Out of service

From ‘The new standard’, The Spectator, 24 July 1915: If a change must be made at all, it is worthwhile to make a great change, to put right our mistakes, to get any happiness that a rearrangement can give us. We fear that at first a new way of life may come rather hard upon the more prosperous and highly skilled of the servant class, many of whom must be turned out of place. But, on the other hand, we hear constant complaints that servants are scarce because new careers are opening before women, and if the race of indoor manservants died out altogether we do not imagine that anyone would seriously regret the loss. If the excessive luxury in women’s dress which has of late years transfigured the London shops were to be once more confined to the really rich, if necessity were to set a sumptuary fashion and the hands of fashion’s clock were to go back a few decades, could such a change be widely regretted?