Hi 
CHAPTER III 
THE PERIOD OF BARBARISM 
S the women did the work of domestic manw 
facture, it was they who made the inventions 
of tools and implements and processes for doing 
that work. Advancement, in primitive times, de 
pends more upon the development of the food and 
clothing industries than anything else; and where 
tribes have ceased to advance at any stage, it must 
be supposed that this failure was due to the fact that 
the women were too much oppressed to make dis 
coveries and inventions. 
The matter of climate and natural products and 
conditions is doubtless back of and connected with 
the special situations of women in different tribes. 
Among the aborigines of Australia, who were in the 
middle sub-period of savagery when discovered, the 
women were in a most abject state of subjection. 
The climate where they were found living is such 
that natural food products are plentiful; and many 
writers have expressed surprise that people so 
favorably situated should have made so little ad 
vancement. But when we reflect that these people 
were able to live in idleness, that nature supplied 
their wants without effort on their part, we see that