Another economic difficulty lies in the fact that so much of the service is largely personal in character, and that, therefore, payments are regulated by personal feelings and not by a recognized standard of payment. The result of this is the obnoxious system of fees--a system difficult to be done away with as long as employees expect to receive them. Fees could be abolished by the action of the employers, but as long as they prefer to have their employees paid by other persons--a practice that would be tolerated by no other class of employers--the initiative will not come from them. Fees could be abolished by the action of the individuals disposed to give them, but so long as men selfishly believe that money ought to purchase privileges that are not rights, the initiative will not come from them. Fees could be abolished by the concerted action of employees, but so long as they are ignorant of economic principles and indifferent to the social results of the system, the initiative will not come from them. But one of the hopeful signs of the times is the recent statement that in Paris waiters are coming to appreciate the fact that fees ultimately must mean smaller wages, since employers not only refuse to pay their employees but demand a certain percentage of the fees received. The movement among the waiters to refuse fees and to insist on wages paid by employers is full of promise. What, then, are the conditions under which improvement in domestic service is possible? First of all must come that attitude of mind that is willing to recognize not only the impossibility of separating domestic service from other parts of the household life, but still more the impossibility of separating the economic conditions within the household from the economic conditions without, a willingness to give up _a priori_ reasoning in regard to domestic employments and to study the historical and economic development of the household. All superficial treatment of the question must fail of securing the desired results, and all treatment must be superficial that does not rest on the solid basis of economic history and theory. Granted, then, the existence of economic conditions in the household, the method of procedure is the same as in all other fields of action. In medicine the first step is to diagnose the case; in law, to take evidence; in mathematics, to state the problem; in science, to marshal the facts. No set of _a priori_ principles can be assumed in the household with the expectation that the household will conform to them. Investigation to-day stands at the door of every entrance into a new field and bars the way to any attempt to force a passage without its aid. The household has been slow to accept the inexorable fact that it must demolish its Chinese wall of exclusion and throw open its facts to investigation, but this is the inevitable end.