284 HUMAN BIOLOGY 



Even the most thorough-going ideaUst admits as much and 

 there is Httle need to do more than remind the reader of these 

 homely facts. It is well, also, to remember that a primitive 

 community is self-contained, but that it can only be so 

 through differentiation of labor and orderly cooperation. 



We have considered the force of certain biological factors 

 in the shaping of marriage, but it is conceivable that economic 

 factors also play a part. The researches of Hobhouse and 

 others indicate that polygyny is far more frequent among 

 pastoral and agricultural peoples than among hunters. This 

 is attributed in part to differences in individual wealth and 

 in part to the need for labor. Instead of a retinue of female 

 servants the head of the family acquires wives whose 

 children are also a labor asset. Monogamy, on the other hand, 

 is almost non-existent among pastoral peoples. The economic 

 relation is even clearer when we turn to such practices as 

 "wife purchase," the custom being rare among hunters, but 

 very frequent in pastoral and agricultural states. In general, 

 then, we can say that economic factors in the life of the 

 community do bear upon the form of marriage. Wife purchase, 

 of course, results in regarding women as property, something 

 particularly abhorent to our culture. Yet the male tendency to 

 possess is fundamental, and the last thing a man is disposed 

 to release is his woman. Modern communistic reformers seem 

 to sense marriage as the bulwark of private property, and so 

 usually try to set up communism in sex, so far without 

 success. 



When we take into account the sharp distinctions primitive 

 people make between the work of men and women, it appears 

 that one outstanding feature of modern life is the degree to 

 which the sexes are integrated. Step by step, industrially, 

 politically, socially and intellectually, the women of the 

 civilized world are advancing to equal rights of participation 

 in national life. This is a matter of current history and a 

 subject with which the reader is familiar. Nor can it be said 

 that the change has been wholly irrational or unconscious, 

 because there have been and exist today, organizations of 

 women, laboring to bring about further specific adjustments 

 in their favor. Even the slogan "all sex distinctions must go" 

 is familiar. Presumably, what is meant by "sex distinctions" 



