But, if the upper servants could not escape to modern, industrial conditions, how much the more did they press down on the bodies and souls of 700,000 washerwomen and household drudges,—­ignorant, unskilled offal of a millionaire industrial system.  Their pay was the lowest and their hours the longest of all workers.  The personal degradation of their work is so great that any white man of decency would rather cut his daughter’s throat than let her grow up to such a destiny.  There is throughout the world and in all races no greater source of prostitution than this grade of menial service, and the Negro race in America has largely escaped this destiny simply because its innate decency leads black women to choose irregular and temporary sexual relations with men they like rather than to sell themselves to strangers.  To such sexual morals is added (in the nature of self-defense) that revolt against unjust labor conditions which expresses itself in “soldiering,” sullenness, petty pilfering, unreliability, and fast and fruitless changes of masters.

Indeed, here among American Negroes we have exemplified the last and worst refuge of industrial caste.  Menial service is an anachronism,—­the refuse of mediaeval barbarism.  Whey, then, does it linger?  Why are we silent about it?  Why in the minds of so many decent and up-seeing folks does the whole Negro problem resolve itself into the matter of their getting a cook or a maid?

No one knows better than I the capabilities of a system of domestic service at its best.  I have seen children who were spiritual sons and daughters of their masters, girls who were friends of their mistresses, and old servants honored and revered.  But in every such case the Servant had transcended the Menial, the Service had been exalted above the Wage.  Now to accomplish this permanently and universally, calls for the same revolution in household help as in factory help and public service.  While organized industry has been slowly making its help into self-respecting, well-paid men, and while public service is beginning to call for the highest types of educated and efficient thinkers, domestic service lags behind and insists upon seeking to evolve the best types of men from the worst conditions.

The cause of this perversity, to my mind, is twofold.  First, the ancient high estate of Service, now pitifully fallen, yet gasping for breath; secondly, the present low estate of the outcasts of the world, peering with blood-shot eyes at the gates of the industrial heaven.

The Master spoke no greater word than that which said:  “Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your servant!” What is greater than Personal Service!  Surely no social service, no wholesale helping of masses of men can exist which does not find its effectiveness and beauty in the personal aid of man to man.  It is the purest and holiest of duties.  Some mighty glimmer of this truth survived in those who made the First Gentlemen of