Page:Olive Malmberg Johnson - Woman and the Socialist Movement (1908).djvu/7

 Rh ple, her possessions remained few and comparatively valueless. Man's "house" became the powerful one and begat the attractive power. Gradually woman had to leave her family at marriage and go to the home of her husband. She became absorbed by his family and assumed its name.

As man accumulated private property and assumed economic power, he naturally desired to perpetuate both in his own family instead of leaving it as formerly to be partitioned among his wife's kindred. Thus arose inheritance in the male line. Later on primogeniture was inaugurated to further assure the concentration of wealth and power within man's "house" and the predominance of the male line.

Man's rule had been established in society. Woman's possessions had no economic value. The division between the sexes had become complete. Property was man's, and women were even excluded from the inheritance thereof unless no male children existed.

In the ancient nations, the circle of the wife was narrow and miserable. The freemen owned the wealth and_ the slaves and held mastery over land and sea. The slaves did the work on land and sea and also in the household. The "free" woman's economic pedestal was knocked from under her by the slave and therefore she was often less considered. She was tolerated only as the breeder of the race of freemen. In the more warlike nations, such as Sparta and Rome, where many free citizens of strength and courage were highly valued for martial operations, women held a higher position as mother and wife than in the purely agricultural and trading nations such as Athens and Phoenicia.

With the establishment of class rule in society, woman lost her prestige. The women of the ruling class were probably the part of humanity that first became wholly and totally parasitic. Theirs, therefore, was the lot, and to them clung the stigma, of the parasite. They were tolerated only as necessary evils, were below consideration, treated as objects of scorn and often subjected to actual degradation.