Re: 1900 House

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Enrique asks:

> kelley wrote:
>
> > >  Just watching her and her daughters doing
> > > >the wash (12 hours to do a single load!), I wondered
> > > >how women ever had time to agitate for suffrage and
> > > >the like.  Check it out if you get the chance...
> > > >
> > > >Jim Baird
> >
> > yer avg family had some form of servants, for one.
>
> How's that possible? How can the *average* family have servants?

"The average family" did not have live-in servants, but Kelley might
have meant the average bourgeois family or else the average
suffragette's family???

BTW, Mary Romero writes in _Maid in the U.S.A._ (NY: Routledge,
1992): "Census figures reveal that the percentage of women employed
in domestic work has dropped steadily since the turn of the century.
In 1900, 28.7 percent of the female labor force was employed in
domestic work, but in 1970, only 5.1 percent worked in the
occupation" (71).  I don't have figures for England, however.

Romero also writes (on p.91):

*****   Today, Mexican immigrant women tend to predominate in larger
cities, particularly along the border.  Researchers estimate that
anywhere from 18,000 to 26,000 domestics are employed in private
residences in El Paso.[114]  In El Paso and other areas near the
border, labor is so cheap that most middle class families have at
least one servant, and some also employ a laundress, nursemaid and
yardman.[115]

[114]  Rosalia Solorzano Torres, "Women, Labor, and the U.S.-Mexico
Border: Mexican Maids in El Paso, Texas," in _Mexicans at Work in the
United States_, ed., Margarita Melville, p.77.

[115]  Mary Wilson Warton, "Methodism at Work among the
Spanish-Speaking People of El Paso, Texas," p.15.   *****

It is not clear from the book how Romero & her sources exactly define
"middle class."

Yoshie