er find the leisure class in fully
developed form. But this lower barbarism shows the usages, motives,
and circumstances out of which the institution of a leisure class has
arisen, and indicates the steps of its early growth. Nomadic hunting
tribes in various parts of the world illustrate these more primitive
phases of the differentiation. Any one of the North American hunting
tribes may be taken as a convenient illustration. These tribes
can scarcely be said to have a defined leisure class. There is a
differentiation of function, and there is a distinction between classes
on the basis of this difference of function, but the exemption of the
superior class from work has not gone far enough to make the designation
"leisure class" altogether applicable. The tribes belonging on this
economic level have carried the economic differentiation to the point
at which a marked distinction is made between the occupations of men and
women, and this distinction is of an invidious character. In nearly
all these tribes the women are, by prescriptive custom, held to those
employments out of which the industrial occupations proper develop at
the next advance. The men are exempt from these vulgar employments and
are reserved for war, hunting, sports, and devout observances. A very
nice discrimination is ordinarily shown in this matter.

This division of labour coincides with the distinction between the
working and the leisure class as it appears in the higher barbarian
culture. As the diversification and specialisation of employments
proceed, the line of demarcation so drawn comes to divide the industrial
from the non-industrial employments. The man's occupation as it stands
at the earlier barbarian stage is not the original out of which any
appreciable portion of later industry has developed. In the later
development it survives only in employments that are not classed as
industrial,--war, politics, sports, learning, and the priestly office.
The only notable exceptions are a portion of the fishery industry
and certain slight employments that are doubtfully to be classed as
industry; such as the manufacture of arms, toys, and sporting goods.
Virtually the whole range of industrial employments is an outgrowth of
what is classed as woman's work in the primitive barbarian community.

The work of the men in the lower barbarian culture is no less
indispensable to the life of the group than the work done by the women.
It may even be that the m