[294] Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, vol. ii, p. 367.  Dr. Stoecker, in Die Liebe und die Frauen, also insists on the significance of this factor of personal responsibility.

[295] Olive Schreiner has especially emphasized the evils of parasitism for women.  “The increased wealth of the male,” she remarks ("The Woman’s Movement of Our Day,” Harper’s Bazaar, Jan., 1902), “no more of necessity benefits and raises the female upon whom he expends it, than the increased wealth of his mistress necessarily benefits, mentally or physically, a poodle, because she can then give him a down cushion in place of one of feathers, and chicken in place of beef.”  Olive Schreiner believes that feminine parasitism is a danger which really threatens society at the present time, and that if not averted “the whole body of females in civilized societies must sink into a state of more or less absolute dependence.”

[296] In Rome and in Japan, Hobhouse notes (op. cit., vol. i, pp. 169, 176), the patriarchal system reached its fullest extension, yet the laws of both these countries placed the husband in a position of practical subjugation to a rich wife.

[297] Herodotus, Bk. ii, Ch.  XXXV.  Herodotus noted that it was the woman and not the man on whom the responsibility for supporting aged parents rested.  That alone involved a very high economic position of women.  It is not surprising that to some observers, as to Diodorus Siculus, it seemed that the Egyptian woman was mistress over her husband.

[298] Hobhouse (loc. cit.), Hale, and also Grosse, believe that good economic position of a people involves high position of women.  Westermarck (Moral Ideas, vol. i, p. 661), here in agreement with Olive Schreiner, thinks this statement cannot be accepted without modification, though agreeing that agricultural life has a good effect on woman’s position, because they themselves become actively engaged in it.  A good economic position has no real effect in raising woman’s position, unless women themselves take a real and not merely parasitic part in it.

[299] Westermarck (Moral Ideas, vol. i, Ch.  XXVI, vol. ii, p. 29) gives numerous references with regard to the considerable proprietary and other privileges of women among savages which tend to be lost at a somewhat higher stage of culture.

[300] The steady rise in the proportion of women among English workers in machine industries began in 1851.  There are now, it is estimated, three and a half million women employed in industrial occupations, beside a million and a half domestic servants. (See for details, James Haslam, in a series of papers in the Englishwoman 1909.)

[301] See, e.g., J.A.  Hobson, The Evolution of Modern Capitalism, second edition, 1907, Ch.  XII, “Women in Modern Industry.”

[302] Hobhouse, op. cit., vol. i, p. 228.

[303] Fielding, Tom Jones, Bk. iii, Ch.  VII.