THE STATUS OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN. 453 



pies, characterized by chronic militancy, with their later states, 

 characterized by a militancy that had become less constant and dif- 

 fused, while industrialism had grown, difierences of like significance 

 meet us. 



We have the statement of Caesar concerning the Celts of Gaul, that 

 fathers " do not permit their children to approach them openly until 

 they have grown to manhood." In the Merovingian period a father 

 could sell his child, as could also a widowed mother a power which 

 continued down to the ninth century or later. Under the decayed 

 feudal state which preceded the French Revolution domestic subordi- 

 nation, especially among the aristocracy, was still such that Chateau- 

 briand says, " My mother, my sister, and myself, transformed into 

 statues by my father's presence, only recover ourselves after he leaves 

 t,he room ; " and Taiue, quoting Beaumarchais and Bretonne, indicates 

 that this rigidity of paternal authority was general. Then, after the 

 Revolution, De Segur writes, " Among our good forefathers a man 

 of thirty was more in subjection to the head of the family than a child 

 of eighteen is now." 



Our own histoiy furnishes kindred evidence. Describing the man- 

 ners of the fifteenth century, Wright says : " Young ladies, even of 

 great families, were brought up not only strictly, but even tyrannical- 

 ly. .. . The parental authority was indeed carried to an almost ex- 

 travagant extent." Down to the seventeenth century, " children stood 

 or knelt in trembling silence in the presence of theii- fathers and 

 mothers, and might not sit without permission." The literature of 

 even the last century, alike by the deferential use of "sir" and 

 ^' madam" in addressing parents, by the authority parents assumed 

 in arranging marriages for their children, and by the extent to which 

 sons, and still more daughters, recognized the duty of accepting the 

 spouses chosen, shows us a persistence of filial subordination propor- 

 tionate to the political subordination. And then, since the beginning 

 of this century, along with the immense development of industrialism 

 and the correlative progress toward a freer type of social organiza- 

 tion, there has gone a marked increase of juvenile freedom ; as shown 

 by a greatly moderated parental dictation, by a mitigation of punish- 

 ments, and by that decreased formality of domestic intercourse which 

 has accompanied the changing of fathers from masters into friends. 



Differences having like meanings are traceable between the more 

 militant and the less militant European societies as now existing. 

 Along with the relatively-developed industrial type of political organi- 

 zation in England, there goes a less coercive treatment of children 

 than in France and Germany, where industrialism has modified the 

 political organizations less. Joined with great fondness for, and much 

 indulgence of, the young, there is in France a closer supervision of 

 them, and the restraints on their actions are both stronger and more 

 rmraerous: girls at home are never from under maternal control, and 



