Mr. A. E. Bateman considers it impossible to state, for England, what the movement of wages in domestic service has been. _Journal of the Royal Statistical Society_, LXI., 264-265. [362] An account of the protest against this on the part of the “Amalgamated Waiters’ Society” is given by the London correspondent of _The Evening Post_ (New York) in the issue of December 10, 1900. [363] A writer in _Le Matin_ (Paris) of April 15, 1900, urges the formation of a society each member of which shall pledge himself not to give fees. [364] Mr. William Clarke, in _The Social Future of England_, sums up the character of domestic service in England in saying: “It is true that English middle-class service is bad, and even growing worse, and this will continue so long as factory labor is preferred to domestic service. But there is probably no country where the wealthy can secure such efficient and fairly honest service in the butler, valet, lady’s maid, and housekeeper lines as in England.”—_The Contemporary Review_, December, 1900. The historical question whether the character of the service has ever been any better than it is at present must also remain unanswered for the same reason. Pandolfini in _Il Governo della Famiglia_ finds the philosophical explanation of poor service in Italy during the fifteenth century in the tendency of servants to seek their own interests rather than those of their masters—an explanation limited by neither time nor place. All literature goes to show that our own age is not alone in finding it difficult to secure those who will “carry the message to Garcia.” [365] _Barber of Seville_, I., 2. [366] The employer as a rule commands absolutely the time of the employee; for example, in Germany the employee spends her time in knitting for the family, in working out of doors, or in similar ways. The hours everywhere seemed to me much longer than those required in America, largely owing to the lateness of the evening meal, which is universally dinner in France, Italy, and England. [367] The lack of elevators in even large apartment houses, the necessity of storing fuel—unless bought in small quantities—in the cellar, the absence of a common heating system, no arrangements for carrying water to every room and the difficulty of securing an adequate supply of hot water, the necessity of daily marketing, the little use of ice, the punctiliousness with which the top box on the top shelf of the closet must be dusted, especially in Germany and in Holland, the endless scrubbing of floors and stairs and polishing of brass and copper, the use of candles and kerosene in private houses and even in large pensions and hotels,—these are but suggestions of ways in which domestic service is much harder than it is in America.