re has opened before the
mass of men a vast new sphere of labour undreamed of by their ancestors.
In every direction the change which material civilisation has wrought,
while it has militated against that comparatively small section of males
who have nothing to offer society but the expenditure of their untrained
muscular energy (inflicting much and often completely unmerited
suffering upon them), has immeasurably extended the field of male labour
as a whole. Never before in the history of the earth has the man's field
of remunerative toil been so wide, so interesting, so complex, and in
its results so all-important to society; never before has the male sex,
taken as a whole, been so fully and strenuously employed.

So much is this the case, that, exactly as in the earlier conditions of
society an excessive and almost crushing amount of the most important
physical labour generally devolved upon the female, so under modern
civilised conditions among the wealthier and fully civilised classes,
an unduly excessive share of labour tends to devolve upon the male. That
almost entirely modern, morbid condition, affecting brain and nervous
system, and shortening the lives of thousands in modern civilised
societies, which is vulgarly known as "overwork" or "nervous breakdown,"
is but one evidence of the even excessive share of mental toil devolving
upon the modern male of the cultured classes, who, in addition to
maintaining himself, has frequently dependent upon him a larger or
smaller number of entirely parasitic females. But, whatever the result
of the changes of modern civilisation may be with regard to the male,
he certainly cannot complain that they have as a whole robbed him of
his fields of labour, diminished his share in the conduct of life, or
reduced him to a condition of morbid inactivity.

In our woman's field of labour, matters have tended to shape themselves
wholly otherwise! The changes which have taken place during the last
centuries, and which we sum up under the compendious term "modern
civilisation," have tended to rob woman, not merely in part but almost
wholly, of the more valuable of her ancient domain of productive and
social labour; and, where there has not been a determined and conscious
resistance on her part, have nowhere spontaneously tended to open out to
her new and compensatory fields.

It is this fact which constitutes our modern "Woman's Labour Problem."

Our spinning-wheels are all broken; in