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tract in law, from passive to active in education, from mass to personality in social life, and with so little domestic friction and so little revolutionary struggle, is proof that the interrelation of men and women in the home has enabled them to keep step so nearly that comradeship in the school and the State and the industrial order has been comparatively easy to gain.

The explanation of these changes, however, and their full significance in ethical advance have not yet been embodied in educational guidance. This is the reason for the many books about women and the many activities by and for women which mark the present day. This is especially the excuse for this small contribution to the story of woman's share in race culture.

What Emerson called "certificates of advance out of fate into freedom" are held to-day by women's hands; what he meant by "new perceptions which open toward the Better and the Best" are grasped to-day by women's insight. In the Hindoo fable Vishnu assumes one masculine form after another, from the lowest to the highest, to mate with Maya as she ascends the stair of life from reptile to woman to become at last a goddess, to woo him to become a god. So in the new incarnation of the old spirit and purpose of womanhood, if but that reincarnation becomes complete, we shall attain new uplift to man and new enticement onward for the race. Happily there is ample prophecy of this outcome of the ferment and confusion of the "woman movement" in the lives and achievements of many free and consecrated women of our

own day. Indeed, for the most part the womanhood of our time is moving along new pathways swiftly and with native power of instantaneous adjustment to difficult claims. To the highest leadership among women it is given to hold steadily in one hand the sacred vessels that hold the ancient sanctities of life, and in the other a flaming torch to light the way for oncoming generations.

Woman's Share in Social

Culture

I

THE PRIMITIVE WORKING-WOMAN

REGULAR industry is rather an acquired habit than a natural tendency in the human race; and women rather than men seem first to have attained the discipline of a "steady job." The biologic hints of the busy bee, the industrious beaver, the ant, to whose example the human sluggard was long ago commended, all seem to have been taken lightly by the primitive man. Primitive woman, however, in a past too remote for any present trace of its earliest social processes, was harnessed to definite tasks which began with each morning. 1 Ward shows that although modern economists often talk as though "labor was natural to man and as though the main question was how to give men work enough to do" (and we may add of the right sort and under right conditions) "the original problem was how to make men work." He tells us

1 Lester F. Ward, Pure Sociology, Chap. 13.

that in the primitive state, "Only the work of women in caring for the men and the children and in performing the drudgery of the camp approaches the character of labor" as we understand the term.

To be sure, primitive man had occasional activities of a strenuous and often dangerous sort. They are indicated by the saying of the Australian Kurnai: 2 “A man hunts, spears fish, fights and sits about; the rest is woman's work." Professor Haddon, writing interestingly about the primitive people of the Torres Straits, says: "The men fished, fought, built houses, did a little gardening, made fish-lines and fish-hooks, spears and other implements, constructed dance-masks, headdresses and all the paraphernalia for the various ceremonies. They performed all the rites and the dances, and in addition did a good deal of strutting up and down, loafing and 'yarning.' The women cooked and prepared the food, did most of the gardening, collected and speared the fish, made clothing, baskets and mats." 3 Macdonald tells us that throughout Central Africa, "The work is done chiefly by the women. They hoe the fields, sow the seed and reap the harvest. They build the houses, grind the corn, brew the beer, cook, wash and care for all the material interests of the community. The men tend the cattle, hunt and go to war; they also do the tailoring, and spend much time sitting in council over the conduct of affairs."

These hints of conditions among undeveloped peoples give a reminiscent picture of the beginning of in

'Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai.

'James Macdonald, East-Central African Customs.

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