Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men

[73] the recent papers in Harper's Bazar upon the organization of domestic service in large households, and it will become plain that nothing but the utmost method can possibly carry on such an establishment without constant failure. In Europe that method is easily provided, because money can at once secure a retinue of servants, each of whom knows his place; and it can, moreover, provide a house-keeper or major-domo who will keep everybody to his work. The trouble here is that no money can buy such an organization, and nine-tenths of the labor of forming it comes upon the lady of the house. A young college graduate, taken suddenly from the laboratory and placed at the head of a great factory in which he finds no foreman and no overlookers, is not so helpless as a young girl taken suddenly from the ballroom and placed at the head of ten or a dozen servants, in a beautiful house, with a “social position” awaiting her. For there actually are foremen and overlookers somewhere in the community, and an energetic young man with money at command can find them. But no wealth can obtain for the American lady that admirable and perfect being, the English housekeeper, so completely adjusted to her environment that she seems as if she must have been created on purpose, and sent straight down from heaven in a black silk gown, to stand behind her mistress's chair, looking more stately than her mistress even