"Is that one of the things the union would do?" queried Mrs. Pedagog, brightening.
"It is one of the things the union _should_ do," said the Idiot. "Similarly with your up-stairs girl, if perchance you have one. Suppose she got into the habit, which I understand is not all an uncommon case, of sweeping the dust under the bureau of your bedroom or under the piano in the drawing-room. Suppose she is really an adept in the art of dust concealment, having a full comprehension of all sixty methods--hiding it under tables, sofas, bookcases, and rugs, in order to save her back? You wouldn't have to bother with her at all under a properly equipped union. Upon the discovery of her delinquencies you would merely have to send for the union inspector, lift up the rug and show her the various vintages of sweepings the maid has left there: November ashes; December match-ends; threads, needles, and pins left over from the February meeting of the Ibsen Sewing-Circle at your house; your missing tortoise-shell hair-pin that you hadn't laid eyes on since September; the grocer's bill for October that you told the grocer you never received--all this in March. Do you suppose that that inspector, with all this evidence before her eyes, could do otherwise than prefer charges against the offender at the next meeting of the Committee on Discipline? Not on your life, madam. And, what is more, have you the slightest doubt that one word of reprimand from that same Committee on Discipline would prove far more effective in reforming that particular offender than anything you could say backed by the eloquence of Burke and the thunderbolts of Jove?"
"You paint a beautiful picture," said the Doctor. "But suppose you happened to draw a rotten cook in the domestic lottery--a good woman, but a regular scorcher. Where does your inspector come in there? Going to invite her to dine with you so as to demonstrate the girl's incompetence?"
"Not at all," said the Idiot. "That would make trouble right away. The cook very properly would say that the inspector was influenced by the social attention she was receiving from the head of the house, and the woman's effectiveness as a disciplinarian would be immediately destroyed. I'd put half portions of the burned food in a sealed package and send it to the Committee on Culinary Improvement for their inspection. A better method which time would probably bring into practice would be for the union itself to establish a system of domiciliary visits, by which the cook's work should be subjected to a constant inspection by the union--the object being, of course, to prevent trouble rather than to punish after the event. The inspector's position would be something like that of the bank examiner, who turns up at our financial institutions at unexpected moments, and sees that everything is going right."