A Traveler from Altruria | Page 5

rather a process of natural
selection. You will see, as you get better acquainted with the workings
of our institutions, that there are no arbitrary distinctions here but the
fitness of the work for the man and the man for the work determines the
social rank that each one holds."
"Ah, that is fine!" cried the Altrurian, with a glow of enthusiasm. "Then
I suppose that these intelligent young people who teach school in
winter and serve at table in the summer are in a sort of provisional state,
waiting for the process of natural selection to determine whether they
shall finally be teachers or waiters."

"Yes, it might be stated in some such terms," I assented, though I was
not altogether easy in my mind. It seemed to me that I was not quite
candid with this most candid spirit. I added: "You know we are a sort
of fatalists here in America. We are great believers in the doctrine that
it will all come out right in the end."
"Ah, I don't wonder at that," said the Altrurian, "if the process of
natural selection works so perfectly among you as you say. But I am
afraid I don't understand this matter of your domestic service yet. I
believe you said that all honest work is honored in America. Then no
social slight attaches to service, I suppose?"
"Well, I can't say that, exactly. The fact is, a certain social slight does
attach to service, and that is one reason why I don't quite like to have
students wait at table. It won't be pleasant for them to remember it in
after-life, and it won't be pleasant for their children to remember it."
"Then the slight would descend?"
"I think it would. One wouldn't like to think one's father or mother had
been at service."
The Altrurian said nothing for a moment. Then he remarked: "So it
seems that while all honest work is honored among you, there are some
kinds of honest work that are not honored so much as others."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because some occupations are more degrading than others."
"But why?" he persisted, as I thought, a little unreasonably.
"Really," I said, "I think I must leave you to imagine."
"I am afraid I can't," he said, sadly. "Then, if domestic service is
degrading in your eyes, and people are not willing servants among you,
may I ask why any are servants?"

"It is a question of bread-and-butter. They are obliged to be."
"That is, they are forced to do work that is hateful and disgraceful to
them because they cannot live without?"
"Excuse me," I said, not at all liking this sort of pursuit, and feeling it
fair to turn even upon a guest who kept it up. "Isn't it so with you in
Altruria?"
"It was so once," he admitted, "but not now. In fact, it is like a waking
dream to find one's self in the presence of conditions here that we
outlived so long ago."
There was an unconscious superiority in this speech that nettled me,
and stung me to retort: "We do not expect to outlive them. We regard
them as final, and as indestructibly based in human nature itself."
"Ah," said the Altrurian, with a delicate and caressing courtesy, "have I
said something offensive?"
"Not at all," I hastened to answer. "It is not surprising that you did not
get our point of view exactly. You will by-and-by, and then, I think,
you will see that it is the true one. We have found that the logic of our
convictions could not be applied to the problem of domestic service. It
is everywhere a very curious and perplexing problem. The simple old
solution of the problem was to own your servants; but we found that
this was not consistent with the spirit of our free institutions. As soon
as it was abandoned the anomaly began. We had outlived the primitive
period when the housekeeper worked with her domestics and they were
her help, and were called so; and we had begun to have servants to do
all the household work, and to call them so. This state of things never
seemed right to some of our purest and best people. They fancied, as
you seem to have done, that to compel people through their necessities
to do your hateful drudgery, and to wound and shame them with a
name which every American instinctively resents, was neither
republican nor Christian. Some of our thinkers tried to mend matters by
making their domestics a part of their families; and in the life of
Emerson you'll find an amusing account of his attempt to have his

servant eat at the same table with himself and his wife. It wouldn't work.
He and his wife could stand