Primitive Human Institutions

69:3.1The di­vi­sions of la­bor in prim­i­tive so­ci­ety were de­ter­mined first by nat­u­ral, and then by so­cial, cir­cum­stances. The early or­der of spe­cial­iza­tion in la­bor was:

69:3.21. Spe­cial­iza­tion based on sex. Woman’s work was de­rived from the se­lec­tive pres­ence of the child; women nat­u­rally love ba­bies more than men do. Thus woman be­came the rou­tine worker, while man be­came the hunter and fighter, en­gag­ing in ac­cen­tu­ated pe­ri­ods of work and rest.

69:3.3All down through the ages the taboos have op­er­ated to keep woman strictly in her own field. Man has most self­ishly cho­sen the more agree­able work, leav­ing the rou­tine drudgery to woman. Man has al­ways been ashamed to do woman’s work, but woman has never shown any re­luc­tance to do­ing man’s work. But strange to re­cord, both men and women have al­ways worked to­gether in build­ing and fur­nish­ing the home.

69:3.42. Mod­i­fi­ca­tion con­se­quent upon age and dis­ease. These dif­fer­ences de­ter­mined the next di­vi­sion of la­bor. The old men and crip­ples were early set to work mak­ing tools and weapons. They were later as­signed to build­ing ir­ri­ga­tion works.

69:3.53. Dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion based on re­li­gion. The med­i­cine men were the first hu­man be­ings to be ex­empted from phys­i­cal toil; they were the pi­o­neer pro­fes­sional class. The smiths were a small group who com­peted with the med­i­cine men as ma­gi­cians. Their skill in work­ing with met­als made the peo­ple afraid of them. The “white smiths” and the “black smiths” gave ori­gin to the early be­liefs in white and black magic. And this be­lief later be­came in­volved in the su­per­sti­tion of good and bad ghosts, good and bad spir­its.

69:3.6Smiths were the first non­re­li­gious group to en­joy spe­cial priv­i­leges. They were re­garded as neu­trals dur­ing war, and this ex­tra leisure led to their be­com­ing, as a class, the politi­cians of prim­i­tive so­ci­ety. But through gross abuse of these priv­i­leges the smiths be­came uni­ver­sally hated, and the med­i­cine men lost no time in fos­ter­ing ha­tred for their com­peti­tors. In this first con­test be­tween sci­ence and re­li­gion, re­li­gion (su­per­sti­tion) won. Af­ter be­ing driven out of the vil­lages, the smiths main­tained the first inns, pub­lic lodg­ing­houses, on the out­skirts of the set­tle­ments.

69:3.74. Mas­ter and slave. The next dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of la­bor grew out of the re­la­tions of the con­queror to the con­quered, and that meant the be­gin­ning of hu­man slav­ery.

69:3.85. Dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion based on di­verse phys­i­cal and men­tal en­dow­ments. Fur­ther di­vi­sions of la­bor were fa­vored by the in­her­ent dif­fer­ences in men; all hu­man be­ings are not born equal.

69:3.9The early spe­cial­ists in in­dus­try were the flint flak­ers and stone ma­sons; next came the smiths. Sub­se­quently group spe­cial­iza­tion de­vel­oped; whole fam­i­lies and clans ded­i­cated them­selves to cer­tain sorts of la­bor. The ori­gin of one of the ear­li­est castes of priests, apart from the tribal med­i­cine men, was due to the su­per­sti­tious ex­al­ta­tion of a fam­ily of ex­pert sword­mak­ers.

69:3.10The first group spe­cial­ists in in­dus­try were rock salt ex­porters and pot­ters. Women made the plain pot­tery and men the fancy. Among some tribes sewing and weav­ing were done by women, in oth­ers by the men.

69:3.11The early traders were women; they were em­ployed as spies, car­ry­ing on com­merce as a side line. Pres­ently trade ex­panded, the women act­ing as in­ter­me­di­aries—job­bers. Then came the mer­chant class, charg­ing a com­mis­sion, profit, for their ser­vices. Growth of group barter de­vel­oped into com­merce; and fol­low­ing the ex­change of com­modi­ties came the ex­change of skilled la­bor.