Domestic Work and Workers

Domestic servants usually lived with the employing family, performing a multitude of household tasks (such as laundry, ironing, cooking, cleaning, and serving) in exchange for a modest wage plus room and board. Domestic workers were usually young, single women from working-class families whose terms of service lasted until marriage. While comparable or superior in pay to other jobs open to poor, uneducated females, domestic work attracted few native-born women because of the long hours, low status, lack of freedom, and close supervision. Consequently, domestic servants often came from the ranks of the most desperate members of the community, either those too poor to pay for housing or those excluded from other vocations.

In the wake of World War I, changes in the national economy and labor market precipitated a transformation in the structure of domestic work and those who performed it. New opportunities for white women in the expanding clerical and sales sectors, restrictions on European immigration, and the migration of African Americans to urban cities in the North significantly altered the labor market for domestic work. By 1920, more domestic workers were living at home than boarding with their employer. By reducing the hours that domestic workers were available for personal service, day work fostered the introduction of electric labor-saving appliances into middle-class homes, further transforming the nature of household work. in the 1930s, domestic workers' pay fell to about 15 cents an hour, or $2.30 in today's currency.

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As discussed during rehearsal, the maids and other servants in the Seton household would have lived with them and been on call 24/7. Also, I think that it's important to point out that the salary of the Seton servants was probably much higher as well. Considering that most people we struggling to find a job in this time period and you have a set and moderately well paying domestic job, how does this affect your relationship with your employers? Are you more willing to do things for them and put up with the excessive things they ask you to do? Just something to think about.