"Oh, I beg your pardon; I ought to have explained. By this time it had
become impossible, as it now is, to get American girls to take service
except on some such unusual terms as we have in a summer hotel; and the
domestics were already ignorant foreigners, fit for nothing else. In such
a place as this it isn't so bad. It is more as if the girls worked in a
shop or a factory. They command their own time, in a measure, their hours
are tolerably fixed, and they have one another's society. In a private
family they would be subject to order at all times, and they would have no
social life. They would be in the family, out not of it. American girls
understand this, and so they won't go out to service in the usual way.
Even in a summer hotel the relation has its odious aspects. The system of
giving fees seems to me degrading to those who have to take them. To offer
a student or a teacher a dollar for personal service--it isn't right, or I
can't make it so. In fact, the whole thing is rather anomalous with us.
The best that you can say of it is that it works, and we don't know what
else to do."

"But I don't see yet," said the Altrurian, "just why domestic service is
degrading in a country where all kinds of work are honored."

"Well, my dear fellow, I have done my best to explain. As I intimated
before, we distinguish; and in the different kinds of labor we distinguish
against domestic service. I dare say it is partly because of the loss of
independence which it involves. People naturally despise a dependant."

"Why?" asked the Altrurian, with that innocence of his which I was
beginning to find rather trying.

"Why?" I retorted. "Because it implies weakness."