If the Age of Servants Passes

In the civilized countries, where the machine has taken the place of man and culture the place of ignorance, the age of servants in the home is on the verge of disappearing. It is a phenomenon that free-minded people greet with much rejoicing, because it means the disappearance of one form of man's enslavement to man.

In public places — in cafés, hotels, and the like — you find the educated waiter who works under conditions fixed by the labor law, and who considers himself the equal of the customers he serves. He is not obliged to appear before them in an attitude of servility and self-abasement, because culture has made human beings equal. Nor do you come across there the porter staggering under his load, for most travelers carry their bags in their own hands; at the station they hand them to the owner of a cart, who wheels them to the taxi they wish to take, or they dispense with him and move them themselves.

In homes and families, the woman cooperates with husband and children, and with the various modern machines, to do all the work of the house, dispensing thereby with servants, who are rare to find and exorbitant in wages. Thanks to cooperation among the members of the family, and by means of the machines and inventions that lighten housework to the utmost degree, the Western woman is able to work outside the home, all or part of the time, and thus to share with her husband in providing for the family and to secure for herself variety in work and contact with society.

You may find a maid in some houses, but she is of a new type. She is no longer called, as in the past, "Saliha" — that is, fit for every task and working at every hour. She is rather the specialized servant who has graduated from one of the vocational schools. She holds a diploma in the rearing of children and is called a governess; or a diploma in nursing and is called a nurse; or in cooking and is called a cook; or in cleaning, ironing, and tidying and is called a household manager.

Such a servant counts herself the equal of the mistress of the house. They address her as Miss or Mrs. So-and-so. She works fixed hours of the day, at wages equal to those of workers of her kind. She returns to her own home in the evening, or sleeps in a room of the house set apart for her.

A Lebanese lady living in England told me: "I am obliged, like everyone else, to do all the work of the house, my husband helping me with it when he returns from his work. On certain days circumstances compelled me to hire a maid to work a few hours of the day, and I was astonished at her skill and speed at the job. She does in one hour what a Lebanese maid does in five, because she is educated and trained. But before long I dismissed her, because I could not bear her wages."

In Beirut, where the level of general culture is higher than in the rest of the Lebanese towns and villages, the first signs of a renaissance in the working class have begun to appear to us, and a movement resembling the striving toward liberation in the servant class. But generally speaking we may say that the people of this class among us are still dragging the chains of the Middle Ages.

No government laws protect them, for they are excepted from the labor law. They toil night and day without interruption, especially in the houses of luxury and ease, where the evening parties last until after midnight. They eat at late or irregular hours. They are addressed with contempt, burdened with orders, and forced into servility and submission, so that their character is spoiled by ill treatment — and the character of the children who keep their company is spoiled as well.

I once saw a schoolgirl of fifteen, known at school for her gentleness and courtesy, address her maid with a strange harshness. I said to her: "Why do you not speak to her kindly? Is she not a creature equal to you?" She looked at me in astonishment, as if to say: "That is how it has always been done."

The degradation of the servant class among us goes back to two causes. First, the ignorance of the people of this class and the lowness of their cultural and professional level. If the maid were better prepared to do the work of the house, she would be better off and higher in value. The same is true of children's nurses, who are usually ignorant of everything concerning the principles of child-rearing and follow in it the method of trial and error. Were they specialists in the subject, their standing in the houses would be quite another matter, and theirs would be the last word and the obeyed command.

Second, the fewness and scarcity of women's occupations in our country. This is what compels the girls of the villages and the mountains who wish to work to bear the hardships of domestic service at paltry wages, especially outside Beirut. If women's work in factories, hospitals, and shops increased, their number in the homes would diminish, and there their wages would rise and their conditions improve.

This may actually come to pass in the future, when the level of servants among us rises and their number diminishes, as in the West. And this development will be not only in the interest of the servants but also in the interest of woman. For the housewife who deserves to keep servants is either frail and incapable of work, or worn out by the work of the house and the number of her children, or a working woman performing, outside her home or within it, a task that surpasses housework in material and moral usefulness.

But she who sends her children to the kindergarten or to the schools, hands her house over to the servants, and gives herself up to adornment and card-playing — is she, do you think, worthy of being served? The answer, of course, is no.

Many of our women are of this sort — of those who spin away their hours on the loom I have described. It behooves these women to choose one of two things: either to work outside the home, or to do the work of the home and dispense with servants.

This is a proposal that may not please those who have grown used to the soft and easy life. But what do these ladies think of the woman who works in her house and outside her house at one and the same time, and who, on top of this, finds time to exercise political rights and to concern herself with social affairs?