WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
equality of the sexes gave the woman proprietary rights, liberty in the choice of a husband, and opportunity for sharing in the counsels of the nation. Such is the ideal of the spirit of modern feminism. An ever-growing number of women of the Western civilisations condemn the economic dependence of their sex. Olive Schreiner explicitly warns women that parasitism results in female degradation. Mrs. Ethel Snowden urges that, so far as possible, every woman should be self-supporting. This insistence upon the economic freeing of women is based upon an appreciation of the status of the sex in the period of mother-right. In America over five million women earn a livelihood without dependence upon men. Japan has a large population of industrial women. The entrance of women into almost every field of employment has its menace; but the long age is nearing the end during which women had no trade but marriage.
Wider knowledge for women is the rock upon which the system will ultimately wreck itself. This is not stating that polygyny will disappear entirely in civilised nations. Sexual variation has always existed, and there is no reason to believe that one stable, rigid form of erotic relationship will ever obtain. But the spread of the revolutionary influence of culture, a perfectly natural process, will cause a steady reduction of the harems of the East.
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