The Cook County herald. [volume] (Grand Marais, Minn.) 1893-1909, 1907-10-05

Copyright, by Joseph B. Bowles)
No one who knew Europe before
1890 and who knows it now can fail to
have observed the wave of American
ism which has swept over European
women in recent years. Its effect up
to the present time is confined to the
great middle classes, except in Eng
land, where it has reached the upper
stratum of society. The lower stratum
seems, 50 far, quite unaffected by it.
In England the laboring man still
beats his wife and gets two or three
years in prison for it if the woman
happens to die under the operation,
and the man can prove that he was
drunk when he gave the beating. In
France the woman of the lower classes
still tolls in the fields. In Germany
she is still hitched with the dog to
the plow, which the man holds, or,
still with the dog, the woman drags to
market the cart, in which the man
sits, In Italy the women still trudge
|
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 shall
be the chief worker has not yet
reached the laboring classes Of Eu-
rope. In every town and hamlet sights
are witnessed every day Of the deg
radiation of women which would pro-
woke tarring and feathering, if not a
lynching, conducted by the leading
citizens in any American community.
In the days of slavery at the south the
negro women did only the lightest
of field work and enjoyed a considera-
tfor. from their masters in illness and
old age which to the European peasant
women of to-day would seem like a
dream of paradise. In Europe the
working woman is never too old, too
feeble or too i'll to work. Nor is any
thing, from Shaving in the mines to
cleaning house, reckoned too hard for
her, nor is any pittance reckoned too
little for her.
i
Emperor William says that he pre-
fers the women who only know four
Ks-kinder (childreny, kuchen (kitch-
en), kleider (clothes) and kirche
(church). If his majesty would con-
slider what the working women in his
own kingdom Of Prussia receive as
wages, the enormous toll they undergo
from birth to death, the wretched
clothes and still more wretched fare
to which they are bound, and then
compare their situation with that of
American women Of the same kind, he
would be forced to admit that the
women who know more than the four
KS have the best CT it.
An American may be forgiven for
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 eminent
ly proper. But no American man or
woman can see tina. sight without hor-
TOT and disgust.
| The Americanizing of the laboring
classes in Europe would mean an in
dustrial and economic chaos-so it
cannot be expected. Those in whom
hope is not dead and who by striving
and pinching almost beyond belief can
acquire the price of a steerage ticket
to America come here as to their land
Of Canaan. The rest work, starve.
freeze and die as their forbears have
done for thousand years, that few
may live and boast of their "civiliza-
tion."
H..
But in the middle classes the Amer
lean 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 Amer
icanization has reached the upper
classes. Especially is this notable in
London society-but it is wholly de-
velopment 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 a 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 thel,
prototypes. Just about the time the
daughters of the English earls were
Ibeginning to 90 out on the street unat.
tended by their maids the daughters
Of the retired American hardware deal.
ers, tobacoonists and the like estab.
lfshed II London found thew ;coli1d M,