The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1893-02-04
The Compressed Feet of the Chinese
Women.

A writer in the Japan Mail, who appears
to have special knowledge of the subject,
refers to the well-known Chinese custom
of compressing the feet of female children
of the better classes in China He hopes
that few of his readers have been so nm
fortunate as to see the naked foot 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
barbarous suffering inflicted on particu-
larly sensitive part of the human body.
Year by year hundreds of thousands of
little girls, throughout the wide empire of
China, are subjected to a ruthless process
which crushes the bones and wrenches the
sinews of their tender feet, until at last u
revolving deformity is produced, and the
foot, crumpled intoa shocking monstrosity,
becomes almost valueless as means of
locomotion, The wretched girl emerges
from her period of feverish torture inrti-
lated cripple, condemned to hobble through
life on feet which preserve no semblanee
of natures beautiful mechanism, having
become as hideous as they are useless. At
intervals the missionary cries out, the
traveller writes, and the charitable agitatc
but the poor little children never benefit.
Fer them there remains always the same
ruthless bending of bones, the same agon-
izing application of tight ligatures, the
same long months of bitter pain and un-
availing tears, Perhaps, he suggests, it is
to this singular contrast between general
refinement and cultivation of the Chinese
on the one hand, and this callous cruelty
on the other, that we must attribute the
periodical appearance of apologSts for the
appalling custom. Some people say that,
though the foot is ultimately deformed,
though the weman is indeed condemned
to be little better than cripT q the
process is not so very painful ait, all.
The bones are caft, they say, in early
youth the sinews supple, Twisting,
crushing and wrenching are operations
that may be performed without much sui-
fering on baby feet, whereas adults would
be maddened by the torture To this the
writer replies "Let no one talk of the
yielding character Of young bones or the
4 pliability of baby sinews We have lis
tened with our own ears to the cries of Il
little girl undergoing the torturing process.
Such agonizing walls never before fell on
our ears. They were the shrieks of
child absolutely wild withsuffering. When
the ligatures were loosened and the shock
ing 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 poor
baby, and father callously listened to IFS
heart-broken cries. Think that this fiend-
ish barbarity is being practiced daily and
hourly throughout the length and breadth
of land containing 00,000,000 inhabi-
tants Not alone are the tender bodies of
the poor little girls ruthlessly racked and
tortured, but the purest sentiment of hu-
manity, the love of parents for their chill
dren, is perpetually being outraged. Such
unnatural cruelty could only be tolerated
in the presence of the worst kind of de-
moralization. How much can survive of
the moral beauty of the paternal relation
when fathers and mothers, in Difference to
a mere freak of fashion, consent to infict
on their daughters, day by day, torture
that well nigh maddens the baby brain and
wrings shrieks of excruciating agony from
the little lips This is one Of those facts
that make us marvel when we hear great
destiny predicted for the Chinese nation.