WOME/'i WORKERS OF THE. ORIE/iT BY /MARGARET E. BURTON tiff, \ I Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https :// a rc h i ve . o rg/d eta i I s/wo m e n wo rke rsof o rO 0 b u rt_0 Copyright by Underwood and Underwood , N. Y. AN UPHILL TASK IN INDIA WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT MARGARET E. BURTON Published bv The Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign Missions West Medford, Mass. by COPYRIGHT 1918 Tm Central Committee on the United Study or Foreicn Missions THE TERMONT PRINTl.VO COMPANY BRATTLEBORO STATEMENT OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE ON THE UNITED STUDY OF FOREIGN MISSIONS The Central Committee, following the program suggested by the Committee of Twenty-eight, pre- sents this, its eighteenth volume, Women Workers of the Orient. While in some countries of the Orient there is as yet little suggestion of industrialism and its problems, with which we are so familiar, women have always had, in every land, their own heavy bur- dens, industrial and economic. Miss Burton has treated the subject broadly, rather than in a narrow and technical sense. She has shown in each chapter, but more especially in the last, the relation of mis- sionaries to the oppressed and weary women of the East, such women as the Master taught in Judea and Galilee. This great company must look today to His representatives for His message which alone can bring full liberation and development. We are indebted to Miss Burton for a wealth of new material, the result of wide travel and research. She has given us a valuable text-book, which will supply the best possible outlines for programs and study classes. Mrs. Henry W. Peabody, Chairman. Miss Olivia H. Lawrence. Mrs. Frank. Mason North. Mrs. James A. Webb, Jr. Mrs. A. V. Pohlman. Miss Alice M. Kyle. Miss Grace T. Colburn. CONTENTS Page Preface 7 Chapter I. Work, within the Home . . 11 Chapter II. The Wage Earners . . . 41 Chapter III. Broadening Horizons . . 81 Chapter IV. The Trail Makers . . . 123 Chapter V. Women working together . 169 Chapter VI. The Call for Leaders . . 207 A Brief Reading List ....... 231 Index 233 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Facino Page Am Uphill Task im India Frontispiece Bread-making in Syria 9 Women Field Workers or China 24 Housewives of India 24 Breaking Stones is a Woman’s Task in China 32 Two of India’s Porters 41 Japanese Women Coalino a Trans-Pacific Liner at Nagasaki . 56 A "Bridge Party” of Japanese Women 73 Child Labor in the Factories or Turkey 88 A "Boat-woman” in China 105 A Mohammedan Woman — Unveiled! 120 A Cooking Class in Japan 137 Social Service in China 137 Red Cross Nurses of Japan just back from Service in France 151 Halideh Hanoum 193 Dr. Mary Stone, Head of the Danfop.th Memorial Hospital, Kiukiang 201 Work and Play in the Madras Women’s College . . . 216 Future Leaders of China in Gin ling's Courtyard .... 224 PREFACE For the first time in its history, the Central Com- mittee on the United Study of Foreign Missions is sending out a text-book into the midst of a nation at war. The book for 1918 is the first of the series to make an appeal tor the attention of women whose sons and husbands are on battlefields and in training camps; whose minds and hearts are full to overflow- ing with the thoughts of what is going on “over there”; whose hands and brains are busy day in and day out with a score of time-consuming war tasks. Has such a book as this a valid claim upon us in this year, 1918? When our men are fighting in Europe, can we stop to study about the women in Asia? When our days are overcrowded with our own tasks, can we take the time to think of the tasks of far- away women? Such questions may, at first thought, arise in the minds of some of us. But second thought cannot fail to bring the vivid realization that the women of America are one today, as never before, with the women who, in other lands, are sharing with them in the work of a world in which the terms “mine” and “thine” have been suddenly and inextricably melted by a common flame of suffering into that 8 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT uniting word “ours.” How can we, in whose windows service flags are flying, fail to feel our oneness with the women in India, whose hands are unceasingly busy with household tasks, but whose thoughts are far away with youth who fight side by side with those from our own homes? We should be less than human if the hunger, the peril, the death of women and little children in war-ravaged lands did not stir us to sacrifice. But we should also be unthinking and unseeing if we failed to realize that the developing industrialism of the Orient is destroying the health, the purity, the life itself of countless women and little children of Asia; even as war is working its destruction upon those in Europe. When a world conflict is forcing us to accept for 1918, and all future years, responsibilities not before laid upon women, to undertake tasks of a magnitude hitherto undreamed of by us, can we be willing to be ignorant of the far more revolutionary changes in the life of Oriental women, of the new responsibilities into which they, also, are being thrust, but with how much less of preparation, of understanding, of guidance! When we are tearing down the obstructing walls that have divided class from class and nation from nation, that we may together seek the good of all the world, can we pass over, unheeding, the breaking of the barriers that have kept the women of the Orient apart? Can we fail to see the significance for the Copyright by Underwood and Underwood , N. Y. BREAD-MAKING IN SYRIA PREFACE 9 Kingdom of God of the coming together of these women, if only they be guided by the Spirit of Him who prayed that we might all be one? Our soldiers are upon the battle field today to help to keep the world a place in which men and women and little children may have life and have it more abundantly. And our missionaries are at the front today, pouring out their lives for the peoples of Asia, that through the glad knowledge of Jesus Christ they may have the life He came to bring and have it more abund- antly. It is one goal, one purpose. We must make every necessary sacrifice for the strength of our armies in Europe, and our missionaries in Asia. To neglect either is to forfeit the victory for which, by different paths, but with the same vision and de- votion, both are striving. The cause of the women at work in the Orient has never had a more evident claim upon us than in 1918. The soldier in France, the missionary in China, we at home who stand behind them both, are together working to bring peace on earth, good will to men. Margaret E. Burton. Christmas , /p/7. CHAPTER I. Suggested Scripture Reading. Christ's Sympathetic Knowledge oj the Home Tasks of Women. Luke 13:20, 21; 15: 8, 9. Work, within the Home. The Woman of Moslem Countries: Her household tasks. Her work in the field. Her home industries. The Woman of India: The life of the poorest. The household duties in homes less poor. The Woman of China: The home she makes. The clothing required by weather “twelve coats cold.” Her care of her baby. Her work in the field. Her home industries. The difference when she has been taught in a Christian school. The Woman of Japan: The life of the farmer’s wife. The life of the artisan’s wife. The Woman of Leisure: In the harem of the Near East. Behind the purdah in India. In the official’s family of China. In the home of wealth of Japan. The new day and the need of us. WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT CHAPTER I. WORK WITHIN THE HOME “Man’s work is from sun to sun But woman’s work is never done.” This couplet may have originated in the western half of the world, but is no less true of the eastern half. In Turkey, India, China, and Japan, as truly as in the United States, there are, and always have been, homes to keep in order, meals to be prepared, clothing to be made and washed, babies to be fed and cared for. Some of these tasks are less arduous than in this country, some of them are more so, but everywhere they are woman’s tasks, the work for which she is responsible. Even as the war has brought such changed conditions in Europe that her women are today, as a matter of course, giving them- selves to many tasks which their mothers would never have dreamed possible for women, so also in the Orient industrial and social changes have call- ed thousands upon thousands of Oriental women into many and varied kinds of work which their mothers did not know even existed. But true as it is that many new lines of work have opened for the women of the Orient within the last few years, it is equally true that work, fer se, is no new thing to them. Within their homes they have always worked, 12 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT and it is there that the vast majority of them are still working. If we would know how the great host of the women of the Orient are spending their days, would see under what conditions they are working, would discover whether or not the help of women in Christian lands is needed, we must go, first of all, to the woman in the home. The housewife As one ste P s inside the door of the of Moslem average home in the village or town countries. G f Turkey or Syria, there seems, at first, to be comparatively little to keep the housewife busy all day long. There is very little furniture to dust, next to no dishes to wash. When the beds, on which the family has slept on the floor through the night, are folded up and packed against the wall, the day’s house cleaning is over. And when we are assured that the styles in dress in most parts of the Ottoman Empire have not changed for at least four thousand years, we are very certain that not many of the hours of the day are spent in making, or making over, the family wardrobe. But there is no bakery to which the Mohammedan mother can go to purchase the bread for her hungry men folk and growing children. Nor can she take down the telephone and order the grocer to send her a sack of flour and a yeast cake. Very probably she has begun to prepare the family’s bread by spending many and many a long hot day in the wheat field, patiently pulling up the spears of grass and weeds that would hinder the growth of the young wheat. Later she has proved herself an adept at wielding the sickle in the harvest field. Then comes the tedious task of WORK WITHIN THE HOME 13 washing and picking over the kernels of wheat, and next the trip to the grist mill to have them ground into flour. Only then is she ready to begin to knead the yeast into the flour, to make the dough, to mold it into round cakes, and set it to rise. When it has risen it must be carefully patted into thin sheets, and loaded onto a huge tray, which is then borne on the housewife’s patient head to the public oven. There the village baker, almost always another woman, bakes it over the conical clay oven, scorching her hands over the quick fire of chaff, as she skillfully pats the dough onto the walls, and peels it off again when it is done. If she is a very up-to-date baker, she may have a big brick oven, into the red-hot depths of which she shoves the loaves on a large wooden tray. Kibby, a dish much in demand by her house- hold, is another article of food which causes the housewife of the Near East much drudgery. First, she cuts up the meat, and places it in a stone mortar, where she pounds it with a great wooden pestle until her arms ache. Then she mixes coarsely ground wheat with it, and wields the heavy pestle again, until the two ingredients have been pounded into a pulp. Next comes the molding of the cakes in her hands, a process in which she has usually attained great dexterity. At last they are cooked and served — first to the critical men folk of the family, then to the hungry children, and last of all to the tired woman who made them. All the butter and cheese which the family eats is prepared by the housewife, and in many cases her responsibility includes the care of the cattle. If the I4 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT family owns donkeys or camels they, too, are some- times her charges. Not only the cooking, but the growing of the vegetables is also the responsibility of many a woman of Mohammedan lands. She and her daughters plant the seeds in the spring, and gather the harvest in the autumn. In fact, there is almost nothing served on her table which the housewife in the village home has not had a hand in preparing, from its earl’est beginnings until the finished product is set before her clamoring family. Her laundry And ^ ma king her family’s clothes is not a time-consuming task, the keeping of them clean causes her much and hard labor. She and a group of her neighbors go down to the river together, one carrying the firewood and the big kettle or copper pan which is to serve as washtub, others laden with the bundles of clothes to be washed, the pails for dipping up water, etc., almost all of them bearing babies who must be cared for all through the day’s work. To build the fire, draw the water and heat it, and wash the clothing is a slow and wearying process, but the woman’s work is by no means over when the washing is hung up on the bushes to dry. The babies must follow the clothes into the big iron kettle, and, last of all, the mother herself indulges in the luxury of a bath. Only then is she ready to gather up the clean clothes, pack them into the tubs, and carry them and the babies wearily homeward. Her home Few housewives of the Near East, industries. however, can limit their labors to cooking, washing, care of the babies, and work in WORK WITHIN THE HOME 1 5 their fields and gardens. Most of them spend many hours in efforts to add to the family income by some form of home industry. They are almost invariably very skillful at all forms of handwork, and many earn a very respectable income with their needles. The exquisite lace and drawn work, by means of which Miss Shattuck and other resourceful mission- aries have enabled thousands of Armenian women and girls to save their lives in time of famine and massacre, have made many of us in America familiar with the delicate skill of the fingers of many of these women. Weaving, too, is an art in which they are very proficient. Perhaps the most general, and certainly the most laborious, home industry of the women of the East is silk culture. During the busy season the whole family must help, but the constant direction of it is entrusted to the women, and the heaviest burdens fall upon them. Early in the spring their skillful fingers mold the earthen trays, in which the baby silk worms are kept warm. Then mulberry leaves must be pulled, packed into huge sacks, and carried from the grove to the house — often a long distance to carry so heavy a load. Next the leaves must be cut into fine pieces, and fed to the hungry worms at regular intervals through the day and night for three weeks. During the last days of this period the worms eat so continuously and greedily that rest and sleep must be rigorously postponed, in order that the crop may not be lost through some mishap at the end. This happens not once a year, but two or three times, according to the number of silk crops. After the cocoon is spun, the silk must be unreeled immediately. i6 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT lest the sleeping grub wake and eat his way out, to the destruction of the precious nest he has woven. This is another phase of sericulture which must be done under high pressure, and this is always woman’s work. It takes her quick eye and skillful fingers to unroll the almost invisible threads without breaking them. But her work is by no means over when the cocoon is unwound. For weeks thereafter, as she goes about the village on household errands, her hands are constantly busy with the distaff, which helps her to transform the hanks of raw silk into golden thread. Later she weaves the thread into lengths of cloth, which she makes into garments for her family, or offers for sale. Reeling cotton for the looms of the men is another home industry which has given employment to many women. “Can you read?” a missionary once asked a Persian village woman. “This is our life,” the woman replied, “to beat the clothes on the rocks in the river, to mould cakes of manure, to carry heavy loads, to spin, sew, weave, bake, and make cakes, to bear children, and grow old and toothless. For all this we get only blows and abuse, and we live in fear of divorce. Have we time to read?" Household In t ^ ie poorest families of India the tasks in woman has practically no household India. duties, for she has no leisure for them. She, as well as her husband, goes out day after day, often with her wee brown baby on her hip or in its little basket, to hire herself out for the heaviest kind of “coolie labor” in city street or country field. In homes where the pinch of poverty is not quite so acute, but where the income is nevertheless very WORK WITHIN THE HOME 1 7 small, the household tasks must be very simple, for the greater part of the woman’s time and attention must be given to helping her husband in whatever his work may be, the potter’s wife helping in the making of pottery, the weaver’s wife assisting in the various processes of weaving, the farmer’s wife taking her place in the field beside him and bearing her share in the planting, weeding, and harvesting of the crops. It is only in the homes where the in- come is, for India, fairly comfortable, that women can give their entire time to the care of their homes and children. The houses of India, like those of the Near East, do not usually impose heavy burdens on the house- keeper. The furnishings are of the simplest, and there is little to catch dust or dirt. But the prepa- ration of food is an arduous and time-consuming process, for when the housewife of India wants rice, she must not only wash and cook it, but husk it; when her menu calls for wheat cakes she must wash, dry, and grind the wheat in her handmill, before she has any flour with which to mix them. All the water she uses must be drawn from the village well, often a long distance from her home, and brought home in large, porous jars, gracefully balanced on the top of her head. She has no dishes to wash, for the highly seasoned food she prepares is conveyed to the mouth in little deftly rolled balls; but the brass pots and pans in which it is cooked must be scoured until they are dazzlingly bright. She is usually exceedingly skillful at all these tasks, this graceful, gentle wife and mother of India, for she began to learn how to perform them when she was barely six, and by the l8 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT time she was eight she was well versed in all house- hold duties. Her mother had trained her thoroughly, for well she knew that when, a pitifully few years later, she went to her husband’s home, a strict mother-in-law would make life hard, indeed, for the child wife who was not efficient in every household art. Even in the homes of comparative wealth, the life of the mother and daughter is largely spent in such household duties as these, and, though servants may sometimes be employed to help, the actual cooking of the food is done by the women of the family. A woman of India gives the following picture of a day in the life of a Hindu girl whom she describes as “upper class.” The day of “She rises early, before sunrise, and a Hindu girl. accompanies her mother to the river to bathe and perform her morning devotions in one of the numerous temples beside the river. A bell hanging by the door is rung as they enter the temple, to apprise the god of their arrival. They bow humbly before the idol with folded hands, pour some ghee or clarified butter in the little lamp that is kept con- stantly burning before it, repeat a certain number of prayers, pour some water over it, decorate it with flowers, apply some red powder to it, go round it a certain number of times and then make another low bow to it before leaving the temple. The burden of a married woman’s prayer is that her husband and children should be kept in health and strength and that she may die before her husband; and that of an unmarried girl is that she may have a good husband and a happy home. WORK WITHIN THE HOME I9 “The rest of the day is spent by the mother and daughter in various household duties, such as sweep- ing the house, scouring the brass and silver pots and pans till they shine, cooking the mid-day meal, bathing and feeding the children and sending them to school, serving the men in the house with their food before they go to their various duties, having their own meals in the kitchen, and then cleaning the kitchen and utensils used. The women are never free till the afternoon, and even then one rarely finds a high-class Hindu woman idle; one generally sees her seated on the verandah cleaning grain which has to be stored for the year in special receptacles. Friends drop in carrying baskets or trays of grain and sit on the verandah beside her, exchange news, and discuss the doings of their neighbors. Very soon it is time for the evening meal to be prepared. Children come home hungry from school and have to be fed and put to bed. The men have their food and retire to their sitting rooms or to the village hall, and the mothers sit and watch their daughters playing games in the garden or listen to them as they sing about the moon, the flowers, or the doings of Krishna, one of the favorite Hindu incarnations.” The Chinese The average home in China gives woman’s home. little evidence of the potential energy and ability which Chinese women have so con- vincingly demonstrated in various ways. It is not for nothing that the Chinese ideograph for home, being analyzed, reveals itself to be a pig under a roof. Centuries of bound feet are undoubtedly chiefly responsible for the fact that, as a whole, the women of China are the least efficient housekeepers 20 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT among Oriental women. Their homes, like most Oriental homes, are simple in furnishing, with no curtains, carpets, or rugs to collect dust, and with no decorations on the walls save an occasional scroll. Yet dust collects — on walls, windows, and floors — and is only occasionally disturbed by a whisking feather duster which takes no account of corners. The floors are swept up with a coarse broom every so often, but the accumulated trash may repose in a dust pan behind the door from one week’s end to another. The yard, too, becomes fairly choked with the accumulated rubbish of weeks and months. Cooking is no such arduous process for the Chinese woman as for the housewife of India or the Turkish empire. Her house- hold demands no laboriously made kibby , and would scorn the wheaten flour which the child wife of India spends so long a time in preparing. Plain boiled rice and stewed vegetables and meat satisfy their wants; and if the vegetables have not been cleaned, and have been cooked scarcely enough to disinfect them, no knowledge of the laws of sanitation mars the enjoyment of them. TT . But if the Chinese woman has an Her sewing. . . . , , easier time at cooking than her sister in India, the latter has the advantage when it comes to making the family’s clothing. The little brown baby can be perfectly comfortable all day long with no more elaborate dress than a string of bright beads, and if he wears a bit of a smock it is not for warmth. But the little Chinese may wake up to mornings which are “twelve coats cold,” and during several weeks of the year must keep warm by having one WORK WITHIN THE HOME 21 little padded jacket piled on top of another, until he is fully as broad as he is long. The brown baby’s mother’s graceful sari is but a single long strip of cloth; but the Chinese mother’s long trousers, skirt, and tunic all require cutting and sewing. She also makes the stockings and heavy cloth shoes for her- self and her family, although when the family can afford it, the tailor usually makes the best clothes. Her laundry Although many an American’s per- sonal acquaintance with the Chinese race is limited to the laundryman whose gay red- paper receipt is covered with “heathenish” hiero- glyphics, but whose shirts and collars are impeccably white and shining, the Chinese housekeeper has learned little of the art of laundering. Occasionally she collects the household wash and makes a trip to the canal — the same one, very probably, in which she is accustomed to wash her rice and vegetables — and rinses it out in the muddy water. If she keeps up with the times she may use soap, but compara- tively few women outside of the cities are acquainted with this modern luxury. When the clothes emerge, somewhat dingier than before, from their immersion in the canal, they are dried and the family washing is finished. Nobody but the tailor uses a flatiron. Her care of It is to her children that the Chinese her children. woman devotes most of her time and attention. She begrudges her baby no amount of time or strength, and too often literally “loves him to death,” keeping him in her arms all day long, whether he is awake or asleep, and waking him innumerable times through the night to feed him. The appalling infant mortality in China is due, most of all, to the 22 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT mother’s ignorance of the simplest rules of health. The average mother has no knowledge of the use of milk in feeding babies, and, as milk is in any case a very rare commodity in a land where there is no un- cultivated ground for pastures, she offers the tiny child of a few months old anything and everything that its elders are eating. Raw cucumber, skin and all, is a not uncommon summer food for little chil- dren. The mother of China does not know how necessary it is to keep her baby and his clothing clean, and inasmuch as he raises his small voice in dismal howls when he is washed, she inflicts this discomfort on him as seldom as possible. As for trying to make his surroundings sanitary, to keep flies away from him, or to guard him from people suffering from con- tagious diseases — such things as these simply never occur to her. Many children come into the Chinese home, but the mother’s arms are too often empty; not because she does not care, but because she does not know. After a recent meeting of the Mothers' Club of the Young Women’s Christian Association of Tientsin, a mother asked that the lecture might be repeated to a company of her friends who had not heard it, for, she said, “My little boy died last week and if I had only known earlier the things you told us today, he might now have been living.” „ _ , . , In the country districts many Chinese Her field work. 1 i • 1 r i 1 i r women help in the fields, and fre- quently show more skill in agriculture than in house- work. Miss Lester of Soochow says that the Chinese woman “may be seen in the fields of the littie land- scape garden patches, called the farm, sharing in like toil with her husband, weeding the fields of young WORK WITHIN THE HOME 23 corn, gathering peanuts, planting the rice, wading deep in the water rescuing the submerged crop, later hulling and threshing the rice. In times of drought she is seen treading the irrigating pump with feet all brown and burned and blistered, as before they had been sore and swollen from her wading in the flooded fields during the rainy seasons.” Sometimes the work of the woman in the field is not by the side of her husband. “It is not uncom- mon,” says a missionary of Fukien, “to see a man of this village, decked out in a long gown, satin shoes, and white socks, standing on the bank of a paddy field, yelling directions down to a woman, his wife, who is up to her knees in the mud of the paddy. She is patient in following out the directions of her liege lord, far more so than when similar conditions concern the paddy of another land.” Even women crippled by bound feet are sometimes seen in outdoor work in China. “We have seen the small-footed women pulling heavy boats along the towpaths, or leaning on their hoes to rest their tired feet while working in the fields of cotton,” says Elizabeth Cooper. And Professor Edward A. Ross writes: “At Kalgan, on the Mongolian frontier, the field women work kneeling, with great pads over the knees to protect them from the damp soil. . . In Shansi and Shensi the women wield the sickle, not stooping — that would hurt their poor feet too much — - but sitting and hitching themselves along as they reap. The women have to be carried to the field on wheelbarrow or cart, and their helplessness is such that most of them never in their lives get a mile away from the houses to which they were taken as wives.” 24 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT Her home China is no exception to the general industries. rule tha.t practically all the women in families of meagre incomes add no inconsiderable amount to their husbands’ earnings by some form of industry which can be carried on in their homes. At certain seasons of the year women supplement the family income by working in the tea fields, picking the tea leaves, and preparing them for market. All the forms of sericulture, too, are carried on by Chinese women, raising the silk worm, spinning the raw silk into thread, and weaving the thread into the finished silk. The spinning and weaving of cotton is another profitable industry to which many women give many hours. Mrs. Baird of Luchowfu says that in that district several of the old-fashioned spinning wheels which are used in this work are found even in very modest homes, and that all the women and girls spin as their share of the work of the family. In many families, she says, slave girls, purchased at a price of from five to twenty dollars, are kept simply for cotton spinning. In Shantung many women spend hours joining together bits of fur left over from the larger pieces used in lining expensive garments. A missionary says that she once counted forty-eight little slivers and wedges of fur in a piece eight inches square. The women earn from five to twenty cash a day by such work (a cash is about one-twentieth of a cent) and furnish their own thread. Many straw products can be made in the home between the cooking of meals and feeding of babies, and the baskets, matting, straw sandals, etc., which are so widely used in China are often the work of women’s fingers. Many Chinese women not only HOUSEWIVES OF INDIA WORK WITHIN THE HOME 25 make the cloth shoes and stockings for their own families, but for sale. There is also, alas, a never- failing market for the materials for idol worship, such as the incredible quantities of paper money which are annually burned as offerings to the spirits of the dead; and the making of these furnishes em- ployment to countless Chinese women, since no machinery is needed and the work can be done at home. It is highly unwise to make any generalizations about the women of China, for what is true in one part of that great country may not hold for another section. But it is probably safe to say that, in general, the woman of China who is not engaged in some domestic industry, and has no responsibility beyond the care of her house and children, is doing very little, and not doing that little well. One who has long lived in the midst of Chinese women passes this severe judgment on them: “Ex- cept among the very poor, where the women help to make a living, they are very idle and inefficient members of the family. Carrying the babies about, and gossiping with each other occupies the greater part of their time, and as a consequence of idleness quarrels among the women are frequent.” No less condemning is the comment of a discerning traveler, who after weeks of journeying through the interior of China remarked, “I am struck with the fact that everything that the Chinese men do is done well, and everything that the Chinese women do is done poorly.” Her ability. Is this because the Chinese women are inherently lazy? Hardly that. 26 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT They belong to that race whose capacity for long- continued, patiently endured drudgery, has made them the despair of the laborers of any other race with whom they are brought into competition. Is it because they lack intelligence or ability? A woman with eighteen years of experience in an American college gymnasium says that she has never had classes which learned so quickly, and acquired proficiency so rapidly as those she is holding among Chinese women today. And a letter, on my desk, from the registrar of a leading American boarding school for girls, reports that two little Chinese students, fresh from China and handicapped by a foreign language, have acquired the highest grade, during the past semester, obtained by any girls in the school. And wherever in China the Christian schools have gone, where it has been possible for little feet and minds to develop normally, hundreds of homes as ideal as any to be found in our own country are bearing incontrovertible testimony to the fact that there are nowhere more efficient home-keepers, more wise and skillful wives and mothers than the Chinese women who have had a chance. Homes that Not all houses in China are squalid, are different. Said one Chinese home-maker, whose house was so shiningly clean and in such beautiful order that it had awakened the enthusiasm of a visiting Englishwoman: “My Father God and Jesus Christ are always coming and going, in and out here. Would it do to have the house other than tidy?” And not all Chinese wives are idle and quarrel- some, “ Sz-mo ,” said a Chinese to a missionary friend, of the Christian wife he had lost, “I have not one WORK WITHIN THE HOME 27 garment she did not make, and she made all for the children, too. She never said ‘half a word’ that caused me sorrow!” Nor is the mother love of all Chinese women un- controlled. ‘‘He was as lively as a cricket,” a mis- sionary said of the three-year-old son of a Chinese pastor, whom she had often seen in church with his mother, “but his mother never grew impatient, only put her arm about him tenderly when the restless little body moved around too much for other folks’ comfort, and drew him to her till his little head found quiet on her maternal shoulder. It was a lovely picture of mother and child that I often found joy in looking upon.” One day, after two days of violent illness, the little son died. In the barren little grave- yard gathered not only Christian friends, but a wondering, ragged crowd of children, who were not accustomed to the sight of little bodies being laid away with such reverence. Just as the rough little coffin was about to be lowered into the earth there was a sudden movement, and “the mother with her efficient step and sweetly maternal eyes went over near to the ragged little crowd, and spoke to them a message, new, indeed, to the starved little souls, of the love of Jesus for little children, so tender that sometimes He took them away from this earth to be with Him. Her little boy, she said, had loved his father and mother and obeyed them, and loved God and tried to do what was right. When he went to bed he offered prayer to God, when he ate his food he gave thanks. Now he had gone to be with the God who had loved him. Would not these, his little brothers, also love their fathers and mothers and 28 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT love God, that they might also go some day to be with Him? With the teacher’s instinct she repeated the little sermon, and then stepped back quietly to her place, as unconscious of having done anything unusual as if she had been on one of her accustomed visits to the poor.” Bound feet, bound minds, too early marriages — - these things, not any inherent lack in the Chinese woman herself, are responsible for the inefficiency of her work as a home-maker. in the field The traveler through Japan in spring in japan. or ear ]y summer is certain to take away a vivid picture of deep browns, pale greens, and bright blues. Wherever he goes he is sure to pass field after field of rich brown soil, in which little blue-clad figures are bending unceasingly, ankle- deep in the mud, kimonos rolled knee high, lower limbs encased in tight blue trousers. Sometimes all these blue figures wear broad sashes, or obis, fastened in the back, and then the traveler knows that they are all women. In other districts sashless figures work beside those with obis — but always the women are there. The cultivation of rice is no pleasant and painless pastime, and it is one in which the women of Japan, whether they work alone, or with their men folks, take the heaviest end; for the brunt of the stooping falls to them. All day long in broiling sun or pelting rain they stand ankle-deep in the evil-smelling mire, stooping almost double to set out the tiny rice plants in regular rows. The ex- haustion is so great by the time all the fields are planted that the entire village takes a rest. But there can be no long time of idleness, for at intervals WORK WITHIN THE HOME 2 9 of a few days each the whole paddy field must be repeatedly “puddled,” which is the expressive descriptive term given to the process of stirring up the mud with the hands in order that weeds may not be able to take root, or the soil become caked around the young rice roots. This must be done at stated intervals, no matter what the weather may be, and it is the little blue figures with the obis who are al- ways the ones chiefly responsible for this most un- pleasant and back-breaking job. Indeed, Dr. Gulick tells us that the women are so important during the rice-planting season, that its days are known as “the women’s daimyo days.” Harvest time, too, is a busy season for the Japanese farmer’s wife and daughter. They share in all the labor of bringing in and threshing the rice, barley, wheat, millet, etc.; for Japanese agriculture is so largely a hand process that at the seasons of special pressure every possible worker must be called on. Tea-picking time, also, is one which sees them con- tinuously in the field. The Japanese Of course, the care of the home home - must go on through rice-planting, tea- picking, and harvest time, but the Japanese house, especially the little country home, is very simple, and is easily kept as clean as even the Japanese standards of cleanliness require. The inner partitions are sliding paper screens, and one or two chests of drawers constitute the entire furnishings. The beds are simply soft futons or mattresses, which are rolled up and stored in a closet by day, and the only seat a Japanese requires is his own long-suffering heels. Yet the household tasks of the Japanese wife 30 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT and mother are by no means inconsiderable. Three meals a day come around as often on the other side of the Pacific as here, and men folk — especially farmers — and growing children are sure to be blessed with good appetites on either side of the globe. Moreover, the Japanese mother is not content unless her little flock are always well scrubbed, and their gay little kimonos fresh and clean. But to keep the family clothing in the state which her ideal of clean- liness demands, means a constant making and un- making of garments, big and little, for each kimono must be unmade to be washed, and firmly basted up again when it is dry. Domestic indus Nevertheless, in spite of constant tries m japan. household duties, many Japanese wom- en and girls in the country districts find time between the busy seasons of agricultural work to carry on some form of domestic industry. The rearing of silk worms, reeling of silk, spinning of thread, and weav- ing of silk and cotton fabrics furnish many hundreds of women and girls with profitable means of sup- plementing the family income. In the towns, too, many Japanese women help to add to the family income, in addition to their house- hold duties, either by sharing in their husbands’ work, or by carrying on some home industry of their own. Weavers’ wives and daughters become expert weavers, and the women in the merchant’s family keep shop, while he peddles his goods from house to house or lays in new stock. But the women folk in the families of carpenters, masons, and men in similar trades, unable to share in their husbands’ tasks, find occupation in braiding straw, making WORK WITHIN THE HOME 3 * fans, embroidering, and fashioning the many artistic trifles which make Japanese shops so fascinating. Some of them earn no inconsiderable amount as hair- dressers — in fact, Japan has a proverb to the effect that a hairdresser’s husband has nothing to do. The woman To find the woman of the Orient of leisure. whose hands are idle, whose days are spent as a consumer and not a producer, you must go not to the country districts or villages, not to the home of small means in town or city, nor to the middle-class family. You will find her over there, as you are too often able to find her in your own land, in the homes of wealth — and when you have found her, you will pity her most of all. _ . . She is in the harem of Mohammedan In the harem. . . . . , . . . countries, with no responsibility through the unending hours of the day, save to fur- nish her lord amusement when he requires it. Not even the supervision of her own house, or the care of her own children is required of her. “I often asked whether they were not happy,” says a mis- sionary, of these women, ‘‘having all the comforts of a grand harem, good food, marvellous silk and satin costumes, husbands who were comparatively good to them; and the answer was, ‘How can we be happy locked up like this! We want to see the river and the gardens and men and women as you do.’ It showed me that in these hearts there existed the longing for something better and more beautiful than the lazy mind-and-soul-wrecking comfort of the harem. Im- agine yourself sitting in a yard of twenty by thirty feet, with walls surrounding it thirty feet high, and not a peephole in them. The glorious sun and the 32 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT blue sky suggest that there is a beautiful world out- side. But here Moslem women have to spend a life- time.” Behind She is behind the purdah in India, the purdah. too, Oriental woman who does not work, too little educated to find resources in books, unable to go out into the world except behind closed curtains, unable to invite the world to come in to her, living, as one of the purdanashins pathetically puts it, “like a frog in the bottom of a deep well.” “The saddest thing I ever heard,” a friend from India told me, “was said by a lady of India who had begged an English missionary to teach her English. ‘When shall I come?’ the missionary asked. ‘You may come at any time,’ was the answer. ‘/ have nothing to do.' ” in the official’s In China, too, you will find the woman family. of l e i sure i n the homes of wealthy officials or merchants, waited upon by servants and slaves innumerable, but with little to fill her mind save bitterness at the thought of the secondary wives whom her husband’s wealth has enabled him to take. “They sit in their homes with nothing to do,” says a Shanghai missionary, “and they are tired of idleness. Often they begin to gamble to pass the time away.” “What would you ask for if you could have what you wanted most?” someone asked one of these women in Shantung. “To become a dog in the next life,” she answered, wistfully, “for then I could go outside the courtyard whenever I wished.” in Japanese The woman without work is in Japan, homes of wealth. too, possibly trying to fill her days with the gayeties of modern Japanese society, but BREAKING STONES IS A WOMAN’S TASK IN CHINA WORK WITHIN THE HOME 33 more probably watching with pathetic but un- protesting eyes the widening of the gulf between her, whose life is still governed by the feudal ideals of the middle ages, and her progressive European-garbed husband, and the children who, day after day, in the modern public school, are learning to regard as the veriest commonplace, knowledge of which she never dreamed. One could not blame the Oriental woman of leisure if she found it hard not to envy the far freer and more varied life of the hard-working wife of farmer or artisan. The poorer woman goes to bed at night much more weary in body, it is true; but the face of the woman of leisure shows the marks of weariness of spirit far earlier. Broadly speaking, the lower one goes in the social scale in the Orient, the more nearly is the wife on an equality with her husband. Her work is as important and valuable as his, in most of the poorer families, and enables her both to re- spect herself and to command the respect of others. She has, on the whole, a far better chance for hap- piness and the development of individuality than the woman who is her husband’s plaything, or servant, and the mother of his children, but never his companion in labor or leisure. Yet within the last few years the doors into a life thrilling beyond their most daring dreams, have suddenly swung open for some of these women of leisure. They have learned of the women of western lands who are interested in and busy about many things beyond the four walls of their homes; and the political, educational, and social changes which have been sweeping through Asia during the first years of 34 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT the new century have brought to the women of many an Oriental city a freedom hitherto undreamed of. What use will they make of their long leisure hours in the new life that is opening up before them? Will they make them as truly working hours as are the hours the sturdy little peasant woman spends in the rice paddy or kitchen, or will they fill them with new forms of pleasure seeking? Will home and com- munity and country be made finer and stronger by such united service as was impossible for their mothers, or will they come together merely to “kill time” in new and often dangerous ways? The answer is not yet, and what it will be depends largely on us. WORK. WITHIN THE HOME 35 Christian Missions and the Oriental Home “From the very beginning of Christian missions, the trans- formation of home life has been one of the most striking effects of missionary endeavor,” said a thoughtful student of missions, recently. “This has been accomplished in many ways, and by many agencies — the preacher, the home visitor, the doctor and nurse, and the educator. Each has taken a part in building up new ideals of family life, in abolishing infant murder, child marriage, polygamy, frequent divorce, degradation of women, and many other deep-rooted customs that are prevalent in non- Christian lands.” If it be true that “actions speak louder than words,” it is probably safe to say that no missionary agency has done more to change the home life of the Orient than the missionary’s home. What the social settlement house is to the crowded slum districts of a great city, this, and even more than this, is the Christian home set in the midst of people to whom home life, in any true sense of the word, has been unknown. In mission schools the young people of the Orient are being taught of the Christian ideals of home and family life; and in the Christian home they see a living example of the fruits of love between husband and wife; mutual respect and deference; and patience, wisdom, and control in the training and discipline of the children. A missionary home-maker feelingly remarked not long ago that a suitable epitaph for the tomb-stones of many missionary wives would be “Given to Hospitality.” But it is just because mis- sionary wives have counted their homes not theirs to keep, but theirs to share, and have kept their doors ever open, that there are so many homes in the Orient today, as beautifully and genuinely Christian as any in our own country. “Many and many a student in college or theological seminary receives his first and only training in Christian courtesy and etiquette at the missionary table.” And many and many a puzzled wife and mother gains new wisdom and new courage because the mission- ary wife is never too busy to sit down and listen sympathetically. “The world-wide experience of wifehood and motherhood” gives the homemaker an entree to the inmost lives of many women, which no one else has; and the things which they have seen and WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT 3 6 heard in her home have made all of life different for many Oriental women. Another missionary agency which has transformed Oriental home life is the Christian school. Says a missionary teacher, “Can we point to any girls whom our schools have developed into the kind of women we long to see, those who ‘open their mouths with wisdom and in whose tongue is the law of kindness, who look well to the ways of their household, and eat not the bread of idleness?’ I should like to take you into a little home I know in Peking where the young mother seems to me the very embodiment of these words. I have watched carefully her treatment of her children, and I have never seen a foreigner who seemed to me more conscientious, judicious, and self-controlled. When the children are cross or mischievous she doesn’t shriek at them and threaten to throw them in a pit of yellow earth. Why not? That is the style of home-training which she was accustomed to from her mother, a most unreasonable termagant. Simply because several years in a boarding school developed in her refined and womanly qualities. Why is it that the clothing, stockings, and shoes of her husband, herself, and children are always neat and well made? Her mother cannot sew at all well, much less teach her daughters. Because she was taught in school to sew and embroider until now she does exquisite needle- work. Why, a few months ago, did she punish her little boy of three and a half years, because he had told a lie? Her mother, though a Christian, tells lies herself. Because the teaching about truthfulness that she had received in the school had entered into the very bone and sinew of her nature.” Such Oriental homemakers as this are being multiplied many- fold by the Christian schools of every mission field. The kindergarten furnishes a sure access to homes. The stories that the little folks tell of their teacher and what they are learning from her, assure her a hearty welcome when she goes to visit the mother; and she has numberless opportunities to influence home life. Many kindergartners are accomplishing marvels through mothers’ meetings, which meet at regular intervals to discuss the various problems of child life and child training. One ingenious American missionary in Korea, recently organized a “Better Babies’ Contest” at which prizes were W®RK WITHIN THE HOME 37 awarded to babies from one month to five years old, according to standards of normal development, cleanliness, and freedom from disease. The Bible woman, too, is playing her part in bringing new life and new ideals to the home of the Orient. Often she may enter doors which do not yet swing open for the foreign missionary. She goes from zenana to zenana and house to house, teaching the women and girls to read, telling them the story of the Good Tidings, winning their confidence and friendship, and gradually leading them into that life more abundant which her Master came to bring. Wholly new ideals and purposes have sprung up in home after home where these humble, consecrated workers have patiently gone. Truly it is good to have a share in the work which mission homes, mission schools, and Christian workers are doing, which results in so beautiful and fair a thing as the Christian home of the Orient. 38 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER I. Aim of study: To bring a knowledge of the home life of the women of the Orient, and to create a realization of the power of Christianity to transform the homes of the East. 1. In what kinds of work are the great mass of the women of the Orient spending their days? 2. What is the life of the wife and mother of the average home in a Moslem land? 3. How does she supplement the family income? 4. Does your mission board maintain any industrial schools in Moslem countries? 5. How have missionaries in the Near East enabled thou- sands of women to save their lives in times of famine and massa- cre? 6. Why do the women of the poorest families in India spend so little time on household tasks? 7. Why do the mothers of India give their little girls such thorough training in household tasks while they are still little more than babies? 8. What is your estimate of the efficiency of the average woman of China as a home-maker and mother? 9. What is your estimate of her natural ability ? 10. How do you account for the fact that the Chinese woman is “the poorest housekeeper in the Orient” ? 11. How do you explain the difference between the Chinese homes described by a missionary as “as ideal as any I have seen in America,” and the average home of China? 12. How is the work of Mission Boards reaching the home life of the Orient? 13. Which form of missionary work seems to you to have the greatest influence upon home life? 14. If you were a woman of Japan which would you prefer to be, the wife of a peasant, or a “woman of leisure”? Why? 1 5. What changes are coming in the thought and life of many Oriental women of leisure ? 16. Do these changes seem to you to bring new responsibili- ties and opportunities to our Mission Boards? V. CHAPTER II. Suggested Scripture Reading. Christ’s Call to the Heavy Laden. Matt, ii: 28-30. The Wage Earners. The Coolie Women: Building roads and weeding crops in India. Hauling coal and poling ferry boats in China. Coaling trans-Pacific steamers and building bridges in Japan. The New Life of the Factory: In Moslem Lands: The factories are few as yet. But women work long hours for small pay in some industries. In India: The woman in industry is a very present factor. Her life in the cotton mills of Bombay. In China: Industries are developing rapidly, and, as there is no unify- ing legislation, conditions of work vary greatly in differ- ent factories. The weaving establishments. A uniform factory. The Shanghai mills. In Japan: More than half of the great army of industrial workers are women and girls. The hours they work and the pay they get. The factories they work in. The dormitories they sleep in. The price they pay. Why they come. Why they stay. Factories that are different. The only solution. Copyright by Underwood and Underwood , N. Y. TWO OF INDIA'S PORTERS CHAPTER II. THE WAGE EARNERS The “coolie When poverty is most bitter there is woman” m India, little or no distinction between man’s work and woman’s. In India, where the average in- come is ten dollars a year, where millions live on one meagre meal a day, the woman of the family where the income is the smallest and the supply of food the scantest cannot stop to question whether or not the work she can get is adapted to her frail body; or whether or not it takes her away from her home. She must take it or starve. So it is that in India many of the women of the laboring classes leave their homes at sunrise and work until sunset at any work which is possible for them. If you have been in India, you have doubtless been struck with ad- miration at the smooth firm roads over which auto- mobiles bowl as smoothly as on any western boule- vard. But unless you saw one in the process of con- struction, you may not have known that the earth and concrete used in the making were very probably carried in baskets on the heads of the women of the country. You will find the women of India, too, where buildings are being erected, bearing away the earth from the excavations on their patient heads, carrying the bricks, fetching water and helping to mix the mortar, and once in a long time slipping 42 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT away to give hasty attention to the needs of the tiny brown baby who, in his little basket, has been stowed away in some corner or under a bush. In the country districts these women day laborers, or coolie women, as they are usually termed, work for the farmers, helping to plant the rice, and usually doing all the weeding of the crops. They are almost always to be found working in groups, or with some older women, for the sake of protection. The wages the coolie woman receives for hauling bricks all day long in the blistering heat of the most unbearably hot cities on the face of the globe, or for bending double over the little rice plants hour after hour in the unshaded fields of the tropics, equal a little more than half that of the man. She receives three, or possibly four, cents a day. In riiina The trave ^ er w ho reaches China from India, and stops at Hong Kong and Canton, will very probably conclude that in China, too, the women of the poorer homes are generally engaged in coolie service. He can scarcely have failed to meet the little blue-trousered women, who carry such incredible loads of wood, coal, and other supplies, fastened to both ends of the bamboo pole across their shoulders, up the steep road, which leads to the villas and hotels of the Peak. And at Canton, when he wanted to cross the river, he was very probably ferried across in a slipper boat, briskly poled by a sturdy “boat woman.” Such tasks as these can be performed by the “big-footed” women of south China, for there the feet of little girls of poor families are rarely bound. But as he journeys onward, he will find that there are many women. THE WAGE EARNERS 43 even in very poor homes, whose maimed feet make hard physical labor an impossibility for them, and who, if they are to supplement the family income, must find some way of doing it inside the home, since they are virtually imprisoned within its walls. In Japan The §^ m P Se J a P an which the traveler coming from India and China receives is Nagasaki, and very probably he gains his first view of the women of the country before ever he leaves the steamer. It is one not easily forgotten. As he looks over the ship’s side he sees dozens of flat-bottomed boats loaded with big pieces of soft cannel coal being made fast alongside of his steamer. Scaffolds are quickly put up by means of rope, and then the day-long task of coaling the huge trans- pacific liner begins. Numbers of little blue-clad Japanese women, with towels bound over their heads to keep out the coal dust, a number of them with tiny babies bound to their backs, take their places on the scaffolds, and catch the coal-laden baskets which the men toss to them from the barges. Hour after hour they stand there, until one wonders how their strength can possibly endure the strain of such long-continued and strenuous effort. It is sometimes late at night before the mammoth coal bins of the great steamers are full. Only then do the patient little coalers take their wages of about 30 or 40 sen (a sen is worth about half a cent in our money) and go home. A recent visitor to Japan says that the first women she saw after landing were “having a bridge party.” “Sounds inviting,” she says, “but it wasn’t. About twenty of them were driving piles for a new bridge. 44 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT The sun was scorching, the timbers enormous, and the man overseer was abusing them.” Again in Nikko this traveler saw from a distance a long line of stooped figures climbing the steep bank of the river Daiya. “On coming nearer,” she says, “we saw that they were old, old women, wrinkled and gray, carrying barrels — not baskets, but barrels of stone from the river bed to the road.” In her classic book on Japanese Girls and Women, Miss Bacon tells of a camping trip which she made up the sacred mountain of Hiyei Zan, where her baggage, consisting of “two closely packed hampers, as large as ordinary steamer trunks,” was lifted lightly to the heads of two women from the village of Yase at the foot of the mountain, and “poised on little straw pads, carried easily up the narrow trail, made doubly difficult by low-hanging branches, to the camp, a distance of three or four miles.” The women of this little village are known throughout Japan for their remarkable physical development, but women burden bearers are not limited to that section of the country. Changes wrought For the women in the poorer families by modem of the Orient to go out from their machinery. homes to work at such tasks as these is no new thing. But the last few years have brought to many women in some parts of the Orient a work outside the home, which is new; and it is undoubtedly safe to say that the Orient’s rapidly developing in- dustrial interests will, in the near future, call many more thousands of the women and girls of the East away from the tasks within the home about which they are now busy, to a no less arduous and very different kind of work. The introduction of modern THE WAGE EARNERS 45 machinery has already wrought startling and far- reaching changes in the lives of many women in the Orient. And although there are many parts of the East which know little or nothing of machinery, where the articles which women make are still made wholly by hand in their own homes, yet the most casual and superficial reading of the signs of the times leaves no room for doubt that “the woman in in- dustry” will before very long be as real and im- portant a factor in the life of the Orient as she is in this country and Europe. In Mohamme- Very few of the women of Moslem dan lands. lands are as yet constituting an “in- dustrial problem.” A missionary of Oorfa, Turkey, says: “I have to think hard to make myself believe that there is a single real industry for them (the women) to earn a living, excepting handwork, laces, handkerchiefs, etc. . . . There are no mills, no fac- tories, no offices, no industries save the lace making.” Yet in 1914, the Woman s World , of Constanti- nople, an illustrated weekly, edited by progressive Mohammedan women, called the attention of its readers to the severe overwork and underpay of the women in Turkish industries, who were working for fourteen hours out of the twenty-four and receiving about fifteen cents a day in return. And in Sivas, an Armenian friend tells me, there are between four and five thousand workers in rug factories, many of them women, some of them children so young that they “scarcely can speak, even.’ The working hours, she says, are in winter from half past five in the morning until half past six in the evening, and in summer from half past three, or sometimes four. 46 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT in the morning, until seven or eight at night. The factory rooms are so crowded that the air is always bad, especially in winter when the below-zero weather of Sivas makes it impossible to open the windows. Payment is on the basis of the amount of work done, and varies from about two to nine cents a day. Definite information as to whether or not the work in such factories has gone on since the war began cannot be secured, but it is highly improbable that it has. And probably, in any case, the number of women in factories in Mohammedan countries is comparatively small, and the occasional reports of them serve to suggest what the future dangers in the Near East may be, rather than to indicate any very widespread present conditions. . T In India, however, the woman in in- In India. . . ’ r , , dustry is a very present factor. In the cotton mills of Bombay alone there are twenty-two thousand women and girls. The fact that the laws which govern India are drawn up by the British Government, tends to guard the Indian women factory workers against such excessive overwork and underpay as some of the women in factories of other Oriental countries must endure. The East India Factory Labor Commission reported in 1908 that “the physique of the female workers is uniformly excellent” and that “they are not in any way in- juriously affected by the employment in factories.” Dr. Nair of Madras attributes this condition to the fact that the law does not permit more than eleven hours of work for women, and that, therefore, “whatever the hours of starting or stopping of a mill THE WAGE EARNERS 47 may be, women seldom turn up before seven, and seldom stay at work after six. This,” he goes on to say, “gives them time both in the morning and even- ing to attend to their household duties.” Morning household duties performed before seven, the hours from seven to six spent at a cotton reel, evening home tasks to be performed before bedtime — in spite of the glowing words of the report of the Factory Labor Commission this would scarcely seem a short or easy day’s work to most of us. And Miss Martha Whealdon, of the Young Women’s Chris- tian Association of Bombay, does not find it possible to bring away any such enthusiastic impression of the health and physique of the women operatives, after visiting several of these cotton mills, at the half hour’s noon rest time. In a Bombay “The looms Were yet flying,” she cotton mill. writes of one visit, “and the din of the machinery, together with the stifling air, gave a sickening sense of confusion. The great room was very light, most of its walls being window space, but I later found that the great humidity in the air is thought to shrink the cotton, hence the operatives must do without fresh air! A scientific gentleman has conducted very delicate experiments to show that the loss per yard would be regained by work done by the operator were he given air, but a campaign or a revolution is necessary to convince on this point. Would that we had a Foundation or a Survey to create India’s public opinion for the next century!” Of the women who gathered around her. Miss Whealdon says: “A strange group it was — old, haggard, gray-headed women, and anxious-faced WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT 4 « girls, old beyond their years. Most of them were of the coolie class, all looking so weary and haunted. The noon rest is but half an hour, and they had been at work since seven o’clock. Many had risen early to cook the food for their family before coming to work. It is no wonder that when the loom stops they lie on the floor by it, until the call to work drives them on again.” Whole communities move to Bombay in a body in order to get work in the mills and factories. After famine or pestilence has swept a district the sur- vivors often move, en masse, to an industrial center. Too often they live under unspeakably unhealthy conditions, crowding together in their little mud huts on some bit of ground which had been left vacant because there were reasons why it was unfit for occupancy. In Bombay, at least, the municipality has made earnest efforts to clean up these breeding places of disease, and has provided comfortable and sanitary shelter for the workers, in corrugated-iron buildings. The main difficulty lies in educating the factory folk up to feeling comfortable in such un- won tedly cleanly surroundings. _ For uncounted centuries China sup- ln China. , , , . , r . ported her vast population by agri- culture. Such simple manufactured articles as she needed were easily supplied by hand. She held no dealings with other nations and lacked the incentive to manufacturing industries which commerce brings. Even after Western nations forced her to open cer- tain of her ports to commerce, the need for indus- trial plants was felt very slowly, for her agricultural products, such as tea, rice, beans, etc., formed a large proportion of her exports, and handwork had THE WAGE EARNERS 49 always proved very satisfactory in the weaving of silks and cottons. But modern machinery has now begun to come in China and the last few years have brought significant changes. Chinese women and girls, in considerable though proportionately small numbers, are spending their days within factory walls in many parts of China. The new republic has had so many overwhelming and urgent problems to solve, that it is not surprising that its scattered and varied industries have not been brought under any unifying legislation or in- spection. There is the greatest possible diversity in the size of factories, type of work, conditions and hours of labor, wages, etc., and any generalizations would be almost certain to misrepresent the facts. The best one can do is to cite a few examples of the work Chinese women are doing in factories, and let these facts suggest the problems and needs which will, e’er we know it, be upon us in China. Weaving In some districts of China the cotton establishments. spinning which many women are doing in their homes has led to the development of weaving establishments in the cities. Mrs. Baird, of Luchowfu, reports that such establishments are found in great numbers throughout that section of the country. Most of those with which she is per- sonally acquainted are very small, numbering their employees by the tens, although there are others with a larger corps of workers. These establishments run seven days a week, with only a very few yearly holi- days, and wages are paid on the basis of the amount of work done and the degree of skill shown. Most of the women employees receive their food and a few WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT 5 ° hundred cash a month (a “cash” is about one- twentieth of an American cent), although those who have become expert through long practice sometimes earn as much as one or two dollars a month, in addition to their food. Another industry, recently established in that section of China, is that of ma- chine-made socks. The machines are very small, but this work pays somewhat better than that in the cotton-weaving establishments, where hand looms are used. A uniform factory. Some two thousand women of Peking are earning a scanty wage in a factory recently opened by the Government for the making of soldiers’ uniforms. Half of the immense building is filled with men, the rooms on the other side of the court with women, who sit on the floor all day long, working on the coarse wadded cloth of which the uniforms are made. It is hard work, and ill-paid, but the few coppers they earn are a boon to the women employed there. „ . An industry recently started in Shang- Egg-preserving. , . . , J c J ^ & hai is that or egg-preserving. 1 wo hundred Chinese girls are working in one factory, each girl breaking and examining about three thousand eggs a day. They receive about five dollars gold a month. The Shanghai Many of the large factories of China factories. are owned and managed by Ameri- cans, Europeans, and Japanese and are, therefore, located only in such cities as have “foreign conces- sions” within which land can be owned by foreigners. Most of these foreign-owned factories are in Shang- hai, and no one who has spent any time in that city THE WAGE EARNERS 5 1 will forget the morning and evening procession of wheelbarrows, each laden with six or eight girls and women, which bump briskly to and from the fac- tories and the workers’ homes each day. The major- ity of the factory women are not, however, residents of Shanghai, and are housed in the unending rows of dingy, sunless little houses which surround the factory districts. It is reported that already thirty thousand women and children have come from out- side of Shanghai to work in the factories there. The chief industries of Shanghai are the making of silk, cotton, and paper. Many of the mills are very large, some of them employing as many as two thousand workers. The buildings are, for the most part typical factories, such as would be found in any manufacturing center in Europe or America. They are equipped with thoroughly modern machinery, and are often well-lighted and well-heated. But the hours are cruelly long and many of them run day and night. After his recent visit to China, Dr. Speer said: “It is heart-breaking to go into the great cotton factories and see the men and women and children, chiefly women and children of eight years old and upward, working in long twelve-hour shifts, seven days in the week, and every week of the year. Near the house where we were staying in China we saw each evening the large companies of women and little girls carrying their simple rice bowls in their hands on their way for their long night toil. If there are too many lives in China, the present factory system will bring a murderous relief.” The child The employment of little children in laborers. these factories is one of the worst 52 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT elements in the situation. The nurses in Shanghai hospitals have a chance to see some of the dreadful results of this child labor. “Last Sunday morning,” says one of them, “a ghastly sight, one to make the blood boil and the soul cry out in indignation, might have been seen at an early hour passing along the streets of Shanghai from one of the cotton mills to one of the hospitals. It was a little child, eight years old, literally scalped — scalp and hair torn from the skull as the skin is peeled from an orange, and mashed up into a horrible mess of flesh and blood and hair. A child of eight years, mind you! The story is very simple. A child of eight years old, working for twelve hours at a stretch on the night shift in a local cotton mill, condemned to work through the long night hours, amid all the dangers of soulless, heart- less, unseeing, unthinking, unheeding machinery, and not equal to the task. Just a nod of the weary, childish head, just a slight fall forward in half- sleepy lapse into unconsciousness — and — whizz, the hair is caught in the machinery, the scalp is torn off - , the little child’s head is all but smashed to pieces. For a relenting moment the machinery is stopped, the encumbrance removed, and the child’s place is taken by another seven or eight-year-old mite, who will surely have learnt better than to get tired and to fall forward into the machinery. Of course, the child has no business to get tired and to fall forward into the relentless machinery. Is there not a superior, or a foreman, or some kindly official of that kind to go round and prod the poor little beggars in the back or the ribs every so often, to make sure they do not go to sleep and waste precious time? Of course THE WAGE EARNERS 53 there is, but he cannot be omnipresent, can he? So poor little eight-year-old must be scalped just as the dawn is coming and when the night’s work is pretty near ending.” “There is abundant child labor in China, we know,” this missionary nurse goes on to say, “but it is only in the treaty ports that this utterly soulless capitalism plays havoc. Most of the child labor of China is at any rate labor in the fresh air and sun. It is labor very largely within the physical powers of the child; and whilst it is none the less to be de- plored, it is to be remembered that it has never been exploited in the way that the new mills and factories are beginning to exploit it.” The certain The growth of industrialism in China growth. i s certain. Dr. Brewster says, “These Shanghai factories are the forerunners of thousands all over China.” Dr. Speer reports that he found, on his last trip to China, that the factory system had begun in many centers besides Shanghai, and was already far developed in Tientsin, Hankow, and other cities. “A new industrial order in China is inevitable,” he says, “and with it will come conse- quences both to China and to the rest of the world which no one can foresee. When the cheapest, steadi- est, most efficient labor in the world, representing more than a fourth of the working power of humanity, is employed in its own mills, working up its own raw materials, and with the product enters into a com- petition with the West, a new chapter of economic history will begin, and a new day for China, as well.” Now is the time, thoughtful men and women in China are saying, to create public opinion which will WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT In Japan. 54 result in laws which shall make this inevitable in- dustrial development bring good, not ill, to China. Now is the time, when the movement is still in its beginnings, to eradicate already existing evils, and guard against the development of new ones. Now is the time to protect the women and children of China against such conditions as industrial develop- ment has brought to the women and children of Japan. Dr. Speer reports that he found many of the Chinese owners of factories eager for reform. The example of the Western world will have no small influence upon them. The great industrial nation of the East today is, of course, Japan. Although she has by no means abandoned agricul- ture, she has, almost during the last generation, shifted her emphasis to manufactures. The genius of her people for learning from other nations, and adapting what has been learned, has enabled her in little more than a quarter of a century to build up a tremendous factory system and to take her place as one of the world’s great commercial countries. The rapidity with which she has achieved what Western nations accomplished very gradually, has, however, involved her in industrial and sociological problems of the most serious and acute type. And they are problems which bear particularly upon her women. For it is woman’s labor which is chiefly responsible for Japan’s ability to compete commercially with nations whose manufacturing industries were well established when Japan was still a hermit and medieval nation, knowing little and caring less about the lands on the other side of the Pacific. THE WAGE EARNERS 55 The proportion Recently published statistics showing of women in the proportion of women employed in the industries of other countries, as compared with that of Japan, are startling. In the United States the proportion is 86 men to 14 women who are wage earners, 7 5 men to 25 women in Great Britain, 80 men to 20 women in Germany, while in Japan 56 per cent, of the factory operatives are women. The figures for Europe were, of course, com- piled before the war and are very different from any statistics which might be taken in Great Britain or Germany today. But they serve to show how much less these nations depend on woman’s work in in- dustry, under normal conditions, than does Japan. The host of Absolutely accurate statistics as to workers. the num ber of women and girls em- ployed in the industries of Japan cannot be secured, for, while government reports are published, they are brought out at infrequent intervals, and the latest figures available are often for several years back. Moreover, the government reports give the proportion of men and women workers in large factories, but do not separate the figures for the weaving establishments where a large proportion of the 697,698 operatives are women. Neither does the Government take any account of establishments employing less than ten workers. That there are hundreds of girls in these little establishments, and that the conditions under which they work are probably even more appalling than those of the girls in the larger factories, is indicated by what Dr. Gulick says of those in and near the city of Mat- suyama. He reports that there are scores, even 56 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT hundreds of such small places in this one city and its suburbs, the treatment of workers and the hours of labor being entirely settled by the individual owners, as the Government does not even include them in its reports. “As a rule,” says Dr. Gulick, “the girls are ap- prenticed for from two to three years immediately on leaving the primary school, at an age, therefore, of twelve or thirteen. They barely earn their living, although they work from daybreak to ten or eleven at night, and in some establishments even till mid- night — from fifteen to eighteen hours a day! There are no night shifts and rare holidays on occasional festivals. The hygienic and moral conditions are about as bad as can be. It is estimated that one-half of the girls are ruined before the close of their ap- prenticeship.”* Of these hundreds of ill-used little girls, the govern- ment statistics take no account. When, therefore, we read the figures in the latest available reports, we must bear in mind that not only the thousands of factory girls listed there, but an unnumbered multi- tude of little weaving apprentices are giving their youth and strength to build up the industries of modern Japan. The government reports for 1912 listed 15,119 factories employing 863,447 workers, 515,217 of whom were women, 348,230 men. The factory returns issued by the Department of Agriculture and Commerce in 1910 report a total of 814,419 workers, 477,874 of whom were women, which serves to show Gulick: Working Women oj Japan. JAPANESE WOMEN COALING A TRANS-PACIFIC LINER AT NAGASAKI THE WAGE EARNERS 57 that the number of women employed in factories is increasing steadily. Of the total of 814,419 workers employed in 1910, 41,913 were under 14 years of age. Of these, 7,308 were boys, and 34,605 girls. Galen Fisher, in a very thorough study of Women Factory Laborers pub- lished in the Christian Movement in Japan, in 1915, reports that the latest figures available to him at that time showed that 65 per cent, of all the women em- ployed in Japan’s factories were under 20, and 22 per cent, were under 14. The factories What of the factories in which these they work m. women and girls work? No factory laws are at present operative in Japan, and each factory is, therefore, a law unto itself. And in view of the conditions existing in hundreds and thousands of factories in Christian America, is it surprising that in Japan, where most of the factory owners are not Christians, there should often be more thought of the owner’s profits than of the employee’s welfare? A rough translation of a Japanese rhyme reads: “To call a factory girl a human’s as absurd As to call a butterfly or dragonfly a bird,” and the way in which many factories are managed would seem to show that too many Japanese em- ployers are in practical sympathy with this senti- ment. Japan feels that to live she must compete successfully with larger nations, whose industries and commerce are well established, and to do this she must put out an inexpensive product from her factories. And the simplest and most obvious method of doing this is to make capital out of inexpensive human labor. That this is, in the long run, the most WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT 58 wasteful possible method, is lost sight of or ignored under the stress of present pressure. Miss Caroline MacDonald tells of a visit to a factory where much of the spinning is done by hand and by small children. “The manager who took us around noticed that I stopped some small children working at spin- ning wheels, and he made a passing comment, ‘You can’t afford to use human labor in your country as we do. Machine labor is cheaper for you. But in Japan human labor is so cheap!' I glanced again at the little mite working with both hands, one to turn the wheel and the other to guide the thread, without the slightest expression of intelligence on her face and with the mechanical precision of a machine. As I stood there she suddenly stopped, and for a moment there was a flash of intelligence. She sighed heavily with an air of utter weariness, and then machine-like again she resumed her work. She was cheaper than machinery! ‘Oh God, that bread should be so dear. And flesh and blood so cheap!’ ” Their hours No laws limiting hours of work are of work. y e t enforced, and the result is that twelve hours and above is the rule rather than the exception for women and little girls. In Susaka, which is reported to have a population of ten thou- sand people plus twenty thousand factory girls be- tween fourteen and twenty years old, the girls are said to work from four in the morning until eight in the evening, with twenty minutes at noon for their dinner of rice and sweet potatoes. In another city, in northern Japan, where fifteen THE WAGE EARNERS 59 hundred girls between the ages of twelve to twenty- eight are working in 130 factories, the hours are reported to be from five in the morning until ten at night, with an hour off at noon. There is, of course, no Sunday rest day, but two holidays a month are granted. The girls are given food and clothing and from fifteen to forty cents a month in money. In general, the hours run from thirteen to sixteen hours in silk factories; twelve to fifteen and even sixteen in weaving factories; although in large cotton mills the working day is seldom over twelve, sometimes not more than eleven hours long. The time allowed for meals and rest is reduced to a minimum, and often the girls eat their rice without stopping their work at their machines. If they take the full time which is nominally allowed them, they are too often in danger of incurring the ill-will of the foreman. The fact that a girl works in a factory which does not require over eleven or twelve hours’ work from her does not at all necessarily mean that her life is less arduous than that of a girl who must stay at her machine for fourteen or fifteen or sixteen hours. For the fact that a girl works no more than twelve hours a day very probably means that she is in one of that very large number of factories whose machines never rest, day or night, even the youngest of whose girls is required to take her turn on the night shift. Most of the large cotton mills and spinning factories work day and night, dividing their workers into two shifts, one working from six A. M. to six P. M.; the other coming on at six P. M. and remaining on duty until six A. M. 6o WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT The wages Statistics gathered from 305 factories they earn. by t he Tokyo Metropolitan Police in 1911-12, and cited in Mr. Fisher’s article, give the average daily wage of women in silk mills as 31 sen a day; in spinning factories, 31 sen; in weaving factories, 29 sen; shirt-making factories, 26 sen; and tobacco factories, 26 sen. Two-thirds of the girls re- ceived less than 33 sen a day, which means that only one-third of the women employed were earning as much as five dollars a month for twelve or more hours’ work a day, or night — seven days a week — for, of course, Japan does not observe Sunday. These wages are about half those paid to men doing simi- lar work. If the girls live in the factory boarding homes, as most of them are required to do, they pay about #1.20 a month for board, which is a trifle less than the cost of their food. The conditions The conditions of work in the factories of work. are reported to be decidedly bad in many cases, especially in the smaller ones. The rooms are too often dimly lighted, ventilation conspicuous by its absence, and the air full of nauseous vapors. Because the girls know so little of machinery, and because the devices which would prevent accidents cost money and would, therefore, reduce profits, many accidents occur. A missionary in Osaka reports that the surgeon in a factory with one thousand employees told her that an average of fifty accidents daily required his services. Not long ago five fingers were clipped off in a single factory in one day. Conditions are improving, but are far from right yet. THE WAGE EARNERS 6l The dormitories But probably the greatest evil of all is they sleep in. wrought by the system of factory dormitories. A recent visitor to Japan tells of passing a stockade fence so high and strong that he thought it must surely be a part of the national defences. But not at all; it was simply the stockade surround- ing the premises of a factory, to prevent the workers from running away. For the factory girl of Japan is usually a prisoner on the factory premises, not allowed to go out from one week’s end to another. Seventy per cent, of the women working in factories are compelled to live in dormitories provided by the company, which are too generally “as good breeding places of diseases as the germ-culture trays of a biologist’s laboratory.” Many of the factories in the large cities house from one to three thousand girls in one great boarding house, divided into wards hold- ing from two hundred and fifty to three hundred girls. In small factories the dormitories are usually worse in appointment than in the larger ones, the sleeping rooms frequently being built directly over the fac- tory, and receiving their full share of the noise, steam, and bad air from below. The rooms are apt to be dark and poorly ventilated and packed so full of girls that the average space allotted per person is two square yards. In the Nagano silk filatures, says Mr. Fisher, there is even less space. One of the most crying evils of the factory dormi- tories lies in the fact that the day and night shifts use the same rooms and bedding from one year’s end to another. The girls from the day shift tumble wearily into rooms from which all sun and air have been kept out all day, in order that the light might 62 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT not disturb the sleeping night shift, and throw them- selves down on the bedding still warm from the girls who have just gone on duty. With neither rooms nor bedding ever aired or sunned is it amazing that skin troubles, tuberculosis, and other diseases spread rapidly through companies of girls whose vitality is being continually lowered by excessive work, lack of air or exercise, and insufficient food? For the food furnished in the factory dormitories is “almost always inadequate.” The price The physical results of factory work they pay. are perhaps its most obvious, though by no means its only, injurious effects on the girls. The cost which Japan is paying in flesh and blood for industrial success is an appallingly heavy one. Life in the factories is one which stunts growth. Practically none of the children who work there grow after they are fourteen years old. The night work which many are required to do wears them down, until in time they are scarcely more than walking skeletons. Mr. Fisher reports that “out of 1,350 girls examined and weighed, the loss of weight of those employed on night shifts in cotton factories was from 1 1/4 to 1 5/12 pounds a week. In the printing works the loss varied from 1 1/5 to 2 1/5 pounds, and in metal factories it ran up to 2 1/2 pounds. During the succeeding five days when these same girls were on the day shift, they in no case regained all that they had lost, the maximum loss being in the printing offices where the loss was 1 2/3 pounds.” Of the two hundred thousand new girls who each year enter the doors of Japan’s factories, thirteen THE WAGE EARNERS 63 thousand return home because of serious illness before the year is over, most of them suffering from tuberculosis. Mr. Fisher’s article reveals the appalling fact that when one adds together the number of women who die in the factories, and those who die after leaving them because of illness contracted while in them, “the ratio of death is nearly three times as high as the ordinary death rate among women. Of 4.6 girls who are taken ill, one dies. This is higher than among any other class of women.’’ One can find no room for doubt of the truth of Mr. Fisher’s emphatic statement: “More damaging to the health of the Japanese people than even a war is the yearly toll exacted from among the two hundred thousand girls who are being recruited for the factories. The family is being undermined at its center. The safe- guards of home, religion, and friends are all weakened by the abnormal conditions of factory life.” But factory life, as it is in Japan, does not simply stunt the body. The fact that the workers are often little children means that only the most elementary education, if any at all, is the portion of the factory girl. And whatever mental keenness may have once been hers is soon crushed out by the bitterly long hours, and the deadening monotony of her work. She becomes simply a part of her machine. Some factories maintain schools for their employees, but few of the girls are fresh enough to derive any bene- fit from the hour or two of study offered them. “Some of the women and girls looked bright and intelligent,” writes a visitor to a factory in Osaka, “but for the most part they were rather dull of face, and below the standard of Japanese cleanliness.” 64 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT And if the conditions in most of the factories of Japan are injurious to physical growth and mental development, it is equally true that they are danger- ous to moral healthfulness. Most of the girls who enter the employ of the factory have had little chance for the development of high moral or re- ligious ideals or strong character, and the environ- ment into which they are thrown is rarely free from temptations. The very fact that body and spirit are weakened by exhaustion makes them less able to resist than under normal conditions. Their over- seers are too often men of little principle, and fre- quently constitute one of the gravest dangers to the girls. Many factories keep the girls locked inside the factory grounds all the time, but it is a question whether this medieval custom is really more to be decried than the unsupervised freedom of the girls of other factories, who are permitted to roam the streets at all times. And unspeakable as are the con- ditions in many factory dormitories, they are less bad than the boarding houses in which other fac- tories place their girls, some of which are frankly immoral, and in which the girls are deliberately tempted. But apart from the dangers directly connected with factory life, many girls are ruined as an in- direct result of the conditions under which they live and work. Approximately eighty thousand of the two hundred thousand annual recruits return to their homes within a year, but of the other one hundred and twenty thousand, sixty per cent, never return at all. Their work is so hard and the con- ditions under which both day and night are spent THE WAGE EARNERS 65 are so unpleasant, that it is little wonder that they are apt to go from one factory to another in the hope of finding easier tasks or better pay, with the too frequent result that they finally drift into places of danger. It is discouraging, though not at all sur- prising, to learn that the adolescent girls, those be- tween fourteen and twenty years of age, are the ones least apt to stay in one place. Doubtless the greater part of the sixty per cent, who never return to their homes are from among these young girls who have drifted from the factory into the restaurant or tea house and, having been unable to resist the tempta- tions of such a life, have been ashamed to go back to their homes. Many of them, indeed, are finally found in the Yoshiwara. Mr. Fisher’s article calls attention to the significance of the fact that Niigata prefecture is the district which furnishes the greatest number of recruits, both for the factories and for prostitution. The fact that in 1912 fully one-half of the women arrested in Osaka had worked in fac- tories is a terrible commentary on the effect of Japan’s factory system upon the moral health of its employees. Why they What really calls for explanation is come. not fhg f act tha-t many girls leave the factories, but rather that it is possible to secure them for such a life at all, and that any of them remain in it. A part of the answer is not far to seek. Girls in Japan, as in other countries, are frequently forced, by the pinch of poverty, to work which they would never otherwise choose. But that is not the whole explanation, for there are other kinds of work less dangerous to physical and moral health, which would 66 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT have been open to a number of these girls. The fact is that many young girls cheerfully sign factory con- tracts simply because neither they nor their parents have any conception of the life to which they are committing themselves. The factories send regular recruiting officers to the little towns and villages, where perhaps there lives no man or woman who has ever seen a great city or has any accurate knowledge of its life. To the young wide-eyed girl this man paints glowing pictures of the marvels of life in this far-away wonderland, the excitement and thrill of its streets, the beautiful clothes to be found in its shops, the joys of its theaters and moving pictures; and to all of these enchantments he promises her an open door by means of the money she will earn. To her parents he holds forth long and loud on the care which will be given their daughter, and the magnifi- cent sums which she will be able to send home each month. And if it is a district to which the broken, worn-out girls have not yet begun to return, he is usually able to persuade a goodly number of the little country maidens to go back to the city with him. Why they Once there, the factory owner takes sta y- various means to prevent the dis- illusioned girls from leaving. The high blockade and bolted gates are usually effective if somewhat lacking in subtlety. But he often resorts to more wily methods. He opens a little store where cakes and candies and bright bits of things to wear tempt girls, whose bodies and minds are alike hungry, to pile up accounts which keep them in a constant state of indebtedness to the factory, and make it impossible for them to leave it. Other factories keep out a THE WAGE EARNERS 67 certain proportion of each girl’s wages and send it to her parents together with a letter telling of the excellent health and general well-being of their daughter. If the daughter has had sufficient educa- tion to enable her to send letters home herself, telling a different story, the parents, delighted at the steady income from her, are aDt to ascribe her dissatisfaction to the fickleness and instability of youth, and to pay little heed to her protests. Some of the larger and better factories try to keep their girls with them by more enlightened methods, such as furnishing good and ample food. Some pro- vide education and recreation for the girls during their leisure hours. These “leisure hours” are, how- ever, so few, and the girls so weary, that few of them appreciate these little attentions to any great extent. And before long there comes a time when the re- cruiting officer’s highly colored stories fall on deaf ears. After the girls who went away with such bright dreams begin to come home ill and disillusioned, there will be few more girls from that district to go away to the city’s factories. The recruiters must take themselves and their alluring mendacities to regions where the modern factory is still only dimly known by the hearing of the ear, if indeed, it is known at all. It is said that any district is likely to be exhausted of factory recruits in three years, and Dr. Ishikara, a Japanese physician who has made a study of the health of women factory workers, thinks the supply of them is now beginning to run out all over the country. Factories that are different. It would be unfair, however, to leave the impression that all Japan’s factories 68 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT are seeking to turn out a cheap and marketable pro- duct with no thought of the human beings whose labor is going into the production. Conditions in general are better now than they were a few years ago, and in particular, there are some factories which might well serve as models for us, as well as for Japan. Among these is the Kanegafuchi Cotton Spinning Company, which not only asks only reasonable hours of work and pays good wages, provides well-lighted and well-ventilated rooms for eating, sleeping, bath- ing, and recreation, as well as working, but also con- cerns itself with the mental and moral development of its employees. Lectures and entertainments are provided for the education and pleasure of the work- ers, and Buddhist and Christian teachers are invited from time to time to give religious and ethical instruc- tion. For a number of years this company has set aside ten thousand dollars each year for a relief and pension fund for its operatives. It recently voted an extra $50,000 in addition to its regular appropriation, for a “welfare-promotion fund.” The Fuji Cotton Spinning Company is another organization which is not unmindful of the future of its employees. When, in 1913, the president of this company was presented with a retiring grant of $50,000 in recognition of what he had done for the company, he turned over the entire amount to the employees’ relief fund and it was voted that his gift should become the nucleus of a permanent endow- ment fund. Many of the model factories are owned and managed by Christian men, who do not keep their Christianity and their business in water-tight com- THE WAGE EARNERS 69 partments. One of the best known of these is the Lion Dentifrice Company, in which a system of promotion and reward for loyal service is in operation. A free night school is carried on for the benefit of the workers, an athletic field is furnished them, a rest and recreation home is kept open constantly, and such interesting lectures and moving-picture en- tertainments are provided for the entire force of workers, that there is no temptation to the girls to seek amusement in dangerous places. Perhaps the most notable of all is the Gunze Sishi Kwaisha, which was established by a man whose conversion to Christianity meant a sudden turn- ing from a wild, immoral life, to one wholly dominated in every particular, by the spirit and teachings of Christ. He started his new life in the face of distrust and suspicion, but the business which he founded on the principle of Matthew 7:12, has become one of the largest and best-known silk filatures in the country, whose ideals are exerting a genuine in- fluence for high industrial standards throughout Japan. Dr. Gulick’s brief account of this remarkable factory is worth careful reading. “It is managed by a Christian who runs it entirely with a view to the benefit of the workers and the district. No girls of that district go elsewhere for work. Once enrolled as members of the working force, they are regularly instructed both in general education and in their particular duties; they earn good wages, keep good health, receive Christian instruction, have their regular rest days, remain the full number of years, help support the family and earn enough besides to set themselves up in married WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT 70 life, and are now beginning to send their daughters to the same factory. This Christian factory is Christianizing the district. The rising moral and religious life is transforming even the agricultural and other interests of the region. So high is the grade of silk thread produced, and so uniform and reliable is the quality, that it alone of all the fac- tories of Japan is able to export its product direct to the United States, which buys the entire output at an annual cost of about $500,000 and without in- termediate inspection at Yokohama.” The efforts of Nevertheless, high as are the points Christian reached by some individual factories, workers. the mean level of Japan’s industrial plane is low, and the life of the great majority of factory girls not only involves great hardship, but saps the vitality and health of body, mind, and spirit. Efforts have been made by many Christian workers in industrial centers to help and safeguard the girls in the factories, but the amount which they are able to do is almost wholly dependent on the attitude of the factory owners. Sometimes they are cordially welcomed and freely allowed to serve the girls, but in other cases the stockades are as effectual in keeping the would-be helpers out as in keeping the girls in. Sometimes the girls are permitted to attend evening classes and night schools carried on by Christian workers, but frequently they are not free to do so. A few homes are being carried on by Chris- tians for girls who are not required to live in the factory dormitories, and some of these have rendered such valuable service that not only have they become widely and favorably known, but have even received THE WAGE EARNERS 71 annual grants of money from the Government. One of the best-known and most successful of these Chris- tian homes is that carried on in Matsuyama by Mr. Omoto. A few Japanese young women, too, whose Christian education has planted deep within them the purpose not to be ministered unto, but to minis- ter, have given themselves to work for the girls of the factories. One such is Miss Hattori, a graduate of the Methodist girls’ school of Tokyo, who, after special study at the Women’s University, and a careful investigation of the factories in Tokyo, accepted a position as matron in a large cotton- spinning factory of Osaka. All such efforts as these are thoroughly good, and it is earnestly to be hoped that much more will be done along this line in the future. But such work as this cannot at best do much more than touch in- dividual factories here and there, and make things better for the girls of certain communities. We cannot rest content with anything which stops short of abolishing evils and raising standards throughout the entire industrial world of Japan. Prof. Amos S. Hershey of the University of Indiana, after a thorough study of industrial conditions in Japan, de- clares: “We submit that it is not enough to carry the Gospel to tired, exhausted factory girls who have been working on their feet for twelve hours or more under the most depressing environment. Something should be done to change this environment or to modify or abolish a system which dooms half a million Japa- nese girls and young women to a life which is destruc- tive, or morally and physically injurious, to many thousands of them each year.” 72 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT Factory legis- Right legislation would, of course, go lation in japan. f ar toward improving matters. Where there is no such legislation, any factory owner can demand the greatest possible amount of labor for the smallest possible return, can force his employees to work and live under the most injurious conditions, can economize on safety devices at the cost of human life and limb, and no one can say him nay. The Japanese Government has realized this, and has made an effort to prevent certain evils, by law. A few years ago three laws were passed through the Diet, laws which leave much to be desired, and do not even touch many urgent problems, but which are good as far as they go. These laws were passed with the understanding that they should not go into effect for several years, in order that the factory owners might have time to adjust themselves to the new demands. The laws, as they stand, are in brief: 1. Work by children under twelve years of age is forbidden. 2. The working day of children under fifteen and of women must not exceed twelve hours. 3. Work by children under fifteen, and by women, is forbidden between the hours of 10 P. M. and 4 A. M. These laws were expected to become operative in 1916, but when the time came the capitalists beg- ged for still further postponement, urging that the European war, and the consequent paralysis of in- dustry in the warring nations, was giving them their great opportunity to establish Japan on a strong commercial basis, and that the necessity of obeying these three meagre laws would seriously interfere RRIDGE-PARTY” OF JAPANESE WOMEN THE WAGE EARNERS 73 with success. The Government yielded to this plea, at what cost of human life and strength and of Japan’s future it is impossible to estimate. Prof. Hershey’s statement is strong, but no statement can well be too strong. “We consider the factory system of The indictment. T . . . . , J \ . Japan with its long hours, night work, low wages, and unhealthy environment even a greater menace to the country than its slums and Yoshiwaras. These latter, indeed, constitute plague spots or festering sores on the body social of the most serious description, but the factory system of Japan, which demands an annual sacrifice of many thous- ands of children and young women, is a dangerous menace to the future of the Japanese race. In its last analysis it is a problem in eugenics, for it is a system which attacks motherhood as well as child- hood, since it injures or destroys the future mothers of the race and the children of Japan, at the most important period in their physical and moral develop- ment.” Mr. Fisher speaks truly when he says, “The personal ministry already under- taken on behalf of factory workers by Christian workers, and the local regulations in certain cities, are good as far as they go, but they do not touch the heart of the problem. Nothing but strong, enlight- ened public opinion, engendered and guided by Christians and other progressive men, will suffice to secure the thorough-going legislation required to put an end to this blot upon Japan’s good name and this menace to her future.” 74 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT The geisha. No story of the women wage earners of Japan would be complete, which contained no mention of the thirty thousand or more women and girls known as geisha , which, being interpreted, means — “accomplished person.” The ac- complishments in which the geisha is trained are the playing of the samisen (a sort of guitar), singing, dancing, and repartee. Little girls destined as geisha begin a prolonged and rigid training in these arts when they are but eight or nine years old, and by the time they are fifteen or sixteen are ready to join the ranks of gorgeously gowned, painted and powdered women, who are so much in demand as entertainers of men at almost all large social functions. Out- wardly the life of the geisha bears no resemblance to that of the factory girl. Dressed in the richest silks of the most vivid colors, her dancing and witty con- versation applauded by wealthy and educated men, her photograph displayed for sale in the shop win- dows, her earnings of one night far exceeding that of the factory girl’s wages for a month — surely the geisha has nothing in common with the girl who plods dully along in the factory day after day. Yet hard work, temptation, danger, and heartsickness are the common lot of both these wage-earning women of Japan. The life of the geisha , says Dr. Gulick, is “piti- ful in the extreme. Chosen from among the families of the poor on the basis of their prospective good looks and ability to learn, they leave their homes at an early age, and are subjected to severe drill .... They go through their lessons with rigid, mechanical accuracy. ... As a rule nothing is THE WAGE EARNERS 75 done to develop their minds and, of course, the cultivation of personal character is not even thought of. They are instructed in flippant conversation and pungent retort, that they may converse interestingly with the men for whose entertainment they are alone designed. The songs learned, some of the dances performed, and the conversational repertoire ac- quired are commonly reported to be highly licentious, but these are the gei that best please the men, to whom they are open for private engagement from the time they are eighteen years of age. ... So far as is known to me, no regular Christian or philan- thropic work is done for this class.” Two things there are which must come in Japan if many of her most beautiful girl children are not to be forced to support themselves as geisha. Christian ideals must so permeate the nation that public opinion will put an end to the entire custom. And the abundant life which Jesus Christ came to give must be so brought to the women of Japan that there will be no need of a special group of women, definitely trained and set aside as conversationlists and enter- tainers. Says Dr. Gulick, “The national custom which predetermines the social incompetence of the majority of cultured women compensates for the loss by providing t\\& geisha class. Not until Japanese ladies can hold their own in social life will the voca- tion of the geisha be ended.” 76 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT Christian Missions and Women’s Industries The girls in the rug factories of Turkey, the cotton mills of Bombay, the factories of Shanghai, and the great industrial plants of Japan are not the only women of the Orient who are earning their way by the work of their hands. Scattered through- out the East are little groups of women whose fingers have learned their skill under the patient tutelage of women mis- sionaries, and who are supporting themselves and sometimes others, by their beautiful needlework, laces, embroideries, drawn work, etc. The mission industrial plants are for the most part of com- paratively recent origin and have usually arisen in answer to an immediate and urgent need. Such a one is, for example, the work at Oorfa, built up by the initiative of one courageous missionary. Miss Corinna Shattuck. In 1895, Oorfa was a city of desolation. The ruthless slaughter of the Armenian men had left a host of women and children grief-stricken, destitute, and helpless. With nothing in the world save the clothes they wore, they crowded the mission stations, seeking help. Temporary relief came through the gifts of the compassionate in many parts of the world, but there was need of more permanent help of a kind which would enable these untrained and helpless women to support themselves and their children. Then it was that Miss Shattuck, “with the skill of a daring pioneer, ushered into Oorfa the crusade of women’s labor that has changed that city, bereft of the Christian male population, into a busy city of women’s industries. The story of it all reads like a fairy tale. The start was made at the mission house. In a small room off the girls’ dormitory, women and girls between fourteen and forty began making embroideries. In another room others made handker- chiefs and fine lace edgings. Miss Shattuck personally super- intended all. She planned the work and taught a few, who in turn taught others, and every piece when finished was thoroughly examined by her and ordered revised if not well done.” In little more than ten years after this small beginning, sixteen thousand dozen handkerchiefs were being exported from Miss Shattuck’s mission every year, and 1824 women were finding employment and self-support in the handkerchief and embroidery work. The THE WAGE EARNER6 77 industry had spread from Oorfa to the neighboring towns and branch industries were working successfully in Garmooch, Birijik, Severek, and Adayaman. The industrial work done under the Methodist mission in Foochow also began as a work of relief for women in great need. Some years ago a young Christian widow fled to her former teacher, Miss Bonafield, in dire distress. Her uncle, under whose authority she had come at the death of her husband, was un- willing to be burdened with her support and was planning to sell her to any man who would pay his price. Miss Bonafield was able to save the girl only by promising her uncle that she would never ask him for any financial help. Then the problem of how the girl could earn her own living arose. She could embroider beautifully and Miss Bonafield sent some of her work to Ameri- ca to be sold. Other widows, young and old, in poverty and dis- tress, came pleading for similar help and Miss Bonafield formed them into a little Industrial School. With the coming to Foochow of Miss Jean Adams, who was able to give her entire time to the industrial work, the little school grew into a large one, its scope was enlarged, and now the Foochow embroideries and drawn work are widely known even in America. Practically every mission orphanage, too, is an industrial school. A typical orphanage is the one carried on by the Metho- dist Mission at Phalera, India. There the girls not only do the housework, but learn to spin, twist thread, weave cloth, blankets and carpets, mold bricks, make paper baskets and grass brooms, and become expert in embroidery, lace making, plain and fancy sewing, and drawn work. Many girls’ schools have industrial departments. In Sendai, Japan, for example, the girls of one mission school are taught “needle-work, flower-making, silk-raising, and poultry-breeding.’’ Moreover, in practically all mission schools the students become expert in household arts by doing much of the work of the school home. Sweeping, cleaning, even some of the cooking, are a part of their regular day’s work. Truly it is of the essence of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that nothing that makes life fuller or finer should be untouched by it. Hands are certain to grow more skilled, even as minds become keener and characters stronger and more beautiful, wherever the Good News is carried. 78 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER II. Aim of study: — To show the magnitude and urgency of the industrial problem of the East, and to discover our responsi- bility toward it. 1. Is tne earning of wages by unskilled labor, done outside the home, a new thing for the women of the Orient? 2. What new conditions are being created in the life of the women of the Orient, by the introduction of modern machinery? 3. Do you think that the Oriental women in industry are likely to decrease or increase in numbers? 4 In what Oriental country is the industrial problem most acute? 5. In what Oriental country do you think industries are likely to develop most rapidly in the future? 6. If you had the power to legislate regarding the conditions of work of the factory women of India, what changes would you make? 7. Are these women being touched by Christian missionary work and, if so, how ? 8. What elements in the industrial situation in China make the appeal for immediate thought and effort on the part of Christian people so urgent? 9. What seems to you the solution of the industrial evils in China, and how can it be achieved? 10. What proportion of the factory workers of Japan are women? How does this proportion compare with that of other countries? 11. How do the hours, wages, and conditions of work of the factory girls of Japan compare with those of the United States? 12. How does the legislation regarding factory workers in Japan compare with that of your state? 13. What effect do you think the conditions of the factory girls of your state, and the legislation regarding them, have on Japan? 1 4. What effect would you expect life in the average factory of Japan to have upon a girl’s health? Upon her character? 15. What effect upon the future of Japan will her factory system have, if conditions and legislation remain as they are at present? THE WAGE EARNERS 79 1 6. Is your Mission Board undertaking any work on behalf of these factory girls? If so, what? 17. Do you think that the work of the mission schools for girls has any relation to the needs of the factory girls of Japan? If so, what? 18. How do you think the Christian forces can best help to remedy the evils of the industrial life of Japan? 19. What seem to you the worst features of the life of the geisha? 20. What fundamental changes must there be in Japanese thought and society if the system of geisha is to be abolished ? CHAPTER III. Suggested Scripture Reading. The Program of the New Day. Luke 4: 16-21. Broadening Horizons. In Moslem Lands: The progressive men are Speaking and writing in favor of a freer life for women; Sending the girls to school; Promoting the cause of women’s education. The women themselves are beginning To long for more abundant life; To protest against the veil; To combat polygamy; To seek education for themselves and their daughters. In India: The great mass of men despise women, but some are urging The education of girls; Home classes, lectures, and clubs for women; The raising of the age of marriage; The relaxation of the purdah system; The remarriage of widows. The great mass of women are ignorant, but some are Venturing out from behind the purdah; Desiring education; Courageously championing the cause of women in public. In China: A new social order for women has dawned; Many Chinese men are changing their ideals for women; Many Chinese women are reaching out for fuller life; The transition period is full of dangers and opportunities. In Japan: Economic conditions are forcing a new life upon women; Western novels, plays, etc., are giving distorted impressions of the life of the women of the Occident. In all the countries: There is only one safe Guide to the new life. CHAPTER III. BROADENING HORIZONS “You know,” said an old Moham- medan sheikh , not long ago, to the head of the American mission school for girls in Alexandria, “we do not care to have our daughters stay in school very long.” But quick as a flash came the correction of the young Egyptian bey who was with him. “No! that is past. Our country can never be great until our women are properly taught.” The two statements fairly represent the old and the new Orient. Many parents there are, especially in the smaller towns and villages of the interior, away from the beaten tracks of travel and the direct influence of western lands, who do not care to have their daughters “stay in school very long,” if, indeed, they are willing to have them go to school at all. But in every Oriental country today there are also the others, younger usually, though sometimes their youth is of the spirit more than of the flesh, who have perhaps traveled, and sought for the explanation of the differences they have seen between their own and other countries; who have read and studied and pondered, and have unerringly traced many of the greatest weaknesses in the social and national life of the East to its low estimate of women, in Mohamme- The young Egyptian bey is one of dan lands. an ever-increasing company of the present generation of men in Mohammedan coun- tries who are earnest champions of the cause of more abundant life for women. A prominent Mohamme- The old and new Orient. 82 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT dan recently published a book on the emancipation of women which was widely read. Another writer recently brought out a book frankly entitled The New Woman. Many of the leading newspapers in Egypt, Persia, and Turkey have devoted many of their columns to articles and discussions on the subject of the Mohammedan woman and the amount of freedom which should be accorded her. One Persian newspaper not long ago expressed its sym- pathy with the efforts of Persian women toward greater freedom by a vivid cartoon, picturing a Persian woman in European dress, the ancient veil discarded, struggling in the hands of a man who, with uplifted club, was trying to drag her backward. But the actions of the progressive men of Moham- medan lands speak louder than their words. There was organized in Turkey a few years ago, a society the purpose of which was to promote public opinion against the wearing of the veil. The membership of this society was composed not of wearers of the veil, but of young husbands, brothers, and fathers! The education Most convincing evidence of a genu- of girls. ine desire on the part of the men for a freer and fuller life for women is the new attitude toward the education of girls which exists through- out the Near East today. Miss Annie Van Sommers of Egypt reported in 1910: “A few years ago it was hard to get parents to allow their girls to come to school at all. When they did come, they were not allowed to remain long, and were married at the age of twelve. But now we find the government trying to encourage female education by giving higher grants for girls than for boys in subsidizing village BROADENING HORIZONS 83 schools. They have also established girls’ schools in the chief towns. . . . The age of marriage is also rising, especially in the upper classes, so that their daughters have more opportunity of being edu- cated.” “Ten years ago,” wrote a missionary in Persia, in 1912, “the American mission school had half a dozen Moslem girls among its Armenian pupils, and there was not a native school for Persian girls in Teheran. This year the American school has en- rolled more than 160 Persian girls alone, and there are said to be seventy girls’ schools in the city with a total enrollment of five thousand.” “Before the Constitution little attention was paid to the education of girls,” an American teacher in Turkey wrote in 1914. “According to a recent state- ment from the Minister of Public Instruction, the Turkish government is now constantly endeavoring to extend and to perfect the instruction given to girls, and to fit it to the progress and civilization of the present century— in fact, to modernize it com- pletely. It is with this aim that it has been decided to establish numerous lycees, schools for teachers, and schools for domestic training. The government is working in every way for the intellectual and moral development of the future wives and mothers of Turkey.” In Turkey many of the leading men are not satis- fied with the elementary or even the high-school course which would have seemed, a few years ago, a very unusual amount of education for a Mohamme- dan girl, but wish to have their daughters go on to college or professional school. Dr. Mary Mills 84 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT Patrick, president of the Constantinople College for girls, said in 1910, “All prominent Turkish patriots at the present time express themselves with great enthusiasm regarding the necessity for the higher education of Turkish women.” And this enthusiasm has persisted even through these last years of devastating war. In 1916, 290 girls were enrolled in the Constantinople College for girls, sixty-three of them Turks, among whom were fourteen whose tuition was paid by the Turkish government. Another was a granddaughter of the late Grand Vizier, Kiamil Pasha. The total enrollment of the school in 1917 was four hundred. One of the most conclusive evidences of the grow- ing belief in the higher education of women was given when, in 1914, the Imperial University in Stamboul opened its doors to women. No definite registration was required, the work offered women being entirely in the nature of University extension work, but the plans outlined provided for a regular program which all students must follow, and for a definite entrance requirement. The lectures offered were on history, pedagogy, hygiene, domestic econo- my, and the “rights of women,” and were given by the professors of the University and other prominent specialists. A promise was also made that women should soon be admitted to a course in the medical school. The war has, of course, broken in upon these plans, but the fact that so good a beginning was made augurs well for the future. New ambitions Contact with western nations and of Mohammedan missionary homes has given to many fathers. a young Mohammedan a new ideal BROADENING HORIZONS 85 of companionship in the home, which only an educated wife will satisfy. And to many an older man these things have brought the startling thought that daughters with trained minds may be to him as truly a joy and crown of glorying as sons. “I wish my wife had been educated,” wistfully remarked a visitor to the American girls’ school in Teheran not long ago. But his face cleared as he added, “I want my daughter to take her diploma and then give her life to educational work for the women of Persia.” Even more amazing in its evidence of a new and startlingly different ideal for a Turkish girl was the request of the father of a student of the Constanti- nople College. “Please give her special training in public speaking,” he requested, “for I wish her, after she graduates, to go into the interior and give addresses to the Mohammedan women.” And there is something very touching and very thrilling in the report of a Persian father who journeyed from Urumiah to Russia not long ago, bearing with him a precious package containing the manuscript of a little elementary school book on hygiene and general science. The author of that book was his little fifteen-year-old daughter, and her proud parent was confident that a Russian publisher had only to see it to accept it. The women Most significant of all the signs of the themselves. times in Mohammedan lands is the attitude of the women themselves. Centuries of enforced seclusion, ignorance, and indolence have failed to crush their longings for life, in place of mere existence. There may possibly have been com- parative contentment when there was no thought 86 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT or dream of any other life possible for women. But in days like these when contact with missionaries and travelers, books, magazines, and many other influences are making it impossible for any part of the world family to live wholly apart from the knowledge of how the other members live, there is definite discontent among many of even the most secluded Mohammedan women. Freedom is the heart’s desire of a great host today, the shining dream which fills their thoughts and is the goal of all their seeking. It is a desire and a dream with which no one of us could fail to sympathize were they seeking freedom simply for the sake of claiming their birthright to know the beauty of the world in which they live and the joys of human companionship. But to the lasting honor of many of these women of the Near East be it said that “the soul-wrecking comfort of the harem’’ has not availed to kill in them the spirit of service. They are seeking to be saved from a fettered, empty, joyless life — yes; but in many a one of them there is the conscious, definite longing to be saved in order to serve. One of them, Ulviye Mevlane Hanoum, recently voiced in The Women s World of Constantinople the thoughts and purposes which are perhaps more or less inartic- ulate, but very genuinely existent, in the minds and hearts of many Mohammedan women. “Love in any true sense is a stranger in our homes. Respect, companionship, are outside of our ex- perience. Yet we have the ambition to do what only women can, to perpetuate and increase in physical numbers and strength the race to which we belong. It is not enough for us to be content with that. That BROADENING HORIZONS 87 is not the happiness to which we have the right and the duty to aspire and to claim. Much less may we content ourselves with that selfish languor so often found in the harems of the rich. We have no right to expect others to make us happy while we do not un- selfishly gird ourselves to make others happy and worthy of their place, as our life’s chief aim. The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves, if we fail of attaining to happiness. Our men are seeing more clearly today than ever before that the welfare and success of our people in the coming years depend very greatly upon us, the mothers and daughters of our race. Emancipation, education, elevation in- tellectually and morally — this is to be our cherished desire, our purpose. The question is not, ‘Who will make us happy?’ but ‘How can we be most useful to our people and our fatherland?’ ” Significant Certain things there are which the changes. awakened women of the Near East are definitely seeking for themselves and one another. Prominent among them is a costume of a kind which will not prevent them from taking the part for which they long in the life of the world. “When the New Woman in Persia awoke,” writes Miss Stocking, “being still a woman, she straightway thought of her appearance and made some significant changes in her dress. Seen on the street she is still enveloped from head to foot in the long black skirt or chuddar , but in place of the troublesome face veil of white cloth she wears a small square of black net or woven horse hair, which conceals her features perfectly and is far more comfortable. ... At first there was much talk of abandoning the veil entirely. This is still a 88 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT cherished dream of Persian women, but they have come to realize that it is not time yet for this radical step, that at present to go with uncovered faces would but put them at the mercy of evil-minded men.” Some of the women of Turkey, however, are de- termined not only that the veil must go, but that it must go soon. When the Constitution was pro- claimed in Turkey in 1908, thousands of women dis- carded their veils in the confident expectation that a new era of freedom for them as well as their hus- bands had begun. But only for a very few weeks were they allowed such liberty. Word was sent out that their religion did not permit the removal of the veil, and public opinion compelled them to replace it though they did so most reluctantly. Then came the second revolution and again the women dared to hope that the emblem of the old, restricted life of Mohammedan women might be removed. Five hundred of them went to the ministers and an- nounced that they intended to discontinue wearing the veil. The reply was: “You may do it, but the responsibility will be yours. We shall not defend you if you suffer for it.” And again the women dared not openly discard the veil. But in the mean- time they are not resting in passive submission to the decrees of the powers that be. “To transform the outdoor costume of Turkish women,” is the first of the seven aims of “The Society for the Defense of Women’s Rights,” a society of Turkish women which is working ener- getically and effectively to bring in a new day for the women of the Near East, And the proposed outdoor Copyright by Underwood and Underwood, N. Y. CHILD LABOR IN THE FACTORIES OF TURKEY BROADENING HORIZONS 89 costume is not to include even the net or horse-hair square worn by the women of Persia. Ulviye Han- oum, one of the leading spirits in this progressive organization, states that the society “will prepare several costumes in different fashions, free from or- nament or any objectionable features, entirely in accordance with the requirements of the Koran, and submit them to the government for its approval. In these proposed costumes the veil shall be discarded, because the Koran does not require it, and the shawl will be so modified as to render it both serviceable and graceful.” “A woman with a veil,” Madame Ulviye goes on to say, “cannot develop individuality and bring out her best possible powers. . . . We maintain that the veil is not only a silly anachronism, but it is an insult to the intelligence and reliability of the Turkish woman; it also reflects discreditably upon the moral and mental makeup of our men. Veil and shawl must go.” Another evil of the Mohammedan woman’s life which the “new” women of the Near East are eager to do away with is polygamy. They are lifting their voices in vigorous protest against it, though with the realization that it will not be easily abolished. “As the veil is a badge of inferiority and slavery, so polygamy is a moral monstrosity,” Madame Ulviye declares, but admits, “Unfortunately, however, polygamy is not a custom; it is a part of the Koranic law. The use of the veil is a custom only. Do we women like the practice of polygamy? Most de- cidedly not. It is far more shocking than the veil. It stamps the woman as an inferior sort of creature and the man as an animal. Our women and men gO WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT have the same feelings and emotions as the women and men of the western world. But it takes time to abolish a fundamental part of a religion.” Mission- aries report, however, that the protest of women has not been without its effect, and that polygamy is actually decreasing. But the thoughtful Mohammedan women recog- nize that the final abolition of both the veil and polyg- amy will come not because of the protests of a few enlightened women, but as a result of the demon- strated ability of many women to be the intelligent companions of their husbands, and the wise and strong guides of their children, to play an active and helpful part in the life of their community and nation, and to earn their own livings if need be. Eagerness for Because of this realization, many education. Mohammedan women are eagerly reaching out for education for themselves and their daughters. Married women, for whom school is no longer a possibility, throng hungrily to lectures which will enlarge their outlook, and increase their usefulness. Miss Gregory tells of a series of public lectures given in the Constantinople College for girls a few years ago, on such subjects as “The Hygiene and Food of Children,” “The Contagious Diseases of Children,” “Tuberculosis and its Prevention,” to which the Turkish ladies in the neighborhood were invited, and to which they came in good num- bers. There is something very touching in her report of these ladies of Constantinople listening with “intelligent and courteous interest” to the first lecturer in the series, but finding that the second lecturer, “by grace of speaking more slowly BROADENING HORIZONS 9I and showing greater confidence in the intelligence of his audience” won their hearts so completely that they begged, “Are you not going to have a lecture next week, and will not this same gentleman give it?” Very significant, too, was the response of the women to the opportunities offered them by the Imperial University at Stamboul. Within a week after permission to attend certain lectures had been given them, two hundred women were enrolled; and as these lectures were put in the afternoons in order to permit of the performance of home duties in the mornings, many married women were among the two hundred. But it is on their daughters that the ambitions of the mothers of Mohammedan countries are chiefly centered. They can endure the limitations of their own lives, if only the doors to a larger, freer life may be opened to the younger women. It is an appealing picture that Miss Stocking draws of the Persian mother of today. “She does not say quite as often as she did a few years ago, ‘Oh, Khanum, we Persian women are nothing but savages,’ yet she still speaks with sadness of her own childhood. ‘There were no schools for girls in our day; we had no opportunity.’ Or she tells how she married at the age of ten or twelve, and how good it is that times have changed. The fact that her own daughter of fourteen or fifteen is still in school gives the mother a feeling of self- respect. . . . The mother speaks of her daughters with as much pride as of her sons, and is as keenly interested in their progress. A few weeks ago I was congratulating a young mother on her first born, and added, ‘I suppose you are sorry the baby is not 92 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT a boy.’ To my amazement she replied, ‘What better service could I render my fatherland than to bring up girls, for until there are good mothers the country will make no progress.’ ” It is for the sake of the girls of today, the women of tomorrow, that many a Mohammedan woman is taking courageous steps into a life undreamed of by her mother, and making active efforts to promote every cause which will bring opportunities for life and service to the women of her country. Woman’s life India, says Mr. E. C. Carter, long a m India. secretary of the Young Men’s Chris- tian Association of India, “is a country where Hindu- ism and Mohammedanism have done worse for women than any religions in any other land.” Hinduism with its child marriage, the terrible and perpetual ban which it has placed upon widows, and its rigid caste system; and Mohammedanism with its seclusion of thirty million of India’s women within the purdah, have combined to make the achievement of abundant life more difficult for the women of India than for any other women in the world. There are more deep-rooted prejudices to be combatted, more numerous and more difficult obstacles to be overcome, by the woman of India who has caught a glimpse of a larger life, than by any other woman. But more discouraging than any obstacles in the way of the women of India is the fact clearly pointed out by one of India’s thoughtful men, Mr. Gokhale, that “a combination of enforced ignorance and overdone religion has not only made women in India willing victims of customs unjust and hurtful in the highest degree, but it has also BROADENING HORIZONS 93 made them the most formidable because the most effective opponents of all change or innovation.” To free a prisoner in the face of innumerable ob- stacles is a difficult task, but to accomplish it for a prisoner from whom all desire for freedom has been crushed, and who may even oppose your efforts, is an achievement which calls for more than ordinary courage, faith, and persistence. Signs of a Yet in no country are there more un- new day. mistakable and hopeful evidences of a new era for women than in India. The great mass of men have no thought that things should be differ- ent with women, and if such a thought is presented to them, oppose it. The great mass of women are too ignorant, too secluded, too crushed in spirit by long- accustomed chains, even to dream of freer, fuller life, much less make any effort to secure it. But against that dark background, as brilliant, vivid, glowing, as the flaming flowers and foliage of that color-filled land, stand out those shining and significant “signs of the times” which make it impossible to doubt that the door into life more abundant has begun to swing open for India’s women and has already swung too far ever to close again. Many of India’s most influential men, Hindus and Moslems, as well as Christians and Parsees, are earnestly championing the cause of the women of their country. Miss Agnes de Selincourt, long a teacher in India, says, “A realization of the necessity for an educated and emancipated womanhood is now no longer confined to those sections of the community which are directly influenced by Chris- tianity, but is laying hold of eastern nations as a 94 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT whole.” And Basanta Koomar Roy, one of India’s keen thinkers, recently declared in the Century Magazine: “By far the most significant and far- reaching feature of the social reconstruction of India is the fact that both the Hindus and Moham- medans are realizing that the progress of India is directly dependent on the proportionate progress the women of India make in education and liberalism. Womanhood is the greatest asset of any nation. A weak womanhood means a feeble nation; an eman- cipated womanhood means a nation based on a sound foundation. The men of India realize that it is on account of their selfishly domineering influence that women have grown feeble in intellect and sickly in physique.” Significant “Hardly a congress or debating resolutions. society exists which does not pass resolutions thereon,” says Miss Minna Cowan, in speaking of the growing realization of the need of greater freedom for the women of India. The fol- lowing resolutions, passed by the Indian National Conference in 1914, are typical. Resolved: 1. “That the Conference record its satisfaction at the progress which the education of girls in this country is making and strongly urges upon the at- tention of government the great and urgent need of further expansion of the elementary and higher education among the women in this country by more liberally providing suitable facilities such as girls’ schools, high schools, and also arts and medical colleges. BROADENING HORIZONS 95 1 . “That the Conference exhorts the public to make the necessary efforts in a strenuous manner for the spread of useful knowledge which forms the basis of progress among Indian women, by the start- ing of home classes, series of lectures, and clubs, associations, or institutions conducted by and for women, so as to secure the gradual elevation of Indian womanhood, and thus enable the women of this country to fairly participate in all social and national responsibility, without which no social ad- vancement could be called complete. 3. “That this Conference expresses its apprecia- tion of the endeavors that are being made in this direction by institutions like the Seva Sadan Society. . . . 4. “That this Conference urges upon the attention of the parents and guardians of girls the prime necessity of raising the marriageable age of girls with a view to enable them to acquire a decent amount of education at schools. 5. “That this Conference urges on the public the necessity of relaxing the existing rigor of the purdah system prevalent among many provinces of India with a view to its final abolition, in the interests of the health and education of women and their partici- pation in all social activities.” Numerous, too, during the past few years have been such resolutions as this: “This Conference notes with satisfaction the progress hitherto made in the cause of widow remarriage, and emphasizes the urgency of pushing forward the work of removing restrictions on the marriage of widows, and of establishing Widow Remarriage Associations, and g6 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT homes tor the shelter of widows desirous to marry.” Still other resolucions strongly support the efforts that are being made to create a public opinion which will make it possible for widows to enter work which will enable them to support themselves, and to provide them with the necessary training for such work. In view of the fact that there are in India today 335,000 widows less than fifteen years old, and numberless others only a few years older, the question of their remarriage and self-support is an extremely important aspect of the woman question in India. Attitude of As in the Near East, so also in India, newspapers. the subject of a new life for women is kept before the public by many newspapers. The Indian Social Reformer is outspoken in its champion- ship of everything that will tend to enrich the life of women and hasten the day of their freedom. But such efforts to further the cause of women a*-e not limited to the journals definitely dedicated to the cause of social reform. Witness, for example, the following quotation from The Comrade , a Moham- medan paper published in Delhi. “If the women of the community are ignorant, and thus cramped and dwarfed in their mentality, the new generations grow up in the same deadening atmosphere, and the loss of personality in the individual is the inevitable result. It is a terrible price to pay, and no community can bear the burden without self-stultification. . . . Efforts should be made by earnest men, by means of an independent organization, if need be, to draw up a complete program and start a vigorous cam- paign for bringing light and emancipation to Moslem BROADENING HORIZONS 97 women. The task is the noblest and yet the hardest that the Mussulmen have got to face. Will not some valiant spirit sound the call and rally other brave hearts for the fight? The hope is not extravagant. The Moslem courage and chivalry are not yet wholly defunct.” Honors to wom- There is something very touching, as en students. well as encouraging, in the pride felt in the Indian women who have won educational honors. The Bihar Advocate of Gayo proudly calls the attention of its readers to the fact that one Srimati Kamala Kammi Debi has passed the last matriculation examination to the University, and “is perhaps the first Beharee girl to achieve this distinction.” The Indian Social Reformer frankly admits that “while the successes of Indian students abroad are a source of gratification and pride, that of an Indian lady is doubly so,” and takes pains to give its readers definite information concerning the honors being won at Newnham College, Cambridge, by Miss Chattopadhyay. No item is more certain of a place on the front page than one like this: “All lovers of Sanskrit and well-wishers of female educa- tion will be glad to learn that Kennari Pandita Satya- wathi has come out successful at the last Shastric examinations at the Punjab University. There were as many as no candidates and only eighteen have come out successful, and Kennari Satyawathi is one of the eighteen. She is the first Indian girl to pass this highest and most difficult examination of the Uni- versity.” It is no unheard of thing nowadays to see in an Indian newspaper such an announcement as this: 98 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT “A gathering in congratulation of Hindu ladies who appeared for the several University examinations last year will be held on October first, at Sir Nathub- hae’s house.” Accounts like this are not infrequent: “A public meeting was held in the school hall, the occasion being the presentation to Srimati Kana- kamma, a Brahmin lady, a Mistress in the local government girls’ school, of six gold medals, and rupees 216, these being the prizes won by her in the Telugu Annual Vidwat examinations. . . . Long before the appointed hour the hall was crowded to the utmost with ladies and gentlemen, and many gentlemen had to stand on the verandah for want of accommodation in the hall. Mrs. Rai kindly consented to preside over the meeting. . . . The President then called upon Mr. Rao to speak. He was exceedingly glad to announce that the Nellore lady headed the list of both male and female can- didates, numbering about 250, that appeared from the Telugu country; and got record marks in all subjects, literature, science, and history, and that she was, therefore, fortunate in carrying away all the prizes for males as well as those for females. This announcement aroused a huge roar of applause from the audience who were never accustomed to hear such things in Nellore, and who were very much astonished at the capabilities of the young lady.” There can be no doubt that such gatherings as these are doing much to reveal to the people of India the possibilities bound up in the women, and to create a divine discontent with conditions which force those possibilities to remain dormant in so large a number. This must assuredly be true when the BROADENING HORIZONS 99 woman honored puts the case as clearly and courte- ously as did Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, India’s best-known woman poet, at a meeting recently held in her honor, in Guntur. In the course of the address of welcome to her, the speaker said, “Our hearts leap for joy, dear sister, at the contemplation of even a single one of your accomplishments in this benighted land of India, where women are especially backward; and we look to you as an ideal of perfection, and an ex- ample for Indian womanhood to follow and to emulate.” But Mrs. Naidu had no mind to accept a compliment to herself at the expense of her country- women, and replied: “I have learned to feel that the generous and spontaneous welcome which awaits me wherever I go is not at all a personal tribute, but stands as a symbol of what the womanhood of India represents when the men of India give them the same chances as I have had. . . . It is your duty, which you have not recognized, to fulfil the task of giving the women these many opportunities which you yourselves had, which are necessary to fully realize all the hidden virtues that lie within their souls. ... I am only a little lamp of clay. But there are thousands of lamps of gold hidden away for want of oppor- tunity. Instead of thanking you, I should reproach you for being contented with lamps of clay when there are lamps of gold. Let me beseech you not to be content with such small ideals as are represented by any successes that I may have achieved.” Growth in the The gradual increase in the number education of of girls of school-going age who are girls ' attending schools is encouraging; IOO WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT but more significant than the actual increase in numbers is the fact that the ranks are being swelled by girls from Hindu and Mohammedan families. Many of the men of these two most conservative branches of Indian society are proving the reality of their conviction that India’s future strength is dependent upon the progress of her women, by sending their daughters to school, and by promoting the establishment of additional girls’ schools. The Moslem World reported in 19 14, “The movement among Moslems in India for the education of their daughters is growing stronger everywhere. They themselves are opening schools and advocating higher education, while the mission schools and zenanas also report a considerable access of pupils.” Only a few months ago the Indian Messenger an- nounced the decision of the Brahmos of Lahore to establish a school for Hindu girls, which should also offer special courses of study for widows and married women. The same week the Indian Social Reform- er reported the opening ceremonies of a “Girls’ Buddhist College” in Ceylon. The remarriage Nothing in the new attitude of the of widows. 2^^ c f ] nc p ia toward women is more hopeful than the fact that some are determined to promote, and others are willing to tolerate, the education of Hindu widows; and to permit their re- marriage when educated. It will doubtless be many a long day before the bitter opposition to the efforts to give the thousands of India’s widows another chance for life and service will cease. But we have gone a long way, when it is possible to pick up at random almost any current number of the Indian BROADENING HORIZONS IOI Social Reformer and find there in large type, notices such as these: “ Wanted . By a gentleman, Karhada Brahmin, age thirty-six, in the Central Provinces, Provincial Service, who has recently lost his wife, a suitable bride of any of the three sects (widow not objected to) between seventeen and twenty-four years of age, of good family and education. Please communicate with G. L. Subhedar, Barrister at Law, Nagpur. “ Wanted . By a gentleman, Maharashtra Brah- min, age thirty-nine, a practising advocate of the Central Provinces’ Bar for the past twelve years, a bride (widow not objected to) who is a graduate and has read up to the B. A. standard. Please com- municate with M. Bhayanishankar Niyog, High Court Pleader. “ Matrimonial — The relatives of a young widowed girl, about thirteen, caste Brahmin, mother tongue Tamil, are anxious to get her remarried to an edu- cated young man of good character of their own or any other sect of Brahmins. The girl belongs to a respectable and well-to-ao family. Communications may be addressed to Pioneer Co., and the editor of this paper.” The new desires But when all is said, the greatest hope of women. for I ndia’s future lies in the fact that many of the women who have hitherto been to pro- gressive men like “a log around the leg of an ele- phant,” are now themselves eager for newness of life. Gradually even the most timid of the purda- nashins are venturing out to “purdah parties,” such as those which have been given for some years by the ladies of the government houses in India. To be 102 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT sure, all men servants must be banished from the grounds on that day, and not a few ladies bring screens with them, and servants to hold the screens protectingly about them as they walk from the carriage to the house entrance. And once within the house they plant themselves firmly in some secluded nook, whence it is difficult to persuade them to move, even to walk in the gardens, or to take tea in the ad- joining dining room. The fear of seeing or being seen by a man is an ever present one; and even the presence of the band causes them uneasiness, though the bandstand is so heavily and completely veiled with thick curtains, that, though there may be danger of suffocation on the part of the bandsmen, there is no danger of their being seen by even the most careless purdanashin lady. They come with trembling at their daring, many of these timid Mohammedan ladies, but they come, and that is much. One of the rules of etiquette is that Moham- medan ladies must always wear gold in the material of their dresses; and Lady Sydenham, who has played the hostess at many such a gathering, says that no one who has not been present “can imagine the shimmering vision of hundreds of these gaily dressed little women, covered with priceless jewels in hair, on neck, wrists, and ankles, the whole atmos- phere filled with scents as strong as incense. Their hair is mostly wavy and shines with a brilliant black polish, they wear a diamond stud in one nostril, and long trailing ear rings.” It is a dazzling spectacle, a purdah party; dazzling to the outward eye, and to the inner imagination, for it forecasts a new and brighter day for “the secluded ones.” For contact BROADENING HORIZONS IO3 with other and more privileged women has an inevitable result. Gradually the more thoughtful and courageous women begin to wonder whether it might be possible for them, or at least for their daughters, to have a chance to learn the things these foreign women know, and which seem to make their lives so rich and full of interest. And presently they begin to venture out to “Home Classes” and to study many different things. Urged by a great de- sire for their daughters, they begin, too, to make definite attempts to further the cause of woman’s education. The courage And because they care very much of women. that women G f India’s tomorrow may find a clearer path to life than the women of today, gentle women of India have greatly dared, and have lifted up their voices in public, even when men have been present. What courage that takes in a woman of India, only those whose heritage is centuries of repression and contempt can under- stand. But it is done in India today, not once in many months, but whenever the cause of women needs a champion. Witness such items as these in the reports of great conferences, attended by both men and women. They are by no means infrequent nowadays. “The following is the full text of a speech delivered by Miss Joshi at the time of moving the resolution on Female Education at the last Provincial Social Con- ference.” “Mrs. Subba Takshimi Ammal in seconding the resolution said, ‘Miss Srimati Alamelumemgammal in supporting the resolution in Tamil traced the IO4 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT development of female education from the time of Miss Mary Carpenter.’” That the women speakers of India are not only courageous, but able, is the testimony of many an interested auditor. Said Dr. Lee, after attending the National Social Conference of 1917, “No fewer than six Indian ladies took part in the proposing and supporting of resolutions relating to women and girls. . . . All were earnest and fluent, some humor- ous and eloquent. Their simple, but cultured, lan- guage was a treat to hear. The large audience (it was at its largest when they came on) listened with well-marked appreciation to what they had to say. One matronly lady who spoke at great length received more prolonged applause than any other speaker in the conference.” She cares enough, the woman of India, for what life shall be for other women, even to speak on sub- jects that are not popular, to audiences which may be more critical than sympathetic. Witness this account in a Bombay weekly, of August, 1915. “Miss Krishnabai Thakur, M. A., was the princi- pal speaker of the meeting held on July 25th last, to celebrate as usual the passing of the Widow Marriage Act. The meeting was held in the Hari Mandir of the local Prarthana Somaj and it was very largely attended, hundreds of people being disappointed at finding no standing room in the Hall. . . . Miss Krishnabai had a difficult task to perform when she undertook to speak on a subject like widow mar- riage. . . . We must congratulate her on the effective speech she made and upon the successful manner in which she performed her difficult task. . . . Her BOAT-WOMAN” IN CHINA BROADENING HORIZONS IO5 appeal to the reason and the good sense of the com- munity will, we hope, produce a desirable result.” Women in America may, if they choose, indulge in such sentiments as these, “I will work on any com- mittee but the finance.” “Yes, I shall be glad to help in any way I can, except that you must not expect me to raise money.” But such words as these are not for the little woman of India. She will go the full length for the cause she cares for, or she will not go at all. For forty ladies of India to volunteer to raise money for “The Female Education Fund” by house visitation during the Diwali holidays, and to bring in almost eighteen hundred rupees, was a far greater triumph than might appear on the surface, and was so recognized by some of their countrymen, who at a public meeting bore testimony to “the self- sacrificing spirit of the volunteers.” India and the Upon an India like this broke, in the world war. summer of 1914, the word of the great war. And the effect of the war upon India has been very striking. It might have been expected that the first stirrings of the new life of women would have been crushed out by a war into which India began at once to pour her richest treasures of men and money. Surely, in the call to arms men would no longer con- cern themselves about the little things of women. In the greatness of their grief and sacrifice assuredly there would die in the hearts of women the little new- born hopes. How could the blackness of world calamity fail to drive back into an even greater seclusion the women who had taken only the first timid steps toward freer life? But not so. With the war there have come to many IO 6 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT of India’s men and women, ideals and longings which were before the possessions of only a few. The desire to be useful, the eagerness to learn the things which will enable her to serve, the willingness to sacrifice for the cause of life more abundant; these things, which, before 1914, lay dormant in many an Indian woman, have become a flaming passion since the war began. The men of India have gone by hundreds and thousands to fight the battles of England in Europe, and while they have been bearing their heroic part, they have seen more than battle, murder, and sudden death. The letter from a wounded soldier of India to his brother at home, published in the Saturday Evening Post some months past, was penned by Rudyard Kipling. But those who know India, and have seen it since the letters began to come back from Flanders and France, say that it is perfected truth, in the picture it gives of what is happening in the minds of hundreds of soldiers of India today, and in its suggestion of what is going to come because of the new ideals and purposes to which those letters bear witness. “Write, Sahib,” says the wounded soldier to the doctor who has offered to write a letter for him, “My belly is on fire now with knowledge I never had before, and I wish to impart it to my brother — to the village elders — to all people. Take down all the words from my lips to my foolish old farmer brother.” And amid much talk of the war, of French methods of farming, of the kind old lady in whose home he has been billeted, “well-born and educated”; this young Indian dictates to his scribe: “The children wear no BROADENING HORIZONS I0 7 jewelry, but they are more beautiful than I can say. It is a country where the women are not veiled. Their marriage is at their own choice and takes place between their twentieth and twenty-fifth year. They seldom quarrel or shout out. They do not pilfer from each other. They do not tell lies at all. When calam- ity overtakes them there is no ceremonial of grief, such as tearing the hair or the like. They swallow it down and endure silently. Doubtless this is the fruit of learning in youth. (And now, Sahib, we will begin to enlighten him and the elders.) “We must cause our children to be educated in the future. That is the opinion of all the regiment, for by education even women accomplish marvels like the women of Franceville. Get the boys and girls taught to read and write well. Here teaching is by government order. The men go to the war daily. It is the women who do all the work at home, having been well taught in their childhood. We have yoked only one buffalo to the plow up till now. It is now time to yoke up the milch buffaloes. Tell the village elders this and exercise influence. (Write that down very strongly, Sahib. We who have seen Franceville all know it is true.)” The mobilization And while the armies of India fight of women. at th e f r0 nt, the women of India are mobilizing by the hundreds in what is sometimes a blind and groping, but always a determined and purposeful, effort to lay hold on the gift of life, and to learn how to use it aright. A few months past a secretary of the Young Women’s Christian Associa- tion of India visited a city in south India, where for many years missionaries had found it impossible to 108 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT gain any access to the high-caste Hindu women. But on this visit she found no more aloof little ladies, who knew no life beyond the doors of their homes, and who never opened those doors to bid a Christian worker welcome. Instead four newly organized somajes (societies) established since the war by these high-caste ladies, sent her urgent invitations to address them; and exhibited, with pathetic eagerness, the ambitious educational and social programs which they had drawn up. A very few there were, among the throngs who poured out to hear her tell of the life of the women of other lands, who had had a chance to go to schools like the women of those faraway countries, and the pride of the others in these learned ones was very great and very touching. The foreign lady must meet each one of them, and lest she should not fully realize the achievements of one who had secured a college degree, she was introduced as “Miss So-and-sc, B. A.” But had she not been told that the number of those who understood English in her audience could almost be numbered on the fingers of the hands, the foreign lady would never have guessed it. Although over a hundred were packed, literally on top of one another, in a room which would have been crowded by a quarter of that number, they listened with such breathless attention, their eyes fixed on her face with such intensity of interest, that she could scarcely believe that the services of her interpreter were needed. And after it was over they crowded about her. “Stay with us,” they pleaded. “We want to know the things you know. We want to learn the things of which you have spoken. We want to be able to do the things the women of whom you BROADENING HORIZONS IO9 have told us can do.” It was not easy to tell them that she had to take the night train; and the ex- planation that important work in other places de- manded her meant little to those hungry high-caste ladies. ‘‘But what could be more important,” they urged wistfully, ‘‘than to stay here and teach us the things we need so much to know?” Day after day they are coming together, the women of that southern city, to learn whatever they can from whomever they can find to teach them. Wrinkled old grandmothers, and wee bright-eyed girl children come hand in hand to the somaj rooms, almost every day, to sit side by side in eager effort “to learn.” But progress is discouragingly slow when there are none to guide the gropings of those untrained minds. Yet, in the meantime, they are reaching out, those women, in efforts to help. One of those new somajes is already carrying on a home for little orphaned and friendless children. That secretary of the Young Women’s Christian Association found conditions like these practically everywhere she went during months of constant and extended travel in 1916. Everywhere the women were reaching out in desperate eagerness for two things; education, and the chance to serve. And when at the end of her traveling she came back to her headquarters in Bombay, she found on her desk a letter from London. The Woman’s Suffrage Society of Great Britain had received a request, the letter said, from some Hindu women in the Punjab. Their letter had said that they had formed themselves into a somaj, and now they must have someone to teach them, and to lead them to a life of freedom, and of no WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT service to their countrywomen. Would the Suffrage Society send some one very soon? And so, said the letter from London, this request is turned over to you. This is a need for Christian women’s organiza- tions to meet. New life in “The establishment of a wholly new old China. social order for women is apparent to the experienced observer,” a missionary whose work had taken her from one end of China to the other wrote in 1913. “That the order is not defined, that it will be subject to much modification, that the form evidenced today will be rejected tomorrow, awakens no wonder. There is, however, no voice in China to forbid the new life to the women of old China.” Men’s new atti- Certainly the young men of China tude toward give little evidence of any disposition women. to ra j se their voices in protest. When, a few years past, a young gentleman of Peking re- ceived a letter of proposal from a young woman in one of the schools of that city, he answered happily to the question of whether he had accepted, “Why, of course! It is so nice to do things as they do in America!” I well remember a wedding of old China which I attended in Shanghai several years ago. The fright- ened-looking little bride had never seen her husband until the moment when, after the wedding ceremony was over, he raised her heavy red veil and looked at her. Very different are some of the weddings of the China of today. A missionary tells of attending one where both the bridegroom and the bride, who had, by the way, become thoroughly acquainted with each BROADENING HORIZONS III other during several months preceding their marriage, made speeches to the audience, in which they ex- horted them to discard old and undesirable customs, and follow the enlightened example of western lands. A friend in Peking writes of a Chinese girl who had just become a Christian, and who asked her if she would go over the Christian marriage service with her a few days before the wedding. When the ap- pointed time came, both the prospective bride and her future husband appeared, and the two went over the service together, showing keen disappointment at the fact that it contained no reference to her gift of a ring to him. When the day for the wedding arrived they waited together at her home until the time came to go to the church. Some years ago a Chinese woman interrupted a missionary’s attempt to picture the joys of heaven, by exclaiming, “It would be heaven enough for me to have my husband walk beside me on the street as yours does with you!” Many a Chinese woman knows that kind of heaven on earth today. No one nowadays turns to stare at the sight of Chinese husbands and wives making calls together or attend- ing church or lectures or concerts; not even though the husband may be carrying the baby, and stepping aside to let his wife precede him through the door. “There is great encouragement,” says a writer in the Chinese Recorder , “in the numberless instances in which husbands now provide instruction for their ignorant wives, neglected in childhood, and take no small pride in their ability to read, to keep accounts, and order their household aright.” But there are husbands who are by no means content with such 1 12 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT modest proficiency for their wives. Men who come to America to study not infrequently bring their wives with them, and the two study together, either in the same school or in separate ones. Older men are determined that their daughters shall have every chance for a good education. In no Oriental, land is there greater or more earnest interest in woman’s education than in China. The Christian schools are overcrowded with girls from every grade of Chinese society; and many Chinese men have given much money and effort to establish additional schools. There is genuine sympathy, too, on the part of many Chinese men, with the enlarging ideals of woman’s life and work. Chinese husbands and fathers boast shamelessly of the prowess of the women of their family in public speaking, in the work of women’s societies, etc. One of the books recendy published by the Shanghai Commercial Press is a thoughtful study by a Chinese gentleman of the suffragist movement around the world, and it leaves no doubt as to the writer’s sympathies. “One of our greatest causes for encouragement,” says a mis- sionary in inland China, “is that very many of the more enlightened men of China are most deeply anxious that their womenkind should take their true place as equals, and helpers in the work of the world, and these men will help with all their influence toward this end.” Women’s new And the women themselves? It goes longings. without saying that the young girls are stretching out eager hands toward all the fasci- nating new interests which life is offering them. But the desire for fuller life is not theirs alone. “The BROADENING HORIZONS ”3 craving for education amongst the grown-up women is another sign of the times,” writes a missionary, and her letter comes not from a port city, full of western influence, but from the less-advanced interior. “Go into any government school of the great cities, and there you will see numbers of grown women from twenty to forty years of age, seated on benches with the little children, patiently bending over their books and slates in earnest study. ... It is a pathetic sight and full of meaning for the future.” _ T . These changes in ideals for the life of women, which have come throughout practically the entire Orient, have in China come with such bewildering suddenness that the dangers of the situation are perhaps both more serious and more evident than in any other land. “The doors of ignorance and custom, which we have so long prayed God to open, are open now, all open,” says Dr. Mary Carleton of Foochow, and adds, “I would go even farther and say that there are no walls at all. They have been torn down altogether, and pouring out from these darkened homes are myriads of young women and girls demanding amusement, entertain- ment, and knowledge. It is not a good thing to have homes totally without doors.” From Sianfu, many days’ journey from Foochow, Miss Shekelton tells a similar story. “They ask for liberty and education,” she says of the women of her section of the country, “for power, for political rights, while as yet, alas, the far greater majority even of the middle and upper classes are without the training which can enable them to wield power. . . . A handsome, wealthy young lady of Sianfu imagines 114 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT that she is proving her emancipation by standing for hours outside her husband’s gate, on a main thorough- fare, smoking cigarettes. Gaily dressed in a pale blue silk robe, with manners far too free, utterly scandaliz- ing all respectable Chinese who passed by, the poor lady honestly believed that she was acting the correct part of the ‘new woman/ and was following the customs of the West.” New oppor- No one who is at all in touch with the tumties. Chinese women of this transition period can fail to be keenly alive to its many dangers — or to its superb opportunities. For the very in- itiative and fearlessness which in unguided Chinese women have found expression in grotesque and perilous forms, have in other Chinese girls, wisely guided, made possible such splendid leadership and service as that of Dr. Mary Stone, Miss Ying Mei Chun, Miss Yu Ling Chen and a host of others. And it is in the development, through Christian schools, of more such women as these, that Miss Shekelton sees the chief means of preventing “pitiful waste of splendid material,” and developing “the great possi- bilities lying dormant” in so many of the bewildered girls of China today. These girls from mission schools, educated, capable of leadership “are the hope of the future; and they are object lessons to all, of the power of Christ in the uplift of women. But — and this is partly due to the indifference of the home churches in the past — how pitifully few are these trained, educated women, when at so great a crisis many times the number available could be put in positions of leadership.” BROADENING HORIZONS In Japan. ”5 The situation in Japan is not al- together unlike that in China, al- though the influences of western ideals for women began to penetrate the Sunrise Kingdom long before the Celestial Empire had even begun to rub its sleepy eyes. For this reason, and because the Jap- anese woman has always had a greater measure of freedom than any other Oriental woman, changes have come less suddenly. The last few years have given no striking evidences of change in the attitude of the men of Japan toward women. They have rather shown a gradual development of the ideals which Japan began to express years ago, when Mutsuhito, in the early years of his reign, made primary education compulsory for girls as well as boys and declared, “Females hitherto have had no position socially, because it was considered that they were without understanding; but if educated and intelligent they should have due respect.” Changes in It is among the women themselves woman’s life. that there is change. Economic con- ditions are thrusting girls out from their homes, into positions fraught with danger to the ignorant, but into which they go gladly because of their desire for freedom. Young girls in country homes are lured by the excitement of life in great cities, but understand nothing of its dangers. The faculties of girls’ schools are puzzling over problems unknown to the teachers of a few years ago. One teacher says, “When leading educators find it necessary to form a body of in- structions cautioning young women against associat- ing with young men unless properly guarded and chaperoned, we know that the actual position and 1 1 6 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT circumstances of girls of today are absolutely different from those of their mothers and grand- mothers.” Miss Michi Kawai, national secretary of the Young Women’s Christian Association of Japan, says that translations of western novels, especially some from France and Russia, are often responsible for warped ideals. The modern theater, too, Miss Kawai says, has wrought havoc among hosts of Japanese women who throng to see Ibsen’s “Doll House,” and other plays like it, but lack the knowledge of the conditions of society represented by these plays, which would enable them to see below the surface. A friend who made an unexpected trip to America from Japan only a year and a half after her return from furlough, found it hard to believe that so short a time had passed. “I suppose it seems so long,” she said, “be- cause during that year and a half so many tragedies have come to so many of my Japanese friends be- cause they have tried to follow western customs, and have misunderstood them.” Such things as these are greatly to be regretted, but they are an almost inevitable accompaniment of a period of transition, and should not decrease our faith in the fundamental strength and fineness of the women of Japan. Miss Ume Tsuda, that splendid leader in woman’s education in Japan, has summed the matter up sanely and fairly when she says: “It is unreasonable to expect Japanese women to have gained those qualities of mind derived from educa- tion and religion which safeguard modern western women in their free life and intercourse with the world. Impulses are now being set free which were BROADENING HORIZONS 1 17 held in check in the past by external forces, while there is yet lacking judgment and knowledge of true values, and restraint from within, to guide the awakened mind.” The one safe Nowhere, except in Christianity, Miss Guide. Tsuda goes on to say, can the awak- ened mind of the woman of Japan find the guidance which it needs in these days of far-stretching, dazzlingly bright, new horizons. Modern education alone cannot do it, says Miss Tsuda, nor the old religions of Japan which “have little ethical influence, and only a feeble hold at best on modern men and women.” “Christianity,” she says, “especially fills the needs of women at this time of awakening. . . . Christianity places woman on a level with man, her individuality and worth in herself are recognized and full scope is given to her powers. . . . Through its ethical and philanthropic side, Christianity makes the strongest appeal to our women, an appeal which meets a wonderful response in the hearts of sensitive natures, made singularly receptive by the discipline of the past.” Not for the awakening women of Japan alone are Miss Tsuda’s words true. To no country can the life of the Orient of olden days return. Into a new life, freer, fuller, fraught with more numerous dangers and infinitely more and greater opportunities, the women of the East cannot choose but go. And for them all there is but one safe Guide. 1 1 8 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT Christian Missions and Broadening Horizons Many causes there are which have contributed to the changing ideals of the Orient regarding the life of women, but perhaps no other single influence has been so great as that of the mission school for girls. The old Orient was convinced that brains had been omitted in the creation of women. The reply of the Chinese to the missionary who was urging him to send his daughter to school is well known. “Can you teach that horse yonder to read? Well then, if you cannot teach an intelligent horse, what can you expect to do with a woman!” Moreover, the Oriental lords of creation were strongly of the opinion that even if women could learn, it would probably be highly undesirable to permit them to do so. Would they not be less womanly and submissive? It was no easy task to start schools for girls in the face of such a feeling as that, but no obstacles were great enough to dis- courage the women who had left all to bring lifemore abundant to their sisters of the East. Not one or two, but many and many a mission school was started with little waifs and orphans, or the children of the poorest of the poor, who were persuaded to per- mit their daughters to attend school because the teachers prom- ised to provide not only education, but food and shelter and some- times clothing, too. The story of woman’s education in the East is one of small beginnings, great difficulties, and many vicissi- tudes. But gradually the patient, persistent efforts of the mis- sionaries accomplished two things. They proved that brains had not been left out when little girls were made, and that, furthermore, women who had been given education were far more useful and attractive members of the family and com- munity than those who had never been to school when they were little girls. And gradually, young men began to desire educated wives, who would be companionable as well as useful; fathers began to entertain ambitions for their daughters; mothers began to hope that the fullness of life which they had never known might be granted their little girls; and the little girls, them- selves, began to beg to go to school. Mission schools became crowded, new ones sprang up, and even more significant, per- haps, the people of the East determined to take their own share in the education of their daughters, and individuals and govern- BROADENING HORIZONS 119 ments established and maintained schools for girls as well as for boys. There are many schools for girls in the Orient today, but the oldest of them are almost all mission schools. They blazed the trails along which others have followed. Prof. Edward A. Ross speaks truly when he says, “The government schools for girls .... would never have been provided if the mission- aries had not created a demand for female education and shown how to teach girls.” Days of broadening horizons, of change of thought and cus- tom, are days of danger as well as days of hope and opportunity. What shall the new life be to which the women of the East are hastening? We who have sent the women, the schools, the ideals, which have played so large a part in flinging wide the doors to this freer life, must accept the responsibility for the answer to that question. We have had much to do with the passing of the old; we must have much to do with determining the new. We who have taken away the old ideals, the old customs, the old sanctions, must see that the new, so far from being less good than those that are passing, shall be in accordance with the spirit and the teachings of Him who came to bring abundant life. We who have created hunger for education must furnish schools, and schools which are the best in the country, both from the point of view of education and of the development of Chris- tian character. W ? e who have brought into being strange and urgent longings and purposes must furnish leaders in these bewildering days of transition, women made wise and steady and clear-visioned by Christian education. Better were it that we had never come, if we fail them now. Better to have left the women of the East bound in body, mind, and spirit, than to have set them free to stumble gropingly and unguided along ways that are fraught with perils. Our work is not ended. Rather our greatest responsibilities, our greatest opportunities are still before us. 120 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER III. Aim of study: To show the changes that are coming in the life of the women of the East today, to understand their causes, to realize the dangers and opportunities of such a time of transi- tion, and to recognize the challenge to Christian women. 1. What two ideals regarding the life of women are in con- flict in the Orient today? 2. Which of the two, do you think, has the greater number of adherents? 3. Which do you think is likely to prevail? Why? 4. What influences do you think have been most effective in changing the attitude and ideals of many men of the Orient regarding women? 5. What part has missionary work played in creating new ambitions for their wives and daughters among the men of the Orient? 6. What are some of the evidences of new ideals and purposes among Oriental women? 7. How generally are these new ideals and purposes held among the women of the East? 8. How significant are they? 9. What do you think will be the results of them? 10. What has brought them? 11. How has the war affected women’s thinking and living? 12. Has it brought new responsibilities and opportunities to our foreign missionary societies, and if so, what are they? 13. What seem to you the greatest dangers of such a period of transition? 14. Which do you consider the greater, its dangers or its op- portunities? 15. What seem to you its most urgent demands upon us? Copyright by Underuood and U nderurood, N. Y. A MOHAMMEDAN WOMAN— UNVEILED! ' CHAPTER IV. Suggested Scripture Reading. Diversities of workings , but the same God who worketh all things in all. I Corinthians 12: 4-11. The Trail Makers. Oriental women In business; In education; In literature; In medicine; In law; In social a;:d religious work. CHAPTER IV. THE TRAIL MAKERS Women and the “Which one of these jobs can you world war. fill ? The time may soon come when you will have to choose.” Under this pointed ques- tion, a recent magazine printed twenty-four illus- trations of the unwonted tasks which women in warring nations are performing today, such as driving taxicabs, ambulances, and huge mail vans, running trolley cars, acting as switch tenders, collect- ing railway tickets, even directing the movements of great trains from signal towers. Tasks such as these, and many others to which, before 1914, women had never put their hands, are now demanding the services of hundreds of girls and women, and will demand them in increasing numbers. Two compelling reasons there are why our traditional ideas of “woman’s sphere” have burst all bounds within the past years, and can never again be forced back within the old limits. The work of the world must go on. Whether they wish it or not, women must take up and carry on the tasks which men are leaving, some- times for years, sometimes permanently. And life must go on. If families in which the men have been killed, or permanently disabled, are not to die out, women have no choice but to take up work which will enable them to support themselves and others. We have been gradually becoming accustomed in these days of industrial development and broadening 124 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT social ideals to the thought that for some women work outside the home which made self-support possible was necessary. A world war, with cataclysmic sudden- ness, has forced us to a place where we must look upon the woman who cannot support herself as the exception, and where we must recognize that no task which contributes to human welfare can be justly designated as “unwomanly.” War is forcing not a few, but many, women to undertake the most difficult of tasks, and heaviest of responsibilities; and they are giving glowing proof of the powers that lie within them. This aspect of the great war has already begun to have its effect in the Orient. Among the warring nations are many Oriental countries; and especially in Turkey and India there are hundreds of families who must henceforth be supported by the work of women, since the men will not come back. And in those lands where the influence of the war has been less direct, it is nevertheless very real. The peoples of the world are too closely knit together today for any widespread change in the life of women in a number of nations to be without its influence on the life of women as a whole. It is too soon to give many concrete illustrations of the ways in which the occupations of Oriental women have been directly affected by the war. In practically every country of the Orient, however, there has been a gradually increasing number of women who, during the past few years, have been taking up lines of work other than those of home or factory. They have blazed trails into the business and professional world over which we may expect a THE TRAIL MAKERS Mohammedan women in business. I2 5 rapidly growing company of Oriental women to follow, as changing conditions necessitate their economic independence, and broadening ideals make it possible for them to receive the education which will fit them for positions of responsibility and leader- ship. “The Mohammedan attitude toward the self-support of women,” says a recent writer in The Moslem World , “has long been bounded by such doctrine as the following, ‘You are a woman, and, therefore, you may not earn your bread with your own hands; even if as an unmarried woman you have talents which might enable you to better your condition and that of your loved ones, you may not so use them. It would be a disgrace. If your husband is ill and unable to earn anything, you may not earn the means for the main- tenance of the household.”’ Yet there have been occasional women who have been permitted to ‘earn their bread with their own hands’ even in Turkey. “From time immemorial,” says Dr. Mary M. Patrick, of Constantinople, “the treasurer of the royal harem has been a woman, and has had working under her direction a regular bureau of trained women scribes.” To be sure, these women have not been trained in shorthand or typewriting, but neither have the men occupying similar positions. A surprisingly large number of Turkish women have been traders, too, like that Lydia of long ago, the seller of purple, who journeyed from Thyatira to Philippi in the pursuit of her business. They, too, take long journeys to Egypt and other countries, in the interests of their business. But the Turkish women of today are look- 126 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT ing forward to very much broader and more general possibilities of self-support. One of the chief aims of that energetic organization of Turkish women, the “Society for the Defense of Women’s Rights” is “to encourage women to earn their own living by their own work, and to find them work, in order to remedy the present evils.” The Society for the Defense of Women’s Rights conceives its task to be not simply “to encourage women to earn their own living,” but to help to prepare them to do so, and to secure positions for them. Says Ulviye Hanoum, one of its leading mem- bers, “Within the limits of our means, we will open workshops for our women, found schools wherein to teach useful trades and arts, and secure employment for our women in those branches of commerce and industry where women are employed.” The Turkish government, too, is helping to prepare women for self-support by maintaining in Constantinople the Senaye , or Professional School for Girls, and the Dar-ul-Moualimaty or Training School for Women Teachers. One of the chief reasons for the vigorous efforts Mohammedan women are making to free themselves from the veil is that it is an effectual barrier between them and many lines of work which they wish to enter. “A woman with a veil,” says Ulviye Hanoum, “cannot become a ticket agent, a sales girl, a type- writer, or a telephone operator.” It was regarded by the Society for the Defense of Women’s Rights as “an humble but excellent beginning” when through their efforts seven Turkish girls, veils or no veils, were given employment in the telephone ex- change of Constantinople. THE TRAIL MAKERS 1 27 The women of The number of Indian women who India and the are employed in offices, stores, etc., business world. j s st jj[ negligible. Such positions as these are almost entirely held by Eurasian or Euro- pean girls. Nevertheless, an article in The Lahore Tribune stated not long ago, “It is believed that there are no fewer than fourteen women employed in the Criminal Intelligence Department of India, who are actually at work in various capacities.” So far from objecting to this, the Tribune goes on to state that “in India there are special reasons for employing women in the public departments,” and adds that “nothing will prevent a large employment of women for police work in this country of purdah customs. In the Punjab alone,” the article continues, “where twenty thousand offences against women are brought to light every year, police women are sure to be of considerable help.” The decision of Chicago to open special courts for women, where judges, court clerks, pleaders, and attendants should all be women met with the hearty approval of an Urdu paper in India, and called forth an earnest article recommend- ing that similar women’s courts be established in India. There is a strong feeling on the part of many men and women of India that in a country where purdah customs prevail so largely, an increasing number of public positions of various kinds must be held by women. Chinese business “In China,” says a missionary of women. many years’ residence, “many women of the middle class know all about their husbands’ business affairs, and I have often heard it said that it was the wife’s head rather than the husband’s 128 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT which made the business prosper.” A number of Chinese women have proved themselves fully capable of carrying on a business left to them by a husband’s death. “I remember a widow,” says this same mis- sionary, “who had charge of a large shoe store in Shaohsing from the time of her husband’s death until her son grew up. She was very successful and was honored for the way in which she carried on the business.” A worker in Paotingfu writes of “a bright girl, an only child, who wore men’s clothes in order to help her father in his business. She had a deep voice and the disguise was complete.” The very rarity of instances such as these is con- vincing evidence that in most parts of China any real entrance of women into the business world is un thought of. Even in the largest and most modern cities, only an infinitesimal number of girls have taken positions as stenographers or secretaries. a woman There came, however, to the Young banker. Women’s Christian Association of Shanghai a few months ago, a bright, well-educated young woman, graduate of a mission school, who was holding a position of large responsibility in the busi- ness world. That such a position had been entrusted to a woman is an almost startling suggestion of the kind of work which educated Chinese girls may con- sider among the possibilities in the future. She was the manager of the Women’s Department of the Shanghai Commercial and Savings Bank. “The appointment of a woman to such a position is a new departure in banking circles in China, I being the first one in China to occupy such a position. The Shanghai Commercial and Savings Bank is entirely a THE TRAIL MAKERS I29 Chinese concern under Chinese management, but operated on the same principles, and with the same regard to sound business methods, as are practiced by foreign banks,” Miss Nyier told the Association secretary. “My appointment as manageress of the Women’s Department was due to two things: First, quite contrary to the idea prevailing in the West that Chinese women have little or no say and control of the family exchequer, and, therefore, have no money of their own to handle, many women have a large banking business. And secondly, my late father and now my two brothers, having large businesses, have given me great opportunities for learning both Chinese and foreign business methods. Also, not a small part of the business of my department is with the foreign ladies and foreign-educated Chinese women and girls. My having graduated in both English and Chinese from McTyeire School in Shanghai, it was thought by the directors of the bank that* I would be in a position to handle this new department in banking business in China with success and profit to all concerned.” The business It is in Japan, however, that the women of japan, entrance of large numbers of women into the business world is not a highly probable future event to be prepared for, but a very present reality to be faced. Such a situation as is being brought about in many countries today by the great war, came in Japan more than a decade ago as a result of her war with Russia. The necessity of supporting a family to which fathers and brothers did not come back led many girls into offices of many kinds. Recent statistics show that as many as I30 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT 12,543 women are employed in connection with the Department of Communications of the Japanese government. These girls are acting as clerks, stenog- raphers, bookkeepers, etc., chiefly in railway and post offices. Some of them are ticket sellers. The rapidly growing use of the telephone in Japan has brought employment to large numbers of girls. In Tokyo alone approximately twenty-five hundred girls are working in telephone exchanges. Most of these girls are very young, the majority being between seventeen ?nd twenty years old. An increasing number of girls are finding work as stenographers and secretaries with foreign firms. The work re- quired of these girls necessitates a fair amount of education and a knowledge of English, as most of their stenographic work is done in that language. Several girls from mission schools have gone into such positions as these. A few Japanese women are controlling large busi- ness interests. A University professor who not long ago returned from a visit to Japan, when asked which of the many things he had seen had interested him most, promptly replied, “Mrs. Hirooka.” Mrs. Hirooka was a very young woman when she came into full control of the large banking business of the Hirooka family, who were one of the banking agents of the old feudal barons. Political changes had wrought havoc with the Hirooka finances, and the business was perilously near disaster when little Mrs. Hirooka took it in hand. She courageously in- troduced radical changes and within a very short time had built up one of the most successful banking establishments in Japan. THE TRAIL MAKERS Oriental women in education. 131 There have been Oriental women teachers ever since girls began to graduate from the mission schools. Wherever there was a girl who had had a chance to study and who was not forced to take up household duties at once, she never lacked for employment. The difficulty lay in deciding whether she was more needed to help with the younger students in her alma mater or to take charge of some little day school in town or village where there was no teacher. The demand for trained Oriental women as teachers in Christian schools has always been, and still is, greater than the supply. The well-equipped Christian girl who does not marry as soon as she has completed her education can always be certain of a good position in the schools of her mission. But the Christian schools are not the only applicants for the services of educated Oriental women nowadays. The increasing interest in the education of girls which is so marked in practically every country of the East today has created an im- perative demand for women teachers in every kind of school, government, private, and mission. The Orient approves the employment of men teachers in girls’ schools only in rare cases. The most serious handicap to the progress of women’s education in the Orient today is probably nowhere any longer the indifference or antagonism of parents, or of the community in general, probably not even early marriage or the purdah, but the dearth of properly equipped women teachers. Women teachers lt was recently reported that seventy in Mohammedan schools for girls had been established in a single city in Persia, with an lands. 132 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT enrollment of approximately five thousand. But the report went on to say, “Scarcely half a dozen of these schools are doing good, efficient work, but what could be expected when almost none of the women in charge have ever been to school themselves, and have only the most vague idea of what real education is? It is to be wondered at that the schools are ac- complishing as much as they are, and the Persian women who have undertaken this great task in the face of difficulties so momentous are worthy of our deepest admiration and sympathy.” The Persian government is as yet establishing no girls’ schools, and making no effort to train women teachers. Its only connection with women’s education consists in requiring all persons desiring to open schools for girls to secure a permit from the Department of Education, and in appointing a woman supervisor to visit the schools and report on them to the Minister of Education. The only sources of supply for trained Persian women teachers are, therefore, the mission schools. The training of The Turkish government has under- teachers. taken much greater responsibility for the education of girls. It is impossible to gain definite information about what has been done since the war, but at the time the war broke out, the government was making every effort to prepare women to enter the profession of teaching, which is a newer profession for veiled Mohammedan women than for any other Oriental women. The Dar-al- Moualimat, or Training School for Women Teachers, maintained by the government, enrolled, in 1914, 143 students from practically every part of the THE TRAIL MAKERS *33 Ottoman empire. The government has offered special inducements to girls from the provinces, some- times meeting all their expenses, in order that they might go back to their own homes and conduct girls’ schools there. The Turkish government has, however, taken an even more advanced step than this, in sending some of its women to schools which are conducted along the most progressive western lines. Soon after the constitution was declared, a number of Ottoman women were sent to Europe to study. Some of these women have since become teachers in government schools in Turkey. Others have been sent to the Constantinople College to be trained at government expense. At the time the war broke out thirty-five girls were being trained as teachers, either in Europe or in the Constantinople College at the expense of the government. It is to be expected that the British government in Egypt would make some provision for teacher training. Two excellent training schools are pre- paring girls to teach both in higher and preparatory schools. India’s women Approximately twelve hundred worn- teachers. en of India are in educational positions today. Some of them are working alone in little village primary schools, some are at the head of the large staffs of finely equipped city institutions, some are teaching wee brown babies the three R’s, and others are professors in government or mission colleges. A few are affording convincing testimony of the change which is coming in India’s attitude 134 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT toward women, by actually spending their entire time in travel as district inspectresses. Many of these teachers are shining examples of the splendid work of which women of India are capa- ble when given an education; others are less so. But the poor or mediocre work being done by some is frequently more the fault of circumstances than of the teacher. Vacancies are so many, trained women so few, that there is an almost irresistible temptation at times to put a girl into a position which she can fill at a pinch, rather than to wait until she has had enough training to enable her to fill it with complete success. The interval between the time when the girl leaves school and the time she marries is so dis- couragingly short in such hundreds of cases! Or again, the combination of schools which need teach- ers, and families which need financial help, may lead to the appointment of a married woman to a task for which other duties leave her very insufficient freshness of mind, or time for preparation. The comment of a Bombay Public Instruction Report on the task of such a teacher puts the case well. “In addition to the long hours at school she has arduous home duties to perform. In many cases she is the sole bread winner for five or six, none of whom consider it incumbent on them to help her with the household work. Rising at five in the morning or earlier, she has to begin her daily timetable which extends over seventeen hours. It is marvelous that she is able to work as cheerfully as she does.” At the opposite end of the scale are women such as Miss Lena Sorabji, head of the Eden Girls’ High School at Dacca, which is known as “the model high school for the entire province of Eastern Bengal”; THE TRAIL MAKERS 135 Miss Cursetji, who for more than twenty-five years has been devoting most of her time and energy to the Alexandria High School; Miss Chunder Mukki Bose, the first woman graduate of the University of Cal- cutta, for years head mistress of the large Bethune Government College for women; another Miss Sorabji, head of the Victoria High School at Poona; Lilavati Singh, at the time of her early death the president of the Isabella Thoburn College for women; and many others whose lives are wholly given to the cause of the education of India’s women. The crying need Miss Minna Cowan in her book on of teachers. Ehe Education of Women of India makes it very clear that the solution of the most knotty problems connected with the education of India’s women is dependent upon securing a far larger number of trained women teachers. That an increasing number of Indian women will be willing to become teachers in the future is suggested by numerous things. The economic pressure caused by the war will make it necessary for more women to earn money. And the pride which many of the people of India are showing in the girls who have won edu- cational honors suggests that there will be more general approval of educational work for women than of almost any other occupation. _ , .. As public opinion gradually makes it India s widows. r . r 0 • 1 1 r t 1 • more and more possible for Indian widows to play their part in the work of the world, a great unused source of supply for teachers will be opened up. The beginnings already made in this direction are among the most encouraging signs of the times. Such a home for Brahmin widows as that I36 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT in Madras, described in a recent letter from Miss Alice Van Doren, is a little garden spot in the dreary waste of Indian widowhood which gives more than a suggestion of how that sad and desolate desert may indeed be made to blossom like the rose. Miss Van Doren found the thirty-six little widows in the garden, most of them engaged in a jolly game of badminton. “There were no shaven heads,, no widow’s clothes, no fasts, nothing of the sombre to mark them from any other group of Indian school girls. And what pleased me most,’’ says Miss Van Doren, “was that almost every girl had something, be it gold necklace or a string of glass beads, dangling around her neck. That ‘dangle’ to my mind seemed the burning of the last hedge that cuts off the typical widow from her kind. This home is a government institution founded with the twofold purpose of giving a chance in life to the otherwise hopeless widows of the Madras Presidency, and of providing teachers for Hindu girls’ schools, for whom there is always a great and unsupplied demand. If you ask a little widow why she is there, she will reply without a moment’s hesitation, ‘To get an education and to work for my country.’ As a government institution, there can, of course, be no Christian instruction, and caste is observed to a certain extent; yet the work seems to me truly missionary in the widest sense of the term, for it lifts one of the heaviest burdens women can bear.” The head of this institution, Gubbu Lackshmi, is herself a living example of the fullness and service which life may hold for a widow who is given a chance. Herself a Brahmin widow, but the daughter A COOKING CLASS IN JAPAN SOCIAL SERVICE IN CHINA THE TRAIL MAKERS *37 of a liberal-minded father, she received her B. A. from the Presidency College, and later took a full course in manual training. She is a most wise and understanding guide of the little Brahmin widows, who under her direction “are learning to walk the difficult, the fascinating path of the new womanhood of the world.” Even greater and brighter promise for the future is given at Mukti where not thirty-six, but two thousand widows and orphans of India are learning the way to new life. This Christian home for widows was not established and is not maintained by the government. The fertile farm of four hundred acres, the weaving establishment, the printing press, the manual-training shops, the school, and all the rest of the great institution came into being through the work of one woman, and it is under her skillful direction that the great institution has grown from strength to strength. She, too, is an Indian widow, radiant assurance to every discouraged little widow who comes to Mukti, of the joy and service which life may hold even for such as she. And it is to a fullness of life even beyond, far beyond, that to which Gubbu Lackshmi guides her little Brahmins, that Pandita Ramabai leads the widows of Mukti, for the Lord of her life is One whom Gubbu Lackshmi does not yet know, and who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The whole problem of training teachers is one which is engaging the earnest thought and attention of all educators in India. In no land of the East is enthusiasm for the education of women deeper and more marked than in that great China’s educational renaissance. I38 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT country where for uncounted centuries reverence for education has been the dominating influence. China’s political revolutions may have tended to make us forget that the greatest educational renaissance which the world has ever seen has taken place there within the past few years. But the most spectacular revolutions are not always the most significant, and the fact that China has determined that her women shall be educated may mean as much to her and to the world as her decision to adopt a republican form of government. The need of How many Chinese girls are teachers women teachers, today it is impossible to say, but certain it is that there are far fewer than the situation demands. Before 1900 only the Christian schools offered employment to women teachers, for the simple reason that they were the only schools for girls in the country. But today, while the demand for trained Oriental women in mission schools is not less, but even greater, because of the larger numbers of girls who are seeking entrance to them, there are, from one end of the land to the other, hundreds of private and government schools for girls, whose need for trained teachers is well-nigh desperate. As in India, so also in China, the result of this sort of situation is that girls who have had little educa- tion and no training in teaching are influenced to accept positions in which they cannot possibly give good service. But given half a chance what teachers the Chinese women make! The Christian schools have been affording proof of this for many years; and the reports of every mission bear testimony to the loyal, splendidly efficient work which the graduates THE TRAIL MAKERS *39 of girls’ schools have done as teachers, even when greatly handicapped by lack of equipment, trained associates, etc. The chief source The Christian schools are still, and of supply. will probably be for many years to come, the chief source of supply for Chinese women teachers. The government has established teachers’ training schools; but China has had little leisure during these last years to develop her educational plans, and it is not surprising that it has proved almost impossible to secure well-equipped instructors for these schools, to say nothing of turning out trained teachers from them. The indemnity The Chinese government has taken fund students. another step in the interests of wom- en’s education which, though it may seem like a comparatively small thing, is likely to have im- portant results. For several years after the United States remitted the Boxer indemnity fund, the government used it to send men students only to the colleges of the United States. In the autumn of 1914, however, ten Chinese girls were among the indem- nity-fund students, and the government has an- nounced its intention of sending ten women every two years, for five years’ study, until fifty have come. The second group of ten arrived in September, 1916, and twenty Chinese girls are now studying in colleges of the United States, supported by govern- ment indemnity-fund scholarships. Not all of them are preparing to teach, but the majority of them are expecting to go into educational work when they return. These girls are chosen by competitive ex- amination, and are one and all making the kind of I4O WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT record in college which inspires their professors to glowing prophecies about what they will do when they return to China. The women Tiny though she looks beside her teachers of great neighbors, China and India, japan. Japan can boast a far greater number of women teachers than any other Oriental country. Approximately thirty thousand young women are teaching in primary and high schools, and their preparation for their task probably averages con- siderably higher than that of the women teachers of any other Oriental country. Eut such a situation as this is to be expected. Women’s normal schools have been established by the government in every prov- ince, and there are two “Women’s Higher Normal Schools” in Tokyo and Nara for the training of teachers for the advanced grades. The government requires all teachers in its schools to have certificates, and these certificates are granted only to girls who are graduates of government higher schools, or who have satisfactorily passed the government examina- tion for a teacher’s license. But in spite of these efforts to secure thoroughly good teaching, the number of teaching positions in Japan, also, still exceeds the number of well-equipped teachers, and there are not a few among the thirty thousand Japanese women teachers who have not had enough preparation to be able to do good work. But there are many who are proving how skillful well-prepared Japanese women are in handling educational problems. Prominent among them are Miss Tami Mitani, head of the large Presbyterian school in Tokyo, the Joshi Gakuin, and Miss Ume THE TRAIL MAKERS 1 4 I Tsuda, founder and principal of the Joshi Eigaku. Miss Tsuda, before she established her own school, was a teacher in the Peeresses’ School, and also in the Women’s Higher Normal School in Tokyo, and her splendid service to the cause of women’s educa- tion in Japan was recognized by the present Emperor at the time of his coronation, by the awarding of the rare gift of imperial decoration. Whatever other occupations may or may not be open to her, the educated woman of the Orient can always be sure of employment as a teacher. Even the most conservative folk in the Orient, as in other lands, count the training and teaching of the young a suitable employment for “the gentler sex.” And there is no country in the Orient, one might almost say no province, no township, no city, where the demand for qualified women teachers does not far and away exceed the supply of them. Women writers Even in the days before any other self- of the Near East, expression was possible, a few Moham- medan women were sending the children of their brains out to the world into which they themselves might not go. And even under the tyrannical rule of Hamid, they were permitted to publish articles and books, provided they expressed themselves discreetly and on safe subjects. One of the best-known of the Turkish women who wrote before the declaration of the Constitution is Fatima Alieh Hanoum, daughter of Jevdet Pasha, who was a prominent Turkish writer and statesman. Few Turkish women had attempted anything more serious than novels, but Fatima Alieh Hanoum is a student of philosophy and history, and, although she has written a few novels, I42 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT they have always been the vehicle for social and ethical teaching. Her younger sister, Emine Samie Hanoum, is also a constant contributor to journals and magazines. Nighiar Hanoum is another Turkish woman who has for several years been bringing out a number of books, both prose and poetry. Turkish critics say that some of her poems have marked an epoch in modern Turkish lyric poetry. Madame Haiideh The best-known writer among young- Salih - er Turkish women is Madame Haiideh Salih, one of the few women ever decorated by His Majesty, the Sultan. She received this unusual honor at the ripe age of fifteen, in recognition of her services to her country in having successfully trans- lated an English book, Josiah Abbott’s The Mother in the Home , into Turkish. This achievement filled Haiideh Hanoum’s father with such pride that he presented one thousand copies of the little book to the wives of his soldiers. But he did more than that. He sacrificed his own chances of advancement in order that his daughter’s keen mind might have the best training available. If the Sultan would permit her to attend a Ghiaur (infidel) school, he would not ask for any rise in the Department of the Treasury. The Sultan agreed to this bargain and in 1901 Haiideh Hanoum took her Bachelor of Arts degree from the Constantinople College, the first Turkish woman to win such a degree. The first few years after her graduation were very trying ones to Haiideh Hanoum. She married, and became the mother of two sons. But to be shut up in a harem, veiled, with practically no intellectual companionship, no opportunity to use her keen mind THE TRAIL MAKERS *43 or the splendid education she had had, was torture to a woman of her spirit and ability. Writing was her only possible means of self-expression, but there was scant comfort in writing articles which could never be published. All modern literature was ruthlessly re- pressed during those years, and the presence of spies everywhere made it unsafe for a woman like Halideh Hanoum, burning with the desire to help bring free- dom and life to her countrywomen, to utter a word on the subjects which were foremost in her thought. But with the revolution came the opportunity for speech. Halideh Hanoum memorialized the Fourth Army Corps, which had effected the revolution, in a dithyrambic address, which so perfectly and power- fully expressed the feelings of the Young Turks, that she became the idol of the people. The Tanine, one of the leading papers of the Young Turks, asked her to become a contributing editor, and she published article after article on such subjects as women’s education, and the curricula which the new schools should adopt, historical sketches of Turkish women who had lived and achieved in the early days, im- passioned essays on the sorrows of the Cretan Moslems and the cruel massacres of Armenians near Adana, etc. Seven papers and magazines asked her to let them publish some of her articles, and many of the things which she had written during her years of seclusion were gathered together into books. Then came the second revolution. Abdul Hamid, in determined effort to regain power, sent his agents through the city, with a list of two hundred army officers and two hundred civilians who were to be 144 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT killed. On the list of civilians were the names of two women, one of them Halideh Hanoum, whose pen the Sultan regarded as quite as dangerous as any sword. She fled for her life with her little boys to the Con- stantinople College and lay hidden there for days, while the Sultan’s followers destroyed her home, the Tanine office, and all her manuscripts. Finally, her friends succeeded in spiriting her away to Egypt, where she stayed until the Young Turk Party came back into power. Halideh Hanoum has published eight novels, and a volume of lectures on pedagogy, and has contributed innumerable articles on a great variety of subjects to many magazines in Turkey, England, and America. She writes with equal ease in Turkish and English. Hers is a rare literary gift, but few if any of her writings are simply literature, for she has definitely dedicated her gift of expression to the service of her people. Not simply a writer, but “educator, philan- thropist, politician, speaker,” is Halideh Hanoum, said the London Nation a few years ago, in preface to one of her essays. The Women’s That there are many other Turkish World. women who can and do write is evidenced by the existence of an attractive illustrated weekly, The Women's World , the editor of which is a woman, and which accepts no articles which are not w r ritten by women. “The issues of The Womens World,” says the Literary Digest, “prove that the feminist movement in Turkey is to be taken serious- ly.” It has twice been suspended by the Turkish government, but this, declares its editor, Ulviye Hanoum, has been due to misunderstandings. THE TRAIL MAKERS 145 A few women of Egypt have given themselves to writing. The history of Egypt which is used in government schools, by order of the Ministry of Education, and which is meeting a long-felt need, is , the work of a woman, the late Mrs. Hind Ammun, a ' graduate of the United Presbyterian girls’ school in Cairo. Some of the women of Persia, too, are writing. A missionary reports a paper devoted to the interests of women and their homes, edited by two Persian ladies. „ .. On the shelves of a New York book Sarojmi Naidu. t • 1 1 1 1 i store, 1 picked up the other day a little brown book, brought out by a publisher of New York, but written by a woman of India. Amer- ica has become very familiar in recent years with The Crescent Moon , Gitanjali , and other books of RabrindanathTagore, but only a few of us have so far discovered The Golden Threshold , The Bird of Time , and The Broken Wing , the three volumes of Mrs. Sarojini Naidu’s hauntingly beautiful poems. Saro- jini Naidu began to write poetry when she was a little girl of only eleven years old, though her first book, The Golden Threshold , was not published until 1905. Four years ago she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in Great Britain. Just how great a tribute this is, can be appreciated only when one understands how limited the membership of that society is, how few have been the women of any nation to be elected to it, and how rarely any foreigner, man or woman, is invited to join it. “Mrs Naidu’s poetry,” says Edmund Gosse, in an intro- duction to The Bird of Time , “springs from the very I46 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT soil of India; her spirit, although it employs the English language as its vehicle, has no other tie with the West.” All the glowing color and vivid imagery of the Orient are in her poems; together with a rare combination of passionate power and exquisite delicacy of expression. The mysticism of them could have come only from India, and the wistful tender- ness of them only from a woman of India. The American Review of Reviews not long ago published her Salutation to the Eternal Peace as an illustration of “the burning fervency” of her “pursuit of the Eternal,” so typical of India and India’s women. Salutation to Eternal Peace “Men say the world is full of fear and hate, And all life’s ripening harvest-fields await The restless sickle of relentless fate. But I, sweet Soul, rejoice that I was born, When from the climbing terraces of corn I watch the golden orioles of Thy morn. What care I for the world’s desire and pride, Who know the silver wings that gleam and glide, The homing pigeons of Thine eventide ? What care I for the world’s loud weariness Who dream in twilight granaries Thou dost bless With delicate sheaves of mellow silences? .... For my glad heart is drunk and drenched with Thee, O, inmost wine of living ecstacy, O, intimate essence of Eternity.” But there is nothing of the spirit of the fanatic in Mrs. Naidu’s mysticism. It does not, after all, draw her to dreams apart from “the world’s loud weari- THE TRAIL MAKERS 147 ness.” In her new book, The Broken Wing, dedicated “To the Dream of Today and the Hope of To- morrow,” are poems which more truly interpret her spirit and that of the leaders among the women of India today. One of them she entitles “Invincible”: “O Fate, betwixt the grinding stones of Pain, Tho’ you have crushed my life like broken grain, Lo! I will leaven it with my tears and knead The bread of Hope to comfort and to feed The myriad hearts for whom no harvests blow, Save bitter herbs of woe. “Tho’ in the flame of sorrow you have thrust My flowering soul and trod it into dust, Behold it doth reblossom like a grove To shelter under quickening boughs of Love, The myriad souls for whom no gardens bloom Save bitter buds of doom.” Other women A few other women of India there writers of India, have been who have given themselves to the writing of books. Toru Dutt, the young Indian Christian poet, lived long enough to bring out poems which India still treasures; and Mrs. Sat- thianadan, daughter of the first Brahmin converts to Christianity, had written two brilliant novels before her early death. The imaginative genius of the people of India and their gift for expression leave no room for doubt of the truth of the statement recently made by a missionary teacher in an article on India’s women writers: “The heritage is there; it is merely hidden by the cobwebs of disuse. It awaits the magic touch.” WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT I48 Women editors of India. There are a rather amazingly large number of women’s magazines in India today, most of them edited by Indian women. Mrs. Satthianadan of Madras, an earnest Christian, is one of the best-known and most successful women editors in India. Srimati Swarna Kunara Devi is the editor of a women’s magazine in Bengali, and has also written a number of novels in the vernacular, one of which has been translated into English. Mrs. Harkishen Lai of Lahore, graduate of Bombay Uni- versity, edits a women’s magazine, The Moon , in Hindu; a Tamil monthly for women is edited by Miss Thayarammah; Mrs. Sarayubala Dutta brings out another women’s monthly in Dacca; and Miss KumudiniMitra is the editor of The Supravat. Nor are the Mohammedan women of India without their own magazines. Miss Fatima of Lahore edits for those of them who speak Hindustani a monthly known as Shareef Bibi {The Gentlewoman) and a Mohammedan woman in Delhi brings out another magazine for the women of that section of the country. Women editors One of China’s classics is a book of China. written centuries ago on the education of girls, by Lady Tsao. But few Chinese women of modern times have followed the example of Lady Tsao. There is no reason, however, why many of the Chinese girls who have had enough education to make it possible should not write, and the great need of the right kind of books for the girls and women of China makes it very desirable that some women should give themselves to the production of litera- ture. A few women’s magazines there are, edited by Chinese women. An example of one type is the THE TRAIL MAKERS I49 Women's Monthly , the first number of which ap- peared in a gaily colored cover, on the front of which was depicted a young Chinese woman, in an amazing Westernized costume, nonchalantly shouldering a gun and flipping her fingers at a dog behind her. Says a Chinese girl, who studied this issue carefully: “With the exception of three articles, the magazine is absolutely worthless. Not only is the Chinese extremely poor, but the ideals are very low. Even in the more able articles there is a freedom of speech that even male students would hardly adopt. For instance, the second article is about suffragists in England. The writer is devoted to their cause, and heartily approves of the destruction of public build- ings, property, pillar boxes, etc. In addition to this, the article has a decidedly low moral tone.” In a time of such startlingly rapid changes, it is not surprising that some Chinese women have been thrown off their balance. Such a magazine as this is an expression of one of the almost inevitable results of a time of rapid transition, and only em- phasizes the opportunity in literary work for the right kind of women. One Chinese woman editor is already leading in the right direction. The Women s Magazine, published by the Chinese Commercial Press, and ably edited by Mrs. Chu, is not only giving practical and much-needed suggestion to young Chinese women along the lines of home and mother- craft, but is also steadying them by the sane, fine ideals which stories and articles are keeping before them. Mrs. Chu will not leave her twenties behind her for some time and her conduct of the magazine is as understanding of the bewildered girl of new China as it is skillful. 1 5 o WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT Japanese women Many of the masterpieces of Japan’s writers. ancient literature are the work of women, and it is not surprising that a number of the women of modern Japan are giving themselves to writing. Among the well-known women authors of Japan today are Madame Atomi, whose writing is chiefly in Chinese; Saisho Atsuka, the poet; Madame Koganei, Madame Nakajima, Madame Yasano, and Miss Sanabe, writers of novels; and Mrs. Ozaki Yukio, who has written several descriptions of Japanese life, past and present, in English, and who has had books published in America. In practically every Oriental country there is great need for women who will help to mold new national ideals, and point clear, straight paths to bewildered girls and women to whom new ways are opening, as difficult and danger-fraught as they are fascinating and hope-filled. The task of the writer or editor ought surely to claim many an Oriental woman. Women physi- The ri g id rules governing harem life dans of Moham- have made it so difficult for Moham- medan women, even in extreme cases, to receive medical attention from men, that the idea that women should know something of medical prac- tice has not been an altogether unfamiliar one in Mohammedan countries. There is no such prejudice, therefore, against women physicians, as the women of other Oriental countries have had to face. In fact, several Turkish women have for a number of years been performing simple medical service for women and girls. Dr. Patrick tells of a holiday granted the School of Fine Arts for Girls several THE TRAIL MAKERS years ago, in order that the students might all be vaccinated, and of the surprise and interest of a visitor when she saw that the doctor sent to vaccinate the girls was a Mohammedan woman. Dr. Patrick also counts among her personal acquaintances a Mohammedan woman who over thirty years ago attended a series of simple medical lectures for women, offered by one of the men’s medical schools, and who has ever since been making use of the knowledge, elementary though it is, which she gained in this way. “She is simple, dignified, and efficient,” says Dr. Patrick, “and is employed by at least one prominent family, who always trust her treatment except in case of dangerous illness.” No woman has been permitted to practice without a diploma, but no great amount of knowledge has been necessary for the securing of a diploma. During the last few years there has come, however, a recognition of the seriousness of having no thorough- ly trained women physicians in a country where the women are in such large measure shut off from the help of men. Daily newspapers and magazines have been vigorously urging that women take up the study of medicine in earnest, and the department of medical instruction has begun to make efforts to provide thorough training for them. Mohammedan The same causes which led untrained nurses. Mohammedan women to give simple medical help to other women have led them to serve as nurses. But only in very recent years has it been possible for Turkish women to receive any training for this work. During the Turco-Balkan war, Turkey was brought to a keen realization of her need for WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT 152 trained nurses. There were no Turkish women at all who were prepared to give the physicians the skilled help so imperatively needed. First-aid classes were hurriedly opened, and eagerly attended by many women, and for the first time in the history of the Ottoman empire Mohammedan women nursed their countrymen. They could not do what trained nurses could have done, but they used what little training they had with a spirit which gave great promise of what nurses they would make if the way into that profession were opened to them. The Red Crescent Society of Turkey, which cor- responds to the Red Cross Society, and to which many influential Mohammedan women belong, established classes for Mohammedan nurses at the Kadirga Hospital in Stamboul, a few years ago, and when the great war broke had plans under way for building a hospital of its own, with a school for women nurses attached to it. This plan, too, doubt- less awaits the end of the war for fulfilment. But can there be room for doubt that the conviction, born in the Turco-Balkan war, that Mohammedan lands need trained nurses, is being intensified, a hundred fold, during every day of this world war? Surely, the professions of both medicine and nursing, whose doors were swinging open to Mohammedan women when the war broke, will be found to be flung wide when the struggle is over. The need of In India, especially in the Mohamme- women physi- dan communities, there is much the aan« in India. same urgent need for women physi- cians as in the countries of the Near East. “The question of providing means for bringing medical Copyright by Underwood and Underwood, N. Y. THE TRAIL MAKERS *53 relief to the women of India is one that has always been present to the mind of Englishmen, and especi- ally to English women in this country,” said Sir Michael O’Dwyer, lieutenant-governor of the Punjab, in a recent address, and went on to point out the hospitals for women which had been es- tablished as a result of the sympathetic efforts of Lady Dufferin, Lady Minto, and Lady Hardinge. “But,” he continued, “ultimate success lies not so much in the building of hospitals, as in training Indian women to take up the medical profession, or the profession of nursing.” For several years the government has admitted women students to its medical schools, but, as Sir Michael frankly con- fessed, very few women have availed themselves of such a chance for medical study. “Our efforts to attract female students to Lahore (the University of the Punjab) have failed,” he said. “We offered them accommodation, we offered them scholarships, and the possibility of a career. Our efforts were in vain, mainly owing to the disinclination of the female students to follow the same lectures and demonstrations as the men.” There is real difficulty here. The medical lectures are given by men, and, as the custom of the country decrees that the girls shall not speak to them, many a difficulty or misunderstanding must go unex- plained. Moreover, Indian parents find it difficult enough to conceive of their daughters sitting beside men in the same classroom under any circumstances, but that they should attend the same medical lectures is particularly shocking to them. The small number of Indian women physicians is due, not so 154 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT much to prejudice against this profession for women, but as Lady Hardinge pointed out in her address, at the laying of the foundation stone of the Union Medical College and Hospital at Delhi, to the ab- sence of women’s medical colleges. Medical schools Missionary societies have done pioneer for women. work in a few medical schools for women and it is a great tribute to the work of these institutions, and the women they have sent out, that the government is now officially appointing some of them to provide medical training for the women of their sections of the country. It marked an epoch in the history of medical work for women when in 1914 the government of the Punjab recognized the Women’s Christian Medical College at Ludhiana as the provincial college for women for the Punjab, and made it an annual grant of Rs 34,000 (about $1 1,350). The government itself is also establishing medical colleges for women. The medical school at Agra is such a one, and the girls who come there are given a thorough training at government expense. It is a striking and significant fact that although this is not a missionary institution, out of seventy-six students in 1915, seventy-jour were Christians. And it is no less significant that of that seventy-four, sixty-four were girls who had come up out of the mass movement. The Lady Hardinge Medical College, recently opened in Delhi, is another government institution and is giving the girls of that district opportunity for medical training. „ . The Indian women who are already Some pioneers. , . . . , . * , . doing medical work have set a high standard for the very much larger number who ought THE TRAIL MAKERS 1 55 soon to follow them. Dr. Rukhnabai, head of the Lady Dufferin Hospital at Surat, Dr. Nagubai Joshi, Dr. Kashibai Nowrange, Dr. Piroja Bahadurji, Dr. Pheroza Malabiri, Dr. Manekbhai Tankariwala, Dr. Karmarker of Bombay, and Dr. Kheroth Bose, who is working under the Church of England Zenana Society, Dr. Ethel Maya Das, professor in the Ludhiana Medical College, and bacteriologist of the hospital staff, are a few of the women of India who are literally meaning life to their countrymen. Dr. Bose was recently awarded the silver Kaisar-i-Hind medal in recognition of the splendid service she is rendering. One out of many and many an incident which could be duplicated in the life of any mission hospital any day, will show a little of how such women as these are bringing far more than the relief of physical pain to the appealing women of India. Every day, Mrs. Datta had to dress a very deep and painful wound for a little Indian lady, and every day when she asked, “Does the dressing of the wound hurt very much today?” she got the same answer, “No.” But one day, after the usual question and answer, Mrs. Datta exclaimed, “What a story-teller you are. I know it hurts you.” But the little woman looked up through the tears of pain which she could not keep back, and with a voice trembling with the strain of trying to suppress the groans, answered, “No, it does not hurt me. I do not count it pain at all. I know your touch. You all touch me with the touch of love. You direct your probe in love. All pain ceases, and everything is sweetened by the touch of love.” I56 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT Many of the medical schools and hospitals are offering thorough training courses for nurses, and there is the same need for nurses, the same oppor- tunities before them, as for women physicians. And as in Turkey, so also in India, the great war is forcing upon India the realization of her need of trained nurses. The war had scarcely broken out before even Hindu and Mohammedan ladies were enrolling in the First Aid and Home Nursing classes which Dr. Joshi and other women physicians were offering. One of the indirect results of India’s participation in the war can scarcely fail to be an increase in the number of her women who will go into medical work as doctors or nurses. Chinese women Enough Chinese women have already doctors. made not merely good, but remark- able, records in medicine and surgery to suggest that the women of China have a peculiar aptitude for such work. The stories of the work of Dr. Hii King Eng, Dr. Mary Stone, Dr. Ida Kahn, Dr. Li Bi Cu, Dr. Li Yuin Tsao, products of missions, have been told many times, and cannot be told too often. And there are other Chinese women, graduates of Dr. Fulton’s medical school in Canton, or of the Southern Methodist school in Soochow, a very few from the younger Union Medical College of Peking and a few, perhaps, trained not in a medical school, but in a hospital, who are less well-known to us because they have not been in America, but who are doing superb work. These three women’s medical schools, all under missionary auspices, are, so far, the only schools in China where girls can receive a thorough training in THE TRAIL MAKERS 1 57 modern medical science. The government has not yet established medical schools for women, and there are undoubtedly many other lacks which the Depart- ment of Education will have to try to fill, before it can attempt anything along this line. Yet the Chinese government wants women physicians. When the second little group of women indemnity-fund students sailed for the United States, they were told that if any of them enjoyed scientific work, and were inclined toward medical training, the govern- ment would be pleased. Four of these ten girls are now preparing for medical work. How great is the need for women physicians, is indicated by almost every report of medical mission- ary work for women. “While we are waiting for these girls to complete their course,” reads a recent article on the Women’s Union Medical College of Peking, “our hospitals at Changli and Taienfu are closed for lack of physicians, and two others are inadequately staffed or equipped.” The hope of the situation lies not in the handful of missionary doctors who can be sent out, important as they are, but in a large number of Chinese women who will give themselves to medical work. Mrs. Bashford, wife of Bishop Bashford of China, writes: “Some have thought that men must take charge of women’s hospitals, since no missionary society can find even the limited number of women physicians it is able to send to the foreign field. But here are Chinese Christian women rising up to meet the need.” The fact that in the autumn of 1915, the enrollment of the Women’s Union Medical College jumped from eight to twenty-nine serves to show how glad Chinese girls are to take such training I58 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT when it is open to them. The number would have been very much larger had the entrance require- ments not been so splendidly high, and will un- doubtedly increase rapidly as more girls are prepared to meet these requirements. The nurses’ profession is sure to attract a growing number of Chinese women. Of the opening of the training school for nurses established by the American Board in Tochow, Mrs. Roys wrote: “Changing conditions now make possible what a few years ago would have been im- possible in Shantung, namely, to have a woman stay single and follow a profession without losing the respect of the people. Parents who a few years ago would have scorned such a proposal are now asking to have their daughters join this first class.” Japanese women The number of Japanese women physicians. physicians is not large. A recent article places the number of those who are in actual practice as below three hundred. There is not quite the same imperative demand for them as in countries where the women have been so much more secluded than they have ever been in Japan. Yet there is a gradual increase in the numbers of women who are entering this work. The present figures are considerably larger than those of 1896, when only thirty women physicians were reported, and the number of Japanese women now in medical schools suggests that medical work is making an increasingly strong appeal. Such women as Dr. Yoshioka, prac- ticing physician and head of the women’s medical school of Tokyo, Dr. Takahashi, for over forty years a well-known figure in the medical world of Japan, THE TRAIL MAKERS Japanese nurses. *59 Dr. Sono Mayeda, and Dr. Tomo Inouye, are all doing such work as to make the way easier for all Japanese women who follow after them. If the number of Japanese women physicians is small, the number of nurses is amazingly large. The government has established nurses’ training schools in almost every prefecture, and it is estimated that there are three thousand nurses in the city of Tokyo alone. Japanese women seem peculiarly fitted for the work of nurses in several respects. They have behind them cen- turies of training in unquestioning obedience and absolute self-control; and Japan’s age-long emphasis on loyalty and fortitude as the supreme virtues have bred in the women, quite as much as in the men, wonderful courage and the power of almost limitless self-sacrifice. Long practice in self-control keeps the Japanese nurse cool and steady in times of crisis, and the samurai code of her ancestors makes her do what it is her duty to do, fearlessly and quietly, no matter what the danger may be. She has proved the stuff she is made of in times of cholera epidemic or plague; in the unnoticed everyday tasks and in the more spectacular service of wartime. Several com- panies of Japanese nurses have been serving under the Red Cross in Europe almost ever since the great war began, and have more than earned the decora- tions given them by the French and English govern- ments, and the military honors with which their own government has welcomed those of them who have returned from the front. And, by the way, that Oriental women should be accorded military honors by an Oriental government is one of the significant signs of these thrilling times. l6o WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT Although Japanese nurses have rendered such splendid service, this work has not yet attained the dignity in Japan which it has in Europe and America, and is still too often thought of as a trade rather than a profession. Wages, hours of work, and conditions of life leave much to be desired. The report of a recent commission reads: “Probably no class of young women needs to know the comfort of the Christian life more than nurses. They are in the midst of suffering all the time, and the hours are desperately long and strenuous. They receive, for the most part, low wages, and when they leave training the housing problem when off duty is a serious one. Nurses’ unions are numerous, but are, for the most part, agencies for the exploitation of the nurses. There is need for some Christian agency to help nurses, not only individually as occasion and opportunity arise, but to provide facilities, social and physical, which will create an environment in which spiritual fruits will have a large chance to take root and grow.” Oriental The woman lawyer is scarcely known women lawyers. j n the Orient, but there is good reason to suppose that this profession, too, will offer oppor- tunity for self-support and service to educated Eastern women in the future. Dr. Patrick says of Mohammedan women, “There are as yet no lawyers among them, but for very many years it has been the custom for them sometimes to plead their own cases in the courts of law, having first studied up the legal points connected with them — and a Constantinople lawyer has declared that they often do this with great eloquence.” The brilliant career of Miss Cornelia Sorabji, the Christian Parsee, who holds the THE TRAIL MAKERS 161 post of legal adviser to the Bengal government for women in purdah is well-known; and two other wom- en of India, Miss Regina and Miss Hannah Guha of Calcutta, have recently taken degrees in law. One of the first requests of some of the Chinese women after the revolution was for a law school, but as yet few, if any, Chinese or Japanese women have entered the legal profession. Social and New purposes and new opportunities religious leaders. are opening up new lines of work for women. Such work as that undertaken a few years ago by Manzara Kaprielian, a graduate of the Constantinople College, suggests a way along which many women of the Near East will soon be following. In a village of Asia Minor, a day’s wagon journey from a railroad, with perhaps twenty men and two women among its thirty-five hundred inhabitants who could read, this young college graduate made her home. At first that home was one little room, but her vision of the future was a little settlement cottage, with reading and recreation rooms, a model of order and cleanliness for all who saw it. “My village life and this small new world of work have been full of mercies,” she wrote. “Our nearest villagers are catching the new disease ‘cleanliness,’ and begin to wash their windows and houses. I am with them and among them, cleaning up houses, washing clothes, making bread, and setting up threads for their looms. I have quite a good room for myself with a little rent. Each corner has its special use — a bedroom, a sitting room, a pantry, and a kitchen with a big oven. Perhaps the Exhibition at St. Louis had less ad- mirers than this mysterious room of mine, which l6l WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT drew the admiration of all the village women. One said, ‘You have gathered the flowers of seven moun- tains in your room,’ others, ‘Surely God will be found here, it is so clean,’ and ‘How will you leave these things when you die?’ ” The great social worker of India is Ramabai, the pioneer, but a number of other women are giving their entire time to social service on a smaller scale. Some are in charge of homes for widows and orphans, some are doing what practically amounts to city settlement work under the auspices of the Seva Sadan and similar societies, of which more will be said in the next chapter. An example of what Chinese women can,anddo,do in such occupations as these is given by modest little Mrs. Cheo of Nanking, who is, says Dr. Robert E. Speer, “a representative of this large and growing company who are rebuilding the new China. Three years ago when the southern soldiers were returning after the revolution, they brought with them to Nanking hundreds of boys and girls whom they were carrying south as household slaves. The children were taken from them in Nanking and given to Mrs. Cheo. For a time the republic supported them and then discontinued its support, until, through the appeal of friendly missionaries it was resumed. Six hundred orphans are cared for now in the orphanage with a discipline, a management, a practicalness of education, and a tenderness of sympathy such as could be envied in any other land. And the whole institution and its wonderful work rest on a frail little slip of a Chinese woman who fears no man, and loves only God and duty.” THE TRAIL MAKERS 1 63 Ever since missionaries have been in the East, Oriental women have been helping to carry the good news of the gospel to other women. The work of the loyal, devoted Bible women has for many years com- pelled our admiration. For such work as this. Oriental women will always be needed in every land. They, better than anyone else, can make the Story real and clear to the groping, wondering minds of their own countrywomen. And, as more and more Oriental girls receive education, there should be an ever-growing number of Oriental women in religious work who are not only fervent in spirit, but well- equipped mentally. The earnest old saint who has learned, by dint of herculean effort, to pick out slowly the words of the Bible story, has been greatly used of God. But there is even greater service waiting for the women who, with equally patient and sympathetic hearts, and quicker and more finely trained minds, can make clear paths for the stumbling steps of burdened women and the eager feet of little children, straight to the heart of God. They are not many in number yet, the women of the Orient who have found in business and pro- fessional life, the way of self-support and service. Not great in numbers are they, but very great in significance. Over the new paths which they are so quietly but so effectively blazing, will come tomorrow a far greater company than they. 164 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT TWO CHRISTIAN SOCIAL EXPERIMENTS It is well to remember that the social progress of the women of the Orient may usually be traced directly or indirectly to Christian missionaries who have blazed the traii. Think of the effect, for example, of the work of such women as Miss Bullard in India, and Miss Bonnell in China. Suppose you looked out of your window one afternoon and saw the vacant space across the street filled with strange, wild- looking folk and disconsolate little donkeys, and suppose that when you asked a nearby policeman about them he answered, “Oh, that’s Gang No. V. of the Erukalas. They are thieves and we are here to watch them, and we sleep by them all night to see that they don’t go off committing robbery.” Suppose! Would your first impulse have been to ask them all to come, bag and baggage, fifty donkeys and all, and stay in your grounds, where they would be more comfortable? And when you had gathered them all there, would you have gone to the district superintendent of police and asked him to give you ail those people to look after, instead of sending them to the mica mines? And when he said, yes, he would, provided you would take not only this group, but the whole tribe, which numbered about two hundred families, what would you have said? What Miss Bullard a dauntless little missionary in India said was, “All this seems so like the working of God’s plan for the saving of these poor, down-trodden, wicked men that we cannot refuse.” So she set them to clearing a piece of ground which was overgrown with cactus, not because they were good and efficient workmen, but because they must be taught to work. Meanwhile word was sent out to other members of the “Red Thieves’ Tribe,” that any who cared to come would be very welcome on the mission compound. And the invitation was promptly accepted. Men, women, children, cattle, sheep, goats, dogs, cats, came pouring in. “How can one describe these w'ld-looking creatures?” Miss Bullard wrote. “Many of the men have hard faces showing that crime is not a new thing to them. Others again have bright faces and it is hard to believe that they have ever done such wicked things. The women are so uncivilized that they are THE TRAIL MAKERS 1 65 dirty and unkempt in the extreme. . . . The children are bright little things, as scared as little rabbits at first. . , . Dirt and noise seem to be the words that best describe the Erukalas.” But if you were to visit this colony of “Red Thieves” today, you would not recognize them from this description. Not at all! Out in the fields or at the looms, you would see men as busy at honest work as if they had never thought of being thieves. And you would never dream that the women, who are so diligently performing the household tasks of their neat little homes, were once “dirty and unkempt in the extreme.” And as for the chil- dren! The decorous little maidens in the girls’ school and the bright-eyed little fellows in the boys’, bear scant resemblance to the “scared little rabbits” who ran whenever anyone looked at them not so very long ago. The entire colony regularly and eager- ly attend church and Sunday school on Sundays, and morning prayers every day, and many have asked to be admitted to the church. Such are the “Red Thieves” today. Let’s suppose again, for a minute. Suppose that you had applied to your mission board to be sent to China. And suppose that no doctor would give you a medical certificate; and that after you had met your Board and tried to persuade them that you were able to go no matter what the doctors said, you had a serious illness which made everybody say, “ There — you see!” Suppose! What would you have done? This is the story of what Cornelia Bonnell, Vassar, ’97, did. She secured a position in a private school for the children of foreign residents in Shang- hai. And while she was teaching little Americans and Britishers, she learned the ways of the city she lived in, and learned the lives of some of its girls. Into Shanghai’s “City of Dreadful Night” she went, where little girls are bought and sold, where heavy coats of gaudy paint cannot hide the horror and anguish of young girl faces, where hundreds upon hundreds of girls and children are lost every year in the horrible whirlpool of vice. For two years Cornelia Bonnell taught, then, at twenty-five years of age, she resigned her position and with dauntless disregard of the fact that she had no Board behind her to support her in her purpose to do what no one else had ever thought it possible to attempt, she went into the very heart of the “City of Dreadful Night.” In November, 1901, the “Door of Hope” opened, and WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT 1 66 for sixteen years Cornelia Bonnell rescued and cared for hun- dreds of girls and children who had been unwillingly sold or rented into a life of shame. This is the work of the Door of Hope, as Mrs. Henry W. Pea- body saw it three years ago. “Out in the sunny suburb we were taken to the Industrial Home, established by Miss Bonnell, Angel-of-Lost-Girls. She was not there, but Miss Morris and other workers greeted us, and took us through the rooms where hundreds of girls were at work. Some were doing dainty em- broidery, exquisite baby dresses, trousseaux for brides, lingerie. Some were dressing fascinating Chinese dolls, carved skilfully from wood, representing various classes. “ ‘I wish you could be here for the Bible lesson,’ Miss Morris said. ‘It is wonderful to see how quick they are.’ “ ‘But are they happy?’ I asked. “ ‘Yes, even happy. We do not speak to them of the past or allow them to refer to the old life. It is literally blotted out as they enter here, and in a short time the worst of it seems to be forgotten.’ “One girl in the Bible class was studying John 14. I asked her what she thought heaven was like. Her face beamed as she said, ‘It seems to me it must be like a great big Door of Hope.’ “There were little children in another home farther out in the country, a real home under the trees where rescued children under ten years of age are taken and are helped in play and work to forget. ‘Who supports it all?’ I asked. ‘Miss Bonnell, who started the work. She has done it all. She began with a little group of five praying women in Shanghai in 1900. She worked out the plan, organized a committee, has literally prayed these buildings into being, for there is no Board back of us. God has sent help as it was needed, as God sent the woman who was needed for this terrible task.’ ” In 1916, Cornelia Bonnell’s frail body was no longer able to endure the strain she had put upon it; but her work goes on. Other missionaries are keeping the Door of Hope flung wide to every suffering Chinese girl who needs the shelter and the care that lie beyond it; and strong-faced, sympathetic Chinese workers are leading hundreds of tired-eyed girls back to life and joy and usefulness. Suppose Cornelia Bonnell had been content to be an invalid. Suppose! THE TRAIL MAKERS 167 QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER IV. Aim of study: To realize the ability of the Oriental women who have had opportunities for education; and to know some- thing of the occupations and lines of service open to them. 1. What changes do you think the war will bring in the lives of the women of the world in general? 2. How do you think it will affect the lives of the women of Oriental countries in particular? 3. What profession has, up to this time, claimed the largest number of Oriental women? 4. What profession seems to you to offer the largest oppor- tunity for service to an Oriental woman? Why? 5. How do you explain the fact that there are so large a number of business women in Japan, and so few in any other Oriental country? 6. What seems to you the greatest single obstacle to the spread of woman’s education in the Orient today? 7. In what ways can the women of America help to remove this obstacle? 8. If an able girl of the Near East, with an aptitude for scientific study, asked your advice as to whether she should prepare herself to be a physician or a teacher of science, what would you say to her? Why? 9. What will be some of the chief problems solved if the widows of India can be released for service? 10. If you were supporting a Chinese woman worker, would you choose a teacher, a writer, a physician, a nurse, a social worker, or a Bible woman? Why? 11. If you were an unmarried woman of Japan, what line of work would you choose to enter? Why? 12. In what ways does it seem to you that the women of America can guide and help the women of the Orient in these transition days of the setting of standards and forming of ideals in the new business and professional life of women? CHAPTER V. Suggested Scripture Reading: The Unity of the Spirit. Ephesians 4:1-7. Women Working Together. Moslem Women: In patriotic service; In social service. The Women of India: Working for their country; Coming together to work for the women of their country. The Women of China: Their share in the revolution; Their organizations for the service of others. The Women of Japan: Their patriotism; Their united work for the needy of Japan. CHAPTER V. WOMEN WORKING TOGETHER “Yet must I go where the loud world beckons And the urgent drum beat of destiny calls, Far from your white domes’ luminous slumber. Far from the dream of your fortress walls. “Into the strife of the throng and tumult. The war of sweet Love against folly and wrong. Where brave hearts carry the sword of battle, ’Tis mine to carry the banner of song. “The solace of faith to the lips that falter, The succour of hope to the hands that fail. The tidings of joy when Peace shall triumph. When truth shall conquer and Love prevail.” Not for herself alone, but for many and many a woman of the Orient today does one of India’s poet- daughters speak in this song of consecration to a splendid quest. Summoned by “the urgent drum- beat” of a new and vivid day, they are coming out from the “luminous slumber” of the harem, from the fortress walls of century-old custom, to an ardent and gallant adventuring along unknown and often rugged ways. They, who have lived their lives apart, whom walls of custom, of prejudice, of suspicion, have separated even from each other, are joining hand in hand today, to wage together “the war of sweet love.” Love of country, love of humanity, love of God; these are the living fires which have burned 170 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT away innumerable ancient barriers of division and joined women together in the glowing purpose to serve. Patriotism in The patriotism of some of the women Persia. of Orient has never been excelled. “The women teach us how to love our land,” the men of the National Assembly of Persia are reported to have said, when the treasured jewels of women were sent to them with the message, “We are women and cannot fight, but we give to our country.” And Mr. Morgan Shuster, the Treasurer-General of Persia during the revolution of 1911, said, “Without the powerful moral influence of the Persian women, the so-called chattels of the Oriental lords of creation, the short-lived, but marvellously conducted revolution- ary movement in Persia would have paled early into a mere disorganized protest.” It is a dramatic picture that Mr. Shuster paints of women’s part during that darkest hour of the revolution when Russia had issued her ultimatum, the acceptance of which meant Persia’s complete abdication of her sovereignty. The National As- sembly voted unanimously to reject the ultimatum, but there were neither men nor funds with which to resist, and the Cabinet, panic stricken, brought pressure to bear upon the National Assembly in an effort to persuade them to change their decision. Then it was, says Mr. Shuster, that out from the walled court yards and harems, there marched three hundred veiled women. “They were clad in plain black robes, with the white net of their veils dropped over their faces. Many held pistols under their skirts or in the folds of their sleeves. Straight to the WOMEN WORKING TOGETHER I7I Assembly they went and, gathered there, demanded of the president that he admit them all. The presi- dent consented to receive a delegation of them. In his reception hall they confronted him, and, lest he and his colleagues should doubt their meaning, these cloistered Persian mothers, wives, and daughters tore aside their veils, and confessed their decision to kill their own husbands and sons and add their own bodies to the sacrifice, if the deputies should waver in their duty to uphold the liberty and dignity of the Persian people and nation. A few days later the Assembly was destroyed by a coup d'etat executed by Russian hirelings, but its members were stainless of having sold their country’s birthright.” The mosques were crowded with Persian women during the days of the revolution, and in the sections reserved for women many of them read burning patriotic addresses, exhorting their countrywomen to stand firm in loyalty to the dream of Persian in- dependence. “And,” says a missionary who was in Teheran during those months, “the men, listening from a distance, would send someone to borrow the addresses and read them in loud tones for the benefit of the men present.” It is well known, Mr. Shuster says, that there are dozens of more or less secret political societies among the Persian women, with a central organization by which they are controlled, and in his story of his experiences in Persia he tells of various ways in which he felt the influence of these societies. The short-lived revolution over, Persian women did not go back to sit in their harems in discouraged idleness. Many of them suffered severely in the days 172 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT of reaction which followed the first brief triumph of reform. Personal privation, loss of property, the murder of dear ones; all these they knew. Some were driven from their homes in the darkness of night, and forced to flee, half clothed, to places of safety. But, said a missionary, “Little repining has been heard; they are setting their faces to the future, and adapting themselves to changed conditions.” There was still work to do. Their missionary friend goes on to write: “The women of this city (Teheran) have made astonishing progress, considering their lack of education and the ordinary privileges of women in Christian countries. Still behind the veil, still re- stricted by religious law, still considered man’s in- ferior, they have this last year established over a hundred schools for girls, attended, as the inspector of schools informs us, by some hundreds of pupils!” Turkish women’s “Turkish women, too,” says one of work for their the professors in the Constantinople country. College, “have shown heroism, self- sacrifice, love of liberty and of humanity, intelligence in service, and a lofty quality of devotion to an ab- stract cause.” When the Young Turk Party was organized, women were the messengers who carried dangerous messages and secret papers from one harem to another, for a Mohammedan woman may never be searched. Women, who had received enough education to make it possible, helped to rouse other women to intelligent patriotism by writing. The patriotism o; Turkish women has shown itself in very practical ways. When the Turkish army was moving on Adrianople the second time, a group of Turkish women raised an amazing amount of money WOMEN WORKING TOGETHER 1 73 for the campaign, by bringing ten thousand women together in two great mass meetings, and presenting the need of funds to them. Women’s organi- In Turkey, too, since the revolution, zations m Turkey, women have been organizing. In Stamboul is the Taarli-Nissvan, or the “Society for the Elevation of those who are Veiled.” The mem- bers of this society are studying English under the guidance of a teacher, and hope to translate into Turkish many English books of the kind that will be interesting and helpful to Turkish women. In Constantinople the women are organized in the Nludafa-a-y-Houkouki Nissvan , the Society for the Defense of the Rights of Women. This society aims to accomplish large things for the women of Turkey, and is seeking: “1. To transform the outdoor costume of Turkish women. “2. To ameliorate the rules of marriage according to the exigencies of common sense. “3. To fortify woman in the home. “4. To render mothers capable cf bringing up their children according to the principles of modern pedagogy “5. To initiate Turkish women into life in society. “6. To encourage women to earn their own living by their own work, and to find them work in order to remedy the present evils. “7. To open women’s schools in order to give to young Turkish girls an education suited to the needs of their country; and to improve those schools already existing.” The illustrated weekly paper for women, edited by 174 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT Ulviye Hanoum, the columns of which are open to any woman writer who cares to contribute, is issued under the auspices of this society. And, says an English visitor to Turkey, “If every Turkish word were badly spelled, and every phrase badly con- structed, and every article poor, I should still rejoice in the publication of Kadinler-Dunyassi because it is a co-operative effort. Co-operative effort alone can save Turkey.” In the Society of the Red Crescent, also, under the leadership of Princess Nimet, Turkish women have worked together, rendering splendid service among the wounded and refugees in wartime; and building hospitals and promoting the training of nurses in times of peace. The loyalty of Expressive of the passionate devotion India’s women. to h er country of the woman of India today is Sarojini Naidu’s foreword to her new book, The Broken Wing . — “In the radiant and far-off yesterdays of our history, it was the sacred duty of Indian womanhood to kindle and sustain the hearth- fires, the beacon-fires, and the altar-fires of the nation. The Indian woman of today is once more awake and profoundly alive to her splendid destiny as the guardian and interpreter of the Triune Vision of national life — the Vision of Love, the Vision of Faith, and the Vision of Patriotism. Her renascent consciousness is everywhere striving for earnest ex- pression in song or speech, service or self-sacrifice, that shall prove an offering not unworthy of the Great Mother in the eyes of the world that honor her. Poignantly aware of the poverty of my gift, I still venture to make my offering with joined palms up- lifted, in a salutation of song.” WOMEN WORKING TOGETHER I75 Loyalty to the “Great Mother” is leading many a woman of India to keep in touch with every effort made to raise the level of her country’s life, and to give her earnest support to such efforts in every way she can. When a bill in which she believes is pre- sented, she cannot, it is true, help its passage by her vote; but she can and does express herself in favor of it. Such newspaper notices as these are no rarity in India today: “Under the auspices of the Hindu Social Reform League a largely attended meeting was held in Anderson Hall, to signify approval of the principles of Mr. Dadabhai’s Bill for the protection of minor girls. ... A Hindu lady supported the resolution in an eloquent speech in Tamil.” “In connection with the Ladies’ Meeting held in the South India Brahmo Somaj on Saturday, Mrs. Chidambramnial, Mrs. Chetty, and others discussed the Civil Marriage Bill introduced into the Imperial Legislative Council and resolved to adopt a memorial to be sent to the Madras government with a request that Mr. Basu’s bill be brought into law.” “Mrs. Ranade’s eloquent and impressive speech at the great meeting held in Bombay in support of Mr. Basu’s Civil Marriage bill will be long remem- bered by those who heard it.” Measures and actions which are a blot on India’s fair name are instantly condemned by Indian women. After the attack upon Lord Hardinge in Delhi in 1913, Indian women in all parts of the country met to pass resolutions “embodying their horror at the attempt on the life of His Excellency, the Viceroy, and their high appreciation of the serene and un- I76 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT faltering courage manifested by Her Excellency, Lady Hardinge.” Even the most secluded pur- danashins of Bombay, who were reluctant to attend the meeting of women held in the Town Hall, had a meeting of their own in the palace of Her Highness, Lady Alishah. “It was a sight never to be forgotten,” says Lady Sydenham. “The gardens round a foun- tain were filled to overflowing. The porch, doorway, hall, landings, staircase, and huge rooms were crowded, and Her Highness sat on a small platform with a table in front of her piled with annas, the offerings of the thousands of women who came at her bidding to prove their sympathy. . . . There were over five thousand present.” The municipal franchise was granted to women property owners of the Bombay Presidency some years ago, and as it enables them to have a share in the election of members of the Legislative Council, they have an indirect influence in affairs of the Presidency. A few women have been candidates for office in India. Mrs. Mohanlal Nehru of Allahabad was reported a candidate for the Civil Station Ward a few years ago; and Mrs. Hemlala Sarkar, a Hindu lady, has been one of the commissioners of the municipality of Darjeeling. It is reported that when she became a member, the Board began to give in- creased attention to the sanitation of the city. After all, even in India, men cannot be expected to be as good housekeepers as women! India’s women The loyalty of India’s women has and the war. never been more convincingly or beautifully demonstrated than since the outbreak of the great war. Early in the war they came together WOMEN WORKING TOGETHER 1 77 in cities great and small to express their loyalty and offer their services. “To those who know the women of India,” reads an article in an English newspaper, “and the scant interest that they have hitherto manifested in the affairs of the world wider than their own secluded circle, the practical efforts that they have made on behalf of Red Cross labors, and the sending of comforts to the troops are among the most remarkable of the unexpected results of the yy war. In the great cities, Hindu, Mohammedan, Parsee, and Christian women are working together to send comfort bags, clothing, bandages, food supplies, and money to the front. The women of Bombay alone sent forty-nine thousand articles to the St. John’s Ambulance Association during the first six months of the war. From towns in the interior come stories of the first meetings of women ever held for any purpose whatsoever, meetings at which women “spoke with fervor of the happiness and prosperity they enjoyed under British rule” and pledged their services and gifts to relief work. Their loyal ty, their gifts, their efforts, their prayers; the women of India are giving all these, and more than these. They have not withheld the greatest gift. And all that they have given, they have offered with a spirit which could be expressed only by one of themselves. To the gifts of the Ladies’ Relief Association of Hyderabad, Sarojini Naidu added “a salutation of song”: “Is there aught you need that my hands withhold? Rich gifts of raiment, or grain, or gold? Lo, I have flung to the East and West 178 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT Priceless treasures torn from my breast, And yielded the sons of my stricken womb, To the drumbeats of duty, the sabres of doom. “Gathered like pearls in their alien graves, Silent they sleep by the Persian waves. Scattered like shells on Egyptian sands They lie with pale brows, and brave, broken hands, They are scattered like blossoms mown down by chance. On the blood-brown meadows of Flanders and France. "Can ye measure the grief of the tears I weep, Or compass the woe of the watch I keep, Or the pride that thrills through my heart’s despair. Or the hope that comforts the anguish of prayer. Or the far, sad, glorious vision I see Of the torn, red banners of victory! “When the terror and tumult of war shall cease, And life be refashioned on anvils of peace, And your love shall offer memorial thanks To the comrades who fought in your dauntless ranks. And you honor the deeds of the deathless ones, Remember the blood of my martyred sons.” Working together In the “Survey for the Year” of the in India. International Review of Missions for January, 1917, the editor has given prominent place to the following little paragraph, “An experienced missionary correspondent, who has returned to India after a long absence, notes as one of the most remarkable changes the rapid spread of clubs and societies of all kinds among the women of the edu- cated classes, and of women’s meetings presided over and addressed by women.” More significant than anything that men are doing to promote the cause of education and progress WOMEN WORKING TOGETHER I79 among the women of India, is the way in which the women themselves are coming together that the girls of today may find the way to a life unknown to the women of yesterday. Well might the Times of India designate as “unique in the world of Islam,” that conference of leading Mohammedan women of west India held in Poona in the spring of 1913, when these Mohammedan ladies not only passed resolu- tions supporting the government proposal to estab- lish a central school for Moslem girls in Poona, and urging that such schools be provided in every district, but also established a fund to send Mohammedan women to less progressive parts of the country to help to advance the cause of women’s education. Hindu women, too, are coming together in con- ference, facing knotty problems, thinking their way through them, sending memorials to government officials. It may be a small, but it is certainly a very shining ray of hope for the future that is cast when a society of the women of south India memorializes the governor of Madras to the effect that “a great change has come over the minds of the people in the Telugu country, in their attitude towards the long- neglected problem of women’s education. The pres- ent complaint is not that there are not willing parents who would permit their grown-up daughters to attend schools, but that there are not schools enough readily accessible and in all respects al- together unobjectionable, to which girls may be sent for a secondary education. . . . The time has come for establishing high schools, one for each district.” There are few aspects of women’s life which the women of India are not together considering today. l80 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT Fifty years or so ago a well-known Gujerati poet pictured the lot of Gujerat’s women as worse than that of slaves. Which city of India, he asked, would produce a Hindu woman who was capable of speak- ing to her sisters to their advantage? But it was the women of this same Gujerati Hindu community who a few months past came together in a meeting of vigorous protest against the gambling which was prevalent among the women of their community. Not only were forceful speeches made; each member of the audience carried home telling cartoons, hand- bills, booklets, etc., on which to ponder at her leisure. The Jain community has often been accused of being “backward,” but for several years the Jain women have been coming together in conferences, passing “resolutions condemning early marriages, emphasizing the need of female education, and suggesting the establishment of widows’ homes.” Nearly four thousand Jain women attended such a conference recently. Provincial women’s social conferences meet each year, attended by hundreds of women, presided over by women, at which women move and pass carefully thought-out resolutions which show the breadth of the ideals which they have set before them. Women’s clubs But ideals, in the minds of these m India. Indian women, are not things simply to be set before one, or embodied in resolutions. Ideals are to be actively and persistently striven toward. And in order to make their dreams of a new Indian womanhood come true they are organizing social service clubs, and performing very definite and concrete pieces of service. It is the Gujerati Hindu WOMEN WORKING TOGETHER I 8 1 women who compose the membership of one of the oldest of these societies, the Gujerati Stree Mandat organized in Bombay in 1903. Fifteen years ago such societies were startling innovations, and the Guje- rati Stree Mandal received more than its fair share of opposition and rid'cule. But under the leader- ship of Mrs. Jamnabai Sakkai, who was for many years its sole and courageous president, it developed into the strong, influential society it is today. It is conducting “home classes” for women who, for one reason or another, cannot attend school, has opened a free library for Hindu women, and is seeking in numerous ways to bring new interest and meaning to the lives of women who have had few opportunities. Another society of Gujerati women is the Vanita Vishram , which was started in Surat, but later extended its work to Ahmedabad and Bombay. Lady Willingdon opened its new buildings in Bombay in 1915. The chief object of the Vanita Vishram is to provide homes and education for the needy women and orphan girls of the Gujerati Hindu community, and to prepare them to support them- selves by giving them training in such subjects as “nursing, teaching, domestic economy, etc.” A work very similar to that done by the Vanita Vishram is being carried on by the Mahila Seva Somaj of Bangalore, which has received government grants-in-aid, in support of its educational and in- dustrial classes. Perhaps the most significant of all the women’s societies in India are those in which the women of the different communities of India are united in the common purpose to serve their needy country I 82 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT women. Just how much this means, only one who knows India can thoroughly understand. Says Mrs. Fleming of Lahore: “Unless one has resided in an Indian city influenced by Mohammedan customs, it would be hard to imagine the actual condition of society which confronts one. Race, religion, caste, color, and custom all combine to divide life into so many air-tight compartments. . . . The proud Par- sees are self-sufficient and uncompromising in their social life, while the high-caste Hindu and Moham- medan ladies live in their secluded zenanas, knowing and caring nothing for the outside world. Hindus and Mohammedans never mingle with those of different religion or caste, and so closely are the ladies watched that they are permitted to extend hospitality only to their immediate family con- nections.” „ , Yet these women are now coming The Seva Sadan. . . . T „ . „ 0 together tor service. In 1908, in Bom- bay, there was started a women’s society, the chief aim of which was to train Indian women for social service, and which adopted the motto “One in core, if not in creed.” Its name Seva Sadan means House of Service, and from the beginning, Hindu, Moham- medan, and Parsee women have worked together in it. The Seva Sadan “calls upon every woman to become a benediction, and upon all who realize that India’s two great sins are her sin against women and her sin against the depressed, to help in creating Sisters Ministrant.” Its members take a vow in which they pledge themselves to “look upon life as a sacred trust for loving, self-sacrificing service, and to do such service, so help me God.” WOMEN WORKING TOGETHER 1 83 The Seva Sadan now has four branches, the largest of them in Bombay and Poona. The work of the society is carried on along three main lines: educational, medical, and philanthropic, and the amount done is nothing short of amazing. The Bombay society maintains a home for the home- less, a girls’ industrial school, free day schools for both girls and boys, a free library and reading room, a large number of educational classes and lecture courses for women, a dispensary for women and children, where thoroughly trained Indian women physicians give their services without cost, and a sanitarium for consumptives in the Simla hills, the grounds of which include a pine forest of about one hundred acres. In addition to all this, the members do a great deal of work among the women in the tenement districts, distributing food, nursing the sick, teaching some- thing of the laws of sanitation and hygiene, advising mothers in the care of their children, and even con- ducting simple classes among them. They visit the factories, and use their influence in helping to secure better conditions for the hundreds of girls who are employed in them. Many of them are regular visitors to the hospitals, and the physicians are busy outside dispensary hours in the homes of women who are too poor to pay for medical help, but who are so strictly secluded that they are not able to go to the dis- pensary. Perhaps the most amazing parts of the reports of the Seva Sadan are those which tell of the relief work done by its members in districts which have been visited by fire or famine. That the conservative. 184 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT secluded women of India, many of them widows, to whom years of contempt and even abuse have taught unusual timidity, should go out tor weeks of travel through strange cities and unfrequented country roads, almost passes belief. Yet members of the Seva Sadan society did this in 1910 at the time of the Salumbra fire; in 1911 and 1912 when the Gujerat famine was causing widespread distress; at the time of the Ahmednagar famine in 1913; and during the Kumbha Mela gathering at Hardwar in 1914. A newspaper account of one such trip reports that the little group of women carried relief to many villages which they could reach only on the backs of camels. The rapid growth of the educational classes offered by the Seva Sadan Society shows how much such work is needed. “No one who was present at the annual prize-giving to the successful students of the Seva Sadan home classes. . . . can fail to be im- pressed with the genuine desire that there is among women of all castes to make up, as far as possible, for their want of schooling during their girlhood,” said a Bombay weekly recently. The latest available reportsgivethenumberof women andgirlsin theclass- es of the Bombay Seva Sadan as over four hundred, and those in Poona as 253. A large proportion of the members of these classes are young widows; and the response to this opportunity of training for service on the part of so many of those whose lives have for so long been given over to despair, gives great cause for encouragement. And that a woman of India, herself a widow, can sound a challenge to widows such as that being continually sounded by Mrs. Ramabai Ranade, the president of the Bombay Seva WOMEN WORKING TOGETHER 1 85 Sadan since its beginning, is one of the brightest causes for hope of a new life for India’s widows. “She said,” reads a report of one of Mrs. Ranade’s speeches to widows, “that life was indeed a great trust, and no amount of personal distress ought to be allowed to prevent them from doing their duty to their own sisters and their own countrywomen. To her, God was love, and the great gifts of charity, affection, and tenderness with which He had en- dowed woman should be used by her in being the mother of the motherless, the helper of the distressed, and the supporter of the unfortunate. ... In short, there was no reason why they should look upon their little family as the only family. She appealed to them to look upon society as their family, and the service of society as the service of God. ... In the end she exhorted Indian women to imitate the life of the Sisters of Mercy who worked strenuously in hospitals and elsewhere, knowing no distinction of caste, creed, or sex.” The Seva Sadan is not the only society in which Hindus, Mohammedans, and others join together in service. The Bharat Stree Mahamandal in the United Provinces and Bengal is such a one, its aim being “to form a common centre for all women thinkers and co-workers of every race, creed, class, and party in India to associate themselves together for the progress of humanity.” The Lahore League of Help is another such, and so is the League of Help of Lyallpur in which missionaries and native Christian women take an active part. Women's part in That one of the seven chapters of a the Chinese recently published book on the Chi- Revolution. n£se Revolution should be entitled 1 86 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT “The Women’s Part” will probably amaze most American readers. We had not known that there was a “women’s part” in the revolution. We would have thought that conservative old China was the last country in the world where women could possibly have a part in anything so revolutionary as a revo- lution! But these are days when the women of every nation are proving their patriotism in ways new and old. The women of China, like the women of India and the Near East, made their gifts to their country in time of need. Through the organized efforts of Chinese women, the w r omen of Shanghai aione con- tributed $10,000 during the first days of the revolu- tion when ready money was imperatively needed. Women’s meetings were held, organized by Chinese women, when hundreds of Chinese tai tais , heaped their jewels on the platform as an offering to the Republican cause; jewels which were not simply pretty ornaments, but which in many cases repre- sented the savings of many years, put into gems in- stead of banks. Women who had little or no money of their own to give, girls who had never before thought of working for others, put their hands to many unwonted tasks in order to earn money. Chinese women organized benefit performances; they forgot their timidity and made house-to-house visits collecting funds. Many an hour they spent in working on Red Cross equipment, not complaining even when they were put to sewing the heaviest canvas. Other and more startling things they did. There is a volcanic little Cantonese woman in Shanghai known WOMEN WORKING TOGETHER 187 as Dr. Chang. The day after the accidentally pre- mature outbreak of the revolution, Dr. Chang called a meeting of women in Shanghai, and asked for volunteers to start with her immediately for the battle fields of Hankow. The next day she set out for Hankow with between thirty and forty women. Untrained they were, almost all of them, poorly equipped, pretty badly frightened sometimes, but dauntlessly loyal to their country and the Chinese cause. All about the country they rode on their little ponies, from one shifting battlefield to another; and because trained medical help could be secured only in the city of Hankow, and some cases demanded immediate attention, they often gave more than “first aid.” Dr. Chang alone, with the meager little kit she carried, performed over one hundred emer- gency amputations during three days when the fighting was especially fierce. Day after day this little company worked on the open battlefield, or in a roughly furnished tea hong in the Russian quarter of Hankow, going without food for twelve hours at a stretch, some of them wounded themselves, none of them dreaming of deserting till their work was done. Other women there were, school girls many of them, whose patriotic fervor incited them to run away from home and friends, determined to take part in the actual fighting. Both from the south and the north, young girls took the long journey to eastern China, determined to go to the front. In China, home of the “lily-footed” women, the stronghold of conservatism, companies of Chinese girls drilled daily under an officer of the men’s army, running, at his command, at a military trot for a full half hour 1 88 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT without stopping! It was only when Sun Yat Sen pointed out to these girls that their gravest dangers would lie in the men with whom they would have to live and fight that the “Women’s Army,” as they were called, reluctantly gave up their hope of going to the front, and decided to turn their energies to the equally dangerous task of making bombs. Crude they are, perhaps, such expressions of love of country as these, but very genuine. “They were ready to give themselves to their country whatever the sacri- fice might be,” says a secretary of the Young Wom- en’s Christian Association who kept in touch with these militant young persons through the months they were in Shanghai. “And they had,” she adds, “a courage and determination which should carry them far along the right road when once they find it.” The story of the working together of China’s women leaves no room for doubt that these energetic, keen-minded women are going to bring things to pass. What they will bring to pass is not always so clear. It depends upon the women who lead. Meetings Of new The women of the interior city of women in old Sianfu organized a very few years ago Chma ‘ an Anti Foot-binding Society. The account of the first meeting of this society, given by Miss Shekelton, a missionary who v/as invited to attend it, vividly illustrates practically every phase of this transition period in the life of Chinese women. “The room was packed, and the benches were crowded with ladies. Many, it was evident from their not too decorous behavior, were present at a meeting for the first time in their lives. They were gorgeously dressed and lounged, smoked, and chatted with their WOMEN WORKING TOGETHER 1 89 slave girls in a most nonchalant way. On and around the platform were the leading ladies of the society, dressed most variously; a few in imitation of West- ern costume, some too absurd for description. One wore a dainty lavendar satin robe while a man’s hideous felt hat, trimmed with a bunch of red paper roses crowned her glossy black hair! Others were brilliantly and tastefully arrayed in old-style cos- tumes, pale blue or pink silks, with embroidered skirts, and tiny satin shoes. Others again, with severe republican simplicity, disdained everything but the dark blue calico of daily wear. “On the platform stood Mrs. L ,the chair- woman, a capable, managing old lady with grey hair, handsomely attired in a dark blue satin costume. She was giving the opening address, which was fluent but without any grace of language, and in too scolding a tone. The moment she began to speak, a younger lady, who all through acted as master of ceremonies, rushed up and down the hall, saying in a stage whisper to everyone, ‘When she finishes, be sure you clap your hands! See! Like this!’ An interrup- tion sufficiently disturbing, we would think, to the orator, especially as some benchfuls of ladies wanted to practice immediately. The chairwoman, however, managed to get through her address with much sangfroid, in spite of the confusion. Following her speech came a younger woman, an educated girl, who spoke charmingly, and with deep feeling — with a pretty shyness, too, which made her address more effective. She well deserved the praiseworthy at- tempts at clapping which followed her speech. Next came Mrs. M , once a slave girl, now the wife of I9O WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT a general. This speaker was quite without education and refinement. She bounced on to the platform, gesticulating wildly, and pranced about the dais as she spoke. Despite her ludicrous appearance, for dress and manner matched each other, the address was vivid and clever, and the applause of the audience quite frantic. . . . “An attempt was now made by the chairwoman to have a resolution moved, to get it seconded, and to persuade the miscellaneous audience to vote. We sympathized with her efforts to have the whole thing carried through in a businesslike way, and to be really effective in her plan of campaign. Most of the audience, however, thought the proposed ‘show of hands’ was a fresh invitation to clap, and the meeting ended vaguely and without voting, in a tempest of applause. There had been some earnest speeches, spoken with real feeling, and we will hope for prac- tical results as to the reform of this cruel custom of foot-binding. “We were asked to accompany the ladies of the committee to a public building close by, where we found a large meeting of men assembled. This meeting was a political gathering of many of the chief men of the city. They listened with keen at- tention to the various addresses given by the ladies, sometimes interrupting with loud applause. The women speakers, with one exception, spoke with graceful modesty, putting their arguments clearly, and with feeling. After this we all left, the men on the platform rising politely while we filed out. The true significance of all this respect and courtesy can only be fully understood by those who have seen the contempt shown to women under the old regime.” WOMEN WORKING TOGETHER Igl It is irresistibly funny, this picture of Chinese women’s united effort, and inexpressibly pathetic. It awakens apprehension and confidence. One is alternately trembling at the lack of balance of these newly awakened women of China, and glorying in the initiative and ability and courageous determina- tion even of those who have had the fewest oppor- tunities. And always, underneath all other emotions, is the consciousness that crude, even grotesque as such a meeting as this may be, there is in it power which will go far toward determining what the coming years shall be in China. Chinese women are meeting together these days for a great variety of reasons. Two hundred and fifty of them met in Peking, some time past, to pass resolutions asking that measures be taken by the government to do away with concubinage. Approxi- mately ten thousand women in Canton came through a pouring rain to pledge themselves to a boycott of all Japanese goods, and it is reported that “the proceedings were conducted in a perfectly orderly manner,” and that the great company of women listened intently to four hours of vigorous speaking on the part of some of their number. Rallies of women have been held to combat the growing use of the cigarette, which Western com- panies have been energetically introducing in China while she has been so heroically trying to free herself from opium. Women have come together in great numbers to add their strength to the anti-opium campaign, and hundreds of them have signed petitions to the Anti Opium Society of England, asking for their continued help. WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT I92 Women’s societies Societies of Chinese women are aiming m China. at th e achievement of great things. A Suffrage Society has been organized, but political power is only one, and a comparatively minor one, of the aims of this society. Ten things to be striven after are named in the constitution of this society; the abolition of foot-binding, the education of women, the prohibition of concubinage, the forbidding of child marriages, reforms in regard to prostitution, social service for women in industry, the encourage- ment of modesty in dress, better terms of marriage leading toward marriages for love, the establishment of political rights, and the general elevation of the position of women in the family and the home. The leadership of this organization is in the hands of very extreme young Chinese women, and just how much actually constructive work it is doing it is difficult to determine. The Soda! Service What a society of Chinese women can League of do when educated leadership is avail- Changsha. able j g go su p er ^]y illustrated by an account of the Social Service League of Changsha, contributed by Mrs. Hume to a recent number of The Survey , that it may well be given here almost in full. “The Women’s Social Service League of Changsha was organized in the fall of 1913, as a distinctively Chinese institution. The work, while planned and directed by Westerners, has been done entirely by Chinese women of the better class. With the excep- tion of $150 subscribed by Westerners, all the funds used through the first year were given by the Chinese. The wife of the governor of the province of Hunan, of which Changsha is the capital, is a subscribing HALIDEH HANOUM WOMEN WORKING TOGETHER I93 member, and so deeply interested is she in the activities undertaken that in addition to her regular membership fee, she has recently donated $300 for special relief carried on by the League during a serious flood. “It was soon found that the work of the League had a double significance. On the one hand, it offered practical relief to the poor by teaching them methods of self-protection against disease and by offering facilities for relief from disease and unhygienic living; it also furnished the well-to-do leisure class of Chinese women an opportunity for outreaching, unselfish service for others. “In such work, too, can be found a means for the ultimate salvation of these women through teaching them Christ’s law of service. Monthly meetings of a social character have brought all the members to- gether, while the active work of the League has been carried on by an executive committee which has met frequently for discussion. A unique Christmas cele- bration was arranged for the several hospitals of the city, and in every case the dominant note was joy linked with and dependent on service. “During the first year, two assistants were paid by the League — Miss Wu, a qualified graduate nurse, particularly skillful in obstetrics; and Mrs. Yang, employed to investigate cases referred by doctors on duty at the hospital clinics. As a result of her in- quiries, much has been learned about the home con- ditions of poor patients and the League has been able to aid judiciously many really deserving ones. “Since every rational effort to wage a successful campaign against disease must rest upon an educa- 194 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT tional basis, it has been particularly necessary, in a Chinese city, to begin the effort to better health con- ditions by hygienic instruction. During this first year, tuberculosis and infant mortality were made the special objects of the League’s activity. “The ever-increasing prevalence of tuberculosis (due in part to the tendency to build more substan- tial and less well-ver.tilated structures) and the hopeless ignorance of its cause and the manner of its spread made it natural to direct our first efforts against this disease. Lectures were given in every section of the city, and in spite of the fact that these lectures were given in the evening, when it might have been feared that women with families would be unable to attend, there was a total attendance of over ten thousand women and girls. To each person attending there was given a simple set of rules for the prevention of tuberculosis. “Realizing the necessity of having the lectures illustrated by local scenes and Chinese settings, in order to make the unhygienic conditions more vivid, the League nad a new set of lantern slides prepared for it by the Y. M. C. A. in Shanghai for use in the second winter’s campaign. The government schools have welcomed every suggestion for lectures in the schools. This ought to prove one of the most hopeful fields for the introduction of reforms. The lectures in these government girls’ schools were very largely attended. “As to our campaign against infant mortality: The campaign was begun by widespread vaccination against smallpox throughout the city. The police department, which includes a bureau of hygiene, WOMEN WORKING TOGETHER I95 supplied the vaccine without charge, and the League issued pamphlets and put up posters urging the im- portance of vaccination. A hospital nurse, assisted by the social service worker, established vaccination stations in four parts of the city, supplementing the work of the hospitals. “Lectures similar to those on tuberculosis were given on “The Care of Children”; and on every occasion when the district nurse thus lectured, a set of rules on “How to Keep the Baby Well” was given to each member of the audience. The League is trying, in conjunction with the police commissioner, to find a way by which the infant mortality of the city may be regularly ascertained. “Further, the League has secured the grounds of several government schools for playgrounds during the summer. “Three milk stations for the free distribution of milk have been opened, in the northern, central, and southern sections of the city. The milk is prepared according to formulae, in eight different strengths for children from birth to two years of age. A set of bottles is provided for each child every day, each bottle containing just enough for one feeding. The milk is prepared at the central station (the Yale Hospital) and is sent by special messenger to the branch stations. Tickets have been placed in the hands of each of the missionary societies and when properly signed may be exchanged for a daily supply of milk for weak or sick infants. Those who can, pay from five to thirty cents a day, according to the amount of milk required. The results during the first month of the distribution surpassed all ex- I96 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT pectations, about two hundred bottles of prepared feeding having been called for daily. “In addition to the circulars given out at the lec- tures, a series of pamphlets for use throughout central China was ordered to be prepared — the topics being as follows: Contagious diseases, care of the teeth, indigestion in summer, instructions to parents regarding trachoma and other eye diseases, tubercu- losis, and an adaptation of Holt’s Care of the Baby. “But the work of the first year soon showed the need for a definite exhibit which should enable people to visualize what they were being taught. Through the combined efforts of the public-health committees of the Y. M. C. A. and the China Medical Missionary Association, much material was as- sembled. Special lantern slides were made from Chinese surroundings, and mechanical devices for showing death-rate, incidence of tuberculosis, etc., were prepared, corresponding very closely to the type of exhibit now frequently seen in the United States. This was shown in Changsha under the auspices of the League in May, and the attendance during six days was 30,622. Physicians and others gave lectures, often having to repeat these as often as four times in a single day. “No popular event in Changsha in recent years has so impressed the body of citizens, and people were found in every section of the city discussing what they had seen and heard. While interest was at its height, a subscription list for a tuberculosis hospital was opened and during exhibit week alone #4,000 (Chinese currency) was secured, to which the civil governor of the province at once added #10,000. WOMEN WORKING TOGETHER 1 9 '/ This sum, with $2,000 previously subscribed by two brothers whose lives are devoted to public service, will go a long way towards providing this much- needed institution. “Changsha is but one of China’s twenty-one capitals; its population of three hundred thousand is exceeded by that in several larger cities. The move- ment started here by a group of women should spread all over the land. A great unrecognized force is pres- ent within the homes, and women who have hitherto been thought of as leading a butterfly existence of idleness can be brought into line for public service.” other women’s A Women’s League of Service has organizations. recently been organized in Shang- hai, also. It was initiated by some Christian Chinese women in the Young Women’s Christian Association, but its membership is not at all limited to Christians. “We as a people know the meaning of love of self,” said one of the members of this Shanghai League of Service, “or even the love of individuals when they are members of our families or intimate friends; but for centuries we have had no idea of love of society. Our streets have been little and narrow because each householder has wanted to get as much room as possible for himself, and has given no thought to the public who must pass through the street. You can judge a country’s civilization by the condition of the masses. We are proud of our great scholars and our long centuries of culture; but when we look at the wretches who do the work of beasts of burden, the beggars who crowd the streets, or the shiftless boat- men who exist on a cent or two a day, then we must confess that there is something lacking in our civiliza- I98 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT tion; and I will tell you what it is: it is public love!” It is the dawn of a new day, when Chinese women see so clearly, speak so bravely, and join together for action. In China, as in other Oriental lands, women are doing valiant service in the Red Cross, for the army in time of war, and for the poor in the days of peace which have been so rare in China of late. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union is another organization in which their united efforts have had splendid results, under such leadership as that of Dr. Mary Stone, the gifted little Chinese physician of Kiukiang, who was one of its recent presidents. The work of the Young Women’s Christian Asso- ciation is more and more completely coming under the direction of Chinese women. The secretary of the Shanghai Association wrote a few years ago: “We have seen a great difference in the spirit of the Chinese women since the revolution. . . . There is growing, and rightly, the desire to put the Chinese to the front and let the foreigner take the place of adviser and helper.” In an account of a recent trip, Miss Coppock, the national secretary of the Association, reported attending a meeting of the Canton Board of Directors where for “nearly two hours, when very important issues were being discussed, and far-reaching decisions made, the Chinese Board members and the Chinese secretary transacted all the business, and the Ameri- can secretary never once opened her mouth.” The members of this Association had just completed a finance campaign, dividing their forces into two teams, the reds and the whites. “Practically all the WOMEN WORKING TOGETHER I99 work was done by the Chinese ladies, without the he p of the foreign secretary,” and more money than was needed for current expenses was raised, so $2000 was put in the bank as the nucleus of a fund for land for a new building! Miss Coppock speaks especially of the large amount of time which the members of the Boards of Directors of Associations in China are giving to the work, but says that it is not at the cost of their families. ”1 have been in the homes of several of them, and they are among the most ideally Christian homes to be found anywhere.” Chinese women seem to be proving the inaccuracy of the statement that “you can’t do two things at once, and do either one well.” Patriotic work That love of country is the greatest ia Japan. 0 f a |i virtues is a teaching which the code of Bushido has bred in the bone of every Japa- nese man and woman from childhood. How real a love it is, the Japanese women demonstrated in a thousand ways during the Russo-Japanese war. Nothing that women could do was unthought of or neglected; no task was too difficult to be undertaken; no sacrifice was too great to be made. At the be- ginning of the war, a missionary says, a little band of women set themselves the task of meeting every train of soldiers that passed. “Day or night, rain or shine, these women have never failed. Admitted to the platform without question, they have never let a soldier go without the sympathy of their presence and parting banzai.” This was only one of many things which their patriotism prompted. School girls gave up desserts to swell war and relief funds, rolled bandages by the thousand and prepared 200 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT comfort bags by the hundred, postponed their summer home going to stay in the city, through the intense heat of Japan’s July, to make sets of soldiers’ underwear needed immediately, and promised to knit fifteen hundred pairs of socks during the vaca- tion. Almost ten thousand women in the Red Cross Ladies’ Nursing Association, and over five hundred thousand in the Women’s Patriotic League gave money and service without stint. Members of the Red Cross attended weekly first-aid lectures and took lessons in bandaging. Some of them went to the front to nurse the wounded there. Some did the work of nurses in the city hospitals to which soldiers were sent, and others gave much time to visiting in the military hospitals, distributing magazines, writ- ing letters for the soldiers, and doing whatever else they could to help them. The purpose of the Women’s Patriotic League, founded by Madame Okumura, is especially to give help to disabled soldiers, or the families of men killed or disabled in battle, and to this appeal of need Japanese women have responded most generously. The present war has been farther removed from them, and Japan’s participation in it has not yet been great. But the Japanese women are responding to the slighter demands of the present time with no less loyalty. Organized work Women’s societies are not quite such of Japanese new and youthful things in Japan as women. they are in most of the other parts of the Orient. It is fortyyears now since thirty women organized the Women’s Educational Society, which now numbers its members by hundreds, conducts an industrial school for girls, issues a monthly maga- DR. MARY STONE, HEAD OF THE DAN'FORTH MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, KIUKIANG WOMEN WORKING TOGETHER 201 zine, and holds large monthly meetings. The Wom- en’s Hygienic Association has a membership of several thousand, and is doing a useful work through lectures and meetings. The Mothers’ Union is a very active and flourishing organization, with branches throughout the empire. One of the best- known women’s societies is the Tokyo Charity Hospital Association, which established and supports the Tokyo Charity Hospital. Poor and orphaned sick children are the especial care of the Ikuji Society, which has a membership of over two thousand women. This society investigates the cases of sick children, whose friends cannot afford to give them proper medical treatment, and places them in hospi- tals where they will receive the care they need. Japan has a larger percentage of insanity than any other nation, and these unfortunates are the special care of one organization of women, known as The Ladies’ Aid Association for Lunatics. Perhaps nowhere is there a more active branch of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union than that in Japan which was organized in 1886, and which under the untiring and splendidly efficient leader- ship of Mrs. Kaji Yajima, who is still its president, has grown steadily in strength and numbers. Its members, of whom there are about five thousand, pledge themselves “to improve public morality and eradicate social evils, especially wine-drinking and smoking, to work for social purity, and to change customs and manners for the better.” The Union publishes two magazines, one of which has a sub- scription list of eleven thousand, conducts a Rescue Home which seeks to do both preventive and re- 202 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT formative work, carries on a night school for girls, does a great amount of educational work among women, and employs a secretary who gives almost her entire time to the work for children. Another much younger organization in which the Christian women of Japan are uniting is the Young Women’s Christian Association, which was opened in Japan in 1905 at the request of the missionary body. As in China, so in Japan, the responsibility for this work is increasingly borne by Japanese Boards of Directors and Japanese secretaries. The Association has organized both city and student Associations, publishes a monthly magazine, and holds a summer conference each summer. No one who has ever had the pleasure of attending one of these summer conferences can ever doubt either the executive ability, the gift for public speech, or the earnestness of Japanese Christian women. Japanese women plan the conference program, a Japanese woman is the business manager, another is the pre- siding officer, and others are among the best speakers heard during the ten days. , Few elements of the situation in the The future. ~ . . . . r , Orient today are so significant as the breaking down of the barriers which have separated Oriental women, and their newly discovered ability to work together. If all this power, so recently released, can be captured for the cause of Christ, it will undoubtedly prove to be one of the most effective agencies in bringing the Kingdom of Heaven to the Orient. WOMEN WORKING TOGETHER 203 Christian Missions and Women Working Together The part which Christian missions have played in breaking down the barriers which have kept Oriental women apart, and in creating the new ideals and purposes which have brought them together in united effort, has been no small one. It was in many and many a case the Christian missionary who first brought the Oriental woman into contact with her neighbors. It was in the little pioneer Christian churches of the East that many of the first meetings of women were held. Most of the earliest women’s conferences of the Orient were Christian conferences, inaugurated by far-sighted missionaries who saw that permanent and far- reaching Christian work for Oriental women could be done only when the Christian women of the East felt their responsibility for such work, and unitedly assumed that responsibility. The impulses which led to the establishment of many of those splen- did organizations, in the work of which Oriental women are so efficiently leading today, might have still been lying dormant, had the spirit and influence of Christian missions not awakened them and roused them to action. Moreover, in several in- stances, the first steps toward the formation of these organi- zations were taken by missionaries. The first Anti Foot-binding Society of China, the forerunner of the national organization in which Chinese and foreign women are working together today, was established in 1873 by a missionary of Amoy, who gathered together a group of Chinese mothers, and so convinced them of the evils of foot-binding that they "put their marks" to a pledge not to bind their daughters’ feet, or marry their sons to girls whose feet were bound. In every Oriental country where the Young Women’s Christian Association is working today, it has gone in response to an appeal from the missionary bodies of that country, and it has entered every city of the East in which it is now at work, because the missionaries resident in that city have united in urging its coming. Missionaries are members of all its National Committees, and while several local Boards are now composed wholly of Oriental women, missionaries have always been among the original members of these Boards, and the work could never have been inaugurated without the sympathetic co-operation and help which the mis- WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT 204 sionary workers have unfailingly given. The growing work of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union owes the same debt to the missionaries of the Boards which have been longer at work in the East, and although, as in the Young Women’s Christian Association, Oriental women are shouldering large responsibility for this work, it could never have been started without the assistance of the missionaries. Such societies as the Changsha Social Service League, and the Lahore League of Help, though not Christian in name, and numbering many non-Christian women among their leaders, owe their existence and much of their success to the missionaries who organized them, and who are taking so active a part in their work. And such organizations as the Seva Sadan Society of India, the Ikuji Society of Japan, and other philanthropic organizations of Oriental women, of which missionaries have been neither organizers nor members, cannot be said to be wholly without debt to the Christian mis- sionary movement. Even as China, and other Oriental countries, began to establish schools for girls only after the work of the mission schools had created new ideals for the life of women, so, in the Orient, organizations for the care of the needy came only after the influence of Christian missions had created a new spirit of love and service, even the spirit of Jesus Christ. So great is the part Christian missions have played in bringing the women of the Orient together for united work for their countrywomen. Even so great is the obligation upon us to help to raise up the leaders fitted to direct this organized energy of Oriental women, and so to direct it that it shall hasten the day of the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth in the lands of the East. WOMEN WORKING TOGETHER 205 QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER V. Aim of study: To realize the significance of the united work of Oriental women, and the possibilities for good or evil bound up in their organized energy; and to understand the challenge which such a situation is sounding to the Christian women of the West. 1. If you knew nothing of them except what is told in this chapter, what would you decide to be the most outstanding characteristics of the women of the Near East? Of India? Of China? Of Japan? 2. What elements in their countries’ civilizations and ideals have had to be overcome by women in order to come together in united work and service in Mohammedan lands? In India? In China? In Japan? 3. What seem to you the most important and significant things indicated by this determination of women throughout the Orient today to join together for the accomplishment of various pur- poses ? 4. What characteristics of these women seem to you to be shown by the purposes and causes for which they are uniting? 5. What causes do you consider to have been most influential in inspiring Oriental women to this united service ? 6. How great do you think has been the influence of the Christian schools for girls; of women’s part in the work of the Christian churches; of the example of missionary workers; of Oriental Christian women? 7. What, in your opinion, is most necessary to assure that these united efforts of Oriental women shall lead in the right direction, and be genuinely constructive and effective elements in tae new life of the East? 8. In what ways can this organized work of women of the Orient be wisely and helpfully influenced by Christian missions? CHAPTER VI. Suggested Scripture Reading. Leadership in the Kingdom. Ephesians 4: 11-16. The Call for Leaders: The Thirst for Leaders. The Training of Leaders. Shaping Character in the Making. Higher Education: The Constantinople College. The Isabella Thoburn College. The Women’s Christian College of Madras. The North China Union College. Ginling College. The women’s department of the Canton Christian College. The Women’s Christian College of Tokyo. The responsibility of success. Medical Schools. Training Schools for Christian Workers. The Challenge of this Hour: Our part. The war and our task. CHAPTER VI. THE CALL TOR LEADERS The thirst for “China,” said one of the most leaders. thoughtful men of that nation, not long ago, “is athirst for leaders!” With equal truth it can be said that the women of every country of the Orient today are athi st for leaders. How is this thirst to be assuaged? Their leaders cannot come from among the men of the Ori nt. The men can do much to help, by sympathy, and by right ideals for the life of the women of their people; but the leader- ship is not for men. Nor can their leaders come from among women of a totally different heritage, from a wholly different environment. Even if women of the Occident cou'd be poured into the Orient in the un- limited numbers which would be necessary to meet today’s demand, they could not be the real leaders of the Orient. Whence then is such leadership to come? There can be but one answer. The leaders so imperatively needed among the women of the Orient, in this day of rapid and revolutionary changes, must come from among the educated women of their own people. And if it is to be the highest leadership, it must come from the Christian educated women of the Orient. The training of How, then, is such leadership for the leaders. women of the Orient to be assured? Only by the united efforts of East and West. The Orient must supply the leaders, but the Occident 208 women workers of the orient must provide the training for leadership, which the Orient cannot at present give. Oriental countries are, it is true, making valiant efforts to provide for the education of women, but in many parts of the East little more than a beginning has been made; and in no part will there be for many years any such provision for women’s education as to guarantee an adequate number of trained leaders. Moreover, it could not be expected that the government or private schools of the Orient would produce a Christian leadership. Shaping character The development of the Oriental in the making. Christian women leaders, so urgently required, can be assured only by Christian education. To meet the demand for them calls for the strength- ening and development of our Christian educational work all along the line. There must be kindergartens and day schools in abundance, for they not only give opportunity for the planting and nurture of right ideals in impressionable little minds and hearts, but open a way of approach to the young mothers whose need of guidance is scarcely less than that of their children. Nor can the opportunity afforded by the high schools for girls well be overestimated. These are boarding schools, where the teachers have oppor- tunity to reach the lives of the girls, not for a few hours of the day, the influences of which may be nullified by the rest of the hours spent in a non- Christian home, but constantly, uninterruptedly, day after day, month after month. And this in- fluence is brought to bear upon the girl at the most formative period of her life. Miss Miner of China speaks truly when she says: “For character in the THE CALL FOR LEADERS 20g making, setting into the hard lines which neither better influence later can easily alter, nor strong temptations easily erase, the middle-school period is most important. This, too, is the decision time for many.” If we are to raise up women of strength and poise and power, women who have made the great decision to give their lives to their Master and to self-forgetful service, we must see to it that there are Christian high schools for girls accessible to every Oriental girl; high schools which will offer her as fine educational advantages as she can find in any school, and the best opportunities for character development anywhere available. T _. . . Moreover, we must offer the able Higher education. . r , „ „ ... graduate of the middle or high school opportunity for further education and train- ing. Such a situation as exists among the women of the Orient today calls for leadership of the highest order. The problems to be solved can be successfully dealt with only by finely and thoroughly trained minds. The responsibilities to be borne, the tasks to which women’s hands must be put, call for the most complete possible preparation. We must, if the dangers of this transition period are to be avoided and its opportunities seized, offer Oriental women colleges, where their minds will be sharpened and disciplined by rigid training, and professional schools where they can receive preparation for the special lines of work through which they purpose to serve their people. The union colleges for women already established in India and China are altogether along the right lines, and it is earnestly to be hoped that they will be the forerunners of many others like 210 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT them, as the Orient increasingly recognizes its need of college-trained women. The One of the best-known colleges for Constantinople women in the East today is the Con- Coiiege. stantinople College to which frequent reference has been made in preceding chapters. This college is supported by an independent board of its own, rather than by a union of several mission boards. Yet it is in a very real sense both a mission- ary and a union college, for it is the outgrowth of a high school founded in 1871 by the Congregational Women’s Board of Missions, and it is supported by the members of many denominations who desire to promote the Christian higher education of the women of Mohammedan lands. It was incorporated as a college in 1890, and has the honor of being the second Christian institution to offer studies of college grade to Oriental women. The Isabella The first Christian college established Thoburn College. f or women in Asia is the Isabella Thoburn College, at Lucknow — a splendid witness to the far-sighted wisdom and courageous faith of the pioneer missionary whose honored name it bears. In 1870, Miss Thoburn, the first missionary of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, opened a school for little girls in one small room. In sixteen short years she had developed it into what was in fact, as well as name, a women’s college. Lilavati Singh, its president-elect at the time of her early death, is perhaps the best-known, though by no means the only preeminently successful graduate of this well- known institution. Nothing could be more in keep- THE CALL FOR LEADERS 111 ing with the breadth of mind and vision of its founder, than the steps toward union which the Isabella Thoburn College is now taking. It is probable that several of the other American mission boards which are doing educational work in north India will soon co-operate with the Methodists in the support and administration of the college. The Women’s The ^ nc wor ^ of the Isabella Thoburn Christian College College has proved conclusively that of Madras. the girls of India not only desire college education, but are also more than able to receive it, and to make superb use of it. But a college in the north of the great peninsula of Hin- dustan, however strong, cannot meet the needs of the girls of south India. It became evident some time ago that they, too, needed a college. But all of the missions working in south India were already overburdened, and none of them could possibly supply a well-equipped college, adequate for the needs of the women in, and adjacent to, the Madras Presidency. Yet that such a college was absolutely essential for the development of Christian leadership among the women of south India was very evident to every thoughtful person. And gradually the idea of the Women’s Christian College of Madras took shape in the minds of a few men and women of clear sight and daring faith. None of the mission boards which longed for this college to which to send the promising girls from their secondary schools, could promise large gifts for equipment or salaries. But if enough of them would agree to unite in the sup- port of a college, this difficulty might be over- come. And the beautiful college which stands in 212 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT Madras today is a result of the union of twelve mission boards. It is not only interdenominational, but international, for six of these boards are in Great Britain, five in the United States, and one in Canada. There is a Board of Control in India which, with the faculty, administers the affairs of the college. In Great Britain is one Board of Governors and in America another, each charged with the responsibility of raising funds and securing professors for the college. The history of the little more than two years of the life of the college makes pleasant and hope-inspiring reading. In the summer of 1915, a large, spacious house was rented which seemed to provide ample accommodations for all the girls who would be likely to seek entrance to the college for some time to come. But an entering class of forty filled the building almost to overflowing, and long before the first year had closed, it was evident that a new home must be found before a second group of girls sought admission. All the available dormitory space was already in use, and the necessity of holding two lectures in the same room at the same time was leading students to such remarkable conclusions as that, “Socrates was too good a man to despise Plato, although Plato was a Scotchman and Scotchmen eat the food of horses,” and that, “Plato’s beloved disciples were Aristotle and Isaac Newton.” _ . The securing of the new home is a Its new home. , .... ° . r . . . thrilling story. After looking at sever- al unpromising places, the principal of the college, Miss Eleanor MacDougall, heard that “Doveton House” was for sale, and early one November morn- THE CALL FOR LEADERS 21 3 ing she and one of the other professors went to look at it. A more ideal college campus could scarcely be imagined; ten acres of grounds on the very banks of the Cooum River, acres of stately trees and velvety lawn, brilliant with scarlet flame of the forest, purple bougainvillea, golden portia and acacia, and other vivid tropical plants “unbelievably often in bloom.” And in the midst of this riot of color stands the historic white-pillared mansion, Doveton House, built in “the spacious days of the East India Com- pany,” the former home of many a government official, at one time the prison of the Gaekwar of Baroda, once the house of a native rajah, and latterly used by Mrs. Besant as a hostel for Hindu students. Nothing could be more ideal for the college home. Miss MacDougall and Miss Bretherton decided; and the price was ridiculously low, only $20,000. But it might as well have been $100,000 as far as they were concerned, they decided; for if you haven’t $20,000, what does it matter how reasonable a price that may be? To secure that sum of money seemed hopeless. But that very evening, on their return from a drive, during which they had wistfully talked of how perfectly the stately spacious rooms of Doveton House could be adapted to the use of a college, they found a letter from America. “You will be as glad to hear as I am to tell you,” it read, “that our Board has voted you $25,000.” Mrs. John D. Rockefeller had left the Women’s Board of the American Baptist Foreign Missionary Society a generous legacy, and the Board had voted $25,000 of it to Madras. “Our castle in the air had solidified with such suddenness that we could hardly believe our eyes,” said Miss MacDougall. WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT 214 In July, 1916, the college opened in its new quarters with seventy-two students, fifty of them residents. The numbers are steadily increasing, and plans are already under way for a new residence building for faculty and students, to be erected on the site of the spacious stables of Doveton House. a tribute from It is convincing testimony to the the government. g 00 d impression already made by the college that the government of India has made an exception to its policy of withholding grants-in-aid during the war, and has promised the college several thousand dollars toward its new residence building and the equipment of a science department. Twelve thousand, five hundred dollars of the remainder of the money needed — more than half — was given by the women of Great Britain, out of the midst of the demands and agonies of war. The women of America have contributed the balance, #7,500. Recognition ln December, 1915, the Madras Uni- by Madras versity gave official recognition to University. t h e Women’s Christian College by numbering it among its affiliated colleges and agreeing to confer its degrees upon its graduates. Such recognition as this is of paramount importance in India, where universities alone are permitted to confer degrees. The course of study required of the students of the college by the Madras University is four years in length, and the subjects offered are very similar to those studied in women’s colleges in this country. „ The descriptions of the college life, College life. , r u ri a too, sound very much like an Ameri- can college. Literary and debating clubs, and musi- THE CALL FOR LEADERS 215 cal and dramatic societies are proving that these gentle, quiet girls of India can plan programs and present plays with quite as much skill as their more experienced college sisters of America. Reports of the debates indicate that all thought of timidity is lost in the heat of argument; and their professors say that “acting is most certainly the strong point of these Indian girls. They are clever mimics and their high-strung temperaments give them an emo- tional power and a self-abandon which the more reserved Anglo-Saxon lacks.” Not only several of Tagore’s dramas, but some of the scenes of “Mac- beth,” “The Merchant of Venice,” etc., have been presented to admiring audiences by the girls of the Madras College. College committees, too, are prov- ing the initiative, and developing the powers of leadership of these girls. A general college committee assigns various responsibilities, appointing girls to attend to the bells, lights, news bulletin, sundry class duties, etc.; a gardening committee is respon- sible for making the beautiful grounds of Doveton House even more luxuriant; an excursion committee plans and conducts trips to various places of in- terest; a games committee keeps the naturally unathletic girls of India busy at badminton, tennis, dodge bail, and other sports; and an editorial com- mittee brings out a most attractive and ably edited magazine known as The Sunflower. The students. The g reat ma j orit 7 o( thc coIlc g e students are Christians, though there are some Hindus among them. The classes in religion, the daily chapel services, the influence of the strong Christia: teachers, and the Young Women’s Chris- 2l6 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT tian Association; all these make the college a training place not alone for leadership, but for Christian leadership. The influence it will exert on women’s life in south India is beyond measure. The North China The first school for girls to offer work Union College of of college rank in China is the North Peking China Union College of Peking. As the Isabella Thoburn College of India did not spring, full-fledged, into being as a college, but developed from a school for small girls; so the North China Union College grew out of the school opened for little girls by Mrs. Bridgman, a Congregational., mission- ary, as long ago as 1864. Little by little the school grew, until in 1904 the institution hitherto supported wholly by the Congregational women, which was then known as the Bridgman Academy, was merged into a union women’s college, supported by Ameri- can Congregationalists, Methodists, and Presby- terians, and the London Missionary Society of Great Britain. Steadily increasing numbers of girls are seeking entrance to this college, and its graduates are already proving the value of the thorough training it offers. .. „ „ But, as the Isabella Thoburn College mg o ege. j nc jj a could no t be expected to meet the needs of the entire peninsula of Hindu- stan, neither could a college in Peking be deemed sufficient for the girls of all China. At almost ex- actly the same time that the Women’s Christian College of Madras was welcoming its first students, a sister college in China was throwing open its picturesque circular doorway to its first entering class. “In the great valley of the Yangtse, from the WORK AND PLAY IN THE MADRAS WOMEN’S COLLEGE THE CALL FOR LEADERS 217 sea up to the borders of Szechuan, and north and south for several hundred miles, there was no place where a girl had a chance to do real college work and get the training which would fit her for leadership among her own people. . . . The situation was as if in the United States, east of the Rockies, there were one college for women.” And the Yangtse Valley region has a larger number of fully developed high schools for girls than any other part of China! Hence it was that in November, 1913, the women of five American denominations, the Baptist, Christian, Presbyterian, Methodist North and South, pledged themselves to the support of a college for women, to be located in China’s old capital and educational center, Nanking. The first home of Ginling College, as the new college is named, is a fine old Chinese gung gwan , a spacious official residence built by the Li Hung Chang family, which makes an excellent home for a small college, with its tiers of rooms, sunny court yards, picturesque pool, and beautiful rose arbor. Before long, however, the growth of the college will make necessary the pur- chase of a permanent and more ample college home. its growth The ^ rst y ear Ginling College was truly one of small beginnings, for the entrance requirements were very high, and only a few girls were ready to meet them. The little group of eight girls who met for the opening chapel exer- cises on the morning of September 17, 1915, seemed small, indeed. But the faculty of Ginling remem- bered that Smith College had opened with only fourteen students, and were not discouraged. At the Its home. 218 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT Its life. beginning of the term this year, thirty-five girls gathered for the opening chapel exercises, six juniors, nine sophomores, twenty freshmen, the latter repre- senting eight provinces, sixteen preparatory schools, and ten denominations. The four years’ course offered in Ginling gives the equivalent of the work offered in our American colleges for women. The description of the courses offered in art, science, economics and sociology, education, literature, history, mathematics, philosophy, religion, etc., has a very familiar ring. And Ginling, like Madras, is giving its students other training for leadership than that contained in books. A Student Government Council, consisting of the presidents of the classes plus two other members of each of the two upper classes, is responsible for the making and execution of the rules governing the college life. Every girl in the school belongs to the Young Women’s Christian Association, which is a highly active organization. In the first year of the college’s life it opened a Sunday school of little “raggedys” in the neighbor- hood, which has now grown to a membership of over sixty. But the girls did not stop there. They se- cured the permission of the faculty to start a little day school, also, and this little day school meets every afternoon, and is financed and conducted wholly by the students. The Ginling College faculty believe ts purpose. that: “The thoroughly trained Chinese woman can do more in China than any foreigner in every line of work. The ultimate success of the Christian movement in China depends on tho THE CALL FOR LEADERS 219 Christian leadership of women. It is not enough to train men as leaders. As the woman is, the home will be; as the home, so the nation — heathen or Christian. The great crying need is for Chinese women able to take the lead in all the work of the church. Those who have come out as leaders would be the first to admit that with better training they could better meet the present opportunity to present the gospel to women of the scholar class who are showing interest, as the men of that class are, in the religion of Jesus Christ. In cur schools we certainly need more women teachers, and teachers with some knowledge in reserve to make their teaching a living and a vitalizing force. College training will no more spoil Chinese girls for home life than it spoils Ameri- can girls. If there is created a discontent with homes as they are, it may have that divine element in it which works for the uplift of the home as for all spheres of life.” That educated Chinese women agree with the Ginling faculty in believing that such a college will do much toward furnishing this needed Christian leadership for Chinese women, is shown by a letter written by the Chinese women students in America, and received by Mrs. Lawrence Thurston, the president of Ginling, on the Sunday before college opened. Dear Madam President: On behalf of the Chinese women students of the United States, we want to express our hearty congratulations and sincere wishes for the work initiated in the Woman’s College in Nanking. We feel as you do, that the most essential need in China is 220 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT the education of her women, and also believe that unless the education is solely crystallized on a Christian foundation, it will do more harm to China than good. A personal knowledge of Jesus Christ is the great need of the women of all lands. We do highly appreciate the efforts made by the members of your Board to enable this institution to be a great success, and shall be very glad to encourage our friends and relatives to use this rare opportunity for the education of their girls. We sincerely hope that there will be many Christian leaders among women produced and multiplied through this institution: and may the darkness of many Chinese women be swept away by the light of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the light of the world. We can assure you of our deep interest in the work you are undertaking for our sisters in China, and we have asked Miss Mali Lee to be our personal representative, to present to you and to the students of the Union Woman’s College our personal greetings. With heartiest good wishes. Cordially yours. Hie Ding Ling. Another Two colleges for the women of all beginning. China in these days of eagerness for education! Surely this is a small beginning, but a beginning has been made, and that is something. And down in the far south of China another beginning is being made, which may bear much fruit in the years ahead. For many years the Canton Christian College has been offering a splendidly thorough Christian education to the men of south China. The eager petitions of a number of girls to be ad- mitted to the college have convinced the College Board that there is a real need and demand for higher education for the women, also; and plans for the development of a women’s department of the Canton Christian College are already under way, THE CALL FOR LEADERS 221 though but two girls are as yet doing actual college work. The Women’s The Women’s Christian College of Christian College Tokyo, Japan, will open April 1,1918. The college will meet an urgent de- mand for higher education on the part of many girls, and a large entering class is expected. The Board of Trustees is to be congratulated that it has secured as president of the college, Dr. Inazo Nitobe, an eminent educator and author. The dean of the college is Miss Yasui,who has resigned her position in the government Women’s Higher Normal School to render this service to the first union Christian col- lege for women in Japan. The Board is appointed by the several missions in Japan, and the support will be provided by the boards in America and friends in Japan. The responsibil- The importance of the development ity of success. Q f these Christian colleges for women, and the establishment of additional ones in the not too distant future, can scarcely be overstated. Some- one has stated the claim of these colleges upon us with convincing clearness. “It is not a simple matter for boards already over- burdened with financial needs of existing institutions to start out with faith to establish these higher institutions for women. Yet it is the value of the work that these boards have already done that makes such institutions necessary. Our great chain of girls’ schools around the world now demands the next step, the women’s college. In order to make efficient institutions, worthy of support and respect, large sums of money will be required, a group of ex- 222 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT perienced teachers of the highest grade must be enlisted. We are facing a crisis in our women’s missionary work. If we stop now we shall put into the hands of irreligious governments the direction of the education of the girls whom we have brought to this day. Our very success means responsibility for the future. Only as we maintain colleges of high grade, and with a strong Christian influence, can we hold what we have gained for the Kingdom of God.” Medical schools. In addition to the colleges, training schools for the special lines of service for which Oriental women are so much needed today must be provided, especially teacher-training schools, medical and nurses’ training schools, and schools for training in religious work. Such schools as the Women’s Christian Medical College at Ludhiana, the Women’s Union Medical College of north China, and the Hackett Medical College for women in Canton, the work of all of which has already been mentioned in Chapter IV, have done splendid pioneer service. The strength of Full of hope for the future is the union - policy of mission boards to unite their forces in building up strong medical education for women. Together we can do what would be im- possible for any one of us alone. And the fine spirit of co-operation and harmony which characterizes all the united work which is already being carried on, is a splendid tribute to the breadth of vision and depth of purpose of these boards and their mission- aries. THE CALL FOR LEADERS 22J Open doors for Never were there such open doors the Good News. f or the telling of the Good News as there are among the women of the Orient today. For one thing, they are far easier of access than they were even five years ago. The doors of homes long closed are flung wide open; and women who can tell the Story are made heartily welcome within them. More than that, women are coming out from those doors, attending lectures, forming organiza- tions, holding meetings, joining with Christian women in social service. Barriers which made it hard for the Christian woman, with her message of hope and strength, to get to the non-Christian woman, are breaking down with almost incredible rapidity. There is no need for the Christian woman to seek a way of approach to the woman who is working beside her in a Social Service League or Red Cross chapter. What is more natural than that she should speak of the One whose spirit has ever inspired such work as that? But more than that; the non-Christian woman is ready to hear. New knowledge, new experiences, new interests, new ideals and purposes are flinging wide the doors of mind and heart. Never were the women of the world so one in a common experience of suffering, a common longing for strength and comfort, as today. Never were lives so open to the Prince of Peace. An army of Bible Such opportunities as these call for women needed. a host Q f Oriental Christian women, skilled in making the Good News clear to women of many kinds. “We need to train an army of Bible women,” says one missionary. “Union Bible schools for women should be established in every province, WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT 224 or in every important centre.” And these schools, she goes on to say, must do more thorough and more advanced work than most Bible women’s training schools have considered necessary in the past, “for the demands now made upon a Bible woman are very different from those of former years.” New opportunities inevitably bring new demands and new requirements, and the Bible women of today and tomorrow must have not only the desire to share the glad tidings, but the training which will enable them to adapt the message to the understanding of many types of hearers, to be able to answer many different kinds of questions, to appeal to the minds as well as the hearts of the newly awakened women of the East. The challenge of The future centuries of the Orient’s this hour. life w jU } j n no sma q measure, be shaped by the women and girls of today, the mothers, the teachers, of the leaders of tomorrow. And the life of the girls and women of today is as clay, soft in the hands of the potter. Old things are passed away, the shape of the new is not yet determined. Who shall determine it? Shall the forces of material- ism and selfishness, or those of Christ? The answer rests with those who, in these days of change and confusion, shall be the leaders of the newly awakened women of the Orient. Yes, but who will determine who these leaders shall be? Neither we, nor our missionaries, nor any other Western women, can take the place of Oriental women in this task of leadership. But we can do an even greater thing. We can help to raise up the leaders. We can help to determine the character of the leadership. Not the Our part. FUTURE LEADERS OF CHINA IN GINLING’S COURTYARD THE CALL FOR LEADERS 225 men of the Orient, not the women of the Oc- cident, can guide the hosts of groping women of the East today. Only educated Christian women from among themselves can lead aright at this time. But we can give such leaders to the Orient. It is in our power to develop, in this day of days, Oriental women trained to lead, and to lead Christward. Never since Christian missions began has there been a challenge like that of this hour! If we would meet it, we cannot delay. The softness of clay is a passing thing. Forces are being brought to bear on it daily. If the forces of the Lord of Love are to be dominant, then must we press on to greater work and stronger for the women of the East. The war and our A call to advance! We have heard task - other calls in other years, and, though none of them have equalled this in urgency and in the magnitude of the issues involved, they have not been unheeded. But, many will say, this is wartime. Surely our supreme task now , to which all else must be subordinated, is to win this war. If Prussianism were to conquer, Prussianism which someone has well said “designates not simply a geographical territory, but a disposition, a disposition which is found in all parts of the world, and from which the world must be utterly purified, the disposition of the strong to override the weak” — if Prussianism were to triumph, surely the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven would be immeasurably postponed not in one part of the world, but in every part. Surely, those laymen were right who in issuing a call to their denomination for 1918, stated, “We have no higher duty, — one might almost say no other duty — than to 22 6 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT win this war, and to achieve the ends for which we are engaged in it.” “To win this war and achieve the ends for which we are engaged in it." Those last ten words help to make it clear that there are no conflicting claims upon us at a time like this. We are willing to pay the terrific cost of this war, to offer, without reserve, the gift of our men and the lesser gift of our money, because the ends for which we are engaged in it, at the cost of bloodshed and suffering immeasurable, have been rightly summed up as the making possible of “a world wherein all men everywhere shall see in God their Father, and in all men of every class and every race their brothers.” This is the aim of our warfare. Could there be any more concise, any more accurate definition of the aim of the foreign mis- sionary enterprise? We must seek the accomplish- ment of that aim today at the cost of the destruction of human life on the battlefields of Europe. God help us, in a situation such as this, we can do no other. We must also seek the accomplishment of this aim today through the constructive building up of life, abundant life, in the shadowed lands of Asia. Thank God, this, too, will help to bring about the ends for which we are engaged in war. To neglect, in the compulsion that is upon us to attain the goal for which we strive through battle and sudden death, the equally great compulsion to seek that goal through service in the name of the constraininglove of Christ, would be to win victory at one point, only to forfeit the cause through the loss of it at another. “This ought ye to have done, and not to have left the other undone.” THE CALL TOR LEADERS ITJ “The fight for a spiritual view of the world,” says Mr. J. H. Oldham, “for justice and fair-dealing, for the protection of the weak and the redemption of childhood, for the establishment of good-will and brotherhood, takes many forms and must be waged on many fronts, but it is the same fight. We cannot retire from the field in any part of the world without being weaker at every point. The task must be accepted as a whole. To confess that it is too great is to surrender something of that confidence in the universal validity of the principles for which we contend, something of that triumphant faith in the possession of invincible truth, which are necessary for success in the particular work we have in hand. Christianity can conquer by nothing less than its whole magnitude.” The word sacrifice holds new depths of meaning for us in 1918. The word giving has new content for us. Things which in brighter years seemed essential to our happiness and comfort we yield unquestion- ingly in answer to our country’s call, and scorn to call it sacrifice. This we cannot but do. But so far from being tempted to leave the other undone, we shall but learn new ways of giving, new possibilities of sacrifice, in answer to our Master’s call to us “for their sakes.” The great missionary movements of the world have been born in the midst of the pain and desolation of war. Nations that have been bearing the heat of this conflict longer than we, have not retrenched, but advanced, on the mission field. A great government, it is said, has urged its mission boards not to fall back in the stress of this colossal conflict, but to hold fast and press onward, that 228 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT when the war is over, and the rebuilding of the world begins, the advantage of ground gained in Europe be not swallowed up by the loss of ground in Christ’s cause in Asia or Africa. “The world’s to build anew” — not Europe, nor America, nor Asia, but the world ! “Long years ago, when the world was just be- ginning to be, there was a kingdom which was not yet finished.” And the king, as he beheld it, was troubled, “for everywhere that he looked there were loose ends and rough edges, and shapeless things waiting to be fashioned and it was so all over his kingdom. There was such a great lot to do that he could not possibly do it all alone — no king how- ever industrious could have done it all, and he longed for the help of his subjects. . . . ‘Summon me my hundred heralds!’ the king suddenly bade his ser- vants. ‘Hundred heralds,’ said the king. ‘I would that you go out into my kingdom, into its highways and even to its loneliest outposts, and take my people my message. Cry to them until each one hears with his heart as well as his head: “The world is beginning. You must go and help the king!" ’ ”* The rebuilding of the world is beginning! We must go and help the King! Zona Gale, The King’s Trumpeter. THE CALL FOR LEADERS 229 QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER VI. Aim of study: To realize the urgent need of the women of the Orient for leaders, and to see our relation to that need. 1. What facts brought out in the preceding chapters seem to you to warrant the statement that the women of the Orient “are athirst for leaders”? 2. Do you agree with the statement that the men of the Orient cannot furnish the leadership required by the women today? If so, why? 3. Do you agree with the conclusion that the women of the Occident cannot themselves be the needed leaders among Oriental women today? If so, why? 4. Does this demand for leadership, then, have any bearing upon our plans and efforts as members of women’s foreign mis- sionary societies? If so, what? And why? 5. If you had $100, ooo to invest in Christian educational work in the Orient in 1918, what proportion would you give to kindergartens, to girls’ high schools, to women’s colleges, to women’s medical schools, and to schools for training women in religious work? 6. What reasons would you give in support of such a division ? 7. If this sum could not be divided, but must all be given to one school, what school would you choose, and why? 8. What arguments would you use to a woman who felt that your denomination should develop a women’s college of its own, rather than join with other boards in a union college? 9. What conditions in Asia make the need for thoroughly trained women physicians so acute? 10. What conditions in the East today call for a great addition to the numbers of Oriental women who can give the Good News to their countrywomen? 11. Why is it necessary to give some of them so much more thorough education and training than most of the Bible women of the past have had? 23O WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT 12. How would you sum up the challenge which the present situation among the women of the Orient makes to the Christian women of the Occident? 13. Can you think of any previous situation which could be compared to this one in the greatness, the extent, or the im- portance for future centuries of the opportunities it has offered the Church of Christ? 1 4. Why is it that the present situation can admit of no delay? 15. What answer would you make to those who would advise the postponement of our foreign missionary work until peace has been declared, and all the needs created by the war have been met? A BRIEF READING LIST The East in General The Child in the Midst , Labaree (Central Committee on United Study of Foreign Missions, West Medford, Mass.) $0.30. Western Women in Eastern Lands , Montgomery (Macmillan) 30.30. The Kings Highway, Montgomery (Central Committee on United Study of Foreign Missions, West Medford, Mass.) 30.30. Overtaking the Centuries , Paddock (The Woman’s Press) 30.40. Moslem Countries Our Moslem Sisters, Van Sommer (Fleming H. Revell Co.) 31.25. Daylight in the Harem, Van Sommer and Others (Fleming H. Revell Co.) 3 I - 2 5 - India As It is Today in India, Fleming (Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York) 30.03. The Education of Women of India, Cowan (Fleming H. Revell Co.) 31*25. Pandita Ramabai, Dyer (Fleming H. Revell Co.) 31.25. Lilaoati Singh , Nichols (Woman’s Foreign Missionary So- ciety of Methodist Episcopal Church, 581 Boylston St., Boston, M ass.) 30.30. China The Changing Chinese, Ross (The Century Co.) 32.40. China, an Interpretation , Bashford, Chapter V (The Abingdon Press) 32.50. Shanghai Sketches, Ward (The Woman’s Press, 600 Lexington Avenue, New York) 30.30. The Gateway to China, Gamewell, Chapter XIV (Fleming H. Revell Co.) 31.50. 232 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT The Education of Women in China , Burton (Fleming H. Revell Co.) $1.25. Notable Women of Modem China , Burton (Fleming H. Revell Co.) £1.25. Japan Japanese Girls and Women , Bacon (Houghton Mifflin) $0.75. The Education of Women in Japan, Burton (Fleming H. Revell Co.) $1.25. The Working Women of Japan, Gulick (The Missionary Education Movement) $0.50. Investigation of Factory Conditions in Japan, Allan (Woman’s Missionary Society of the Methodist Church, Wesley Buildings, Toronto, Canada) $0.05. Japan Today , Emerson (The Woman’s Press) $0.25. Many of the Women’s Foreign Mission Boards will provide supplementary leaflets and pamphlets to accompany our study books. INDEX Accidents, 52-53, 60 Anti Foot-binding Society formed by Chinese women, 188-190 Armenian women, 15 Arrests of Japanese girls, 65 Babies, care of, by Moslem women, n Baking, in public ovens, 13; see Cooking Banker, woman, 128-129, I 3 ° Bashford, Mrs., quoted, 157 Bible woman, influence upon Oriental home, 37, 163 Bible women, 223-224 Bonnell, Miss Cornelia, and the “ Door of Hope,” 165-166 Brewster, Dr., quoted, 53 Broadening horizons, 81-120; and Christian missions, 118-119 Bullard, Miss, reformation of “Red Thieves Tribe,” 164-165 Business, Moslem women in, 125- 126; Indian women in, 127; Chinese women in, 127-129; Japanese women in, 129-130 Canton Christian College, 220-221 Carleton, Dr. Mary, quoted, 113 Carter, E. C., quoted, 92 Changes, see Industrial changes, Social changes Changsha, Social Service League of, and its work, 192-197 Character shaping, 207-208 Child labor in China, 51-53 Children, care of, 21-22, 195; helped by the Ikuji society, 201 China, washing clothes in, 20; economy in utilizing fur, 24; slave girls in, 24; a Christian home in, 26; the coolie woman of, 42-43; machinery in, 49-54; old and new wedding customs in, iio-iii; educated leaders needed in, 114; educational renaissance in, 137-140; wom- en’s societies in, 192 Chinese men, new attitude of, 110-112; provide instruction for their wives, 1 11-1 12 Chinese Revolution, 185-188 Chinese woman, home of, 19; cooking and sewing, 20; care of children, 21-22; field work, 22- 23, 24; her home industries, 24-25 ; opinions u pon, 25 ; ability of, 25-26; tribute to Christian wife, 26-27; disciplined mother, love of a, 27; addresses attend- ants at funeral of her child, 27-28; why inefficient as home- maker, 28; of leisure, 32; a banker, 128-129; as social work- er, 162 Chinese women, establishment of a new social order for, 110-114; new longings, 112-113; craving for education, 113; new dangers, 1 1 3—1 14; new opportunities, 114; Christ a power in the uplift of, 1 14; in business, 127-129; edi- tors, 148-149; physicians, 156- 158; part of, in the Chinese Revolution, 185-188; hold pub- lic meetings in favor of re- forms, 188-191 Christ, power of, in the uplift of women, 114 Christian converts own model factories in Japan, 68-70 Christian education necessary for development of leaders, 208-210 234 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT Christian factory is Christianizing a district in Japan, 70 Christian influence, doors opened by world war, 108-110 Christian leadership, 207 Christian missions, and Oriental home, 35-37; and women’s in- dustries, 76—77; and broadening horizons, 118-119 Christian schools chief source of supply for women teachers, 139 Christian social experiments, two, 164-166 Christians, should furnish leaders to Oriental nations, 1 19; women medical students are, 154 Christianity the only safe guide of the Japanese woman, 117 Clubs, women’s, 180-185 College, Constantinople, 210; Isabella T h o b u r n, 210-211; Women’s Christian, of Madras, 211-216; North China Union College of Peking, 216; Ginling, 216-220; Canton Christian, 220- 221; Women’s Christian, of Tokyo, 221 Colleges, Christian, for women, responsibility of success, 221- 222; union, of great value, 209- 210 Concubinage, 191 Constantinople College, 210 Cooking, 12, 20, see Baking Coolie labor of Indian women, 16 Co-operation between women, 169-205 Coppock, Miss, quoted, 198-199 Cotton, reeling, an industry for women, 16; spinning and weav- ing, a home industry for Chinese women, 24; weaving in Japan, 30; weaving in China, 49-50 Cotton mill in Bombay, 47-48 Courage of Indian woman, 103-105 Cowan, Miss Minna, quoted, 94, I3S Death rate abnormally high in Japanese factories, 63 de Selincourt, Miss Agnes, quoted, 93-94 Disease, factory dormitory a breeding place of, 61-62; com- batted by a Chinese society in Changsha, 193-194 Diseases, in Japanese factories, 63 “ Door of Hope,” 165-166 Dormitories of Japanese factories, evils of, 61-62 Dress, styles in Ottoman Em- pire, 12; changes in, desired by Turkish women, 88-90; Ulviye Hanoum upon, 89-90 Earnings of Japanese girls, 60 Editors, women, Turkish, 143- 144; Indian, 148; Chinese, 148- r 49 Education, of factory girls, 63; Moslem women desire, 85-87, 90-92; need of, recognized, 93- 94; pride in achievements in, 97- 99, 108; demand for, stimulated, 108-110; Chinese men provide, 111-112; Chinese women desire, 1 13 ; primary, compulsory, 1 1 5 ; story of woman’s, in East, 118; women teachers, 13 1; training teachers, 132-133; renaissance of, in China, 137-140; Christian, necessary, 208-209; higher, in- dispensable, 209-210; see Teach- ers. Education of girls, conflicting opinions, 81; subsidized in Egypt, 82; in Persia, 83; in Turkey, 83-84; Mohammedan fathers ambitious for, 84-85; commended, 94; growth in, 99- 100; urged by Mohammedan and Hindu women, 179 Educational Society, Women’s, Japanese, 200 Egypt, education of girls, 82; women writers of, 145 INDEX Emancipation, of women, favored, 82; desired, 87; need for, recog- nized, 93-94; necessary, 94; favored, 111-112 Entertainers, Japanese, see Geisha Erukalas, reformation of, 164-165 Evils, Turkish women encouraged to remedy, 126 Factories, in Moslem lands, 45-46; in China, 49-54; increase of, certain, 53; proportion of wom- en employed in, 55; model, in Japan, 68-70; see Japanese fac- tory girls, Factory legislation Factory legislation, 53-54,57, 72-73 Factory system, in Japan, 54 Factory workers, see Japanese fac- tory girls Field work of women, 12, 14, 22- 23, 24, 28-29, 42 Foochow, women’s industries at, 77 Food, labor of women in prepar- ing, 17; insufficient, 62 Freedom, desired, 86-87; desire for crushed, 92-93; of Japanese woman, 115; effect of desire for, US Gale, Zona, quoted, 228 Geisha, the, 74-75 Ginling College, 216-220 Girls, education of, see Education of girls Gokhale, Mr., quoted, 92-93 Gospel, open doors for, 223 Gosse, Edmund, quoted, 145-146 Gulick, Dr., quoted, 69-70, 74, 75 Hanoum, Halideh, 142-144 Hanoum, Ulviye M., quoted, 86- 87, 89, 126; editor, 144 Hershey, Prof. Amos S., quoted, 7G 73 . Hindu girl, the day of a, 18-19 Hindu men favor education of girls, 99-100 235 Hindu women urge the education of girls, 179 Hinduism, effect of, 92-93 Home, work within the, 11-38; Moslem, 12; of Chinese woman, 19; a Christian, 26; the Japanese, 29-30; missionary’s, influence, 35-36; Oriental, and Christian missions, 35-37 Home industries, of women, 14, 15, 16, 24-25, 30-31 Home-maker, why Chinese woman is inefficient as, 28 Homes, Christian, 70-71 Horizons, broadening, 81-120; and Christian missions, 118-119 Hospital Association, Tokyo Charity, 201 Hospital, tuberculosis, 196-197 Hospitals train nurses, 156 Hour, challenge of the, 224-225 House, Indian, 17 Housekeepers, Chinese, 19 Housework, 12, 17, 29-30 Hygienic Association, Women’s, 201 Hygienic conditions, 56 Ideals, changing, of the Orient, 118-119 Idleness of women of leisure, 3 1-34 Ignorance makes Indian women willing victims, 92-93 Indemnity-fund students, 139-140 India, household tasks in, 16, 17; women aid men, 17; women of leisure in, 32; the coolie woman of, 41-42; woman in industry in, 46-48; woman’s life in, 92-93; and the world war, 105-107; de- mand for education, 108-110; need for teachers in, 135; re- formation of thieves, 164-165 Indian men enlightened, 106-107 Indian National Conference, reso- lutions passed by, 94-95 Indian woman, 100-107 Indian women, willing victims through ignorance, 92-93; signs 236 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT of new day, 93-94; as students, pride in educational achieve- ments of, 97-99; mobilized for service, 107-110; in the business world, 127; teachers, 133— 1 3 5 ; writers, 145-149; editors, 148; needed as physicians, 152-154; medical colleges for, 154; pioneer physicians, 154-156; training courses offered to, by medical schools and hospitals, 156; patri- otism of, 174-176; and the war, 176-178; of all religious work together for Red Cross, 177; working together, 178-180; clubs, 180-185 industrial changes, IX, 54 Industrial conditions, 71, 73 Industrial success, cost of, 62 Industries, see Women’s industries Industries, home, see Home in- dustries Infant mortality, 194-195 Isabella Thoburn College, 210-21 1 Insane, the, helped by Ladies Aid Association for Lunatics, 201 Intelligence of Chinese women, 26 Japan, field work of women, 28-29; home industries, 30-31; women of leisure in, 32-33; the coolie woman of, 43-44; a manufactur- ing nation, 54; no factory laws now operative in, 57; cheap labor, 58; cost of success, 62; industrial conditions in, 71; the situation in, 115-117 Japanese learn quickly, 54 Japanese factory girls, apprenticed when young, 56; long hours, 56, 58-59; bad hygienic and moral conditions, 56; no factory laws now operative, 57; earnings of, 60; conditions of work, 60; accidents, 60; dormitories, 61- 62; exposed to diseases, 61-62; insufficient food, 62; stunted growth of, 62; percentage of sickness and disease abnormal amongst, 63; limited education of, 63; temptations of, arrests of, and prostitution amongst, 64-65; lured to factories by lying agents, 65-66; why they stay, 66-67; welfare work for, in factories, 67-70; efforts of Christian workers, in behalf of, 70-71 Japanese girls, education, 115; economic conditions, 115; dan- gers that threaten, 115-116 Japanese woman, freedom of, 115; lacks safeguards, 116-117; Chris- tianity the only safe guide of, 1 17; a banker, 130 Japanese women, greatly affected by introduction of factory sys- tem, 54; in business, 129-130; as teachers, 140- 141; writers, 150; physicians, 158-159; nurses, 159-160; work for Red Cross and Patriotic League, 200; organized work of, 200-202 Kawai, Miss Michi, quoted, 116 Kibby, preparation of, 13 Kindergarten, influence upon Oriental home, 36-37 Kipling, Rudyard, quoted, 106- r I0 7 Knowledge, public exhorted to aid spread of useful, 95 Labor, hours of, long in Japan, 56, 58-59; cheaper than machinery in Japan, 58 Lace, Armenian women as makers of, 15 Laundry, see Washing Lawyers, Oriental women as, 160- 161 Leaders, educated, needed in China, 114; Christians should furnish, to Oriental nations, 119; social and religious, 161-163; the call for, 207-230; thirst for, 207; training of, 207-208; best, must be native women, Chris- tian and educated, 224-225 INDEX Leadership, social, of missionaries, 203-204 Lectures attended by Turkish women, 90-91 Leisure, women of, in Moslem countries, 31-32; in India and China, 32; in Japan, 32-33; social changes involved in broad- er outlook, 33-34 Liberty, Chinese women ask for, 113 Machinery, changes work of Orien- tal women, 44-45; in China, 49- 5 4; more expensive than labor in apan, 58 Madras, Women’s Christian Col- lege of, 211-216 Marriageable age, raising of, for Indian girls advocated, 95 Medical aid, Ikuji society of Japan, 201 Medical colleges for women, in India, 154; offer training for nurses, 156; the only, in China are under missionary auspices, 156-158 Medical schools, 222 Men, selfish and domineering, produce weak women, 94 Meetings held by Chinese women, 188-191 Milk stations for free distribution, 195-196 Miner, Miss, quoted, 208-209 Missionaries, great constructive social leadership of, 203-204 Missionary task and the war, 225- 228 Mission industrial plants, 76-77 Missions, see Christian missions Mission schools, the fruits of, 118- ”9 Mohammedan fathers, ambitious to have daughters educated, 84- 85; 99-100 Mohammedanism, effect of, on lives of Indian women, 92-93 237 Moral conditions in Japanese fac- tories, 56 Moslem countries, housewife in, 12; women of leisure in, 31-32; factories in, 45-46; women phy- sicians of, 150-15 1 Moslems, progressive, favor eman- cipation of women, 82 Moslem women, new aspirations of, 85-87, 90-92; in business, 125-126; as teachers, 131-132; as nurses, 151-152; urge the education of girls, 179 Mother love of Chinese woman, 27 Mother’s Union, Japanese, 201 Naidu, Sarojini, poetry and prose of, 145-147; elected Fellow of Royal Society of Literature of Great Britain, 145; quoted, 174; “a salutation of song,” 177-178 Nation, feeble, results from weak womanhood, 94 Near East, women writers of, 141-145 Newspapers, attitude of, towards new life for women, 96-97; see Editors North China Union College of Peking, 216 Novels, effect of translations of western, upon Japanese girls, 116 Nurses, Mohammedan women, 151-152; training offered for women, in India, 156; Chinese, 158; Japanese, 159-160; Japan- ese training schools, 159; visit- ing, employed by society in Changsha, 193 Oldham, Mr. J. H., quoted, 227 Oorfa, mission industrial plant at, 76-77 Orphans, home for Indian, 137 Oriental women as teachers, 13 1 Orient, the old and new, 81-120 238 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT Pamphlets written and circulated to improve living conditions, 196 Patience of Chinese women, 26 Patrick, Dr. Mary, quoted, 125 Patriotism, of Persian women, 170- 172; of Turkish women, 172- 173; of Indian women, 174-176; of Chinese women, 185-188; of Japanese women, 199-200 Peking, North China Union Col- lege of, 216 Persia, education of girls in, 83; schools in a city of, 131-132 Persian women, their lives, 16; and abandonment of veil, 87-88; and new outlook, 91-92; writers, 145; patriotism of, 1 70-172 Physicians, women, of Moslem lands, 150-151; needed in India, 152-154; some of the pioneers in India, 154-156; Chinese, 156- 158; Japanese, 158-159 Polygamy, opposed by “new” women of the Near East, 89-90; decreasing, 90 Poor, relief of, in Changsha, 193 Prostitution, Japanese factory girls and, 65; and the “Door of Hope,” 165-166 Purdah parties, ior-103 Purdah system, relaxation and abandonment of, advocated, 95 Reading, no time for, 16 Red Crescent, Society of, 174 Red Cross, Indian women of all religions work together for, 177; work of Chinese women for, 198; work of Japanese women, 200 “Red Thieves Tribe,” reformation of, 164-165 Religious leaders, 161-163 Remarriage of Indian widows, conferences favor, 95-96, 100- 101; has brave advocates, 104- io 5 Rescue homes, “ Door of Hope,” 165-166; Japanese, 201 Resolutions passed by Indian National Conference, 94-95 Rice, cultivation of, in Japan, 28- 29 Ross, Prof. Edward A., quoted, 119 Roy, Basanta Koomar, quoted, 94 Russo-Japanese war, work of Jap- anese women in, 200 Sacrifice, new meaning of, 227 Salih, Madame Halideh, see Han- oum, Halideh School, Christian, influence upon Oriental home, 36 School, mission, for girls and changing ideals of Orient, 118- ”9 . Schools, in a Persian city, 1 3 1— 132; see Christian schools Self-support by women, forced by tvorld war, 1 23-1 25; Moham- medan attitude toward, 125; taught in a Christian home at Mukti, 137 Self-support of widows, in India, 96 Service, spirit of, aroused in Moslem women, 86-87; Indian women mobilized for, 107-no Seva Sadan or house of service, 182-185 Seva Sadan Society, commended by Indian National Conference, 95 Sewing, of Chinese woman, 20 Shanghai, factories of, 50; Wom- en’s League of Service, 197-198 Shanghai’s “City of Dreadful Night,” 165-166 Shattuck, Miss Corinna, estab- lishes women’s industries at Oorfa, 76-77 Shekelton, Miss, quoted, 113, 114, 188-190 Shopkeepers, women, in Japan, 30 Shuster, Mr. Morgan, quoted, 170-171 INDEX 239 Silk culture, a home industry for women, 15; work of Chinese women in, 24; in Japan, 30-31 Slave girls kept in China to spin cotton, 24 Social activities, participation of women in, 95 Social changes, caused by war, 11; involved in broader outlook for women of leisure, 33-34; in Japan, due to introduction of factory system, 54 Social experiments, two Christian, 164-166 Social leaders, 161-163 Social leadership of Missionaries, 203-204 Social Service League of Changsha and its work, 192-197 Social service clubs in India, 180- 185 Societies of Indian women adopt ambitious educational and social programs, 108-110 Society for the Defense of Wom- en’s Rights, aims of, 173-174 Speer, Dr., quoted, 51, 53, 54, 162 Spiritual view of the world, the fight for, 227 Straw products made by Chinese women, 24 Stocking, Miss, quoted, 87-88; 91-92 Success, responsibility of, 221-222 Teachers, Oriental women as, 13 1; women, in Mohammedan lands, 131- 132; training of, in Turkey, 132- 133; Indian women, 133 — 135; crying need for, in India, 135; Indian widows training to become, 135-136; need of wom- en, in China, 137-138; chief source of supply, 139-140; wom- en, of Japan, 140-141 Temptations of Japanese factory girls, 64-65 Theatre, effect of, upon Japanese girls, 1 16 Thieves, tribe of, reformation by Miss Bullard, 164-165 Tokyo, Women’s Christian College of, 221 Trail makers, the, 123-167 Tsuda, Miss lime, quoted, 116, «7 Tuberculosis, free lectures upon in Changsha, 194 Tuberculosis hospital, money raised for, in Changsha, 196-197 Turkish women, and the veil, 88; and the “ Society for the Defense of Women’s Rights,” 88-90; attend lectures, 90-91, encour- aged to earn their own living to remedy present evils, 126; de- barred from many occupations by veil, 126; writers, 141-144; nurses, 151-152; patriotism of, 172-173 Turkey, education of girls favored in, 83-84; training teachers in, 132-133; women’s organizations in, 173-174 Uniform factory in Peking, 50 Union, the strength of, 222 University training open to women in Turkey, 84 Vaccination in Changsha, 194 Van Doren, Miss Alice, quoted, 136 Vegetables raised by Moslem women, 14 Veil, Persian women wish to abandon, 87-88; Turkish women and the, 88; Ulviye Hanoum upon, 89; debars Turkish women from many occupations, 126 Vocations, women forced into new, 123-125 Wage earners, the, 41-79 War, cause of changes in women’s work, 1 x ; world, its reactions 240 WOMEN WORKERS OF THE ORIENT upon India, 105-107; women and, 123-125; the, and the mis- sionary task, 225-228 Washing, in Moslem countries, 14; in China, 20; in Japan, 30 Weaving, Armenian women pro- ficient in, 15 Wedding customs, old and new, in China, 110-in Welfare work in Japanese fac- tories, 67-70 Whealdon, Miss Martha, quoted, 47-48 Wheat raised by Moslem women, 12 Widows, remarriage of, confer- ences favor, 95-96; self-sup- port of, 96; number of, in India, 96, 100-101; brave advocates of, 104-105; training to become teachers, 135-136; home for, 137 Wife, tribute to Chinese Chris- tian, 26-27 Woman, see Chinese, Indian, and Japanese woman Womanhood, weak, means a feeble nation, 94 Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, 198, 201 Woman’s sphere broadened by world war, 123-125 Woman’s tasks, 11 Women, Persian, life of, 16; in Japan, assist men in household industries, 30; as unskilled laborers in India, 41-42; in China, 42-43; in Japan, 43-44; in industry, in India, 46-48; proportion in industry, 55; emancipation of, favored by pro- gressive Moslems, 82; the new aspirations of Moslem, 85-87; life of Indian, 92-93; new life for, attitude of newspapers to- wards, 96-97; and the world war, 123—125 ; see Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Moslem, Persian, and Turkish women Women working together, 169- 205; Christian missions and, 203-204 Women’s Christian College, of Madras, 211-216; of Tokyo, 221 Women’s clubs in India, 180-185 Women’s industries, Christian mis- sions and, 76-77 Women’s League of Service of Shanghai, 197-198 Women’s organizations, in Turkey, 173-174; in China, 192-199; in Japan, 200-202 Women’s Rights, Society for the Defense of, 88; encourages Turkish women to earn their own living, 126; aims of, 173- , 174 Women’s work, affected by ma- chinery, 44-45; in Moslem lands, 45-46 Womens World , The, illustrated Turkish weekly, 144 Work within the home, 11-38 World is beginning, all should help to shape it, 228 Writers, women, of the Near East, 141-145; of India, 145- 147; of Japan, 150 Young Women’s Christian Asso- ciation, 198-199, 202 DATE DUE Ofi s , • • • " * DEMCO 38-297 Enters of the Orient