Do you ask, Madame, why it is so hard for you to secure and retain servants? The reason is given above.
An explanation of the cause for the dearth of good domestic servants was sought by a great New York daily newspaper. It opened its columns and asked for communications explaining why a young woman preferred to work in a shop ten or twelve hours a day, and receive therefor three dollars a week, rather than accept a position as a domestic servant, in your house, Madame, where she would have greater comfort in the way of food and lodging, and receive more dollars.
Read the answers received by the _Recorder_, of New York. In almost every instance, the writer of the communication would say that it was not a matter of food, lodging, and dollars, but a matter of self-respect. They were snubbed and sat upon when engaged in serving the rich.
Go to any fashionable restaurant, or saloon, where the would-be swells swill champagne. Ask the attendants their opinion of those who, with a supercilious air, throw them a dollar to fee them for their services. You will hear expressed, in reply to your question, opinions like this: “I feel like knocking their heads off. I am ready to work. I don’t want their money for nothing; but I am a _man_, and as good as they are.”
The workman was content, nor did it interest him if the rich should drive their Tally-hos. He had no desire to divide the money of the purse-proud devotee of “caste”; but when, weary from his day of labor, trudging along the road to his humble home, with tooting horn and flourish of whip the Tally-ho sweeps by him, and he has to scurry out of the road, he long remembers the derisive smile of the insolent, purse-proud occupants of the coach, and he objects--not to the coach--but to the manner and the smile of the occupants.
The heart of the shop-girl or the seamstress is not filled with envy because the fine lady (?) of fashion possesses garments of silk and laces; but the insolence and supercilious manner, when the fine lady (?) brought in contact with her, fills her soul with a sense of injured dignity. She knows she’s quite as good as a lady of fashion. Possibly her father is not a protected, petty manufacturer; and she goes to her home, resenting the assumed superiority in the manner of the fine lady, and preaches to father, brother, and lover equality and broad democracy. The fine ladies (?) of fashion have ever been most potential causes for victories by the people. No orator so eloquent as the wife, daughter, sister, or sweetheart; and her wrongs were resented November 8th.