p. 93Masters and Servants

“SERVANTS, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the simplicity of your heart, as to Christ. Not serving to the eye, as it were pleasing men, but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. With a good will, serving, as to the Lord, and not to men. Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man shall do, the same shall he receive from the Lord, whether he be bond or free.”

“And you masters, do the same thing to them, forbearing threatenings: knowing, that the Lord both of them and you is in Heaven: and there is no respect of persons with Him.” (Eph. vi. 5-9.)

The relations between masters and servants, which St. Paul defines so clearly in these words, have dwindled down in our time to a mere commercial contract of letting and hiring. A servant has a certain amount of work in him which he wishes to convert into food and money; a master wants the work and agrees to give the food and money for it; and so, after a few preliminary inquiries about the character and habits of the hired worker, a bargain is struck and the two parties are brought into mutual relations. These relations (with many exceptions, thank God), are nowadays generally characterized on both sides by selfishness, jealousy, and opposing interests. The master often claims too much for his money, and the servant quite as often wants to give too little; or the former is cruel, niggardly, and unfeeling towards the latter, while he in his turn is lazy, careless, and eye-serving, perhaps, even unfaithful and dishonest. Neither takes the slightest interest in the other’s welfare; nor indeed can he well take any without incurring the charge of impertinence. “What does the governor mean by bidding me go to church? He hasn’t hired me to go to Church: he doesn’t pay me to go to Church. I’ll do what I am paid for, and I’ll go to Church or not as I please. It’s none of his business.” Whoever knows anything of the modern servant recognizes these remarks as characteristic of him; and they are justified by the position which his master wishes him to hold in his family. For if he steps out of his way to tell this same master something very useful for him to know; or suppose he is found doing something beyond the sphere of his duties, that other servants were employed to do; how often is he snubbed, and told to attend to his own business, and reminded that, not being paid for doing the work of others, he need not trouble himself whether it be done or not.

Now masters and mistresses should bear in mind that servants ought to be treated as members of the family in which they live. This is the idea of their position which the Catholic Church has always inculcated; and it is the idea most in harmony with the character of a Christian home, as well as with every feeling of humanity. They are made in the same image of God, and they are redeemed by the same Precious Blood, and they are sealed by the same Baptism, and made heirs of the same Father and of the same kingdom of Heaven, as the rich and noble and the exalted. Wealth and position indeed make social distinctions that are legitimate in themselves, and are recognized by the Church; but they cannot interfere with the law of charity that is intended to bind men together in an universal brotherhood, irrespective of caste or condition. Servants, therefore, have a claim on the charity of their employers; and this claim is satisfied by the faithful discharge of three duties in their regard: by looking after their spiritual interests; by providing for their material comforts; and by displaying a kind, humane demeanour towards them. I shall say a few words on each of these duties, as it is important that Christian masters and mistresses should know them thoroughly.

First of all, then, Catholic servants should be obliged to attend to their religious duties: Mass on Sundays and Holidays; Confession and Communion, at least once a year; the Fasts of the Church, &c. It sometimes happens that a very useful servant, honest, sober, and hard-working perhaps, cannot be brought to go when he ought to Sacraments. He will plead various excuses, or he will defend himself for not going by saying that he has no sins to tell. Such a domestic, as a rule, will be found either to have been badly instructed in his youth and to have only vague ideas of religious obligations, or, if sufficiently instructed, he will be found to have contracted some habit of sin that he is not willing to cast off. In either case, he should be brought under the notice of the Priest in charge of the mission where he resides; and if he refuse to see him, or if he show indifference to his admonitions, he ought, I think, in ordinary circumstances to be dismissed. If, however, he make any reliable promise of amendment, or if he seem to be influenced not by disregard of the Sacraments, but by a morbid dread of approaching them, then charity demands that he be dealt with kindly and patiently, and that he be left in the care of God’s infinite mercy.

It may perhaps seem hard to dismiss any servant on account of his religion; but if he be adopted into a Christian family and be made a member of it, the head of that family surely has a right to insist that he fulfils the obligations which every one else belonging to it has to fulfil. He suffers no hardship, therefore, in being made to comply with his religious obligations in return for his admission into a home-circle, where he is treated with that consideration and kindness that Christian charity demands for him.

In many cases, however, in which servants omit their religious duties, the master is himself the cause. He is either a Protestant who does not believe in Catholic observances, or he is an unworthy member of our own Church, who, from a grinding, avaricious disposition, insists on taking the last penny-worth of labour out of those under him. Each of these masters makes the hearing of Mass on Sundays and Holidays, and the observance of fast and abstinence days, as well as the reception of Sacraments, morally impossible by his domestic arrangements which he will not alter on any consideration. Now I would tell such masters that they are not only guilty of great cruelty towards those whom they treat so; but they also contribute much towards making them unfaithful and dishonest. The surest safeguard of a Catholic servant’s trustworthiness is his attendance to his religious duties: if this attendance be prevented, he is deprived of powerful spiritual helps for the regulation of his conduct; and besides, he often acts against his conscience by remaining in such service; and from this infidelity to his Master in Heaven, he easily falls into what he considers the lighter infidelity of betraying the interests of his master on earth. From purely temporal motives, then, as well as from those that are higher, servants should not be prevented from fulfilling those obligations which the divine law and the Church impose on them. On the contrary, every facility should be given them for their performance, even with the sacrifice of personal convenience.

As I have already remarked in another part of this work, very great spiritual injury is often done to children by irreligious or immoral servants. It would be a serious fault, then, to retain such servants either as nurses or governesses or tutors, no matter how useful or necessary they may be. Parents are more bound by charity to their children than by that which they owe to servants; and therefore, no matter what hardship these may incur, and no matter how much they may have endeared themselves to the children in their charge, they should be dismissed at once before they have time to poison the young hearts and minds of those committed to them. I know that servants cannot be expected to be wholly devoid of faults; but I speak here not of faults but of vices—swearing, lying, drunkenness, and others not necessary to mention.

Masters should not only look after the spiritual interests of their servants; they should also provide for their material comforts. I have known some families in which much more care was taken of brute beasts than of Christian servants. I have known fires to be kept up, night and day for months every year, in their harness-rooms, while, even in the depth of winter, their unfortunate domestics had to lie down at night, shivering with cold in their fireless dormitories. Other instances, similar to these, of disregard on the part of masters for the ordinary wants of those who do their work, might be multiplied so as to fill many pages. But there is no need of proving what every one is convinced of who has any knowledge of our modern social life. We have abolished slavery in name, but it is retained in its substance and essence in many of our homes, and even in the homes of that class from which most of our legislators are taken. What boots it for a nation to proclaim its subjects free, when a large portion of them are bound to serve and slave and wear themselves out without feeling or regard for their comforts; without ever a kind word to cheer them, or a kind act to show them that master and servant are both children of one Father who is in Heaven? The lash of the slave-master that used to cut into the body is nowadays converted into one that cuts into the soul, or rather that cuts between body and soul, often sundering them, if its threat does not command submission? Dismissal is the new form that the slave-master’s lash has assumed in the hands of society. We have such an over-supply of servants, and they are driven to such straits to live and to help those depending on them to live, that they can be bullied and badgered, and made to feed on scraps and offal, and sleep in garrets and cellars, and submit to several other inhuman usages, simply because if they refuse, others are ready to step into their place, and they themselves are liable to be cast out into the streets to beg or starve, or become so many festering sores of the society in which they live.

Nor has civil legislation any power to cope with the growth of this social slavery. Only the remodelling of our homes on the principles of Christian charity can make men truly free, notwithstanding their inequality of condition. When the master thinks of his servant as of a human being like himself, made after the same divine Model, redeemed by the same divine Sacrifice, destined for the same eternal home where there is no respect of persons—when, thinking of him thus, he treats him with kindness, and speaks to him affably, and shows in his manner that a human being is more in his eyes than his brute pets—then the servant will begin to be truly attached to his master, and to feel a pleasure in working for him, and to defend his interests, and to stand by him in difficulties and troubles, aye, and to be faithful to him when all the world may have shrunk from him or cast him off.

Kindness of demeanour should then characterize the relations of masters towards their servants. The man or woman who has to go out from home and parents, and cast his or her lot among strangers to earn a livelihood, is an object of pity for which the all-embracing love of our Father in Heaven has made provision. In His infinite wisdom, He permits such a one to sell, and us to buy, the labour of his hands; but Christian charity obliges us, as a condition of the contract, to recognize and respect in him the dignity of his nature, created, as I have said above, in the image, redeemed by the Blood, and destined to share the eternal glory of God. This condition, however, is frequently ignored; and the feelings of many masters and mistresses towards those in their employment are nowadays substantially the same as they were in the olden times of pagan slavery. It is, indeed, only in truly Christian homes (and every one knows how rare they are), that the servant’s true position is acknowledged; that his treatment is uniformly kind and considerate; that his labours are lightened by the kind word, and the benign look, and the grateful encouragement of his employers. In such homes he feels at rest and happy; and he becomes every day more and more trustworthy, for he feels himself “at home” and he works, not with the grudging, stinted spirit of a mere hireling; but with the genuine, loyal heartiness with which men labour for their own fireside.

Dear reader, if you have servants, treat them as I have here pointed out, and you will soon find yourself doubly rewarded. Their fidelity and their attachment and their gratitude will make their hired labour more valuable and productive. This will be your temporal reward; but far greater than this will be the spiritual reward, the happiness of having done a work of Christian charity, the merit of having done it for God, and the record of it that is registered in Heaven, awaiting you there. “If thou have a faithful servant, let him be to thee as thy own soul: treat him as a brother.” (Ecclus. xxxiii. 31.)

Besides the duties of charity which masters owe to their servants and of which I have now spoken, they also owe them a duty of justice. This duty consists in paying promptly, when asked, the wages due to them. I do not think that much need be said on this subject, notwithstanding its great importance. Civil society so far protects servants as to enable them to recover the price of their labour; and every one imbued with ordinary principles of honesty and fair dealing recognizes the obligation of paying those they employ what is due to them without compelling them to have recourse to legal proceedings. Some masters, however, curtail without scruple the wages of their servants on account of damages done by them, no matter how indeliberately. They make this curtailment a rule of their household; and they carry it out so strictly, that they not only succeed in reducing very considerably the amount of the salaries due, but they keep their furniture, delf, &c., constantly renewed at the expense of their domestics. Now, I admit the justice of charging these latter for the consequences of deliberate neglect in the discharge of their duties; and I admit also, that every reasonable precaution should be taken to make them careful of whatever is intrusted to them; but I deny the equity of punishing them for losses arising from purely accidental causes. But perhaps it may be said that servants usually attribute every mistake of theirs to accident, and that therefore if they are to be believed and the principle I advocate is to be accepted, there is no safeguard for masters against the wholesale destruction of their household property. Well, in every individual case of damage, such as I am writing about, a fair judgment can be formed as to its culpability. If the servant be habitually careful and truthful, and if he aver that it happened accidentally, then, I think, his word ought to be believed. If, on the other hand, similar mistakes have been not unfrequently made by him, if he have a reckless manner of doing his work, if his word cannot be relied on, then the presumption of negligence, no matter what he asserts to the contrary, seems to justify his being fined for the loss incurred. If a master take the trouble of inquiring thus into each act of his servants before punishing them, he will save himself from the danger of doing them great injustice, and he will also save them from the temptation of recouping themselves for the portion of their wages kept back from them—a temptation, I may add, that has led many good servants into pilfering, dishonest habits.

I now come to the second part of the subject of this chapter; namely, the duties of servants to their masters; and as fidelity is by far the most important of these duties, I shall treat of it first. A servant, faithful to his master’s interests, faithful to every trust reposed in him, faithful in thought and word and work, faithful in adversity as well as in prosperity, faithful when no eye is upon him equally as when he is under supervision, faithful under censure and rebuke, faithful under suspicion or false accusation, faithful in derision and contempt, faithful always and in all things—such a servant has more true nobility and heroism of character than many of those whose noble and heroic deeds are written and emblazoned and admired in history; he has more true holiness than many a reputed saint; aye, and in all likelihood, he will hold a higher place in Heaven than some of those fashionable ladies who visit his mistress and of those high-toned gentlemen who dine with his master, both of whom scarcely think him worthy of a passing look, and have very slight appreciation of his fidelity, when they hear it casually mentioned. Such fidelity, however, must be the outcome of religion; as human nature, unaided by divine grace, is not capable of it. The patience and meekness, as well as the conscientiousness and the self-sacrifice which characterize it, prove it to be of Heaven and not of earth. Hence, a servant, to be truly and uniformly faithful to his duties, must not rely on his good purpose of being so, or on his natural dispositions, no matter how strongly they may incline him towards honesty and diligence. Such purpose and dispositions are most useful as a groundwork; but Prayer and the Sacraments, and the careful observance of religious duties are morally necessary to obtain the supernatural gift, or in other words, to build up a supernatural life of true interior Christian fidelity. Of course, in writing these words, I have before my mind Catholic servants primarily; but the necessity of divine help, as a condition of the uniform discharge of duty, extends to servants of all denominations, and indeed to every class of men and to every position in life. Now, as divine help is obtained ordinarily only through the means established by our divine Lord, it follows that every one, Catholic and non-Catholic, servant and master, must have recourse to them in one form or another, if they would fulfil undeviatingly the obligations of their state of life. No matter then of what creed a servant be, if he have not habitual recourse to Heaven for strength to be faithful to his duties, he will not be faithful to them in all the varying conditions of life in which he will be placed.

Hence, it follows, that masters, if for no other reason, at least for their own self-interest, should encourage their servants to attend to their religious duties. It follows also, that servants should convince themselves of the necessity of doing so, as a means and a condition of their perseverance in that fidelity which they owe their employers and on which their own future welfare depends. They may not indeed have time to say long prayers, night and morning; they may not be at liberty to go to Church as often as they wish; they may have to omit many devout exercises very useful and conducive to sanctity; but notwithstanding these drawbacks, they can practise their religion in a way most pleasing to God, by thinking of Him frequently at their work, by saying what prayers they do say with attention and fervour, and by making up in increased devotion at Church for the fewness of the occasions on which they are permitted to go there.

I think this is a fitting place to bring before servants a certain natural motive well calculated to insure their fidelity. It is a motive indeed that has in it nothing sublime or heroic; it is, if you will, self-interested and material; yet it cannot be devoid of use, if it help higher motives in the attainment of their end. Every one is bound to take care of his character; but it is not of the same vital importance to everyone as it is to a servant. A servant’s character is, at the same time, his reserve and his floating capital. It is capable of acquiring increased value every day; and it is capable of being lost in an instant. Unlike invested money, however, it can scarcely ever be recovered when once forfeited. Repentance that avails before Heaven is held of little account by earthly masters. There is no stain of the soul too deep for our merciful Father to blot out; but the world is unforgiving and inexorable where its material interests are at stake; and it requires in those it trusts, and in domestic servants perhaps more than in all others, an unexceptionable character for trustworthiness. It follows from this, that domestic servants are in a special manner bound to earn a good name for themselves by their diligence and fidelity, and by constant study and effort to make that good name grow brighter and brighter day by day, until the little kingdom of the home in which they live, by unanimous vote, raise them to the social peerage of their class, the distinguishing title of which is the simple but matchless title: “Faithful.” Those who act so are sure never to be thrown adrift in their old age; for besides their being useful even then to watch over the interests for which they worked while they could, they will have long before gained a place in the affections of their masters, who will never refuse them a comfort or convenience that their condition and circumstances may require. They will thus have the assurance of being gently treated in their growing infirmities; of being tended by kind, loving hands in their last illness; and of closing their eyes in the sleep of death amid the genuine sorrow of those whom they had served with such unvarying life-long fidelity.

But what a different prospect lies before those other servants who have always been grudging and selfish in their service, and who have never shown any true loyalty to their master’s interests. They prevented any except the most formal business relations to exist between themselves and those they served; and the consequence naturally follows, that in their old age or in sickness they have no claim on the kind consideration of those latter; they are bound to them by no tie, and they are dismissed without a single feeling of regret or a single thought of what is to become of them. They are often too old or too much broken down in health to find another place; and they have to eke out the remnant of their lives in the parish workhouse, and after death they are buried in a pauper’s grave.

This end, however, so much dreaded by every one who has not lost all self-respect, as it is the probable fate of those just described, so it is the morally certain fate of another class of servants who, secretly dishonest or intemperate, try to keep up appearances before their masters, and think they will succeed in doing so to the end. They may succeed for a time; but as habit becomes stronger, they become more and more incautious; they feel emboldened by their previous success; and they go on recklessly, never dreaming that they are binding themselves with a chain of suspicious circumstances that will one day end in their loss of character, and in the consequent loss of their situation. Each one thinks this misfortune possible for others; but he never considers its possibility for himself. If he sees some of his fellow-servants dismissed for the very same conduct in which he himself secretly indulges, he attributes the dismissal to want of prudence in avoiding detection; his sense of security is increased; he walks on the edge of an abyss with the freedom of one a hundred miles from it; and the sure result is that he falls in. With his blighted character and his bad habits, whither can such a servant turn himself to procure a new place? He can do manual work, perhaps; but how seldom do domestic servants become ordinary day-labourers, and how many of them are altogether unfit to do a constant day’s work? No; he will drift steadily to the prison or the workhouse; and, as a rule, he will end his days in one or the other.

Fidelity then is the first and most important quality in a good servant. Respect for his employer is the second. He is admitted into the household in which he serves, as one of its members, and he thus becomes subject to its head, who is in that household the representative of his divine Master in Heaven. This, I feel certain, was the thought St. Paul wished to convey when he wrote: “Servants, be obedient to them that are your lords according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the simplicity of your heart, as to Christ.” (Eph. vi. 5). Masters, therefore, should be honoured and respected neither on account of their wealth or their social position, nor from a motive of expediency to gain their favour, but on account of Him whose divine authority they represent in their households. This view of their position and duty, I need hardly say, is very seldom taken by servants. Many of them are dogged and obstinate in their demeanour towards their masters; others are meek and humble and almost whining before them, while, in their absence, they ridicule and detract them, and sometimes even curse them for some real or fancied wrong received from them. There are in fact no subjects of conversation among servants more ordinary than the private characters, the domestic arrangements, the vices or follies, and the secrets of their masters. Individual grievances, too, are spoken of freely; and the revengeful feelings caused by them are relieved by the disrespectful and sometimes disgusting expressions used against those who inflicted them. Now in all such conversations, servants not only violate charity, and when they publish secrets or discover secret faults, justice also; but they dishonour God in dishonouring them who represent Him. There are some, perhaps, who may not be deterred by this view of their conduct from pursuing it in the future; but there are others I am sure, who with divine grace will resolve to respect their masters, and conceal their faults, and keep their secrets, whenever the temptation or the opportunity presents itself of violating these obligations. In fact they cannot be said to be truly faithful unless they do so.

I need not say much of the third quality of a good and faithful servant, namely, of the obedience which he owes to his master. If indeed he be faithful, he is sure to be obedient; that is according to his own idea of obedience. But unfortunately that idea is sometimes a very defective and inadequate one. Most people know by experience that old, attached and faithful servants occasionally give much trouble by their dogged adherence to their own opinions regarding the right way of doing what they are ordered, or indeed the expediency of doing it at all. They err through excess of zeal for their master’s interests; but notwithstanding their good intentions, they cause confusion in the household; and their stubbornness often renders them unbearable. Now, I have only to say to such servants, that they seem to forget a very important part of their duty towards their master in not doing his work as he wishes it done. They also seem to lose sight of the inferior, dependent position they hold in his family, and they incur the risk of being dismissed from it much oftener than they imagine. Fidelity will of course be always highly valued in servants; but in the eyes of many employers of our day, who wish to conduct all their affairs in a formal business-like manner, fidelity will not always excuse officiousness, and much less will it excuse stubbornness or wilful disobedience. And yet it is hard, if not cruel, to deal severely with those whose chief fault, as far as we are concerned, is over-zeal in our service. We should therefore be patient and forbearing towards them, overlooking as far as possible their defects, or correcting them with gentleness and charity. The chances are wholly against our getting better servants, if we dismiss those we have, after testing their fidelity and finding it staunch and true in every circumstance of difficulty and temptation.