There is more risk of disease being introduced into the home, and of bad
habits being contracted by allowing one's children to associate with
other children in schools, public or private, and by letting them play
in the streets and public parks, where they mingle with more or less
undesirable companions, than by having the housework performed by
employees who come each day to their work and return to their homes
at night when their duties are over. Nevertheless no sensible parents
would keep their children shut up in the house, only allowing them to
go out of doors for a few hours once a week, for fear of contagion or
contamination, and yet this is just what the housewife has been doing
for years with her household employees under the firm impression that
she was protecting them as well as herself.

Present statistics, however, upon the morality and immorality of women
who belong to what is at present termed the "servant class," prove only
too clearly that the "protection" provided by the employer's home does
not protect. The shelter thus given serves too often to encourage a life
of deception, especially as in reality the housewife knows but little of
what takes place "below stairs."

The "servants' quarters" are, as a rule, far enough away from the other
rooms of the house for much to transpire there without the knowledge of
the "mistress of the house," but who has not heard her complain of the
misconduct of her employees? Startling discoveries have been made at the
most unexpected times and from the most unexpected quarters. One lady
found her maid was in the habit of going out at night after the family
had retired, and leaving the front door unlocked in order to regain
admittance in the early morning without arousing the family. Another
housewife discovered one day that her cook's husband, whose existence
until then was unknown, had been coming for several months to her house