on, there was "absolute Need of Hired
Help;" but it was less household servants than field hands to whom the
author was referring. Later, however, we find Hugh Peters, of Salem,
writing to an acquaintance in Boston, "Wee haue heard of a diuidence of
women & children in the baye & would be glad of a share viz: a young
woman or girle & a boy if you thinke goode." This points to domestic
service, as does a later letter from the same source, in which he says,
"My wife desires my daughter to send to Hanna that was her mayde now at
Charlestowne to know if she would dwell with us, for truly wee are now
so destutute (having now but an Indian) that wee know not what to do."
Later yet, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, we find in the
journals frequent advertisements of runaway servants, mostly Indians.
There was also negro slavery in the northern colonies, though it was
never entirely accepted as an institution,--not from any moral scruples,
but because of inexpediency and poverty. In 1645, Emanuel Downing
suggested the exchange of Indian captives for negroes, and said, "I doe
not see how wee can thrive untill wee gett a stock of slaves sufficient
to doe all our business;" but this probably referred to field hands,
though he later wrote to England for "godly e skylful paynestakeing
girles" as servants, and in default of these he at last fairly
inaugurated the system of slavery which existed for a time in New
England. There were white slaves as well as black in the northern
colonies, and this infamous custom helped to solve the problem of
domestic service.

That there was trouble with servants in those old days, even as in these
present, is amply attested by the records; but it was possible to resort
to more drastic measures than are now feasible. We read that at
Hartford, "Susan Coles for her rebellious cariedge towards her mistris
is to be sent to the house of correction and be kept to hard labour and
course dyet, to be brought forth the next Lecture Day to be publiquely
corrected and so to be corrected weekly until Order be given to the
contrary." This was in the early times, and many matrons of later days,
even as many now, must have longed for the return of the laws which
enabled them to keep their servants in order. Mary Dudley has set forth
her experience in this matter in a letter to her mother, Madame
Winthrop, whom she had asked to send her "a goode girle, a strong lusty
servant, used to all kind of work who wo