The Dean and the Dish-cloths (1937)

From the September 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

The servant problem has become an international question of high importance, and reports come from countries as far away as Japan of conferences on the matter.

It has become so urgent in this country that Mr. Brown, the Minister of Labour, is using up some of his vacation pondering over the business to try and find a solution.

What is this servant problem, anyway ? Is it the conditions under which working-class girls are forced to earn a humiliating living that are the subject of examination ? Oh dear, no! The Right Reverend Dean Inge is agitated about the matter and has given his views in an article in the Evening Standard (July 7th).

His first few words show the seriousness of the matter: —

Nobody can deny that the plight of ladies who have to run a house is becoming desperate. They run from one registry office to another. They offer preposterous wages. They put up with language from their servants which in any other employment would lead to instant dismissal.

In the end these poor genteel ladies, who dread the thought of soiling their lily-white hands, are driven to handle a dish-cloth themselves, instead of making dish-cloths of others: —

Finally, they are often driven from house and home and take refuge in an hotel or a bungalow where they do their own household work. The collapse of country house life is due as much to this trouble as to predatory taxation.

We might suggest that the Dean urges upon these people the value of prayer and Christian resignation to the will of God !

The worker, living in slum or semi-slum districts, is hardly likely to break his heart, nowadays, over the collapse of country house life, or the prospect of the Dean’s lady friends having to do a bit of housework themselves. But it is a very good example to the workers of the outlook of people in Dean Inge’s circumstances. The following is a further example of this: —

But how can a young wife, who has her own interests, do the household work and look after her children at the same time ?

The working man’s wife, it is true, manages it, but if a girl has been brought up to expect amenities which require some leisure time she cannot do both, and in thousands of cases the couple decide to have no children.

There we have it. The worker exists to minister to the needs and follies of the idlers; they presumably don’t need leisure. Anyhow, the Christ-like spirit of the Dean is above worrying about them. However, he has a glimmering of the truth: —

We can only conclude that there is a social prejudice against domestic service; and a girl who is not ashamed to stand behind a counter thinks it derogatory to answer a bell. There is in fact a lingering flavour of servile associations in domestic service which is resented in a democratic age.

It has taken a long time perhaps, but at last daughters of working-class people are revolting at the particular degradation as a rule associated with domestic service, though the need to live drives them into that service.

Another side of the picture was given by a writer in a letter to the News Chronicle for August 16th: —

The hours are too long, from 7 in the morning until 10, 11 or 12 o’clock at night sometimes.

I for one have had to serve a three-course dinner at 11.15 p.m. for four persons, to say nothing of the washing-up afterwards.

The food for the staff is often poor.

We almost live on corned beef for our lunch.

Breakfast one Dutch egg, one piece of streaky bacon, tea, bread, cakes if you buy them yourselves.

For a meal at night, bread again.

There is no thought the staff might like cheese or something tasty.

Imagine a basement kitchen in the middle of winter without a fire or boiler to warm it.

Whoever invented frilly caps and aprons should be made to wear them. You can’t sit down in comfort for fear of creasing them.

Under Socialism, when we all live in equality and there will be no fine ladies afraid to soil their hands, or fine gentlemen requiring male nurses to tie their ties, the degrading characteristics and the unnecessary frills will be removed from the business of cooking and housework, as well as the drudgery.

Gilmac.