THE ''NEW WOMAN'' AND HER DEBTS. 665 



"units, as man was less busy conquering and enslaving enemies, he 

 began to enslave bis helpmeet, confining her within narrower 

 social bounds, withdrawing from her all share and voice in pub- 

 lic affairs, establishing, in short, a social order now known as Ori- 

 entalism, to some extent characteristic of the Jews through the 

 Persians, and fastened anew on Christianity by the Oriental St. 

 Paul, who preached the subjection of woman. With the decad- 

 ence of Greece and Rome, woman fell from her high estate of 

 honored equality, and in the dark ages as a social factor she dis- 

 appeared. 



Nevertheless, she was the worker, though receiving no credit 

 for her work. Under the feudal system, when men were bound 

 to bear arms and make constant war, women carried on the 

 trades and arts around the baronial castles, in the wretched 

 homes of the serfs — but not as free agents, only as chattels of 

 their husbands. Later, in the middle ages, all the great indus- 

 tries were controlled by guilds and syndics, which regulated the 

 manufacture and sale of goods, but in which man only repre- 

 sented the working classes. He alone had power, he alone drew 

 wages. Though the exquisite silks, damasks, and embroideries 

 that were the fruit of his loom embodied a dozen kinds of skilled 

 labor performed by his wife and daughters — hackling, combing, 

 carding, dressing, spinning, dyeing, weaving — only the head of 

 the household counted and handled the pay. 



Everywhere in Europe and America, before the era of steam 

 machinery, women plied the industrial crafts at home, in towns, in 

 villages, in the country. The conditions under which these domes- 

 tic industries were carried on were bad, indeed, almost intolerable 

 — in damp, overcrowded habitations, without air or drainage, 

 amid squalor, want, filth, and devastating epidemics. But woman, 

 the most important agent in such productive labor, was econom- 

 ically and politically ignored. She had no power, no voice, no 

 pay ; and without money she had no control of her own time or 

 her own aptitudes. In fact, she was very like a slave ; and Eng- 

 lish and Irish peasant girls even sold themselves into real volun- 

 tary slavery in colonial times, coming to America as quasi crimi- 

 nals or indentured apprentices, to be household servants and work 

 out their freedom, in order to escape the miserable tyranny of the 

 then prevailing domestic industries. 



About the middle of the last century steam was harnessed. 

 The spinning jenny was invented — the first blow at home indus- 

 tries. Factories for steam machinery were opened, and women 

 aiid children were drawn from the wretched cottages to tend first 

 the spinning frames, then the looms, and finally the whole array 

 of textile appliances which during the past centurj'" have revolu- 

 tionized production and again emancipated woman. Steam ma- 



