More than this, in many city households, especially in apartment households, the servants are prohibited from receiving their friends even in the kitchen.  “Are we allowed to receive men visitors in the house?” chorused a group of girls, questioned in a fashionable employment agency.  “Mostly our friends are not allowed to step inside the areaway while we are putting on our hats to go out.”

There is no escaping the conclusion that a large part of the social evil, or that branch of it recruited every year from domestic service, is traceable to American methods of dealing with servants.  The domestic, belonging, as a rule, to a weak and inefficient class, is literally driven into paths where only strength and efficiency could possibly protect her from evil.

Servants share, in common with all other human beings, the necessity for human intercourse.  They must have associates, friends, companions.  If they cannot meet them in their homes they must seek them outside.

Walk through the large parks in any city, late in the evening, and observe the couples who occupy obscurely placed benches.  You pity them for their immodest behavior in a public place.  But most of them have no other place to meet.  And it is not difficult to comprehend that clandestine appointments in dark corners as a rule do not conduce to proper behavior.  Most of the women you see on park benches are domestic servants.  Some of them, it is safe to assume, work in New York’s Fifth Avenue, or in mansions on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive.

[Illustration:  AN UNTHOUGHT-OF PHASE OF THE SERVANT QUESTION]

The social opportunity of the domestic worker is limited to the park bench, the cheap theater, the summer excursion boat, and the dance hall.  Hardly ever does a settlement club admit a domestic to membership; rarely does a working girls’ society or a Young Women’s Christian Association circle bid her welcome.  The Girls’ Friendly Association of the Protestant Episcopal Church is a notable exception to this rule.

In a large New England city, not long ago, a member of the Woman’s Club proposed to establish a club especially for domestics, since no other class of women seemed willing to associate with them.  The proposal was voted down.  “For,” said the women, “if they had a clubroom they would be sure to invite men, and immorality might result.”

But there is no direct connection between a clubroom and immorality, whereas the park bench after dark and the dance hall and its almost invariable accompaniment of strong drink are positive dangers.

The housekeeper simply does not realize that her domestics are girls, exactly like other girls.  They need social intercourse, they need laughter and dancing and healthy pleasure just as other girls need them, as much as the young ladies of the household need them.

Perhaps they need them even more.  The girl upstairs has mental resources which the girl downstairs lacks.  The girl upstairs has the protection of family, friends, social position.  The last is of greatest importance, because the woman without a social position has ever been regarded by a large class of men as fair game.  The domestic worker sometimes finds this out within the shelter, the supposed shelter, of her employer’s home.