WANTED:  A HOME ASSISTANT—­Eight hours a day; six days a week.  Sleep and eat at home.  Pay, twelve dollars a week.

Whenever this notice appears in the Help Wanted column of a city newspaper, fifty to one hundred answers are received in the first twenty-four hours!

“Why,” we hear some one say, “that seems impossible!  When I advertised for a maid at forty dollars a month with board and lodging provided, not a soul answered.  Why are so many responses received to the other advertisement?”

Let us look more closely at the first notice.

Wanted:  A Home Assistant!  How pleasant and dignified it sounds; nothing about a general houseworker or maid or servant, just Home Assistant!  We can almost draw a picture of the kind of young woman who might be called by such a title.  She comes, quiet, dignified, and interested in our home and its problems.  She may have been in an office but has never really liked office work and has always longed for home surroundings and home duties.

I remember one case I was told of—­a little stenographer.  She had gladly assumed her new duties as Home Assistant, and had wept on the first Christmas Day with the family because it was the only Christmas she had spent in years in a home atmosphere.  Or perhaps the applicant for the new kind of work in the home may have been employed in a department store and found the continuous standing on her feet too wearing.  She welcomes the frequent change of occupation in her new position.  Or she may be married with a little home of her own, but with the desire to add to the family income.  We call these Home Assistants, Miss Smith or Mrs. Jones, and they preserve their own individuality and self-respect.

“Well, I would call my housemaid anything if I could only get one,” says one young married woman.  “There must be more to this new plan than calling them Home Assistants and addressing them as Miss.”

Let us read further in the advertisement:  “Eight hours a day; six days a week.”  One full day and one half day off each week, making a total of forty-four hours weekly which is the standard working week in most industrial occupations.  At least two free Sundays a month should be given and a convenient week-day substituted for the other two Sundays.  If Saturday is not the best half day to give, another afternoon may be arranged with the Home Assistant.

“Impossible,” I can hear Mrs. Reader say, “I couldn’t get along with eight hours’ work a day, forty-four hours a week.”  No!  Well, possibly you have had to get along without any maid at all, or you may have had some one in your kitchen who is incompetent and slovenly, whom you dare not discharge for fear you can not replace her.  Would you rather not have a good interested worker for eight hours a day than none at all?  During that time the Home Assistant works steadily and specialization is done away with.  She is there to do your work and she does whatever may be called for.  If she is asked to take care of the baby for a few hours, she does it willingly, as part of her duties; or if she is called upon to do some ironing left in the basket, she assumes that it is part of her work, and doesn’t say, “No, Madam, I wasn’t hired to do that,” at the same time putting on her hat and leaving as under the old system.