Will there be a return to servants?
Megan McArdle at the Atlantic, following Arnold King, asks this.
Why hasn’t rising inequality resulted in in the much-predicted oligarchy? Or to put it as he does: with so many unemployed, and income increasing faster among the affluent, why aren’t people hiring more servants?
Or to put it more personally, would you hire a servant? Would you go out to work as a servant?
McArdle suggests that neither the rich nor the poor are enthusiastic about these options.
1. The cost is greater. The poor are wealthier than they used to be. Hard as times may be, they don’t want to work for as little money (even inflation adjusted) as 100 years ago. The rich don’t want to pay the higher prices. Plus taxes, regulation and liability make servants less appealing to the rich.
2. The hassle is unappealing. For the poor, they have more independence in regular service sector jobs. For the rich (or middle class) servants have to be managed, including training. And the rich value their privacy more, they don’t want servants in the house. And McArdle does not mention that it is socially taboo to have servants now in the United States.
As someone who feels that living in Mexico, as a rich gringa, I really should employ people, I would add that it’s not just a matter of managing. Servants are part of your life, other very real human beings. They have their own problems, usually much greater than yours. Taking these seriously (their child’s persistent eye infection, their jerk of a husband, the murder of their father) is something no one with any decency would avoid. Equally there’s no denying that it takes time and money.
3. The alternatives are greater: cleaning services, take out, dry cleaners, and washing machines, for example.
I don’t think Americans will go back to working as or employing servants until things get a lot worse. And that’s another reason to hope they don’t get worse. I would dearly love to live a servantless life.
Understanding food history, however, means you have to take the presence of servants into account. This seems a good moment to repost a summing up of several of my posts about servants in the kitchen.
1. Lest We Forget: Servants in Culinary History
Why we tend to forget servants and who servants were
2 Mistress and Servant Go to Cooking Class
How the mistress learned to supervise the cook and how the cook learned to cook
What did and didn’t count as stealing, a response to readers’ questions
4. Servants: The Missing Link in Culinary Change
How an Indian servant learned to cook Indian food from a cookbook for British housewives
5. Servants and Ethnic Cuisines
The shadowy role of servants in “ethnic” cookbooks designed for an American market
The shadowy role of servants in Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
I would hesitate to employ a cleaning lady, let alone a gardener, until such time as we might become physically disabled. The best cleaning lady we know is also a friend of ours, and she is related to everyone in our pueblito. I would feel very uncomfortable giving her orders and especially, critiquing her work. As long as I can stand and move, I’ll be the cook in our household.
Saludos,
Don Cuevas
Well, I’m the cook in our household too. But I have employed a sequence of cleaning ladies and one gardener and learned a lot from all of them about aspects of Mexico that would otherwise have remained closed to me. So for me (and i hope for them) it has been positive.
I enjoyed reading this selection of posts. Another reason you and McArdle didn’t mention in your discussion of Americans is that many potential “servants” that you could hire speak very little English, which makes for a trying relationship. In two long stays in California, a Spanish-speaking house cleaner was part of my temp rental deal, and I, not knowing any Spanish, found it really frustrating.
One other interesting treatment of the role of servants in a famous person’s life is the book “Mrs. Woolf and the Servants: An Intimate History of Domestic Life in Bloomsbury” by Alison Light.
Yes, a lot of americans in Mexico find it tricky for the same reasons. And thanks for the reference, Mae. I think I saw a review of the book once and always meant to read it. Now I definitely will.
Interesting that ‘servants’ may be taboo in USA but nannies definitely are NOT taboo. Now there is a crossover here, too. I know people who hire nannies who come all day (9>10 hours) 5 days a week and take care of the children (little ones all the time and older ones when they return from school) and do the housework, and, of course! feed the children and often cook or start parts or all of the dinner. They often bring their own children to mingle with the employers children in lieu of putting them in daycare or with other family members, who may now be working also rather than waiting at home for the ‘servant’ to bring home the pay.