These are unfortunate facts.  For the untrained girl of merely average abilities, with no pronounced talent or inclination, but with an interest in persons and a pleasure in doing things for people, helping in the tasks of homemaking ought to prove suitable work.  It is, however, the one vocation for the untrained girl which requires her to live in the home of her employer, thus curtailing her independence, rendering her hours of work long and uncertain, and cutting off the natural social environment possible if she returned to her own home at the end of the day’s work.  The social position of girls in domestic service, especially in the towns and cities, is peculiarly hard for a self-respecting girl to bear.  It is in large part a reflection upon her sacrifice of independence.  The derisive slang term “slavey” expresses the generally prevalent public contempt.  It is small wonder that a girl fears to brave such a sentiment and as a result avoids what is perhaps in itself congenial work in pleasanter surroundings than most noisy, ill-smelling factories.

Almost all the conditions surrounding the domestic worker are such that it is practically impossible to say except of each place considered by itself whether or not it is a suitable and desirable place for a girl, or whether work and wages are fair.  Practically no progress has been made in standardizing household work.  The factory girl knows what she is to do and when she is to do it and how long her day is to be.  The housework girl seldom knows any of these things with any degree of certainty.  Any plan which will make it possible to regulate these matters according to some recognized standard, and which will enable domestic workers to live at home, going to and from their work at regular hours as shop, factory, and office employees do, will help very materially to solve the problem of opening another desirable vocation to the untrained girl.

The untrained girl who is willing to accept a difficult and trying position in a private kitchen with the idea of making her work serve her as a training school for better work in the future may make a success of her life after all.  Such a girl will have good observing powers and ability to follow directions and gauge the success of results.  She will have adaptability, patience, and a very definite ambition.  For domestic service may be a stepping stone.

For the high-school girl a better opening may sometimes be found as a mother’s helper.  Many women who find the ordinary household helper unsatisfactory give employment to girls of refinement and high-school training who are capable of assisting either with household tasks or with the care of children.  Girls in such positions are usually made “one of the family,” and are sometimes very happily situated.  Their earnings are often more than those of other girls of their intelligence and training who are in offices or stores; but there is of course little chance of advancement, and there is still the prejudice against domestic work to be reckoned with.  Here, as with household assistants, the greatest drawback is probably lack of standardization of work and of working conditions.