§ 13. Condition of women.

As we have remarked before, the position held by the women of a tribe determines to some extent whether or not slaves are wanted. Where all the drudgery is performed, and can be performed, by the women, and the men do not want to relieve them of it, there is no great use for slave labour. But where women enjoy high consideration, the men are more likely to procure slaves who are to assist the women in their work.

We shall speak first of the latter fact, of slaves performing female labour. It is very often stated that slaves are employed for domestic labour. And as, in countries where slavery does not exist, domestic labour is nearly always incumbent on the women, slaves who perform such work alleviate the women's task. Where slavery prevails to a great extent it even occurs that slave-owners, female as well as male, have scarcely anything to do, all work falling to the share of the slaves. The slave-owners, in such case, form the aristocracy; the slaves, and the poor freemen unable to purchase slaves, are the labouring classes. We may remind the reader of ancient Rome, where the domestic slaves, the familia urbana, performed all domestic services required by the rich, and of the women of the upper classes in Mohammedan countries, who spend their time in idleness in the harems.

We have seen that among some pastoral tribes domestic labour is the chief occupation of the slaves. We do not recollect [389] having found any instance of a similar state of things among any agricultural tribe, and cannot think that such will anywhere be the case. A rich cattle-keeper can easily support, by the produce of his cattle, some domestic slaves who perform no productive labour. But among agricultural tribes it is otherwise: subsistence here depends almost entirely on labour; therefore slaves performing unproductive labour can only be kept if there are other slaves who till the soil and procure food for the family. It is not probable that the master will himself undertake the cultivation required to feed the slaves who assist his wife in her work; nor would the wife be glad to receive slaves from her husband, if she had to provide for them by working on the field. The Romans would not have kept a familia urbana, if there had not also been a familia rustica.

Hitherto we have spoken of unproductive female labour. But women, in primitive agricultural societies, often perform productive labour also: in many cases the tilling of the soil is incumbent on them. We may suppose that the introduction of slaves has often served to free the women from this task. We shall not, however, proceed to a closer examination of this point; for this would require a digression on the division of labour between the sexes, which falls beyond the scope of the present volume.

On the other hand, the place of slaves is often supplied by wives. We have seen that among the Australian hunters polygamy widely prevails and serves economic purposes. The same is the case among some agricultural tribes.

In § 8 the non-existence of slavery in most of the Melanesian islands has been left unexplained. We shall see now that in several of these islands a "slavery of women" prevails which bears much resemblance to slavery proper. Purchase of wives is in vogue; and most of the women are bought by the rich, many of whom possess a large number of wives. And the women must work hard to increase the income of their owners. [See Melching, p. 19.]

Guppy, in his description of the Solomon Islands, states: "The powerful chiefs of the islands of Bougainville Straits [390] usually possess a large number of wives of whom only the few that retain their youth and comeliness enjoy much of the society of their lord. The majority, having been supplanted in the esteem of their common husband, have sunk into a condition of drudgery, finding their employment and their livelihood in toiling for the master whose affections they once possessed. I learned from Gorai, the Shortland chief, who has between eighty and a hundred wives, that the main objection he has against missionaries settling on his islands is, that they would insist on his giving up nearly all his wives, thereby depriving him of those by whose labour his plantations are cultivated and his household supplied with food. A great chief, he remarked, required a large staff of workers to cultivate his extensive lands, or, in other words, numerous women to work in his plantations and to bring the produce home". [Guppy, pp. 44, 45.]

This statement is very remarkable. In the second chapter of Part I we have seen that in these same islands of Bougainville Straits boys are captured from the neighbouring islands. Guppy calls them slaves, but at the same time tells us that they "enjoy most of the rights of a native of the common class". [See above, p. 90.] There is thus no difficulty in obtaining slaves; yet slavery is little developed, for the simple reason that polygamy perfectly serves the purposes of slavery.

Ribbe equally remarks that on Bougainville polygamy is common. The wife is the slave of her husband: she has to till the fields, to perform most of the domestic work and to take care of the children. In the Shortland Islands (near Bougainville) the wife is the slave and beast of burden of her husband, rather than his companion. [Ribbe, pp. 100, 141.]

In the Nissan Islands, according to Sorge, most of the work is done by the women. [Sorge, in Steinmetn's Rechtsverhaltnisse, p. 399.]

In the New Hebrides polygamy also prevails. The price paid for a wife varies from 10 to 20 pigs, "according to her capabilities as a worker in the yam-patch." "They [the women] learn in their girlhood all that fits them to be man's slave and [391] toiler in the fields". "Women are degraded to the level of brute beasts, doing all the hard field work, and being made to carry loads which appear quite disproportionate to their ugly-shaped bodies and thin legs". [Somerville, New Hebrides, pp. 3, 5, 7, 4.] Hagen and Pineau give a similar account of female labour, and add that a man's wealth depends on the number of his wives. [Hagen and Pineau, p. 331; see also Meinicke, Neue Hebriden, p. 340.]

De Vaux, speaking of the women of New Caledonia, says: "All the drudgery is incumbent on them. They perform the clearing and digging of the soil, carry on their backs crushing loads of ignames and taros to the village, and, if a chief has promised you assistance in some fatiguing work that you want to have quickly done, he will send you a gang of these miserable beings who may scarcely be called women." Turner remarks: "Chiefs had ten, twenty, and thirty wives. The more wives the better plantations and the more food." "If a wife misbehaved, the chief did not divorce her, but made her work all the harder". And Rochas tells us that the New Caledonians keep no servants, but have many wives instead; rich men have as many wives as they want for the cultivation of their fields. [De Vaux, p. 330; Turner, Samoa, p. 341; Rochas, p. 229; see also Brainne, p. 248.]

In Neu Pommern, according to Parkinson, "every man who can afford it buys many wives. For a wife is a capital that yields a fair interest; she works from an early age till her strength is spent; and when, from age or by being overtaxed with labour, she grows sickly and decrepit, she perishes unheeded by anybody. The wife is nothing but the beast of burden of her husband; she performs all labour, tills the soil, cleans the dwelling, prepares the food, and carries the reaped produce in heavy baskets far away to the market. The husband therefore regards his wife as a valuable property." "The husband continually urges his wives to work, that they may earn much dewarra [shell-money] for him; for the more dewarra he owns the greater is the consideration and influence he enjoys. But the lot of the wives is not bettered by an increase in the wealth of the husband. The wives of a man who owns thousands of coils of dewarra have no better life and are no [392] less overworked than the wife of a very poor man who has no property/except his only wife." And Danks states that "a man may have as many wives as he can afford to purchase. If he cannot afford to purchase one, and his credit is low, he may have to remain single. The headmen are generally rich men, hence they invariably have a number of wives, ranging from three to six". "Married life in New Britain is a hard one for the women. They are beaten and ill-treated by their husbands as occasion may arise". [Parkinson, Im Bismarck-Archipel, pp. 98, 99, 101; Danks, pp. 294, 292, 293; see also Melching, pp. 43, 44.]

In New Mecklenburg the condition of the women is equally bad. [Parkinson, Dreissig Jahre, p. 269.]

In Fiji, according to Williams, "polygamy is looked upon as a principal source of a chief's power and wealth." And Pritchard says: "The greater the number of wives a man had, the better his social position . . . . Besides the acknowledged wives, there were attached to the household of the chiefs slave-women, who, though performing the most menial services, were at the same time nothing else than what the odalisques are in the Turkish harem" 3). [Williams, p. 178; Pritchard, p. 372.]

We see that these Melanesian wives supply the place of slaves. They are bought like slaves; they have to work for their owners like slaves; and their labour, like that of slaves, increases the wealth of their lords. Another point of resemblance is this. In slave countries it is generally the rich only who are able to procure slaves; poor freemen have to work for themselves. Here it is the rich who appropriate the women; and many of the poor have to remain single. Here, as in all countries where polygamy is practised, it is only the minority of the men who can live in polygamy; for everywhere the number of women is nearly equal to that of men. And as in Melanesia the rich, who otherwise would want slaves, have many wives to work for them, slaves are not required.

We cannot explain here why in Melanesia womankind is so much at a discount, whereas among some other savage tribes (e. g. on the North Pacific Coast of North America) the sex [393] commands such respect. [The condition of women is not, however, equally bad in all Melanesian islands. Among the "Western Tribes of Torres Straits "the women appear to have had a good deal to say on most questions, and were by no means down-trodden or ill-used" (Haddon, p. 357; see also Meinicke, Die Torrestrasse, p. 115). And Somerville, speaking of New Georgia in the Solomon Islands, says: "In the eastern part the treatment of women is notably good. I have but rarely seen them at work" (Somerville, New Georgia, pp. 405, 406).] But we clearly see what is the effect of this state of things. Much labour is wanted; otherwise the women would not have to work so hard, and the rich would not keep so many female labourers. Yet slaves are not kept in any considerable number, because the women supply the place of slaves.

One might object, that possibly the women are held in such a slavelike state because male slaves are impossible or very difficult to procure, or because the coercive power of these tribes is not strong enough to admit of the keeping of slaves, or because male captives, where they are introduced into the tribe (as in the islands Bougainville Straits), are wanted for warriors. Shortly expressed the objection is, that slavery is not wanting because there exists a "slavery of women," but "slavery of women'' exists because slavery proper is wanting. We must own that this is quite possible. But, whatever be the cause of this "slavery of women," as soon as it exists it renders slavery less necessary than it would otherwise be. War is frequent in Melanesia [See the details given in Part I Chap. II § 5.], so there is no physical impossibility of procuring captives. And though it may be difficult to keep male slaves subjected, -- if the men were unable to impose all work on the women and obliged to perform their due share of it themselves, they would decidedly take more pains to procure slaves and set them to work. A low condition of women, though only a secundary factor, certainly is a factor which tends to make slavery proper superfluous.