Page:Lily Gair Wilkinson - Revolutionary Socialism and the Woman's Movement.djvu/14

 Rh seat and voice tn the councils. Ancient historians, such as Tacitus, and modern travellers alike, bear witness to the rights of this primitive variety of "Suffragette."

The development of private property was the cause of the downfall of the matriarchal system. Under that system the family groups were the basis of society, and property was hereditary in the gens. When a man married he did not become a member of the gens of his wife, although he lived among her people; he remained always a member of the gens to which his mother belonged, and when he died his property accrued to his mother's gens and not to the gens to which his wife (or wives) and his children belonged; thus a child could never inherit from his father, as they did not belong to the same gens. Such a system was only suited to societies in which property was undeveloped. A contradiction arose as the forms of property multiplied and its importance increased. It was then more and more individually appropriated for the sake of power and ease, and the words mine and thine began to have a fuller significance. As a natural result, inheritance became an important social factor; but so long as children belonged to the mother's gens they could not inherit from their father, however great his importance as a man of property. This contradiction was the cause of the great change from the matriarchal system to descent in the male line, and, finally, in advanced societies, to the introduction of monogamy. Desiring to make their own children their heirs men took possession of their wives. Instead of living in the families of their wives, they took their wives to live with them, and thus the idea gradually grew up of female morality and virtue as distinct from male morality and virtue—an idea which has descended to our own day veiled in a sickly sentimentality which can only partially conceal its materialistic basis.

Another result of increasing productive power by development of the tool was the second great division of labour in society—that of freemen and slaves. Instead of eating their prisoners of war, the conquerors found that, by the use of tools of production, they could force them to produce a sufficient amount to cover their own necessary sustenance and yet leave a surplus for the enjoyment of their masters. This was the first form of exploitation and the first division of society into classes with antagonistic interests. The female slaves not only shared in the degradation of this exploitation, but they suffered further degradation because of their sex. Their helpless position made it possible for men to allow themselves