Page:Olive Malmberg Johnson - Woman and the Socialist Movement (1908).djvu/5

Rh and learning their value, he developed to ever higher degree the powers of invention and discovery. This in turn developed the brain so that it finally ran into the channels of art, science and literature. Woman, on the other hand, by constantly staying at home, adopted quieter habits. She has therefore less energy and endurance. By association with the children and the sick and wounded she became kinder and more sympathetic, but her circle was narrow and required little mental or physical energy of the kinds that man developed.

The process of evolution has made different beings of the two sexes. These differences must not and should not be ignored. In the early stages of the human struggle they developed for the good of the entire race. In class society the ruling classes have known how to turn both the advantages and disadvantages of each sex to its own good and the oppression of the enslaved. But, as the economic development points to a future society of peace, leisure and plenty, so does the sexual development point to a future when the good in both sexes may be amalgamated into a greater and nobler humanity.

That the economic relations in society are powerful and determining factors in the social relations is. well demonstrated by woman's position during primitive communism. At that time man's tools and weapons were as yet crude, and they were his only possession. But woman was the ruler of the house, or rather the women of the gens were the rulers of the community house. They owned the household goods and utensils, and the value at that time of these acquirements for the art of cookery can scarcely be over-estimated, as they greatly increased the value and nutriment of the food. Moreover, the women were the earliest tillers of the soil, the little plot around the camp. They had charge of the first domestic animals, at least those whose meat and milk was used for food.