Little Falls transcript. [volume] (Little Falls, Morrison County, Minn.) 1876-1894, 1879-03-20
1Falkin Motches----BrastaI Torture o
Women.
New York Nation.l

Women. =.
New York Nation.
The sport of long distance and consecu-
tive period walking has within the past few
months become 9 popular athletic entertain
ment. Weston is now engaged in attempt:
ing to perform the nearly impossible feat of
walking 1000 miles in 900 hours over. Eng
fish country roads, while female pedestrian
has in this country lately accomplished 2,70O
miles in 2;7O0 consecutive quarter hours
over q saWdust course, and several other
women are now trying to beat her by doing
5000 miles in 5000, quarter hours: The
Saturday Reuaeao calls attention to the fact
that these tests of endurance have been i'm
ported into England from this country, and
charitably suggests that, inasmuch as they
began to become popular in the United
States at about the time of the e1ifranohise-
ment of the negro, one fact may explain the
other; the negro no longer being available
for the qualification of our inhumanity and
cruelty. We have developed the new form of
pedestrianism to supply US with sort of
public "nigger," whose bodily sutferings
and ang uish we may get the same
pleasure from that We used to get
from the writings of the African
under the LASH. Unfortunately for this in
genious suggestion, the new sport was in
vented, or at any rate has been chiefly de-
veloped, in the free and enlightened North.
We fear that nothing short of an Unborn
love of cruel amusements will explain the
phenomenon. There is inthe spectacle it.
self absolutely nothing of the slightest in
terest. In almost all other sports there is
some rivalry, some, struggle; or an exhibition
of the human form brought to high pitch
of muscular perfection; in, this there is
nothing but 8 woman, dressed in short skirts,
her legs incased in some kind of worsted
hose, walking monotously round: q sawdust
ellipse, about which sit . number of stolid
spectators, who every now and then break out,
spparently2 without rhyme or reason,
into frantic applause. After walking round
a certain number OF, times she goes off into
q room, |" where she falls asleep.
After certain number of days of this her
feet begin to swell and become painful;
later on she begins, it is said, to see visions,
and walks round in sort of dream, like
those which people dying Of hunger and
thirst have; atany rate, she can barely stand
upright, and has to be forced up to her
work. When she finally leaves the track, she
is in condition which. makes. continuous
medical attendance a necessity to save her
life. We confess We cannot see why such
brutal exhibitions as this should be allowed
in civilized community. It ia nothing
more nor less than q. public trial by slow
torture, which does not advance athletic
sports in the Least; for the actual walking
done in these !sawdust rings is not, as
walking, good for anything. Three
thousand quarter miles in 5000
quarter .hours is, at the
rate Of twenty-four miles in twenty.four
hours, which, with regular intervals of Sleep
anybody can no. It is, IN fact,r in q new
form,>a revival of the medieval torture of
preventing person from getting his sleep
fora long time. It is immeasurably below
prize-f fighting, bull fighting, and : number
5of othsr cruel sports which the police nova
days break up. The cruel part of it is, that
the test lasts So long = time that the gate
money taken in reaches . large sum, and .
woman may, Il she can, accomplish the feat,
earn . small fortune. The subject Is One
fvhich thosezwho are INTERESTED in woman's
rights, and in the prevention Of, cruelty,
might look into With advantage. s3s - -