The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-06-17

(copyright, 1906, by Joseph B. Bow,es,o ao . No one who knew Europe before ie.o and who knows it now can fail to nave ohssrvad ths wave of. Americanism which has swept over European womsn in recent years. Its efefct up 10 .na present time Is confined to the ereae middle class. except in England. Whelo it has reached the upper stratum or So- ciety The lower stratum seems. far. quite unaffected by IL .,,
 In England the laborinG man SUI heats his wife and gets two or three years in prison for. 1t if the woman happens to die under the operatfon anu inc man can prove that he was drunk when he gave the beating. In France the woman of the lower classes sei'' tolls in the fields. In Germany she IS still hitched with the dog to the piow. which the man holds. or. still with the dog, the woman drags to market the cart. in which he man sits. In ItalV the women still trudge home from their labors in the fields carrying great burdens on their backs. and sometimes children, too. in their arms. while the men ride the donkeys and mules.
 The American idea that man snail os the chief worker has not yet reacneo the laboring classes of Europe. III every town and hamlet sights are Wit messed every day of the degraoae'oh of women which would provoke tarr- | ing and feathering. if not lynching. conducted py the leading citizens In an American community. In the days ot slavery at the South the negro women did only the Highest of field work ana enjoyed a consideration from their masters in illness and old age Wnich | to the European peasant women or to7 | day would seem like dream or para disc. In Europe the working woman | is never too old, too feeble or too III to work. Nor is anything. from slav- | ing in the mines to cleaning house
 reckoned too hard for her, nor in any pittance reckoned too little for her. Emperor William says that he pre-
 fers the women who only know TOUT
 K's--kinder (children), kuchen tkitch- | en), kelder (clothes). ana hircne l (churchl. If his majesty would eoa- | sider what the working woman Tn ms l own Kingdom Or Prussia receive as
 wages, tie enormous toll they underSo l from birth to death. the wretcneo clothes and still more wretched rare | to which they are bound ana then | compare their situation with that or American. women O. the same, klnd, ne | would be forced to admit that the | women who know more than the TOUT
 Ks have the best Of IT,
 I American
 thinking his civilization the best, which | releases from women the horrors that are so common in Europe that they are | not regarded as horrors at all, but as | the normal conditions. Emperor Will | liam may see, any day that he goes | forth, the woman yoked with the dog' and he perhaps regards It as enIn sntas r.ta 1 proper But no American man or Wo- | man can see that sight without horror | and disgust.
 | The Anerioanizing of the laboring l classes in, Europe would mean an in dustrial and economic chaos---so II can | nor be expected. Those in whom hope
 Is not dead and who by striving ana | ufnchfng almost beyond belief can ac- | euire the price of Q steerage ticket to | America come here as to their land or | Canaan The rest work, starve. freeze | and die as their forbears have done | for a thousand years, that few may l live and boast of their civilization. But in the middle classes the Amer
 ican leaven Is working strongly. These | middle class European women see, in | the tremendous number of American | women of all sorts who come to them | every year, what vast privileges and | immunities the American woman has -
 and they are following her as fast as they can In England the Americani-
 zation has reached the upper classes. Especially Is this notable in London society-but 1t Is wholly a development of the last few years.
 Up to about the year 1890 all that English people of the higher classes | saw of American women was in Lon
 don, where there was small colony | of Americans, who conformed strictly | to English standards. The daughters of these American parents, were made to be, as far as possible, limitations of the English girl. These bogus Eng fish girls knew little of their own
 country. As the case always is with | limitations, they went far beyond their prototypes. Just about the time the daughters of the English earls were beginning to go out on the street unat-
 tended by their maids the daughters of the retired American hardware deal
 CTS, tobaccouists and the like estab-
 Iished In Lcndon found they could not go around the corner without a maid at
 their heels When the English girl had
 begun to think 1t little old-fashioned | to have a footman escort her to church
 and to carry her prayer book the bogus
 English girl founn q footnaan absolute
 ly necessary to her attendance at Di- vine worship. Under such conditions | 1t was not to be expected that Ameri-
 can ideas could make any headway in | England
 But this type of Anglo-American
 girl was succeeded in time by the girl
 whose parents take a house in London
 Tor the season, go to Homburg for the
 late summer, to Paris in the autumn,
 and to Rome. Egypt or the Riviera for
 the winter The new American girl
 is cosmopolite, and. comparing the
 ways of all nations, finds her own
 quite as good as any Her American
 ism is not blatant, but deep. She goes
 her own independent but perfectly
 proper way. and is politely indifferent
 as to what the English girls think. of
 her. There is nothing like polite in-
 difference to win the favor of the Eng
 fish. as a race Straightway they be-
 gan to respect, to admire, to copy the
 society into American and anti-Amer-
 lean parties-one bemoaning and la
 menting and deriding American GUS
 toms. the other enthusiastically imitat-
 ing them.
 London is the battle-ground of these two factions. The Americans. how
 ever, are steadily gaining and invading the enemy's camp. American GUS toms in entertaining get a firmer
 footing every season. Ten years ago the American fashion of smart dinners
 especially on Sunday nights. at splen-
 did cafes. with music and flowers, was
 unknown in London. Today it is ram pant, and there are not less than g . dozen superb London hotels -~wher' these dinners are the great feature , Another evolution is the dance fol f young girls alone. It was inaugurateC