servant, employer and employed, became facts;
and dim suspicions as to economic laws were penetrating the minds of the
early thinkers. The earliest coherent thought on economic problems comes
to us from the Greeks, among whom economic speculation had begun almost
a thousand years before Christ. The problem of work and wages was even
then forming,--the sharply accented difference between theirs and ours
lying in the fact that for Greek and Roman and the earlier peoples in
the Indies economic life was based upon slavery, accepted then as the
foundation stone of the economic social system.

Up to the day when Greek thought on economic questions formulated, in
Aristotle's "Politics" and "Economics," the first logical statement of
principles, knowledge as to actual conditions for women is chiefly
inferential. When a slave, she was like other slaves, regarded as
soulless; and she still is, under Mohammedanism. As lawful wife she was
physically restrained and repressed, and mentally far more so. A Greek
matron was one degree higher than her servants; but her own sons were
her masters, to whom she owed obedience. A striking illustration of this
is given in the Odyssey. Telemachus, feeling that he has come to man's
estate, invades the ranks of the suitors who had for years pressed about
Penelope, and orders her to retire to her own apartments, which she does
in silence. Yet she was honored above most, passive and prompt obedience
being one of her chief charms.

Deep pondering brought about for Aristotle a view which verges toward
breadth and understanding, but is perpetually vitiated by the fact that
he regards woman as in no sense an individual existence. If all goes
well and prosperously, women deserve no credit; if ill, they may gain
renown through their husbands, the philosopher remarking: "Neither would
Alcestis have gained such renown, nor Penelope have been deemed worthy
of such praise, had they respectively lived with their husbands in
prosperous circumstances; and it is the sufferings of Admetus and
Ulysses which have given them everlasting fame."

This is Aristotle's view of women's share in the life they lived; yet
gleams of something higher more than once came to him, and in the
eighth chapter of the "Economics," he adds: "Justly to love her husband
with reverence and respect, and to be loved in turn, is that which
befits a wife of gentle birth, as to her intercourse with her own
husband." Ulysses, in his address t