A German Solution of the Servant Problem

How often may be read in American newspapers, after laments over the servant problem, a cry of envy of the German system, with its reference-books and fixed limits of time, under which the mistress can neither summarily discharge, nor the maid silently steal away.

In England, since the passing of the Insurance Act, there is more or less constant talk of following up this first imitation of German bureaucracy by its natural sequel. It is to be hoped that the undoubted blessings of the first half of the experiment may not blind the powers that be to the shadow of its other side. That is, unless all the advantages are openly intended to be presented to the maid.

Experience of the system in action would open a good many eyes to its drawbacks. When first in Germany, the confiding foreigner approaches the reference-book with a touching faith that from it she is to learn, as the Germans would say, ‘Alles Wuenschenswerthe’ about the maid whose name is inscribed on the back. Never is credulity more quickly punished. If the foreign woman is lucky enough to possess a German friend, she will be warned in advance that the three references demanded by ihe book as to honesty, decency, and diligence are always overlooked by the German house-wife as something to be taken for granted, she invariably searching for further comments by former mistresses on the capacities of the maid.

The inquiring foreigner is immediately struck by the fact that most German women, so communicative in conversation, become strangely noncommittal in writing. But her American optimism, fed by the plain testimony as to honesty, diligence, and decency, undertakes an experiment.

Alas, she finds too soon why the German hausfrau prefers not to engage a maid who has passed so triumphantly in what might be called the three R’s of her business. If a mistress adds nothing more than that to the maid’s ‘character,’ it is because there is nothing good in the way of capacity to add. Also, there may be a good deal of an unpleasant nature, for if the foreign mistress is unlucky, she may have strange experiences, which are made clear to her only when she understands a curious trait of the German mind.

This is the peculiarity of saying that a fact is not a fact unless you wish it to be. Perhaps the Germans have a talent for pragmatism. At any rate, in Germany a thief is not a thief unless he is found ‘with the goods.’ For instance, if a German housewife knows her maid to be guilty of theft, she may not discharge her on that account and put this damaging fact in the maid’s book unless she has proved the theft by finding the stolen article in the maid’s trunk, opened in the presence of an impartial witness, preferably a policeman. As she can rarely bring off this coup de theatre,— the maid naturally secreting her booty outside her mistress’ apartment, — the mistress waits until the fifteenth of the month, gives the maid two weeks’ notice on some other pretext, and sends her off, having signed her own name to a declaration of honesty which she knows to be false; and the maid pursues her pilfering path.

But why? — asks the inquiring foreigner. Because, when a maid’s book lacks the necessary adjective, she summons her mistress to write it in, in the presence of a magistrate. If the mistress be obdurate, the case is taken to court, and invariably lost by the mistress, who is compelled on pain of fine or imprisonment for libel to sign her name to a dishonest statement.

The inquiring foreigner here puts her inquiry to a lawyer, who answers her not without cynicism.

In the first place, in Southern Germany at least, a thief is not a thief if he can dispose of his spoils. In the second place, a German servant whose book lacks the necessary declaration of her honesty, could find no employment; she would become a pauper, and would fall on the hands of the State. It is all very simple. And the result is that the German housewife knows that the fundamental facts about a girl’s character are never to be discovered by the one method on which German officials pride themselves most.

In one of the smaller South German cities, the housewives have discovered a means of helping themselves by doing the very thing that is forbidden by these officials. They put their telephone number beneath the name and address which garnish a too flattering character, and when mistresses who are aware of the signal read it, the maid is not engaged. And all the mistresses are gleeful over their cleverness in circumventing a system of which all Germany is proud. Another light on the two ways to look at a fact.

In regard to giving notice to leave, again the advantage is with the maid. It is true that she must stay on for two weeks after notice has been given by either party to the contract, but can any student of human nature be in doubt as to the kind of work she will do during the armed truce of those two weeks? And although she may give notice on either the first or the fifteenth of the month, the mistress, for some occult reason, is limited to the fifteenth. Should she be carried away by disapproval of utter incapacity or lively impertinence, and send away the maid without warning, she is legally obliged to pay full wages plus board and lodging for the full time that must elapse between the maid’s removal and the end of the month following whatever fifteenth is imminent. Needless to say, such extravagance is never practiced by the frugal Germans, who prefer a sulky maid in the house to a joyous maid making merry outside on the fruit of the victory won over her late mistress.

It would seem then, that in the system drawn up by the careful Germans, the care is entirely spent on safeguarding the interests of the government, which, by its method of registration, can lay hands at a moment’s notice on either its soldiers or the potential mothers of soldiers, and is also freed from the expense of their support. That incidentally these pawns are benefited, is not to be wondered at, since without them t he structure of the army would not stand; and what the government thinks would become of Germany without the army is made sufficiently clear by the late Army Bill.

Whatever the motive entwined in all the red tape that makes a change of servants an official ceremony, the benefits accruing to the maids are not great enough to induce, in Germany more than elsewhere, a desirable class of girls to adopt the profession. Statistics, taken with German thoroughness, show each year a greater number of the intelligent turning to factory and shop, leaving only the physically and mentally unfit to the housekeeper; one is shocked by the percentage rated as positively deficient. The philanthropists, here as elsewhere, attribute this state of things to the never-ending work, and the constant supervision on the part of the mistresses; but conversation with elderly working-women invariably brings out another explanation. The house-servant must be indoors by nine o’clock in the evening, the usual time for locking up the main entrance to the apartment house, keys, to which are not given to the maids; the factory or shop-girl, after working all day may and usually does carouse all night, as long as her health allows. In a country where liberty is seen and permitted only in the guise of physical or artistic license, the choice is hardly to be wondered at.

It may of course be objected that in unbureaucratic America the most salient drawbacks to this sytem would not be felt. But without official control, carefully exercised on behalf of the servants, these would be entirely at the mercy of ill-natured or unscrupulous mistresses; and an organized official apparatus once set in motion, it is hard to say what results may occur. On the whole, a housekeeper in both countries is invariably convinced that the independence of action so necessary to the American spirit, is only to be preserved by the freedom to make experiments, however many unpleasantnesses the unsuccessful ones mayentail.