Even, the land and all which it implied was a family possession in primitive days.

And the worker's equipment, owned privately, was limited in the early days.

We read that "tools, weapons, slaves and captured women and the products of some special skill were generally private possession, but products of group-work, such as the capture and killing of buffalo, salmon, and all larger game among the North American Indians, and the maize which individual women tended but which belonged to the household or the tribe in common, were all shared as community property." When to this communal possession of products of group-activity were added control over marriage portions, however those might be appropriated, and the management of all property thought to be of group-value, we can see that all of economic weight of influence now so individualized once went into the family asset.
In the mediaeval times, when laborers were gaining slowly a class consciousness outlined by Guilds and Unions of special groups of workers, the family was still the main centre of work-direction and of united profit from work, and hence it was evident to the dullest mind and the coldest heart that members of a family should work and save together.

Now the whole trend of industrial relationship is toward making independent and individualistic connection between the worker and his job outside of family unity.

Even movements for legal protection of the worker against exploitation by masters in industry often take little account of family relationship or the varying inherited family ideals.