The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1893-03-22
CRUSHING GIRLS FEET IN CHINA.
4 Freak of Fashion That Tortures Its
Victims for Many Years.

An English paper quotes from a
writer in the Japan Mail who appears
to have special knowledge OF the WE'LL
known Chinese custom of compressing
the feet of female children of the bet
ter classes in China. He hopes that
few of his readers have been so unfor-
tunate as to see the naked foot of an
orthodox Chinese lady. But many
have looked at photographs of this ter
ribly twisted and distorted member,
and the sight must have suggested
thoughts of barbarous suffering in
ficted on particularly sensitive part
of the human body.
Year by year hundreds of thousands
of little girls throughout the wide en-
pire of China are subjected to ruth
less process which crushes the bones
and wrenches the sinews of their ten
der feet, until at last a revolving de-
formity is produced and the foot,
crumpled into shocking monstrosity,
becomes almost valueless as a means
of locomotion. The wretched girl
emerges from her period of feverish
torture mutilated cripple, condemned
to hobble through life on feet which
preserve no sem blance to natures
beautiful mechanism, having become
as hideous as they are useless.
At intervals the missionary cries out,
the traveller writes, and the charitable
sgitate, but the poor little children
never benefit. For them there re-
mains always the same ruthless
bending of bones, the same agonizing
application of tight ligatures. the same
long months of bitter pain and unayail-
ing tears. Perhaps, he suggests, it is
to this singular contrast between the
general refinement and cultivation of
the Chinese, on the one hand, and this
callous cruelty, on the other, that we
must attribute the periodical appear
ance of apologlsts 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 painful after all.
The bones are soft, they say, in early
youth, the sinews supple. Twisting,
crushing, and wrenching are opera
tions that may be performed without
much suffering on baby feet, whereas,
adults would be maddened by the tor
ture. 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 lit
tie girl undergoing the torturing
process. Such agonizing walls never
before fell on our ears. They were
the shrieks of a child absolutely wild
with suffering. When the ligatures
loosened and the shocking succession
of breathless screams ended in long
drawn walls of exhaustion and misery,
the listener turned almost sick with
horror and sympathy. Yet mother
was the deliberate torturer of the pool
baby and father callously listened te
its heartbroken cries.
aThink that this fendish barbarity
is being practiced daily and hourly
throughout the length and breadth O.
q land containing 300,000,000 inhabi
tants. Not alone are the tender
bodies of the poor little girls ruthless
ly racked and tortured, but the purest
sentiment OF humanity-the love o
parents for their children-is perpet
ually outraged. Such unnatural cruel
ty could be tolerated only in the pres
ence of the worst kind of demoraliza
ton. How much can survive of tht
moral beauty of the parental relation
when fathers and mothers, in defer
ence to mere freak of fashion, con
sent to inflict on their daughters, day
by day, torture that well-nigh mad
dens the baby brain and wrings shriek
of excruciating agony from the littl'
lipsp This is one of those facts tina
makes us marvel when we hear
great destiny predicted for the Chimes
nation"