America starts with a political organization based oh a declaration
of the primitive freedom and equality of all men. Every human being,
according to this principle, stands on the same natural level with
every other, and has the same chance to rise according to the degree
of power or capacity given by the Creator. All our civil institutions
are designed to preserve this equality, as far as possible, from
generation to generation: there is no entailed property, there are no
hereditary titles, no monopolies, no privileged classes--all are to
be as free to rise and fall as the waves of the sea.
The condition of domestic service, however, still retains about it
something of the influences from feudal times, and from the near
presence of slavery in neighboring States. All English literature of
the world describes domestic service in the old feudal spirit and with
the old feudal language, which regarded the master as belonging to a
privileged class and the servant to an inferior one. There is not a
play, not a poem, not a novel, not a history, that does not present
this view. The master's rights, like the rights of kings, were supposed
to rest in his being born in a superior rank.
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