the family through the maternal functions of her nature, and only
chains thus strong could have bound her to her lot as a brood animal
for the masculine civilizations of the world. In accepting her role as
the "weaker and gentler half," she accepted that function. In turn,
the acceptance of that function fixed the more firmly her rank as an
inferior.

Caught in this "vicious circle," woman has, through her reproductive
ability, founded and perpetuated the tyrannies of the Earth. Whether
it was the tyranny of a monarchy, an oligarchy or a republic, the one
indispensable factor of its existence was, as it is now, hordes of
human beings--human beings so plentiful as to be cheap, and so cheap
that ignorance was their natural lot. Upon the rock of an
unenlightened, submissive maternity have these been founded; upon the
product of such a maternity have they flourished.

No despot ever flung forth his legions to die in foreign conquest, no
privilege-ruled nation ever erupted across its borders, to lock in
death embrace with another, but behind them loomed the driving power
of a population too large for its boundaries and its natural
resources.

No period of low wages or of idleness with their want among the
workers, no peonage or sweatshop, no child-labor factory, ever came
into being, save from the same source. Nor have famine and plague been
as much "acts of God" as acts of too prolific mothers. They, also, as
all students know, have their basic causes in over-population.

The creators of over-population are the women, who, while wringing
their hands over each fresh horror, submit anew to their task of