Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 September 1880 — Reading Servants. [ARTICLE]

Reading Servants.

There are many women who complain if their housemaids show a fondness for reading, even in moments of leisure; but they could hardly find the kind of service they like in the servant who cannot read. Did any of you ever notice the difference between the educated and the uneducated housekeeper? The one brings all her intelligence to bear upon her work, the other works with a stolidness that betrays her sluggish brain. If all servant girls were educated, one would save money even at a higher rate of wages than by employing uneducated women. One of uie first business houses in New York, known as well in Europe as in this country, furnishes books, teachers and apparatus for a thorough instruction of all their employes in the common branches and the rudiments of science and mechanics, requiring them to give an hour daily at recitation, for which they prepare out of work hours. No deduction is made because of this hour’s absence from the work room or ou account of instruction or school books. The house gets its return from outlays of this sort from the increased skill and intelligence of its employes. If the house mistress can feel and take an interest in the substantial improvement of her domestic help and make them sensible of it, she will have a basis for expectation that they in tarn will be conscientioas in their regard for her interests and her rights. In all stations as life intelligence is to be praised.