character of its inhabitants, and the personal relations of mistress and maid, something more is involved for the employer than “kind treatment” and personal consideration. The belief has apparently been general that these perplexities are confined to our own country and that the adoption of English or German or French methods of dealing with the subject would remove them all. The question is undoubtedly a less difficult one in England than it is in this country, since it is not complicated by differences of race, religion, interests, and traditions, by foreign immigration, and possibly not by the same ease with which labor is transferred from one employment to another, while tradition and social custom have favored country rather than city life and have thus eliminated one of our difficulties. But with all these obstacles removed, DeFoe’s _Behaviour of Servants_ shows that even in England the question is an old one, and current literature indicates that it is far from settled.[241] If the question is asked in Germany, “Is it easy to secure good domestic servants here?” the almost invariable answer is, “It is very difficult, almost impossible.” The reasons for the difficulty are precisely the same as in America—the attractions of city life, the competition of shops and factories, the growth of democratic ideas, the difficulty of securing, in spite of the system of service books, unimpeachable recommendations, and the spirit of restlessness that everywhere prevails among the working classes. In some of the higher classes, where something of the old patriarchal relationship between mistress and maid still exists, there is apparently no difficulty; but each year these classes become more and more undermined by the social democratic spirit, and must in time be affected by the same conditions that bring perplexity to other classes. Yet it is true in Germany as in America that servants seeking places are always to be found, that intelligence offices are crowded with applicants for work, and that an army of incompetents is always at hand. In France the problem is the same. It varies in details; the proportion of men employed in housework is far greater than in America, England, or Germany, servility of manner is not expected as in England, and waste of material is less common than in America. But fundamentally the conditions are the same as elsewhere.