on, from fighters with
blow-guns and bows and arrows to fighters with Mauser rifles and
modern artillery. Laws and institutions suited to the needs of
one tribe are unsuited to those of another. Side by side are
Catholicism, Mohammedanism and heathenism. Their amusements vary
from cannibalism to cock-fighting. Their social status ranges
from barbarous promiscuity to Moslem polygamy and thence to
Hindoo monogamy. But everywhere exist masculine domination and
feminine subjection, under varied forms of political despotism,
tempered with Protestant liberalism in the case of Hawaii. To
establish over all these diverse social conditions the rigid
principles of the English common law, which prevail largely in
our jurisprudence, will perpetuate and intensify the tyranny of
husband over wife, of father over offspring.

We see the consequences already in the British West Indies, where
negro women generally prefer to live outside of legal marriage
because as wives they find themselves subjected to practical
serfdom. In Jamaica 75 per cent. of the births are illegitimate
for this reason. When I visited Haiti, I was told to my great
surprise that the homes and small farms were usually owned by the
women. Expressing my admiration of this chivalrous recognition of
women's right to the homestead, I was informed that there was no
such sentiment. It was solely because the men were so lazy and
unreliable that the perpetuity of the race was endangered. The
fathers of the children were here to-day and away to-morrow. They
spent their time in loafing, drinking, gambling and plotting
"revolutions." The women, anchored by the love for their
children, lived in the little huts on their small plantations,
raising yams and bananas, and if the men became too drunken and
abusive the women ordered them to leave. Among those people, in a
tropical climate, with land to squat upon, most of the work is
done by the women. Let no one imagine that the so-called
"matriarchate" of early ages was an ideal condition of society.
It was based primarily upon the industrial and moral
irresponsibility of men.

In our new possessions, side by side with these primitive
conditions, we have great bodies of Chinese and Hindoo coolies,
who represent ancient and fossilized types of civiliz