Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-11-26
WOMEN IN GERMANY.

WOMEN IN GERMANY.
Everywhere in Continental Europe there
is a contempt for and an oppression OF
woman. Everywhere there is laid on her
the mental drudgery that must be done, but
which men will not assist in DOING nor for
the performance of which will they pro-
vide mechanical appliances as American
men do. Everywhere she is robbed OF
proper compensation for her labor. But
Germany, the land of literature, science,
scholarship, music, art, culture-to whose
universities we send our sons for thorough
mental equipment-the land that boasts OF
it's advanced civilization-this Germany
leads in mean treatment of women, and
has pre-. eminence in that kind of civiliza-
ton which leaves nothing undone to exalt
man, but ia content to regard and treat
woman as serf.
The country was in the perfection OF its
midsummer beauty as we Journeyed
through it, But I could not enjoy its
beauty, for here, as in Virginia years and
years ago, women were forced into en-
ployments unsuited to them, degraded to
extreme mental service, and robbed OF all
that makes life worth living to woman.
Eight tenths of all the agricultural la
borers were women. They were hoelng
the immense sugar-beet fields. or, on their
hands 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,
thew distributed it as it was needed. They
were moving, raking, pitching the hay en-
carts, or loading it as it was pitched.
They were reaping, and stacking the grain
in the fields, or bearing 1t home ON their
heads and shoulders, which had been so
loaded that we scrutinized long and closely,
before we discovered the motive power of
the peripatetic grain stacks marching away.
In fields where the first crop had been re.
moved, women were driving the OK or cow
to plow-for we saw nc blowing with
woke of oxen-or the OK or COW was dis.
pensed with, and one woman drew the
pillow while another held it.
IF there was extra hard work to be done,
loaded carts to be hauled away, or heavy
wheelbarrow loads removed, the work was
assigned to women, who bent themselves
to the task with patient and persistent en-
ergy, while men looked on, smoking their
eternal pipes, without SO much as lifting
finger in help. Scantily dressed, generally
bare headed in the blazing sun, quite as
often bare footed and bare-legged, 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 employ
ers, their wages average 10 and II cents
day. Men doing the same work, working
side by side with these women, receive
nearly twice as much. Hard as is this
farm work, women prefer it to house. SER
vice, when they have the strength for it
as the great majority of house.servants
work for board and clothing, and very
meagre board and clothing at that.
When we went to the German cities we
saw what was more repellant Women,
bare. footed, or wearing wooden clogs, were
at work everywhere in the streets, with
brooms of rods, and stiff brushes, with
hoes and shovels and hand, carts, directing
the floods of the cutters, clearing them of
debris, shoveling it into carts, and repair
ing whatever damage the heavy rain had
wrought.
We took an early drive through Munich,
before the city had awakened. Early as
was the hour, the sun only just touching
the lips of the majesti; Bavaria, women
were astir everywhere. They were collect
ing the offal and refuse from houses and
stores sweeping yesterdays dirt from the
streets into piles, which other woman
shoveled into hand.carts clearing the
tracks of the tram-cars from distractions
harnessed into bakers and milk carts, and
distributing their supplies to their custom
ers scrubbing the floors of shops; moving
in all directions to prepare for the business
of the day, that men might not only find
their breakfast ready, On rising but the
streets and shops in tidiness and order.
Wandering among the architectural
wonders of Vienna, where everything old
and ugly is being displaced by modern and
beautiful structures, we halted beside
magnificent building in process of erection,
to study its design. Immediately we came
upon women mixing mortar, and far above
us, at dizzy height, saw other women
climbing ladders bearing on their heads
and shoulders hods of brick, stone and
mortar, for the use of masons.
We spent day in the picture gallery in
Dresden stepped out on the street, and
found myself launched in stream of wo-
men, all bending under the loads of the
baskets strapped to their backs, each of
which is made to carry sixty pounds. Some
were young, but many were past middle
age, and some were white-haired, tottering
under their load, their sad eyes looking
into mine YEARLY and hopelessly.
In some of the towns Of Wurtemburg
there are brigades of women water carriers
attached to the fire departments. They
buy their own equipment of fire costume
and tin water. pail, and at stated times are
drawn up in line before the district in
spector, to go through drill and sham
fire, to test their efficiency. In short
there is no sort of mental work that is not
done by German women, and Austrian
women as well. l have seen them saving
and splitting wood on the streets, and then
carrying it on their backs up several stories
into houses. | have seen them molding
brick unloading freight cars at depots
building the road-beds of railroads get
ting stone out of quarries; yoked with
dogs, cows and oxen, pulling heavy loads
along the highways; making and mending
the roads; repairing the embankments of
canals dredging rivers and small streams
for the sake of the fertilizing mud doing
any drudgery that men are glad to be
rid of.
The German universities, to which we
send our sons, each of which numbers its
students by thousands and its eminent
professors by hundreds, are not for Ger
man women. Hardly is higher educa-
ton for women" thought of in Germany.
The German woman is completely subor
dinate to the German man, who treats her |
as his intellectual inferior, and evidently
SO regards her. He is willing she should
share the beer garden with him and the
theater, but not the university nor the |
field of literature. Mrs. Livermore.