26o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tlie bondwoman, who milks and who fetches water, now from a well 

 .at hand and now Irom one farther off, varies from day to day ; and 

 its worth, as compared with the worths of other works, cannot be 

 known. So with the preparation of skins, the making of clothing, the 

 setting up of the tents. All these miscellaneous services, differing in 

 arduousness, duration, skill, cannot be paid for in money or produce 

 while there exists neither currency nor market in which the relative 

 values of articles and labors may be established by competition. 

 Doubtless a bargain for services rudely estimated as worth so many 

 cattle or sheep may be entered into. But beyond the fact that this 

 form of payment, admitting of but very rough equivalence, cannot 

 conveniently be carried out with all members of the group, there is 

 the fact that, even supposing it to be carried out, the members of the 

 group cannot separately utilize their respective portions. The sheep 

 have to be herded together; it would never do to send them out in 

 small divisions, each requiring its attendant. The milk which cows 

 yield must be dealt with in the mass could not without great loss of 

 labor be taken by so many separate milk-maids and treated afterward 

 in separate portions. So is it throughout. The members of the group 

 are naturally led into the system of giving their respective labors 

 and satisfying from the produce their respective wants : they have to 

 live as a corjjorate body. The patriarch, at once family-head, director 

 of industry, owner of all members of the group and its belongings, 

 regulates the labor of his dependents ; and, maintaining them out 

 of the common stock that results, is restrained in his distribution, as 

 in his conduct at large, only by traditional custom and by the pros- 

 pect of resistance and secession if he disregards too far the average 

 opinion. 



The mention of secession introduces a remaining trait of the patri- 

 archal group. Small societies, mostly at enmity with surrounding so- 

 cieties, are anxious to increase the numbers of their men that they 

 may be stronger for war. Hence sometimes female infanticide, that 

 the rearing of males may be facilitated ; hence in some places, as parts 

 of Africa, a woman is forgiven any amount of irregularity if she bears 

 many children ; hence the fact that among the Hebrews barrenness 

 was so great a reproach. This wish to strengthen itself by adding to 

 its fighting-men leads each grouj) to welcome fugitives from other 

 groups. Everywhere, and in all times, there goes on desertion some- 

 times of rebels, sometimes of criminals. Stories of feudal ages, tell- 

 ing of knights and men-at-arms who, being ill-treated or in danger of 

 punishment, escape and take service with other princes or nobles, re- 

 mind us of what goes on at the present day in varioiis j^arts of Africa, 

 where the dependents of a chief who treats t])em too harshly leave 

 him and join some neighboring chief, and of what goes on among 

 such wandering South American tribes as the Coroados, members of 

 which join now one horde and now another, as impulse prompts. And 



