The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1892-07-17
WOMEN OF THE EAST.
TaEIR STRUGGLE FOR LIFE IN
CHINA AND JAPAN.

CHINA AND JAPAN.
No Sin to Kill Female Children in
China - Wonderful Revolution n
Society in Japan That Gave Women
Equality and Happiness.
Eli Perkins in the Chicago Ne,cs- Record.
YOKOHAMA. JAPAN, June 10.-In COM
plying with the invitation of the editor 30
describe the present condition of woman in
Japan and China, l will say reluctantly
that there is no change in the status of
woman in China. This is because the
Buddhist religion teaches that woman
should simply be a slave to her husband.
The state Of woman is so low IN China that
mother prays that she may have no female
child. The birth of female child throws
the whole family into the deepest grief. Not
only is medicine given to kill the child. but
when born it is often put ous of the way and
a boy adopted in its place. The killing of a
girl baby in China is crime never pun-
ished. There is Catholic missionary asy-
lum In Canton with not a baby boy in it.
Mothers bring their little girl babies and
abandon them on the asylum steps.
In Foochow l saw this sign on the banks
Of the Yuen-Fule river.
-. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. ......s......E
Do Nor Drown FEMALE IN
FANTs HERE.
This sign is read by $50 900 Fooehowens,
causing no blush and no comment.
ELI PERKINS TELLS WHY IT IS so.
"Why is this!" asks the loving American
mother.
1t is because in all heather countries
women and girls occupy low positions. The
Chinese boy succeeds his father. He alone
inherits his fathers property. It is the law
and custom in China that a mother shall
obey her eldest son, and when Chinese
girl marries she not only obeys her
husband and son, but also her father
in.law. A Chinese father is allowed
to kill a child for disobedience. and he
often does so. and no law ever convicts him,
while custom honors him. II child strikes
its father, and that father does not kill him
on the spot, then the authorities will take
that child, and not only consign 1t to igno-
minious death, but to slow and awful tort
ure. But If a boy should strike his mother,
the father would look on with a sort Of
pride.
The Chinese mother is not educated. Few
Of them can read. 1t is common for
Cinnamon to have two or three wives
his wife. She does not come TO the table.
She ID d servant.
PLAYTHINGs NOT WIVES.
A gentleman friend of mine was invited
to q Chinese dinnar in Shanghai. He was
greeted by four Cinnamon and what he
thought to be their wives. They were
pretty, painted and silly. They even begged
presents Of rings and breastpins from the
guests-teased them for trinkets. The next
day he spoke OF meeting some Chinese gen
tlemen and their wives.
"Wivesw exclaimed his friend. "No,
they were not wives. They were play
things polygamous wives, taken into their
own families With the consent of the down
trodden wife. Such Mormonism is custom
airy among rich Chinese In Shanghai,
Canton, Hankow and other large Chinese
cities
CASTE CAUSED BY SMALL FEET.
There is no caste now IN China except the
caste caused by small feet. So every woman
who pretends to respectability must deform
her feet The fashionable husband coun-
tepances this deformity because it makes
his wife too helpless to walk land 1t keeps
her out of mischief"
saw poor fashionable woman's foot in
the English hospitable at Shanghai. When
the doctor unwound it he found the ankle
shriveled as thin as chickens drumstick
The skin was purple. The four toes were
rolled under the foot, stunned and buried ir
the bottom of the foot-about the size of
the second joint OF turkey-a chunk Of
withered flesh ending in one poor, puny
toel That foot represents the moral and
intellectual status OF the Chinese woman Of
1899.
BBFoRE THE REvoLUTfoN IN JAPAN.
Now compare with the sad state of the
IN ehA ali -
rpent Of the Japanese woman. Her oivilixa-
ton, language characters, literature and
religion came from China. Thirty years
ago Japanese women ranked with the Chi
nese women. The niksdo was wurshiped
unseen as god. His wife was a myth. He
was the sun, In daily intercourse with
Jehovah. He only spoke to she TYCOON, the
visible ruler from behind q wall while the
tycoon, priests and mobiles knelt 10 che floor.
Then men wore cues and shaved their
heads. They worshiped Shinto and
food. Mothers s shaved asS no their animal on,il
dren's heads and their own eyebrows.
painted their faces and rode horseback
astride. Mothers bathed naked with hus-
band, children and all the neighhors. Para
dox1cal simplicity was everywh Serv-
ants (musumes In the country went naked
in the summer. Bsshfulness," says Rous-
Beau, came with civilization The JAM
anese that Commodore Perry saw in 1884,
when he landed at Yeddo, were as innocent
as Eve They did not know what shame
was AS Sir Edwin Arnold SAYS. They
were modest and yet immodest."
The women all CREASED their hair like gyp-
sizes. They all smoked, and when they got
married degraded themselves by painting
their teeth black. Many girls OF the lower
classes had their arms and backs tattooed
and showed them proudly as marks of
beauty. Husbands could have many wives
and could divorce any OF them for disobe-
dience to her husbands parents, barrenness.
drunkenness, talkstiveness and could and
did sell daughters and conslgn them to lives
of shame.
LIFE, LIBERTY AND HAPPINESS,
In 1857 a great social and political change
came to Japan. The young lnikado, so long
shut up to commune with Jehovah In the
old feudal sastle at KAota, came to years of
discretion. Light struck him at onoe. He
SAW that Totugawa, the old tycoon or
Shotgun, had usurped the rulership and was
running the country from his feudal castle
in Toxic, surrounded by military daimios
He deposed him in day and sent &c. 900
daimios to their plows or workshop or
gave them new government positions. Their
swords became plowshares or were auctioned
off in the curio shops Of Toxic. With one
stroke he declared himself emperor and
his wife an emDress-his equal"
This act freed every woman in
Japan. Every wife in the emperor's court