Jan, 21. our all of the women of Honan for the Tiberation of their down-trodden sisters in the province suggests ieward glance over the progress of the movement for women's riighis in other coun-Lies, The subjection of women is traved by Sir Hour in his book "The Early Histor; of Institutions" to the fact that in ancient times the fami the unit of the state, as it fs in China to this day. The head of the family was an autocrat and the women were not more absolutely under his contro! than were the male members of the household, and both were us wholly his possessions as were the family cattle, The progress of civilization has been. the progress of individualism, Step by step the members of the clan have freed themselves from the domination of the chief and have wrn the ight to be persons; to have an individuality and be entitled yo own property in ther own right. This freedom came later 19 women than it did to men, Until the passing of the Married Women's Property Act in 1882 4 women's estate passed, on marriage, to her husband, Hence the abductions and Gretna Green marriages of early days which, while romantic in theory were very often mercenary in prac= tice, Until 1886 a woman's children belonged solely to her husband and even after his decease she could only claim to possess them as his deputy, was not until 1884 that the penalty of imprisonment for disobeying an order of court for the restoration of conjugal rights was abolished and a wife given the right to the sanctity of her own person, Even now the domestic work of women is seldom esteemed at its true economic value. If a woman ix engaged in business her earnings are her own but if she has chosen the career of being a wife and a mother she is often told that her husband "keeps her and his family." Whereas the woman who sews, cooks and washes for her husband and children "keeps" the family as truly as does the man who drives a plough or drives a pen.
By the so-called "Votes for Flapper "act, passed last ye quarter million women are enfranchised this year in Great Britain, The balance of voting power i definitely on the female may be taken for granted that any further legal inequalities remain in the position of wame., als contrasted wilh men, these inequalities: are doomed to speedy extinction. There are few who would care to say that have mot justified the of those who yielded to privileges they have Even in those ife which men as peculiarly their owa women have challenged their superiority. Last y aly 2 Heath established " new altitude record by ascending to a height of 22,000 fect at Croydon. Our news page contained, only a few days ago, the information that Lady Bailey had completed a solo flight of 18,000 miles around 'Africa, In the first race for women motorists, run at Brooklands last' year, Miss M.M. Bond's ear somersaulted and escaped death by a miracle. Scrambling from the wreckage she asked, breathlessly, whether the ear could be repaired in time ito continue the race. The women of to-d dently, rising to her opportunities and is as dizferent from the puling, simpering, creature depicted in thi romances of fifty years ago as she is from the ancient Amazons, These seress record of eve! in Great Britaia but the movement is world wide inevitable and as ible as the occa ease for the of women's position in China too strong to be disputed, for they labour yet under all the disabilities recorded above, from which their sex in more favoured lands has already been "freed.
Their tortured, bound, feet have been, for hundreds of years, the badge of their inferiority. In ne other countr; at no time la the world's history has such an atrocity been perpetrated on such a large portion of humanity. The time for its abolition is long overdue. The matter of the betrothal of children also calls loudly for redress. In poorer families it frequently happens that the betrothed child is trans ferred at an carly age to the home of her prospective parents in Inw. She then becomes the household drudge and is beaten and badgered until suicide puts an end to her misery, Two causes contribute to keep Chirese women in thralldom; they are ignorance and economic necessity. The education of women was distinctly discouraged in the China that is passing away, There was a proverb—the Chinese have proverbs, for every contingency in life and, in any argument. the quotation of 4 proverb is the end of discus: sion—"simplicity in woman is 9 virtue." Christian missions were the pioneers of female education in China and they did much to instill a spirit of indepence into the minds of their girl students, The much decried foreign industrialism provided ud did some her economic dependence and now we sec stirring: in the dry bones and the beginning of that battle foe freedom which "though baffled oft is ever won."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.