Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 November 1888 — HARNESSED TO OXEN AND DOGS [ARTICLE]

HARNESSED TO OXEN AND DOGS

D«<tadlac Df*4c«rjr Which Garina* j -Faaaaat Women Undergo. *. icannevter forget the fefeling of astonlafnhent miqglcd with. Shame with which 1 first looked upon a woman hnrnessed side bv side with an.ox. says a foreign cor respondent. "It was on a lonely road in Switzerland, near the Italian frontier, flight had already set In, and the bonfires lighted by woodsmen on the steep nioiin lain sides, hundreds of feel above my head, gave scarcely light enough to pick a way over the rocky road. I hurried, on to reach the next village,’ and in my’ hurry almost ran into a huge mass of moving ha.v. A v woman was polling that liny, anil in ox—not her husbapd—was helping her. On.jhc. pame road I overtook a number oj women who looked like veritable walking liaystacks. Strapped on their backs were conirivancgs into which hay was stacked to a height of five or six feet, -The men. who kindly fill* the, funnels that 1 heir wives carry, fill the hay so high that the poor women fairly stagger under their load. For this severe labor the-peasant women of Switzerland and Germany earn from thirty to thirty-five cents a day. They take their.babies, their,tyread. ami their beer to the fields witty, them, wield the scythe all day long, then creep bacK to their hovels under their huge loads and go to lied to get up nt 4 next morning and go through another, twelve or fourteen hours of similar drudgery. I have seen women in ’Bulgaria thrashing grain with sticks—a slow arid laborious process, and none the more pleasant for the burning sun that beats down oil that semi-tropical country. While they were engaged in this work their brothers and husbands sat on the shady side of their thatched huts and dozed or minded the children as the humor struck them. Evidently, in the Bulgarian peasant’s opinion, woman’s sphere is where the hardest work is to be done. In Heidelberg I made the acquaintance of an honest red-cheeked woman who made her living selling milk. She had a small cart that held two six gallon cans. To this cart she hitched herself and a dog and made her rounds from house to bouse selling milk qt six cents -a quart This queer team stopped before the door of my lodgings punctually .every morning, at <3 o'clock, and while I chatted a moment with the German frau the dog would lie down hi his harness to rest, The frau and busband were tryihg to save enough to bring them to America. The husband was a styoemaker, but somehow never managed’ to save anything.; There was not much profit in milk, still she wdukl be careful and hoped to have enough ’’some day.” Once in America she felt sure that she and Ilans could get along. It is doubt ful whether the poor woman with all her economy and toll Will ever reach her 1 goal, Many months afterward, when I was in Heidelberg again, she was there still, hitched, with her dog in the cart, selling milk for six cents a quart.