The Domestic Help Crisis of 1891
As the Pacific Northwest boomed, the P-I warned that a 'growing distaste' for housework among the working class threatened to turn the domestic service shortage into a bigger issue than currency reform.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Advancing civilization and general prosperity have their drawbacks as well as their advantages. In the United States, one of the most trying of these is the difficulty of securing good domestic service. Naturally enough, the increase of this difficulty keeps pace with the improvement in the general condition of the people. For many years our people have been compelled to place chief reliance in this respect upon immigrants from foreign lands, and these, as they become assimilated, soon imbibe the native prejudice against this method of making a livelihood. It is a surprise to learn from Southern papers that their section is suffering in this respect more severely than any other. It has been supposed that in their large colored population they were peculiarly blessed with an inexhaustible reserve to draw upon. But it is stated that among the brighter of the colored people, especially as they become educated, there is a great and growing distaste for domestic service. Many of the young men incline to the learned professions, or to clerical employments, and thousands are becoming factory operatives. The young women exhibit a preference for typewriting and the like, or draw the line at seamstress or nursery maid, and are as averse as are the white girls to cooking, scrubbing, or the laundry. Co-operative kitchens and laundries, as things are going, must soon become necessities. They are conveniences and economies which it were well worth while to commence thinking about and preparing for.
“If so, the tariff question, the silver question and all similar issues will become insignificant in comparison with the domestic service question.”
This 1891 editorial captures the era's anxiety over a 'servant shortage'—a class-based grievance that mirrors modern debates about labor shortages in service industries. It is fascinating to see the P-I, over a century ago, proposing 'co-operative kitchens' as a tech-forward solution to the domestic drudgery of private home life.
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