Another suggestion of the same character is the importation of Chinese servants. While much has been said of the superiority of the Chinese as household employees,[287] and not a few housekeepers would be glad to see the restriction act repealed,[288] difficulties other than the present legislative and political ones stand in the way of adopting this policy. The Chinese, as well as the negroes, occupy in this country a social position inferior to that of Americans or Europeans. Gresham’s law may perhaps be applied to domestic service and the principle stated that superior and inferior labor cannot exist side by side—the inferior must drive out the superior. Unless employees of the lower social grade can be imported in such numbers as to meet every call for domestic servants, there must exist, as now, the discrepancy between supply and demand. The old struggle between free labor and slave labor must be repeated in miniature wherever the social chasm exists between two classes of laborers. The introduction to any considerable extent of Chinese servants would drive out European labor as that has in a measure driven out native born American service. As a means of promoting a better adjustment of the business relations between employer and employee, it is sometimes proposed that licenses should be granted domestic employees by municipal corporations. This plan, however, would be a violation of the principles underlying the granting of such licenses. A municipal body is not justified in granting a license to any employment or industry unless such occupation is objectionable in itself as entailing expense, or danger of expense on the part of the taxpayers, as the sale of intoxicating liquors; or unless it involves special use by non-taxpayers of city improvements made at the expense of the taxpayers, as in the case of cabmen; or unless it brings into competition with tax-paying industries trades which contribute nothing to the general treasury, as is true of travelling peddlers; or unless it brings special danger, as of fire in the case of theatrical companies. The license is a tax imposed in return for special risks incurred or privileges granted. Domestic service comes under none of these principles, and to place it under the care of municipal authorities as is not done with other occupations of its class would be to degrade it in an unjustifiable way. The license, when granted in accordance with a principle, is not more objectionable than an ordinary tax; if granted without principle, it becomes an obnoxious and tyrannical measure.