804 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the drudges, and the servile appendages of the classes who have 

 wealth, intelligence, and power. In domestic life these relations be- 

 come organized with the abject class at the base of the social struc- 

 ture. Improving agencies will obviously not take effect alike upon the 

 higher and lower elements. Many causes will operate powerfully to 

 maintain separate interests, to favor the superior class, and to hinder 

 their inferiors, so that servants will be the last to be reached by ele- 

 vating agencies. 



How slowly ameliorating changes in the domestic relations have 

 proceeded, and how long their worst features have survived, are shown 

 by the tenacity with which a vicious system of domestic servitude was 

 clung to even in this country. Multitudes still remember the order 

 of things in which half the country bought their servants from the 

 auction-block. That primitive condition in which the menial was a 

 merchantable chattel, with hardly more rights than a brute, continued 

 down to these times, and has been got rid of only in the present gen- 

 eration. The slave system could have lasted as long as it did only in 

 a form of society in which the menial class was low, degraded, and 

 without influence. And that the slave system has in turn widely re- 

 acted to promote the social debasement of the working-class there can 

 be no doubt. The slave system, of course, grew more and more anoma- 

 lous as the sense of justice and humanity strengthened among the 

 people i but we must not forget that slavery in this country was not 

 destroyed by the moral reprobation of the community. It was de- 

 fended as an historic and permanent order of society until it was 

 incidentally terminated by revolution. It is now easy to execrate its 

 atrocious forms, but we have by no means escaped from the baneful 

 influence of many of its ideas. The idea of an abject menial class is 

 still entertained as a part of the normal constitution of human society, 

 while the associations of a degrading and but recently abandoned sys- 

 tem are still potent for the debasement of those who continue in the 

 relations of domestic service. 



But, in spite of all this, the serving class, however disabled and de- 

 graded, will be found to have participated much in that general move- 

 ment which we term the progress of society. Civilization may have 

 been staggered by the " servant-girl problem," but it has not wholly 

 broken down before it. The mistress can no longer kill her perverse 

 domestic with impunity although she may often think this is a step 

 backward instead of forward. General tendencies have been at work 

 which have put an end to the ancient order in this respect. In the 

 early ages of domestic servitude, one of its incidents was the power 

 of the master over the life of the servant. This prerogative has 

 long since disappeared, though not because of the sixth command- 

 ment, or as a result of law reform, or the enactment of protective 

 legislation. It was the culminating effect of a succession of natural 

 causes, whose operation was gradual and extended over centuries. By 



