DOMESTIC SERVICE. By domestic service is meant the work done in and about the house to provide for the physical comfort of its occu pants. It includes the labor of housekeepers, cooks, laundresses, chambermaids, waitresses, nurses, butlers. coachmen, footmen, gardeners, ehoremen and charwomen, and personal attend ants.
The condition of household service in different countries varies according to the remoteness of the countries from the feudal state of society and industry. Where the social organization remains aristocratic, there is a class bred more or less definitely to service. at least as to mental atti tude. Where democratic eonditions prevail, there is no such class. Yet the relation between em ployer and employed in domestic labor, even in democratic countries, has not resolved itself as it has in other industries. The personal element remains as between the feudal baron and his re tainers. The work is done with all the waste of energy and material attendant upon individual effort as opposed to cooperation. The industry is altogether in an involved transition state.
In ancient times the work of the household was done by slaves. ID modern times it has been very largely done by the women of the house hold, and by women employed by them as help ers. To the former fact is largely due the stigma of social inferiority attaching to domestic ser vice, and to the latter its uncertain standing as an industry.
The social status of the household servant is everywhere about the same: hut as the demo cratic form of government is approached the social inferiority which service involves becomes more and more dreaded and despised. and the marks of it more abhorrent to the servant. For instance, it is often difficult to persuade a maid nr a nurse in the United States to wear a cap, and English women servants are beginning to protest against that badge; while German and French ones seem, on the contrary, rather proud of their uniforms.
Except where there is a contract specifying other terms, domestic servants in England are hired by the year. Their wages are payable quarterly. Their master is bound to find them suitable lodging and board. The contract, once
entered upon, can be terminated only by a month's notice on the part of the servant or the payment of a month's wages on the part of the employer. Immediate dismissal may follow the discovery of immorality. theft, disobedience, ex treme inefficiency. or permanent disability. The employer may not legally keep hack money from the servant's, wages for any breakage, damage, or loss on the part of the servant.
In Germany a two weeks' notice is sufficient to end the service. The employer there is obliged, at the termination of a servant's employment in his house, to register with the• police authorities a letter defining the record of the employee while in his service. This is filed in the police book; and as premiums are paid by masters and mis tresses for the servants having, the best police book records, it becomes a matter of moment to the servants to maintain good ones. The objec tion to this system is that the records are not al ways entirely accurate, although great care is exercised in the matter by the' authorities and strict rules are made to govern it. Most of the German servants are drawn from the peasant class, coming from the country to the provincial towns, and thence to the large cities.
In France and Italy conditions do not greatly differ from those of Germany. except that the police-hook system is not used. In France more men are employed for household work, and there is less waste than in any other country. Italy and Spain approach more nearly to the feudal 'system of domestic service.
In Russia, in the country regions, the feudal system prevails. For a piece of land—about two acres—nut of the estate, one cow, and the priv ilege of raising as many pigs and chickens as the serving family desires, a landed proprietor may obtain whole villages of retainers, the services of all of whom are his at his need. In Saint Petersburg most of the household servants are Finns. Here also enough of the feudal system re mains to make it no unentninon thing for a serv ant to remain twenty years in one family's em ploy.