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Arizona republican. [volume] (Phoenix, Ariz.) 1890-1930, May 02, 1919, Image 15

Image and text provided by Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records; Phoenix, AZ

Persistent link: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84020558/1919-05-02/ed-1/seq-15/

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Stripping the Teil from the face of the oriental
woman and the bandage from the feet of the
Chinese, is a plank in the new program of recon
struction. Slave girls, held in the incense-blurred shadows
of Hindu temples as victims of the rituals of anci
ent creeds, are to find the temple doors thrown
open for their escape.
Young brides, wedded by strange rites to
grotesque Asiatic gods, are to be delivered from
their stone masters.
Women in many lands millions of women who
arc beasts of burden, slaves of cruel custom, play
things and property are to be made free.
The program of their deliverance is an Amer
ican program. The will of millions of American
racrO and women has created it. The power of
$1 40,000,000 now being raised by the two branches
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 democracj
that is in the political reconstruction of today.
In narrow, winding streets and sun-drenched
i market places from Algiers to Teheran and from
.Bombay to Peking, white-draped women may be
seen gliding by. And their eyes look out like the
eyes of a prisoner, above the "purdah" the white
veil of Islam.
All the light of occidental civilization, stream
ing in upon China, has not completely flooded out
the shadow of the binding of women's feet. Still
among the Chinese, despite the efforts of their now
more Intelligent classes to end a tradition of suffer
ings are women whose goings and comings amid life
are limited to mincing steps npon contorted ex
tremities. . In Shanghai, npon the Yangtse-Kiang, not long
ago, a country woman shuffled along, unsteady
under the bamboo yoke from which bung two
swaying baskets. Over the sjde of each peeped the
immobile face of a Chinese child. They were the
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woman's children. She had brought them to the
city to offer them for sale.
Up the steep incline oa a road in Northern
India, under a merciless sun, twenty women
strained at the traces of a Iieavy roller. Their bare
feet, cut and blistered, scrambled painfully in the
gravel of the new roadbed. At their head an orer-
seer a man urged them on.
As a trans-Pacific liner slipped into the harbor
of Nagasaki, innumerable flat-bottomed boats laden
with soft coal made fast alongside. Scores of little
Japanese women, heads bound for protection from
coal dust, and some with babies bound to their
backs, scrambled np the hastily erected scaffolding.
Hour after hour they stood, catching the baskets of
coal tossed to tbem by men in the boats. Night
had fallen when the coaling was done. The little
women took their day's wage, fifteen or twenty
cents, end went home.
Are these the mothers of universal democracy?
They are types, living illustrations of the sub
jection of women in oriental countries, whether un
der the yoke of custom, of ignorance or of poverty.
' Lifting the yuke is the objective of the cen
tenary program. The small army already being
rsfcruited to apply that program will undertake not
only to help make them free, but to halp make
them better mothers, better home makers, greater
influences in the lives of their mm and of their
countries.,
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every country. There are millions of women who
must be given their heritage. f
India's women number 150,000,000. Their j
yoke, despite all the British government has done
to aid them, is still heavy. g JJ. IWrvteOTer of Nat?tTv JfriCti
They are bowed under the institution of child
marriage which disposes of their lives before they hare become courtesans, sanctioned by religion and
are old enough to know what life means. And the custom.
custom is 600 years older than the Christian era. The women coolies of India work from sunrise
They suffer under the contempt of widowhood. to ronset- They carry npon their heads baskets of
More than 20,000,000 of them, widowed in girl- concrete for the smooth automobile roads of modem
hood, or even childhood, live lives of outcasts, India. They carry earth from excavations, bricks
with shaved heads as a badge of their widowhood, for bnflding, and water. They mix mortar. And
and 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
the seven cowries. They are wedded to the dagger
of Khandabo. Their lives are devoted to singing
obscene songs in praise of the god, performing
night worship and song 16X71068, selling them
selves. These are the nraralis. Akin to them are the
devadasis, or slaves of the gods, and the nautch
girls of Southern India. They are taken in child
hood to sing and dance before the temple gods and
ia ttejdojrocessmsi TJitotjA, centuries thei
often, they steal a moment from their work to look
after the little baby they have left under the
shadow of e bush near their tasks.
For the bowed millions of India's women, the
Centenary program promises the beginning of
new life.
"Woman," wrote Confucius, "is a mindless,
soulless creature."
The bound feet, the bound minds, the too
early marriages of China's women tell the story
of their sufferings under such a philosophy.
China has bound its women's feet for 1,000
years. Within the last two or three decades many
pfthe wonen have unbound their feet But so old
And the sHogi or licensed prostitutes, estireitet
to number more than 60,000, endure a fate evei
worse. They are driven to the Yoshiwaras or viot
districts by sheer necessity of making a living
They become virtual slaves under the burden ol
debt necessarily incurred to equip them foT theii
profession. They are openly bought and Sold.
Again, in Japan one finds the coolie womSn, not
only helping to coal ocean liners, but assisting in
driving piles for the building of bridges, and
carrying burdens of every kind. And among the
factory worken of Japan in some of the factories
shifts are said to be changed once every twelve
hours 66 per cent are women. And these women,
i according to available statistics, are paid between
thirteen and fifteen cents a day.
Japan is provided for in the program of tLe
Centenary. Japan's women are to be relieved of
their yoke, as well. So are the women of Korea
and Malaysia, of Mexico and South America.
So are the women of Africa those 40,000,000
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 tbeir
childhood nor their motherhood held sacred.
In North Africa, and all through the countries
of the orient, millions of Mohammedan women
must be liberated, not only from the purdah, .bnt
from the cenana and the harem the forbidden
place of women. ;
The cenana and the purdah are obligatory
upon all women who recognize the Koran. Both
are symbols of the snpservience and inferiority of
woman's position under Mohammedanism, and the
zenana carries always the implication of polygamy.
The veiled women of Islam are innumerable. The
secluded number many millions. In India alone
n custom cannot be eradicated in a .few years, are 40,000,000 of the latter, and in North
There are thonsands of Chinese women who have Africa, it is estimated, there are 20,000,000 more,
never gone more than 100 yards from their homes jjje ggjj 0f the harem deprives women of
unless they were carried. And in the interior one liberty and recreation. It affects their
may see women of bound feet, compelled to work, health Md cf children. Many of
dragging at the ropes of boats, along the towpatks prisoned women die of tuberculosis,
of canals. And, in the cotton fields, they work, sit- j ?mit m their experience, permitted to see only
ng, hitching themselves along as they proceed, nd, father, brothers and nephews, their
They are carried to and from the fields in wheel- knowiedgc c life ia small, their minds seldom more
barrows. than chfld minds.
China's coolie women labor like beast of For e ef -orld democracy Methodism in
burden. One may see them by hundreds, bowed America believes that these wrongs must be
under heavy yokes. One may watch them, in the righted, these women lilted oat of the subjection,
mud of the rice paddies, while men stand by on Wrvitude, the contempt which surrounds all
dry ground, directing their work. (' women of the oriental countries.
China's women are even more numerous than Freedom for the women of the world means to
India's. But the program of the Centenary is for church the dispelling of ignorance through
them as well The American millions to be spent mrtfr'n, the substitution of Christian ideals for
will help them to a higher place in the new scheme gnperstition and far creeds that hare made poa-
of things that is in the making. gible the wrongs of women.
There is work to be done among the women of The program for attaining these ends is definite
Japan, advanced though that country is. There and detailed. Schools, seminaries, colleges and
are the superannuated women hired out at a few universities are to be built in many countries,
yen a day to carry babies on their backs for many Hospitals are to be founded and equipped, and
consecutive hours the Komori. There are the made the center of systems of dispensaries,
girls of the tea bouses, some of them work for Teachers, physicians, nurses are to be sent from
twenty or even twenty-two hours a day. this country.
And there are the 80,000 geisha, each taken ia - AH these wQl have behind them the major pur
childhood, to become the property of old women pose of tha Methodist Centenary movement, the
who support them, and train them in singing, establishment of the ideals of Christianity in every
dancing, playing the samlsen and in repartee, country, as a foundation upon which women may
After years of the most rigid instruction, these stand w the work that. is primarily theirs, the
girls may be hired by men for their entertainment. bofJdinJof ttworfd democracjjf the atura,

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