THE HOUSEKEEPING OF THE FUTURE.

THE uncertainty, perplexity, and even real distress that surround the housekeeping and home-keeping of to-day, are temporary in their nature, and are due mainly to the fact that we are in a transition period. The economic law of the organization of labor is rapidly extending its workings into every department of the world's work, and is at present particularly active in the direction of what we have been accustomed to regard as the domestic industries. As is usually the case, the first effects of the operation of this law are confusion and destruction, while the old is being disintegrated and abolished to make way for the new. But to those whose experience and observation of life are deep enough and broad enough to enable them to perceive that our present confusion is only a part of the general evolutionary process everywhere at work in society, the future of the domestic arrangements of the home is full of hope and promise.

First, as to servants. However numerous the causes assigned for the difficulties of housekeeping, all agree that the principal difficulty is found in the incompetence, insubordination, and irresponsibility of that class whom we name domestics. The very fact that we denominate them by the words "class" and "servants," gives the key to the fundamental difficulty. The man or woman who expects that in any country where education and opportunity are free to all, any intelligent and competent workers will be content to remain in a class, and that class a stigmatized one, expects in vain. It is singular how wide-spread, even among good and intelligent people, is the disposition to grow indignant over a statement of this kind. With flushing cheeks and elevated voices they will declare such a principle to be wholly wrong; that domestic work in the household is just as honorable as any other kind of work; and that the young woman who has her own living to earn, and who is not willing to earn it by going into a good home and doing the cooking or laundry work or "second work" for a

good, kind, respectable family, deserves to starve. They will adduce the fact that the young man who has his living to earn does not hesitate at beginning as office boy, sweeping floors, kindling fires, and performing all the menial work pertaining to such a position. The answer to all this is the facts in the case. No matter who is to blame; no matter how much society is denounced for making such distinctions; we all know that to start as office boy affixes no stigma, nor does it in any way bar the upward progress of the youth toward the possible ultimate goal of partnership in the firm; while the title or occupation of "servant girl" is a bar sinister which no intelligence or faithful performance of duty can ever remove-at least it cannot in the present constitution of society. People who discuss this singular fact will assert that it is not in the nature of the work performed that the difference lies, the office boy's work being just as menial and disagreeable as that of the kitchen girl. No matter where the difference lies --and where and why it lies, the writer hopes to show in this paper-the facts are stubborn dictators to parents who have sons and daughters. The parent, however rich, who says, "My son shall, if necessary, begin on the lowest round of the ladder and learn and work up' in a regular business," is regarded as sensible and judicious; the parent, however poor, who should say concerning a bright, intelligent daughter, "My daughter shall begin her career in life by preparing herself to be a first-class cook, since such a preparation will always insure her good wages in a good home," would be set down as a "crank," if not something worse.

But what are the difficulties with those already engaged in domestic service-the great class of foreigners who haunt our kitchens? Principally two. First, they do not know how to perform properly the work now required in our homes; and, secondly, they, as a class, cannot or will not be taught. Their utter irresponsibility, their general indifference about retaining their places, the impossibility of holding them by any contract and consequently of enforcing any rules or discipline, the usual entire separation of their interests from those of their employers, all combine to make them a foreign and disintegrating element in family life. It is mere waste of words to say that if mistresses only knew

how to instruct and direct household servants the difficulty would be overcome. Those among mistresses who have the most difficulty and whose experience is the most discouraging, are those who know exactly how to perform all the operations of household work themselves, and who are willing to spend time and strength in teaching their servants how to do these things, if teaching once or twice or even a dozen times were the end of it. But it has passed into a proverb among clever mistresses, that just as they have succeeded in training a servant to perform her work in a satisfactory manner, she either marries or goes off for higher wages and easier or perhaps for more systematized and specialized work. Her favorite time for leaving without notice is just after she has been paid in full till date; and the mistress who has in a generous moment thus settled the wages account, leaving the question of broken china and bric-a-brae for future consideration, most frequently finds herself, without redress, left to take in a new recruit and reconcile herself to the loss of china as best she may.

It may throw light even upon this discouraging aspect, to observe that there are conditions under which these difficulties are met and overcome even in domestic service. These conditions are found wherever domestic labor is employed on a large scale, organized, and systematized; and, paradoxical as it may appear, nearly all domestic servants prefer to work in an organization. It is a well-known fact that hotels and institutions of all kinds where the work is specialized and systematized, can obtain domestics with far less difficulty and for less wages, and can control them with far more success than the private family. This is only an illustration of the fact that domestic servants are impressed and influenced by the spirit of the age, which rebels against submission to the dictates of the individual will, but submits freely to the despotism of an organization. In a large part the insubordination of domestic servants arises from a growing feeling of unwillingness to be directed and governed by the individual.

And, lastly, in so far as the difficulties lie on the side of domestic servants, the conditions of the work are not in accordance with developing human nature. Human nature loves to work

in company, in sympathetic companionship. The domestic servant is a solitary worker, without such companionship during her hours of toil. Whatever interests she has, lie in a wholly different direction from those of her employer. To hurry through her work, so as to get off and join companions of her own class, seems to be increasingly the motive of the modern domestic servant; and hence arise all the difficulties about "days out," and evenings spent the mistress knows not where. All attempts to enforce rules about hours and times and seasons, usually end in an informal parting between mistress and maid, the mistress almost always in such an issue coming out second best.

And on the part of the mistresses of the homes of to-day, where do the chief difficulties lie? First, in the fact that modern social life makes so many demands upon educated womenmost of them in the direction of refined social pleasures or of associations for intellectual improvement or for beneficent and philanthropic work-that the time necessary to supervise the kitchen and the servants of to-day cannot be given without an almost entire relinquishment of the pleasures and benefits of refined and educated social life. If the housekeeper of to-day have little children, her task is already more than any but those of the strongest physique can endure. The care and nurture and training of little children is an occupation that should be varied only by recreation and unfatiguing, congenial work, uncomplicated with any care that is distracting and distressing. The farthest possible remove from these desirable conditions is that of the mother of young children whose care and labor for her children is complicated with the care of incompetent and wasteful servants; whose daily visits to her kitchen send her back to her children disturbed and distressed by the sight of disorder, uncleanliness, waste, and destruction which she is powerless to remedy either by deeds or words; deeds being impossible, and words useless or worse than useless.

Let us not fail to note the fact that neither mistresses of households nor domestic servants are to blame for the present inharmoniousness of the relation of mistress and servant. In the present condition of home life this inharmony inheres in the relation itself. It is a favorite theory with superficial thinkers and observers upon

this subject, that the present difficulties could be largely remedied if domestic service could be elevated and domestic workers be respected and treated as members of the family. All such theorists. ignore the fundamental difficulty that the home is the most exclusive institution in the world-the happier and the more refined, the more exclusive. It cannot tolerate the permanent familiar intrusion into its daily life of any one, no matter how good and respectable. Households may recognize and admit the fact that those who perform household service for them are just as good and perhaps better than their own members; but that is not the question. Nobody is wanted as "one of the family"; and to feel that the housekeeper or domestic helper expects to be admitted into the sanctuary of the family sitting-room, or to become a member of the group that surrounds the family table, is to realize the eternal inharmony of the proposed relation. On the other hand, considering the question from the standpoint of the domestic servant, it is this very isolation and separation from the life of the home, coupled with abridgment of individual liberty and the lack of association with others in the performance of toil, that causes the inseparable dislike to undertaking household service. This is the answer to the question so often asked, why American girls will take work in shops and stores and manufactories of all kinds, where they will endure all manner of hardships and live on the barest pittance of wages, rather than go into comfortable, sheltered, domestic service. Human nature not only yearns for companionship in toil-yes, and even in misery-but it longs also for absolute freedom from dictation and command, as also for freedom from the yoke of toil, at stated periods. It is true that those who work in organizations usually work harder and have their individual liberty much more despotically abridged during their hours of labor than the domestic servant; but the work and weariness and discomfort are shared by fellow-workers, and in this fact there is a divinely-ordained alleviation and consolation, while the despotism that rules them ceases absolutely with the close of working hours, and then there is liberty. Not even surveillance or advice, after the gong rings. All these conditions of organized labor are in accordance with the fundamental desires of human nature, and no theory of life and progress can ever obtain which contravenes them. Emerson, in his "Sover