Section Lxxvi. (appendix to Chapter Iv.)

The Domestic Servant System.

In most countries the servant system developed itself gradually out of serfdom, or of some condition of tutelage analogous thereto. This is seen most clearly in the long continuance of forced service, by which the subjects of the lord of the fee were compelled to allow their children to remain in the court of the lord as servants, either without any remuneration whatever, or for very low wages fixed by long continued custom.(454) Here, also, belongs the right of correction, so generally accorded to masters in former times. In the higher stages of civilization, the whole relation is wont to be resolved more and more into freedom of competition; and this process is wont to take place earliest and most strikingly in the cities. Where vast numbers of men are brought together, demand and supply of services meet most easily. The nearer in the course of this development the servant system approaches to piece-wages and day-wages, the shorter does the customary (presumptive) duration of the contract last,(455) the more voluntary is the period of leave-taking by both parties;(456) the more does the entire relation tend to be limited to single acts of service agreed upon in advance (§ 39), and the more frequently do both parties endeavor to supply the place of the domestic servants by workmen who receive wages and live outside of the family.(457) The extreme of this direction at present is the servant-institutes in cities, the more movable and more democratic character of which finds expression in this, that they have extended the use of personal services to a lower circle of consumers than could previously have thought of employing them. In English agriculture this transition was completed mainly in the third decade of this century. The change was unquestionably favorable to the improvement of the art of agriculture, but it was frequently damaging to the social relation existing between the rich and the poor in the country.(458) In Germany, the sale of the public domains, conscription and Landwehr duty have operated in this direction.(459) Hence it is, for instance, that in Prussia, the servants, in 1816, were 15.18 per cent. of the entire male population over 14 years of age, and 17.84 per cent. of the entire female population over 14 years of age. In 1861, on the other hand, there were only 11.88 and 12.93 per cent., respectively, while the number of day laborers and workmen, in the same time, increased from 16.29 per cent. males, and 10.87 per cent. females, to 20.95 and 16.65 per cent., respectively.(460) In most civilized countries, the grade of society from which servants are recruited grows lower and lower as the spirit of independence extends to the deeper strata of humanity.(461)

The servant class may continue a long time yet to be a school of development for those of the lower classes, who, ripe in body, are not intellectually independent; just as the duty of bearing arms has been a school of improvement for all male youth. Life-long servants are as seldom to be desired as life-long soldiers.

In most places, the long transition period from complete bondage to free competition was governed by a police system of wardship, which was very unfavorable to the servant class. Such especially was the provision that all young people of the lower classes, who could not expressly show that they were employed under the paternal roof or at some trade, should be compelled to seek some outside or inland work;(462) such also was the strict prohibition of “usurious” wage-claims, and the “decoying” of servants from their masters.(463) Besides, a great many provisions relating to servants, and based on views belonging to an older economic condition, were intended to throw obstacles in the way of farm hands and country servants(464) becoming servants in towns; and, on the other hand, to facilitate the speedy abandonment of service in all cases in which the servant desired to marry.(465) All these preferences in favor of one class of contractors, and at the cost of another, are radically opposed to the modern political spirit. The laws relating to servants are wont, in our day, to have but one object, the prevention, by registration with the police, of fraud and breach of contract, and of all strife and litigation by the legally formulating of the conditions which are very frequently tacitly understood.

The ideal of the relation of master and servant is attained when it is considered by both as a part of the life of a Christian family.(466) Hence, benevolence on the one side and devotedness on the other, fidelity on both sides, disinterested care for the present and future interests each of the other tanquam sua; and especially for each other’s eternal future. Whether this state of mutual feeling is best furthered by the patriarchal system, by a police system, or by free competition, it is scarcely possible to say. It may, however, be affirmed that it depends upon a mutual and continued denial of self not easy to attain. Where it really prevails, all the advantages of the piece-work system are obtained in a worthy and organic manner, and without its atomistic drawbacks.(467)