While man went forth to hunt, or to battle with the foe who would have dispossessed us of all, we laboured on the land.

We hoed the earth, we reaped the grain, we shaped the dwellings, we wove the clothing, we modelled the earthen vessels and drew the lines upon them, which were humanity's first attempt at domestic art; we studied the properties and uses of plants, and our old women were the first physicians of the race, as, often, its first priests and prophets.
We fed the race at our breast, we bore it on our shoulders; through us it was shaped, fed, and clothed.

Labour more toilsome and unending than that of man was ours; yet did we never cry out that it was too heavy for us.

While savage man lay in the sunshine on his skins, resting, that he might be fitted for war or the chase, or while he shaped his weapons of death, he ate and drank that which our hands had provided for him; and while we knelt over our grindstone, or hoed in the fields, with one child in our womb, perhaps, and one on our back, toiling till the young body was old before its time--did we ever cry out that the labour allotted to us was too hard for us?
Did we not know that the woman who threw down her burden was as a man who cast away his shield in battle--a coward and a traitor to his race?
Man fought--that was his work; we fed and nurtured the race--that was ours.

We knew that upon our labours, even as upon man's, depended the life and well-being of the people whom we bore.