it survives only in employments that are not classed as industrial,—war, politics, sports, learning, and the priestly office. The only notable exceptions are a portion of the fishery industry and certain slight employments that are doubtfully to be classed as industry; such as the manufacture of arms, toys, and sporting goods. Virtually the whole range of industrial employments is an outgrowth of what is classed as woman’s work in the primitive barbarian community.
The work of the men in the lower barbarian culture is no less indispensable to the life of the group than the work done by the women. It may even be that the men’s work contributes as much to the food supply and the other necessary consumption of the group. Indeed, so obvious is this “productive” character of the men’s work that in the conventional economic writings the hunter’s work is taken as the type of primitive industry. But such is not the barbarian’s sense of the matter. In his own eyes he is not a labourer, and he is not to be classed with the women in this respect; nor is his effort to be classed with the women’s drudgery, as labour or industry, in such a sense as to admit of its being confounded with the latter. There is in all barbarian communities a profound sense of the disparity between man’s and woman’s work. His work may conduce to the maintenance of the group, but it is felt that it does so through an excellence and an efficacy of a kind that cannot without derogation be compared with the uneventful diligence of the women.
At a farther step backward in the cultural scale—
