Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework Business principles applied to housework   By: C. Hélène Barker (1868-)

Business Principles Applied to Housework

by

C. HÉLÈNE BARKER

Author of Automobile French

New York Moffat, Yard & Company

1915

PREFACE

This little book is not a treatise on Domestic Science. The vacuum cleaner and the fireless cooker are not even mentioned. The efficient kitchen devised in such an interesting and clever way has no place in it. Its exclusive object is to suggest a satisfactory and workable solution along modern lines of how to get one's housework efficiently performed without doing it one's self.

If the propositions that she advances seem at first startling, the writer begs only for a patient hearing, for she is convinced by strong reasons and abundant experience, that liberty in the household, like social and political liberty, can never come except from obedience to just law.

C.H.B.

CONTENTS

PART I

CAUSES OF THE PRESENT UNSATISFACTORY CONDITION OF DOMESTIC LABOR

Ignorance and Inefficiency in the Home 1 Difficulty of Obtaining Women to Do Housework 11 The Disadvantages of Housework Compared with Work in Factories, Stores, and Offices 19

PART II

BUSINESS PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO HOUSEWORK

Living Outside Place of Employment 31 Housework Limited to 8 Hours a Day 47 Housework Limited to 6 Days a Week 61 The Observance of Legal Holidays 75 Extra Pay for Overtime 81

PART III

EIGHT HOUR SCHEDULES IN THE HOME

Eight Hour Schedules for One Employee 93 Eight Hour Schedules for Two Employees 109 Eight Hour Schedules for Three Employees 121

PART I

CAUSES OF THE PRESENT UNSATISFACTORY CONDITION OF DOMESTIC LABOR

Ignorance and inefficiency in the home. Difficulty of obtaining women to do housework. The disadvantages connected with housework compared with work in factories, stores, and offices.

IGNORANCE AND INEFFICIENCY IN THE HOME

The twentieth century woman, in spite of her progressive and ambitious theories about woman's sphere of activity, has allowed her housekeeping methods to remain almost stationary, while other professions and industries have moved forward with gigantic strides.

She does not hesitate to blazon abroad with banners and pennants her desire to share with man the responsibility for the administration of the State, but she overlooks the disquieting fact that in the management of her own household, where her authority is absolute, she has failed to convince the world of her power to govern. When confronted with this accusation, she asserts that the maintenance of a home is neither a business nor a profession, and that in consequence it ought not to be compared with them nor be judged by the same standards.

Is it not due perhaps to this erroneous idea that housekeeping is a failure to day? For the fact that it is a failure cannot be hidden, and that it has been a failure for many years past is equally true. Recent inventions, and labor saving utensils, have greatly facilitated housework, yet housekeeping is still accompanied with much dissatisfaction on the part of the employer and the employee.

There are only a few women to day who regard domestic science in the light of a profession, or a business, although in reality it is both. For what is a profession if it be not the application of science to life? And does not work which one follows regularly constitute a business?