ted out occasionally, who supply her with books and papers and companionship. Nothing could be more praiseworthy in motive, but it is seldom successful in actual operation. In the first place it is a forced relationship, and nothing in the world can be worse than a simulacrum of companionship. The employé may have a genuine friendship for her employer and a pleasure in her companionship, or she may not, and the unnaturalness of the situation comes from the insistence that she has, merely because of the propinquity. I should consider myself an unpardonable snob if, because a woman did my cooking, I should not hold myself ready to have her for my best friend, to drive, to read, to attend receptions with her, but that friendship might or might not come about, according to her nature and mine, just as it might or might not come about between me and my college colleague. On the other hand, I should consider myself very stupid if merely because a woman cooked my food and lived in my house I should insist upon having a friendship with her, whether her nature and mine responded to it or not. It would be folly to force the companionship of myself or my family upon her when doubtless she would vastly prefer the companionship of her own friends and her own family. The unnaturalness of the situation is brought about by the fact that she is practically debarred by distance and lack of leisure from her own natural ties, and then her employer feeling sorry, insists upon filling the vacancy in interests and affections by her own tastes and friendship. She may or may not succeed, but the employé should not be thus dependent upon the good will of her employer. That in itself is feudal.
Added to all this is a social distinction which the household employé feels keenly against her, and in favor of the factory girls, in the minds of the young men of her acquaintance. A woman who has worked in households for twenty years told me that when she was a young and pretty nurse girl, the only young men who "paid her attention" were coachmen and unskilled laborers. The skill in the trades of her suitors increased as her position in the household increased in dignity. When she was a housekeeper, forty years old, skilled mechanics appeared, one of
