us
discover what show of right is on the economist's side, and how far
present conditions are a necessity of the time. It is women on whom the
facts weigh most heavily, and whose fortunes are most tangled in this
web woven from the beginning of time, and from that beginning drenched
with the tears and stained by the blood of workers in all climes and in
every age. As women we are bound, by every law of justice, to aid all
other women in their struggle. We are equally bound to define the
nature, the necessities, and the limits of such struggle; and it is to
this end that we seek now to discover, through such light as past and
present may cast, the future for women workers the world over.

I.

A LOOK BACKWARD.

The history of women as wage-earners is actually comprised within the
limits of a few centuries; but her history as a worker runs much farther
back, and if given in full, would mean the whole history of working
humanity. The position of working women all over the civilized world is
still affected not only by the traditions but by the direct inheritance
of the past, and thus the nature of that inheritance must be understood
before passing to any detailed consideration of the subject under its
various divisions. It is the conditions underlying history and rooted in
the facts of human life itself which we must know, since from the
beginning life and work have been practically synonymous, and in the
nature of things remain so.

In the shadows of that far remote infancy of the world where from
cave-dweller and mere predatory animal man by slow degrees moved toward
a higher development, the story of woman goes side by side with his. For
neither is there record beyond the scattered implements of the stone age
and the rude drawings of the cave-dwellers, from which one may see that
warfare was the chief life of both. The subjugation of the weaker by the
stronger is the story of all time; the "survival of the fittest," the
modern summary of that struggle.

Naturally, slavery was the first result, and servitude for one side the
outcome of all struggle. Physical facts worked with man's will in the
matter, and early rendered woman subordinate physically and dependent
economically. The origin of this dependence is given with admirable
force and fulness by Professor Lester F. Ward in his "Dynamic
Sociology":[1]--

In the struggle for supremacy, "woman at once became property, since
anything that affords its posse