The next largest has been referred to as attempting a style of living beyond one's income.
In all other walks of life, in transportation, in manufacturing, machinery has come in to replace the heavier and more mechanical portions of labor.
The steam-shovel, the hoisting-engine, an infinite combination of mechanical principles have been applied to the doing of things to save human muscle.

To stand by the machine which turns out the familiar grape-basket, ready to fill with the fruit, and then to watch the housemaid bending over some piece of work, is to realize the difference.
In few, very few operations is it necessary to-day that men should bend their backs, but in how many household processes is the worker expected to get down on all fours?
The free-born American rebels.

Perchance it is the unconscious protest over a four-footed ancestry, or it may be that disuse has really weakened the spinal column.

Whatever the cause, the fact remains.

It is not the idea of work, of service, but of bending the back to work that is so repugnant; likewise the effect on the hands of hot water and scrubbing.