Page:The Truth about Marriage.djvu/52

 take China as an example. For 2,500 years a system of filial piety, emphasized by Confucius, has prevailed. Under this patriarchal system the father has had absolute power over all his children. The sons escape by entering upon their own lifework, but the daughters never escape. When they marry they pass under the control of their husband's family. This situation has existed from time immemorial.

China to-day has one-fourth of the population of the globe. Since the girls and women of that country have had to take what those in control of them gave them in the way of marriage, we see that in one single country one-fourth of the women of the world have never had anything to say about whom they should marry.

Japan offers no better condition for women. It has never done so.

In India the girls as a rule are married long before they are able to become mothers and have never had a ghost of a show to choose their own mate.

In other Asiatic countries women are helpless in the matter of choice.

The whole continent of Africa, as to its native born population, offers, if possible, worse conditions to women. In some places they keep them in cages until they are married.

As to Europe we know that girls and women