Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 September 1881 — Housekeeping Hereafter. [ARTICLE]

Housekeeping Hereafter.

Housekeeping, as now conducted, is too big a job for those who undertake to doit—a fact practically realized in all households. Not even the most favored are free from danger of periodic breakdown in the over-taxed machinery of domestic administration, and the common experience is that the gearing runs anything’but smoothly at best. The one matter of trouble with servants is becoming such a crying evil that it is talked of whenever housekeepers meet, and the public prints are burdened with discussions of remedies and plans for obtaining better “help.” This agitation will presently make plain that the servant trouble lies too deep to be reached by changes in the personnel of the service. It is not that cooks and chambermaids are so greatly at fault as that tod much is demanded from them. The work to be done requires greater intelligence and ability than can be induced to enter domestic service at present. Necessity commanding and opportunity inviting, an attempt to institute better methods of housekeeping cannot long be delayed. The centripetal force of society, potent in commerce and arts, will be permitted again to modify the conduct of household affairs ; acting, as heretofore, by removing certain kinds of work from the home, and making them the basis of a new business. The kinds of work to be transplanted are those which bring dirt and litter into the house, those which require and which produce heat, and those which demand a man’s strength or an expert’s skill. In plain words, the household is to be relieved of the heavy and gross labors, and also the difficult and trying operations connected with cooking, washing, ironing, heating and cleaning. —Atlantic Monthly.