Page:Lily Gair Wilkinson - Revolutionary Socialism and the Woman's Movement.djvu/13

 10 human society has an essentially economic basis. To Morgan and to Marx is chiefly due the scientific research which shows that the evolution of human society has progressed in accordance with the development of the tools of production and the methods of their ownership. Here we have the secret of the origin of all forms of social slavery, the subjection of women among the rest. Without the introduction of economic inequality, sex-inequality could never have spread throughout the civilised world as it has done. And this economic inequality was itself a quite natural result of the primitive division of labour and the primitive development of the tool.

Women of today, brought up to believe in their helpless inferiority, would gain somewhat in self-respect if they were taught instead the scientific facts of their position; because, while it is true that during all historic periods the position of women has been one of degrading dependence, this was not the case in pre-historic ages. But, of course, while Morgan, Engels, Bebel, and others have shown that the social position of women was superior in barbaric times before the growth of private property, we must clearly understand that it was only relatively so. Privilege in those days had a much more obvious materialistic basis than in civilised times, during which the fashion has grown with the growth of modern social evils of covering up these evils as prettily as may be. The famous "Mother-right" of barbarism was not by any means of an idyllic or chivalrous description. The first division of labour was of a purely physiological nature. Man was the fighter; woman was the rearer of the race. Man procured the food; woman prepared it. It was for man to "fight, hunt, and sit down;" for woman to bear, nourish, and bring up the children. Descent was in the female line simply because the custom of group-marriage between all the members of certain different clans (gentes) made possible only the definite recognition of the mother. This "Mother-right" naturally gave power and importance to women as having control over the children. As Morgan says:—"The members of her own gens, in all probability, predominated in the household, which gave full force to the maternal bond, and made the woman, rather than the man, the centre of the family." What the Suffragists of to-day are striving for, and a good deal more besides, was enjoyed by women in those barbaric days, such "women's rights" being regarded as merely natural. The women not only voted (e.g., in the elections of military chiefs), but had a