THE POWER OF THE SCREW.
Your car is too big for one person to stir--Your chauffeur is a little man, too;
Yet he lifts that machine, does the little chauffeur, By the power of a gentle jackscrew.
Diantha worked.
For all her employees she demanded a ten-hour day, she worked fourteen;rising at six and not getting to bed till eleven, when her charges were all safely in their rooms for the night.
They were all up at five-thirty or thereabouts, breakfasting at six, and the girls off in time to reach their various places by seven.Their day was from 7 A.M.to 8.30 P.M., with half an hour out, from 11.30 to twelve, for their lunch; and three hours, between 2.20 and 5.30, for their own time, including their tea.Then they worked again from 5.30to 8.30, on the dinner and the dishes, and then they came home to a pleasant nine o'clock supper, and had all hour to dance or rest before the 10.30 bell for bed time.
Special friends and "cousins" often came home with them, and frequently shared the supper--for a quarter--and the dance for nothing.
It was no light matter in the first place to keep twenty girls contented with such a regime, and working with the steady excellence required, and in the second place to keep twenty employers contented with them.There were failures on both sides; half a dozen families gave up the plan, and it took time to replace them; and three girls had to be asked to resign before the year was over.But most of them had been in training in the summer, and had listened for months to Diantha's earnest talks to the clubs, with good results.
"Remember we are not doing this for ourselves alone," she would say to them."Our experiment is going to make this kind of work easier for all home workers everywhere.You may not like it at first, but neither did you like the old way.It will grow easier as we get used to it; and we _must_ keep the rules, because we made them!"She laboriously composed a neat little circular, distributed it widely, and kept a pile in her lunch room for people to take.
It read thus:
UNION HOUSE
Food and Service.
General Housework by the week...$10.00General Housework by the day...$2.00
Ten hours work a day, and furnish their own food.
Additional labor by the hour...$.20
Special service for entertainments, maids and waitresses, by the hour.
..$.25
Catering for entertainments.
Delicacies for invalids.
Lunches packed and delivered.
Caffeteria...12 to 2
What annoyed the young manager most was the uncertainty and irregularity involved in her work, the facts varying considerably from her calculations.
In the house all ran smoothly.Solemn Mrs.Thorvald did the laundry work for thirty-five--by the aid of her husband and a big mangle for the "flat work." The girls' washing was limited."You have to be reasonable about it," Diantha had explained to them."Your fifty cents covers a dozen pieces--no more.If you want more you have to pay more, just as your employers do for your extra time."This last often happened.No one on the face of it could ask more than ten hours of the swift, steady work given by the girls at but a fraction over 14 cents an hour.Yet many times the housekeeper was anxious for more labor on special days; and the girls, unaccustomed to the three free hours in the afternoon, were quite willing to furnish it, thus adding somewhat to their cash returns.
They had a dressmaking class at the club afternoons, and as Union House boasted a good sewing machine, many of them spent the free hours in enlarging their wardrobes.Some amused themselves with light reading, a few studied, others met and walked outside.The sense of honest leisure grew upon them, with its broadening influence; and among her thirty Diantha found four or five who were able and ambitious, and willing to work heartily for the further development of the business.
Her two housemaids were specially selected.When the girls were out of the house these two maids washed the breakfast dishes with marvelous speed, and then helped Diantha prepare for the lunch.This was a large undertaking, and all three of them, as well as Julianna and Hector worked at it until some six or eight hundred sandwiches were ready, and two or three hundred little cakes.
Diantha had her own lunch, and then sat at the receipt of custom during the lunch hour, making change and ordering fresh supplies as fast as needed.
The two housemaids had a long day, but so arranged that it made but ten hours work, and they had much available time of their own.They had to be at work at 5:30 to set the table for six o'clock breakfast, and then they were at it steadily, with the dining rooms to "do," and the lunch to get ready, until 11:30, when they had an hour to eat and rest.From 12:30 to 4 o'clock they were busy with the lunch cups, the bed-rooms, and setting the table for dinner; but after that they had four hours to themselves, until the nine o'clock supper was over, and once more they washed dishes for half an hour.The caffeteria used only cups and spoons; the sandwiches and cakes were served on paper plates.
In the hand-cart methods of small housekeeping it is impossible to exact the swift precision of such work, but not in the standardized tasks and regular hours of such an establishment as this.
