Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 245, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 October 1912 — GERMAN WOMEN HAVE TO WORK. [ARTICLE]

GERMAN WOMEN HAVE TO WORK.

So Do the Girls, Who Have No Time for Frivolous Sports. One of the things in which the German woman differs from her English sister is that every German girl, when Bhe reaches the age of seventeen or eighteen, is sent away from home to gome family a long way off, who send one of their own daughters in exchange. According to the Gentlewoman, this exchange lasts for about three years. The girl is treated as one of the family, is styled Fraulein, ‘but in every other respect is a mere servant. She has to do all the work of the house, scrubbing, washing, cooking, mending—in fact, everything that a domestic servant is required to perform. This does not leave her with much leisure for play, and the outdoor sports of an English girl are quite unknown in Germany. A German lady on being told that English girls played tennis and hockey expressed her contempt for such foolery and asked who did the housework. On being informed thaA'£e'T£ug!ish girl or matron would dream of turning to and doing the cooking, etc., she gasped out: “Oh, Lord! What a lot of lazy hussies!” Every German, woman has all the work of her home on her shoulders, and by this is not meant the lower class woman. No German lady thinks of haring more than one servant, who gets about £6 a year, and does the rough work, her mistress doing all the cooking and mending. It is a sight to see the lady in a German town going to market. She knows what to buy and what to pay, and every Wednesday and Saturday you may see her trotting off to market with- her servant behind her carrying a huge basket and examining the comestibles with a critical air. About the only ray of sunshine she has, apart from the Kaffeeklatsch, Is the visit on Sunday to some Kaffeegarten, anglice tea garden, where the and her lord and master surrounded by their olive branches, sit under the shade of a leafy treeand drink coffee and munch cakes or sour milk.