Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/54

 going on for more than a generation, and that education of a sort is becoming more and more general. This has not yet led to the abolition of forced and early marriages, with the right of the husband to take any number of concubines should the legal wife fail to produce an heir. Nor has the destruction of girl babies ceased. The earnings of the Chinese wife still belong to her husband; but, as the law requires that the husband should be the bread-winner, no court, it is said, would enforce the husband's claim on the earnings of the wife.

The Chinese woman can own property only when she is a widow. Until that time she is the thrall of her father, husband, and mother-in-law; but, contrary to the custom in India, the Chinese widow may remarry. Suicides amongst the lower orders of Chinese women are very common indeed, and travellers report that the sufferings of these women are unbelievable.

In response to the demand of the newly-educated women, there are several newspapers devoted to the special interests of women. When preparations for the revolution were being made, the Chinese women, for the first time in their history, were asked to help with the work and share the risk involved in this stupendous upheaval, with its proposed change of government. The women responded in great numbers, for it was the first call ever