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Page 26
As a quadruped, the female suffers very little handicap from the
functions peculiar to her sex, except when actually carrying her young
or nursing them. When she stands erect, however, the support for the
special organs of reproduction is far from ideal; heavy lifting, or
long-continued standing, often leads to disaster, and the periodic
functions, even in the healthiest conditions, must always place women
at a working disadvantage as compared with men. Add to this the fact
that women are smaller, less agile, and far less strong, than men, and,
even when not encumbered with young, it is clear that a woman, when
confronting physical work in competition with men, needs something more
than a fair field and free competition.[33] Idealists and travelers
among primitive people love to tell us how easily women meet their
special functions, carrying burdens equal to those carried by men when
on the march, and dropping out from the caravan for only a few hours to
give birth to a child; but the fact remains that women in all primitive
societies age quickly and that those who are spoiled are thrown aside
and forgotten.[34] Woman's handicap as a working animal in competition
with man is too obvious and too deep-seated to be idealized away.
[33] The Supreme Court of the United States, in passing on the "Oregon
laundry case," in 1907, declared a bill limiting a woman's working hours
constitutional. See the _Brief for the State of Oregon_, prepared by
LOUIS D. BRANDEIS, published by The National Consumers' League, 105 East
22d Street, New York.
[34] DUDLEY, _Principles and Practices of Gynecology_, pp. 23-24, says
that among Indian women want of care during and after labor leads to
numberless evils.
In all savage societies labor is clearly specialized between the sexes.
The man, because of his superior strength and mobility, fights, hunts
and makes weapons of the chase. The woman fetches and carries, digs and
delves, cures the meat, makes the rude huts, clothing and pottery.
Gradually she changes wild grasses to domesticated plants, and rears the
young animals brought home from the chase, till they follow and serve
their human masters. She is truly the mother of industries, and it in no
way detracts from her credit that her motherhood is here, as elsewhere,
mainly unthinking.
With the exhaustion of the supply of wild animals, man is forced to turn
his attention to the world of vegetation and he takes over the direction
of the plants and animals which woman has largely domesticated. In his
career as fighter and hunter he has learned to co�perate with his
fellows to a degree which aids him greatly in dividing the arable land,
protecting his crops, and using grazing lands in common with the tribe.
He has also learned to make stone hatchets, spears and bows and arrows.
Woman has not felt the same necessity to invent in her work; such new
tools as she has devised have been helpful, but men who could not invent
have been wiped out by those who learned to make stronger spears or
better arrow-heads.
It is the same difference in adaptability which one observes to-day
between the farmers on the western frontier of America and those who
remain in their peasant homes in Europe. The peasant has even greater
need of inventing than has his expatriated countryman in Colorado, but
he lacks the driving impulse. It was the same with women and men under
the conditions of savage life. Thus it came about that man's greater
strength and mobility, backed by power of co�peration and invention,
gave him the leadership in such primitive life as we find depicted in
the pages of Homer or in the epic of the Jews. True, woman was his first
lieutenant, but he spoke for her in most of the larger matters of the
industrial life.
With settled conditions and accumulation of wealth, the most desirable
women were almost entirely freed from physical labor and gradually
became luxury-loving parasites and playthings, as we pointed out in the
second chapter of this volume. Meantime slaves were multiplying, male
and female and, while the most desirable women passed to the harem, the
mass of them became drudges in house and field. It is hard for us to
realize that it is exactly in those times when a few women are
surrounded with great luxury that most of the sex are reduced to heavy
labor and wretchedness.
During the early Christian ages, a tradition was gradually formed
concerning woman's place in industry, or rather three traditions were
formed. The working woman of the lower classes was to be the
housekeeper, which meant that she was to care for food, cook, spin,
weave, sew and mend, scrub and wash, bear children and nurse and tend
them. If she were of the middle class, she was to be a mother, to
supervise this range of work, look after dependents, conserve social
conditions and be the lady bountiful of her district. The second ideal
was the woman of religion, who was to subdue her passions, observe set
prayers and other religious exercises, and do the menial work of the
convent. The third ideal was the lady of chivalry, who appeared after
the tenth century. She was to be cared for and protected from work or
anxiety; menials were to prepare her food, clothes and ornaments;
gallants were to await her orders and do her bidding.
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