South Bend news-times. (South Bend, Ind.) 1913-1938, 1913-08-27
SEESPROGRESS
Of WOMANK|ND
Miss Jessie Alderman Says
They Have Advanced in
Every Country.

NEW YORK, Aug. 27.-After an
eight years absence from these. her
native shores. on her eighth trip
around the world, Miss Jessie Acker-
man, writer and lecturer. has just re-
turned 10 America fairly glowing with
satisfaction at the advance of women
the world around. Miss Ackermann
who has now Travelled nearly four
hundred thousand miles, covered on
her last journey most OF the countries
of South America, Australia and New
Zealand, China, Siberia, Russia and
other European countries. She stop
ped in England on the way home long
enough to observe the militant situa-
ton there
Women have advanced all along
the lines of cultural and social devel-
opment far more rapidly than the
most sanguine Of US could have an
| ticipated a few years ago" she said
at the City club. Suffrage is just one
phase Of the change, and that, too, is
moving fast II will advance in the
next year or so far more rapidly than
most of us realize, hopeful as we have
all become by recent events. A few
more thunderclaps like Illinois will
break In upon much slumber. or l am
vastly mistaken.
Change Greatest i'm China.
Il have been through Turkey and
| Syria, l have been in the Russias and
| in the far east, and have found no
community where the evidences of
| woman's advance were not to be found
at every hand. Perhaps the most
| spectacular change was in China. 1t
| all came swiftly and impressed me all
| the more profoundly, because when l
| was in China twenty years ago / saw
and studied things there as they used
! TO be. / remember so well when the
4 = 1,
| gathered around me, staring at my big
| feet and asking the Interpreter why
| this old creature wore cloth things
| on her hands. / am inclined to be-
| lieve that it was the decree of the old
| empress that the children's feet should
! he allowed to grow unbound that first
| started the women of China thinking
/ am inclined to believe. too, that it
| was the missionaries, not by their
teachings but by their examples. who
! first led the Chinese women to con-
! slider what a home and family life
| might be and mean.
| Now the women are to enter the
| liberty Of the new republic on the
| same footing as the men. That has
been guaranteed to them. You know
| they had their militants there, who
were very active in the south. They
| stormed the houses and threw stones
| and kicked the legislators about a bit
| and made themselves generally annoy
| ing. / asked one of the men what
| they did about ii. oh, he said. we
moved the assembly to the north
The FTeest Country on Earth.
II was more interested in Australia
| than in any other country 1 visited,
with the possible exception of Argen-
tina. Australia is the freest country
on earth. They have the suffrage
there now. The critics from afar have
told how, in some of the states the
women took little interest in the
ballot and it's possibilities. That is
because in those particular states the
women have not been interested be-
forehand
They had not asked for the vote,
which came TO them as it did to the
rest of Australia, party measure,
a political eXpedient. The suffrage is
appreciated and used only where ii
has come to women as a result of their
own work-where, in other words the
. receiving Of the vote has been preced-
ed by period of education such as is
going on in Holland now, for instance.
THE women of Australia are the
finest mothers in the world That is
because they have been unable to get
domestic help and have ben obliged to
run their own homes. They are pio-
neer women, the Australians, workine
alongside their husbands in the fell
ing and burning of trees in the BUSH
There are women farmers there, and
in Victoria women solicitors"