IfiJoMm AS^VOME ve» ** T S V EMPLOYERS NA 7 SITO ° N - MIIB I 7 AnA KB wage-earning woman ; is pretty well aware of H her Importance to soci -8 tty In the modern world, but the wage-paying Ni'SQfp' woman seems, for the most part, entirely un conscious of any neces sary connection between herself and the world outside her home. The expression "employer" brings to mind the few women of these modern days who, by very unusual ability, have become directors of large business enterprises, rather < than the great number of house- { wives, who are the employers in an important occupation. Domes- 1 tic service is an occupation In which, in this country alone, over 3,000,000 wage earners are en gaged; it is not only the consumer of the products of large numbers of other important industries, but its products or achievements serve the most vital interests of society The employer owes it to society , to make the occupation in whict he employs others an efficient means of satisfying some numan need in a way that shall be con ducive to the economic welfare of society. The obligations of the employer imposed upon him by this position in the social order may be put into three classes: to those he employs, in the regulation of wages, standards of efficiency, etc.. and in maintaining proper conditions for the preservation of health and so cial welfare; to other employers, in the same occupation, in regulation of wages, class of service and standards of efficiency, and to the employers en gaged in the production of supplies for this occupation, in the stability and character of the demand; to those whose needs the occupation sup plies. in reliability and quality of sup ply. In domestic service, in which wom en figure as workers and employers in overwhelming majority, there are unique conditions, which make it an interesting problem to unravel tho purely economical relationships from the tangle of closely related social and personal ones In the first place, the products or achievements are such as cannot be defined in terms of the market. The selection and preparation of the food of the world and the cleaning and sanitary care of its dwellings is the work of the occupation, and the prod ucts ill*- '<fr necessity found in the quality of the bodily life of the com munity Then, too, those whose needs this occupation supplies—the "con sumers" —are members of the em ployer's immediate family, bound to him by the closest and tenderest ties, and the employes, more often than not, are dwellers under the same roof, thus making of employer, consumer and employe one household group, with a mixture of personal, social and economic relationships that no law yer, PI iladelpliian or otherwise, not to speak of any "mere woman," has ever been able to adjust satisfactorily. From the nature of the case the ob ligations to the "consumer" have re ceived the bulk of attention given to domestic service. Long centuries of isolation have bred in women its char acteristic evil of selfishness and obli gations to her family not only appear to her as her first duties, but, in the majority of cases, have obscured all Though this obligation of maintaining the healthful and com fortable conditions of the home is so completely recognized, the fact that it is most imperfectly met is lamentably evident. This is commonly attributed to the inefficiency of the available supply of employes and. at first glance, would put the whole responsibility for the evils in the present to the work ers in it. The methods of the prepa ration of food in the modern family are for the most part governed by tra dition, based upon the more or less intelligent experiments of a long line of female ancestors, or the fads and fancies generated in idle brains or by misused stomachs, rather than any knowledge of the value for support and upbuilding of human bodies based upon scientific experiment. From the position of the employe In the employer's household the exist ence of obligations to them is gener ally recognized, but any general idea as to the definition and scope of these obligations is extremely vague. Right here is a very delicate adjust ment of the personal and economic re lations. The training that men have gotten in the business world, where the distinctions between personal and business relations are sharply drawn, has been almost unknown to women in the past and the'r propensity to mix sentimentality, prejudice and pre sonal caprice with all their business transactions is notorious. In the economic relation the em ployer owes to the employe a definite, reasonable wage for a definite amount of service, and, since she is also the educator, she owes such training as shall bring efficiency. She is also un der obligations to maintain proper conditions in the occupation for the preservation of- health and social wel fare Such obligations certainly in clude a place to sleep, having the requisite amount of air space and sun light, with comfortable and wholesome bee! and proper facilities for bathing, etc I3ut this has been so entirely ignored that our homes have been built with "the girl's room" irnarl ubly in the most uncomfortable part of the house and rooms that will be considered impossible for any other human being even casually spending the night in the house. They are fre uqently bare of even common necessi ties. The position of those employed In this service, as dwellers under the same roof with their employers, gives the latter no more right to interfere in their private personal affairs than with those of her tailor. When the service for which she pays Is properly rendered, economic rights end. It may be her privilege to suggest or wisely guide in personal affairs, but it must be willingly granted her. Cer tain personal restrictions are neces sarily imposed upon anyone living In another's household, but they must be only such as any self-respecting per son would naturally comply vyith t or they become intolerable. The housekeeper who does her whole duty to those who are members of the household —may her tribe in crease! —rests seienely in the confi dence of having performed the whole duty of woman. Nevertheless, every once in a while her home is invaded by the reprehensible methods of her neighbors, introduced by one of the nomadic host that forms the constant procession through our American kitchens, witb uncomfortable and sometimes calamitous results; or a sudden demand for an increase of wages from a carefully trained and reliable maid reveals the fact that some other housekeeper in the neigh borhood, in dire stress of circum stance, or for a less honorable rea son lias been tempted to offer higher wages. The good woman cannot un derstand how she becomes the victim of such unmerited disaster and won ders "why people can't mind their own business and let her alone," and she forthwith goes to the intelligence office and fills the place of the com petent. intelligent maid with a wholly inexperienced and untrained emigrant, at the same rate of wages she paid for competency and the next order she sends to her grocer calls for an inferior quality of goods, because "such are good enough for an incom petent cook to spoil." The whole course of human devel opment has had a tendency to make woman the conservative, self-centered being that she is, and through that characteristic the home, her special province, became and remained a sup posedly self-sufficing social unit. Here are enshrined the deepest mysteries and sanctities of human life, rightly protected from public interference. As the manufacturer is entitled to keep secret the processes wherewith he combines his raw materials into the finished product, but. the plant and machinery may be matters of public interest, so in the home the life itself is a personal affair, but the machin ery whereby it is carried on is a so cial affair. In the days of simpler housekeep ing the domestic wage earners were few in number and the ministrations of each individual were confined to one or at most perhaps a half dozen families, and it mattered comparative ly little if the training consisted large ly of unwholesome processes of cook ing and unsanitary methods of clean ing, since the mischief was not dis seminated through a whole commu nity, neither disease germs nor other results of crude experimenting were carried from family to family by the constantly moving stream of domestic employes we have to-day. The woman who raises the rate of wages in her own household compels every other employer In her neighbor hood to do likewise, either absolutely or by accepting inferior service, and this result follows whether her motive in so doing was to raise a wage un justly acquired through some other woman's careful training, or whether it was done in pure thoughtlessness The woman who ikes into her em ploy, in place of a competent and well i trained cook or housemaid, an inex perienced one. at the same rate of wages, because the girl, through nat ural stupidity or ignorance of the ways of her adopted country, "is not up to the tricks of girls in general." or because the housekeeper wants to CAMERON COUNTY PRESS, THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 1910. be able to "train her from the start," not only raises the relative rate of wages, but puts a premium on Incom petency. She repudiates her obliga tions to her own family, for nowhere else is the employment of unskilled labor more extravagant than In do mestic service, where processes are so intricate and varied and where routine counts for so little and unskil ful experimenting can hardly produce the best conditions for bodily health and comfort. There are natural laws that governin the economic world in exorably, without respect to Bex or person, and one of them is that the nature of the supply is governed by the demand The common expedient for balan cing the extravagance of Incompetent service is using poorer quality of ma terials and there again the same law holds; less price means less of some thing. For example, we hear house keepers say, "Oh, yes, I know these extracts are perfectly pure and much superior in every way, but they are BO expensive and the cook Is no more careful about wasting them than the cheap ones, so I buy the cheap ones." The facts are that the cheap extracts, if really taken from the fruits or spices they represent, are so diluted that a much larger quantity must be used to get the same result. In the case of foodtstuffs the lower grades have a smaller percentage of nourish ing power- an unpardonable sin. Ev ery housekeeper is by her demand in fluencing the quality of the supply for every other housekeeper. It is the demand of the economical (?) house keepers that has made the problem -it adulterated foods assume such propor tions Large numbers of industries are de pendent upon the home for the con sumption of their products—the mar ket gardener, the dairyman, manufac turers of grocers" supplies and all the multitude of industries engaged in the production of supplies for house dec oration and furnishings, and every change in the economic conditions there Is registered in some disturb ance throughout this whole system of dependent industries. The real worth of the decorative and esthetically valuable things lies in the artistic skill put Into them, in combination of colors, design or work manship, and the degree of Intelli gence necessary in the proper care of them is in almost direct proportion to such value. When such intelligence is lacking in the housemaid the care of these things falls upon the mistresß of the house and the wise woman of to-day very often comes to the con clusion that her life and time have too many more important demands upon them to be used .up In the way that ownership of many of these valu able things makes necessary Conse quently the demand for the really high-class commodities falls off and those of cheaper quality, imitations, etc., take their places and the skilful and artistic employes are supplanted by cheaper and untrained workers. As a rule, low-class labor can be em ployed profitably only upon the cheap er grades of products. The compe tency and intelligence of those em ployed as cooks and housemaids has an Important Influence upon the qual ity of the supplies demanded by the housekeeper ' and It depends upon these demands whether the employers in the production of these supplies, who furnish honest, first-class quality and pay good wages to a high class of workers, shall be able to prosper or whether the market shall be mo nopolized by the law-grade products These are some of the responsibili ties that the housekeeper assumes when she becomes an employer. To study them and meet their demands would not only lead to the solution of that modern riddle of the Sphinx, the domestic service problem, but would help conditions throughout the in dustrial world. The thoughtful women of the coun try should become actively interested in these questions. The great need is fi;r general organized effort among intelligent women to put the one In dustry exclusively controlled by them into its proper place in the socia older IN HOSPITAL FOR NINE MONTHS. Awful Tale of Suffering From Kidney T rouble. Alfred J. O'Brien, Second St., Ster ling, Colo., says:"l was in the ltalti tmore Marine Hos pital for nine months. I had a dull pain in the small of my back that completely wore me out. The urine was in a ter rible state, and some days I would pass half a gallon of blood. I left the hospital because they wanted to operate on me. I went to St. .Joseph's Hospital at Omaha and putin three months there without any gain. I was pretty well discouraged when I was advised to use Doan's Kidney Pills. I did so and by the time I had taken one box, the pain in the back left me. I kept right on and a perfect cure was the result." Remember the name—Doan's. For sale by all dealers. 50 cents a box. Foster-Milburn Co., liuffalo., N. Y. In New Hampshire. That irresponsible Manchester TJnion man gave himself a surprise party by going to church last Sunday and this was the result: "On this first Sunday of Lent, while George Bailey of the Houston Post is sacrilegiously fishing for eels in a Texas bayou, and the (married) paragrapher of the Kennebeck Journal is tapping his boots, and the Ging-Ging Goophus of the Springfield Union is playing seven up, we, in common with other good New Hampshire people, shall dutifully attend church. —Springfield Union. Resinol Is a Perfect Remedy for Pru ritus and All Itching Skin Troubles. Have used Resinol with the utmost satisfaction. A case of Pruritus Vulvae which seemed to defy ail known remedies was at once relieved and promptly cured. It also acted in a like manner in a severe case of eczema that had almost driven the pa tient crazy. It is indispensible to this day and generation. F. C. Imes, Philadelphia, Pa. National Tuberculosis Sunday. Present Indications point to a gen eral observance of National Tuber culosis Sunday in more than 200,000 churches of the country on April 24. Reports from heads of local anti-tuber culosis associations, health officers, pastors, mayors, governors, and nu merous interdenominational bodies show much enthusiasm over the movement. The National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tu berculosis has prepared an outline for a tuberculosis sermon for use on April 24, which will be sent free of charge to any clergyman applying at 105 East Twenty-second street. New York. Thousands of these outlines are being sent out weekly to all parts of the country. Prominent churchmen, including bishops ai.d heads of all the leading denominations, have expressed their approval of the movement. Vindictive Cuss. "Ugh!" spluttered Mr. Jones. "That nut had a worm in it." "Here," urged a friend, offering him a glass of water, "drink this and wash it down." "Wash it down!" growled Jones. "Why should I? Let him walk!"— Everybody's. So Different. "Mrs Uppersett takes such great in terest in her baby." "Yes; she says she was delightfully surprised when it came, as she had ob tained her ideas about babies from the comic supplements, you know."— Puck. Studies in Still Life. "I want a few colored illustrations of beets and tomatoes." "Life size?" inquired the artist. "Catalogue size," replied the seeds man, with a significant smile. —Louis- ville Courier-Journal. ROSY COLOR Produced by Postum. "When a person rises. from each meal with a ringing in the ears and a general sense of nervousness, it is a common habit to charge it to a de ranged stomach. "I found it was caused from drink ing coffee, which I never suspected for a long time, but found by leaving off coffee that the disagreeable feelings went away. "I was brought to think of the sub ject by getting some Postum and this brought me out of trouble. "It is a most appetizing and invig orating beverage and has been of such great benefit to me that I natu rally speak of it from time to time as opportunity offers. "A lady friend complained to me that she had trieu Postum, but it did not taste good. In reply to my ques tion she said she guesed she boiled it about ten minutes. I advised her to follow directions and know that she boiled it fifteen or twenty, minutes, and she would have something worlh talk ing about. A short time ago I heard one of her children say that they were drinking Postum now-a-days, so 1 judge she succeeded in making il good, which is by no means a difficult task. "The son of one of my friends wa. formerly a pale lad, but since he ha been drinking Postum, has a fine colo) There is plenty of evidence tlia Postum actually does 'make red blood as the famous trade-mark says." Read "The Road to Wellville," fou. in pkgs. "There's a Reason." lOver rend Iho above let tor? A r.t one np|>eatr* from time to time. T!- (ire Rerutine, true, uu<l lull of hum I lute-en*. ilf you are a business man, did you ever think of the field of opportunity that advertis ing opens to you? There is almost no limit to the possi bilities of your business if you study how to turn trade into your store. If you are not get ting your share of the business of your community there's a reason. People go where they are attracted where they know what they can get and how much it is sold for. If you make direct statements in your advertising see to it that you are able to fulfill every promise you make. You will add to your business reputa tion and hold your customers. It will not cost as much to run J • .L' your ad in this paper as you *u:„i tk » » . think, it is the persi-tent ad vernier who gets tnere. 1 lavc something in the paper every issue, no matter how small. We will be pleased to quote . vou our nar yuu uur auverusmg iaieb, p*r timlnrlv on hnci ucuiany on uie year s dusi rv*cc ixcas. MAKE YOUR APPEAL rn to the public through the, columns of this paper. With e\ery issue it carries tm its message into the homes ■ and lives 01 the people. Your competitor has hi* • »!-• • Tin. j t. store news in this issue. Why don t you have yours? Don't blame the 1 t a 1 • *. people for nocking to hu store. They know what he has. * * Gives you the readme matter la m BIG nome » which you have the greatest in i ■ " - terest —the home newt. Its every issue will prove a welcome visitor to every member of the family- It should head your list of newspaper and periodical subscriptions. G.SCHMIDT'S,^" HEADQUARTERS FOR {fW3 fresh BREAD, gopdlar CONFECTIONERY Daily Ddlivery. Allorderi! given prompt and akillful attention. Enlarging Your Business If you are in annually, and then carefully business and you note the effect it has in in« ■rajffr want to make creasing your volume of busi- VA more money you ness; whether a 10, 20 or 30 will read every per cent incrense. If you wor d we have to watch this gain from year to CW lla say. Are you T ou will become intensely in* M Kraft spending your terested in your advertising, 9 money for ad- and how you can make it en- Kj vertising in hap- your business. IH h hazard fashion If you try this method w« as if intended believe you will not want to for charity, or do you adver- let a single issue of this paper tise for direct results? goto press without something Did you ever stop to think from your store, how your advertising can be We be pleased to hava made a source of profit to you call on us, and we will you, and how its value can be take pleasure in explaining measured in dollars and our annual contract for so cents. If you have not, you many inches, and how it can be are throwing money away. ttsed in whatever amount that Advertising is a modern seems necessary to you. business necessity, but must If you can sell goods over be conducted on business the counter we can also show principles. If you are not you why this paper will best satisfied with your advertising serve your interests when you you should set aside a certain want to reach the people of amount of money to be spent this community. 8 1 Y THP T TV T We can do the finest p B f{ J[ 1 jL class of printing, and we can do that class just a little cheaper than the other fellow. Wedding invitations, letter heads, bill heads, sale bills, statements, dodgers, cards. .*tc., all receive the same careful treatment just a little better than seems necessary. Prompt delivery always. 'Jfl—mkii umm m P—l 3
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