Cheyenne transporter. [volume] (Darlington, Indian Terr.) 1879-1886, 1881-12-10
WOMEN IN GERMANY.
How They are Oppressed---Their Pc or
Wages and Hard Life.


Europe there is contempt for and an
oppression of women. Everywhere
there is laid on her the menial drudg-
cry that must be done, but what men
will not assist in doing, nor for the
performance of which they will pro-
vide mechanical appliances. as Ameri-
can men do. Everywhere she is robbed
OF proper compensation for her labor.
But Germany, the land of literature.
science, scholarship, music, art, cult
ure,-tO whose universities we send
our sons for thorough mental equip
ment-the land that boasts of it's ad-
vanced civilization-.this Germany
leads in mean treatment of woman, and
has prominence in that kind of civ
ilization which leaves nothing undone
to exalt men, but is content to regard
and treat woman as a seIf.
The country was in the perfection
of its midsummer beauty as we jour
neyed through it. But could not en-
JOY its beauty, for here, as in Virgin
ia years and years ago. women were
forced to employment unsuited to them,
degraded to extreme menial service,
and robbed of all that makes life worth
living to women. Eght-tenths of all
the agricultural laborers were women.
They were hoeing the immense sugar
beet fields, or, on their Lands and
knees, were wedding, where hoe
could not be safely used. Staggering
under heavy loads of manure, which
they brought from distant place of
deposit, they distributed it as it was
needed. They were moving, raking,
and pitching the hay on carts, or load
ing it as it was pitched. They were
reaping and stacking the grain in the
fields, or bearing it home on their heads
and shoulders which had been so load
ed that we scrutinIzed long and close
before we discovered the motive power
of the peripatetic grain stacks march
ing away. In the fields where the first
crop had been removed, women were
driving the OK or COW to plow-for we
saw no blowing with yoke of oxen
or the OK or COW was dispensed with,
and one woman drew the plow, while
another held it. If there was an extra
hard work to be done, loaded carts to
be hauled away, or heavy wheel bar
row loads removed, the work was as
signed to women, who bent them
selves to the task with patient
and persistent energy, while men
looked on, smoking their eter-
nal pipes, without SO mnch as
lifting finger in help Scantily
dressed, generally bareheaded in the
blazing sun, quite as often barefooted
and barelegged, they were bronzed in
complexion, thin of flesh, bent and
inelastic in figure, without JOY in their
work, or hope in their faces. For the
work of day, twelve hours long,
when these women board themselves
they are paid an average of % cents.
When they are boarded by their en-
ployers, their wages average 10 and Il
cents day. Men doing the same
work, working side by side with these
women receive twice as much. Hard
as is this farm work, women prefer ii
to house service, when they have the
strength for it-as a great majority OF
the house servants work for board and
clothing and very meager board anC
clothing at that. When we went tC
the German cities we saw what was
more repellant Women barefooted OF
wearing modern clogs, were at worl
everywhere in the streets, with broom
of rods and stiff brushes, with hoe
and Shovels and hand-carts, directin
the floods Of the gutter, cleaning then
of debris, shoveling it into carts, an,
repairing whatever damage the heav,
rain had wrought. We took an earl
drive through Munich before the cit