time relieved them of every shred
of responsibility, even, to an extent, of moral responsibility. "So
great a favorite," comments Blackstone, "is the female sex under the
laws of England."

You may well imagine that, in these circumstances, husbands were
interested that their wives should be very good. The law supported them
by permitting "moderate correction." A married woman might be kept in
what Blackstone calls "reasonable restraint" by her husband. But only
with a stick no larger than his thumb.

The husbandly stick was never imported into the United States. Even the
dour Puritans forbade its use. The very first modification of the
English common law, in its application to American women, was made in
1650, when the General Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony decreed that a
husband beating his wife, or, for that matter, a wife beating her
husband, should be fined ten pounds, or endure a public whipping.

The Pilgrim Fathers and the other early colonists in America brought
with them the system of English common law under which they and their
ancestors had for centuries been governed. From time to time, as
conditions made them necessary, new laws were enacted and put into
force. In all cases not specifically covered by these new laws, the old
English common law was applied. It did not occur to any one that women
would ever need special laws. The Pilgrim Fathers and their successors,
the Puritans, simply assumed that here, as in the England they had left
behind, woman's place was in the home, where she was protected,
supported, and controlled.

But in the new world woman's place in the home assumed an importance
much greater than it had formerly possessed. Labor was scarce,
manufacturing and trading were undeveloped. Woman's special activities
were urgently needed. Woman's hands helped to raise the roof-tree, her
skill and industry, to a very large extent, furnished the house. She
spun and wove, cured meat, dried corn, tanned skins, made shoes, dipped
candles, and was, in a word, almost the only manufacturer in the
country. But this did not raise her from her position as an inferior.
Woman owned neither her tools nor her raw materials. These her husband
provided. In consequence, husband and wife being one, that one, in
America, as in England, was the husband.

This explanation is necessary in order to understand why the legal
position of most American women to-day is that of inferiors, or, at
best, of minor childre