easily learn the correct way of serving it, and the possession of this knowledge ought not to prevent her from being capable of sweeping a room, or making a bed, or taking care of children.

It is above all in families where only a few employees are kept, that the housewife will quickly realize how much it is to her immediate advantage to employ women who know how to do all kinds of housework, instead of having those who make a specialty of one particular branch.

The specialization of work in private houses has been carried to such an extreme that it has become one of the greatest drawbacks to successful housekeeping in small families. Under this system of specialization, a household employee is not capable in emergency of taking up satisfactorily the work of another. Even if she be able to do it, she often professes ignorance for fear it may prolong her own hours of labor, or because, as she sometimes frankly admits, she does not consider it "her place." The chambermaid does not know how to cook, the cook does not know how to do the chamberwork, the waitress, in her turn, can do neither cooking nor chamberwork, and the annoyance to the whole family caused by the temporary absence of one of its regular employees is enough to spoil for the time being all the traditional comforts of home.

In hotels and public institutions, and in large private establishments, where the work demands a numerous staff of employees, the specialization of the work is the only means for its successful accomplishment, but in the average home requiring from one to four or five employees no system could be worse from an economic point of view, nor less conducive to the comfort of the family.

Specialization produces another bad effect, for it prevents the existence of the feeling of equality among employees in the same house. Each "specialist" speaks rather disparagingly of the other's work, regardless of the relative position her own special "art" may occupy to the unprejudiced mind.

An amusing instance of this was recently shown at a country place near New York, when "the lady of the manor" asked a friend to send some one down from the city to help with the housework during the temporary absence of her maid. The friend could not find any one at the domestic employment agencies willing to go, but at last through the Charity Organization Society, she heard of a woman temporarily out of employment, who had been frequently employed as scrubwoman on the vacation piers. When the work was offered her, she accepted it immediately. Arriving at her new employer's house, she began at once to scrub the floors, and when the work was completed, she sat on a chair and took no further notice of anything. The next day, having no more floors to scrub, the same general lack of interest was manifested. She was asked to wash the dishes after dinner. She replied that she was not used to "dishwashing," and did not know how to do it. She was persuaded, however, to make the attempt, but performed her new task very reluctantly. The following morning she said she felt "lonely" and would return at once to the city. As the train came in sight to bear her back to her accustomed surroundings, she gave a snort of relief, and exclaimed: "I'm a scrubwoman, I am. I ain't going to do no fancy dishwashing, no, not for no one; I'm a scrubwoman." And she clambered up into the train with the alacrity of a woman whose dignity had received a hard blow.

The above illustration is typical of the spirit subjected to the system of specialization, and shows how unwise it is to encourage it in the home where all branches of housework could be easily made interchangeable.

Under the new system of limiting housework to eight hours a day, the housewife must insist that all applicants be willing and able to perform any part of the housework she may assign, and their duties ought not to be specified otherwise than by the term HOUSEWORK. The employee who refuses to wait on the table during the absence of the waitress, or to cook, or to do the laundry work, or to answer the telephone, or to carry packages from her employer's automobile to the library, because she does not consider it "her place to do these things," should be instantly discharged.

These very important conditions being understood and conceded, the choice and arrangement of the eight hours' work must necessarily lie with each individual housewife. Each family is different and has different claims upon its time. The "rush hours" of social life are sometimes in the evening, and sometimes in the afternoon, and again in some families, especially where there are small children, the breakfast hour seems the most complicated of the day. All these details have to be carefully thought of when making an eight hour schedule. At the end of this book a set of schedules is placed. Any intelligent housewife can understand them, imitate them, and in many instances improve them. They are merely given as elementary examples.

According to the number of employees she engages, the housewife will have eight, sixteen, or twenty-four hours of work to distribute among them, and to meet her peculiar needs she will find it necessary at the outset to devote some hours to a satisfactory scheme. After testing several, she will probably have to begin all over again before she finally succeeds in evolving one that is available. But the problem is interesting in itself, and always admits of a solution.

It may not be amiss to make this final suggestion for the woman who is willing to give the new plan a fair trial: she should follow the example of the business man when he is in need of new employees, and advertise for help, stating hours of work, and requesting that all applications be made by letter. This disposes rapidly of the illiterate, and in the majority of cases, a woman who writes a good, legible, and accurate hand, is more apt to be efficient in her work than one who sends in a dirty, careless, ill-expressed and badly spelled application. Through advertising one comes into touch with many women it would be impossible to reach otherwise. It is also the most advantageous way of bringing the employer and employee together, inasmuch as it dispenses entirely with the services of a third person, who, naturally can not be expected to offer gratuitous service.

The plan of limiting housework to eight hours a day is not an idle theory; it has been in successful operation for several years. Yet it is not easy to change the habit of years. There are many housewives who would loudly declare it impossible to conform to such business rules in the household; and many of the older generation of cooks and housemaids would agree. But when such a plan has been generally adopted, the domestic labor problem will be solved, and it does not appear that in the present state of social organization, it can be solved in any other way.

HOUSEWORK LIMITED TO SIX DAYS A WEEK

Under the present system of housekeeping, there is not one day out of the three hundred and sixty-five that a domestic employee has the right to claim as a day of rest, not even a legal holiday.

It is remarkable that this fact, showing so forcibly one of the greatest disadvantages connected with housework, should attract so little attention. No one seems to care about the fate of the "servant girl," as she is so often disdainfully called. During six days of the week she works on the average fourteen hours a day, but no one stops to notice that she is tired. On the seventh day, instead of resting as every other employee has the right to do, her work is merely reduced to nine, eight, or perhaps seven hours; and yet she needs a day of rest as much as every other woman who earns her bread. The rights of the domestic employee are ignored on all sides apparently. In public demonstrations of dissatisfaction between employers and employees the most oppressed class of the working people—the women who do housework—has never yet been represented.

This is probably due to two causes: the first is because women dissatisfied