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work, she ought to receive 15, 22-1/2, or 30 cents per hour for every
hour she works for her employer after the completion of her regular
eight hours' work.
This plan has never failed to bring satisfaction, and it has the
advantage of placing the employer and the employee on an equally
delightful footing of independence. The performance of extra work is no
longer regarded as a matter of obligation on one side, and of concession
on the other, but as a purely business transaction.
Some housewives fear that the regular work would be intentionally
prolonged beyond all measure if it became an established rule to pay
extra for work performed overtime. This could be easily checked,
however, by paying extra only for work that was necessitated by unusual
events in the family life.
In families where only one employee is kept, naturally the occasions for
asking her to work overtime arise more frequently than in families where
there are two or more employees, especially if there be small children
in the family. Yet these occasions need not come very often, if the
housewife bears in mind that even with only one employee, she has eight
hours every day at her own disposal; she ought to plan her outside
engagements accordingly. Her liberty from household cares during
these eight hours can only be gained though by having efficient and
trustworthy assistants in her home, and she can never obtain these
unless she abandons her old fashioned methods of housekeeping. She must
grant to household employees the same rights and privileges given to
business employees; she must apply business principles to housework.
A great power lies in the hands of the modern housewife, a power as yet
only suspected by a few, which, if properly wielded, can raise housework
from its present undignified position to the place it ought to occupy,
and that is in the foremost rank of manual labor for women.
PART III
EIGHT HOUR SCHEDULES IN THE HOME
Eight hour schedules for one employee.
Eight hour schedules for two employees.
Eight hour schedules for three employees.
EIGHT HOUR SCHEDULES FOR ONE EMPLOYEE
The schedules given in the following pages have been in actual practice
for a sufficient length of time to prove that they can be relied on to
produce satisfactory results, although no doubt many housewives will
find that some of them must be modified to meet special requirements in
their homes.
Two very important points must
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