ABSTRACT
Workhouses were provided for those who lived idly and had no visible means of support as early as 1682; while a house of correction would suffice where no workhouse was, as one James Mead found out in Cambridge in 1737. The families of the colonists provided sons and daughters to do the work of the farm. Even so, many farmers of moderate means had at some time in their career a servant or two who worked shoulder to shoulder in the raising of food, or helped the overburdened mother in the multifarious household tasks of the day. In the better appointed homes, male house servants did the more specialized work of body servants for their masters. Since most servants worked along with their masters or mistresses on farm or in shop, in house or garden, they had a long supervised day of labor before them when the cock crowed.
