which the distinction between a leisure
and a working class arises is a division maintained between men's and
women's work in the lower stages of barbarism. Likewise the earliest
form of ownership is an ownership of the women by the able bodied men
of the community. The facts may be expressed in more general terms, and
truer to the import of the barbarian theory of life, by saying that it
is an ownership of the woman by the man.

There was undoubtedly some appropriation of useful articles before the
custom of appropriating women arose. The usages of existing archaic
communities in which there is no ownership of women is warrant for such
a view. In all communities the members, both male and female, habitually
appropriate to their individual use a variety of useful things; but
these useful things are not thought of as owned by the person who
appropriates and consumes them. The habitual appropriation and
consumption of certain slight personal effects goes on without
raising the question of ownership; that is to say, the question of a
conventional, equitable claim to extraneous things.

The ownership of women begins in the lower barbarian stages of culture,
apparently with the seizure of female captives. The original reason
for the seizure and appropriation of women seems to have been their
usefulness as trophies. The practice of seizing women from the enemy
as trophies, gave rise to a form of ownership-marriage, resulting in a
household with a male head. This was followed by an extension of slavery
to other captives and inferiors, besides women, and by an extension of
ownership-marriage to other women than those seized from the enemy.
The outcome of emulation under the circumstances of a predatory life,
therefore, has been on the one hand a form of marriage resting on
coercion, and on the other hand the custom of ownership. The two
institutions are not distinguishable in the initial phase of their
development; both arise from the desire of the successful men to put
their prowess in evidence by exhibiting some durable result of their
exploits. Both also minister to that propensity for mastery which
pervades all predatory communities. From the ownership of women the
concept of ownership extends itself to include the products of their
industry, and so there arises the ownership of things as well as of
persons.

In this way a consistent system of property in goods is gradually
installed. And although in the latest stages o