Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/39

 raising of crops. To the woman also belongs the beginnings of medical science, for, to restore her man or her children when in ill-health, she skilfully prepared the herbs and simple things of her own growing. Small wonder that, for a period, the man was content to be governed by the woman. During this period the family took the name of the woman, inheritance was through the female line only. Holding in their charge the health of the community, and being, as they were, its sole builders, farmers, spinners, weavers, and manufacturers, they held as high a place in the little community as they did in their individual homes. The sole, though important, work of the man was to kill the animals required for food by his family, and to protect them against the depredations of marauding tribes.

Ages passed, and again the social order changed. Not all the grown men of the village were required for fighting. Some might work, or get others to work for them. The province of agriculture was taken from the women by the men, who confined the women within the house, there to devote themselves to indoor occupations. To this confinement of women is to be attributed the real decay in the physical strength of their half of the race, and the consequent power to enslave them which was so freely and so arbitrarily used. Women