Among the higher hunters, according to Grosse, monogamy is the prevalent form of marriage but polygamy is sanctioned, and practiced by the wealthy.[74]
The conditions of the herders are better known than that of the hunters. The individual family may rest upon monogamy or polygamy depending upon the wealth of the nomad. In Central Asia the price of the wife is often very high, and the father considers his daughters as a means of increasing his wealth. The price a well-to-do Kalmuck asks for his daughter is fifteen horses, fifteen cows, three camel, and twenty sheep. He gives in return as a dowry, one camel, one horse, four sewed garments, eight unmade garments, and tools depending upon his wealth.[75]
The great family (sippe) whether on the father’s or mother’s side developed a social organization having its basis in agriculture. Starke says, “An agricultural community lays much more claim to the capacity of each individual for labour than is the case with a community which is wholly or chiefly occupied with the rearing of cattle. In the former case the diminution of the number of the household is a loss which is difficult to supply, and they are chiefly concerned in keeping up their numbers, that is, in retaining their hold on the individual. But in a cattle-breeding community men make it their first object to increase the number of stock. In the former community the head of the family opposes the departure of his daughter, and seeks to induce her wooer to become one of the household; but in the latter he sells her early, and for as high a price as possible.”[76]
While Grosse emphasizes the fact that the different forms of economy influence the prevalent form of marriage, it is apparent that polygamy exists in a marked degree where women are not valued for their labor, and where there has developed a stage of economy admitting of inequalities in wealth. It is when woman’s work has real economic value that she obtains rights of her own. Agriculture as a means of subsistence is pursued to a marked degree only where there is a measure of security against enemies: where there is strength by virtue of numbers. Under these circumstances warfare is not so common, and there is a tendency for the numbers of the sexes to remain comparatively equal.
“The circumstances attending marriage by service, especially when we compare it with marriage by purchase or capture, have shown us how much the relations of husband and wife are determined by what in the modern world is called the economic factor. The savage woman’s price—if we mean by price the difficulty of approaching her—may be high or low. Where it is always possible to organize a raid and carry her off it is decidedly low, and she becomes the captor’s property. When this is not countenanced, it is possible to buy her from her guardian, and then presumably her price like that of other things, is a matter of supply and demand.”[77]
In all civilizations inequalities of wealth arise, and make possible social privileges differing from the common practices of the general population. Under such circumstances we always find social types at variance with established conceptions of right, and human nature showing itself in many cases unspeakably repulsive when free from any economic restraint. This is perhaps, the effect of a freedom from restraint which is made possible by great wealth. The only restraint then is public opinion or religious precepts; the former is easily swayed by the powerful and wealthy, and the latter often admits of a tolerance not shown to the masses of the people.
In industrial communities where no great inequalities of wealth exist, the marriage relation tends toward monogamy. Even where western civilization has made little impression on social institutions, great and conscious inequalities do not often exist between the sexes, and woman’s position is not a degraded one. All the important factors entering into economic life, tending to create serious distinctions—social, political and industrial—between men and men, between the rich and the poor, tend to differentiate status between men and women. Women are most degraded in the marriage relations where they are economically the weakest; where they personally control the least wealth. The few who are more fortunately situated are not sufficiently numerous to make any impressive protest even if they desired to do so.
In a society where the few dictate to the many because of their financial strength, in a society marked by inequalities originating in predatory exploitation, we find in a greater or less degree moral discrepancies with the prevailing conception of right and wrong. Normal industrial life tends to promote a normal moral life, and to develop ideals most conducive to a steady progress.
When the family represented an exclusive economic unit with little dependence upon the outside world, it was of economic importance to both men and women to marry, and thus lay the foundation for household prosperity. Wife and children were never a luxury to the poor man, but of real economic value. This fact is apparent in new countries where the form of industry must be necessarily domestic. Women have been shipped in large numbers to new colonies to marry the settlers. In practically all cases the women went voluntarily for they too appreciated the importance of obtaining for themselves a place in homes where so much of the social and economic life of the time centered. These unions, primarily economic resulted often in family groups containing much of the ideal.
In the early colonial days of America “every farmer and his sons raised wool and flax; his wife and daughters spun them into thread and yarn, knit these into stockings and mittens, or wove them into linen and cloth, and then made them into clothing. Even in large cities nearly all women spun yarn and thread, all could knit, and many had hand-looms to weave cloth at home.... All persons who were not employed in other ways, as single women, girls, and boys, were required to spin. Each family must contain one spinner.... There were no drones in this hive. Neither the wealth nor high station of parents excused children from this work. Thus all were leveled to one kind of labor, and by this leveling all were elevated to independence.”[78]