n in this respect often points the moral and
adorns the tale of returned missionaries, who are apparently forgetful
that servile labor[221] of the severest and most degrading character
is performed by Christian women in highly Christian countries. In
Germany, where the Reformation had its first inception, woman carries
a hod of mortar up steep ladders to the top of the highest buildings;
or, with a coal basket strapped to her back, climbs three or four
flights of stairs, her husband remaining at the foot, pipe in mouth,
awaiting her return to load the hod or basket, that she may make
another ascent, the payment for her work going into the husband's
hands for his uncontrolled use. Or mayhap this German wife works in
the field harnessed by the side of a cow, while her husband-master
holds the plough and wields the whip. Or perhaps, harnessed with a
dog, she serves the morning's milk, or drags her husband home from
work at night.

In France women act as porters, carrying the heaviest burdens and
performing the most repulsive labors at the docks, while eating food
of so poor a quality that the lessening stature of the population
daily shows the result. In Holland and Prussia women drag barges on
the canal, and perform the most repulsive agricultural duties. On the
Alps[222] husbands borrow and lend their wives, one neighbor not
scrupling to ask the loan of another's wife to complete some farming
task, which loan is readily granted, with the understanding that the
favor is to be returned in kind. In England, scantily clothed women
work by the side of nude men in coal pits, and, harnessed to trucks,
perform the severe labor of dragging coal up inclined planes to the
mouth of the pit, a work testing every muscle and straining every
nerve, and so severe that the stoutest men shrink from it; while their
degradation in brick-yards and iron mines has commanded the attention
of philanthropists and legislators.[223]

A gentleman recently travelling in Ireland blushes for his sex when he
sees the employments of women, young and old. They are patient
drudges, staggering over the bogs with heavy creels of turf on their
backs, or climbing the slopes from the seashore, laden like beasts of
burden with the heavy sand-dripping seaweed, or undertaking long
journeys on foot into the market towns, bearing weighty hampers of
farm produce. In Montenegro, women form the beasts of burden in war,
and are counted among the "animals" belonging to