nt. The
demands of the Government for soldiers and for supplies threaten us with
a _labor famine_ in spite of the large immigration. In Europe labor is
scarce and in demand. Commerce, manufactures, colonization have outrun
the supply. Wages have doubled in England and in France within the last
twenty years, and are rising. With increase of wages comes always
decrease of subordination. The knowledge of reading, now becoming
general, and exercised almost exclusively in cheap and worthless
newspapers, and the progress of the democratic movement, which for good
or for evil is destined to extend itself over the whole earth, make the
working classes restless and discontented. They chafe under restraints
as unavoidable as illness or death. What floods of nonsense have we not
seen poured out about the conflict between labor and capital? It is the
old fable over again: the strife of the members against the belly.

Gradually has sprung up the feeling that it is degrading to be a
servant; a terrible lion in the path of the quiet housekeeper in search
of _assistants_. There may arise some day a purer and a wiser state of
society, wherein the relation of master and man will be satisfactory to
both. A merchant exercises a much sharper control over his clerk than
over any servant in his house, and it is cheerfully submitted to. The
soldier, who is worse paid and worse fed than a servant, is a mere
puppet in the hands of his officers, obliged to obey the nod of twenty
masters, and to do any work he may be ordered to, without the noble
privilege of 'giving notice;' and yet there is never any difficulty in
obtaining a reasonable supply of soldiers--because clerks and soldiers
do not think themselves degraded by their positions, and servants _do_.
It may be a prejudice, but it is one which drives hundreds of women, who
might be fat and comfortable, to starve themselves over needlework in
hovels; and often to prefer downright vice, if they can hope to conceal
it, to virtue and a home in a respectable family. Any logic, you
perceive, is quite powerless against a prejudice of this size and
strength.

But is it altogether a prejudice? Is it not a sound view of that
condition of life?

I confess that it has long been a matter of surprise to me that men
should be found willing to hire themselves out for domestic service in a
country where bread and meat may so easily be obtained in other ways,
and where even independent manual labor is so of