Condition of Women among the Laboring Classes in Germany.
FREDERICK HECKER, a German American journalist, now on a visit to Germany, writes:— “The condition of the women among the laboring classes in the country is really revolting. I will not speak of the cities, where women carry mortar up three or four stories, and work in other respects like beasts of burden, but I will only mention what hundreds of German Americans have observed as well as myself. I thought it bad enough to see father and son lazily smoking on a wagon, while the poor mother on foot drove the oxen; but I would willingly have horse-whipped a young fellow who sat reclining on a heap of grass with which a kind of wagon was loaded, while his poor mother drew it painfully along. But the worst of all was a man guiding a plow to which his wife and a cow were yoked together! One is struck with the number of women who have to perform the heaviest farm work, while one is no less pained to see poor old men and women, bent with age, toiling from sunrise to sunset. When questioned on the subject, the reply is, ‘My son is in the army.’”