nd nervous strain combine to make essential the help of
a servant in the home. But the American maid is too independent and
high-minded to make a household servant, and the American matron in
the main has not learned how to be a just and considerate mistress.
The result has been an influx of immigrant labor by servants who are
untrained and inefficient, yet soon learn to make successful demands
upon the employer for larger wages and more privileges because they
are so essential to the comfort and even the existence of the family.
Family life is increasingly at the mercy of the household employee. It
is not strange that many women prefer the comfort and relief of an
apartment or hotel, that many more hesitate to assume the
responsibility of marriage and children, preferring to undertake their
own self-support, and that not a few seek divorce.

75. =Family Desertion.=--While the burden of housekeeping rests upon
the wife, there are corresponding weights and annoyances that fall
upon the man. Business pressure and professional responsibility are
wearying; he, too, feels the strain upon his nerves. When he returns
home at evening he is easily disturbed by a worried wife, tired and
fretful children, and the unmistakable atmosphere of gloom and
friction that permeates many homes. He contrasts his unenviable
position with the freedom and good-fellowship of the club, and chafes
under the family bonds. In many cases he breaks them and sets himself
free by way of the divorce court. The course of men of the upper class
is paralleled by that of the working man or idler who meets similar
conditions in a home where the servant does not enter, but where there
is a surplus of children. He finds frequent relief in the saloon, and
eventually escapes by deserting his family altogether, instead of
having recourse to the law. This practice of desertion, which is the
poor man's method of divorce, is one of the continual perplexities of
organized charity, and constitutes one of the serious problems of
family life. There are gradations in the practice of desertion, and it
is not confined to men. The social butterfly who neglects her children
to flutter here and there is a temporary deserter, little less
culpable than the lazy husband who has an attack of _wanderlust_
before the birth of each child, and who returns to enjoy the comforts
of home as soon as his wife is again able to assume the function of
bread-winner for the growing family. From