The San Francisco call., 1896-05-08

Miss Hamlin explained that everywhere
the Government in India is organizing
schools, but very few of the women take
advantage of them. Only about per cent
of them can read and write even their
own vernacular.
women of India are adopting the English
style of dress. The reply was that per-
haps not more than one in a hundred of
the women converted to Christianity wear
the European dress; it is not encouraged
by the missionaries.
Miss Yates remarked that she had never
attempted to have the Chinese women
adopt the European costume, for she be-
heves theirs is vastly superior to ours, nor
could she advise them to adopt such as
her own, because the next fashion papers
from America might wholly change it.
Miss Agnes Manning of this City began
her paper, Women in Northern Races, 4"
with proud boast that she had converted
Sarah b. Cooper, the president OF the
Woman's Congress, to the suffrage move
ment. Continuing, she said in part:
"Our German women are too low in the social
SCALE says a German writer, Jenny Htrsch, ITO
dream Nm OF the franehse our object is to lift them
cry and shame and train them for work which
will make themselves and Others happy.
Here is the law of Prussia: Children may not
marry without the consent of their father. The
mother is not even mentioned. BY marriage the
Whatever the wife earns during her marriage be-
longs to the husband. The wife may not spend
cent of the fortune she brought to the husband.
He may squander it as he peases.
The Bavarian statute-book says: The law al
lows the husband TO chastise the wife moderately.
Women, with the exception of the mother and
grandmother. are unfit TO be guardians.
The Germanic man has been greatly shocked
that his poor savish Gretchen should aspire to the
higher education. he could complacently look on
four stories in his cities with load of brick and
mortar on her shoulders, but for young lady to
outrage on her whole sex that he was boundr to
prevent. Slowly, indeed, is he learning that Gods
alone but for both. II history teaches us one les
son more forcibly than another it is this inevitable
fact-that no human being can be trusted with
irresponsible power over another.
Before the dawn OF Christianity the nations Of
the north were little better than hordes Of savages
In their deep forests beyond the Rhine they lived
their wild lives, knowing nothing of the civiliza-
ton tnat Veneered tne snrface condltlon OF their
southern neighbors. Or by the lonely shores of
the Baltic, under cold, gray skies, they pursued
their barbarous tasks with little to brighten the
present and only gloomy mythology to speak to
them of future. 1t does not require much imag-
ination to picture the position of their women.
She knew not hing of the unrest OF her little sis
ters in the to her unknown lands of the south.
She had never even heard of the sunny isles,
where women as soon as learning had been given
them, had blossomed into poetry and song headed
by that great poet that all her contemporaries
united in putting her beside the greatest that
Greece has known. she knew nothing of the DIS
content that stirred other women by the banks of
the Tiber. She never knew how they combined
together and even clamored at the gates OF the
senate against the unjust laws forced upon them
by their tyrants. The dark-eyed WON of Rome
were not quietly held In subugation. Because
they barred out of the world of letters they
have been unable to defend themselves from the |
base ISLANDERS of the corrupt writers of their time
The Germanic woman gave no cause for COM
plant. She knew nothing of combination and if
it occurred to her TO blame anything it was the
fate tnat made her woman. All liberty for her
slept in the night of time. The senisavage at
her side had conception of liberty himself NO
man ever has that denies 1t to another If he was
rich he tyrannzed over his people: If he poor
he bowed his head to the yoke Whether rich or
poor, the wife of his youth, the mother of his chill
dren, was piece of goods, household chattel. to
do by her IS he saw fit.
Alas, for the history Of the human race, woman
the first TO be enslaved and she will be the |
last 10 be wholly free. Rough and rude AS we see
the condition of the Germanic woman. it yet never
sank the degradation that her sisters touched in
the lands where the Mussulman's cruel edicts held
sway. The religions invented by some man to
crafty his baser animal nature from Mohammedism
to Mormonism, and every shade OF polygamy have
always sacrificed women by the most unjust
usages
A man in the gallery devoted some
minutes to a rather caustic review of the
addresses of DR.. Voorsanger and Miss
Shaw on the preceding evening.
"If that learned speaker he said,
"wished to lay down the proposition that
the great ideal of womanhood was very