equally
imperative and binding one for each side. The mistresses who command the
best service are those who make rigorous demands, but keep their own
side of the bargain as rigorously. They are few, for the American
temperament is one of submission, varied by sudden bursts of revolt, and
despairing return to a worse state than the first. A training-school
school for mistresses is as much an essential as one for the servants.
The conditions of modern life come more complicated with every year; and
as simplification becomes for the many less and less possible, it is all
the more vitally necessary to study the subject from the new standpoint,
settle once for all how and why we have failed, and begin again on the
new foundation.

Here then stands the arraignment of domestic service under its present
conditions, given point by point as it has formulated itself to those
who urged to turn to it. The mistresses' side defines itself as sharply;
but when all is said the two are one, the demand one and the same for
both. Men who work for wages work a specified number of hours, and if
they shirk or half fulfil their contract, find work taken from them.
Were the same arrangement understood as equally binding in domestic
service, thousands of self-respecting women would not hesitate to enter
it. Family life cannot always move in fixed lines, and hours must often
vary; but conscientious tally could be kept, and over-hours receive the
pay they have earned. A conscience on both sides would be the first
necessity; and it is quite certain that the master of the house would
require education as decidedly as the mistress, woman's work within home
walls being regarded as something continuous, indefinable, and not worth
formal estimate.

In spite of the enormous increase of wealth, the mass are happily what,
for want of a better word, must be called middle class. But one servant
or helper can usually be kept, and most often she is one who has used
our kitchens as kindergartens, adding fragments of training as she
passed from one to the other, ending often as fairly serviceable and
competent. Sure of her place she becomes tyrant, and nothing can alter
this relation but the appearance upon the scene of organized trained
labor, making a demand for absolute fairness of treatment and giving it
in return. Once certain that the reign of incompetence was over, the
present order of servers would make haste to seek training-schools, or
accept the low