When I Heard This I Didn't Make Any Answer, But Just Walked Off A
Little Way And Began Raking And Thinking.
I have often wondered why it
is that English servants are so different from those we have, or, to
Put it in a strictly confidential way between you and me, madam, why
the chambermaid at the "Bordley Arms," as she is, is so different from
me, as I used to be when I first lived with you. Now that young
chambermaid with the pretty hat is, as far as appearances go, as good a
woman as I am, and if Jone was a bachelor and intended to marry her I
would think it was as good a match as if he married me. But the
difference between us two is that when I got to be the kind of woman I
am I wasn't willing to be a servant, and if I had always been the kind
of young woman that chambermaid is I never would have been a servant.
I've kept a sharp eye on the young women in domestic service over here,
having a fellow-feeling for them, as you can well understand, madam,
and since I have been in the country I've watched the poor folks and
seen how they live, and it's just as plain to me as can be that the
young women who are maids and waitresses over here are the kind who
would have tried to be shop-girls and dressmakers and even
school-teachers in America, and many of the servants we have would be
working in the fields if they lived over here. The fact is, the English
people don't go to other countries to get their servants. Their way is
like a factory consuming its own smoke. The surplus young women, and
there must always be a lot of them, are used up in domestic service.
Now, if an American poor girl is good enough to be a first-class
servant, she wants to be something else. Sooner than go out to service
she will work twice as hard in a shop, or even go into a factory.
I have talked a good deal about this to Jone, and he says I'm getting
to be a philosopher; but I don't think it takes much philosophizing to
find out how this case stands. If house service could be looked upon in
the proper way, it wouldn't take long for American girls who have to
work for their living to find out that it's a lot better to live with
nice people, and cook and wait on the table, and do all those things
which come natural to women the world over, than to stand all day
behind a counter under the thumb of a floor-walker, or grind their
lives out like slaves among a lot of steam-engines and machinery. The
only reason the English have better house servants than we have is that
here any girl who has to work is willing to be a house servant, and
very good house servants they are, too.
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