“Those who contract the habit of being ill-natured and rude toward their brothers and sisters, are rude and ill-natured toward everybody else. If the home-intercourse is tender and true, man will experience in his other social relations the same need of esteem and noble affections.”
129. Duties of masters toward their servants.—One of the most important functions of home administration, is the management of domestics. It comprises two things: choice and direction. It is well known how important in a household the choice of servants is; as it is they who attend to the marketing and pay the bills, so that the finances of the house are, to some extent, in their hands.[87] But this is but one of the lesser features of the influence of servants in a household; the most serious one is their familiar intercourse with the children; and it is there especially that it becomes necessary to make sure of their fidelity and honesty. Yet to make a careful and successful choice is of no use, if one is ignorant of the art of directing and governing, which consists in a just medium between too much lenity and too much severity. The master of the house should, of course, always have his eyes open, but he should also know that no human being learns to do things well, if he is not allowed to act with some sort of freedom.
Surveillance and confidence are the two principles of a wise domestic government. Without the first, one is apt to be cheated; without the second, one cheats one’s self in depriving the servant of the most energetic elements of human will, responsibility and honor.[88]
The master, again, should avoid being violent and brutal toward his servants. He should require of them all that is just, yet without pushing his requirements to the point of persecution. Many persons deprive themselves of good servants, because they cannot patiently bear with the inevitable defects inherent in human nature.
On the other hand, the servant owes his master: 1, an absolute honesty. As it is the servants who do the marketing and pay the bills, they have the funds of the family in their hands. The more one is obliged to trust them the more are they bound to restrain themselves from the slightest act of dishonesty. 2. They owe obedience and exactness in the duties pertaining to their service. 3. They should, as much as possible, attach themselves to the persons whose service they have entered; the longer they stay with them, the more will they be considered as part of the family, and the greater will be their right to the regard and affection due to age and fidelity.
130. Duties of children toward servants.—It is not only the master and mistress of the house that have duties to fulfill toward servants, but the children also. The latter are, in general, too much disposed to treat servants as instruments of their wishes and the playthings of their caprices. Although slavery is no longer allowed, some children, if let alone, would very soon re-establish it for their own benefit. To command, insult, beat, are the not uncommon modes of procedure with children that are left entirely free in their relations with inferiors. The latter, on the other hand, do not hesitate to employ force, in the absence of the masters, and pass readily from slavery to tyranny. All such conduct is reprehensible. The servant should never be allowed to strike; but he should himself not be struck or insulted. In childhood, it is for the parents to oversee the relations between their servants and children. Later it is for the children themselves, when they have reached the age of reason, to know that they must not treat servants like brutes. The same observations may be applied to workmen, in circumstances where workmen are in some respect in the service of the family.
Although servants are no longer slaves, nor even serfs, one may still, modifying its meaning, quote Seneca’s admirable protestation against slavery: “They are slaves! rather say they are men! They are slaves! Not any more than thou! He whom thou callest a slave, was born of the same seed as thyself; he enjoys the same sky, breathes the same air, lives and dies the same as thou.” Seneca closes this eloquent apostrophe with a maxim recalling the Gospel: “Live with thy inferiors, as thou wouldst thy superior should live with thee.”
As to the duties of servants to their masters, they belong to the class of professional duties which we shall take up further on (Chap. XIII.).