| “In a given society the degree of woman's emancipation is a measure of the general emancipation.”—Fournier. |
CHAPTER I.
THE ECONOMIC RELATION OF WOMEN IN THE PAST.
Evoluti⟨on.⟩
⟨Every social scientist to-day accepts the fact that the human race has developed from forms lower in the scale of nature, and that the career of humanity has been a growth from savagery through barbarism into civilization. Modern society also recognizes that this progress has an economic basis; that it is the modes and methods of producing and exchanging the necessaries of life that determine the status of progress; that it is the development of the means of production that as forced humanity onwards from stage to stage; that the morals, ethics, religions, manners, customs and laws of the human race are but reflexes of their economic status of development.⟩
⟨In order therefore to understand woman's position in society—past and present—it it necessary to investigate what has been and is her economic relation to society, her relation to the means of life, of production and exchange.⟩
⟨Early Division of Labor.⟩
⟨Man is a social animal as well as a tool-using animal. From the very earliest stages the human race collected in herds which later developed into clans and tribes, and, finally, into nations. The first coming together was undoubtedly for mutual protection. Out of that grew love for society.⟩
⟨The first division of labor was between man and woman.⟩
