The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-03-01
MISS LAURA WHITE, EDITOR
 OF CHINESE PAPER, ENJOYS
 REST AFTER 30 YEARS EXILE
Spending Short Vacation At Home Of Her Broth CT, Chinese Missionary Tells Interesting Story Of Social Progress.

of her brother, Rev. Ralph T. White at 4S1 Wood avenue, this city, from thirty years of arduous labor in self | imposed exile is feminist of world wide fame and experience, who be- lfeves that unless the rights and prixi- | leges being won by women in America
 are accompanied by a realization, as | never before of their duties and 2 real moral revival, America itself will | decay. Miss Laura White, editor o1
 the Women's Messenger of Shanghai 1 China, is vigorous, outspoken Amer | ican woman, long actively engaged in | teaching in Methodist schools in China | seven years at Lawrence Hall, Nan 1 king, and ten years at Chinklang. For l thirteen years she has devoted her very considerable talents to freelance 1 literary work, particularly along the line of social progress of women. She | is the author of seven original
 volumes. upwards of forty transla- | tions from the Chinese, and innumer-
 able magazine articles.
 l When the Times representative | called she was chatting with Rev. MT White and Mrs. White about a forth
 coming magazine article. Perhaps
 the thoughts I have been collecting
 will be interesting to Times readers
 aIso," she said with a smile. II am
 writing on social progress Of women
 I wish the young women of today in | America realized the truth that na- tional decay is inevitable,' this very earnestly, eff Women's progress | doesn't bring to them Q corfeSpondlnS
 sense of duty. Roman women had ' more rights of property than we have today, but the sense of duty, the moral sense, was lacking and Rome decayed- | So with the Italian women of the renaissance period, so with the wo- men of France from Francis I to the revolution with the result that women in France have practically no rights and with Venice. Gains of rights and privileges by women without an awakened moral nature bring nation al decay. A nation can live with all the men bad and the women decent.
 but with the women bad, it goes un- der. If America goes under, the wo- men of China and Japan will take their places."
 Christ First Feminist.
 Miss White is enthusiastic over the advance made by women in China during the thirty years of her stay there, and the panorama of progress she enrolls is indeed thrilling one. Thirty years ago." Miss White said, my first task was to convince those Chinese girls and their parents that these girls had souls. Their view was that woman was merely a machine for producing sons. In fact, as far as woman's social progress is concerned, the first teacher to recognize woman had a soul was Christi So deepset was this feeling when Miss White first was in China that when Chinese teacher committed 1nQ1SCToI1On or introducing his own daughter into his classes, and some of the boys began to fail in their studies, the parents of the boys were so firmly convinced that girls could acquire information only parasite fashion from the su- perior sex that they accused the little girl of stealing their boys brains.
 Being a feminist myself" " Miss White continued, 'it wasn't hard for me to explain to my own group of girls that in the beginning God created men and women equal, that when sin entered the world, woman as the weaker party went to the wall, to re- main until Christ lifted her up from under mans foot" An amusing in cident of the effect of this teaching related by Miss White was that of an his daughter, a budding feminist of ten, had refused to clean his shoes on the ground that God had made her his equal.
 Parents Picked Husbands.
 At that time betrothals in China were solely in the hands of parents, and Chinese girls generally considered it a much better method than that of the foreigners. "A little later," Miss White said. "a budding sense of re- sponsibility developed" The first manifestation Miss White observed was the case of a young girl who resolutely refused to marry the man her parents had chosen for her. and when that failed resorted to the sub terfuge of making herself so unat- tractive to him that he withdrew. Her parents were perfectly furious" Miss White said, "at her unheard of conduct. They were aghast at her audacity and her vu1garity, but she had her way" It wasn't until about fifteen years ago, however, in Miss Whites opinion, that Chinese girls really began to assert themselves. In the years shortly after that Miss White herself arranged several marriages, but her opportunities for matchmak- ing waned when a still further ad- vance was made, and young China started doing it's own choosing. The first case of this sort Miss White en- countered was that of a Christian Chinaman with a good salary, who ex- pressed the wish to marry a girl at Miss Whites school. Miss White told one of the graduates, who, she thought, was better fitted for life in a home of her own than for active Christian work, that the young man would like 70 marry her, but when Miss White l lad to answer on questioning that the | young man hadn't spoken for her particularly, the girl stalked out of | he room with considerable dignity | after saying: Thank you, I never would consider a man for a husband | who hadn't made the first advances O me"
 Today It Is Different.
 The next progressive step Miss ~ h1te noted was that Iaken Dy a Toung Chinese girl who had been be- | rothed with her own consent by her ather to a Chinese young man study ng at Oxford. She took the leading 'art in Everywoman soon after at an Lmateur performance in Shanghai and distinguished young man in the audience fell in love with her, man -ged to meet her, and she fell in love with him. She went home and made he unprecedented announcement- or China at least-that she hadn't been responsible for engagement and wouldn't marry the man. She wrote he Oxford student of the circun1- rtances and received courteous let CT releasing her in reply. Her ather was so enraged,'' Miss White | aid, ''that he took her out of school. put she met her Romeo on the sly enlisted the sympathy of other young vomen-sone of them foreigners-so hat she always had a chaperon avail lble, and there was a regular court 'hip without her father being any the wiser" The young man in the case Miss White explained. made an .nviable record during the war in the