If her employers found her faulty in
work or conduct, and proved to the visiting inspector that she was so,
she would be penalised by an additional term of service. If she, on
the other hand, made good any complaint against her employers, she
would be transferred to another flat, and they be penalised by
suspension of their license to employ. There would always be chances
of friction. But these chances would not be so numerous nor so great
as they are under that lack of system which survives to-day.
Servants would be persons knowing that for a certain period certain
tasks were imposed on them, tasks tantamount to those in which all
their coevals were simultaneously engaged. To-day they are persons not
knowing, as who should say, where they are, and wishing all the while
they were elsewhere--and mostly, as I have said, going elsewhere.
Those who remain grow more and more touchy, knowing themselves a mock
to the rest; and their qualms, even more uncomfortably than their
demands and defects, are always haunting their employers. It seems
almost incredible that there was a time when Mrs. Smith said `Sarah,
your master wishes--' or Mr. Smith said `Sarah, go up and ask your
mistress whether--' I am well aware that the very title of this essay
jars. I wish I could find another; but in writing one must be more
explicit than one need be by word of mouth.
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