, but whose experiences before this harbor was reached
include every form of oppression and even privation. Many more of the
same nature are recorded and are arranging themselves under heads, the
whole forming an unexpected and formidable arraignment of household
service in its present phases. This arraignment bides its time, but
while it waits it might be well for the enthusiastic prescribers of
household service as the easy and delightful solution of the
working-woman's problem to ask how far it would be their own choice if
reduced to want, and what justice for both sides is included in their
personal theory of the matter.

CHAPTER THIRTEENTH.

SOME DIFFICULTIES OF AN EMPLOYER WHO EXPERIMENTED.

The business face in the great cities is assimilating to such degree
that all men are brothers in a sense and to an extent unrealized by
themselves. Competition has deepened lines, till one type of the
employer in his first estate, while the struggle is still active and
success uncertain, loses not only youth and freshness, but with them,
too often, any token of owning a soul capable of looking beyond the
muckrake by which money is drawn in. If he acquires calm and
graciousness, it is the calmness of subtlety and the graciousness of the
determined schemer, who, finding every man's hand practically against
him, arranges his own life on the same basis, and wages war against the
small dealer or manufacturer below and the monopolist above, his one
passionate desire being to escape from the ranks of the first and find
his name enrolled among the last. He retains a number of negative
virtues. He is, as a rule, "an excellent provider" where his own family
is concerned, and he is kind beyond those limits if he has time for it.
He would not deliberately harm man or woman who serves him; but to keep
even with his competitors--if possible, to get beyond them--demands and
exhausts every energy, leaving none to spare for other purposes. Such
knowledge as comes from perpetual contact with the grasping, scheming
side of humanity is his in full. As the fortune grows and ease becomes
certain, a well-fed, well-groomed look replaces the eager sharpness of
the early days. He may at this stage turn to horses as the most positive
source of happiness. He is likely also, with or without this tendency,
to acquire a taste for art, measuring its value by what it costs, and to
plan for himself a house representing the utmost that money can buy.