Missouri Botanical Gardes 
OUR 
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ery of America by Christopher Columbus. | 
When it came to “ servants/’ these States 
were more than made good. New York 
counted her 155,282 ; Pennsylvania, 81,233; 
Massachusetts, 37,464. 
This brief recital will probably suffice to 
show the inexpediency, in the present social 
condition of our people, of attempting to 
divide the class of domestic servants accord- 
ing to distinctions of occupation, which are 
certain to be affected where they do not 
exist, and disregarded quite as generally 
where they do exist. In the further course 
of this paper, this class, whether at 1870 or 
at i860, will, therefore, be treated as a 
whole, without discrimination of cook or 
chambermaid, butler or scullion, gorgeous 
flunky or simple drudge. Prior to the 
enumeration of 1870, it was an interesting 
subject of speculation whether the social 
and economical causes which had produced 
such marked effects upon the ways of busi- 
ness throughout the country, upon the gen- 
eral scale of expenditure, and upon the hab- 
its of domestic life, would be found to have 
increased materially the number of hired 
servants in families. At the South, indeed, 
where the negroes, who mainly supplied the 
domestic service of i860, had come to own 
themselves, and hence to be in a position not 
only to demand wages, but to take on airs ; 
where, moreover, the general impoverish- 
ment of the proprietoi; class, and the slow 
and painful recovery of industrial produc- 
tion necessitated the retrenchment of ex- 
penditure, it required no careful count of 
the people to make it certain that more per- 
sons, in proportion to population, were not 
employed in the offices of the household in 
1870 than at the earlier date. 
But of the Northern and Middle States, 
the reverse was reasonably to be assumed. 
Not only had rapid progress been made in 
the Upper Ten Thousand toward European 
standards of equipage and service, but it 
was generally claimed and admitted that the 
middle class of our population had made a 
decided movement in the same direction; 
that life was freer with us than it used to be, 
family expenditure more liberal, luxuries more 
widely diffused, assistance more readily com- 
manded in all departments, industrial or 
domestic. Few would have ventured to 
predict that the results of the Census 
would show that, while social require- 
ments have increased on every hand ; while 
the appetites and tastes of the household 
have been rendered more difficult and exact- 
ing by the, diversification of the national 
diet, and by the popularization of foreign 
fruits and spices, of condiments and game ; 
while we are everywhere taking on the sem- 
blance of greater ease and indulgence, — with 
these facts in view few would have thought 
the tendency of the age is not more and more 
to place servants in the houses of the people, 
or believed that, however it may be with the 
abodes of luxury and fashion, the wives and 
the mothers of the great middle class are 
discharging their daily duties, and keeping 
up their outward conformity to the demands 
of society, with a diminishing, rather than an 
increasing, body of hired help. Yet such is the 
fact, as revealed by the count of 1870. The 
sixteen free States in i860 showed 474,857 
domestic servants of all descriptions. The 
same States, ten years later, showed but 
570,054, being a gain of only 20 per cent. 
Meanwhile the aggregate population of these 
States had increased upward of 27 per cent. 
The States in which this relative decrease 
in the number of servants has been most 
marked, are the New England States, 
together with New York, New Jersey, and 
Pennsylvania. |#he Western and. North- 
western States, 6 n the other hand, have, 
without exception, increased the proportion 
of their domestic service largely since i860, 
showing that, while the commercial and 
manufacturing States are coming to feel the 
necessity of economizing in this direction 
of expenditure, the well-to-do inhabitants 
of the agricultural States are just beginning 
to indulge themselves somewhat freely in 
the luxury of being served and waited on. 
Abandoning now the retrospect, and 
grouping the States of the Union according 
to the facts of the present time, we shall in 
our further comparisons set the number of 
. domestic servants in each State, not against 
the total population, but against the number 
of families, as affording the best measure of 
the amount of service secured. 
Let us turn first to the old slave-breeding 
States. Here, in former times, the tendency 
to a plethora of domestic service was very 
marked. “ Niggers” were native and to the 
manor born. They represented no expendi- 
ture but that of the com and pork necessary 
to bring them to the age, and size, and 
strength to perform the arduous duties of 
lying around on the floor or in the sun, and 
answering an occasional call to some per- 
sonal service. In “ one of the first families ” 
cook had her legion of minor functionaries; 
the coachman was at the head of a little 
state ; every member of the family, from 
youngest to eldest, had his or her own body- 
01 234567 8 910 Missouri 
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