The Case of Servants : Part 6

American Woman's Home
By Catharine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe

(Page 31 of 47)

As to the terms of social intercourse, it seems somehow to be settled in the minds of many employers that their servants owe them and their family more respect than they and the family owe to the servants. But do they? What is the relation of servant to employer in a democratic country? Precisely that of a person who for money performs any kind of service for you. The carpenter comes into your house to put up a set of shelves - the cook comes into your kitchen to cook your dinner. You never think that the carpenter owes you any more respect than you owe to him because he is in your house doing your behests; he is your fellow-citizen, you treat him with respect, you expect to be treated with respect by him. You have a claim on him that he should do your work according to your directions - no more.

Now, I apprehend that there is a very common notion as to the position and rights of servants which is quite different from this. Is it not a common feeling that a servant is one who may he treated with a degree of freedom by every member of the family which he or she may not return? Do not people feel at liberty to question servants about their private affairs, to comment on their dress and appearance, in a manner which they would feel to be an impertinence, if reciprocated? Do they not feel at liberty to express dissatisfaction with their performances in rude and unceremonious terms, to reprove them in the presence of company, while yet they require that the dissatisfaction of servants should be expressed only in terms of respect? A woman would not feel herself at liberty to talk to her milliner or her dress-maker in language as devoid of consideration as she will employ toward her cook or chambermaid. And yet both are rendering her a service which she pays for in money and one is no more made her inferior thereby than the other. Both have an equal right to be treated with courtesy. The master and mistress of a house have a right to require courteous treatment from all whom their roof shelters; but they have no more right to exact it of servants than of every guest and every child and they themselves owe it as much to servants as to guests.

In order that servants may be treated with respect and courtesy, it is not necessary, as in simpler patriarchal days, that they sit at the family-table. Your carpenter or plumber does not feel hurt that you do not ask him to dine with you, nor your milliner and Mantua-maker that you do not exchange ceremonious calls and invite them to your parties. It is well understood that your relations with them are of a mere business character. They never take it as an assumption of superiority on your part that you do not admit them to relations of private intimacy. There may be the most perfect respect and esteem and even friendship between then and you, notwithstanding. So it may be in the case of servants. It is easy to make any person understand that there are quite other reasons than the assumption of personal superiority for not wishing to admit servants to the family privacy. It was not, in fact, to sit in the parlor or at the table in themselves considered, that was the thing aimed at by New - England girls; these were valued only as signs that they were deemed worthy of respect and consideration, and, where freely conceded, were often in point of fact declined.

Let servants feel, in their treatment by their employers and in the atmosphere of the family, that their position is held to be a respectable one; let them feel, in the mistress of the family, the charm of unvarying consideration and good manners; let their work- rooms be made convenient and comfortable and their private apartments bear some reasonable comparison in point of agreeableness to those of other members of the family and domestic service will be more frequently sought by a superior and self-respecting class. There are families in which such a state of things prevails; and such families, amid the many causes which unite to make the tenure of service uncertain, have generally been able to keep good permanent servants. There is an extreme into which kindly disposed people often run with regard to servants which may be mentioned here. They make pets of them. They give extravagant wages and indiscreet indulgences, and, through indolence and easiness of temper, tolerate neglect of duty. Many of the complaints of the ingratitude of servants come from those who have spoiled them in this way; while many of the longest and most harmonious domestic unions have sprung from a simple, quiet course of Christian justice and benevolence, a recognition of servants as fellow-beings and fellow-Christians and a doing to them as we would in like circumstances that they should do to us.

The mistresses of American families, whether they like it or not, have the duties of missionaries imposed upon them by that class from which our supply of domestic servants is drawn. They may as well accept the position cheerfully, and, as one raw, untrained hand after another passes through their family and is instructed by them in the mysteries of good house-keeping, comfort themselves with the reflection that they are doing something to form good wives and mothers for the republic.

The complaints made of Irish girls are numerous and loud; the failings of green Erin, alas! are but too open and manifest; yet, in arrest of judgment, let us move this consideration: let us imagine our own daughters between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four, untaught and inexperienced in domestic affairs as they commonly are, shipped to a foreign shore to seek service in families. It may be questioned whether, as a whole, they would do much better. The girls that fill our families and do our house-work are often of the age of our own daughters, standing for themselves, without mothers to guide them, in a foreign country, not only bravely supporting themselves, but sending home in every ship remittances to impoverished friends left behind. If our daughters did as much for us, should we not be proud of their energy and heroism?

When we go into the houses of our country, we find a majority of well-kept, well-ordered and even elegant establishments, where the only hands employed are those of the daughters of Erin. True, American women have been their instructors and many a weary hour of care have they had in the discharge of this office; but the result on the whole is beautiful and good and the end of it, doubtless, will be peace.

Instead, then, of complaining that we can not have our own peculiar advantages and those of other nations too, or imagining how much better off we should be if things were different from what they are, it is much wiser and more Christian-like to strive cheerfully to conform to actual circumstances; and, after remedying all that we can control, patiently to submit to what is beyond our power. If domestics are found to be incompetent, unstable and unconfirmed to their station, it is Perfect Wisdom which appoints these trials to teach us patience, fortitude and self-control; and if the discipline is met in a proper spirit, it will prove a blessing rather than an evil.

About the Author

Catharine Esther Beecher (1800 - 1878) was a noted educator, renowned for her forthright opinions on women's education as well as her vehement support of the many benefits of the incorporation of a kindergarten into children's education.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811 - 1896) was a white American abolitionist and novelist, whose Uncle Tom's Cabin attacked the cruelty of slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential, even in Britain.