DOMESTIC SERVICE

Although the Great Depression adversely affected a broad spectrum of Americans between 1929 and 1941, the economic calamity was particularly devastating for the millions of workers employed in the domestic and personal service labor force. New Deal programs did little to remedy the financial difficulties of this group. Before the 1929 stock market crash, domestic and personal service employees, such as maids, cooks, washerwomen, and laundresses, comprised 8 percent of the American workforce. The crash, along with falling manufacturing sales, increased debt, the shrinking money supply, bank failures, small business closings, tariff policies, the boll weevil epidemic, and the overproduction of agricultural goods, increased the size of the domestic and personal service sector slightly to 10 percent of the labor force by 1930.

The domestic labor force in the early twentieth century was comprised mostly of immigrants from Ireland, Eastern Europe, Mexico, Japan, and China, as well as many native-born, single white females and married and single African-American women, whose fathers, husbands, and sons faced routine periods of underemployment and unemployment. Between 1900 and 1920, native whites and immigrants from northern and western Europe made up the majority of domestics. However, a gradual racial and ethnic shift occurred during and after World War I. In the northern United States, Eastern European immigrants and African Americans began to replace German, Scandinavian, Irish, and native-born single white women as household help. As native-born and foreign-born white females found better-paying jobs outside the domestic labor sector, the numbers of black servants increased substantially. African-American females comprised 40 percent of all female household workers in 1920, 36 percent in 1930, and 47 percent the following decade. Not surprisingly, they led in the numbers of domestics in the Jim Crow South. In the southwestern United States, Mexican and Mexican-American women comprised a large percentage of household workers. Like African-American women, they increasingly dominated the domestic and personal service sector after their white counterparts found employment opportunities elsewhere. In 1930, Latina household workers comprised 45 percent of all Mexican females employed outside the home. In major southwestern cities such as El Paso, Denver, and Albuquerque, young unmarried female domestics constituted two-thirds of all Mexican women employed outside the home.

Although women overwhelmingly dominated the domestic service sector, men also worked as household help, mainly as butlers, chauffeurs, gardeners, and cooks. Only in California and Washington state, where high numbers of Chinese male immigrants lived, did men lead in the domestic service area. For the duration of the Depression, men made up 10 percent of all household servants in the nation.

White women remained the largest segment of the female domestic service category—54 percent in 1930 and 53 percent in 1940. Still, some of them had other options. Those with skills increasingly found work in the growing female-oriented service sector economy, where they worked in nursing, education, newly created government agencies, social services, and sales, as well as in business as clerical staff. Although they dominated the domestic sector, those working as servants made up only 10 percent of the overall white female labor force.

Black women, of whom 60 percent labored as domestics, had a different experience, and found themselves at the bottom rung of the labor sector. Like their white counterparts, black wives, mothers, and sisters, attempted to supplement the meager earnings of their husbands, fathers, or brothers. During the Depression, however, they faced competition from both whites and other black women for their domestic jobs. Although the white female labor force increased by 17 percent, the black female labor force declined by 5 percent during the Depression. Given a choice, many employers preferred white domestics over black domestics. Furthermore, unemployed African-American high school and college graduates—displaced teachers, secretaries, sales consultants, and social workers—sought domestic work in growing numbers after losing their jobs. Faced with this uncertainty, African-American domestics sought alternatives.

A newly elected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, with the help of advisers, unleashed a number of programs that attempted to increase industrial profits, improve consumer spending, alleviate unemployment, and relieve destitution: These programs included the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Legislation with similar aims included the National Industrial Recovery Act, which improved working conditions and wages and guaranteed employees the right to unionize; the Fair Labor Standards Act, which created maximum working hours and minimum wages; and the Social Security Act, which established unemployment compensation and retirement pensions for the unemployed. Unfortunately, this legislation excluded domestics and farm laborers because many New Dealers, especially southerners, argued that the provisions would have put undue financial strain on the employers of household help and agricultural workers. Domestics, thus, continued to experience economic contraction and widespread discrimination. Many household workers went on temporary relief, provided by such agencies as FERA and the WPA. Other disillusioned household workers abandoned domestic work altogether. Only with the entry of the United States into World War II in December 1941 did the Depression end for domestic workers.

DOMESTIC SERVICE

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