Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/40

 became valuable as child-bearers and slaves, and their helplessness at the child-bearing period offered the opportunity for complete domination. They became the property of the masters who had purchased, stolen, or captured them, and they lived their dull, heavily-burdened lives at the whim and pleasure of their lords.

Time passed: civilisations rose and fell. One part of the human family rose against another, and enslaved it. The development of the rich natural resources of the world, the growth of the mind of man, the use of his inventive genius in the making of tools, instruments, weapons of defence, houses, ships, public buildings; his industry in the raising of crops, the making of roads, the building of bridges, the discovery of the arts and the rudiments of science, all contributed to a state in which property took a new and large significance. Wealth meant power, the power to command other men and women; and so the slowly-developing spirit of man sought power, admiration, worship. The value of woman as property, in these days of destructive wars, lay chiefly in her power to bear children. For this she was fed and protected, for this she was permitted a certain amount of freedom, though within clearly defined limits and in strict seclusion, unless she were a slave. In the number of his slaves a man's