The existence of such a class is a fact peculiar to American society,
a plain result of the new principles involved in the doctrine of
universal equality.
When the colonists first came to this country, of however mixed
ingredients their ranks might have been composed, and however imbued
with the spirit of feudal and aristocratic ideas, the discipline of
the wilderness soon brought them to a democratic level; the gentleman
felled the wood for his log-cabin side by side with the plowman, and
thews and sinews rose in the market. "A man was deemed honorable in
proportion as he lifted his hand upon the high trees of the forest."
So in the interior domestic circle. Mistress and maid, living in a
log-cabin together, became companions, and sometimes the maid, as the
one well-trained in domestic labor, took precedence of the mistress.
It also became natural and unavoidable that children should begin to
work as early as they were capable of it.
The result was a generation of intelligent people brought up to labor
from necessity, but devoting to the problem of labor the acuteness of
a disciplined brain. The mistress, outdone in sinews and muscles by
her maid, kept her superiority by skill and contrivance.
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