on as they
have laid by a little money; some form of independence which shall
give them a home of their own is constantly in mind. Families look
forward to the buying of landed homesteads, and the scattered brothers
and sisters work awhile in domestic service to gain the common fund
for the purpose; your seamstress intends to become a dressmaker, and
take in work at her own house; your cook is pondering a marriage with
the baker, which shall transfer her toils from your cooking-stove to
her own. Young women are eagerly rushing into every other employment,
till female trades and callings are all overstocked. We are
continually harrowed with tales of the sufferings of distressed
needlewomen, of the exactions and extortions practiced on the frail
sex in the many branches of labor and trade at which they try their
hands; and yet women will encounter all these chances of ruin and
starvation rather than make up their minds to permanent domestic
service. Now what is the matter with domestic service? One would
think, on the face of it, that a calling which gives a settled home, a
comfortable room, rent-free, with fire and lights, good board and
lodging, and steady, well-paid wages, would certainly offer more
attractions than the making of shirts for tenpence, with all the risks
of providing one's own sustenance and shelter.

I think it is mainly from the want of a definite idea of the true
position of a servant under our democratic institutions that domestic
service is so shunned and avoided in America, that it is the very last
thing which an intelligent young woman will look to for a living. It
is more the want of personal respect toward those in that position
than the labors incident to it which repels our people from it. Many
would be willing to perform these labors, but they are not willing to
place themselves in a situation where their self-respect is hourly
wounded by _the implication of a degree of inferiority which does not
follow any kind of labor or service in this country but that of the
family_.

There exists in the minds of employers an unsuspected spirit of
superiority, which is stimulated into an active form by the resistance
which democracy inspires in the working class. Many families think of
servants only as a necessary evil, their wages as exactions, and all
that is allowed them as so much taken from the family; and they seek
in every way to get from them as much and to give them as little as
possible. The