land States; but the causes assigned
therefor, to follow Madam Knight's example, need not be "Related by a
Female Pen."

III

DOMESTIC SERVICE

It is plainly evident that in a country where land was to be had for the
asking, fuel for the cutting, corn for the planting and harvesting, and
game and fish for the least expenditure of labor, no man would long
serve for another, and any system of reliable service indoors or afield
must fail. Whether the colonists came to work or not, they had to in
order to live, for domestic service was soon in the most chaotic state.
Women were forced to be notable housekeepers; men were compelled to
attend to every detail of masculine labor in their households and on
their farms, thus acquiring and developing a "handiness" at all trades,
which has become a Yankee trait.

The question of adequate and proper household service soon became a
question of importance and of painful consideration in the new land.
Rev. Ezekiel Rogers wrote most feelingly in 1656 on this subject:

"Much ado have I with my own family, hard to get a servant glad of
catechizing or family duties. I had a rare blessing of servants in
Yorkshire, and those I brought over were a blessing, but the young
brood doth much afflict me."

The Massachusetts colonists had attempted even before starting, to meet
and simplify the servant question by rigidly excluding any corrupt
element. They even sent back to England boys who had been unruly on
shipboard. But the number of penalties imposed on servants during the
early years are a lasting record of the affliction caused by the young
brood.

All the early travellers speak of the lack of good servants in the new
land. The "Diary of a French Refugee in Boston," in 1687, says: "There
is an absolute Need of Hired help;" and that savages were employed in
the fields at eighteen-pence a day. This latter form of service was
naturally the first way of solving the vexed question. The captives in
war were divided in lots and assigned to housekeepers. We find even
gentle Roger Williams asking for "one of the drove of Adam's degenerate
seed" as a slave. Hugh Peters, of Salem, wrote to a Boston friend: "Wee
haue heard of a diuidence of women & children in the baye & would bee
glad of a share viz.: a young woman or girle & a boy if you thinke
good." Two years later he wrote: "My wife desires my daughter to send to
Hanna that was her maid now at Charlestowne to kn