Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/52

 countries which fall under one or another of these denominations. A broad statement of the general position of the women in typical and important countries at the present time, taken from each of these convenient divisions of the human family, will be sufficiently interesting and illuminating.

Let China, the latest to rouse herself from the slumber of ages, be the first to give an account of the way in which she treats her women in these present days. The general facts about the position of the Chinese woman up to quite recent times are very well known. Every little learner of geography in the public elementary schools remembers the thrill of horror which ran through her whole body as she listened to the story of the cruel mothers who left their girl babies to die on doorsteps, or who threw them into the rivers for the sharks and crocodiles to eat. The bandaged foot of the poor little Chinese girl has been a scandal and an outrage for centuries.

By an edict of 1908, the bandaging of their girl children's feet was forbidden to Chinese parents, but Mrs Chapman Catt, the President of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, who recently travelled in China with the object of gleaning information about the women of that vast Repubic, informs us that the custom, though illegal, is still practised. She may be permitted to speak in