SALESWOMEN AND DOMESTIC SERVICE. 83 up by "gentlewomen" who, one learned at the then? Threw it over because of the labor it exhibition, were to turn them out by a machine would entail. The probability is that such a that could not begin to compete in rapidity chance will never again come in her way. with ordinary machines used in the same manufacture, and therefore the cigarettes would be nowhere when offered in the market. The very band, composed of women, who played in the exhibition rooms, never rose above mediocrity. Of course this is not true of all women. The London exhibition counted among its exhibitors several who showed that women, as well as men, can be business-like and that when they are, when they cease to be amateurish, independence is easily enough achieved. Type-writers, milliners, dressmakers (though of the two latter only a couple contributed), decorators and furnishers like Mrs. Garing Thomas, already well-known in London, sent examples of workmanship that would have found a place in any exhibition. Indeed when I saw what very creditable things are being done by Mrs. Garing Thomas, not gone in for household decoration and furnishing. It is pleasant work and it can be made to pay. But this weakness in the show, to me, had its important significance. Women nowadays are rightly struggling to be independent, but too often they refuse to pay the only price at which this independence can be secured. They play with an art or profession to which men devote their lives. They dabble a little in paint, and then hope to compete with men who have studied for years. They I wondered why more women at home have imitate the work of others and then wonder that their second-hand productions cannot rival the originals. Or else, at a certain critical point in their working career, their energy suddenly gives out. A case in point came under my notice only the other day. A girl who had been studying in the Royal Academy schools won a prize for £400 for a decorative design; when the work winning this prize is sufficiently good, the artist receives a commission to carry it out on the walls of some public building. The student of whom I am speaking was the first woman, the third prize-holder, who received this commission. The honor was great. She was given the chance to execute her design in the dining-hall at Girton. And what did she do But I am convinced that the Women's Handicrafts exhibition will have accomplished a great good-though perhaps not exactly the end it had in view-if it convinces many women now toiling in vain, that they will never find fairly remunerative occupations until they set themselves down to work in genuine earnest and seek success as men seek it, by the excellence of what they produce without reference to their sex. We must not expect to enjoy all the advantages of our new independence and to retain all the privileges of our old subjection. LONDON, January, 1891 SALESWOMEN AND DOMESTIC SERVICE. were to walk out in a body and individually engage in kitchens, their places would be immediately filled and the condition of affairs in the shops remain unchanged. It is this fact that causes those who believe that the law of supply and demand is something too sacred to be interfered with to cry "hands off." But nature's laws receive no such immunity; since we will even lend an umbrella to the improvident man there seems to be no reason why we should not defend ourselves against economic laws when they press too cruelly. But admitting that domestic service would be a remedy, why will the saleswoman not ex 84 SALESWOMEN AND DOMESTIC SERVICE. change the illy ventilated shops and scanty good food, she may have a worse bed, but pay for a service in which she has shelter, they are hers. food, and can lay up money? Let the working-woman answer for herself. At a large meeting once held in New York City, Miss Arria Huntington, the daughter of Bishop Huntington, once asked this question. "Because the men whom we may hope to marry will not visit us in other people's kitchens," was the prompt reply. This removes the solution a step further; that the working girl hopes to become a wife, mother, to have a home of her own, is a desire so natural and reasonable that nobody will blame her for it. It is in this hope she struggles on in factory and shop. If the mechanic, tradesman, clerk, whom she may expect to marry, were questioned, he might say that a man who may be a possible ruler, and have his life written up as a campaign document does not want to read that he found his wife in Miss Blank's kitchen, nor to have the Blanks giving reminiscences of his courtship below stairs. This view, idle, frivolous, unworthy as it may appear, is not the exclusive property of the working-girl and mechanic, it is held by the entire body of the people. An Englishman once asked me what sort of servants the Americans made. At first I did not know what he meant. "Oh," I said without a thought of vain boasting, "our servants are English, Irish, German, French-Americans are never servants." This was merely stating a fact; our servants are foreigners. When they become denationalized and American they leave service. But admitting that we are all sensible people with no foolish ideas about what we call menial employments there are still cogent reasons why saleswomen will not go into domestic service, and these lie not in the actual work but in the requirements of the service itself. The shop girl's hours are long, but they are to an extent defined. During those hours she daily works harder and more continuously than she would have to work in most families. But she works elbow to elbow, she is one of a community, she feels its esprit de corps, she shares with it good and ill fortune. When she is through her work she is free; she rejoins her family, or she goes to her lodging, which, mean as it is, is her home. She may spend the evening washing clothes, or she may go to the theater; she may not have It is useless to say that this is mere sentiment and not to be weighed against more material benefits. In any case it is a sentiment we all feel and can appreciate at its full value. If a girl who has all these natural impulses, this desire for friends, companionship, home, freedom, goes into service, what is her state? No matter how faithful and devoted her service, she is an alien and reduced to a state of pupilage. If she does general housework she is practically without companionship week in and week out; for she has no place in the family life. With the exception of every other Sunday, and in some families one afternoon a week, she is not allowed to go out except by special permission. Although her work is over she must spend her solitary evenings in her room; she may not care to read, and is perhaps too tired to sew. By far the larger number of mistresses regard this restraint as necessary for the morals of their servants, whom they look upon much as children of a larger growth. But to the girl it appears needlessly exacting, and a species of tyranny that she resents. If on the other hand domestic service assumed more of the nature of a business; if when a girl's services were no longer needed her hours were her own, and she free to go and come, it would attract that better and more capable class which now finds its way into factories and shops. She becomes a responsible being, fulfilling her duties, and otherwise living her own life, not a life prescribed for her. The objections to this business-like freedom that at once springs to the lips every one Knows the difficulty of so arranging household matters, questions of moral responsibility, and so on. But against these it may be urged that this is a partial solution of the domestic problem that some women have tried with success, and which requires only certain mutual and definite understandings between employer and employed. A case in point is a lady who employs three persons in her household, and who says, "Here is my work; it must be done." The details of the doing, and the arrangement of their own time is left to the work people themselves, and with satisfaction to both parties to the agreement. Confidence on the one hand and fidelity on the other are apt to be reciprocal. A BOSTON MAGICIAN. BY ANNA CHURCHELL CAREY. F all the inventions and and boiling are the best, but quite the condiscoveries which have trary is true. In the first place it makes food been made recently, none indigestible, as for instance in bread and will appeal so strongly cake baking; while in the second place the to the housekeepers or high degree of heat applied to the boiling of do so much to ameliorate soup and the roasting of meat means a loss the condition of the of nutriment and of flavor, for the essential working classes as the oils are evaporated and lost. To quote Mr. Aladdin Oven, invented Atkinson, "the smell of cooking in the ordiand patented by Edward nary way gives evidence of waste of flavor as Atkinson of Boston. This oven was put well as a waste of nutritious properties; and upon the market about two years ago; it is in most cases the unpleasant smell also gives rapidly making its way among the most in- evidence that the food is being converted into telligent classes and meets a need of the rich an unwholesome condition, conducive to inand poor alike. Externally the oven looks digestion and dyspepsia." Think of the loss like a paste-board box. It is made of sheet of nutriment that goes on while onions are iron and incased in wood pulp, which is one being boiled! of the best non-conductors of heat. The standard oven has an inside space eighteen inches in width, twelve inches in depth, and fourteen inches in height, containing movable perforated sheet-iron shelves so as to divide it horizontally into four compartments. It is heated by a lamp of any make having a circular wick about one and one-half inches in diameter; the Aladdin Oven is not in the least like an oil stove. This unsuspiciouslooking wooden box stands on a table from twelve to eighteen inches in height, while underneath the table, sitting on the floor is the lamp, so placed that the opening in the bottom of the outer oven is directly over the lamp; gas from a Bunsen burner at the rate of from four to six feet an hour may be used in place of oil. Care must be taken in managing the lamp used with the oven; if the flame is not turned up high enough it will not yield sufficient heat; if too high it will smoke, but the amount of care required is no more than one gives to the lamp on his parlor or library table. Mr. Atkinson has proved to himself and to those who have seen his oven in operation that the conventional iron stove is wasteful, both in quantity and quality of food prepared and the amount of fuel consumed. The odor of cooking that is so apparent in even the best regulated houses represents just so much wasted nutriment. Cooks have an erToneous idea that quick roasting, baking, The accounts of the Aladdin Oven which come to us seem exaggerated, but it stands the test of actual experience: food in it is most delicious, and an inferior article cooked in this oven is more palatable and satisfying than the best article prepared by the ordinary methods; asparagus cooked in this way is of an unimaginably fine flavor, while oysters and game are beyond the praise of a connoisseur. After having once eaten food prepared in this way one can never be satisfied with the comparatively tasteless and indigestible meats and vegetables which are prepared by the best cooks on the best stoves. There are many persons who cannot eat sausage, owing to the quantity of fat which it contains; but when cooked at a low heat, as in an Aladdin Oven, and in a dish with a drainer in it which allows the oil to settle in the bottom, leaving the sausages free from it, they then make an appetizing and nutritious dish which a delicate person could digest. Mr. Atkinson has one of these ovens in use in the building in which he has his offices, and his employees have their mid-day meal cooked on it every day. To give the reader an idea of how unsuggestive the kitchen is of what goes on there, it is only necessary to say that the tenant occupying the room next but one to this kitchen did not find out till three weeks had elapsed that there was any cooking going on in the building. Mr. Atkinson started this kitchen for the benefit of his employees. He found that they were paying from thirty to fifty cents each per day for food at cheap restaurants, and he proposed to them the formation of a co-operative club for the purpose of furnishing wholesome noon-day meals prepared in the building. It was agreed, and to-day his employees are furnished three-course meals consisting of soup or fish, boiled or roast meat, with vegetables, pudding or pie, and coffee, while the entire cost of fuel and food to each of the sixteen members averages from eighteen to twenty cents a day. Different articles of food can be cooked at the same time in the oven without any mingling of the flavors, because the low temperature at which they are cooked does not allow the volatile oils to escape and mingle. It is of no common occurrence for Mr. Atkinson to serve a dinner of four or five courses-"soup made the day before, reheated; fish, meat, game, potatoes, cauliflower, asparagus, onions, tomatoes, and custard pudding-all cooked in the same oven at the same time in the dining-room, and served from the table, in the china or earthen dishes in which each had been cooked; the only difference between one dish and another being in respect to the time in which it had been subjected to the heat of the lamp, yet without the least flavor or taint being carried from one kind of food to the other." An Aladdin Oven necessitates learning a different time table from that used for the ordinary cooking stove. As for instance it takes half an hour to broil a steak, two hours to bake large potatoes, and an hour and a quarter for beans, peas, or squash. One of the great charms of the oven is that it requires no watching. If one wishes to bake a sponge cake, all that is to be done after the dough is mixed is to look on the schedule that comes with each cooker to see just how long it takes sponge cake to bake. The cake can then be put into the oven and the cook need give it no more thought for two or three hours, whatever the time required, confident that the steady heat to which it is subjected will turn out a perfectly baked cake. Provided the cake is properly mixed the result is certain. At the New England Kitchen in Boston where good food is furnished at a low price to working people, and where the Aladdin Oven, steam, and gas heat are used, they say that for making soups the oven far excels any thing else. To make the best pea soup that was ever tasted, they put the unsoaked peas-with a small piece of pork, a little salt, pepper, onion, and sweet marjoram with enough water to coverinto an earthen pot and set it in the oven at four in the afternoon. Three hours later the lamp is filled and relighted and allowed to burn all night. It will go out of its own accord, and if a metallic lamp is used there is absolutely no danger of its exploding. The soup is then rubbed through a colander, and with the addition of boiling water and a little thickening, it is ready to serve. Another advantage in the oven is that it reduces dish washing to the minimum, as the food may be, and usually is, served in the dishes in which it is cooked; there are no heavy, greasy, iron pots and pans for the cook to handle. To people who keep but one servant or no servant at all, such a cooker is a boon. No stove will admit of the cook's preparing the noonday dinner at seven o'clock in the morning, putting it in the oven at that early hour and leaving it until it is time to serve the meal, and yet find every thing perfectly baked, as does the Aladdin Oven. Besides, this cooker may stand in the dining-room just behind the housekeeper so that the dishes can be conveniently handed from the oven to the table. As there is no odor of food and no heat sent out from it there is no objection to having it there in summer time. With such an oven no cook can complain of the unbearable temperature of her kitchen in warm weather, nor can the family suffer from the heat which always comes from the room in which cooking is done during the summer months. With an Aladdin Oven and a Case BreadRaiser there is no excuse for even a stupid cook to fail with her bread. No kneading is required, besides the bread does not have to raise over night. The bread is made in the morning, put in the bread-raiser for three hours, and then baked in the oven three hours and a half; no bread was ever more delicious. This oven does only cooking. It cannot heat a large quantity of water, or warm the kitchen in winter, or heat the irons for ironing; for these a small stove which demands but a small quantity of coal, wood, or coke will take the place of the wasteful range which is seen to-day in nearly every house. The price of the Aladdin Oven, including 1 HOW MARRIAGE AFFECTS A WOMAN'S WAGES OR BUSINESS. the metallic table on which it stands, is twenty-five dollars. The lamp is extra and costs about two dollars and a half. When one finds out by experience that the cost of fuel for this oven for supplying food to a 87 family of sixteen persons for three months is seven dollars, it is seen that the Aladdin Oven will soon pay for itself in economy of fuel alone, to say nothing of the economy of food. HOW MARRIAGE AFFECTS A WOMAN'S WAGES OR BUSINESS. ness. T common law, a married woman could receive no wages and could transact no busiWages she might earn by her labor, it is true, but they must be paid to her husband and not to her, unless he authorized her to act as his agent to collect money due him. If without being so authorized, she collected the money for her work, her husband could compel her employer to pay it over again to him. Business she could not transact in her own name and for her own benefit, because she could not make any business contract whatever for which either she or her husband or her property could be held responsible. She could act as her husband's agent to transact his business for him, and as his agent could make all necessary contracts, thereby binding him and his property but not herself or her property. This disability was not intended to work a hardship on the wife, but rather the contrary, for it was only a part of the entire scheme which assumed that wife and minor children were maintained solely by the husband, and that, the better to enable him to perform this duty, he must receive as his own all personal property belonging to the wife and all proceeds of personal labor or business enterprise of wife and children until the latter should attain majority. The legal incapacity of a married woman to make a contract was also intended to protect her against the undue influence which it was assumed her husband had over her. She could make no contract with him, nor he with her, and this disability of husband and wife to contract together still prevails in many states, Massachusetts among the num ber, where otherwise, or with all other persons than the husband, a married woman may now make binding contracts of every kind and nature. The laws on this subject of the capacity of married women to make contracts, carry on business on their separate, independent account, and to receive the wages of their personal labor, differ very greatly in the different states. There is less difference on the question of wages; but in regard to business, the danger of fraud on the public and evasion of the just claims of creditors of the husband by a business apparently though not really carried on by the wife, necessitates the exercise of care in authorizing married women to transact business on their own account. These dangers are especially apparent when, as is often the case, the wife who has embarked in a business enterprise, employs her husband to work for her. It is easy to see how a man who wished to evade his creditors might secretly make over his business to his wife, and then continue therein as her employee and manager. His creditors might go on trusting him on the credit of the business, only to find out at last that the profits belonged to the wife and were claimed by her, by virtue of the rule of law now prevailing almost universally, which allows a wife to hold her property free from all claims of her husband or his creditors. To prove the fraud might be a very difficult and expensive proceeding. It is on this account that protections of various kinds have been thrown about such transactions. In Massachusetts the law permits any married woman to carry on any business in her own right, but if she would secure the stock and profits from liability of attachment by her husband's creditors, she must file with the town clerk a "married woman's certificate," |