Such a sketch, worked out in the detail for which there is no time tonight presents a nobler picture of the importance of woman and the dignity of her position in society, than the intense and bitter experience-of her later subjection, so vividly painted by Mill, and remodels for us the orthodox doctrine, which has always proclaimed the complete degradation of the savage mother. Instead of our former conception of her, as the cowed slave, driven to a detested task by her relentless master, we may substitute the image of the creative worker; instead of the oppressed burden bearer, we find the intelligent and far-sighted provider. Work was an expression, not of her degradation, but rather of her value to society, as well in mental astuteness as in physical endurance. Her creative faculty was the fruitage, not of unhappy or dogged submission, but rather of spontaneous adjustment to her environment.
Unfortunately, this bright picture of initiative and achievement, forms a very sharp contrast to the conditions of sixty years ago or even of to-day. If the women of antiquity were the chief producers, if to them is attributable so large a share of the creative genius, why are modern women occupying so comparatively insignificent a position in the industrial world. I think that the explanation is to be found; first, in the capacity for organization, early developed in man through cooperation in battle; second, in the seclusion in which women worked from primitive times up to the invention of machinery and the industrial revolution; third, in man's quick perception of his need of political power to protect his industrial interests, and his greater ability, because of his previous training, in acquiring his political rights.
From the beginning, man went forth to hunt and fish, to fell the forests and to slay.his enemies. Accomplishing this more effectively through combination, he soon developed a
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