“It is possible by painstaking and patient teaching to create a respectable and helpful serving class.”
— a “well-known hostess” in the Tribune’s “Household Hints” column in 1904
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It really was hard to get good help a century ago, according to experts of the time offering advice on the “servant problem.” Most middle-class homes had at least one servant, and mistresses forever complained that in spite of better-than-factory-work wages, the help was insolent, incompetent or dishonest. To these employers the experts posed these questions: Are you making your expectations perfectly clear? Are you setting a kind, patient example? Are you reproaching your servants privately and not in front of others? Are you providing a decent room and giving them a day off once in a while? So mistresses learned it was up to them to set the tone. As for making sure their husbands behaved — that was for a whole other set of experts.
* Average weekly wage of a domestic in Chicago in 1900: $4.28, plus room and board.
* Year that the minimum wage first was applied to domestic servants: 1974. * Size of the household staff of Gilded Age Chicago developer Potter Palmer and wife Bertha: 26.
Sources: Tribune archives, news reports, “Seven Days a Week” by David Katzman.
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nwatkins@tribune.com
