immigration with the object of developing the material resources of the country was another weight in the scale in favor of greater mobility of labor as regards both place and employment. The abolition of slavery removed the last important legal barrier against perfect mobility. All of these industrial movements have been important factors in changing the condition and character of domestic service. It is true, in a general sense, that every great change in economic conditions affects all occupations. But domestic service has through these causes been affected in certain specific ways. The employee who disliked housework, but to whom no other occupation had been open, could go into a factory or a mill, since no time was consumed in learning the simple processes of mechanical work. Every invention formed the basis for a new occupation. Domestic service had a hundred competitors in a field where before the era of inventions it had stood alone. Moreover, these new occupations required little skill, no preparation, and possessed the charm of novelty. Again, the rapid development of railroad interests, with the increase of competition and consequent lowering of passenger rates, often influenced families emigrating to the West to take with them their trusted employees. The same fact made it possible for women seeking new employments to go from place to place in ways unthought of in the early part of the century. In view of these changed and changing economic conditions it may be said that the immobility of labor, which has seemed to some economists so great an obstacle to the industrial advancement of women,[178] has practically ceased to exist in the case of domestic service. In fact, industrial development has so far changed conditions that the problem has now come to be how to make this form of labor not more mobile, but more stable. One illustration of this is found in the fact that when seven hundred domestic employees represented on the schedules were asked how many of them had ever been engaged in any other occupation, twenty-seven per cent replied that they had. The mobility as to the place of labor was found to be even greater. Twenty-seven per cent of the native born employees did not reside in the same state in which they were born, and adding to these the number of foreign born, it was found that sixty-eight per cent did not reside in their native country or state. Moreover, this statement is below the truth as it does not take into account the number of changes made within a single year and refers to only one change from place of birth to present residence.[179]