A chambermaid came one day to her employer and said she did not wish to
complain but thought it better to say frankly that she was not satisfied
with what she was getting to eat in her house: she wanted to have roast
beef for dinner more often, at least three or four times a week, for she
did not care to eat mutton, nor steak, and never ate pork, nor could
she, to quote her own words "fill up on bread and vegetables as the
other girls did in the kitchen."

Then, and only then, did her employer wake up with a start to the
realization of the true position every housewife occupies in the eyes
of her household employees. They evidently regard her in the light of
a caterer; she does the marketing not only for her family but for them
too. She pays a cook high wages, not only to cook meals for herself and
family, but for her employees also.

For the first time in her life, this housewife asked herself the
following questions: Why should she allow her household employees to
live in her house? Why should she consent to board them at her expense?
Why should she continue to place at their disposal a bedroom each, a
private bathroom, a sitting room or a dining room? Why should she allow
them to make use of her kitchen and laundry to do their own personal
washing, even providing them with soap and starch, irons and an ironing
board, fuel and gas? Why should she do all this for them when no
business employer, man or woman, ever does it? Was it simply because her
mother, her grandmother, her great-grandmother had been in the habit of
doing it?

This awakening was the beginning of the end of all the trouble and
expense which she had endured for so many years in connection with the