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Returning to the Yir Yoront, we find that adult men kept axes in camp with their other

equipment, or carried them when travelling. Thus a woman or child who wanted to use an axe as

might frequently happen during the day–had to get one from a man, use it promptly, and return it

in good condition. While a man might speak of “my axe,” a woman or child could not

This necessary and constant borrowing of axes from older men by women and children was in

accordance with regular path of kinship behavior. A woman would expect to use her husbands

axe unless he himself was using it; if unmarried, or if her husband was absent, a woman would

go first to her older brother and then to her father. Only in extraordinary circumstances would a

woman seek a stone axe from other male kin. A girl, a boy, or a young man would look to a

father or an older brother to provide an axe.
It will be noted that all of these social relationships in which the stone axe had a place are pair

relationships and that the use of the axe helped to define and mantain their character and the

roles of the two individual participants. Every active relationship gong the Yir Yoront involved a

definite and accepted status of superordination or subordination.A person could have no dealings

with another on exactly equal terms. The nearest approach to equality was between brothers,

although the older was always superordinate to the younger.
It can be seen that repeated d widespread conduct centering around the use of the axe helped

generalize and standardize these. sex, age, and kinship roles in their normal benevolent and

exceptional malevolent aspects.
The stone axe was an important symbol of masculinity am the Yir Yoront [just as pants, or pipes,

are to us]. By a complicated set of ideas the axe was defined as “belonging” to males, everyone

in the society [except untrained infants] accepted these ideas. Similarly spears, spear throwers,

and fire–making sticks were owned only by men and were also symbols of masculinity. But the

masculine values represented by the stone axe w constantly being impressed on all members of

society by the that females borrowed axes but not other masculine artifacts Thus the axe stood

for an important theme of Yir Yoront : the superiority and rightful dominance of the male, and

greater value of his concerns and of all things associated . him. As the axe also had to be

borrowed by the younger people it represented the prestige of age, another important theme ring

through Yir Yoront behavior.
As a result a woman would refer to the axe as “mine,” a possessive form she was

never able to use of the stone axe. In same fashion, young men or even boys also

obtained steel directly from the mission, with the result that older men no longer

had a complete monopoly of all the axes in the bush unity. All this led to a

revolutionary confusion of sex, age, kinship roles, with a major gain in

independence and loss of information on the part of those who now owned steel

axes n they had previously been unable to possess stone axes.
The trading partner relationship was also affected by the new situation. A Yir

Yoront might have a trading partner in a tribe to south whom he defined as a

younger brother and over whom he would therefore have some authority. But if the

partner were in contact with the mission or had other access to steel axes, his

subordination obviously decreased. Among other things, this took some of the

excitement away from the dry season fiesta–like gatherings centering around

initiations. These had traditionally been the climactic annual occasions for

exchanges between trading partners, when a man might seek to acquire a whole

years supply of stone axe heads. Now he might find himself, prostituting his wife

to almost total strangers in return for steel or other white man’s goods. With

trading partnerships ended, there was less reason to attend the ceremonies – and

less fun for those who did.
Not only did an increase in steel axes and their distribution to women change the

character of the relations between individuals [the paired relationships that have

been noted], but a previously rare type of relationship was created in the Yir

Yoront’s conduct toward whites. In the aboriginal society there were few occasion

outside of the immediate family when an individual would initiate action to several

other people at once. In any average group, in accordance with the kinship system,

while a person might be superordinate to several people to whom he could suggest

a1 command action, he was also subordinate to several others with whom such

behavior would be tabu. There was thus no overall chieftanship or authoritarian

leadership of any kind. Such complicated operations as grass–burning animal

drives or totemic ceremonies could be carried out smoothly because each person

was aware of his role.
On both mission and cattle stations, however, the whites imposed their conception

of leadership roles upon the aborigines consisting of one person in a controlling

relationship with subordinate group. Aboriginals called together to receive gifts

including axes, at a mission Christmas party found themselves facing one or two

whites who sought to control their behavior the occasion, who disregarded the age,

sex, and kinship variables of which the aboriginals were so conscious, and

considered– them all at one subordinate level. The white sought to impose similar

patterns on work parties. [However, he placed an aboriginal in charge of a mixed

group of postdiggers, for example, half of the group those subordinate to “boss,”

would work while the other half, who were superordinate to him, would sleep.] For

the aboriginal, the steel axe and European goods came to symbolize this new and

uncomfortable form of social organization, the leader–group relationship.
The most disturbing effects of the steel axe, operating conjunction with other

elements also being introduced from white man’s several sub–cultures, developed

in the realm traditional ideas, sentiments, and values. These were undermined at a

rapidly mounting rate, with no new conceptions defined to replace them. The result

was the erection of a mental and moral void which foreshadowed the collapse and

destruction of all Yir Yoront culture, if not, indeed, the extinction of biological

group itself.
From what has been said it should be clear how changes in overt behavior, in

technology and conduct, weakened the v inherent in a reliance on nature, in the

prestige of masculinity and of age, and in the various kinship relations. A scene

was in which a wife, or a young son, whose initiation may not have been

completed, need no longer defer to the husband or father who, in turn, became

confused and insecure as he was forced to borrow a steel axe from them. For the

woman and boy the steel axe helped establish a new degree of freedom which they

accepted readily as an escape from the unconscious stress of the old patterns–but

they, too, were left confused and insecure. Ownership became less well defined

with the result that stealing and trespassing were introduced into technology and

conduct. Some of the excitement surrounding the great ceremonies evaporated and
they lost their previous gaiety and interest. Indeed, life itself became less

interesting, although this did not lead the Yir Yoront to discover suicide, a concept

foreign to them.
The whole process may be most specifically illustrated in terms of totemic system
breakdown of a culture.
The adoption would require a much more difficult

procedure; the acceptance by the entire society of a myth, either locally developed

or borrowed, to explain the presence of the canoe, to associate it with some one or

more of the several hundred mythical ancestors [and how decide which?], and thus

establish it as an accepted totem of ore of the clans ready to be used by the whole

community.
The steel axe, shifting hopelessly between one clan and the other, is not only

replacing the stone axe physically, but it is hacking at the supports of the entire

cultural system.
The totemic ideology can no longer support the

inrushing mass of foreign culture traits, and the myth–making process in its native

form breaks down completely.
Both intellectually and emotionally a saturation

point is reached so that the myriad new traits, which can neither be ignored nor any

longer assimilated simply force the aboriginal to abandon his totemic system. With

the collapse of this system of ideas, which is so closely related to so many other

aspects of the native culture, there follows an appallingly sodden and complete

cultural disintegration, and a demoralization of the individual such as has seldom

been recorded elsewhere. Without the support of a system of ideas well devised to

provide cultural stability in a stable environment, but admittedly too rigid for the

new realities pressing in from outside, native behavior and native sentiments and

values are simply dead. Apathy reigns.
Without the past, the present could be meaningless and the future unstructured and

uncertain. Insecurities would be inevitable. Reaction to this stress might be some

form of symbolic aggression, or withdrawal and apathy, or some more realistic

approach. In such a situation the missionary with understanding of the processes

going on about him would find his opportunity to introduce his forms of religion

and to help create a new cultural universe.

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Find Result - 121 S.Ct. 1302

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We have been clear in rejecting the supposition that the advantages of the arbitration process somehow disappear when transferred to the employment context. See
Gilmer, 500 U.S., at 30-32, 111 S.Ct. 1647.
Nevertheless, the original bill was opposed by representatives of organized labor, most notably the president of the International Seamen's Union of America,^FN5 because of their *127
concern that the legislation might authorize federal judicial enforcement of arbitration clauses in employment contracts and collective-bargaining agreements.^FN6
FN5. He stated:“[T]his bill provides for reintroduction of forced or involuntary labor, if the freeman through his necessities shall be induced to sign. Will such contracts be signed? Esau agreed, because he was hungry. It was the desire to live that caused slavery to begin and continue. With the growing hunger in modern society, there will be but few that will be able to resist. The personal hunger of the
seaman, and the hunger of the wife and children of the
railroad man will surely tempt them to sign, and so with
sundry other workers in ‘Interstate and Foreign Commerce.’ ” Proceedings of the Twenty-sixth Annual Convention of the International Seamen's Union of America 203-204 (1923) (emphasis added).
As the history of the legislation indicates, the potential disparity in bargaining power between individual employees and large employers was the source of organized labor's opposition to the Act, which it feared would require courts to enforce unfair employment contracts.
FN3. Senator Walsh expressed this concern during a subcommittee hearing on the FAA:“ ‘The trouble about the matter is that a great many of these contracts that are entered into are really not voluntar[y] things at all. ... It is the same with a good many contracts of employment. A man says, “There are our terms. All right, take it or leave it.” Well, there is nothing for the man to do except to sign it; and then he surrenders his right to have his case tried by the court, and has to have it tried before a tribunal in which he has no confidence at all.’ ” Hearing on S. 4213 et al., at 9.