In most countries the servant system developed itself gradually out of serfdom, or of some condition of tutelage analogous thereto. This is seen most clearly in the long continuance of forced service, by which the subjects of the lord of the fee were compelled to allow their children to remain in the court of the lord as servants, either without any remuneration whatever, or for very low wages fixed by long continued custom.(454) Here, also, belongs the right of correction, so generally accorded to masters in former times. In the higher stages of civilization, the whole relation is wont to be resolved more and more into freedom of competition; and this process is wont to take place earliest and most strikingly in the cities. Where vast numbers of men are brought together, demand and supply of services meet most easily. The nearer in the course of this development the servant system approaches to piece-wages and day-wages, the shorter does the customary (presumptive) duration of the contract last,(455) the more voluntary is the period of leave-taking by both parties;(456) the more does the entire relation tend to be limited to single acts of service agreed upon in advance (§ 39), and the more frequently do both parties endeavor to supply the place of the domestic servants by workmen who receive wages and live outside of the family.(457) The extreme of this direction at present is the servant-institutes in cities, the more movable and more democratic character of which finds expression in this, that they have extended the use of personal services to a lower circle of consumers than could previously have thought of employing them. In English agriculture this transition was completed mainly in the third decade of this century. The change was unquestionably favorable to the improvement of the art of agriculture, but it was frequently damaging to the social relation existing between the rich and the poor in the country.(458) In Germany, the sale of the public domains, conscription and _Landwehr_ duty have operated in this direction.(459) Hence it is, for instance, that in Prussia, the servants, in 1816, were 15.18 per cent. of the entire male population over 14 years of age, and 17.84 per cent. of the entire female population over 14 years of age. In 1861, on the other hand, there were only 11.88 and 12.93 per cent., respectively, while the number of day laborers and workmen, in the same time, increased from 16.29 per cent. males, and 10.87 per cent. females, to 20.95 and 16.65 per cent., respectively.(460) In most civilized countries, the grade of society from which servants are recruited grows lower and lower as the spirit of independence extends to the deeper strata of humanity.(461)