Yet he lifts that machine, does the little chauffeur,
By the power of a gentle jackscrew.
Diantha worked.
For all her employees she demanded a ten-hour day, she worked fourteen;
rising at six and not getting to bed till eleven, when her charges were
all safely in their rooms for the night.
They were all up at five-thirty or thereabouts, breakfasting at six, and
the girls off in time to reach their various places by seven. Their day
was from 7 A. M. to 8.30 P. M., with half an hour out, from 11.30 to
twelve, for their lunch; and three hours, between 2.20 and 5.30, for
their own time, including their tea. Then they worked again from 5.30
to 8.30, on the dinner and the dishes, and then they came home to a
pleasant nine o'clock supper, and had all hour to dance or rest before
the 10.30 bell for bed time.
Special friends and "cousins" often came home with them, and frequently
shared the supper--for a quarter--and the dance for nothing.
It was no light matter in the first place to keep twenty girls contented
with such a regime, and working with the steady excellence required, and
in the second place to keep twenty employers contented with them. There
were failures on both sides; half a dozen families gave up the plan, and
it took time to replace them; and three girls had to be asked to resign
before the year was over. But most of them had been in training in the
summer, and had listened for months to Diantha's earnest talks to the
clubs, with good results.
"Remember we are not doing this for ourselves alone," she would say to
them. "Our experiment is going to make this kind of work easier for all
home workers everywhere. You may not like it at first, but neither did
you like the old way. It will grow easier as we get used to it; and we
_must_ keep the rules, because we made them!"
She laboriously composed a neat little circular, distributed it widely,
and kept a pile in her lunch room for people to take.
It read thus:
UNION HOUSE
Food and Service.
General Housework by the week..... $10.00
General Housework by the day....... $2.00
Ten hours work a day, and furnish their own food.
Additional labor by the hour....... $.20
Special service for entertainments, maids and waitresses,
by the hour..........$.25
Catering for entertainments.
Delicacies for invalids.
Lunches packed and delivered.
Ca
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