A Gilded Age Servant Problem

The habit of calling servants “the girls” and “helps” has had not a little to do with the demoralization of domestics in this country. They insist there are no servants in the United States, and the deference due to superiors in the ‘old countries’ is not to be exacted here. Now, what we want are honest, efficient servants, with a sufficient quantity of neat dresses and undergarments to render them tidy and respectable looking. At many boarding schools, each girl is obliged to bring a stated number of good undergarments. Why not exact the same from servants? 

Understanding the Importance of Undergarments and Proper Training

To the Editor of the New-York Times: The excellent article in the TIMES on “Servants” has encouraged me to speak. I have been anxiously expecting to see it followed up by other hints, and thus prepare the way for action. Every household is suffering more or loss from the want of good, efficient servants, not “helps.” Farmers in the country employ these, when they get their equals, or the sons and daughters of their neighbors to assist them.


The habit of calling servants “the girls” and “helps” has had not a little to do with the demoralization of domestics in this country. They insist there are no servants in the United States, and the deference due to superiors in the ‘old countries’ is not to be exacted here. Now, what we want are honest, efficient servants, with a sufficient quantity of neat dresses and undergarments to render them tidy and respectable looking. At many boarding schools, each girl is obliged to bring a stated number of good undergarments. Why not exact the same from servants?


And in yesterday morning's TIMES we see by the address of Reverend H.W. Beecher, that there are 30,000 unfortunate women in the city of New York, many of them brought to that condition for want of proper employment or training for work. Again, we hear of thousands of thousands out of employment, and also that household after household is without its usual complement of servants, either because it cannot afford to pay the enormous wages required, or supply its domestics with the luxuries they require; or, what is often the case, the heads of households are in despair as to where to turn to look for honest women to do their work properly.


Answering advertisements, all can tell you who have tried it, no matter how much trouble one is put to to hunt them up, is almost always unsatisfactory for one reason or another. And intelligence offices, what are they but places where women congregate to gossip and insult ladies who come after them by their arrogance and exactions? If a good girl goes into one, she is soon spoiled by the rest, who dictate to her what she must do, and what she must not. The keepers of the offices are often, if not always, the fosters and encouragers of discontent, as it fills their pockets with money and the offices with women.


Cannot some enterprising person bring about a better state of things? Domestics themselves would certainly be benefited, for under the present state of affairs they are far from being a happy class of creatures; they drift from pillar to post, and finally die, never having reached any position of trust or esteem. - From a Subscriber — The New York Times, April 1870

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