These conditions may prevail even in primitive life, but to-day they have been vastly increased through the fact that with advancing civilization money was devised.  This is a system of counters, generally coin or paper, not really valuable in themselves, but always resting back for value on the earth, or on something derived from it.  In the past it was supposed that there were some things which, because of their nature, were not marketable, while others were beyond price.  To-day we set values on everything, even on men’s bodies; eyes, ears, legs and lives can be priced.  There are, in fact, insurance companies and factories that have regular schedules of value for various parts of the body.  Our courts set prices on blighted affections, damaged reputations, social advancements, impaired digestions, damaged complexions, nervous shocks and extreme humiliations.  Even a woman’s honor may have a price in dollars.

These property rights, like the rights of the person, have always been subject to violence.  Powerful individuals and groups have always been able to overstep legal restrictions and public opinion, and seize what they desired.  The land grabbing going on in North Africa and Persia to-day and the activity of great industrial monopolies at home, show us that some property rights still need to be secured by force.  In this struggle, it has come about naturally that men, being stronger, freer and less scrupulous than women, have outstripped them and have so far had a pretty complete monopoly of wealth.  In fact women themselves have at times become property.  In such times a man who stole or bought a woman, naturally took over with her all her rights in real estate and personal property as well as her person and her services.

Only gradually did women gain power to hold property themselves.  Mainly because fathers wished to preserve property in their families, the right of women to inherit became slowly established as civilization advanced.  In Judea, Greece and Rome, certain rights of a woman to hold property were clearly settled.  In the reversion to force under feudalism, woman’s rights to outside property suffered; but they have been gradually restored during the last few centuries.  To-day, in civilized lands, a woman’s rights to property, inherited or definitely given her or purchased by her, are everywhere recognized, if she does not marry.  In France, and other Latin countries, she may still lose control of her property if she takes a husband; but in northern and western lands, even a married woman may retain her possessions.

Woman’s body, too, is increasingly looked upon as her personal property.  With the raising of the age of consent; with increasing severity in laws punishing rape, and with the abrogation of judicial orders for the restitution of marital rights, it is now quite generally recognized that a woman should have the right to control her own person.  Still, in many lands there is much to be done before this right is fully safeguarded.