p. 11 | The Poor Chinese Women by Mrs. H. E. Warner

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 16, 1909

The Poor Chinese Women

By Mrs. H. E. Warner

MRS. H. E. WARNER

A RECENT issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal has an interesting editorial by Mr. Bok, who writes that “a woman not long ago listened to an eloquent missionary address on the Chinese women, in which special stress was laid upon the ‘barbarous dress’ of the women of China, particularly their ‘bound feet.’ At the close of the address the woman was so impressed with the necessity of ‘doing something’ for the Chinese women that she contributed ten dollars, and said to a friend, ‘Isn’t it awful?’”

“Next to this woman sat her daughter, a girl of seventeen. She wore a tight, high collar, in which she could hardly turn her head; the lingerie shirt-waist was so thin that it fairly beckoned one to look at the overtrimmed underwear beneath it; her eyes looked out from under a veritable life-preserver of hair, the source of which she had no idea; she wore two combs bejeweled with cheap rhinestones; her waist was screwed into a ‘Number 19,’ and her feet were pinched into a pair of high-heeled shoes, which the girl herself confessed were ‘all right for anything but walking!’ And yet the mother of this girl is, as the world would say, a very good mother! But for which one — the American girl, the Chinese women, or, perhaps, the American mother — should the missionary fund of education and relief have really been raised?”

If Christian women would lead out in the good work, and set the example of dressing with neatness and simplicity and with regard to health, there would be a universal reform.

It would take moral courage to break away from the chains of fashion, and dress and educate their children with reference to health; but the result will repay all the sacrifice made.

Clintonville, Conn.