old largely because her
"mistress" fatuously believes that she is thus maintaining the sanctity
of family life.

The household employee has no regular opportunity for meeting other
workers of her trade, and of attaining with them the dignity of a
corporate body. The industrial isolation of the household employee
results, as isolation in a trade must always result, in a lack of
progress in the methods and products of that trade, and a lack of
aspiration and education in the workman. Whether we recognize this
isolation as a cause or not, we are all ready to acknowledge that
household labor has been in some way belated; that the improvements
there have not kept up with the improvement in other occupations. It is
said that the last revolution in the processes of cooking was brought
about by Count Rumford, who died a hundred years ago. This is largely
due to the lack of _esprit de corps_ among the employees, which keeps
them collectively from fresh achievements, as the absence of education
in the individual keeps her from improving her implements.

Under this isolation, not only must one set of utensils serve divers
purposes, and, as a consequence, tend to a lessened volume and lower
quality of work, but, inasmuch as the appliances are not made to
perform the fullest work, there is an amount of capital invested
disproportionate to the product when measured by the achievement in
other branches of industry. More important than this is the result of
the isolation upon the worker herself. There is nothing more devastating
to the inventive faculty, nor fatal to a flow of mind and spirit, than
the constant feeling of loneliness and the absence of that fellowship
which makes our public opinion. If an angry foreman reprimands a girl
for breaking a machine, twenty other girls hear him, and the culprit
knows perfectly well their opinion as to the justice or injustice of her
situation. In either case she bears it better for knowing that, and not
thinking it over in solitude. If a household employee breaks a utensil
or a piece of porcelain and is reprimanded by her employer, too often
the invisible jury is the family of the latter, who naturally uphold her
censorious position and intensify the feeling of loneliness in the
employee.

The household employee, in addition to her industrial isolation, is also
isolated socially. It is well to remember that the household employees
for the better quarters of the city and suburbs are largely