It has rather been looked upon as a normal feminine function, a form of healthy exercise.

No one has ever suggested to legislators that sweeping and beating rugs might be included among the dusty trades; that bending over steaming washtubs, and almost immediately afterwards going out into frosty air to hang the clothes, might be harmful to throat and lungs; that remaining within doors days at a time, as houseworkers almost invariably do, reacts on nerves and the entire physical structure; that steady service, if not actual labor, from six in the morning until nine and ten at night makes excessive demands on mind and body.
Such conditions exist because the workers are too weak, too inefficient, too unintelligent to change them.

Yet the demand for servants so far exceeds the supply that they are in a position, theoretically, to dictate the terms of their own employment.

If they elected to demand pianos and private baths they could get them; that is, if instead of remaining isolated individuals they could form themselves into an industrial class, like plumbers, or bricklayers, or carpenters.

Even as isolated individuals they are able to command a better money wage than more efficient workers, which proves how great is the need for their services.
The housekeeper clings to her archaic kitchen, firmly believing that if she gave it up, tried to replace it by any form of co-operative living, the pillars of society would crumble and the home pass out of existence.
Yet so strong is her instinctive repugnance to the medieval system on which her household is conducted, that she shuns it, runs away from it whenever she can.