The Kemper herald. (Scooba, Miss.) 1875-1908, 1907-08-15

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any other country of Europe.
Here woman still does the manual
labor of the land as she once did it
all over the world. The voice of pro-
gress, whose modern note is spelling
emancipation everywhere else, has not
yet sounded for the woman of the lit
tie strip of land 173 miles by 112 that
r~ejoices in the name of kingdom.
The Belgium woman is the nations
farmer, miner, laborer and mechanic.
She tolls from dawn till sunset at the
heaviest kind of work, and none pities
or makes an appeal for her.
The little country, of whose exist
ence she is the cornerstone, is n of
the most densely populated in the
world and every square mile of terri
tory must support 4S5 persons. That
1t is able to do so is only because of
the industry, the slavish willingness
of the woman of the country to do the
kind Of work from which other nations
have freed her.
The soil of Belgium is well adapted
to agriculture. The once impossible
morasses of the Morini and the Mena-
phi have been drained and converted
intc fertile fields, surrounded by dense
Plantations. A system of canals helps
the Scheldt and the Mas in their work
OF irrigating the land, and the yaria-
tons of climate from vesy hot sum-
mers to extremely cold .inters give
advantages for the production of va
ried farm stuffs that are denied to
the n%eighboring country Of Holland.
But the seed sown by nature would
never be reaped If the work of doing
1t were to be left to man. The popula-
ton of the country, some sever mil
lions, is divided into the proportion
of three rural jewellers to n who
lives in the city and probably the same
proportion. three to one, would show
the number of women and children as
against men who toll in the fields.
Centuries of habit have made man
regard the Belgian m as a na-
tural wage If he is industrious
he works in the factory, while she goes
out and raises the farm produce that
is eaten on his table and when there
is a surplus, sold. Young women and
old think nothing of working a 12-hour
day in the fields, where wheat, barley,
rye, oats, hemp, fax, hops, dye plants
and chicory are prepared for the mar
kets.
In the hundreds of acres devoted to
vineyards, where is produced a fair,
but not famous wine, it is women who
do the bulk of the work, and the gour-
mand who drinks a bottle of wine with
4 Belgian label has a woman to thank
for his enjoyment.
Women Work in Belgian Mines.
But it is not alone at farming that
the women of Leopold's realm toll for
their keep. Incredible al it may seem,
they are actually miners, and no small
part of the valuable mineral output Of
the country results from their efforts.
In the United States it has always been
a matter of concern with humanitar-
ians that in order that the world might
be supplied with coal, men must do all
the dangerous work incident to mining
and getting it to the market. Touch
ing articles have been written on the
danger of sinking shafts, of blasting
the coal from it's natural state with
dynamite, of getting it to the shafts
and carrying it to the surface.
The miseries of the breaker BOYS.
who sit in the dusty whirl and confu-
sion Of the lofty ~ramshackle building
picking the slate from the coal as it
moves before them on long chutes, has
often been painted as sad pictures of
toll and misery that has gone far to
give to the coal miners support in their
various contentious with their en-
ployers over the question of wages.
Every now and then some accident,
a cave-in, an explosion or a washout,
directs attention to the dangers that
beset the life of the miners, and an
indignant and watchful public forces
legislatures to pass laws in order to
give the man with the pick every DOS
sible protection.
In this country, the miners subject
vi ~ 1dS i luCu, Jul ll
Belgium the same dangers, privations
and 'exhausting work are the portion
of woman.
In all the Belgian mines women work
at the surface, handle coal, gush wa
CONS and do the work that breaker
boys accomplish in the United States.
In some Of the mines they are not per-
mitted to go below the surface, but in
others they actually compete with men.
So in all the centers of the various
minerals, at Liege, where copper is
wrought; at the black marble quarries
of Diant, the slate quarries of Herbe-
mont and calimine mines of Liege,
there will be found women working,
and in most cases very grateful for the
opportunity.
At the great seats of the linen indus
try, Courtney and Bruges, in West
Flanders, Client in East Flanders,
Brussels in Brabant, Mechlin or Ma
lines in Antwerp, Tourney in Hainault,
women are employed in great numbers
and are more skilled than. men. But
no account of their ability is taken in
the wages paid to them, which are for
the most part pitifully small.
When Dowie, as part of his dream of
a modern Zion in the United States,
brought a number of lace workers
from Belgium, with the idea of making