Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  “This is a new stage of labor,” their leader reminded them. “You are not servants — you are employees. You wear a cap as an English carpenter does — or a French cook, — and an apron because your work needs it. It is not a ruffled label, — it’s a business necessity. And each one of us must do our best to make this new kind of work valued and respected.”

  It is no easy matter to overcome prejudices many centuries old, and meet the criticism of women who have nothing to do but criticize. Those who were “mistresses,” and wanted “servants,” — someone to do their will at any moment from early morning till late evening, — were not pleased with the new way if they tried it; but the women who had interests of their own to attend to; who merely wanted their homes kept clean, and the food well cooked and served, were pleased. The speed, the accuracy, the economy; the pleasant, quiet, assured manner of these skilled employees was a very different thing from the old slipshod methods of the ordinary general servant.

  So the work slowly prospered, while Diantha began to put in execution the new plan she had been forced into.

  While it matured, Mrs. Thaddler matured hers. With steady dropping she had let fall far and wide her suspicions as to the character of Union House.

  “It looks pretty queer to me!” she would say, confidentially, “All those girls together, and no person to have any authority over them! Not a married woman in the house but that washerwoman, — and her husband’s a fool!”

  “And again; You don’t see how she does it? Neither do I! The expenses must be tremendous — those girls pay next to nothing, — and all that broth and brown bread flying about town! Pretty queer doings, I think!”

  “The men seem to like that caffeteria, don’t they?” urged one caller, perhaps not unwilling to nestle Mrs. Thaddler, who flushed darkly as she replied. “Yes, they do. Men usually like that sort of place.”

  “They like good food at low prices, if that’s what you mean,” her visitor answered.

  “That’s not all I mean — by a long way,” said Mrs. Thaddler. She said so much, and said it so ingeniously, that a dark rumor arose from nowhere, and grew rapidly. Several families discharged their Union House girls. Several girls complained that they were insultingly spoken to on the street. Even the lunch patronage began to fall off.

  Diantha was puzzled — a little alarmed. Her slow, steady lifting of the prejudice against her was checked. She could not put her finger on the enemy, yet felt one distinctly, and had her own suspicions. But she also had her new move well arranged by this time.

  Then a maliciously insinuating story of the place came out in a San Francisco paper, and a flock of local reporters buzzed in to sample the victim. They helped themselves to the luncheon, and liked it, but that did not soften their pens. They talked with such of the girls as they could get in touch with, and wrote such versions of these talks as suited them.

  They called repeatedly at Union House, but Diantha refused to see them. Finally she was visited by the Episcopalian clergyman. He had heard her talk at the Club, was favorably impressed by the girl herself, and honestly distressed by the dark stories he now heard about Union House.

  “My dear young lady,” he said, “I have called to see you in your own interests. I do not, as you perhaps know, approve of your schemes. I consider them — ah — subversive of the best interests of the home! But I think you mean well, though mistakenly. Now I fear you are not aware that this-ah — ill-considered undertaking of yours, is giving rise to considerable adverse comment in the community. There is — ah — there is a great deal being said about this business of yours which I am sure you would regret if you knew it. Do you think it is wise; do you think it is — ah — right, my dear Miss Bell, to attempt to carry on a — a place of this sort, without the presence of a — of a Matron of assured standing?”

  Diantha smiled rather coldly.

  “May I trouble you to step into the back parlor, Dr. Aberthwaite,” she said; and then;

  “May I have the pleasure of presenting to you Mrs. Henderson Bell — my mother?”

  “Wasn’t it great!” said Mrs. Weatherstone; “I was there you see, — I’d come to call on Mrs. Bell — she’s a dear, — and in came Mrs. Thaddler—”

  “Mrs. Thaddler?”

  “O I know it was old Aberthwaite, but he represented Mrs. Thaddler and her clique, and had come there to preach to Diantha about propriety — I heard him, — and she brought him in and very politely introduced him to her mother! — it was rich, Isabel.”

  “How did Diantha manage it?” asked her friend.

  “She’s been trying to arrange it for ever so long. Of course her father objected — you’d know that. But there’s a sister — not a bad sort, only very limited; she’s taken the old man to board, as it were, and I guess the mother really set her foot down for once — said she had a right to visit her own daughter!”

  “It would seem so,” Mrs. Porne agreed. “I am so glad! It will be so much easier for that brave little woman now.”

  It was.

  Diantha held her mother in her arms the night she came, and cried tike a baby.

  “O mother dear!” she sobbed, “I’d no idea I should miss you so much. O you blessed comfort!”

  Her mother cried a bit too; she enjoyed this daughter more than either of her older children, and missed her more. A mother loves all her children, naturally; but a mother is also a person — and may, without sin, have personal preferences.

  She took hold of Diantha’s tangled mass of papers with the eagerness of a questing hound.

  “You’ve got all the bills, of course,” she demanded, with her anxious rising inflection.

  “Every one,” said the girl. “You taught me that much. What puzzles me is to make things balance. I’m making more than I thought in some lines, and less in others, and I can’t make it come out straight.”

  “It won’t, altogether, till the end of the year I dare say,” said Mrs. Bell, “but let’s get clear as far as we can. In the first place we must separate your business, — see how much each one pays.”

  “The first one I want to establish,” said her daughter, “is the girl’s club. Not just this one, with me to run it. But to show that any group of twenty or thirty girls could do this thing in any city. Of course where rents and provisions were high they’d have to charge more. I want to make an average showing somehow. Now can you disentangle the girl part front the lunch part and the food part, mother dear, and make it all straight?”

  Mrs. Bell could and did; it gave her absolute delight to do it. She set down the total of Diantha’s expenses so far in the Service Department, as follows:

  Rent of Union House $1,500

  Rent of furniture................... $300

  One payment on furniture............ $400

  Fuel and lights, etc................ $352

  Service of 5 at $10 a week each... $2,600

  Food for thirty-seven............. $3,848

  ——

  Total............................. $9,000

  “That covers everything but my board,” said Mrs. Bell.

  “Now your income is easy — 35 x $4.50 equals $8,190. Take that from your $9,000 and you are $810 behind.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Diantha, eagerly, “but if it was merely a girl’s club home, the rent and fixtures would be much less. A home could be built, with thirty bedrooms — and all necessary conveniences — for $7,000. I’ve asked Mr. and Mrs. Porne about it; and the furnishing needn’t cost over $2,000 if it was very plain. Ten per cent. of that is a rent of $900 you see.”

  “I see,” said her mother. “Better say a thousand. I guess it could be done for that.”

  So they set down rent, $1,000.

  “There have to be five paid helpers in the house,” Diantha went on, “the cook, the laundress, the two maids, and the matron. She must buy and manage. She could be one of their mothers or aunts.”

  Mrs. Bell smiled. “Do you really imagine, Diantha, that Mrs. O’Shaugh
nessy or Mrs. Yon Yonson can manage a house like this as you can?”

  Diantha flushed a little. “No, mother, of course not. But I am keeping very full reports of all the work. Just the schedule of labor — the hours — the exact things done. One laundress, with machinery, can wash for thirty-five, (its only six a day you see), and the amount is regulated; about six dozen a day, and all the flat work mangled.

  “In a Girl’s Club alone the cook has all day off, as it were; she can do the down stairs cleaning. And the two maids have only table service and bedrooms.”

  “Thirty-five bedrooms?”

  “Yes. But two girls together, who know how, can do a room in 8 minutes — easily. They are small and simple you see. Make the bed, shake the mats, wipe the floors and windows, — you watch them!”

  “I have watched them,” the mother admitted. “They are as quick as — as mill-workers!”

  “Well,” pursued Diantha, “they spend three hours on dishes and tables, and seven on cleaning. The bedrooms take 280 minutes; that’s nearly five hours. The other two are for the bath rooms, halls, stairs, downstairs windows, and so on. That’s all right. Then I’m keeping the menus — just what I furnish and what it costs. Anybody could order and manage when it was all set down for her. And you see — as you have figured it — they’d have over $500 leeway to buy the furniture if they were allowed to.”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Bell admitted, “if the rent was what you allow, and if they all work all the time!”

  “That’s the hitch, of course. But mother; the girls who don’t have steady jobs do work by the hour, and that brings in more, on the whole. If they are the right kind they can make good. If they find anyone who don’t keep her job — for good reasons — they can drop her.”

  “M’m!” said Mrs. Bell. “Well, it’s an interesting experiment. But how about you? So far you are $410 behind.”

  “Yes, because my rent’s so big. But I cover that by letting the rooms, you see.”

  Mrs. Bell considered the orders of this sort. “So far it averages about $25.00 a week; that’s doing well.”

  “It will be less in summer — much less,” Diantha suggested. “Suppose you call it an average of $15.00.”

  “Call it $10.00,” said her mother ruthlessly. “At that it covers your deficit and $110 over.”

  “Which isn’t much to live on,” Diantha agreed, “but then comes my special catering, and the lunches.”

  Here they were quite at sea for a while. But as the months passed, and the work steadily grew on their hands, Mrs. Bell became more and more cheerful. She was up with the earliest, took entire charge of the financial part of the concern, and at last Diantha was able to rest fully in her afternoon hours. What delighted her most was to see her mother thrive in the work. Her thin shoulders lifted a little as small dragging tasks were forgotten and a large growing business substituted. Her eyes grew bright again, she held her head as she did in her keen girlhood, and her daughter felt fresh hope and power as she saw already the benefit of the new method as affecting her nearest and dearest.

  All Diantha’s friends watched the spread of the work with keenly sympathetic intent; but to Mrs. Weatherstone it became almost as fascinating as to the girl herself.

  “It’s going to be one of the finest businesses in the world!” she said, “And one of the largest and best paying. Now I’ll have a surprise ready for that girl in the spring, and another next year, if I’m not mistaken!”

  There were long and vivid discussions of the matter between her and her friends the Pornes, and Mrs. Porne spent more hours in her “drawing room” than she had for years.

  But while these unmentioned surprises were pending, Mrs. Weatherstone departed to New York — to Europe; and was gone some months. In the spring she returned, in April — which is late June in Orchardina. She called upon Diantha and her mother at once, and opened her attack.

  “I do hope, Mrs. Bell, that you’ll back me up,” she said. “You have the better business head I think, in the financial line.”

  “She has,” Diantha admitted. “She’s ten times as good as I am at that; but she’s no more willing to carry obligation than I am, Mrs. Weatherstone.”

  “Obligation is one thing — investment is another,” said her guest. “I live on my money — that is, on other people’s work. I am a base capitalist, and you seem to me good material to invest in. So — take it or leave it — I’ve brought you an offer.”

  She then produced from her hand bag some papers, and, from her car outside, a large object carefully boxed, about the size and shape of a plate warmer. This being placed on the table before them, was uncovered, and proved to be a food container of a new model.

  “I had one made in Paris,” she explained, “and the rest copied here to save paying duty. Lift it!”

  They lifted it in amazement — it was so light.

  “Aluminum,” she said, proudly, “Silver plated — new process! And bamboo at the corners you see. All lined and interlined with asbestos, rubber fittings for silver ware, plate racks, food compartments — see?”

  She pulled out drawers, opened little doors, and rapidly laid out a table service for five.

  “It will hold food for five — the average family, you know. For larger orders you’ll have to send more. I had to make some estimate.”

  “What lovely dishes!” said Diantha.

  “Aren’t they! Aluminum, silvered! If your washers are careful they won’t get dented, and you can’t break ‘em.”

  Mrs. Bell examined the case and all its fittings with eager attention.

  “It’s the prettiest thing I ever saw,” she said. “Look, Diantha; here’s for soup, here’s for water — or wine if you want, all your knives and forks at the side, Japanese napkins up here. Its lovely, but — I should think — expensive!”

  Mrs. Weatherstone smiled. “I’ve had twenty-five of them made. They cost, with the fittings, $100 apiece, $2,500. I will rent them to you, Miss Bell, at a rate of 10 per cent. interest; only $250 a year!”

  “It ought to take more,” said Mrs. Bell, “there’ll be breakage and waste.”

  “You can’t break them, I tell you,” said the cheerful visitor, “and dents can be smoothed out in any tin shop — you’ll have to pay for it; — will that satisfy you?”

  Diantha was looking at her, her eyes deep with gratitude. “I — you know what I think of you!” she said.

  Mrs. Weatherstone laughed. “I’m not through yet,” she said. “Look at my next piece of impudence!” This was only on paper, but the pictures were amply illuminating.

  “I went to several factories,” she gleefully explained, “here and abroad. A Yankee firm built it. It’s in my garage now!”

  It was a light gasolene motor wagon, the body built like those old-fashioned moving wagons which were also used for excursions, wherein the floor of the vehicle was rather narrow, and set low, and the seats ran lengthwise, widening out over the wheels; only here the wheels were lower, and in the space under the seats ran a row of lockers opening outside. Mrs. Weatherstone smiled triumphantly.

  “Now, Diantha Bell,” she said, “here’s something you haven’t thought of, I do believe! This estimable vehicle will carry thirty people inside easily,” and she showed them how each side held twelve, and turn-up seats accommodated six more; “and outside,” — she showed the lengthwise picture— “it carries twenty-four containers. If you want to send all your twenty-five at once, one can go here by the driver.

  “Now then. This is not an obligation, Miss Bell, it is another valuable investment. I’m having more made. I expect to have use for them in a good many places. This cost pretty near $3,000, and you get it at the same good interest, for $300 a year. What’s more, if you are smart enough — and I don’t doubt you are, — you can buy the whole thing on installments, same as you mean to with your furniture.”

  Diantha was dumb, but her mother wasn’t. She thanked Mrs. Weatherstone with a hearty appreciation of her opportune help, but no le
ss of her excellent investment.

  “Don’t be a goose, Diantha,” she said. “You will set up your food business in first class style, and I think you can carry it successfully. But Mrs. Weatherstone’s right; she’s got a new investment here that’ll pay her better than most others — and be a growing thing I do believe.”

  And still Diantha found it difficult to express her feelings. She had lived under a good deal of strain for many months now, and this sudden opening out of her plans was a heavenly help indeed.

  Mrs. Weatherstone went around the table and sat by her. “Child,” said she, “you don’t begin to realize what you’ve done for me — and for Isobel — and for ever so many in this town, and all over the world. And besides, don’t you think anybody else can see your dream? We can’t do it as you can, but we can see what it’s going to mean, — and we’ll help if we can. You wouldn’t grudge us that, would you?”

  As a result of all this the cooked food delivery service was opened at once.

  “It is true that the tourists are gone, mostly,” said Mrs. Weatherstone, as she urged it, “but you see there are ever so many residents who have more trouble with servants in summer than they do in winter, and hate to have a fire in the house, too.”

  So Diantha’s circulars had an addition, forthwith.

  These were distributed among the Orchardinians, setting their tongues wagging anew, as a fresh breeze stirs the eaves of the forest.

  The stealthy inroads of lunches and evening refreshments had been deprecated already; this new kind of servant who wasn’t a servant, but held her head up like anyone else (“They are as independent as — as— ‘salesladies,’” said one critic), was also viewed with alarm; but when even this domestic assistant was to be removed, and a square case of food and dishes substituted, all Archaic Orchardina was horrified.