مصممة

1

1857.

The Employment of Women.

months of every year out of service, it is ly well, and do other things much better;* wholly impossible that she should ever save but even a preposterous page, clumsy and any money. She spends all she has earned ungainly, is considered a surer distinguishing in one place, before she obtains another; mark of gentility than the "neat-handed and, not improbably, has been obliged to Phillis," with her pretty face, her tidy perget rid of all she possesses, beyond the son, and her quiet movements, who presides clothes on her back, or perhaps to do worse over the ménage next door. "Stripes," things, to provide herself with food and writes Mr. Thackeray, in one of his soundshelter. By a continued connexion with one hearted Snob Papers," was in the livery of family, on the other hand, not only may the the Ponto family-a thought shabby, but means of laying by a little money be sup- gorgeous in the extreme,-lots of magnifiplied, but a claim to the good offices of the cent worsted lace, and livery buttons of a family, in sickness or old age, be founded. very notable size. The honest fellow's hands, It is sometimes said, that the rich are more I remarked, were very large and black; and ungrateful to their old servants than to their a fine odour of the stable was wafted about old horses or dogs, for that they support the the room, as he moved to and fro in his latter after they have ceased to be useful, ministration. I should have preferred a whilst they turn their human attendants clean maid-servant, but the sensations of adrift. But long service is necessary in all Londoners are, perhaps, too acute on these vocations, to the establishment of a claim subjects; and a faithful John, after all, is It seems to be Mr. Thackeray's especial to be pensioned in old age; and we are in- more genteel." clined to think, that where this claim has been established, it is more frequently vocation to write down flunkeyism; but admitted than ignored. The reason why flunkeyism is not easily written down either there are so many old servants in our work- in one shape or another. People will go on houses is, that the claim on private benevolence is rarely established.

having and being flunkeys. But we should ill acquit ourselves of the task we have unAnother point worthy of consideration, in dertaken, if we did not enter our protest connexion with this branch of our subject, against the intrusion of flunkeys in situations is, whether, by extending the market for where women-servants may be employed female service in more profitable quarters, with equal utility. Any improvement in something may not be done to diminish the this respect we know must be very gradual. supply of poorly-requited labour of this "Example moves where precept fails;" but kind. Every man-servant costs his em- it moves slowly when conventional ideas of ployer twice-or, probably, thrice-as much gentility are assailed. Your Apollos of as a female servant. With due advertence May Fair, or your Joves Tonantes of the even to the subject of "keep," it may be Stock Exchange, will not readily consent said, without fear of contradiction, that two to turn their Ganymedes into Hebes, and good parlour-maids will cost less than one have their nectar poured out by feminine footman. Now, we know that men-servants hands. But they may discover, in process bear a very small numerical proportion to of time, if they are gently led to it by unfemale servants. There are many streets which contain a hundred of the latter to one of the former. Still, a large number of men are employed in domestic service; whilst many householders resort to the ridi*Besides exempting you from the chance of inculous compromise of a boy in buttons, page." sult and injury. A distinguished weekly journal under the absurd designation of " low-Plush Troubles," exhibits some of the inconSetting aside the insane notion of "gentili- (the Examiner), in a recent article, headed "Yelty," what is gained by this addiction to men- venient results of keeping men-servants, who get servants, what gain is there of substantial drunk and insult you, and, when you resent their "What is the remedy ?" asks the jourcomfort? If a servant be required, as in impertinence, bring you into Court, and cause you some instances, to attend a carriage, it is to be fined. vants. They are dangerous nuisances and abominanecessary to entertain a footman; but there nalist. "There is but one,-discharge your he-serare a vast number of cases in which no such tions in every respect. They are the trouble of reason exists, and the only motive to the every family. All who have to do with them, comemployment of the man, in preference to the plain without end of them. When will some man woman, is vanity. It is, conventionally, of mark set the example of turning off his spoiled, substituting female attendants, who, when well more aristocratic to keep a footman than a pert flunkeys, with their airs and insolencies, and parlour-maid. The latter may wait at table, trained, wait and perform every other office quite as clean plate, answer the door, &c., &c., equal-well, and at smaller cost of money and temper."

to be in proximity to a clean print frock | this kind. The best actions of a man's life than to a pipe-clayed white coat, which per- often subject him to suspicion. Such suspihaps, leaves its mark on your shoulder.* cion as we have indicated would soon be But even if this-of which we confess we lived down, with the error in which it originhave no great hope at present-were accom- ated, and the immense advantages of such plished, and Yellow-plush went to the Blues, education-advantages beneficially influencand Buttons were sent back to the country, ing, perhaps, a whole life-be generally apto weed gravel-walks, or dig potatoes at six-preciated.

will take care of themselves," is true of more things than coin. These little pence of benevolence make a vast capital of welldoing, and, properly cared for, may fill the world with wealth. Besides, such independent, spontaneous effort does not exclude association and organization. We only say that it may precede them. Whilst we are contriving machinery to operate on a large scale, let every one try what can be done with one's own hands on a small scale. The association and organization, which are so much needed, will not go on the worse for this.

pence a-day, there would be no very great This is a good work, in which every one gain to the female community, who now so who has an establishment, great or small, vastly outnumber the male in the ranks of may assist, without any associated efforts or domestic service. That to which our re- organized machinery. Let no one say, marks practically tend, is not so much the "What can I do alone?" Let every one extension as the improvement of a descrip- try what he can do alone, and leave the tion of employment which occupies the lives joint resul to God. The homely adage, of so large a portion of the women of Eng-"Take care of your pence and your pounds land. The great mistake, as we have said, is, that it is generally conceived by the classes who supply the raw material of domestic service, that every girl is by nature a domestic servant, and that she has only to step from the cottage to the servants' hall or to the kitchen, there to take her place at once, full-fledged, as an important member of a household. This is hardly, perhaps, so much their fault, as the fault of those who are above them, and who, having the power to correct, endorse the error of their less instructed neighbors. There are few poor families, we suspect, who would not gladly avail themselves of any permitted means of obtaining a good practical household education for their daughters, as soon as they were once made clearly to understand its advantage. There may be some ignorance, prejudice, and suspicion to be combated at the outset, but these would soon give way before reason and self-interest. We know that the mistress of a household, either in town or country, could hardly render more real practical service to her poorer neighbours, than by permitting the daughters of such people, at the age of fifteen or sixteen, to come from time to time into their houses, to see how the work is done, and to learn how to do it, by assisting the regular members of the establishment. And yet we are afraid that many poor people, with habitual suspicion, would look upon any such proposal as an insidious attempt to obtain so much service "for nothing," and, after a little time, would suggest an idea of payment. But no one who desires to do good must suffer himself to be deterred by obstacles of

And what should the machinery be? We have already, in some measure, indicated its nature; and with any such indication, there will be suggested to every reader's mind an idea of industrial training in schools or other institutions. It has been stated that a large number of the female servants of England begin life in the workhouse, and end it there. We are afraid that in such cases the middle is worthy of the two extremes of their social existence. But the workhouse, as we have already observed, contains all the machinery for industrial training,-a machinery which is often set most beneficially at work in favour of the boy inmates, but is generally inoperative in behalf of the girls. Every Union workhouse ought to be an industrial school on a large scale, and, in a great measure, a selfsupporting institution. Every girl ought to learn, before she is cast adrift on the world, how to wash, how to iron, how to make a bed, how to clean a grate, how to boil vegetables, how to cook a joint, how to make a pudding, how to wait at table, and how to do all kinds of plain needlework. Doubt. *Flunkeyism in white livery is comely and im- less, some of these things are learned and posing; but we have sometimes carried with us into practised for the benefit of the master and the drawing-room, after a grand dinner, a mark of mistress of the Union; but there is no systhe genteel society in which we have been, in the tematic instruction in which it is to be shape of a patch of pipe-clay on our shoulder, left there by a footman, after leaning over us to remove gravely and earnestly regarded as the business of a life.

a dish.

The rate-payers are not invited to receive | ened-who have learnt from you how to manthese girls in furtherance of the same impor- age a household-who have caught up from you, tant object, from time to time, into their insensibly, lessons of vast utility, lessons of order, houses. Indeed, it seems to be the rule to of the management of children, of household lessons of economy, lessons of cleanliness, lessons coop them up as much and ventilate them comfort and tidiness, these women eventually as little as possible-to hinder their contact become the wives of small tradesmen and respectwith the outer world and its duties, as able operatives. They carry into a lower and a though there were a fear of their revealing very extended circle the influence of your teachthe secrets of the prison-house, in a manner ing and your training. Visit a hamlet or a vilthat might, perhaps, be inconvenient to their gaolers. We do not say that there are no exceptions to this rule; but we are certain that our workhouses generally, whatever they may do for boys, fall very short of the due discharge of their proper functions as training institutions for girls.

proper

lage where the cottager's wife has been a servant in the squire's mansion, and you shall see the results immediately in the air of comfort, order, and neatness which reigns around-in the gentle and respectful manner of the woman-in_the tidiness and respectability of her children. Even her husband, though rude and habituated to rough toil, has caught something of the gentle manners of his wife. Go into the small butcher's, baker's, green-grocer's shops in town, and the same result is observable. The woman has not only the air of business, but a tone and manner about her which has been picked up in another sphere. She shows the result in her house, in the management, the dress, the cleanliness, the neatness of her children. She is not so good a specimen as the former, because she is not so unso

The same may be said of nearly all our schools. The children of labouring men and of petty tradesmen, are not brought up to consider that they must earn their livelihood by their own work, soon after their days of pupillage are over. They learn a little reading a little writing-and a little "summing;" and before they have ly learnt to sew, they are often promoted to phisticated; the town mansion and the management of servants in them have been somecrochet-work, or suffered to waste their what different. Still from you she has carried time on elaborate "samplers." But every lessons of inestimable value to her husband and school for the poor ought to be, more or her family."-[Rev. F. S. Brewer on Workhouse less, an industrial school; and the rich Visiting-Lectures to Ladies on Practical Subwho subscribe their money to them, ought jects.] to make it a condition of their support, that ,the children are instructed in the practical utilities of life. If this were done, there would be fewer failures at starting-fewer girls would fall by the wayside at the very outset of their career. The many failures and the many falls, the deplorable results of which we see on the pavements of our large towns, are to be attributed not merely to the fact that the poor girls are not taught to work, but that they are not taught to look seriously and solemnly at work, as at that, which if it has its pains and penalties, has also its pleasures and its privileges, and which, if worthily performed, "ranks the same with God," whether it be in the high or the low places of the earth, amidst glory

and honour or dust and ashes.

In more senses than one, this is worth considering. If the results of failure in this walk of life be grievous to contemplate, the results of success are cheering in the extreme. We must look indeed beyond the boundaries-wide as they are-of domestic service, for the good influences which issue from its more perfect organization. Hear what is said upon the subject by a man of large experience and of earnest thought

Now hear what follows-a further and very noticeable result :

"Now, this class of women is never found in the London workhouses-never except from some very great misconduct, or rarely overwhelming misfortune. Coachmen, grooms, stable-boys, every class of out-door labourers, though in receipt of higher wages than domestic servants— all, in short, who do not come into close contact houses; but with the rarest exceptions, in proportion perhaps of one in a hundred-no woman who, having been a domestic servant, has preserved her character."

with

you,

I have seen and seen often in work

The reverend lecturer limits his statement

to the case of the London workhouses; and it may be said, perhaps, that as a large proportion of our female servants-even those employed in London-are drawn originally from the country, and therefore, in distress or in old age, return to the country, it is to the rural rather than to the metropolitan workhouses that we must look for general results. But, with this caution to the reader, we may still venture to affirm, that really good servants seldom or never come to penury in old age. It may be said that marriage is a contingency not always associated with good "The female servants in your household, service. A pretty parlour-maid may somewhom you have taken and instructed in their re- times obtain a husband before a homelyspective duties-whose manners you have soft-looking cook, though the cook be the steadier

and the thriftier of the two. Yet, as a gen-nysonian laudations of an opposite state; eral rule, small tradesmen and tradesmen's but we confess that there was one aspiration assistants, think more of useful qualities in a embodied in a stanza of Maud, which awakwife, and marry more systematically and ened all our sympathy on perusal : more providently, than their superiors in the social scale. It is not the prettiest or the smartest girl in an establishment who makes the earliest or the best match. It is

the steady, industrious girl, always to be found busy at her proper work, no gadder, no gossiper, on whom the baker or the grocer casts his admiring eyes. And, apart altogether from the consideration of matrimony, (which, if many female servants bitterly deplore, so also do many in other walks of life,) there is this to be said with respect to good service, that employers know how to appreciate it, and are grateful for it when it comes. Few who have given their livelong faithful services to one family, are ever suffered to want in their old age. As a race, perhaps, they are not provident. Good and faithful servants derive little profit from their situations beyond the actual wages attached to their respective places; and, if they have no relatives poorer than themselves to be assisted by them, they spend the greater part of their earnings on dress. But we believe that the number of pensioned servants in this country is by no means small. Thousands of old servants are now spending the winter of their days in comfort, aided, if not wholly supported, by the employers to whom they have devoted the energies of yonth and of middle age. There are few positions, indeed, where there is a higher premium on industry and fidelity than in domestic service. And seeing, therefore, that the difference is so wide between the results of success and the results of failure, strenuous should be our efforts, in every way, to diminish the chances of the latter. The few first steps generally determine all the rest. Give a girl a fair start, trained and disciplined for service, and the chances are, that she will not fall by the way.

1

"For I trust if an enemy's fleet came yonder round by the hill,

And the rushing battle-bolt rang from the three-decker out of the foam,

That

the smooth-faced, snub-nosed rogue would leap from his counter and till, And strike, if he could, were it but with his cheating yard-wand, home."

The only

Looking at this as rather a desire than an expectation, we repeat that it has all our sympathies. If the tall fellows who wait behind the chairs, or stand behind the carriages of the great, and the men-milliners who smirk behind the counters of our shops, were, by reason of a want of manhood for war purposes, absorbed into our regiments, and handed over to the drill-sergeant and the rough-rider, so as to leave more room for women in places where men intrude, to the manifest discredit of themselves and our social and commercial system, a state of war would, at all events, have one beneficial result. It is sickening to see the "smoothfaced rogues" behind our counters, dandling tapes and ribbands in hands which God made for ruder tasks, and lisping about the "sweet things" with which they desire to, tempt their lady customers, and even presuming to pay insolent compliments, for which they ought to be kicked. shadow of an argument in defence of this system which we have ever seen, is, that women cannot take down heavy bales of goods from the shelves. But even admitting the truth of this, the argument would only be valid so far as to indicate the necessity of keeping in every large establishment, where heavy bales of goods require to be taken down from the shelves, one or two porters for this express purpose. It does not follow that, because man's strength is needed to lift We have devoted more space than we had heavy bales of goods, it is needed to meaoriginally designed to this subject of do- sure out yards of ribband and lace, or to dismestic service, but not more than, when the course upon the quality of silks and satins. number of women who are thus employed We have heard it said that the majority is considered, it will be thought to demand. of ladies who frequent our shops prefer Of a nature kindred to this is the employ-shop-men to shop-women. But we are hapment which is found for women in our py in our unbelief of this assertion. We shops. This is a favourite description of know that many ladies are very much afraid employment with young females of good ad- of London shop-men, and that many more dress, who have received a rather better thoroughly dislike their forwardness and kind of education than the class from which our domestic servants are commonly drawn. The first observation on this subject which suggests itself is, that the demand ought to be greater than it is. We are devout lovers of peace, and could never concur in the Ten

foppery. Some we hope take a more serious view of the matter, and are disposed on principle to support those establishments which afford most occupation to their less fortunate sisters. At all events, it were time that they should do so-full time that they

should consider that the greatest service sex all the sewing work of the country. which they can render to society is to pro- How men-tailors first arose it is difficult to mote by all possible means the extension of say. Perhaps it was esteemed only in acthe circle wherein the women of Great Bri- cordance with the fitness of things that tain may earn for themselves an honest men's garments should be made by men. livelihood. If the ladies of England took Stout broadcloth or stern fustian were heed of this, and acted in accordance with thought perhaps to defie delicate female their convictions, tradesmen would soon find hands. But the notion is becoming, practiout that their shops can be attended quite as cally, weaker and weaker; and no inconeffectually by women as by men. The shop-siderable portion of man's apparel is really woman may not have the same presumption made by female hands. We believe that or the same perseverance in pressing ar- the greater number of the garments emanatticles on unwilling purchasers; but this ing from the "bespoke" trade are the work practice is so generally disliked by custom- of men; but that the "slop" work more ers of all kinds, and is altogether so disagree- commonly belongs to women. In other able,that it deters more than it tempts. It words, that if you order a coat or a pair of is a libel on the women of England to affirm trowsers, it will be made for you by a man, that the assiduities of "oiled and curled" but that if you walk into a shop and buy shop-men are otherwise than irksome to one ready-made, it is the work of a woman. them.* A very large number of women are emThere is another department of shop bu- ployed in the getting up of the outer garsiness in which women may be very advan- ments, which, at seemingly very low prices, tageously employed-we mean as account- are ticketed in the large outfitting shops, and keepers and cashiers. On the Continent, which supply really the great mass of the women are much more extensively employ-coat-wearing population of the country. ed as book-keepers and financiers than they Waistcoat-making is in itself a profession, are in England. They are not worse arith- which numbers members by thousands. meticians than men; and inasmuch as their Now it is not to be denied that the garments temptations are fewer, they are more likely made by men are more enduring than those to be honest. We see no reason why, in made by women, if the former issue from this respect, we should not imitate our Con- the bespoke, and the latter from the readytinental, and we believe, our Transatlantic made business. But the difference does not friends. In the labour-market there should reside in the hands of the employed, but in be no monopoly of sex. Of every descrip- the wages paid by the employer. We have tion of work which can be done equally well no reason to doubt that for the same money by women, without any abatement of their a woman, properly trained to the business, claims to our respect as women, they ought will do all the sewing work in a coat as well to have their fair share. as a man. But ready-made garments are It may be a question, whether, in the cheap, because the makers of them are unproper distribution of labour between the derpaid; and for the same reason they are two sexes, all the needle-work should not bad. The slop-sellers pay neither for skillpass into the hands of the woman. Certained labour, nor for enduring work. It is not ly, it would seem at the first blush, that the the woman's work, but the underpaid work, lords of the creation, without any loss of male or female, which is necessarily bad. manly dignity, might leave to the weaker It may be good for the price, but it could not possibly be good at the price that is

* In connexion with this subject of the employ-paid for it. ment of women in shops, it may be observed that, The miseries of the slop-workers of all reversing the proper order of things, there is an in- kinds, whether they be makers of outer or creasing tendency to employ them, just where they under garments, has awakened much popuought not to be employed, in shops frequented only lar sympathy and excited much popular inby men, especially tobacconist shops, where young and comely girls are placed to attract customers. dignation. The horrors of this white slavery We do not speak of those low tobacconist shops have not been exaggerated. How could which are really brothels in disguise-but of respect such colossal fortunes be made by Hebrew able establishments. That the system is bad is prov- and other outfitters, if the soil from which ed by the significant fact, that girls seldom remain long in these shops. They disappear with unpleas- the harvest issued were not plentifully wa ant rapidity from their place behind the counter. tered and manured with blood and tears? We may admit that men are better judges of snuffs Everybody knows that London is full of and cigars than young girls, and therefore do not "distressed needle-women." But how, it grudge them the exclusive possession of the tobacconists' counters. But women certainly ought to may be asked, is this to be helped? There know, and we believe do know, more about ribbands is a demand for cheap garments. And there is a demand for employment in the making

and lace.