to the recent compet.i.tion between gas and electricity, has become both cheaper and better. But an intelligent application of science and investment of capital when a house is under construction could easily effect still further improvements.

Since, however, the household is not influenced by the ordinary processes of compet.i.tion, advance will probably depend on some form of co-operation among tenants. The principle of tenant co-partnership has. .h.i.therto been applied only to the construction of working-cla.s.s houses, but there seems to be no reason why it should be not equally useful among the middle cla.s.ses. The advantages of the organisation are that it secures to the tenant a well-built house, sometimes specially constructed to meet his wishes, while his complete mobility is not interfered with as it is by ownership of his dwelling. These apparently opposed results are obtained by the formation of a company which is the legal owner of the land and the houses; but no one is allowed to rent a house until he invests a certain amount of money in the company. Thus there are two cla.s.ses of shareholders--tenant shareholders and ordinary shareholders. If a man wishes to move from the neighbourhood, then he ceases to be a tenant and becomes only an ordinary shareholder, and if he needs the money he can always sell out. Rent is paid in the ordinary way, and so too are dividends on the shares. Thus groups of people are enabled to control the conditions under which they are housed, without being hampered by the possession of a dwelling-house, which in an emergency they may be forced to sell at a serious loss. Minor advantages are greater cheapness of construction owing to wholesale buying of materials, and the provision of a more liberal repair fund than is contemplated by the ordinary landlord. It is possible, too, to provide common tennis courts, children's playgrounds, pleasure gardens, &c., which are kept up out of the general funds of the company.[74] The "co-partnership tenants'" villages at Bournville, Hampstead, Ealing, &c., are all doing well,[75] and we may venture to hope that if the same principle were applied to the housing of the middle cla.s.ses, the worst horrors of the dreary and yet pretentious suburbs constructed by the speculative builder would soon be checked.

(_b_) THE PROBLEMS OF DOMESTIC SERVICE

The position of the domestic servant is the next subject which demands consideration. It is a question which has aroused much acrimonious controversy, mistresses accusing maids of ignorance and inefficiency, maids objecting in their turn to the menial position and lack of freedom involved in domestic service. Yet it is curious to notice that the conditions of this branch of work have been little studied by the economist. The number of domestic servants as enumerated in the census of 1901 was 1,330,783, the largest single occupation in the country.[76]

But while dozens of books and blue-books could be named discussing the position of the textile worker or the agricultural labourer, not more than three or four investigators have concerned themselves with the domestic servant, on whose efficiency our health and comfort absolutely depend.

Another curious anomaly is that domestic servants are becoming fewer in proportion to the population, although the level of their wages is very high in comparison with the usual payments for women's work. Between 1881 and 1901 female indoor servants increased from 1,230,406 to 1,330,783, an increase of 8.2 per cent., while the population increased 25.2 per cent. Actually, then, there was a smaller proportion of the population engaged in domestic service in 1901 then in 1881.[77] What is still more remarkable is that at the younger ages the number has actually decreased. Between the ages 15-20, there is a decrease of 7.3 per cent., while in the number of females living at those ages there is an increase of 28.1 per cent. This suggests that the difficulty of finding servants will intensify as time goes on, as is indeed borne out by observation. Other women's industries are growing very rapidly. The number of female clerks more than trebled between 1891 and 1901. In the same period, female elementary school teachers increased by over 50 per cent., and the women engaged in hospital and inst.i.tution service and in workhouses and workhouse infirmaries by 41 per cent. These facts indicate that domestic service is becoming less and less popular and is losing ground, while other women's industries are gaining.

It is our duty then to consider the causes of this state of things, which cannot be regarded with equanimity. Our steadily increasing wealth ought to make it more and more possible and desirable for more women to specialise in those basic industries of cooking and cleaning, which are of the utmost importance for the right ordering of life.

The question must be treated in reference to the general industrial and social changes of our time. Many ladies, knowing nothing of economics, discuss the matter as one of personal relations only, and when they find themselves annoyed with one incompetent servant after another, content themselves with blaming the servants as individuals without inquiring whether the difficulty has any deeper root. Or they take up a reactionary att.i.tude, and declare that the lower cla.s.ses are over-educated and too well off, and are in consequence refusing to perform their natural duties. But neither personal blame nor the semi-feudal belief that the one and only rightful destiny of daughters of bricklayers, coal miners, or small clerks is to become cooks or housemaids in the service of their betters will avail to throw any light on the difficulty of obtaining competent domestic workers. We must study carefully and without bias the conditions of that industry as compared with other industries, in order to solve the problem.

In the first place, we may note the advantages of domestic service. It is, as has been already observed, well paid. Some investigations carried out by a group of my students last year led to the conclusion that the ordinary cook, housemaid, or general servant in middle-cla.s.s households costs her employer in wages, food, house-room, heating, lighting, and insurance about 50 a year.[78] I have been informed by a lady accustomed to deal with servants in a wealthy household, that board wages are usually 14s. 6d. for men servants, and 12s. 6d. and 10s. 6d.

for women servants. When we remember that in the ranks from which servants are drawn,[79] a workman is comparatively well off if he is earning 35s. a week for the support of himself and his family, and that a woman who makes 1 a week is a rarity,[80] we should expect to find domestic service one of the industries in which the supply outruns the demand. Again, there is no period of apprenticeship or training necessary. The servant earns from the first day she enters service, and is often carefully trained by a mistress in cooking or waiting at table, only to leave that mistress for a better situation the moment she thoroughly understands her duties. Again, in many households the maids share in the family holidays. They spend a month at the seaside or in the country, having all their travelling expenses paid as a matter of course. Their allowance of personal holidays may not be large, but at all events their wages run on without interruption. These advantages are the more remarkable, when it is considered that they have been attained without the aid of any trade organisations at all. Trade unions for domestic workers have been formed from time to time, but their life has been ephemeral and their membership of the smallest. High wages, practically continuous employment, food and lodging usually of a standard much above that in the servant's own home--all these are to be found in domestic work. Why, then, does it remain unpopular?

In the first place, the hours are long and irregular. A domestic servant, especially in a place where only one or two are kept, is "on duty" for at least fifteen hours a day--from 7 A.M. to 10 P.M. Even meal-hours are not free from interruption. The thoughtful mistress, it is true, will not summon her maids at dinner-time or supper-time if she can help it, but all mistresses are not thoughtful, and in any case there is the doorbell to be answered. Much of the work is not hard; in a well-managed household there should always be an hour or two of comparative leisure in the afternoon and again in the evening. But the average maid is never sufficiently free through the whole day to go out without asking leave, or to lie down for an hour should her morning work have been unusually heavy. Of some households a much blacker picture could be painted. Not merely do the maids have no leisure, but they are actually hard at work washing, cooking, ironing, serving meals, washing up, carrying coals and hot water, &c., for even a larger period than the fifteen hours which, as noted before, is the minimum of time "on duty." These hours compare very unfavourably with the six or seven hours' day of the elementary school-teacher, the eight hours' day of the Civil servant, and the nine or ten hours worked in factories and in offices.

Next, there is the lack of personal freedom. This may seem a mere sentimental objection not to be weighed in the balance for a moment by sensible persons as against the solid advantages of domestic work. But sentimental objections count more decisively with women than with men.

Miss B. L. Hutchins points out in a recent article that respectable girls of the working cla.s.s often accept quite low wages, provided only their employment is light, clean, comfortable, and affords abundant hours of leisure. And women enter on domestic service exactly at the age at which freedom and some amount of leisure seem more valuable than high wages. Doubtless in later years many sweated drudges have wished that they had become servants instead of entering the jam-factory or the steam-laundry. But at sixteen and seventeen, when the choice was made, the situation appeared very different. I have very little doubt that one of the greatest objections to domestic service is that it removes the young woman from her own cla.s.s just at the marriageable age, and therefore decreases her chances of marriage, while in some ill-governed households and in hotel and restaurant service she may be subjected to severe temptation. The widening of the gulf between rich and poor and their segregation into distinct districts increases this disadvantage.

Again, there is the fact that domestic service is strangely enough regarded as a peculiarly menial occupation, in itself a mark of a lower social grade. This is indicated by the use of the Christian name, the insistence on a uniform, and the commonness of contemptuous terms such as "slavey." Refined people are careful to avoid the use even of the word "servant," replacing it by "maid," so strong is this connotation of inferiority. Here again we are on sentimental grounds. But it certainly seems undesirable, in view of the spread of doctrines of social equality, that this suggestion of a low social status should cling around the person who undertakes such important duties as cooking and washing.

Another disadvantage is the loneliness of domestic servants. In other occupations women have colleagues and companions. The general servant, coming as she does from a lively even if poor working-cla.s.s home, with neighbours at hand for gossip in moments of relaxation, may find it very hard to bear up against the restraint and unnatural quietude of her first place,[81] and often ends by returning in haste to the factory industry she had been persuaded to abandon, when she will find the gaiety and lively society of girls and young men of her own age. Even when two maids are kept, they may not be congenial to one another, and one cannot deny that to share work, meals, and often bed with a woman whom one has reason to dislike, is a fate we would all wish to avoid.

Girls of higher status and more intelligence are often turned from domestic service by the fact that it affords little or no opportunity for self-improvement or recreation, or for promotion inside its own ranks. Servants cannot go to lectures or evening cla.s.ses. The servant's piano or bicycle is a common theme for jesting in the comic papers. In a large household or in a hotel promotion may be obtained, but the maid who becomes a general servant or a single-handed cook reaches the limit of her increase in income at an early age.

Many of the disadvantages noted do not apply to large households. There companionship is to be found, and promotion may be looked for. The hours are more regular, meals less interrupted, and free time easier to obtain. Hence I was not surprised when I questioned proprietors of clubs, residential hotels, and the mistresses of wealthy households to learn that most of them considered the servant difficulty to be greatly exaggerated. The housekeeper of one suite of residential flats told me she had no trouble at all in getting servants, and that she sent them off at a week's notice if they proved unsatisfactory. "Even if I cannot get a maid to live in at once," she added, "I can always supplement the work of the others by an extra charwoman. There are any number of outworkers to be had." In another residential hotel all the women servants had two evenings a week free from 5 to 10.30. Here, too, there was never much difficulty in obtaining workers.

Another disadvantage of the small as opposed to the large household is that the management is often inefficient, and the equipment poor. In these residential flats, for instance, each suite had its own bathroom and lavatory, and consequently the work of carrying water was reduced to a minimum. I think, too, that the regularity of the discipline is often liked by girls, who find it hard to keep to good ways when they work alone.

On the whole, then, I see no reason to believe that domestic service is unpopular because cooking and cleaning are regarded as disagreeable occupations in themselves. It is the conditions under which it is carried on that are disliked, and if mistresses desire to have better servants, those conditions must be altered. Some of them, it must be admitted, are inherent in the present organisation of the household.[82]

Some form of co-operation might obviate certain of these defects; in groups of a.s.sociated homes, the domestic equipment could certainly be improved, skilled supervision and proper discipline could be more easily carried out, and the maids would have the advantages of shorter and more regular hours and of companionship with their equals. Here again it may be possible to apply the co-partnership tenants' organisation. Many people, however, not unnaturally dread the lack of privacy and independence which such a mode of life would, they think, entail, and would prefer to endure the disadvantages of the present system rather than lose control over their own kitchen and their own servants. It is too soon yet to express an opinion. Fortunately, at Letchworth, at Brent Lodge, Finchley, and elsewhere, experiments in the provision of a.s.sociated homes with a common kitchen and a common staff of servants are shortly to be tried. If successful, they will no doubt prove a boon to many people.

In the meantime one can only suggest that mistresses must endeavour individually to mitigate some of the disadvantages of domestic service.

It is not higher wages that are needed, but more leisure and more society, and an absence of the foolish sn.o.bbery which regards it as an amusing joke that a servant should wish to possess a bicycle or go to a meeting or concert.

The suggestion has sometimes been made that distressed gentlewomen might find a refuge in domestic service. But "lady servants" or "mothers'

helps" only rarely prove a success. Their presence is inevitably a hindrance to the full enjoyment of family privacy, and often enough their gentility is an excuse for incompetence. But in special cases lady servants turn out well, especially as children's nurses. The most interesting attempt to introduce them into general domestic service is that started by the Guild of the Dames of the Household at Cheltenham. A short period of training is insisted upon, while on the other hand certain privileges not usually conceded to maids must be granted, in particular, a period of two hours each day free from duty. In small and quiet households, specially in those composed of ladies only, a "Dame" would be welcomed in place of the incompetent general servant, or two Dames might take the place of the regulation cook and house-parlour maid. But it would not be easy to have one Dame demanding special privileges and imbued with different traditions in a larger household.[83]

Nor do I see any reason to expect that increased provision for domestic training alone is likely to improve the lot of mistresses who want maids. The training in the elementary schools is often given to children too young to profit by it, and is besides designed rather to enable them to be of use in their own homes than to qualify them to become cooks or housemaids in middle or upper-cla.s.s households. Again, the girls who attend at the special domestic economy schools are not usually available for ordinary domestic service; the greater number of the students are being prepared either for teaching or for positions as housekeepers and matrons. While untrained girls can find a place and wages without any difficulty, working-cla.s.s parents are not likely to spend money on training for domestic service; and the numbers for whom scholarships are provided must naturally be limited.

Improvement is much more likely to result from alterations in the condition of domestic service. If, as regards leisure and social status, that occupation could be put more nearly on a level with other women's trades, the outlook would be much brighter, and then training in domestic economy in continuation schools or trade schools for girls from fourteen to sixteen would be valuable.

Failing these reforms, mistresses will probably continue to find themselves obliged to put up with cooks who cannot cook, and housemaids and laundresses who are both ignorant and incompetent. The irk and irritation of living all day long at close quarters with an impertinent and inefficient person, which often severely tries the nerves of the women of the professional cla.s.ses, will continue. These things are inevitable so long as domestic servants do not choose their occupation because they wish to follow it, but because they have been failures in other directions. Therefore no improvement would be attained by shutting other avenues of employment to women and forcing them back into this.

Such a line of action is, of course, quite impracticable, whatever be the difficulties of mothers of families and mistresses of households; factories, offices, shops, elementary schools and post-offices will continue to offer employment to women. But even if it were practicable it would fail of its aim. Work is only well done when it is chosen for its own sake, not when it is unwillingly accepted because the worker is fit for nothing else. And a genuine improvement in domestic service can only come about by an alteration in its conditions.

A systematic investigation into English domestic service similar to that carried out in America by Professor Lucy Salmon of Va.s.sar College would be most useful at the present juncture, and may possibly be undertaken by the household economics cla.s.s at King's College. Professor Salmon issued 5000 schedules to employers and 5000 to employees, and received in all 1744 answers. On the answers received she based the conclusions arrived at in her book, "Domestic Service," which are not dissimilar to those set forth in the preceding paragraphs. Conditions in America are, however, so unlike those in England that a separate investigation for this country would be most valuable.

(_c_) A DISCUSSION OF DOMESTIC BUDGETS

(1) _Working-Cla.s.s Budgets_

I have left myself very little s.p.a.ce for dealing with another important section of household economics, namely, domestic budgets. Unfortunately the material for a satisfactory study of the actual and the advisable division of household expenditure is only abundant in certain cla.s.ses.

There are a considerable number of investigations into the cost of living among the working-cla.s.ses.[84] From these it is clear that we must make a very marked line of distinction between the domestic circ.u.mstances of labourers and of artisans. The former spend at least from 75 to 80 per cent. of their income on food and lodging alone; yet if the family is of ordinary size and none of the children are earning anything, they are commonly under-nourished and badly lodged. The remainder of the income is devoted to fuel, clothes, savings, insurance, and recreation.

Members of this cla.s.s commonly wear second-hand clothes, and live in tenement houses, originally built for a wealthier section of the community. It is they who send their children to work at any employment that turns up at the earliest moment allowed by the law. The burden laid on the women of this cla.s.s is peculiarly heavy. They must work for wages if possible, for every extra shilling adds immensely to the family comfort. Hence they go out charing; they undertake ill-paid home work; and at the same time all the toil of keeping the house and children clean and of doing the cooking and washing falls on the mother. Add to this the fact that if the food supply runs short, then the children and the husband have their share first and the mother takes what may be left. It has been calculated[85] that this cla.s.s amounts to about one-third of the population, and is the source whence comes the greater part of the pauperism with which the country is afflicted.

The artisan cla.s.s was found by Mr. Rowntree to comprise about one-half of the working-cla.s.s population. Its domestic circ.u.mstances differ in several respects from those of the cla.s.s already described. Food and housing were adequate; and, save in the textile districts, the wife commonly remains at home and the children stay longer at school. It is this cla.s.s that is the backbone of trade unionism and the co-operative movement; it is in fact the true "middle-cla.s.s" of Britain.

Lady Bell in her book "At the Works" gives a very sympathetic sketch of the home life of the ironworkers of Middlesborough, pointing out that the monotony and narrowness of the lives led by the women and the ugliness of the surroundings of the workers' houses are the main defects from which they suffer. Roughly half their income goes on food, which is plain but adequate. The proportion of rent varies very much from district to district. In York it was 12.8, but in such crowded towns as London and Glasgow it would be higher. There is, however, a surplus sufficient for clothing, saving, holidays, and reasonable recreation.

It is conjectured that the excessive expenditure on drink in the United Kingdom[86] must be largely due to this cla.s.s. But the evidence is insufficient to show whether the labourer or the artisan is the more guilty.

(2) _Lower Middle-Cla.s.s Budgets_

The next cla.s.s which should be examined is that made up by the clerks and routine brain-workers. As already noted, there is little or no material available for the study of the budgets of this cla.s.s. The Economic Club published a few years ago a collection of family budgets, four of which might be taken as ill.u.s.trating the home life of this important section of the community. From these and from the rather unreliable divisions of income given in some of the smaller women's papers, I have come to the conclusion that food absorbs 30 to 40 per cent. of the income, and rent 15 to 20 per cent. The expenditure on clothing is much more liberal, and I am inclined to believe that the poorer clerks are sometimes insufficiently fed.

It should be noted that in this cla.s.s the cost of education tends to be borne by the parent and not by the State; no doubt there is here a genuine grievance, one, however, which the provision of munic.i.p.al secondary schools is gradually removing. But a thorough and accurate study of the circ.u.mstances of the lower middle-cla.s.s would be of the utmost value at the present time. It is certain that its needs and demands are to some extent at all events overlooked through the increasing power of organised labour on the one hand and the increasing wealth of the upper cla.s.ses on the other.

(3) _The Budget of the Well-to-do_

Probably it is in the budgets of these wealthier cla.s.ses that the reader of these pages will be most interested from a personal standpoint. Under this head there is very little scientifically collected material; but on the other hand the ladies' papers and the housekeeping handbooks afford considerable information of somewhat varying value.

It is in this cla.s.s that service becomes an important item; it is in this cla.s.s that the artistic side of life, the enjoyment of physical and intellectual luxury, first becomes possible. In a sense the study of expenditure here is both more useful and more interesting. A fraction of the income would suffice for the satisfaction of the mere physiological needs, and there is a real choice possible in the disposition of the surplus.

Therefore, in the case of these larger incomes, I propose to discuss rather the general principles of expenditure than the statistical facts.

The latter are not thoroughly reliable, and at the same time the circ.u.mstances of the cla.s.s in question are better known to my readers.