Yet domestic service is the only employment in which economic laws are so openly defied and all questions connected with it settled on the personal basis. No manufacturer can from charitable motives double the wages ordinarily paid to unskilled labor without being called to account for it by competing manufacturers, nor can he reduce unduly the wages of his employees without being held responsible for his course by the employees of other establishments, nor can he prolong by one fourth of an hour the daily period of labor without overstepping his legal privileges. Within certain narrow limits he has freedom, but competition, labor organizations, and the arm of the law combine to keep him within these limits. Before domestic service is freed from all the difficulties that attend it there must be a more widespread recognition of the responsibility of the individual employer to those outside his own household.[234] Five general classes of perplexing conditions have been suggested. All of them are independent of the personal characteristics and habits of employer and employee and of the personal relationship that exists between them. They do not take into account the fact that throughout the South and wherever negroes are employed in the household the housekeeper must be ever on the alert to guard against dishonesty and immorality on the part of these employees, that intemperance has been found a besetting sin of cooks and coachmen irrespective of race and nationality, that many agree with Mr. Joseph Jefferson when he says, “I am satisfied that domestic melancholy sets in with the butler. He is the melodramatic villain of society.” They do not consider the tendencies encountered here as elsewhere towards indifference, idleness, laziness, low ideals and standards, insubordination, and a desire to obtain much for nothing.[235] They do not include lack of harmony in the personal relations between employees in the same household,[236] the constant friction that necessarily arises from the presence of a stranger in the family, the question of compatibility of disposition between the mistress and the maid, the feeling between employees and the children of the household. They are as prone to trouble a good mistress as a poor one, they are independent of knowledge of household affairs, of housekeeping experience, of good or ill treatment of employees, of any personal element whatever in employer or employee. They are difficulties apparently inherent in the present system of domestic service. It is of interest to note the opinion of housekeepers on this point. The question, “Have you found it difficult to secure good domestic servants?” was answered with the following result: