Note 250-11 — Chapter II

J. S. Mill, on the other hand, rejoices over the great economic independence of women, and expects from it especially a decrease in the number of thoughtless marriages. (Principles, IV, ch. 7, 3. Compare by the same author, The Subjection of Women, 1869.) I need only mention the dramatic art and the factory proletariat, where the independence in question obtains and indeed with very different results! It is very characteristic of the time, that Homer(Il., XII, 433) considered the spinning for wages as despicable, while Socrates, in the mournful period following the Peloponnesian war, earnestly counsels that free women without fortune should employ themselves with home industries. (Xenoph., Memor., II, 7.) It is in keeping with this that during the time of scarcity after the Peloponnesian war even female citizens hired themselves out as nurses. (Demosth., adv. Eubul., 1309, 1313.) The frequency of such engagements has, in many respects, causes related to these which produce a frequency of illegitimate births.