FOOTNOTES:

[4] Marshall, Principles of Economics, I, pp. 10-11. Ed. 4.

[5] Ward, Pure Sociology, p. 360.

[6] Quoted by Thomas, Sex and Society, p. 125.

[7] Mason, Woman’s Share in Primitive Culture, pp. 2-3.

[8] Thomas, Sex and Society, p. 134.

[9] Westermarck, The Position of Women in Early Civilization, The American Journal of Sociology, Nov., 1904, p. 410.

[10] Westermarck, The Position of Women in Early Civilization, The American Journal of Sociology, Nov., 1904, p. 411.

[11] Spencer, Principles of Sociology, I, p. 747.

[12] Bücher, Industrial Evolution, p. 96.

CHAPTER II
The Status of Women in Early Historical Times

The world furnishes many examples of the rise and decline of civilizations before our era. Their art and literature often show social institutions comparing favorably with those of modern times. Almost without exception their decline can be traced to the invasion of people of less culture but greater warlike propensities. The institutions of these warlike peoples are the ones which survived, and upon which rest our modern institutions.

As we have seen the primitive society, militancy favors a greater differentiation of sex status and of work than industrialism. In the primarily industrial nations, men’s and women’s work often overlap, and although we can recognize a sex division of work, the line constantly shifts to the economic advantage of women. In a militant society, the women of the higher classes are often shown a deference unknown in the lower classes, but this deference is not shown them as a sex alone, but because of their relation to those who stand highest in the state. Where the women of the higher classes enjoy rights and privileges other than those reserved to them by the state, they are bestowed upon the individual alone, and not upon the sex in general. They have their basis in family ties making the family a unit in its economic interests, as well as in its social and political interests. No matter how conservative men may be in their attitude toward the political, social, and industrial equality of men and women, their prejudices do not weigh against family interests, or apply to the females of their own families.

Militant types of society have not recognized the political rights of women as women. But for all that their women have often played important roles in history by virtue of the power coming to them through some male relative who was more anxious to delegate his power to them than to see it pass to strangers, or to men of remoter blood relationship.

In the early, less militant societies we see that certain rights of women were recognized. In Egypt “the husband appears to have entered the house of his wives rather than the wives to have entered his, and this appearance of inferiority was so marked that the Greeks were deceived by it. They affirmed that the women were supreme in Egypt; the man at the time of marriage promised obedience to her, and entered into a contract not to raise any objection to her commands.”[13]

Hobhouse says, “It is very possible that the preservation of relics of mother-right was among the forces tending to the better condition of women in Egypt. These were augmented toward the close of the independent history of Egypt by the rise of free contract and the important part taken by women in the industrial and commercial life. In these relations and in social intercourse generally it is allowed on all hands that their position was remarkably free.”[14]

In Babylonia there were times when women held a position of independence and authority. “The wife could act apart from her husband, could enter into partnership, could trade with her money and conduct lawsuits in her own name.”

Sayce says further, “Women, as well as men, enjoyed the advantages of education. This evidence from the Babylonian contract-tablets, in which we find women appearing, as well as men, as plaintiffs or defendants in suits, as partners in commercial transactions, and as signing, when need arose, their names. There was none of that jealous exclusion of women in ancient Babylonia which characterizes the East of today, and it is probable that boys and girls pursued their studies at the same school.”[15]

Among the Greeks of the Homeric age, women held a position of respect and dignity but in the age of Pericles “little pains were taken with their education. Before their marriage, they managed their households and seldom left their dwellings.”[16]

In spite of paternal authority so firmly established by custom all through early history we find individual women conspicuous by virtue of their cleverness, intelligence or charm giving them power in affairs of state. When Rome was at its height, there were men solicitors acting in behalf of women in litigation and in the management of their property. In fact, “the mass of capital which was collected in the hands of women appeared to the statesmen of the time so dangerous, that they resorted to the extravagant expedient of prohibiting by law the testamentary nomination of women as heirs, and even sought by highly arbitrary practice to deprive women for the most part of those collateral inheritances which fell to them without testament.”[17]

The Roman family was absolutely controlled by the father. His jurisdiction extended not only to the women and children of his household but to his grown sons after they had established a household of their own.[18]

The attitude of the law toward a class of men is a fair criterion of their status; but this is not true of the women. Since they do not constitute a distinct class or industrial stratum, law is more apt to reflect their status as determined by tradition and custom, than to determine their status.

Mommsen below says, “Wife and child did not exist merely for the house-father’s sake in the sense in which property exists only for the proprietor, or in which the subjects of an absolute state exist only for the king; they were the objects indeed of a legal right, on his part, but they had at the same time capacities of right of their own; they were not things but persons. Their rights were dormant in respect of exercise, simply because the unity of the household demanded that it should be governed by a single representative.”[19]

Long before legislation took a more enlightened attitude toward the legal and political rights of women, the old laws relating to women had become antiquated. “Even in public matters women already began to have a will of their own and occasionally, as Cato thought, ‘to rule the rulers of the world.’”[20]

Irrespective of the legal and social status of women, early history shows practically the same division of work between the sexes as in primitive times. If there is any apparent difference, it is in a greater diversity of household tasks for women, and the narrowing of the limits of their out-of-door tasks. Men continue to make inroads upon the increasing industrial work of women without changing the nature of it in any of its essentials.

In Rome within the house “woman was not servant but mistress.” Exempted from the tasks of corn-grinding and cooking which according to Roman ideas belonged to the menials, the Roman housewife devoted herself in the main to the superintendence of her maid servants, and to the accompanying labours of the distaff, which was to woman what the plow was to man.[21]

The characteristic work of the Roman women of the well-to-do classes was practically that of the well-to-do classes of all early civilizations. The work, however, of the wives of the poor was in marked contrast. The Ligurian women “laboured, like the men, at the hardest work, and hired themselves out for the harvest in the neighboring countries.”[22]

History throws little light upon the conditions of the laboring people in early civilization. Although they were the foundation on which society rested, they were considered of no consequence in the development of the state excepting in their capacity as warriors. Hence, our knowledge of the manners and customs of the people must be gleaned from data regarding the well-to-do classes.

Under feudalism, status was well defined and the individual counted for little in the social regime. The position of the lord was based upon military prowess, and he took little or no direct part in the industrial occupations of the people. The laborer was his property, and the lord in return agreed to protect him. Guizot says, “There was nothing morally common between the holder of the fief and his serfs. They formed part of his estate; they were his property; and under this word property are comprised, not only all the rights which we delegate to the public magistrate to exercise in the name of the state, but likewise all those which we possess over private property; the right of making laws, of levying taxes, of inflicting punishment, as well as that of disposing of them or selling them.”[23]

The serf was in no wise a part of the feudal lord’s family nor did the women of his class experience any of the male chivalry which we are accustomed to associate with this period.

The status of the women of the serfs was little better than that of slaves. The difference between the status of men and women of this class was probably no greater than that between the lord and his wife, but the difference was emphasized in that there was a greater range of abuse on the part of the social superior toward the social inferior where women were concerned.

In the house of the lord “the chief, however violent, and brutal his outdoor exercises, must habitually return into the bosom of his family. He there finds his wife and children, and scarcely any but them; they alone are his constant companions; they alone are interested in all that concerns him. It could not but happen in such circumstances, that domestic life must have acquired a vast influence, nor is there any lack of proofs that it did so.”[24]

The predominance which domestic life acquired among the upper classes during feudal times did much toward elevating the women of these classes to social equality with men.

Although during this period there exists among the people a great difference in the kind of work performed by men and the work performed by women in the higher classes, nevertheless the position of the wife was one of respect, and often one of authority. When the lord was away from home on warlike expeditions the wife assumed at times her lord’s duties.[25]

“Women exercised to the full the powers that were attached to the land either by proxy, by bailiffs, or in person. They levied troops, held courts of justice, coined money, and took part in the assembly of peers that met at the court of the lord.”[26]

Parallel with the decline of the feudal system is the rapid growth of towns. Women did not take a conspicuous part in the work carried on in the towns, but that they were not excluded from the industries is apparent when we find them in the trade guilds as early as the fifteenth century. “Labor disputes arose over the questions of wages and piece-work, of holidays, of the employment of women and cheap workers.”[27]

Before the great pestilence of 1348, women were employed as agricultural laborers. Their wages were invariably lower than the wages of men. This difference in wages can be partially accounted for on the ground that there existed a marked difference in the nature of their work. Women as farm hands were employed in “dibbling beans, in weeding corn, in making hay, in assisting the sheep-shearers and washing the sheep, in filling the muck carts with manure, and in spreading it upon the lands, in shearing corn, but especially in reaping stubble after the ears of corn had been cut off by the shearers, in binding and stacking sheaves, in thatching ricks and houses, in watching in the fields to prevent cattle straying into the corn, or armed with a sling, in scaring birds from the seed of ripening corn, and in similar occupations. When these failed, there were the winding and spinning of wool ‘to stop a gap.’ These were the employments not only of the laborers’ wives; the wife and daughters of the farmer took their part in all farm works with other women, and worked side by side with their husbands and fathers. After the ‘black death’, women shared for a time in the general rise of wages, and were seldom paid less than two-pence for a day’s work, a sum not unfrequently paid a woman for her daily work in the fields before the time of the great pestilence. This amount of wages, however, was diminished by one of the statutes of labourers, which required that every woman not having a craft, nor possessing property of her own, should work on a farm equally with a man, and be subjected to the same regulations as to wages as her husband and brothers, and like them should not leave the manor or district in which she usually lived to seek work elsewhere.”[28]

In the early stages of industry “wool and silk were woven and spun in scattered villages by families who eked out their subsistence by agriculture.”[29]

Often in the sixteenth century the wealthy graziers were clothiers and employed the men and women of the neighborhood to make into cloth the wool raised upon their own lands. “In many districts the farmers and labourers used few things which were not the work of their own hands, or which had not been manufactured a few miles from their homes. The poet Wordsworth’s account of the farmers’ families in Westmorland, who grew on their own land the corn with which they were fed, spun in their own home the wool with which they were clothed, and supplied the rest of their wants by the sale of yarn in the neighboring market town was not so far inapplicable to other parts of England as we might at first imagine.”[30]

With the introduction of machinery the paternal attitude of the master toward the employee disappeared. Since the workman at this time had no political rights the decline of the spirit of paternalism exposed him to easy industrial exploitation.

Under the domestic system of industry the entire family was engaged under one roof in the spinning or weaving of cloth. The spinning was done by the women and children, and the weaving by the men. Often it took as many as six spinners to keep one weaver busy, thus necessitating the employment of the women in the neighborhood when there were not sufficient spinners in the household.[31]

This system of industry was revolutionized by the invention of the spinning-jenny, the water-frame, and the self-acting mule, and the application of the steam engine to cotton manufacture. With the introduction of these inventions into the cotton industry the modern factory system arose. Those employers who could not compete with the new methods were forced to give up their small domestic factories and seek employment in the towns. In 1811 the agricultural population of England was 35 per cent of the whole, and within twenty years it had declined to 28 per cent.[32]

Before the introduction of machinery, industrial occupations kept pace with increasing wants, but so little progress was made from one generation to the other as to give the impression of a static condition. Class lines were sharply drawn, and all authority rested with those whose property holdings were sufficient to place them with the privileged classes. Their political power increased with their material prosperity but neither political power nor material prosperity fell to the laboring classes. “Except as a member of a mob, the labourer had not a shred of political influence. The power of making laws was concentrated in the hands of the land owners, the great merchant princes, and a small knot of capitalists, manufacturers who wielded that power?—was it not natural in the interests of their class, rather than for the good of the people.”[33]

From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century little change was effected in the home life of the people. Many of the houses had “but a single great fireplace.” At the beginning of the nineteenth century came many improvements in household affairs. “The common use of the friction matches after 1830 saved an infinitude of pains to the cook, the workman, and the smoker; instead of the iron pots and Dutch ovens came the air-tight cook stove, an unspeakable good friend to the housewife; for the open fire was substituted the wood-stove, and then the coal-stove, which leaked gas but saved toil and trouble; for the labor of the needle which has kept feminine fingers employed from the time of Penelope, came the sewing-machine, rude enough at first, which revolutionized the making of clothing.”[34]

History shows from the earliest times the employment of women of the higher social classes within doors. Although the women of the laboring classes are employed extensively in the fields there is always an apparent tendency for them to center their activities about the hearth. The performance of out-door tasks among women is determined as much by their class status as sex status. The outdoor work of women resulted less from the tyranny of one sex over another than from the tyranny of one class over another. Whatever the lot of the women field laborers, the lot of their husbands and brothers was little better.

The difference between the status of men and women is estimated by the nature of their work when engaged in the same general occupation as agriculture. Women seem to be deprived of the element of choice in their work since they perform the most monotonous and uninteresting tasks, and the men perform the work allowing for the greatest play of individuality and skill. How much this division of work is due to differences of authority, and how much to the difference in the assumption of responsibility, is difficult to say. It is certainly more convenient for women not to assume responsibilities for out-door work when they have to care for small children; and what may be attributed to an exercise of authority of men over women, may be due to custom having its basis in convenience. It is interesting to note that in practically all civilized societies women are the first to profit by any change doing away with the necessity of all the members of the family being employed in the field. This fact alone would indicate a common recognition of the necessity of protecting women from the severest work for the good of the race. It may have its basis, too, in the inherent chivalry of man toward woman.