Excerpt from Papers and Proceedings, Vol. 3: Third Annual Meeting, American Sociological Society, Held at Atlantic City, N. J., December 28-30, 1908 The status of women was generally sad and pathetic in savage life but we may accept it as an established fact that that was not because she was physically inferior to man but that it was due to inferiority in the struggle for existence on account of maternity. In the family the man often tyrannized over the woman, and the woman came into the family unwillingly, driven by a greater necessity, but the family was not a product of force. It was a product of contract. It was controlled by the mores which soon established notions of the right way to behave and of rights and duties which would be conducive to prosperity and happiness. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.