In January of 1895, the New York Times began publication of a series on the state of domestic labor, comprised of a number of written statements from a sampling of "mistresses" (as they were then known).

Entitled Competent Domestics: A Question of To-Day, the series mirrored the unbridled elitism of its Gilded Age authors.

I never allow my servants an afternoon off during the week, noted one respondent, the wife of a physician. Why should I lose so much time and put myself to a great deal of inconvenience in doing the work myself?

By all indications, the "servant problem" was alive and well.

But there was another story waiting to be to be told. And so, six weeks later, the Times publishes a short rebuttal. "What an Irish Girl Thinks" is a first-person account from the other side of the battlefield, its (nameless) author masterfully describing the harsh realities of domestic labor: airless rooms, endless days, basement gates resembling prison bars—an overall experience she likens to "a mild form of slavery".

This particular author writes with purpose, precision, and—rather remarkably, considering the subject at hand—fairness:

I hold that there are good and bad servants of every nationality, she writes. I also hold that there are good and bad mistresses.
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She is cogent and circumspect in her observations about this divided landscape: and here, what she highlights most of all is a stunning lack of tolerance for difference.

Why can't great, free, independent America afford to be original, she asks?

The irony—and the impasse—of a country whose opportunities and protections did not extend to the immigrants keeping it running would sadly continue to persist for some time. The servant problem, it seemed, went both ways.