River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1908-08-13

torture of women. Among the Ead1rs,
relates Herbert Spencer, besides her
domestic duties the woman has to per.
form all the hard work; she is her hus.
bands OK, a Kaffir remarked to a
traveller; she had been bought, he
argued, and must therefore labor.
cheftain's Wife Complete Slave.
Prof. Ward observes that the com.
plete slavery of woman to man is
shown by the account of a Malagary
chief who had scarcely seated himself
at his door when his wife came out.
crawling on her hands and knees till
she came to him, and then licked his
feet All the women in the town sa-
Juted their husbands in the same man
ner. Almost everywhere in Africa. re-
ports Letourneau, woman is the prop
ertv of her husband, who has the right
to use her as a beast of burden. and
almost always makes her work as he
does his oxen.
In certain Himalayan regions the
women are a veritable merchandise
which is bought and sold. At the time
of Fraser's visit a woman among the
a sum, (which it was pleasant to re
ceive but painful to expend.
The daughters also are freely sold,
and the brothers of each family bought
a common wife whom they rented
without hesitation to strangers. In
New Zealand, according to Moerenhaut
and Ward, a father or brother, in Civ
ing his daughter or his sister to her
future husband, would say: IF you
are not satisfied with her, sell her,
kill her, eat her; you are absolute
| master of her.
Women of Tahiti Half Starved.
Almost at the origin of society,
writes Letourneau woman was sub
| jugated by her companion; we have
seen her become in succession beast
| OF burden, slave, minor, subject, held
aloof from a free, active life, often
maltreated, oppressed, punished with
| fury for acts that her male owner
would commit with impunity before
| her eyes.
In the Soudan, where the removal of
clothes is a sign of obeisance, women
may only come unclothed into the
| presence of the sultan of Melli, and
even the sultan's daughters must con-
| form to this custom. At the court of
Uganda stark naked, full grown WON
en- are the Wallets. Indeed, throughout
the primitive world women are beasts
| of burden, servants, slaves.
Not only the wife of the negro, the
| Hindu, and the Keighis, but also the
wife of the present slav of the Balkan
| peninsula and of Russia, is the mis-
used slave of her husband, and as the
result of the effort to escape labor, we
see the unwholesome interchange of
wife and child labor in the factories
which would make greater gains from
| the Iaborer at the expense of wife and
child.
Indeed, in it's origin the family is
| held to have been simply an institu-
ton for the more complete subjugation
and enslavement of women and chill
| dren, for the subversion of natures
method in which the mother is the
queen, dictates who shall be father
and guards her offspring by the in
stinct of maternal affection planted in
her for that purpose"
Japanese Widows Blacken Teeth.
In India the subsection of women
! has had its headquarters. The suffice
or the burning of widows on the
| funeral pyres of their husbands is not
| yet wholly extinct, although forbidden
| by law; and the remarriage of widows
is only beginning to be permitted. The
widow at best leads an isolated ex-
| istence, cut off from her natural asso-
| ciates, condemned to base foods and a
| life of practical servitude.
In Japan the widow must blacken
| her teeth and shave her eyebrows.
| Throughout the orient women are
| taught to address their husbands as
| master or lord, whereas the men
speak to their wives as slaves and
| servants. The oriental proverbs de-
clare that woman is like slipper,