One other general difficulty is the assumption that any improvement in domestic service must mean putting the domestic employee on a plane of absolute equality with the employer. Yet nothing could be farther from the truth than this. It is doubtful whether equality ever meant either in America or in France what the rhetorical phrases of the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of the Rights of Man would on the surface seem to imply. Certainly to-day we interpret equality to mean that all persons should have the opportunity of making of themselves all that is possible; to jump at the conclusion that reform in domestic service means subscription to the literal interpretation of the preamble of the Declaration of Independence is to make an unwarranted assumption. If, however, we were to accept the doctrine of equality, it would be with an appreciation of what it involves. The establishment of social equality would sometimes mean the elevation of the employer to the natural social and moral position of the employee. Our present social status is well characterized by the late Lawrence Oliphant in “The Tender Recollections of Irene Macgillicuddy,” where the heroine describes her mother, suddenly elevated in the social scale, as being very democratic toward all those who were socially above her and very aristocratic toward all those who were socially below her. It is specious, not genuine, democracy that to-day blocks the progress of improvement in domestic service. These are general conditions that confront any and all attempts to put the household on a more reasonable basis. Not less serious are the specific economic conditions existing in the household. One of these is the truck system of wages. In every other occupation the truck system has disappeared; formerly the teacher boarded around, the minister received an annual donation party, and the tailor and the carpenter shared the home of the master workman. The more recent attempt to pay employees in part in orders for household supplies on an establishment kept by the head of a factory or a mill has met with the most bitter protest. The truck system of payment in general industry is antiquated and disadvantageous to both parties of the labor contract. But in the household it is accepted as one of the foreordained provisions of the household, and meets with neither protest nor objection.