[DY] M. Ballanche.
[DZ] As in some of the States there is no law of divorce, the
legislatures grant it in virtue of their legislative omnipotence. Out
of less than 150 acts passed by the New Jersey legislature in 1836,
thirteen were acts authorising divorces.
[EA] In the mail-coaches, the best seats are always yielded to women,
without regard to the order in which the names are booked. The husband
also does the marketing and often brings home the provisions himself.
Nothing is more common than to see men carrying home a goose or a
turkey by the legs, or a basket of fruit. I have before observed that
the conjugal and social submission of the woman is more complete
in the United States than in France. In France, a woman engages in
business, and with the consent of her husband is acknowledged as a
responsible agent; but there is nothing of this sort in England and the
United States. Our children in Canada have even gone beyond us in this
respect, and have admitted females to the electoral franchise.
[EB] The English workman is very skilful. Although in certain branches
we excel the English, it appears to me incontestable, that at present
the English workman is the first in Europe. In some respects, he
is also superiour to the American; he will, for example, finish a
particular piece of work in a better style, but when out of his special
sphere, and separated from the tools of the English workshops, which
are of a superiour kind, he will be at loss. The American workman has
a more general aptitude; his sphere is larger, and he can extend it
indefinitely at will. He accomplishes at least, as much as the English
workman, and when he devotes himself for a long time to the same task,
which is not usual with him, he does it better.
[EC] Thus a shoemaker or tailor will not go to a customer's house to
take a measure, but requires all, women and men, to come in person to
his shop.
[ED] In the relations between the master and the operative, the most
deplorable usages prevail in our large manufacturing towns. Many of
the masters are reduced to practise the most disgraceful artifices on
their workmen, in order to sustain themselves against the violence of
competition; thus, in some workshops and factories, the hands of the
clock are put forward in the morning and backward in the evening. The
operatives commit reprisals in every possible manner.
[EE] The _piquage d'onces_, or secretion of silk by the workmen, is one
of the cankers of Lyons. The value of the silk thus stolen is estimated
at nearly one million of dollars a year; the thefts committed in the
Rheims factories are stated to exceed 600,000 dollars. The operatives
exchange the gold-lace at the dram-shops for about one fourth of its
actual value.
[EF] The domestics in the United States are almost everywhere much
inferior to the operatives, personal service being here looked upon
as degrading. In many of the States the domestics will not bear to
be called servants, and take that of _help_; this is the case in New
England. The domestic is there a hired agent whose task is light,
and who in many houses takes his meals with the family. On these
conditions, native servants may be had in New England who are attentive
and intelligent; they stand upon their rights, and expect to be treated
with respect by their employers, but they perform their duties with
an honourable fidelity. In most of the non-slave-holding States, the
servants are chiefly free blacks, who are generally lazy and depraved,
or newly arrived emigrants from Ireland, who are ignorant and without
skill, prone to be most provokingly familiar, and in the intoxication
of their new condition, so different from the squalid misery they have
left behind them, more disposed to take airs upon themselves, than the
natives of the country.