This plan has never failed to bring satisfaction, and it has the advantage of placing the employer and the employee on an equally delightful footing of independence.  The performance of extra work is no longer regarded as a matter of obligation on one side, and of concession on the other, but as a purely business transaction.

Some housewives fear that the regular work would be intentionally prolonged beyond all measure if it became an established rule to pay extra for work performed overtime.  This could be easily checked, however, by paying extra only for work that was necessitated by unusual events in the family life.

In families where only one employee is kept, naturally the occasions for asking her to work overtime arise more frequently than in families where there are two or more employees, especially if there be small children in the family.  Yet these occasions need not come very often, if the housewife bears in mind that even with only one employee, she has eight hours every day at her own disposal; she ought to plan her outside engagements accordingly.  Her liberty from household cares during these eight hours can only be gained though by having efficient and trustworthy assistants in her home, and she can never obtain these unless she abandons her old fashioned methods of housekeeping.  She must grant to household employees the same rights and privileges given to business employees; she must apply business principles to housework.  A great power lies in the hands of the modern housewife, a power as yet only suspected by a few, which, if properly wielded, can raise housework from its present undignified position to the place it ought to occupy, and that is in the foremost rank of manual labor for women.

PART III

EIGHT HOUR SCHEDULES IN THE HOME

  Eight hour schedules for one employee. 
  Eight hour schedules for two employees. 
  Eight hour schedules for three employees.

EIGHT HOUR SCHEDULES FOR ONE EMPLOYEE

The schedules given in the following pages have been in actual practice for a sufficient length of time to prove that they can be relied on to produce satisfactory results, although no doubt many housewives will find that some of them must be modified to meet special requirements in their homes.

Two very important points must always be borne in mind in order to obtain the greatest advantage from an eight hour schedule, especially in families where only one employee is engaged to do the housework.

The first point is this:  the housewife ought only to make her working schedule after she has carefully studied her own comfort and convenience in regard to the hours she considers the most important of the day for her to have help in her housework.

The second point is for the housewife to reserve for herself the entire freedom of the eight hours during which her employee is on duty, for then she can place, or she ought to be able to, the full responsibility of the housekeeping upon her employee.