EXTRACTS FROM “DEGENERATE GERMANY.”

Taihape Daily Times, 6 December 1917, Page 7

EXTRACTS FROM “DEGENERATE GERMANY.”

The Prussian law concerning societies forbids schoolboys and apprentices under IS, and women, to take part in political associations and public meetings. Until late in the I9th century women were forbidden by various German codes to enter the public law courts as listeners. . . . For many years in Germany while men had gone through their schooling in the art of wholesale murder, much of the agricultural and lowest forms of mechanical labour of the country has been loft in their hands, and upon her shoulders falls the hardest portion of 'the work. A woman and cow yoked will draw the plough; the peasant wife will carry bricks or mortar to the top of the highest building, while her husband sucks away at his pipe at the foot of the ladder, refilling the hod each time she descends. It is estimated by the German's themselves that eighttenths of the agricultural labourers in the Fatherland are women. They plough and sow an dreap grain, and carry on their backs huge sacks of offal for fertilising the land As street cleaners in most German towns they still collect the garbage, sweep and cleanse the roadways, and harnessed with cows or dogs perform the most repulsive labours in the fields and streets. An American consul, writing upon a Labour circular issued by the German Government some few years ago, commented thus: —“’An important factor in the labour of Germany is not inquired of in this circular, viz., the labour of dogs. I have heard it estimated that women and dogs harnessed together do more hauling than the railroads and all other modes of conveyance of goods united. Hundreds of small wagons can be seen every day on all the roads leading to and from Dresden, each having a dog for the “near horse” harnessed, while the “off horse” is a woman with her left hand passed through a loop in the rope, which is attached to the axle, binding the shoulders; the harnessed woman and dog trudge along together, pulling miraculous loads in all sorts of weather.’ ’ \

The pay of women for this degrading form of abour is from 5d to Is a day. Xo burden in Germany is thought too heavy fr a woman until old age insists heavy for woman until old age insists ployment; she then, among other things will take the place of newsboys in England, selling papers in the streets. In Munich, the capital of Bavarian Germany and the seat of the fine arts, in beautiful Dresden, the so called German Florence, women are no better off than elsewhere in the Empire. Bavarian boors, who themselves wear heavy wooden shoes, drive their barefooted wives and daughters before the plough in the fields, or harnessed with dogs, as in other parts of Germany, send them with loads of produce to the city and town. These ((German labouring women arc mere beasts of burden yet they never seem to grumble; they do not smile, cither—they simply exist. The only liberty they possess is liberty to work; the only rest they know is sleep. ‘'The existence of a cow or a sheep,” says an American authoress, “is a perpetual heaven compared to the lives of these German women.” But the labours of these German women slaves (5 a.m. to 7 p.m., or even 8 p.ra., most mouths) do not end outdoors. Idleness is not for them Their evenings are spent in cooking, spinning, making clothing, and rearing children. They seldom go to bed before midnight —is it any wonder one never sees these peasant women smile ? Instead, in their dull eyes is the cold, expressionless gaze of a statute, while on their faces are deeply. etched lines of the strenuous, never-ending toil which makes life a prison hoiufe for them. Throughout Prussia women are to be found working in the mines, in quarries, in foundries, building railroads, acting as sailors and boatmen, dragging barges in place of horses on the canals, and performing the most repellant forms of labour known to man.