THE POSITION OF WOMEN 79 



success or failure of their courses. No good has ever 

 come of any society founded on such a basis. 



The ordinary life of commerce, with its basis of a 

 seafaring and agricultural population, where the occupa- 

 tions outside the homes are in the hands of the men, has 

 usually led to a satisfactory type of social development. 

 The women have found occupation and independent 

 interests in domestic duties, and sufficient leisure and 

 strength have remained to allow for the development 

 of arts and crafts. It is in such communities, inter- 

 mingled with the full life of the countryside the two 

 being mutually interdependent, that civilization has 

 reached its highest developments of literature, art, and 

 science. The Greek and Italian cities were all origin- 

 ally settlements of this kind. 



Such, then, is a brief survey of the effect of occupa- 

 tion on the organization of societies of a simple 

 nature, and many of the special characteristics remain 

 among sections of the population even when the 

 various types are blended to form one of our complex 

 modern states. 



Let us now examine our subject from the historic 

 point of view, and see if we can assign any part in the 

 making and unmaking of nations to an adjustment of 

 the position of women, on whom, as we have already 

 said, falls the chief burden of regulating the destinies 

 of a nation. Clearly no community that uses its 

 women as beasts of burden, either in the fields or the 

 factories, has reached or can ever hope to reach to any 

 satisfactory standard of development. History gives 

 us no instance of any country that has devoured its 



