the
following questions: Why should she allow her household employees to
live in her house? Why should she consent to board them at her expense?
Why should she continue to place at their disposal a bedroom each, a
private bathroom, a sitting room or a dining room? Why should she allow
them to make use of her kitchen and laundry to do their own personal
washing, even providing them with soap and starch, irons and an ironing
board, fuel and gas? Why should she do all this for them when no
business employer, man or woman, ever does it? Was it simply because her
mother, her grandmother, her great-grandmother had been in the habit of
doing it?

This awakening was the beginning of the end of all the trouble and
expense which she had endured for so many years in connection with the
boarding and lodging of her "servants." To-day she has no "servants";
she has household employees who come to her house each day, just as
other employees go each day to their place of employment. They take no
meals in her house, and her housekeeping expenses have diminished as
much as her own comfort has increased. Her employees are better and more
efficient than any she ever had under the old regime, and nothing could
persuade her to return to her former methods of housekeeping.

The cost of providing meals for domestic employees varies according to
the mode of living of each individual family, and of late it has been
the subject of much discussion. Some important details, however, seem
to be generally overlooked, for the cost of the food is the only thing
usually considered by the average housewife. To this first expense must
be added the cost of pots and pans for cooking purposes; even under
careful management, kitchen utensils are bound to wear out and must be
replaced. Then there is the cost of the extra fuel or gas or electricity
required to cook the food, nor must one forget to count the extra work
of the cook to prepare the meals, and of the kitchen maid or of some
other maid to wash up the dishes after each meal served to employees.
There is also the expense of buying kitchen plates and dishes, glasses,
cups and saucers, knives and forks, etc. Every housewife is in the habit
of providing kitchenware for the use of her employees.

The total sum of all these items would astonish those who think that
the actual expense of giving meals to household employees is not a very
great one and is limited to the cost of the food they eat; even this