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THE DAILY CAPITAL JOURNAL. SALEM. OREGON. SATURDAY. MAY 24. 1919.
Stripping the veil from tlie face of the oriental
'woman and the bandage from the feet of tha
Chinese, Is plank ta the new program of rccoo-
structkm. : ' -
j Slave girls, held in the incense-blurred shadows
af Hindu temples as victims of the rituals of anci
iawt creeds, are to find the temple doors thrown
fjca for their escape.
Young brides, wedded by strange rites ta
grotesque Asiatic gods, are to be delivered from
their stone masters.
Women in many landi millioiis of women who
re beasU of burden, slaves of cruel custom, play
things and property are to be made free.
The program of their deliverance is a1 Amer
ican program. The will of millions of Aneriean
men and women has created it. The pwer ol
$1 10,000,000 now being raised by the two brunches
of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America is
being put behind it And the name of it is the
world reconstruction program of the Methodist
Episcopal Centenary.
Inspiring this program is a profound conviction
that only free women can bear generations capable
of fulfilling the promise of universal democracy
that is in the political reconstruction of today.
In narrow, winding streets and suu-drenched
market places from Algiers to Teheran and from
Bombay to Peking, white-dr.iped women may be
seen gliding by. And their ryes look out like the
eyes of a prisoner, above the "purdah" the while
'veil of Islam.
Where They Bandage
Feet and Sell Babies
All the light of occidental civilization, stream
ing In upon China, h.is not completely fljodcd out
j the shadow of the binding ol women's feet Still
among the Chinese, despite the efforts of their now
more intelligent classes to end a tradition of suffer
ing, are women whose going and comings amid life
re limited to mincing steps upon contorted ex
tremities. In Slinnpiini, upon the Y.ingtse-Kiang, not long
go, a country woman shuffled along, unsteady
'nuder the hamW jn';e from which hung two
"ViVe of ike od KMnoba
Swaying baskets. Over the side of each peeped the
Immobile face of Chinese child. They were the
(woman's children. She had brought them to the
tity to offer them for sale.
Up the steep Incline of road In Northern
Imlia, under a merciless sun, twenty women
trained at the traces of a heavy roller. Their bare
feet, cut and Mislrrrd, scrambled painfully to the
grvel of the new roadbed. Ai their head an over
eer a man argrd them on.
j As a trans-Pariiic liner slipped Into the harbor
is( Nagasaki, Innumerable flat-bottomed boats laden
fwi'ih soft foal made fast alongside. Scores of little
Japanese women, heads bound for protection from
eoal dust, and same with babies bonnd to tbelr
"lacks, scrambled np the hastily erected scaffolding.
Hour after hoar they stood, catching the baskets of
ton tossed to them by men In the boats. Night
b id fallen when the coaling was done. The little
women took their day's wage, fifteen or twenty
evts, and went home,
ilre these the mothers of nnlvemal democracy?
They re types, living illustrations of the sub
jection of women in oriental countries, whether co
der the yoke of custom, of hnorance or of poverty.
Slranjjc Wrongs to Be
flighted in Every Country
) Lifting the yoke is tb objective of the eew
t'-nary program. The small army already being
j recruited to apply Hist program will undertake not
: M!y to belp make them free, but to help make
j them better mothers, better home makers, greater
I Influences in the lives of their men and of heir
entries. trsrt
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There are strange wrongs to be righted (a T"
vrur country. There are millions of women who
Biwi be given their heritage.
India's women number 180,000,000. Tbeir
yoke, despite all the British government has done
to U them, Is still heavy.
CcLrtcsar.s, Sanctioned by
Religion and Custom
Tbey are bowed under the institution of child
marriage which disposes of their lives before they
re old enough to know what life means. And the
cufttom is 800 years older than the Christian era.
They suffer under the contempt of widowhood.
More than 20,000,000 of them, widowed la girl
hood, or even childhood, live lives of outcasts,
with shaved beads as badge ! their widowhood,
nd practically prohibited from remarriage.
Young girls are devoted to idols in Infancy and
early childhood by their parents In some parts of
India. About their neck Is placed the necklace of
tli seven cowries. They are wedded to the dagger
of trhandoba. Tbeir lives are devoted it singing
obscene songs In praise of the god, performing
night worship and song services, selling them-
selves.
These are tie muralls. Akin to them are the
deraJwIa, or slaves of He gods, and the eauich
gfrLi 0f Southern India. Tbey are taken fa cMd-
hood to sing and dance before the temple gods and
fa the pr-teesflor.s. TcMwgn. centuHea taey
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X barderv bearer of Not h MfciCa
bare become coartCMuu, sjuiclio&ui Ly religion and
custom.
The women coolies of India work from sunrise
to sunset Tbey carry upon their beads baskets of
concrete for the smooth automobile roads of modem
India. They carry earth from excavations, bricks
for building, and water. Tbey mil mortar. And
often, they steal a moment from their work to look
after the little baby they have left under the
shadow of busb near their tasks.
For the bowed millions of Indie's women, tha
Centenary program promises the beginning of t
new life.
''Woman," wrote Confucius, "Is mindless,
soulless creature."
The bound feet, the bound minds, tbt too
early marriages of China's women teU the story
.
of their sufferings under sacb philosophy.
Why Chinese Women ,
Are Carried to Work -
Chins bas bound tu women's feet for 1,000
years. Within the last two or three decades many
of the women bave unbound their feet. But so old
enrtoa eannA be eradicated la few yean.
1
Zrlr i
There are thousands of Chinese women who bare
sever gone more than 100 yards from their homes
unless they were carried. And In tha Interior one
may see women of bound feet, compelled to work,
dragging at the ropes of boats, along the towpaths
of canals. And, In the cotton fields, they work, sit
ting, hitching themselves along as they proceed,
Tbey are carried to and frou the fields In wheel
barrows, China's coolie women labor like beasts of
burden. One may see them by hundreds, bowed
under heavy yokes. One may watch them, fa the
mud of tha rlca paddiM, while wen stand by on
dry ground, directing thdr wort
China, women are eves more numerous than
Indls's. But the program of lie Centenary la lor
them as welL The American millions to be spent
wQl belp them to a higher place In the new schenv
of things that Is In tha making.
The Story of ihn
Geisha Girls
There is work to be dona among the women of
Japan, advanced though that country fa. There
are tha superannuated women hired oot at a few
yea a day to carry babies on their backs for many
consecutive boors the EomorL There are tha
girls of tha tea bouses, some of then? work for
twenty or even twenty-two boon day.
And there ere the 10,000 geisba, each Uken is
childhood, to become the property of old women
who support them, end train them la staging,
dancing, playing the samisen and la repartee,
After years of the most rigid Instruction, these
gfrls may be hired by men for their entertainment
s) And the shogl or licensed prostltntes, estimated
' aombn mora than 10,000, endure fate erea
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worse. They are driven lo the Yoahlwaras or vice
districts by sheer necessity of making s living
They become virtual slaves under the burden ol
debt necessarily Incurred to equip them lor their
profession. They are openly bought and sold
Again, in Japan one finds the coolie woman not
only helping to coal ocean liners, but asmtin ih
driving piles for the building of bridges, and
carrying burdens of every kind. And among tlie
factory workers of Japan in soma of the luctnrie
shifts are said to be changed once every twelve
hours 88 per cent are women. And these women,
according to available statistics, sre paid between
thirteen and fifteen cents a day. .
Japan Is provided for In the program nf the
Centenary. Japan's women are to be relieved of
their yoke, as welL So are the women of Korea
snd Malaysia, of Mexico and South America.
Where Neither Childhood
Nor Motherhood Is Sacred
So are the women of Africa those 40,000,006
wild creatures of the jungle who are the prey of
the strong, whipped and worked like beasts; bought
and sold and Inherited like property; neither their
childhood nor their motherhood held sncrcd.
In North Africa, and all through the coun! ries
of the orient, millions of Mohammedan w hm-n
must be liberated, not only from the purdnh but
from the senana and the harem the forbulilm
place of women.
The senana and the purdnh are ohlig.itory
upon all women who recognize tlie Koran. Hoik
are symbols of the subservience and Inferiority of
woman's position under Mohammedanism, and Urn
senana carries always the Implication of polygamy.
The veiled women of Islam are innumerable. Tbe
secluded number many millions. In India alone
there are 40,000,000 of the latter, and In North
Africa, It Is estimated, there are 80,000,000 more.
The seclusion of tbe harem deprives women of
outdoor liberty and recreation. It affect the!,
health and tbe health of their children. Many ol
these Imprisoned women die of tuberculosis.
Limited In their experience, permitted to see only
husband, father, brothers and nephews, their
knowledge of life Is small, their minds seldom more
than child minds. ..-' -
What the Freedom of '
Wcscn Will Mcsn ''
For the sake of world democracy Mclnodisra in
mer1ca beiJevM that thee wrongs must be
tg,lted &M woan Wlei out of .objection,
& lerv1rude. the contemrt which surrounds all
women of the oriental countries.
Freedom for the women of the world means to
the church tha dispelling of Ignorance throngh
education, the substitution of Christian Ideals for
superstition snd for creeds that have made pos
sible the wrongs of women.
Tbe program for attaining these ends Is definite
and detailed. Schools, seminaries, colleges aad
universities are to be built in many eountrlea.
Hospitals are to be founded end equipped, and
made tha center of systems of dispensaries. Teach
ers, physicians, aursee ere to be sent frees this
country.
All these will have behind them the major pur
pose of the Methodist Centenary movement, the
establishment of the Ideals of Christianity in every
country, as a foundation upon which women may
stand la the work that Is primarily theirs, the
:f!ding of the world democracy of the future.