why, things would stop being crooked and folks would get along well
enough. Don't you think so?"

How far the energetic speaker had solved the problem must be left to the
reader, for whom there still certain unconsidered phases, all making
part of the arraignment, scouted by those who are served, but more and
more distinct and formidable in the mind of the server.

CHAPTER TWENTIETH.

MORE PROBLEMS OF DOMESTIC SERVICE.

Though the testimony given in the preceding chapter on this topic
includes the chief objection to be made by the class of workers who
would seem to be most benefited by accepting household service, there
remain still one or two phases seldom mentioned, but forming an
essential portion of the argument against it. They belong, not to the
order we have had under consideration, but to that below it from which
the mass of domestic servants is recruited, and with which the
housekeeper must most often deal.

The phases encountered here are born of the conditions of life in the
cities and large towns; and denied as they may be by quiet householders
whose knowledge of life is bounded by their own walls, or walls
enclosing neighbors of like mind, they exist and face at once all who
look below the surface. The testimony of the class itself might be open
to doubt. The testimony of the physicians whose work lies among them, or
in the infirmaries to which they come, cannot be impugned. Shirk or deny
facts as we may, it is certain that in the great cities, save for the
comparatively small proportion of quiet homes where old methods still
prevail, household service has become synonymous with the worst
degradation that comes to woman. Women who have been in service, and
remained in it contentedly until marriage, unite in saying that things
have so changed that only here and there is a young girl safe, and that
domestic service is the cover for more licentiousness than can be found
in any other trade in which women are at work.

Incredible as this statement at first appears, the statistics of
hospitals and in infirmaries confirm it, and the causes are not far to
seek. Household service has passed from the hands of Americans into
those of the Irish first, and then a proportion of every European
nation. So long as the supply came to us entirely from abroad we were
comparatively safe. If the experience of the new arrival had been solely
under thatched roof and on clay floors, at least sun could visit them
an