Omaha daily bee., 1909-01-24
RUSSIAN WONEN'S DEMANDS
They Want to Have Their Status
Fixed by Law.
RESULT OF TEN YEARS EFFORT
AbsurditIes of Present situation
Pointed Out NJ First AII-Russian
wOmen's Congress - Trial
Marriages Proposed.

ST. PETERSBURG, Jan. 23.-The first
all Russian women's congress has just had
a busy week of general and sectional
meetings. The 100 delegates represented
the most diverse elements from the Baltic
to the Pacific.
For ten years women have been trying to
bring the congress about. It is not a by
product of the recent revolutionary up
heaval. Its program of business, drawn
up long ago, was distributed for debate
and decision to four sections. 1t com
prised: Woman's position in the family,
her wages, liberty and health when work
ing for her livelihood; her right TO vote
and to have a share in civic life, her edu-
cation and the u~pbringins OF children.
Russian women hold a different position
in the scheme Of society from the women
in other lands. In many respects 1t is
more advantageous.
Thousands OF them are employed in
banks and business offices in st. Peters
burg. They do most of the copying and
typewriting in the government depart
ments. They form the corps Of stenog-
raphers who take down the official reports
in the debates in the council of empire
and in the Duma. They sell railway tickets
and sometimes they sigma trains. They
are the cashiers at theaters.
Women doctors of medicine are more
numerous and in better practice here than
in any other capital in Europe. Women
are being trained at the st. Petersburg
engineering institute in drawing architec-
tural plans and in the School of Scientific
Design. Even In the vast network of viii
lage communities, which is the essence Of
Russia, women are accustomed, through
dowhood or the failure Of male success
sion, to speak and vote at the peasant meet
ings where local life is regulated.
What Thee Complain OF.
1t was the complaint of the Women's
congress that such opportunities have been
accorded by the complacence of the men
and are not based on law. The recent in
stance was cited Of the minister of educa-
tion's closing to women students the doors
of university classes by the issue of a de-
partmental order from which there is no
appeal, because some of them had been
proved to be members of revolutionary Sc
cret societies. In the mass of administra-
tive presidents sanctioned by the imperial
senate-still the supreme court in Russia
and initiated by a success Of cars,
which is known as the code of laws, the
status of women is nowhere defined.
The congress cited a fragrant case. A
widowed mother and two young daugh-
ters have created for themselves in st.
Petersburg a small hosiery business by
which they live. The only son turned
out badly and deserted the family. To
secure themselves in their property, as
they thought, the women registered their
shop in the name of a younger daughter,
as the one likely to live longest,
Three months ago this daughter was
attacked by cholera and died without
being able to make a will. All the regis
tered property went by law to the son as
the male head of the family. He ordered
it to be sold and appropriated the pro-
ceeds, leaving the two women who had
made the business to start from nothing
and try to make a living again.
Advanced w~omanhood had her oppor-
tunity at the congress to have her say on
the institution of marriage, In Russia she
has got much beyond George Meredith's
idea of a terminable contract.
Trial Marriage Suggested.
An enthusiastic and comedy young woman
(single) advocated a more excellent way