Note 1 — Chapter I · DEFINITION AND DISTINCTION FROM KINDRED PHENOMENA.

The general use of the word, as is so often the case, is rather inaccurate. “Careless or rhetorical writers” says Ingram, “use the words “slave” and “slavery” in a very lax way. Thus, when protesting against the so-called “Subjection of Women”, they absurdly apply those terms to the condition of the wife in the modern society of the west—designations which are inappropriate even in the case of the inmates of Indian zenanas; and they speak of the modern worker as a “wage-slave”, even though he is backed by a powerful trade-union. Passion has a language of its own, and poets and orators must doubtless be permitted to denote by the word “slavery” the position of subjects of a state who labour under civil disabilities, or are excluded from the exercise of political power, but in sociological study things ought to have their right names, and those names should, as far as possible, be uniformly employed”1.