The Waste of Private Housekeeping

The principal waste in our "domestic economy" lies in the fact that it is domestic. Domestic industry is the earliest form of labor. Its original type is mother-service, to which was soon added wife-service and slaveservice, often embodied in the same person. This primitive labor type increased in numbers where more than one slave, or wife, or slavewife was possessed, and was slightly raised in grade as slave labor became serf labor, and that gradually turned to contract labor in a modified form. The domestic servant is still expected to take part wage in barter, food and shelter being given instead of the full price in money; to live in the house of the employing family, to show the virtues of the earlier status, humility, loyalty, faithfulness, and, as belonging to that earlier status, no high degree of skill is expected. Where no servants are employed, which in our country is the case in fifteen families out of sixteen, domestic industry is still at its first stage, mother-service. As such it is not regarded as labor, in any economic sense, but as a sex-function proper to the woman. She is expected to do the work because she is a woman, without any regard to special fitness or experience, this view being frequently expressed in the words "every girl should know how to cook," while no single trade is ever so mentioned as necessary to every boy. Industrial efficiency grows along lines of specialization, organization and interchange. In the stage of industrial evolution when each man provided for himself by his own unaided exertions we find the maximum of effort with the minimum of product. Domestic industry is the only survival of that stage in our otherwise highly differentiated economic system. While every woman is expected to follow one trade the grade of efficiency must remain at the lowest possible average.