The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-09-16
LANDS OF BALTIC BARONS
 DIVIDED AMONG PEASANTS
Frank C. Carpenter Relates Queer Features Of Life And Customs In Latva, A War-Born Republic, Formerly Par
 Of Russa--Education Compulsory And Standard Very High-People Recently Published 100000 Folk Songs

apparently was bossfng the job. This should be remembered in the rebuilding of Latvia. The labor fac
 tor is doubled by the number of
 women. They do everything that man does, and they are worked from daylight till dark Even the chil- dren have their share of the labor, and this is especially so in watching the cattle, sheep and hogs in the pas lures. Most of these new farms have
 no fences, and an old woman, young gorl, or a boy may spend days as 1t were herding two or three ani- mals. l remember one young woman whom l saw watching two cows eat
 ing the grass of a meadow, with nothing in sight for a mile. 1 asked what she was doing, and the agricul- tural official said she was a cof- maid, which is peraps a good name for her job. It seems a great waste of labor.
 l saw many women spading and hoeing potatoes, and in some of the new fields they followed the plough man to throw the manure into the furrows. They all looked overworked and, with their short skirts and clumsy shoes, almost unsexed. Many of the women wear mems boots and some have dirty coats of sheepskin with the wool on the inside Their faces are tanned and their hair sometimes bleached by the sun. Most of them wear unattractive shawls wrapped around their heads, and one can see how the Bait, raised in luxury, came to look upon the peasants as a different order of be- ings with practically no rights that he was bound to respect.
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 The women do much of the work of the cities. I see them in Riga pushing carts and carrying loads of wood in bags on their backs. There are more women than men in the markets, and such stalls as sell the products of home industry are usual ly managed by women, who carry their wares for miles into town and, when the market is over, take back home what they have left. The first sight that met my eyes as the train came into the capital of Latvia was dozen flat-bed cars backed up against a sandbank and a score of women, thirty, forty, and fifty years of age, with short skirts and big shoes, and handkerchiefs wrapped round their heads, loading the sand into the cars with long handled shovels. I could see them bending over and forcing the scoops into the sand with their feet, and with a toss that showed their bare arms throw ing it into the car. They were bronzed-faced and rough looking, and each bore the marks of, a decade of toll. The sun was then rising and l venture their labor continued till dark.
 A common sight in Riga is a wom- an walking over the cobbles with two three- gallon cans of milk fast ened to the end of a long pole that rests on her shoulders. She is on her way to the market to sell these six gallons of milk, or she may be de- livering it to customers, ladling it out on the doorsteps. see such sights every morning from the win dows of my hotel, a building which cost perhaps $300,000, looking out on million. AS the milk-women go by they have to move this way and that to avoid the gang of other women who, clad in homespun and with their heads wrapped in rags. are sweeping the streets of the city.
 I see, also, many women pushing and pushing sarts and whellbarrows. The human race horse traffis here Is as common as in Germany and France.
 The women bend over as they force their way through the streets. The
 
 bask.. It is cold in the etarly morn- ing and they now and thein stop and stop and slap their arms, or, if walk ing without loads. tuck their hands into their sleeves as they push onward half double facing the wind.
 Today at the Beginning of their independence. the Latvians are in much the same condition as our fore fathers were when they established the republic. The United States was then largely a forest. We had to cut our homes out of the woods. and we lived in log cabins. We made our own clothes from the wool of which we picked by hand from the farms, and we were practically in- dependent of stores and factories The same is true of the Latvian peasant, except that he has no land to clear, and, the farm he Is getting is practically ready for crops. The Balts were students of agriculture. and their estates were so large that they could profitably use modern ma chinery. Many of them had tractors, gang ployws and mowers, reapers and threshers. It cost our pioneers, In labor, more than s100 per acre to fell the trees and get out tho stumps. the ground. The Latvian pioneers They had to build up everything from have their farms ready made. They have cities and villages, good roads and railways. They haxe excellent schools, and even now they are better educated, by and large. than the United States.
 There are fewer people hero who