Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/467

Rh ;" daughters are treated "with confidence and kindness;" and when marriages are being arranged, "there is a consulting the destined bride;" to which add the reciprocal trait that "it is deemed shameful to leave old parents entirely alone." The Dyaks, again, largely industrial, and having an unmilitant social structure, yield the fact stated by Brooke, that "the practice of infanticide is rare," as well as the facts before named under another head, that children have the freedom implied by regular courtship, and that girls choose their mates. We are told of the Samoans, who are more industrial in social structure and habit than neighboring Malayo-Polynesians, that infanticide after birth is unknown, and that children have the degree of independence implied by elopements when they cannot obtain parental assent to their marriage. Similarly with the Negritos inhabiting the island of Tanna, where militancy is slight and there are no pronounced chieftainships: of them we read in Turner that "the Tannese are fond of their children. No infanticide there. They allow them every indulgence, girls as well as boys." Lastly, there is the case of the industrious Pueblos, whose children were unrestrained in marriage, and by whom, as we have seen, daughters were especially privileged.

Thus with a highly-militant type there goes extreme subjection of children, and the status of girls is still lower than that of boys; while in proportion as the type becomes non-militant, there is not only more recognition of children's claims, but the recognized claims of boys and girls approach toward equality.

Kindred evidence is supplied by those societies which, passing through the patriarchal forms of domestic and political government, have evolved into large nations. Be the race Turanian, Semitic, or Aryan, it shows us the same connection between political absolutism over subjects and domestic absolutism over children.

In China the destruction of female infants is common; "parents sell their children to be slaves;" in marriage "the parents of the girl always demand for their child a price;" and "forced marriages often produce the most tragic results. . . . A union prompted solely by love would be a monstrous infraction of the duty of filial obedience, and a predilection on the part of a female as heinous a crime as infidelity. . . . Their maxim is, that, as the emperor should have the care of a father for his people, a father should have the power of a sovereign over his family." Meanwhile it is observable that this legally-unlimited paternal power descending from militant times, and persisting along with the militant type of social structure, has come to be qualified in practice by sentiments which the industrial type fosters: infanticide, reprobated by proclamation, is excused only on the plea of poverty, joined with the need for rearing a male child; and public opinion puts checks on the actions of those who purchase children. With that militant type of social structure which, during early wars,