In the early Roman days, their position was recognized by the state as distinct from any rank applicable to men. Men were graded from the highest position of respect in the state, to the lowest conceivable; from absolute authority to abject slavery. Women were destitute of authority as a sex, but individually the state recognized their rights as involved in the rights of the family. They received the rank of their husbands, but in a lesser degree, when they had no claim to the rank by virtue of any inherent power or ability of their own. While as a sex they had no voice in the state, the law-makers feared them when they were closely related to superior officers. When war declined and agriculture assumed greater importance, the family became a close social and economic unit with recognition of a division of work between the sexes. Women, while still working in the fields tended to leave the out-door work to men, and to confine themselves more exclusively to in-door work. This might have been considered a concession to the sex, for only among the poorest people did women continue to hold their own in the field. Undoubtedly women thought it was to their advantage to be able to confine their efforts to work close to the hearth. Here we have another example of convenience as responsible for the division of labor between men and women. From the dawn of the industrial era men made inroads upon the industrial sphere of women, and while they seemed to assume those tasks most desirable from a modern point of view, nevertheless those tasks were the ones most conveniently relinquished by the women. The change was a mutual advantage and not necessarily a consequence of the arbitrary exercise of authority. Women’s interests were concentrated on industrial occupations only in so far as these occupations furthered the well-being of their families, and just as soon as they were able to shift the responsibility to others, they did so gladly, for by so doing they were brought closer to the fireside and their children. Before the introduction of machine industry, the home of the working people stood for an economic unit as well as a social one. Women left the field for indoor work, and as soon as there existed a surplus of labor out-of-doors, they once again divided their employments with the men, the latter taking over those tasks allowing for the greatest play of skill and inventiveness, and most completely divorced from personal service. These became the textile industries and paved the way for the industrial revolution, and the substitution of machine work for hand work. Women drew their work instinctively closer to the hearth; men away from it.