The Daily Worker Newspaper, October 23, 1926, Page 12

By HALINA SIERIEBRIAKOVA., HE letus is the symbol of beauty, the ideal of femining grace in China. The Chinese idea concerning the charm of woman differs greatly from our own. The Chinese woman, like the stem of the lotus, must be slender and undulating. To achieve this, from earliest child- hood they put a special corset on the little girls which, thru its rigid em- brace, hinders the normal development of their chests and hips. This cruel custom impedes the circulation of the blood and hinders breathing; it makes the Chinese woman a poor, small thing, delicate and fragile. The ChineSé woman can scarcely move, and from this it is that her abysmal bondage arises. Scarcely born than they already squeeze her feet in bands. A decree of the revolution of 1911 prohibits the deforming of the feet of little girls. Nevertheless, up to the present, most Chinese motherg- con- tinue to cripple their children, A wom- an having the feet of a young girl of two or three"years is sought after much more, especially in the country, thon a young girl whose feet are nor- mally developed. The latter simply risks remaining without a husband. The peasant women of Chinese vil- lage’, while performing a labor wholly beyond their strength, walk only with difficulty on their fragments of feet. Sometimes not able to stand up even omher poor, deformed feet, the Chi- ‘mese peasant woman gets down “on afl fours” in order to cultivate her soil, The Chinese woman remains in ab- solute bondage from the moment of her birth to the time of her death. In her childhood she is governed by her father; later by her husband, chosen by the father or brother; in her old age she submits to the power of her oldest son. The Chinese woman can never marry of her own choice. Only during these last years have love mafriages made their first appearance among the students and the bour- geoisie. To most women this senti- ment is prohibited. They deliver the ive ME mille” XZ thire?. ' we Me Fhought. “and eares aleth bso J ‘Ye wear. ay little girl to the husband, who often has been chosen for her when she was quite small. If during these years she does not give birth to a son the hus- band may send her back to her fath- er’s house or simply drive her out into the street. The Chinese woman who works must give her “master,” that is, her father or husband, all the money that she earns. In the cities there are as- sociations of Chinese women workers who have sworn never to marry, in order to avoid the conjugal servitude, They sell the little girls ‘‘wholesale” to the factories, to the public houses and for a “time” to the rich foreign- ers. For twelve or fifteen dollars a month a foreigner can obtain, for some time, a Chinese woman, who owes him absolute obedience and who will serve him, among other things, as domestic and washerwoman. If the “commodity” doesn’t please him, the foreigner can, if he wishes, get rid of the “rented” woman by pay- ing the indemnity provided by the contract. Without having exact statistics, we may assert that suicides are very fre- quent among the Chinese women. The poor people sell their daughters to special schools of “concubines” (women for a time) where only pretty women are bought. In these “school- retail-houses” they teach the little girls dancing, music, sewing_and de- portment, When these little boarders have become big girls they are sold very: dearly: to.lovers, ..In China they. often give “jugs of wine” in the shape of a woman, Duripg one year alone sixty women had been offered in this manner to President Tsao-Koun. China has a custom unknown to the bill of fare, they offer you an ele- gant catalog in Chinese and English which points out to you under pom- pous ‘names, not wines or dishes, but women. Affecting dramas, which one makes a careful effort to hide, take place in the public houses at the grated win- dows like those of a prison. The-buying and selling of women, like all the other events in the life of the Chinese, are surrounded with com- plicated ceremonies. The procuresses, ordinarily old women, specialists in this sort of business, play an important role in these preparations and nego- tiate with the buyer. An enormous quantity of women are exported to the public houses of America. Whole Boats leave loaded with women torn by misery from a poor family incapa- ble of feeding them. Two women deserve a_ certain amount of attention in the history of contemporary China. One of them, the Empress Tsi, has made herself famous by an unbridled squandering of the people’s money, by her cruelty and her debauchery. A few kiiometers from Pekin is tlie win- ter palace built for the Empress Tsi with the money intendedg for the Chi- nese fleet. An enormous boat of mar- ble fronting the palace at the verge of the lake, as if to bring back to. the passers-by the memory of this money to symbolize the ships which had never been built. At the beginning of the twentieth century this wonder- working sovereign-undertook fabulous tasks, yielding nothing to the construc- tion of the Egyptian pyramids. Thou- sands of workers raised mountains other peoples: As a sign of friend-jand constructed marvelous palaces ship the Chinese exchange their con cubines. Sometimes the concubine, having given birth to a son, remains at the home of the husband who has bought her: lodging and daily subsist- ence thus being assured her up to her death. More often the concubine, hav- ing become old, is driven out, finding a last shelter’in a public house. ff, in a chic Chinese cabaret, you ask for Wy fou who buy : agai A i daily gow with lighted galleries. It is under the Empress. Tsi that the execution of a revolutionary woman took place for the first time: a simple schoolmistress bearing the name of Tsin-Din (Treas- ure of Autumn)? Daughter of a high fufictionary, she had received a care- ful education, first in China, then in Japan, Quite young, Tsin-Dsi en- tered the revolutionary movement to which she henceforth sacrificed her. whole life. It was-said of Tsin-Dsi that she was the equal of men, which in China is the supreme praise given to a woman. She made an effort to awaken her co-citizens, to stimulate them in their struggle by her dis- courses and her poetry. Thousands of Chinese’ walk on solid feet, thanks to the influence of Tsin- Dsi, who fought constantly, long even before the revolution, against the cruel local customs physically deforming the woman. Thousands of women — students, women doctors, schoolmistresses, ral- lied to the slogan of the émancipation of woman lauftched for the first time in China by Tsin-Dsi. She was con- demned to death and executed in 1907 after a fruitless effort at revolt, Sun-Yat-Sen always supported Tsin- Dsi energetically and introduced into the program of the Kuomintang the demand for the complete emancipa- tion of woman, ~“ Today the Kuomintang party num- bers relatively many women in its ranks, At Canton there are 500 women workers who are members of the party, which is not..an_ insignificant number if one considers the local con- ditions. : In spite of a hard labor which is be- yond the. energies of the Chinese woman and which, it seems, ought to | have condemned her to cotipleteviner- | tia, it is just from among the Chinese workers that the most energetic mili- tants are recruited. Actually, two Communist women weavers, Lui-Tehang-lang and Men- Tchi-Tchung, enjoy a particular popu- larity and are reputed to be the best women orators in China. The widow of Sun Yat-Sen, who is a member of the central committee of the Kuomintang, similarly takes an ac- tive part in the feminist’movement. - THRE TINY WORKER By George Nevers, Seattle, Wash, is is the tale Fr a lonely scab He got in jail Because of gab. : 2 <™ told his boss o Rees were Seth a ow He stole what he had. Queen 8. fine. rights. So they put the seab In jail by heck, The men all hope They stretch his She — and the neck. ” Marie has come to the U. All the foolish nuts think she is And in Roumania workers are 3 put in jail because they fight for their I'll bet all of them wish they had an airplane so they also could come to America to tell or what kind of a.) queen = lady is. A Weekly. Edited by Billy Tapolesanje and Miller Suman, Herminie, Pa. Johnny Red, Assistant. {Vol. 1. Saturday, October 23, 1926 No. 22 \ THE SCAB HEY, NEW YORK Remember _ that as soon as We get enuf contributions we will print a spe- celal New York is- sue of the TINY WORKER. So far we ge only two— poem. Of course, if another city sends in enuf to print a special is- sue why they will set theirs frst. First, come, first printed. So you Tiny New York Not to AF Reds better shake \ a leg. Billy and Miller Won't Smile, soy: niaytoscatdanth. Saputotd. ee to {eo flag pf ge ay put the workers’ Red! boa I salute it, I told her. tree C) a me stay after school, ~5 Tuesday we were saluting flag school. I ‘aid “not salute and By Miller Suman, man, Herminte, Pa. teacher tried to. to mak and me salute the nag, "make ddth oe not salute and : The next jon my desk and valnted ath. si teacher asked what I had ewes her. But she did oe att rom me; <