Chapter I: Experiences and Problems of the Investigators

Every one admits that one of the most difficult subjects upon which to secure any kind of information is "domestic service." The home and all pertaining to it is carefully shielded from the prying eyes of "searchers for truth," and the intelligence office, being so closely related to it, presents many of the same difficulties. There is also the fear that some competitor will profit by its disclosures, for the rivalry is keen. The general public, even among householders, does not realize the extent of the intelligence office as a medium of exchange for household workers. In the four cities included in this study there are 834 licensed agencies, 522 of which are in New York, 115 in Chicago, 110 in Philadelphia, and 87 in Boston, and fully three fifths of these supply workers for the household, together with other employees, and over one half are for this purpose exclusively.

The material for such a study is readily accessible. All of the cities issue licenses and courteously furnished us with lists. The method of study, however, was a much more difficult proposition. No private business can be investigated, with even a remote approach to accuracy, by any one who goes openly and avowedly as an investigator; and this is especially true of enterprises that are in the least degree questionable. Such visitors are regarded with suspicion, are considered as intruders, motives are misunderstood, and all kinds of misrepresentations are made, not from love of lying, but through antagonism, based on self-protection. But when an investigator goes as a patron, all this is changed. Suspicion becomes friendliness, and any reasonable inquiries are answered, not always accurately, but at least without malicious perversion. This is true not simply because a fee is paid, for ten times the amount cannot purchase the information. After several attempts by other methods, it was found that accurate results could be obtained only by visiting these offices in the rôle of employers and employees, which the writer and her eight associates did. Frequently an office was visited several times by different people, if it seemed to require close observation. This included all of the licensed offices in New York, and three fourths of those in Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Others in smaller cities, as New Haven, Connecticut; Columbus, Ohio, and St. Louis, Missouri were added, to ascertain the difference in conditions; but they proved to be of degree rather than of kind.

It was soon found that even this plan left many questions unanswered; and there were but two points of view represented, that of the employer and that of the employee. But the owner of the office has his side as well. That there are difficulties in running an office, and much abuse is heaped upon it, was learned by trying to purchase offices and by asking owners for suggestions for running them in non-competitive parts of the city. In this way we secured some pretty fair material. Where an office seemed morally bad, men were sent there to verify the impression, and, if possible, secure legal testimony. There will be many criticisms of this method—they have already been encountered in planning the work, and in answer to these the question must be put: Does not the end justify the means? Is it not expedient and right to employ this, the only accurate method of investigation, rather than to continue the present conditions, which, beyond doubt, are at least partly responsible for the doubling of wages, the dissatisfaction of employees, the interference with households, the crowding of statutes with laws that mean nothing and do not even touch the problem in hand, the swindling of penniless, homeless, but worthy men and women out of fees and positions, and the misleading of ignorant immigrants and innocent city and country girls to the number of many thousands a year?

Because of these methods, we feel that an apology is due to the many employers with whom we have engaged but failed to appear; for our poor services in their homes, and for our early departures; and we are sure that in their estimation we have long since been added to the endless list of incompetents and household tramps. We regret that we have consumed so much of the valuable time of the employer and office, especially since we are forced to state many uncomplimentary things, and they must think their unknown co-operation and confidence misplaced. As a compensation for the false hopes which we may have raised in the hearts of employers, that they had at last found an "ideal servant," we can only hope these results may really send such to them. We have tried to compensate the offices for all their efforts on our behalf by paying fees, and not insisting, with the bayonet of the law, that they be returned. To the offices, if they recall us at all, we are at best "rounders" and not much worth while anyway, so they can scarcely miss us.

But employers, offices, and employees drove us to this. Employers would not tell us how they fed, clothed, and otherwise treated their employees, and we agreed with them that ordinarily this was "none of our business," but it was essential to understand the problem, so we became employees in order to find out. Employees would not tell us their troubles, the demands made upon them, or their experiences, so we had to become employees and mingle with them, and then they made us their confidants and poured out their tears and wrath. Offices refused to say anything of their methods, or even let us in, so we became employers, and could wait about at will and be treated just like any one else. We had twinges of conscience about fair play, honesty, and veracity, and any fair co-operation on their part would have changed our wavering selves back into honesty, and when an office was kind or fair or honest, we so wanted to open our hearts and receive absolution for our sins that only the good of the cause forbade.

At first we made many blunders, because we had all the old-fashioned ideas of our training. We tried to dress like employees and become acquainted, but they held aloof until we had learned their language and habits, and could talk in up-to-date slang about places and mistresses. We were green about household duties and wages and rights, but so free has been their advice that we now know where "we are at" and possess the requisite "sand"— at least they associate with us. And after a time we became so proficient that we could pass for either the better class of employees or the poorer class of employers, and frequently we did not know which we would be until we saw the office. If it was "swell," we crept into the employees' quarters; and if poor, we swept into the employers' room. When we chanced into offices for men, we could not apply for a cook's place, but were necessarily looking for a gardener, otherwise we would have been turned out and learned nothing. If we found an office well crowded with girls it would have been a lost opportunity not to have mingled with them.

When any individual assumes a different personality it requires constant tact and self-possession. When we came straight up against an old acquaintance who was looking for a maid and were sent in to her to fill that place, something needed to be done at once, for the manager was ever watchful. On one occasion two associates happened to be in the same office, and one was sent in as a cook to the other, who was an employer. In a spirit of mischief the "cook" insisted that she would go, even though we replied, "The wages are small, we give no privileges, and have seven children who play in the kitchen." Self-possession was certainly in demand. When an office manager says familiarly, "Well, sis, out of a job?" and tries to lead us down the room by the hand, it is rather difficult to stifle pride and dignity and resent it in a manner in keeping with a new station.

Then we made acquaintances invaluable to the work, but they were apt to affect our peace of mind by appearing at inopportune times. Going uptown in the car one night, we were reading quietly, when suddenly a large Slavish woman suddenly rose and shouted in broken English: "I got a girl for you—plenty girls now; come to-morrow." Only public recognition and a promise to come satisfied this business zeal. In another instance we were "cornered" and had to pose as a mother, with a baby, looking for work, and later when in a restaurant with friends, we were suddenly confounded by a call from an office associate who used our office name and asked after the baby.

But these were among the least of our real difficulties. The treatment of employees in some offices, even the best, is so brutal and humiliating that our increasing wonder is, that employees are as good as they are. We are absolutely sure we could not have continued the rounds of these offices, seriously looking for work, as these women do, year after year, without becoming untruthful, dishonest, impertinent, and perhaps intemperate and immoral.

When we entered the average office, the first effort of the attendant was to ascertain if we were an employer or employee. Usually this was apparent, and some offices—in fact, all that could afford two rooms—had a "ladies'" room and a "servants'" or "girls'" room. It is no exaggeration to say that, almost without exception, the kind of treatment we received depended primarily and almost entirely upon whether we were "ladies" or "servants." As the former, we were almost invariably accorded some measure of courtesy. In the best offices, chairs were brought to us, we were given individual attention, the attendants rose from their desks or tables to talk to us, and the attitude was, "What do you wish?" "What can I do for you?" In a few of them we were ushered in and out by polite attendants, our orders were placed, and fees were not mentioned until we engaged or ordered a girl sent to our homes. Employers are advised in a deferential way, but little dictating is attempted. The rooms accorded us were always the best furnished and some few were not only comfortable but luxurious. In the poorer offices not only the best, but sometimes all of the furniture was in the employers' room.

Occasionally we went into "ladies'" rooms and allowed them to talk to us politely for a few minutes. Then we said we were looking for places, and they had misunderstood us. Such a situation certainly gives some idea of the possibilities of change in the human voice and attitude. It never failed and the replies in some good offices were something like this, with just a note of wrath: "Well, why didn't you say so? get in the other room," or, "You would make a pretty servant; don't know your place." It is the medium and best-grade offices where the contrast in treatment is most striking. Without any experience at all any one can enter these with her eyes closed, and if she hears nothing but the voice of the manager can tell if she is in the "ladies" or "servants" room. In the one it is modulated, polite, smooth, pleasing, courteous; in the other, rough, arrogant, and discourteous, and often nothing expresses it but "fresh." This contrast in treatment must impress even the dullest employees. One of the most fashionable offices in New York makes its employees stand all day—"The room holds more," one girl said. Little thought or money is expended to make the employees' rooms either comfortable or healthful, and yet the girls wait all day, while at best the employers wait a few minutes or an hour. Employees cannot help but contrast a dirty, disorderly kitchen where they are huddled together with the clean, comfortable parlor where they are taken to talk to employers.

In some these girls are actually herded and treated like cattle. In one Swedish office, run by two young men, one guarded the door of the employees' room and by promises and threats and actual force made it impossible for them to get out without paying a fee. We had to assume much of our ordinary English and dignity, and even expose our knowledge of the law, before we were allowed to depart. Swearing at employees who are restless or demand their fees back is too common an occurrence to need mention. The means of maintaining order in some of the crowded offices is not only insulting, but brutal, and the best employees or girls seeking housework for the first time will certainly not come here after one or two experiences. In a good office, a woman who insisted upon her fee was pushed out of the door and downstairs for "creating a disturbance," for she was encouraging others to demand their fees also. She said she had waited two weeks and had not even had an offer of a position. To insist upon "rights" after paying a fee is more often than not the signal for insolence and wrath, and employees are pretty sure to be ignored thereafter in the selection for positions. Sodden, uncomplaining, patient, submissive, must be the attitude, unless they respond to the familiarities and "jollying" of attendants or "work" them for favors.

Discourtesy, noticeable lack of respectful address, "bossing," and contradictions are the things found where the absolute brutality does not exist. We fixed our wages—the office said "Change it or get out." We stated the kind of work we wanted—the office said "Do something different." We wanted work in a private family—the office cajoled us into going into a hotel, which spoils any good girl for all time for a family. We stated we were twenty-five years old, and the office replied, "You are only twenty for our business." In other words, so far as it possibly can, it makes girls over to suit whatever position it has on hand, and employees are forced, through such means, into places which they are not fitted to fill and into work in which they have no interest.

If the real problem in "domestic service" is how to increase and improve the supply of employees, what is the effect of such treatment? We have talked with employees in stores and factories and have employed some of them to visit offices where a "make-up" would not answer and they felt very strongly about this treatment. We wanted their own impressions, because we felt that the reader would believe that we saw it only from a different or "class" point of view, and that it did not represent the feeling of actual workers. To us it was a new, embarrassing, and certainly humiliating thing to go in to an employer whom we had never seen and have her say, "Well, Mary, let's see your reference," or, "Katie, where did you work last?" This more than any other one thing helped us to feel like "servants." But they do not say this in stores and factories—the places where the employer is looking for "improved servants." We are not advocating any reforms, only giving our own experience, and that of hundreds of others, and when employers say to us, "Girls do not mind," we must reply, "But they do." One girl so well summarized the situation that her reply is worth quoting: "Of course when I am with a mistress and she knows me, I am glad to be called Mary, but why should every mistress do it before she even engages us, and why should it be done in such a way that the iceman and grocer's boy and every Tom, Dick, and Harry always calls us that? I am Mary to every guest in the house and every stranger who appears at the kitchen door; in fact, how can I respect myself when no one else shows me any!" If the employees whom we met in offices did not care, then they had become accustomed to what seems to them to be a necessity, or they did not belong to the class which improves the service. When an office attendant presents a girl to an employer he rarely says "Miss," and frequently only the first name is given. We asked some employers who had had girls for a time—running into years—their surnames, and some of them said: "Why, really, I don't believe I know; you see, she is just Katie to us." We do not believe that any American girl of poor but good family, especially from a small town, who has had the training required, and possesses the amount of sensibility necessary for an ideal maid, could have helped the rising flush that came into our faces when employers calmly raised their lorgnettes and looked us over, point for point, exactly as one estimates animals at a stock show; or when they commented upon our clothes, and the "size of your feet," as not belonging to the traditional working girl; or upon the condition of our hands as having "seen too little hard work"; or that we evidently "expect the mistress's clothes in addition to your wages." This was not only in immigrant, but in the best offices, and these were real experiences, and there were questions and comments even more humiliating. We did excite a little curiosity, but there was no reason to believe that an employer so publicly personal would not exercise a strict censorship over every action and impulse of a "servant." Girl after girl has come back into the waiting-room, and when anxiously asked if she was "engaged" would break out in wrath or tears and say, "No! what do you think she asked me," and would relate personalities which the finest analysis could not connect with requirements for a waitress or a maid.

One employer was about to engage us because we looked "promising," though she said "one can't depend much on looks." Then she asked us where we lived and we said on Ludlow Street (which was true, in a settlement). She replied that she did not know that street, and, unable to suppress a wicked uprising, we replied, "It's off the Bowery and has a jail on it." She held up her hands in horror, unconscious of our "promising" appearance, and said, "You never, never will do for my house," and then, as though we were some objectionable object, she moved away and said to the agent, "Take her away; bring me another girl at once." And she took one who had been the rounds of all the dirty, disreputable places in the negro quarter.

In another we had doubts cast upon our intelligence. We applied for a chambermaid's position, hoping no one would appear, and we could talk to the attendant. But out from behind a screen there loomed up a huge boarding-house keeper, who said she had been looking for us all day. We were still green and did not see any other way out, for she wanted us at once and said, "You can get your baggage later if you have any." We were about to pay our fees and depart, when she said, "Can you wait on table?" We replied that we never had, whereupon she studied us for a few minutes and then said: "By gum, you don't look as if you could ever learn, either; I won't take you." The greetings with which we were received by the other employees on our return were certainly entertaining. At another office we were dismissed in a more insolent way, because we modestly did not think we could thoroughly clean ten big rooms in two days.

The employer who is not well or stylishly dressed does not always have an easy time, especially in the poorer offices and negro places. We had an interesting experience while looking for a general-housework girl. The waiting girls were mostly Irish of an inferior type, who looked as though they were recovering from the effects of intemperance. When we expressed a wish for a young woman, a chorus of voices broke out. "She's married a widower"; "Lord, she do be too mean to have any children"; "She'd be a worr'in' if the cat was lickin' the butter"; "Afraid to take an old one for fear she'd know too much." Such disrespectful remarks are common about employers in the poorer offices, but are usually in a language which she is supposed not to know.

As employees, when we refused hotel and restaurant positions, we were frequently told we were "lazy," "good for nothing," "not worth your salt," or "more trouble than you are worth." The first thing that usually happened to us on entering the "servants' room" was an attendant pouncing on us with "Have you paid your fee?" If we had not, many roughly told us to "pay or get out." If we still refused, we were sometimes let alone, but no positions were offered, and the clerk would sneeringly remark, "If you knew enough to pay your fee you would be getting these." In some they said it was "no day hotel," and we could not wait unless we paid, and they were so disagreeable we were actually forced out.

In one negro office, when we applied for a maid, we were told that they did little business in summer, as the proprietor was in Saratoga. Meaning only to be pleasant, we inquired if she had an office there. Indignantly she replied: "I dun have yo' understan' she is a lady of wealth and has her country home there, and she tak' her grand-chillin there 'cause New Yo'k am so bad for dem in summer, and she do keep open house for all her frien's. She doan have to run dis business-she can retire on her money." We were so utterly "squelched" that we made no further efforts for a maid.

In the sweet innocence of the first days of our investigation, we ventured to ring the front door bells of imposing houses, because our list said they were offices. Such a "raking over the coals" as we received at one for not going to the basement door, and were asked, "Do you want to wait on a lady or be waited on by one?" Fortunately we were too confused to answer, else we might have "forgotten our place." In another instance they told us to go below, saying: "What ladies would want to come here with you all over the steps?" In another, while waiting for a position, two sisters came back and said they had given up their positions because the mistress was much older than her husband, was very jealous, spent all her time watching him because he had married her for her money, that her father lived there, was an idiot, and was very disagreeable to care for, and that the lady of the house drank, and the husband had offered them higher wages if they would remain. The proprietor joked with them in a frivolous manner about the "chances you stand of cutting the wife out, and are very silly, for in a place like that there is always plenty of money to be made." This was a large, better-class American office, and when we asked if we could get lodging there she said indignantly we "ought to know enough to see that such a style of house would not do such a thing."

In another large American office the male clerk came into the room and shouted out the positions wanted. When no one replied he then singled out girls, and we asked why no one responded, and a girl said: "Because he always answers us impudently, and picks out the ones he wants to have anyway." He always posted the girls before they went in to an employer. The girls said they came there chiefly to gossip and would not take positions while they had money.

Our experiences have not always been unpleasant, and this was especially true in German offices. We often met with a sympathetic attitude and they were interested in our stories. In one office when we replied, "We live on Rivington Street," an old German woman said, "That is a bad, crowded neighborhood and you had better stay with me for twenty cents a night, though I can't keep you long." They sometimes offered to trust us for fees when we said we had no money, and gave us good advice about work, and we are convinced that the only friends many girls have are these employment agents. In one they would not board or lodge us, but said, "You may do your washing here and bring your food and cook it."

Notwithstanding the many humiliating interviews, there have been many employers who have been considerate and even courteous to us, and we are sure if housework ever becomes our portion, that we will seek them and offer ourselves. They always secured the help if it was there, and others wondered what was the trouble and accused the office of partiality. When engaged by these, employees came back to say good-by to some waiting friend, enthusiastic and happy. Indeed, it was these contacts with the truly gracious employer which gave us much of our courage to go on with our work and meet the disagreeable things which we knew would come. And if a word of apology is needed to those whom we have deceived and disappointed, a word of thanks is also due to the considerate employer, who treated us as though we had souls as well as bodies, and for whom we would have labored if we could.