as a matter of course. It is no easy matter to make her understand that
that position is unworthy, and that it is her duty to endeavor to become
a member of society, equal-righted with, and in every sense a peer of
man.

However much in common woman may be shown to have with the workingman,
she leads him in one thing:--_Woman was the first human being to come
into bondage: she was a slave before the male slave existed._

All social dependence and oppression has its roots in the _economic
dependence_ of the oppressed upon the oppressor. In this condition woman
finds herself, from an early day down to our own. The history of the
development of human society proves the fact everywhere.

The knowledge of the history of this development is, however,
comparatively new. As little as the myth of the Creation of the
World--as taught us by the Bible--can be upheld in sight of the
investigations of geographers and, scientists, grounded as these
investigations are upon unquestionable and innumerable facts, just so
untenable has its myth proved concerning the creation and evolution of
man. True enough, as yet the veil is far from being lifted from all the
sub-departments of this historical development of mankind; over many, on
which already light has been shed, differences of opinion still exist
among the investigators on the meaning and connection of this or that
fact; nevertheless, on the whole, there is agreement and clearness. It
is established that man did not, like the first human couple of the
Bible, make his first appearance on earth in an advanced stage of
civilization. He reached that plane only in the course of endlessly long
lapses of time, after he had gradually freed himself from purely animal
conditions, and had experienced long terms of development, in the course
of which his social as well as his sexual relations--the relations
between man and woman--had undergone a great variety of changes.

The favorite phrase--a phrase that the ignorant or impostors daily smite
our ears with on the subject of the relations between man and woman, and
between the poor and the rich--"it always has been so," and the
conclusion drawn therefrom--"it will always be so," _is in every sense
of the word false, superficial and trumped-up_.

For the purposes of this work a cursory presentation of the relations
between the sexes, since primitive society, is of special importance. It
is so because it can thereby be proved that, seeing th