To string thy fiddle, wax thy bow,
And scrap a ditty, jig, or so.
Now don't wax wrathy, but excuse
My calling you old Goody Muse:
Because "Old Goody" is a name
Applied to every college dame."
H.U.E.R.A.
The recent history of maid service at Harvard is essentially that of the union from the time the A.F.L. attempted to capitalize on the wide-open labor situation. In the fall of 1936, the University cut the maids' hourly wage from 39 cents to '37 cents per hour. The alumni asked for contributions to make up the dicerence is yearly salary, and the fund was over-subscribed.
The H.U.E.R.A. was formed in the spring of 1937. This new union, which was careful to avoid "union" in its title, included maids, janitors, engineers, polles department, H.A.A. employees, laboratory workers, and bakers--it has a total membership of over 1000 members.
When the union was formed, the maids worked every day of the academic year except legal holidays. In 1940, when Daniel G. Mulvihill became president of the Union, the maids went on a six day week with an hourly wage of 41 cents per hour.
In 1941 the union opened its first office on a daily basis and hired its first full-time secretary.
Last year officers of the H.U.E.R.A. received their first salary; and Mulvihill won the maids a five day week and an hourly wage of 82 cents.
The A.F.L., which made the first at-1936, tried again in 1943, but Mulvihill points out that it was the desire of the tempt to organize University labor in University employees to have an independent union that would devote itself to University problems without outside influence and red tape.
Student Porters?
Most recent plans for changing the maid service are based on the M.I.T. system of allowing student porters to assume the cleaning duties of the maids, thus contributing to the student's financial welfare.
If the student porter system were put into effect the present service, which costs each student about 75 cents per week, would be substituted by a service that would offer a cleaning service on only six days a week. Each student would make his own bed daily, as they do in most other eastern colleges.
Other Colleges
Most of the privately endowed colleges in the East had a maid service until just before the war, when the general trend was to abolish the service in favor of having each student make his own bed and getting the janitor to clean the room daily and vacuuming one a week.
This system currently prevails at the dormitories of Dartmouth, Brown, Yale, and Princeton. Of these colleges having fraternities, each fraternity house assumes the responsibility of its own cleaning arrangement, employing maids or fraternity brothers.