The popular toleration of domestic service is due to a misapplication of the theory that the family is the unit of society. This theory has, in the past, played an important part in social evolution by calling attention to and emphasizing the family relation. It has, however, led to many undemocratic practices. This has been not so much because of anything wrong with the theory, as because it has not been supported by a clear conception of the value of the individual life. Thus unsupported, it has, by allowing itself to become entangled with the theory that man is the logical representative of the family in society, taken from woman the incentive to, and the opportunity for, independent action, and has also been responsible for the grossest infringements of her property rights. Thus unsupported, too, it has, by emphasizing the family as an institution, rather than the right of the individual to the family relation, led to the condoning of the maintenance of certain families at the expense of the freedom of individuals to enter into the family relation. Thus in slave times the family connections of the blacks were ruthlessly shattered in order to provide the service that was thought necessary to preserve the family life of the whites. A better working theory, and one that is less likely to lead to undemocratic practices, is the one that sees in the individual the unit, and in the family relation one of the most important means for promoting his happiness and social usefulness. Such a view of the value of the individual and of the importance of the family relation leads logically to the conception of the obligation of the individual who accepts the privileges of the family relation so to adjust his life to the lives of the other members of his family group as to preserve their individual freedom, and to coöperate with them in the effort so to adjust the group to the social order as not to interfere with the freedom of other individuals to enter into and to maintain the family relation. In the light of this view of society, domestic service looms up most undemocratic. It is so ordered as to bring a combination of benefits to a privileged class. This combination consists of the opportunity to live in retirement with those to whom they are bound by kinship or affection or by both, and thus to transform the places where they eat and sleep into homes, and the privilege of getting rid of the multiple activities which the maintenance of separate homes involves, the cooking, cleaning, etc., and of being able to engage in activities of their choice, and to secure leisure for social intercourse.