As for the particular line of life which domestic service offers under modern circumstances, it is not too much to say that it is, as a rule, very demoralising, more especially for the men. And its demoralising tendency increases in proportion to the size of the establishment. The single general servant lives a life of hard work but genuine service on four to eight shillings a week, often living in friendly relations with master or mistress, and really lifting from them the burden of necessary domestic duties which they with limited incomes and professional work of their own cannot possibly find time to perform; and this remains true in other small households. In the large house the faithful old family servant, who is more of a friend than a servitor, is rare in these days of ostentation. The butler, on wages of fifty to sixty shillings a week, which together with board and lodging represents from £250 to £300 a year, has a life of leisure, ease, and excessive comfort, seldom having to exert himself even up to his limited capacities. Male house-servants are often chosen for their looks; their work is very light physically, they are overfed, and being under-educated, can hardly be blamed for becoming demoralised. These able-bodied men, whose muscles, if not their minds, might be devoted to some really serviceable purpose, are still increasing in numbers. Over 25,000 more male servants have got employment in the last ten years, the total number now being 227,995. Even deducting the single indoor servant, the single coachman or gardener, this means a large increase of ornamental male attendants. Female servants are becoming more difficult to secure in the higher grades, because the class of women from which they are drawn value their liberty and are not so ready to sacrifice it for food and comforts. In fact, they are showing signs of impatience of control, and of preferring the risky though exhilarating struggle of independence. But still large retinues of men and women exist solely employed in keeping up huge houses to satisfy the vanity and minister to the comfort of a comparatively few rich people. No work of a more hopelessly barren, profitless, and, indeed, degrading character could be found for them. A system of tips deprives their smallest acts of what might be an obliging and disinterested intention. Arrangements are organised with tradesmen to defraud the employers in what is thought a perfectly legitimate way; the actual waste of food is appalling, and by extras, gratuities, perquisites, commissions, and pickings a considerable amount is added to the wages of the upper servants. In these large establishments immorality exists more as a rule than as an exception, but it can be kept secret, for these communities of private servants--like everything else connected with the lives of the rich--cannot be made the subject of investigation.