An indication of these various changes in the condition of domestic service during these different periods is seen in the history of the word “servant.” As used in England and in law at the time of the settlement of the American colonies it signified any employee, and no odium was in any way attached to the word.[180] But five things led to its temporary disuse: first, the reproach connected with the word through the character and social rank of the redemptioners; second, the fact that when the redemptioners gave place at the South to negro slaves the word “servant” was transferred to this class,[181] and this alone was sufficient to prevent its application to whites;[182] third, the levelling tendencies that always prevail in a new country; fourth, the literal interpretation of the preamble of the Declaration of Independence; and fifth, the new social and political theories resulting from the introduction of French philosophical ideas. At the North the word “help” as applied especially to women superseded the word “servant,” while at the South the term “servant” was applied only to the negro. From the time of the Revolution, therefore, until about 1850 the word “servant” does not seem to have been generally applied in either section to white persons of American birth.[183] Since the introduction of foreign labor at the middle of the century, the word “servant” has again come into general use as applied to white employees, not, however, as a survival of the old colonial word, but as a reintroduction from Europe of a term signifying one who performs so-called menial labor, and it is restricted in its use, except in a legal sense, to persons who perform domestic service. The present use of the word has come not only from the almost exclusive employment of foreigners in domestic service, but also because of the increase of wealth and consequent luxury in this country, the growing class divisions, and the adoption of many European habits of living and thinking and speaking.[184] These simple historical facts are one explanation of the unwillingness of American women to engage in work stigmatized by an offensive term applied to no other class of laborers. In studying the question of domestic service, therefore, the fact cannot be overlooked that certain historical influences have affected its conditions; that political revolutions have changed its personnel, and industrial development its mobility. It is as impossible to dream of restoring the former condition of household service as it is of restoring former household employments, and neither is to be desired. In each case the question is one of preparing for the next step in the process of evolution, not of retrograding toward a condition impossible to restore. Any attempt to secure a change for the better in the present condition of domestic service must be ineffective if it does not take into consideration these historic aspects of the subject. CHAPTER V