The Intelligence Office

ACCORDING to various prophets, the “servant problem” is in process of solution; according to skeptics, it is in a hopeless muddle. In some periodicals appear elaborate statements of the employers’ attitude and ideas of solution; in others, the employees’ experiences and demands, and in still others, the opinions of theorists and students. But no one thinks it worth while to study, at first hand, all sides of the problem, with a view to ascertaining the possible points of adjustment. This is proved by the fact, that the intelligence office — that great medium of exchange to which more than three fifths of the employers look for help, and which holds the balance of power, if not the key to the situation — has been utterly ignored. These offices as they exist today are the places where every phase of the servant problem is presented, and oftentimes threshed out; where hundreds of thousands of employers and employees meet one another for the first time; where conditions of work are discussed and arrangements made. This gives them a special opportunity, as educational centres, and as starting points to remove some of the difficulties. But employers, unconscious of these conditions and possibilities, do not insist upon standards; and the offices, in their greed for gain, and in the face of this ignorance or indifference, pursue a policy which makes improvements from other sources difficult. This policy is a very definite one, and influences the homes in at least three vital ways, — through the supply, competency, and wages of employees.

The intelligence office, as distinguished from the employment bureau, is one which furnishes household help exclusively. Such offices are of great number and variety. New York has more than three hundred, and other cities proportionately; while many more combine domestic with other kinds of employment. They range from well - furnished, adequately equipped houses or suites of rooms in desirable localities, with good business methods and systems, down to a single room in a tenement, which is the kitchen, dining-room, parlor, and office by day, and by night the sleeping quarters, not only of the family, but of any unplaced girls. It is not unusual in such a room to find at night from five to ten people. The office with brownstone front frequently does less business than the saloon or underground offices. The former secures its clients by attractive advertisements, keeps records, gives receipts; the latter have runners with pockets full of cards, who accost girls on the streets, steal their pocketbooks, until they agree to go to the address furnished, and fight with one another over girls they claim to have discovered, until the police interfere to save the girls’ clothing. All grades of honesty are found, from the offices which refuse fees, knowing they cannot furnish servants, to those which make no attempts whatever and laugh insolently when the return of fees is demanded.

The intelligence office affects the peace and happiness of homes by the kind of servants which it sends into them; the health and morals of employees, by the locations and conditions in which it compels them to wait; and the character and competency, upon which so much depends, by the training afforded while they wait. Where good and bad, young and old, green girls and old rounders, uncleanly and disorderly, tidy and neat, and drunk and sober, are crowded together in dark, unsanitary rooms, without supervision, girls learn every form of vice, and all the tricks “old hands” consider essential to “getting on in service.” The best offices, aware of these conditions, refuse to let the girls wait, drive out the rounders, and have attendants, or provide reading; but these are few compared with the whole number.

I am the more sure of the truth of the extent and nature of these conditions because of the methods used in my investigation. For two years I have visited as a patron the offices in the chief cities, to the extent of many hundreds, and my observation has been corroborated by visits from one or more of the ten people associated in the study. They have gone as employers and interviewed girls, or they have donned the rough, oftentimes conspicuous garb of the applicant for work, and waited their turn in the office; they have been called by their first names, have answered all sorts of personal questions, have submitted references, and been many times unceremoniously turned down as “green,” “ incompetent,” “too high priced,” or “unattractive.” I have taken positions to find out the truth of the representations made in the office, and have found that an ironing-board over a bath-tub offered for a bed, the diningroom table “made up as a bed for two,” general housework for a family of ten, wages $12 per month, and work from 5.30 to 8.30 A. M. before any breakfast was permitted, were not unusual conditions. But in contrast with this I have had comfortable rooms, a sitting-room, not enough work to furnish proper exercise, and have had employers equal in consideration and fairness with any in the factory or store. But this is not all. As an employee I have been turned out for refusing to pay fees, have been sworn at or cajoled as the occasion seemed to demand, or have been assisted by a sympathetic proprietor, who thought me “ playing in hard luck.” I am convinced that if these proprietors are oftentimes the worst enemies of the employee, they are also oftentimes her only friends. Did they not offer her shelter, crowded and unsanitary as it often is (for many run lodging-houses), she would be homeless upon the city streets.

The supply of applicants for household service depends upon some things which offices cannot control, such as immigration, conditions in homes, social stigma of household work, and competition of stores and factories, but it is unquestionably true that they do divert some of the available supply. In a large percentage of offices, fortunately not in all, it was found that saloons, places of amusement, questionable houses and resorts were given the preference. Such places not only pay any fee asked, but make gifts, and the honest householder cannot compete with them. It was also found that many such offices were the places where inmates for disorderly houses were secured. Some employees are sent to these houses without a knowledge of their character; others are bribed or forced; and from others consent is won through misrepresentations. Some offices have monthly contracts to furnish a specified number of inmates, and thirty out of fifty offices, marked suspicious and visited, took such orders as a matter of course. The supply of honest workers for homes is thus very materially decreased, for there are never enough girls who are willing to accept these offers, and bribes and force must be used. In other offices, disreputable characters are permitted to loiter, and it is impossible to estimate how many girls who are looking for honest work in households are thus led astray.

Some intelligence offices encourage even the greenest girls to abandon general housework and try for the place of cook, parlormaid, etc., for this increases the fee, which in many offices is based upon the amount of wages paid. This is one explanation of the decreasing number of general housework girls. The offices are also responsible for some of the restlessness of servants. Girls are placed in positions and removed when they are needed for others. Some use employers as training schools. They send green foreigners who, when they have learned enough English and housework, are sent to other places for higher wages, the office not neglecting to collect the extra fees. Then they inform the long-suffering employer that they understand her girl has left, and that they can supply her need. One girl said that her business was to take positions in large households, and to make all the other employees dissatisfied by tales of privileges and high wages which the office offered. She was paid a liberal commission for each one who came. Another girl said an office had placed her ten times in one year. There are a few offices which are fences. A girl is sent into a home where she remains long enough to collect the small valuables. These she takes to the office, which disposes of them, and then gets her another place. This great influence of offices may also be used for good. One said that in less than three months she had induced one hundred and eight girls to remain in positions they wished to leave for trivial reasons, and had frankly told them she could not get them positions as good or wages as high elsewhere. But of course she lost all the fees from both employers and employees.

There are so many ideas of what competency means that in many instances the offices cannot be held responsible. Two employers in an office stated their requirements thus: “I want just an ordinary waitress.” After various questions it was found in one case that she must be “honest, neat, strong, quick, capable, earnest, willing, trained, good-tempered, nice-looking, not impertinent, sober, willing to renounce all attentions from men, religious, and willing to wear a uniform.” The second wanted a sanctimoniouslooking waitress for a family of ten, who would be willing to quote Scripture if clerical guests were entertained, and who would sit on the back porch Sunday evenings, Bible in hand, and turn her eyes heavenward when the mistress and her devout guests passed by. All other defects would be overlooked. Another employer wanted a maid, no matter how incompetent, who smoked cigarettes, so that she herself would not be suspected. The office only learned this after several girls had been dismissed as unsatisfactory.

Offices with high standards certainly prevent questionable characters from getting into homes, and keep the failures in life from using housework as a last resort. But when they forge, alter, trade, steal, and buy references, and then sell or give them to girls who have none, or whom they do not know, they make it possible for any kind of an employee to get into the best houses. I have seen girls turned out when they refused to lend their references for a few minutes to a girl who was called in for an interview with a “particular employer.”I have been recommended as “ all right and known to the office for years;” and when I showed a reference which I had purposely made bad, they offered a new one, or to “fix” the old one.

Employers complain that applicants are impertinent, deceitful, dishonest, and lazy. If they are not so by nature what can they be when they come from some offices ? When they are herded in rooms, often held by force until they pay their fees, treated with familiarity, and sworn or jeered at for refusing “good places” in questionable resorts, there is little inducement to polite address. When girls are coached to lie about their ages, qualifications, last places of employment, wages, etc., they are started on a series of falsehoods which they must continue. When they are encouraged to wait daily from nine A. M. to four p. M., with only gossip for a pastime, or to work a week and then “spend their money on a good time,” the intelligence offices can be looked upon as nothing but trainingschools for certain forms of incompetency. A few permit drinking, especially in their lodging-houses, which are often in, or adjoining, the offices. Broken contracts and other deceptions are frequently encouraged. A few will have no further dealings with girls who break contracts, but only one or two apply this rule to employers. With one or two exceptions separate interview rooms are not provided. This means that an employer engages a servant in public, — a thing not permitted in any other line of work. The employer is tempted to make big promises and offer high wages, and the employee insists upon privileges, because both wish to impress their hearers. This leads later to hard feelings and broken agreements.

Of course these conditions exist only because employers patronize such offices, and it is a question if the methods of offices can be much improved until employers collaborate with them. Employers write false references out of pique, or sympathy, or refuse them because they want to keep a good girl. They neglect to return reference blanks sent to them by mail from honest offices, and every one is kept waiting for days; or they tell but half the truth when they do answer. They misrepresent conditions; then the girls upbraid the office when they find there are three children instead of none; that they must share their room with three or four others, when they were told they would have a room to themselves; and that they must help with work other than that for which they were engaged. Employers think nothing of ordering girls from half-a-dozen places, and never notifying the offices when they have secured some one. The sense of honor and obligation of contract between employers and employees, with the office as the middle man, seems hardly to exist. To “all is fair in love and war” must be added “and in servant hunting.” So disloyal are employers to one another that offices which have tried to raise their standards have been abused roundly by employers and employees.

The best offices leave the question of wages entirely to the employer and employee; but where ten per cent of the first month’s wages is the fee charged, they are more directly interested in high wages. Some refused to place me until I had increased my demands; and they will not introduce employers and employees when the wages offered are too low, saying they have no one. When employers offer good wages they announce to a roomful, “I want a $30 cook.” Of course all become $30 cooks unless they demand more. So common is this dictation by the offices that some employees prefer to state no wages, knowing they will get more than they dare ask. But employers sometimes interfere with an honest office. I have seen a girl engaged at a certain wage rate, which was overheard by another employer, who, before the girl could depart, offered her more. The girl was of course dissatisfied and wanted to break her word. Then, again, a few employers pay wages which are disproportionate, or which others cannot afford. Then if an employee loses such a position she refuses all others for less; and usually she advertises the office as a place to get high wages.

Nevertheless, the case of the intelligence office is not altogether hopeless. Wherever employers intelligently insist upon certain requirements the tone of the offices is immediately improved. This raising of standards depends primarily upon the employer. Yet there are various other ways of improving these conditions, as New York has demonstrated. Induced thereto by this investigation, it has passed a model employment agency law, and established a commission, with many inspectors, to enforce its rulings. A system of model employment agencies, with improved lodging-houses, is in operation. These will aim to become educational centres as well as mediums of exchange. The best agencies have formed associations to raise the standard of the whole business. Philadelphia and Chicago have started model agencies, and Boston has one of long standing whose work is distinctly educational, as well as a good working law.

But there are conditions in household work which no law or association can remedy. So close is the relation between offices and homes that the improvement of one is for the good of the other. The intelligence office cannot completely solve the problem of household work, and the public should not be misled by those which so advertise. They are the places at which unknown employers and employees gather, some for too brief a space to receive any lasting influence, others for a long enough time to spoil them; they are training-schools for many employees; they are the places where questions of contract are decided and where opinions and preferences are expressed. But they are at best a medium of exchange. Employers and employees have a relation to one another in the home, which offices cannot control; and both have a relation to others and to the economic and social world which offices can no more influence than a store can govern the conditions of trade. Offices do indicate the extent and complexity of the problem, and they do offer the opportunity for educational work and more perfect adjustments. But do we know as much of the other two factors in the problem, — the home and the independent life of the employee ? I do not believe that a first-hand study of these by an impartial body, free from the prejudices of employers, the class resentment of the employees, the greed for gain of the offices, and the fads of the theorist, has been made. Employers have not been asked to contribute of their knowledge, skill, and experience for the good of all, and employees have not coöperated for the good of one another.

So deep is this conviction, and so fragmentary is the available information about these conditions in modern cities, that a plan has been formulated for such a study and its attending educational work. The attempt is not so much to solve the problem as to examine and relate the various elements. The use of this knowledge by employers and employees may aid in a more rapid adjustment, or may at least indicate more clearly the lines where it is possible.

An Inter-Municipal Committee on Household Study, representing the three cities of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, will have charge of this study. Three organizations, one in each city, will support it until its usefulness can be determined. In Boston, the organization is the Woman’s Educational and Industrial Union; in New York, the League for Home Economics; and in Philadelphia, the Housekeepers’ Alliance. The presidents of the New York and Boston organizations, the vice president of the Philadelphia organization, a representative of the College Settlements Association and Association of Collegiate Alumnæ (which grant a fellowship for the study), and the elected fellow constitute this committee, which determines the plan of study, subjects to be investigated, publications, distribution of information, and the general policy. In addition each city has its own local committee, consisting of several members, which carries out the details and has charge of the bureau of information. The Secretary of the Central Committee, who is the Fellow of the College Settlements Association and Association of Collegiate Alumnæ, has direct charge of the work in the three cities for each local committee.

The bureau of information is conducted separately as in New York and Philadelphia, or in connection with the Association which supports it, as in Boston. The function of these bureaus is to gather and distribute information. Employers and employees are requested to answer questions, grant interviews, and send in any criticisms, suggestions, opinions, or experiences, and to help in other ways in gathering the needed material. Other parts of the work will be the collection and evaluation of published information, and a classification of the first-hand material gathered by the experienced field workers.

The distribution of information will be through publications. The committee will issue its own bulletin, which will contain whatever is new,helpful, and suggestive from all parts of the country. Newspapers and magazines will be furnished with articles and stories, the object being to create a reliable source of information upon which periodicals can draw, and from which they can secure coöperation if they wish to conduct special lines of investigation. There will be directories and lists, of value to householders, such as those of reliable employment agencies, lists of daily service workers, information upon advertising, etc. Statistics, papers, carefully edited references, and lecturers will be furnished to individuals, clubs, associations, and other organizations. Lecturers will be registered, and the data of the committee placed at their disposal. Papers will be prepared and writers assisted. Coöperative work, such as furthering conferences, arranging club programmes and meetings, stimulating or assisting in various other related lines of research, legislation, and educational work, will be undertaken.

The field of study has not been fully outlined, but it will cover the phases necessary to make it complete. Of first importance is the source of supply. Immigration is the important factor here, and there are changes in the proportionate nationality of arriving immigrants, in methods of finding them work, in their distribution after reaching this country, and in the effect of restriction, which vitally affect the household. The characteristics, occupations, and preferences of American girls, and the districts from which they come, must be considered, and there are some nice questions in the use and adaptation of negroes to service in Northern homes. The Japanese and Chinese are also becoming factors of importance. A further study of the methods by which positions and help are obtained is essential, and includes employment agencies, advertising, the relation of employers to one another, and the coöperation of employees with one another.

Some of the most vital conditions of household service are quite unexplored. These may be divided into three groups, — sanitary, economic, and social, and will include the study of hotels, restaurants, and boarding-houses as well as private houses. This will prove a difficult part of the investigation, for employees will be suspicious, and many employers will not see that it is not individual homes, or publicity of names, which are required, but a large number, composing the various groups, which make the results valuable. In the sanitary group fall the various questions of housing, food and its service, exercise, bathing facilities, and the general effect of various kinds of household work upon health. Many years ago, when conditions of work in cities were radically different, housework was the most healthful occupation. Recent studies in tuberculosis, and along other lines, at least open this subject to question.

Most of the study already made has been upon the economic and social conditions. Economic conditions include such subjects as hours, wages, kinds and methods of work, standards of competency, and rewards; while the social group involves such matters as privileges, customs, rights, opportunities, vacations, supervision of free time by employers, etc. It is very desirable that the attitude of various classes of employers and employees toward certain questions should be known, and attempts will be made to secure these through letters and interviews.

The status of the employer must be known in order to understand other factors, and, for the employee, such facts as associates, standards of honesty, training, protection in homes, etc., are very essential. The life of the employee when outside the employer’s home, as it concerns clothing, luxuries, organizations, recreations, savings, and housing when unemployed, is a field of importance. Other subjects which seem essential are legislation and organizations affecting both classes; experiments, such as coöperative housekeeping, daily service employees, etc., and solutions which have been proposed or attempted. In addition there are some special subjects which must be included, as nurse girls, masseuses, hairdressers, etc., and laundries, public kitchens, prepared foods, etc. Where comparisons are desirable or possible the facts for household workers will be compared with those of employees in stores, factories, and offices. As outlined at present the study includes twelve main groups and more than fifty distinct lines of study,— all a part of the whole, but requiring different methods.

This brief outline gives some idea of the scope of such a study, — one which depends primarily upon coöperation. The committee and the investigators start out with no theories which they wish to prove, and there are no salaried officers who might have interests other than the impartial gathering of facts. It is a simple attempt to gather the information necessary to understand the situation, by students trained in the field of research and under the direction of capable, earnest, and unprejudiced employers and employees. The object is purely educational, and not in the interest of any one class or reform. Reforms there may be, but these should be at the initiative of employers and employees if, in their judgment, the conditions found, and honestly and fairly presented warrant them.