How To Write Special Feature Articles Part 49

I looked, and I admitted, with a blush of shame for ever doubting, that I certainly could not beat it. But, I suddenly realized, I could steal it!

I have been stealing it ever since, and having an enormously enjoyable time in the bargain.

Of course, stealing is a relative term, like anything else connected with morality. What would be stealing in the immediate neighborhood of a city is not even what the old South County oyster fisherman once described as "jest pilferin' 'round," out here on the edges of the wilderness. I go out with the trailer hitched to the back of my Ford, half a mile in any direction, and I pa.s.s roadsides where, if there are any farmer owners of the fields on the other side of the fence, these owners are only too glad to have a few of the ma.s.sed, invading plants or bushes thinned out. But far more often there is not even a fence, or if there is, it has heavy woods or a swamp or a wild pasture beyond it. I could go after plants every day for six months and n.o.body would ever detect where I took them. My only rule--self-imposed--is never to take a single specimen, or even one of a small group, and always to take where thinning is useful, and where the land or the roadside is wild and neglected, and no human being can possibly be injured. Most often, indeed, I simply go up the mountain along, or into, my own woods.

I am not going to attempt any botanical or cultural description of what I am now attempting. That will have to wait, anyhow, till I know a little more about it myself! But I want to indicate, in a general way, some of the effects which are perfectly possible, I believe, here in a Ma.s.sachusetts garden, without importing a single plant, or even sowing a seed or purchasing any stock from a nursery.

Take the matter of asters, for instance. Hitherto my garden, up here in the mountains where the frosts come early and we cannot have anemone, j.a.ponica, or chrysanthemums, has generally been a melancholy spectacle after the middle of September. Yet it is just at this time that our roadsides and woodland borders are the most beautiful. The answer isn't alone asters, but very largely. And nothing, I have discovered, is much easier to transplant than a New England aster, the showiest of the family. Within the confines of my own farm or its bordering woods are at least seven varieties of asters, and there are more within half a mile.

They range in color from the deepest purple and lilac, through shades of blue, to white, and vary in height from the six feet my New Englands have attained in rich garden soil, to one foot. Moreover, by a little care, they can be so ma.s.sed and alternated in a long border (such a border I have), as to pa.s.s in under heavy shade and out again into full sun, from a damp place to a dry place, and yet all be blooming at their best. With what other flower can you do that? And what other flower, at whatever price per dozen, will give you such abundance of beauty without a fear of frosts? I recently dug up a load of asters in bud, on a rainy day, and already they are in full bloom in their new garden places, without so much as a wilted leaf.

Adjoining my farm is an abandoned marble quarry. In that quarry, or, rather, in the rank gra.s.s bordering it, grow thousands of Solidago rigida, the big, flat-topped goldenrod. This is the only station for it in Berkshire County. As the ledges from this quarry come over into my pastures, and doubtless the goldenrod would have come too, had it not been for the sheep, what could be more fitting than for me to make this glorious yellow flower a part of my garden scheme? Surely if anything belongs in my peculiar soil and landscape it does. It transplants easily, and under cultivation reaches a large size and holds its bloom a long time. Ma.s.sed with the asters it is superb, and I get it by going through the bars with a shovel and a wheelbarrow.

But a garden of goldenrod and asters would be somewhat dull from May to mid-August, and somewhat monotonous thereafter. I have no intention, of course, of barring out from my garden the stock perennials, and, indeed, I have already salvaged from my old place or grown from seed the indispensable phloxes, foxgloves, larkspur, hollyhocks, sweet william, climbing roses, platycodons and the like. But let me merely mention a few of the wild things I have brought in from the immediate neighborhood, and see if they do not promise, when naturally planted where the borders wind under trees, or grouped to the gra.s.s in front of asters, ferns, goldenrod and the shrubs I shall mention later, a kind of beauty and interest not to be secured by the usual garden methods.

There are painted trilliums, yellow and pink lady's slippers, Orchis spectabilis, hepaticas, bloodroot, violets, jack-in-the-pulpit, ma.s.ses of baneberries, solomon's seal, true and false; smooth false foxglove, five-flowered and closed gentians, meadow lilies (Canadensis) and wood lilies (Philadelphic.u.m), the former especially being here so common that I can go out and dig up the bulbs by the score, taking only one or two from any one spot. These are but a few of the flowers, blooming from early spring to late fall, in the borders, and I have forgotten to mention the little bunch berries from my own woods as an edging plant.

Let me turn now for a moment to the hedge and shrubbery screen which must intervene between my west border and the highway, and which is the crux of the garden. The hedge is already started with hemlocks from the mountain side, put in last spring. I must admit nursery in-grown evergreens are easier to handle, and make a better and quicker growth.

But I am out now to see how far I can get with absolutely native material. Between the hedge and the border, where at first I dreamed of lilacs and the like, I now visualize as filling up with the kind of growth which lines our roads, and which is no less beautiful and much more fitting. From my own woods will come in spring (the only safe time to move them) ma.s.ses of mountain laurel and azalea. From my own pasture fence-line will come red osier, dogwood, with its white blooms, its blue berries, its winter stem-coloring, and elderberry. From my own woods have already come several four-foot maple-leaved vibernums, which, though moved in June, throve and have made a fine new growth. There will be, also, a shadbush or two and certainly some hobble bushes, with here and there a young pine and small, slender canoe birch. Here and there will be a clump of flowering raspberry. I shall not scorn spireas, and I must have at least one big white syringa to scent the twilight; but the great ma.s.s of my screen will be exactly what nature would plant there if she were left alone--minus the choke cherries. You always have to exercise a little supervision over nature!

A feature of my garden is to be rock work and a little, thin stream of a brooklet flowing away from a wall fountain. I read in my catalogues of marvellous Alpine plants, and I dreamed of irises by my brook. I shall have some of both too. Why not? The war has got to end one of these days. But meanwhile, why be too down-hearted? On the cliffs above my pasture are ma.s.ses of moss, holding, as a pincushion holds a breastpin, little early saxifrage plants. From the crannies frail hair bells dangle forth. There are clumps of purple cliffbrase and other tiny, exquisite ferns. On a gravel bank beside the State road are thousands of viper's bugloss plants; on a ledge nearby is an entire nursery of Sedum acre (the small yellow stone crop). Columbines grow like a weed in my mowing, and so do Quaker ladies, which, in England, are highly esteemed in the rock garden. The Greens Committee at the nearby golf club will certainly let me dig up some of the gay pinks which are a pest in one of the high, gravelly bunkers. And these are only a fraction of the native material available for my rock work and bank. Many of them are already in and thriving.

As for the little brook, any pond edge or brookside nearby has arrowheads, forget-me-nots, cardinal flowers, blue flag, clumps of beautiful gra.s.ses, monkey flowers, jewel-weed and the like. There are cowslips, too, and blue vervain, and white violets. If I want a clump of something tall, Joe-pye-weed is not to be disdained. No, I do not antic.i.p.ate any trouble about my brookside. It will not look at all as I thought a year ago it was going to look. It will not look like an ill.u.s.tration in some "garden beautiful" magazine. It will look like--like a brook! I am tremendously excited now at the prospect of seeing it look like a brook, a little, lazy, trickling Yankee brook. If I ever let it look like anything else, I believe I shall deserve to have my spring dry up.

Probably I shall have moments of, for me, comparative affluence in the years to come, when I shall once more listen to the siren song of catalogues, and order j.a.panese irises, Darwin tulips, hybrid lilacs, and so on. But by that time, I feel sure, my native plants and shrubs will have got such a start, and made such a luxuriant, natural tangle, that they will a.s.similate the aliens and teach them their proper place in a New England garden. At any rate, till the war is over, I am 100 per cent Berkshire County!

WANTED: A HOME a.s.sISTANT

(_Pictorial Review_)

One ill.u.s.tration made by a staff artist, with the caption, "The New Home a.s.sistant is Trained for Her Work."

WANTED: A HOME a.s.sISTANT

BUSINESS HOURS AND WAGES ARE HELPING WOMEN TO SOLVE THE SERVANT PROBLEM

BY LOUISE F. NELLIS

WANTED: A HOME a.s.sISTANT--Eight hours a day; six days a week. Sleep and eat at home. Pay, twelve dollars a week.

Whenever this notice appears in the Help Wanted column of a city newspaper, fifty to one hundred answers are received in the first twenty-four hours!

"Why," we hear some one say, "that seems impossible! When I advertised for a maid at forty dollars a month with board and lodging provided, not a soul answered. Why are so many responses received to the other advertis.e.m.e.nt?"

Let us look more closely at the first notice.

Wanted: A Home a.s.sistant! How pleasant and dignified it sounds; nothing about a general houseworker or maid or servant, just Home a.s.sistant! We can almost draw a picture of the kind of young woman who might be called by such a t.i.tle. She comes, quiet, dignified, and interested in our home and its problems. She may have been in an office but has never really liked office work and has always longed for home surroundings and home duties.

I remember one case I was told of--a little stenographer. She had gladly a.s.sumed her new duties as Home a.s.sistant, and had wept on the first Christmas Day with the family because it was the only Christmas she had spent in years in a home atmosphere. Or perhaps the applicant for the new kind of work in the home may have been employed in a department store and found the continuous standing on her feet too wearing. She welcomes the frequent change of occupation in her new position. Or she may be married with a little home of her own, but with the desire to add to the family income. We call these Home a.s.sistants, Miss Smith or Mrs.

Jones, and they preserve their own individuality and self-respect.

"Well, I would call my housemaid anything if I could only get one,"

says one young married woman. "There must be more to this new plan than calling them Home a.s.sistants and addressing them as Miss."

Let us read further in the advertis.e.m.e.nt: "Eight hours a day; six days a week." One full day and one half day off each week, making a total of forty-four hours weekly which is the standard working week in most industrial occupations. At least two free Sundays a month should be given and a convenient week-day subst.i.tuted for the other two Sundays.

If Sat.u.r.day is not the best half day to give, another afternoon may be arranged with the Home a.s.sistant.

"Impossible," I can hear Mrs. Reader say, "I couldn't get along with eight hours' work a day, forty-four hours a week." No! Well, possibly you have had to get along without any maid at all, or you may have had some one in your kitchen who is incompetent and slovenly, whom you dare not discharge for fear you can not replace her. Would you rather not have a good interested worker for eight hours a day than none at all?

During that time the Home a.s.sistant works steadily and specialization is done away with. She is there to do your work and she does whatever may be called for. If she is asked to take care of the baby for a few hours, she does it willingly, as part of her duties; or if she is called upon to do some ironing left in the basket, she a.s.sumes that it is part of her work, and doesn't say, "No, Madam, I wasn't hired to do that," at the same time putting on her hat and leaving as under the old system.

The new plan seems expensive? "Twelve dollars a week is more than I have paid my domestic helper," Mrs. Reader says. But consider this more carefully. You pay from thirty-five to fifty dollars a month with all the worker's food and lodging provided. This is at the rate of eight to eleven dollars a week for wages. Food and room cost at least five dollars a week, and most estimates are higher. The old type of houseworker has cost us more than we have realized. The new system compares favorably in expense with the old.

"I am perfectly certain it wouldn't be practical not to feed my helper,"

Mrs. Reader says. Under the old system of a twelve to fourteen-hour working day, it would not be feasible, but if she is on the eight-hour basis, the worker can bring a box-luncheon with her, or she can go outside to a restaurant just as she would if she were in an office or factory. The time spent in eating is not included in her day's work.

Think of the relief to the house-keeper who can order what her family likes to eat without having to say, "Oh, I can't have that; Mary wouldn't eat it you know."

"I can't afford a Home a.s.sistant or a maid at the present wages," some one says. "But I do wish I had some one who could get and serve dinner every night. I am so tired by evening that cooking is the last straw."

Try looking for a Home a.s.sistant for four hours a day to relieve you of just this work. You would have to pay about a dollar a day or six dollars a week for such service and it would be worth it.

How does the Home a.s.sistant plan work in households where two or more helpers are kept? The more complicated homes run several shifts of workers, coming in at different hours and covering every need of the day. One woman I talked to told me that she studied out her problem in this way! She did every bit of the work in her house for a while in order to find out how long each job took. She found, for instance, that it took twenty-five minutes to clean one bathroom, ten minutes to brush down and dust a flight of stairs, thirty minutes to do the dinner dishes, and so on through all the work. She made out a time-card which showed that twenty-two hours of work a day was needed for her home. She knew how much money she could spend and she proceeded to divide the work and money among several a.s.sistants coming in on different shifts. Her household now runs like clockwork. One of the splendid things about this new system is its great flexibility and the fact that it can be adapted to any household.

Thoughtful and intelligent planning such as this woman gave to her problems is necessary for the greatest success of the plan. The old haphazard methods must go. The housekeeper who has been in the habit of coming into her kitchen about half past five and saying, "Oh, Mary, what can we have for dinner? I have just come back from down-town; I did expect to be home sooner," will not get the most out of her Home a.s.sistant. Work must be scheduled and planned ahead, the home must be run on business methods if the system is to succeed. I heard this explained to a group of women not long ago. After the talk, one of them said, "Well, in business houses and factories there is a foreman who runs the shop and oversees the workers. It wouldn't work in homes because we haven't any foreman." She had entirely overlooked her job as forewoman of her own establishment!

"Suppose I have company for dinner and the Home a.s.sistant isn't through her work when her eight hours are up, what happens?" some one asks. All overtime work is paid for at the rate of one and one-half times the hourly rate. If you are paying your a.s.sistant twelve dollars for a forty-four-hour week, you are giving her twenty-eight cents an hour. One and one half times this amounts to forty-two cents an hour, which she receives for extra work just as she would in the business world.

"Will these girls from offices and stores do their work well? They have had no training for housework unless they have happened to do some in their own homes," some one wisely remarks. The lack of systematic preparation has always been one of the troubles with our domestic helpers. It is true that the new type of girl trained in business to be punctual and alert, and to use her mind, adapts herself very quickly to her work, but the trained worker in any field has an advantage. With this in mind the Central Branch of the Young Women's Christian a.s.sociation in New York City has started a training-school for Home a.s.sistants. The course provides demonstrations on the preparation of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, and talks on the following: House-cleaning, Laundry, Care of Children, Shopping, Planning work, Deportment, Efficiency, and Duty to Employer. This course gives a girl a general knowledge of her duties and what is even more important she acquires the right mental att.i.tude toward her work. The girls are given an examination and those who successfully pa.s.s it are given a certificate and placed as Trained Home a.s.sistants at fifteen dollars a week.

The National a.s.sociation would like to see these training-schools turning out this type of worker for the homes all over the country. This is a constructive piece of work for women to undertake. Housewives'

Leagues have interested themselves in this in various centers, and the Y.W.C.A. will help wherever it can. There are always home economics graduates in every town who could help give the course, and there are excellent housekeepers who excel in some branch who could give a talk or two.

The course would be worth a great deal in results to any community. The United States Employment Bureaus are also taking a hand in this, and, with the cooperation of the High Schools, are placing girls as trained a.s.sistants on the new basis. I have talked with many women who are not only using this plan to-day but have been for several years.

It has been more than six years ago since Mrs. Helene Barker's book "Wanted a Young Woman to Do Housework" was published.

This gave the working plan to the idea. Women in Boston, Providence, New York, Cleveland, and in many other cities have become so enthusiastic over their success in running their homes with the Home a.s.sistants that a number are giving their time to lecturing and talking to groups of women about it.

Let me give two concrete ill.u.s.trations of the practical application of housework on a business basis.

Mrs. A. lives in a small city in the Middle West. Her household consists of herself, her husband, and her twelve year old son. She had had the usual string of impossible maids or none at all until she tried the new system. Through a girls' club in a factory in the city, she secured a young woman to work for her at factory hours and wages. Her a.s.sistant came at seven-thirty in the morning. By having the breakfast cereal prepared the night before, breakfast could be served promptly at eight, a plan which was necessary in order that the boy get to school on time.

Each morning's work was written out and hung up in the kitchen so that the a.s.sistant wasted no time in waiting to know what she had to do.

Lunch was at twelve-fifteen, and at one o'clock the Home a.s.sistant went home.

She came back on regular duty at five-thirty to prepare and serve the dinner. Except for times when there were guests for dinner she was through her work by eight. When she worked overtime, there was the extra pay to compensate. Mrs. A. paid her thirteen dollars a week and felt that she saved money by the new plan. The a.s.sistant was off duty every other Sunday, and on alternate weeks was given all day Tuesday off instead of Sunday. Tuesday was the day the heavy washing was done and the laundress was there to help with any work which Mrs. A. did not feel equal to doing. Even though there are times in the day when she is alone, Mrs. A. says she would not go back to the old system for anything.

Mrs. B. lives in a city apartment. There are four grown people in the family. She formerly kept two maids, a cook-laundress, and a waitress-chambermaid. She often had a great deal of trouble finding a cook who would do the washing. As her apartment had only one maid's room, she had to give one of the guestrooms to the second maid. She paid these girls forty dollars apiece and provided them with room and board.

Her apartment cost her one hundred and fifteen dollars a month for seven rooms, two of which were occupied by maids.