We have seen the wardrobe of a New England woman, presumably one of fashion, yet not of notable rank. Here was a great change from the era when the majority of women wore homespun and furnished themselves with the material which they wore as well as fashioned the garments with their own hands. Of course there was still, and long continued to be, an element that preserved the household traditions of the earlier settlers, and thus the individuality of the life; but it had come to be in the minority. The New England woman, taken from the representative class, no longer whirled her spinning wheel and wove the garments for her wearing and that of her family; she looked to her goodman to import these things from England in the vessels which were now regularly arriving in the home ports. Another sign of the changed conditions of the New England home was the matter of domestic service. In 1687, according to the writer of _The Diary of a French Refugee_ in Boston, there was "absolute Need of Hired Help;" but it was less household servants than field hands to whom the author was referring. Later, however, we find Hugh Peters, of Salem, writing to an acquaintance in Boston, "Wee haue heard of a diuidence of women & children in the baye & would be glad of a share viz: a young woman or girle & a boy if you thinke goode." This points to domestic service, as does a later letter from the same source, in which he says, "My wife desires my daughter to send to Hanna that was her mayde now at Charlestowne to know if she would dwell with us, for truly wee are now so destutute (having now but an Indian) that wee know not what to do." Later yet, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, we find in the journals frequent advertisements of runaway servants, mostly Indians. There was also negro slavery in the northern colonies, though it was never entirely accepted as an institution,--not from any moral scruples, but because of inexpediency and poverty. In 1645, Emanuel Downing suggested the exchange of Indian captives for negroes, and said, "I doe not see how wee can thrive untill wee gett a stock of slaves sufficient to doe all our business;" but this probably referred to field hands, though he later wrote to England for "godly e skylful paynestakeing girles" as servants, and in default of these he at last fairly inaugurated the system of slavery which existed for a time in New England. There were white slaves as well as black in the northern colonies, and this infamous custom helped to solve the problem of domestic service.