Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-12-26
A FREAK OF FASHION
That Causes Frightful Suffering to
Little Chinese Girls and
HARDENS THE PARENTS HEARTS.
Revolving Cruelty of the Practice Of
Crushing the Feet There.
AWFUL AGONY OF THE SUFFERERS

An English paper quotes from writeri
the Japan Mail, who appears to have special
knowledge of the well-known Chinese Gus
tom of COMPRISING the feet of female chill
dren of the better chases in China. He
hopes that few of his readers have been so
unfortunate as to zee the naked feet of an
orthodox Chinese lady. But many have
looked at photographs of this terribly
twisted and distorted member, and the sight
must have suggested thoughts of barbarious
suffering inflicted on a particularly sensi-
tive part of the human body.
Year by year hundreds of thousands of
little girls throughout the wide Empire of
China are subjected to the ruthless proc
ess which crushes the bones and wrenches
the sinews Of their tender feet, until at last
revolving deformity is produced, and the
foot; crumpled into shocking monstrosity,
becomes almost valueless as a means of To-
comotion. The wretclAd girl emerges from
her period of feverish torture mutilated
cripple, condemned to hobble through life
on feet which preserve no semblance of
natures beautiful mechanism, having
become as hideous as they are useless
No Help for the sufferers.
At intervals the missionary cries out, the
traveller writes and the charitable agitate;
but the poor little children never benefit
For them there remains always the same
ruthless bending of bones, the same agoniz-
ing application of tight ligatures, the same
long months of bitter pain and unavaillng
tears Perhaps, he suggests, it is to this
singular contrast between general refine
ment and cultivation of the Chinese, on the
one hand, and this callous cruelty, on the
other, that wemust attribute the periodical
appearance of apologists for the appalling
custom.
Some people say that, though the foot is
ultimately deformed, though the woman is
indeed condemned to be little better than a
cripple, yet the process is not so very pain
full after all. The bones are soft, they say,
in early youth; the sinews supple. Twist
ing, crushing and wrenching are operations
that may be performed without much suffer-
ing on the baby feet, whereas adults would
be maddened by the torture. To this the
writer replies:
''Let no one talk of the yielding char
acter of young bones or the pliability Of
baby sinews We have listened with our
own ears to the cries of little girl under
going the torturing process Such agoniz-
ing walls never before fell on our ears.
They were the shrieks of child absolutely
wild with suffering. When the ligatures
were loosened and the shocking succession
of breathless screams ended in long-drawn
walls of exhaustion and misery the list
ener turned almost sick. with horror and
sympathy. Yet a mother was the deliber-
ate torturer of the poor baby, and father
callously listened to its heartbroken cries.
Tortures That Madden Baby Brains.
''Think that this fendish barbarity ia
being practiced daily and hourly through
out the length and breadth. of a land con-
tain1ng 300, 600 600 inhabitants. Not alone
are the tender bodies OF the poor little girls
ruthlessly racked and tortured, but the
purest sentiment of humanity, the love of
parents for their children, is perpetually
outraged. Such unnatural cruelty could be
tolerated only in the presence of the