The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1890-09-21
WOMAN on HER MUSCLE
FEMALE LABOR AS SEEN IN TIE
EUROPEAN FIELDS.


Moving Looks Hard, But It is Proba-
bly, Healthier Than Housework-
Women PACK Carriers in switzsr.
land-Women as street Lsborers.
Ccopyightl
HEIDELBERG, Sept 1l.-As tee train
pulled slowly on the brightest morning of
last week up the street grade from Inter
laken to Lauterbrunnen a German Swiss
peasant woman carrying basket of posa-
toss on ner back nearly kept pace with us
on the roadway which climbs parallel with
the rails. The sun. just beginning to I eep
into the valley, struck her blue petticoat.
white chemise and black bodice, and her
head, covered only by braids of hair.
heavy but faded by exposure Her face
was brown, like her arms, bsrsd to the
elbows. The basket was large and funnel
shaped, and its contents heavy, but she
bent to the ascent with the long step, slow
to the eye and ungracsful but easy, of the
practiced mountaineer, knitting ste ldily as
she climbed.
"Do see the poor creature" said the Brit
lsh matron who was my vis-a-vis "the
women hereabouts are like so many beasts
OF burden, they are nothing more than
slaveSw And paterfamilias, who had been
debating to her about her wraps and the
window shades, and to his two daughters,
during the entire trip after the amusing
fashion of your true Englishman, leaned
from the window with a corroborative
smile.
Arrived at thu station paterfamilias
grasped his alpenStock and the two girls
mounted mules for the ascent Of the Wen
germ Alp to see tho Jungfrau in her aiesty.
MaterfamlllaS looked at her long cared
steed, then down at her own portly person,
then hesitatingly at a chdtse a porteur.
Her husband permitted the substitution,
but only three litter bearers were immedi-
ately available, whereupon the knitter came
forward and offered herself for the vacant
pole. lifting her share of the 200 pounds
accumulated by q too easy life and too
much novel reading. and starting up the
stony path with an alacrity that provoked
the query why the woman who could not
walk should pity the woman who could
carry her.
The amount Of hard manual labor per-
formed by the German women ia subject
of universal comment among people Of
other nationalities, and the returned trav-
eler Is never weary of holding forth on the
degradations of the sex as evidenced by the
saving and cutting of wood py women il
the streets of Munich, the work of women
with the pick and shovel on the roads in
South Germany. the carrying of hods of
mortar, ETC., for building, the Harvesting of
women with dogs in the drawing of milk
carts, and other customs which appear to
him strange.
In point Of fact, the employment of wo-
men in outdoor labor ia no0 peculiar to Ger
many, but is found in every country of Eu-
rope, the difference being that the farm la
Dor, which is general, attracts less attention
from the hurried visitor than the town work
of which one secs most in the realms of the
kaiser.
The few figures in the almost deserted
helds of Ireland are apt to be large-framed,
ruddy-cheeked, dark-gowned, barefooted
peasant girls. whose black head shawls hang
on the hawthorn hedges while they pull the
weeds from the potato hills on hands and
knees instead of using hoes In the equally
forsaken Scottish Highlands the tall Gaels
who come stalking down the hilisides at
evening, each with bushel or more freshly
cut poets in her apron, and a struggling
root dug from the bog suug over her
shoulder, belong to the landscape, which
would not be complete without them. In
England the hardest and toughest lives are
led by the women on the canal boats who,
In point OF endurance, equal OF surpass oil
that one sees or the Swiss or Germans. On
the boats that ply up and down the Thames
and in Lancashire you may see the weather.
beaten face of the "mastern standing at the
door Of the little square box that serves for
cabin, her hand on the helm. There she re-
mains, Sundays and weekdays alike, fifteen
hours or more day, The wind comes down
on the water with swoop, driving the rain
In her face and blowing her coarse she wi
almost off her shoulders but she does not
stir. During the dismal passage through
the tunnels the children creep into corners,
and the MASTER" who does the smaller
share of the work and takes the lions share
Of the spoils, disappears, but the woman
stands resolutely at the helm. Most of them
were born abroad, few can read or write,
and one never sees their silent, patient
figures without contrasting them mentally
with the gay houseboat crews and punters
who look ON the rivers holiday side.
In Franco women oftener than men guard
the railroad crossings. raising and lowering
the gates. One afternoon on the edge Of
the forest of Fontainebleau l remember
watching a woman binding sheaves in the
wheat harvest. All the color notes about
her were low toned, from the blues and
gravs of her apparel to the yellow brown Of
her skin, and ner eyes which were like those
of patient animal She was not romau-
tic looking peasant as she beat. lifting the
great yellow bundles; rather one of the
women of Bastien Lepage, the "honest"
painter; but would-be female Milet or
second edition of Marie Bashkrtseff,
seemed to have found her hicturesque
enough to be interesting, for an
easel was planted in the shade of straw
stack and the chic Parisienne her high
heeled ribbon-tied slippers peeping from
under her skirts of muslin and Valencennes:
her broad-brimmed, poppy-covered hat
pushed back from her forehead, was meas
uring the harvester against the sky with
her pencil while she sketched and ate april
cots to idle away the afternoon. The Paris
ienne's sketch was baddish one, while the
hervester's sheaves were securely bound,
and yet one would wager the busy idle
woman achieving vast amount of nothing
looked down on the state of the other sim
ply doing little of something.
When one gets into Switzerland the ap-
pellation of weaker sex as applied to women
seems altogether misnomer. In point of
strength, the peasant women of the remoter
valleys appear quite the equals of the men.
One sees them moving on those green, beau
tiful slopes over which the snow peaks
tower, and party of girls swinging the an
tique Swiss scythes with their straight
snaths that bend the figure so cruelty. cut
broad, even swaths with the regularity of
They do not keep pace with each
other across the felds-one seldom sees in
the European peasant, man or woman, any
pronounced signs of emulation-they do not
WORK with any appearance of haste or con-