THE LABOUR-SAVING HOUSE.*
The Labour-Saving Home is an amusing little book which raises many questions of interest to the modem housewife. "The greatest labour-saving apparatus which we possess is the brain— it has not been worn out by too much use." This very true sentence is, so to speak, the text of Mrs. Peel's sermon, and stands in large print upon the page which faces her first chapter. Like a good many other teachers and preachers, she is sometimes in danger of forgetting her text. As we read we are inclined sometimes to think that what she is really advocating is not the use of the brain but of gas, so anxious is she to do away with that expensive but to many of us indispensable delight—the coal-fire. Forswear coal and you reduce the labour of housekeeping by one-third, she declares. Two servants will be able to do with ease what three got through with difficulty in the past. To reduce one's household expenses by the wages and board of a servant is no doubt to make a great economy, but the family who do this and then reorganize the heating system of their house, change ordinary grates for " attractive " gas-fires, put in an extra bathroom, and replace half their carpets by linoleum will not find that their saving in service has been a saving of expenditure. Many things which prove cheap "at last" are very expensive in the beginning. So true is this that certain economies are only possible to people with capital. However, whatevar we are able to save or spend, we are all faced by the fact that domestic service has become unpopular, and we must make shift to do with fewer maids or none. Whether after the war the old state of things will return is a matter of opinion. Mrs. Peel thinks that the dislike has been growing steadily, that it began years before the war and is unavoidable, and that unless con- ditions of service change very much it must continue.
Hitherto many, perhaps the majority of, mistresses keeping more than one servant, have been ignorant of housework. All they knew of the conduct of a house was how to choose servants, and now they have no choice. With regard to domestic service, employers have been till lately under a misapprehension. Wages have gone up immensely, and we have all pointed to the fact as showing what could be done without any form of Trade Union by those who had their own advantage and that of their fellow-workers at heart. Plainly, however, the cause of the change was misunderstood. It was not the servants as a corporation who insisted on more pay for the sake of their order. It was employers who, finding servants hard to obtain, tempted the unwilling by better monetary condi- tions, not realizing that the root question in the matter was one of leisure, not wages. It is still easy enough to get upper servants in large houses where trained under ones ensure them a little off-time, and where the under ones hope in their turn to obtain, as they get older, some hours daily to themselves. The difficulty, in many cases the impossibility, is to find the single-handed cooks and house- maids and nurses who are required by the well-to-do middle class. It is no longer a question of wages. They will not come. Mrs. Peel blames the mistresses. Is it an attractive life, she asks, to work from 7 a.m. till 10.30 p.m. on five days a week? The employers should have bestirred themselves to organize some form of recrea- tion and put themselves out to give more freedom. The present writer is inclined to think that behind the whole matter as between employers and employed stands the matrimonial problem. Frank and intelligent maid-servants say openly that the "young lady in business" has ten chances of making a good and suitable match for one which offers itself to the servant.
The shop-girl has her " evenings " and the whole of Sunday- i.e., time to make friends. Of course snobbishness plays some part in the business. Young men, Mrs. Peel admits, would rather, other things being equal, not marry servants. Why ? The servant has passed through a course of domestic training such as must be to her advantage in married life. She has gained much. What has she lost ? Putting aside a certain amount of Socialistic feeling and a certain amount of snobbish feeling, which no doubt exist and grow, we think there may be something on the purely
• The Labour-Saving House. By Aim 0.8. real. London ; John Lane. Da. 65. ilet.1
human side to be said for these reluctant beaux. It wants much besides order and cleanliness, or even decent cooking, to make a happy home. It wants sympathy, and we think that is not developed in domestic service. Divided from her family, often by long periods of time and many miles of distance, the maid-servant ceases as a rule to take any very keen interest in their joys and sorrows, while those of her employers, though they occur under her eyes, she sees necessarily from the outside. Even if she is nurse to their children, she knows that the affection and solicitude which she feels and evokes are of an entirely temporary character. A "new nurse" will be as well liked in a month, and new children will as soon make fresh appeal to her maternal instincts. She may by a life among people of wider outlook improve her mind and develop her ideals and become vastly more critical than her home sisters, but we venture to think such like advantages are not rated by prospective husbands, in any class of life, so high as the more human and homely qualities.
The new labour-saving house will be very different from the old "home." Ifearthless, servantless, kitchenless, and almost furnitureless, with oilcloth instead of carpet, and ornaments put away to avoid dust, we must hope to be very healthy in it, for certainly we shall not be at all cosy. A few years ago those who desired to simplify were advised to have a beautiful kitchen and have their meals in it. The last new thing is to have no kitchen worthy of the name, only a sort of large cupboard filled with gas- works and machinery in which neither servant nor servantless are asked to sit down. A nice gas-stove will warm the servants' hall when there is any one to inhabit it ; otherwise the cupboard must suffice for the woman herself, or the "woman in," as the case may be. What will be the next improvement ? Moving staircases, we should imagine, to spare the steps of the "woman in."
In the end Mrs. Peel's heart seems to fail her a little. She is not drawing, she says, the home of her dreams, but instructing us about the possibility of a civilized life without waste of work. Anyhow, she has written a cheerful, pleasant little book with many useful hints in it about mistresses and servants, cookers and stoves, electric heaters and fans, and methods of placating those who may be persuaded to come and help us to set them working. We are tempted almost to believe she wrote it in front of a hot coal-fire, in a drawing-room with a fitted carpet and full of her household gods.
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