But other political influences more subtle and possibly more far-reaching in their effect have been at work. Our loose naturalization laws, and the determining of the qualifications for the right of suffrage by as many standards as there are states, have made the enormous number of men coming to this country annually an easy prey to scheming politicians and demagogues. The labor vote, the Irish vote, the German vote, have been flattered and sought by party managers until the wage-earning man feels that “like Atlas of old he carries the world on his shoulders.” If the laboring man feels the weight of the world, his wife and daughter believe that some share of the burden rests on them. The democratic tendencies of the country, the political practices of the day, have everywhere broken down the high wall of separation between employer and employee. They are subversive even in the household of that patriarchal relationship that has been driven from every stronghold but this. While the political movements of the century have thus changed the personnel of domestic service in America, the development of the material resources of the country has affected its status. Before the present century employees of every kind were in a sense stationary. This was due partly to the influence of the English poor laws; partly to the system of indenture which bound a servant for seven, five, or four years, and to the system of slavery which bound the servant for life; partly to the system of apprenticeship which made the servant a member of the family of his master; partly to the custom prevailing in the country districts and small towns for unmarried workmen in all industries to board with their employers; and partly to the lack of facilities for cheap and easy means of communication between different sections of the country. There was no mobility of labor as regards either employment or place of employment—a fact true alike of domestic service and of other occupations. But this condition of affairs gradually changed. As has been seen, indented servants disappeared and every employee was free to break as well as to make an engagement for service. The establishment of the factory system of manufactures and the consequent substitution of mechanical for skilled processes of labor broke down the system of apprenticeship, and workmen of every occupation, except domestic service, ceased to be members of the families of their employers. A mobility of labor was made possible such as could not have been secured under the old system. At a later time the great era of railroad development and similar enterprises gave opportunity for a certain mobility as regards place of employment. The tide of western emigration due to the discovery of gold and the cheapness of western land caused much shifting of labor among the non-capitalist class, and this was increased as means of communication were rendered more easy. The establishment of companies to encourage foreign