Hammond Times, Volume 13, Number 283, Hammond, Lake County, 13 May 1919 — Page 8

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' Stripping the veil from the face of the oriental woman and the bandige from the feet of the Chinese, is a plank in the new program of reconstruction. Slave girls, held in the incense-blurred shadows ' of Hindu temples as victims of the rituals of ancient creeds, are to fir.H the temple doors thrown opes 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 re beasts of burden, slaves of cruel custom, playthings and property are to be made free. The program of their deliverance is an American program. The will of millions of American men and women has created it. The power oi $140,000,000 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 democracy that is in the political reconstruction ci today. In narrow, winding streets and siun-drenched market places from Algiers to Teheran and from Bombay to Peking, white-draped wo:nen may be seen gliding by. And their eyes look out like the eyes of a prisoner, above the "purdah" the white veil of Islsm. All the light of occidental civiliza'uon, streaming in upon China, has not completely flooded out Jie shadow of the binding of women':! feet. Still among the Chinese, despite the efforts of their now more intelligent classes to end a tradition of suffering, are women whose goings and comings amid life are limited to tnindng steps upon contorted extremities. In Shanghai, upon the Yangtse-Kiang, not long ago, a country woman shuffled along, unsteady under the bamboo yoke from which hung two swaying baskets. Over the side 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 trained 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 overseer a mau urged them on. As a trans-Pacific liner slipped into the harbor cf Nagasaki, innumerable fiat-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 up the hastily erected scaffolding. Hour after hour they stood, catching the baskets of coal tossed to them 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, and went home. Are these the mothers of universal democracy? They are types, living illustrations of the subjection of women in oriental countries, whether under the yoke of custom, of ignorance or of poverty. Lifting the yoke is the objective of the centenary program. The small army already being recruited to apply that program will undertake not only to help make them free, but to balp make them better mothers, better home makers, greater influences in the lives of their wl and of their countries. There are strange wrongs to be righted in

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Dancing Girl -iff- - .4, soocxpv i I rrx, -ii: l must be given their beritage, T I m nnn nnn T-U-l ... yoke, despite all the British government has done to aid them, fa still heavy. They are bowed under the institution of child marriage which disposes of their Lives before they arc old enough to know what Life means. And the custom is 00 years older than the Christian era. They suffer under the contempt of widowhood. More than 20,000,000 of litem, widowed in girlhood, or even childhood, live lives of outcasts, with shaved heads as a badge of their widowhood, and practically prohibited from remarriage. Young girls are devoted to idols in u. fancy 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 cevoted to singing obscene songs in praise of the god, performing night worship and song services, selling themselves. Thtse are the muralis. Akin to them are the devadasii, or slaves of the gods, and the nautcb girls of Southern India. They are taken in childhood to sing and dance before the temple gods and in the idol processions. Through centuries they

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r " ft, J . -if y X S ' 0 , V. V - ".vX r: 4, 1 ,?';:ti1 -will V of Q hi' 3 :..rt, ' W.stJ(&" v4 r have become courtesans, sanctioned by religion and custom. The women coolies of India work from sunrise to sunset. They ra rry upon their beads baskets of concrete for the smooth automobile roadr of modern India. They carry earth from excavations, bricks for building, and water. Tbey mix mortar. And often, they steal a moment from their work to look after the little baby tbey have left under the shadow of c bush near their tasks. For the bowed millions of India's" women, the Centenary program promises the beginning of a new life. "Woman," wrote Confucius, "is a mindless, soulless creature. The bound feet, the bound minds, the too early marriages ot China's Nomen tell the story of thjcir su.lerings under jucb-a philosophy. China has bound its women's feet for 1,000 years. VVitLin the last two or three decides many of tUe ouien have unbound their feet. But so old

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ilicfUture U a custom cannot be eradicated in a few years. There are thousands of Chinese women who have never gone more than 100 yards from their homes unless they were carried. And in the 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, sitting, bitching themselves along as they proceedThey are carried tc and from the fields in wheelbarrows. China's coolie women labor like beasts of burden. One may see them by hundreds, bowed under heavy yokes. One may watch them, in the mud of the rice paddies, while men stand by on dry ground, directing their work. China's women are even more numerous than India's. But the program of the Centenary is for them as welL The American millions to be spent will help them to a higher place in the new scheme of things that is in the making. There is work to be done among the women ot Japan, advanced though that country is. There are the superannuated women hired out at a few yen a day to carry babies on their backs for many consecutive hoars the Komori. There are the girls of the tea houses, some of them work for twenty or even twenty-two bonrs a day. And there are the 30,000 geisha, each taken in childhood, to become the property of old women who support them, and train them in singing, dancing, playing the samisen and in repartee. After years of the most rigid Instruction, these girls may be hired by men for their entertainment.

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And the shogi or licensed prostitutes, estimatto to number more than 0,000, endure a fate even worse. They are driven to the Yoshiwaras or vice districts by sheer necessity of making a living. They become virtual slaves under the burden of debt necesscrily Incurred to equip them for their profession. They are openly bought and sold. Again, in Japan one finds the coolie woman, not only helping to coal ocean liners, but assisting in driving piles for the building of t ridges, and carrying burdens of every kind. And among the factory workers of Japan in some of the factories shifts are said to be changed once every twelve hours 56 per cent are women. And these women, according to available statistics, are paid between thirteen and fifteen cents a day. Japan is provided for in the program of the Centenary. Japan's women are to be relieved of their yoke, as well. So are the women cf Korea and Malaysia, of Mexico anj South America. So are the women of Africn 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 their childhood nor their motherhood held sacred. In North Africa, and nil through the countries of the orient, millions of Mohammedan women must be liberated, not only from the purdah, but from the renana and the harem the forbidden place of women. The xenana and the purdah are obligatory upon all women who recognize the Korm. Both are symbols of the snpservience and inferiorifv of woman's position finder Mohammedanism, -nd the rcnana carries always the implication of rsolrgamv. The veiled women of Tslam are innumerable. Ths secluded number many millions. In India alone there are 40.000.000 of the latter, md in North Africa, it is estimated, there are 20.000.000 more. The seclusion cf the harem deprive? women of outdoor liberty and recreation- It affects their health and the health of their children. Many of these Imprisoned women die of "-ubercnlosis. Limited In their experience, permitted tc see onlv husband, father, brothers and nephews, their knowledge of life is small, their minds seldom more than child minds. For the sake of world democracy Methodism in America believes that these wrcnes must righted, these women b'fted out of the subjection, the servitude, the contempt which surrounds all women of the oriental eountrlesFreedom for the women of the world means to the church the dispellina of Ignorance thr-asti education, the substitution of Christian ideals for superstition and for creeds that have maie possible the w rones of women. The program for attaining these ends Is definite and detailed. Schools, seminaries, eolleees and universities are to be built in many eenntries. Hospitals are to be founded and equipped, and made the center of systems of dispensaries. Teachers, physicians, nurses are to be sent from this country. ' All these will have behind them the major purpose of the Methodist Centenary movement, the establishment of the ideals of Christianity in every country, as a foundation upon which vrsmen may stand in the work that is primarily theirs, the buildisuz of the world democracy of the ig.