I am not here concerned with the housewife who can afford to keep more than one efficient servant.  Indeed, I am hardly concerned with one who can employ a really good “general” at from L20 to L25 per annum.  The person I am concerned with is the homemaker who can afford at most to employ an inexperienced young girl at from L10 to L14 per annum.

 I will draw the worst side of the picture first, for although it is
 the worst side it is true enough, as so many harassed housewives know.

The young “general” often comes straight from a council school where domestic economy had no place in the curriculum, and from a home in name only.  Such an one is usually slatternly and careless in all her ways, has no idea of personal cleanliness, and regards her “mistress” as, more or less, her natural enemy!  She is “in service” only under compulsion, and envies those of her schoolmates whose more fortunate circumstances have enabled them to become “young lady” shop assistants, typists and even elementary school teachers.  If she had her choice she would prefer labour in a factory to domestic work; but either a factory is not available, or the girl’s parents consider “service” more “respectable” in spite of its hardships.  Its hardships?  Yes, it is its hardships that account for its peculiar unpopularity.  For there are hardships connected with domestic service in small households that do not apply to other forms of much harder labour.

Everyone who is familiar with the small lower middle-class household knows how often the life of the little “general” resembles that of an animal rather than a human being.  All day long she drudges in a muddling, inefficient way, continually scolded for her inefficiency yet never really taught how to do anything properly.  Her work is never done, for she is always at the beck and call of her employers; yet she lives apart in social isolation, is referred to contemptuously as the “slavey,” and even her food is dispensed to her grudgingly and minus the special dainties bought for Sundays and holidays.  This is domestic service at its worst, of course, but the prevalence of such “places” in actual fact is undoubtedly at the root of the young girl’s objection to it.  How can she help gleaning the impression that such work is “menial,” when her employers more or less openly despise her?  Being human, how can she but envy those of her old friends who have their evenings to themselves?  What contentment can she find in a life of drudgery unenlightened by intelligent interest in learning how to do something well?  What wonder that all her hopes and ambitions become centred in the possession of a “young man,” and that reason—­stunted from its birth for lack of room to grow—­being entirely absent from her choice, she marries badly and too young, and becomes the mother of a numerous