Page:Marriage as a Trade.djvu/117

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MARRIAGE AS A TRADE
109

prefer to set his hand to a restful occupation which would keep him in his home, rather than to the plough or the spade, which would take him out of it.

In the beginning of things, labour seems to have been divided between the sexes on a fairly simple plan. Man did most of the hunting and most of the fighting; and woman, only joining in the hunting and fighting if necessity arose, did all the rest. In savage tribes which have suddenly come under the domination of a civilized race—a domination which usually means not only the cessation of tribal warfare, but a rapid decrease in the raw material of the chase—the male, debarred from the exercise of his former avocations, frequently refuses to do anything at all. Deprived of the only work proper to man, and disinclined, at first, to undertake the work he considers proper to woman, he is apt to fold his hands and exist in idleness on what is, to all intents and purposes, the slave-labour of his female belongings. The distaste of certain South African races for what we esteem men's work is well known, and has had political consequences before now; and it is