day and night by taking care of a small child; besides the average nurse
is generally ignorant of the harm caused by so-called "soothing syrups."

If a child be sick, the mother should call in a trained nurse, that
is if she can afford it, and when she has several employees, she can
usually afford this extra expense. If the child or children be well,
and the mother desires some one to attend to them at night, she should
engage a woman who has no occupation during the day and who is willing
to work at night. She should make a point of choosing one who sews well,
so that the services of a seamstress might be combined with the duties
of a night nurse. There is always some mending to do in all families and
a woman who is clever with her needle might make herself very useful to
her employer. Thousands of women sew by artificial light in dressmaking
establishments and factories; in all probability just as many women
could be found to sew by artificial light in private homes. Perhaps at
first the novelty of working at night might deter women from taking a
position similar to the one suggested above, but a woman who was really
in need of work would not let the unusual hours prevent her from
accepting it,

Many men work at night and it is not unlikely that many women would be
willing to do it too. Women are not as timid as they were reputed to
be in former years; they would neither scream nor faint nowadays at
the sight of a little mouse scampering across the floor. Indeed quite
recently the newspapers reported that a woman whose husband had just
died had accepted the position of a night watchman, and she filled her
new role so successfully that on one occasion she managed to seize a
burglar and handed him over to a policeman.

This proposition of engaging a woman to work at night is only a
suggestion, however, offered to those who find it absolutely necessary
to have a domestic employee in their house at night. It remains to be
proved if it could be carried out successfully.

But the great changes in housekeeping described in the preceding
chapters are not mere suggestions nor theories of what might be done:
each reform has already been put into actual practice. The result has
been so extraordinary that one is impelled to believe that the only way
to solve the Servant Problem is to apply business principles to
housework in private homes.

Naturally such a revolution from methods now in vogue can not be wrought
in a day,