Curiously enough nearly forty years earlier Madame d’Arusmont had written of friends who thought of coming to America and urged, “Let them by all means be advised against bringing servants with them. Foreign servants are here, without doubt, the worst; they neither understand the work which the climate renders necessary, nor are willing to do the work which they did elsewhere.”[169] She, like all travellers, found that however subservient domestic servants might be when they left Europe, the first contact with the democratic atmosphere of America wrought a sudden change; subserviency disappeared, and the servant boasted of his equality with all. She explains that those educated in America perceive the difference placed between the gentleman and the laborer by education and conditions, but the foreigner taking a superficial view of the matter sees no difference.[170] This second period in the history of domestic service continued from about the time of the Revolution until 1850. It was the product of the rapid growth of democratic ideas fostered by the Revolution and the widespread influence of the French philosophical ideas of the latter part of the eighteenth century. It was a period chiefly characterized by social and industrial democracy, as the political system was also in its spirit democratic. This democratic industrial spirit showed itself in the universal use at the North of the term “help,” in the absence of liveries and all distinguishing marks of service, in the intolerance on the part of both employer and employee of servility and subserviency of manner, in the bridging of the social chasm between master and servant as long as the free employment of native born Americans continued, and in the hearty spirit of willingness with which service was performed. The results of this democratic régime were the difficulty of securing help, since new avenues of independent work were opening out to women and the class of indented servants had disappeared; the lack of all differentiation in household work, since the servant conferred a favor in “going out to work” and did what she knew how to do without troubling to learn new kinds of work; and, most important, the subtle change that the democratic atmosphere everywhere wrought in the servants who came from Europe. This condition of free, democratic, native born white service at the North and compulsory slave service at the South continued practically unchanged until about the middle of the century. Between 1850 and 1870 four important political changes occurred which revolutionized the personnel in domestic service and consequently its character. These changes brought about the third period in the history of the subject.