The foreigners have remained practically in control of the American kitchen ever since they took possession of it. The eleventh census re port classifies the domestic servants employed in the parts of the l'nited States by race thus: In the Eastern States 6(1.89 per cent. of the household servants are foreign or colored: in the "Aliddle States, 55.29 per cent.: in the Southern States, 83.23 per cent.: in the herder States, 68.35 per cent.: in the Western States, 40.02 per cent.: and in the Pacific States, 62.42 per cent. In only one section of the country, then. do native servants outnumber the foreign and negro. Of the foreigners, the Irish are the most numerous. being 37.64 per cent. of the whole number engaged in domestic service. and the Germans are next, being 21.16 per cent. of the whole number.
In the farming districts of the Northern and Western States the old conditions of equality above mentioned still prevail. The farmers' wives do their own work, with the help of a 'hired girl•' and the farmer employs for his field work and chores a 'hired limn.' Both of these are practically members of his family and his social equals. as they are often sons and daugh ters of his neighbors. Household servants are found mainly in the large cities. partly on ac count of the congregation of wealth there, and partly on account of the servant's rooted objec tion to the country—an objection which is doubt less partly due to the foreigner's desire not to he coinpletely isolated from all her kind as well as from her home. In the fifty largest cities of the United States, Kat per eent_ of the total popu lation of the country is to be found. and 32.32 per cent. of the olonicstie servants of the country. The wages vary with the region. the Pacific Coast paying, much more than the Eastern Slates, and these in turn more than the Southern States. The average rate paid to household servants on the Pacific Coast is $4.57 a week, against $3.60 in the East and $2.22 in the South. Cooks are the best paid of all domestic 1 n England and on the Continent. wages are much smaller for household labor than in the l"nited States. Four dollars a week, which is IftWer than the Western and only it little higher 1 butt the Eastern average. is a phenomenally high rate there. In addition. in SO/111. pa 1'1 of the Continent, servants are not neeossarily boarded from their employers' tables, and the English may or may not be. as the agreement specifies. 'Board wages' are paid instead, and they are very small, sometimes not more than 20 cents a day. Even when food is provided by the employer, it is not likely to be of the sonic variety as that which serves his own table. 'Beer money' and 'tea money' are gen erally stipulated fur in English contracts. But the European servants, even in small establish ments, have a means of revenue which only the servants of the wealthy or of corporations have here. Tips from guests are a rec%mized source of income; and the German maid, for instance. lighting a caller to the front door of it modest apartment house in Berlin, would feel defrauded unless she received her small fee.
The advantages enjoyed by household servants in this country are many. They are generally lodged more comfortably than they would prob ably be otherwise. Numerous as are the com plaints against 'the girl's room' of a small estab lishment, it is usually moderately comfortable. The food is generally good. The wages, consid ering that lodging. light, heat, hoard, car-fare, and expensive dress are not to be provided from them, are much better than shop and factory wages. and do not compare badly with the sal aries of teachers. On the other hand, household servants have practically no chance to rise in their occupation: they are isolated. both indus trially and socially. They have almost no per sonal freedom, and their standing is regarded as lower than that of other women workers.
Mistresses complain of the uncertainty of the whole situation: there is no fixed rate of wages. no fixed term of service, and no fixed standard of excellence.
Various remedies have been suggested to meet these difficulties. none of which have proved en tirely adequate. Some advocate a return to the more patriarchal system of the past. and believe in making the relations between mistress or master and servant a more personal one. Some have advocated a 'shift system' for servants— setting each to work for only eight hours, and then relieving him or her by another. This plan has been successfully adopted in Chicago by a very rich woman. It would. in its present form. be possible only to the very wealthy, or to an organization of sonic. sort.
Others advocate the abolition of all individual domestic labor. Neighborhood nurseries for the children. with neighborhood kitchens and dining rooms for the adults, seem to them to solve the problem. This, the cooperative housekeeping scheme. has been often tried. and generally with a signal lack of suecess. The failures. however, scent to have been due rather to mismanagement or to too sweeping and hurried changes than to any inherent impossibility in the plan. Thug, though one of the first arrangements of this sort tried in America. at Cambridge. Mass., in IS71, was not a success, a similar effort on a modified plan. in Brookline. Alass„ twenty-five years later, has not been a failure. This is the Beaconsfield Terrace sehenn—a business affair. rather than a sociological experiment. in intention. The residents of the terrace have, in addition to their own yards, an inclosed park in common. They share tennis courts: a casino, where any one of them may entertain on a larger scale than in his own home: the services of a choreman; the time of a superintendent of the buildings; and so on. Their heat is supplied from a central engine-room and not from individual furnaces. The with cooperative housekeeping is that most persons instinctively object to it on the ground of lack of privacy. They feel that they will be deprived of their homes and given instead an improved boarding-house system, and that under these conditions their children cannot develop properly. Many, too. see in such plans danger of being victimized by 'cranks' and peo ple of uncertain social views.