Woman in the United States.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 810, 9 September 1887, Page 4

Woman in the United States.

Professor Oscar Abrahamsohn, of the University of Pennsylvania, is going to Berlin to deliver a series of lectures at the university of that city on ‘The American Woman.’ If Professor Abrahamsohn understands his subject and is capable of handling it in the right way, his lectures may do a great deal of good. He can teach Germans many things they ought to know. For even Germany, with the well-earned reputation of being the most learned nation in the world, is away behind the United States in the recognition of woman’s just and proper rights. This is no reflection on Germany, for she is fully up to the standard that could be expected on this question in any old country where prejudices hamper progress and conservatism is regarded as the synonym of safety. Nowhere else in the world is woman as free as she is ip the United States. Nowhere has she such perfect protection to her.individual rights, or such opportunities for her full develop, ment. The laws of nearly every State have been amended to give her complete rights of property; and in many States there are statutes designed for her special protection from every injustice, even though her own husband be the agressor. Woman's legal status in this country is not relatively higher than her social and intellectual condition. It is one of the peculiar honors of this State that the first college ever founded for the education of women rose on one of the ‘old red hills of Georgia.’ Schools of high grade and liberal scope are now established for girls in every State and Territory, Some of the most advanced of these compare favorably with the oldest and best of our colleges for boys. The social status of woman in America is the outgrowth of our Anglo-Saxon instincts, refined and elevated by our free institutions. In no community jp this country would women be permitted

to perform the menial and degrading labor which is often forced upon them in the most enlightened nation of Europe. In some of the English coal mines, women are compelled to pull carts whioh are so heavy that the poor creatures are obliged to harness themselves like horses. Such brutality would not be tolerated for a day anywhere in the United States. Sickening pictures are drawn by reliable Americans who have visited the great factories and mines of Europe, and witnessed the tasks which are there given to women. There is abject poverty to an alarming extent in many of the larger cities in our own country, but while woman often suffers here, there is a respect for her sex which is found in every class of society, and which protects her from the indignities endured by her sisters in other lands. Women are finding many avenueß to self-support opening to them in the United States. They are more and more in demand in the cities every day. Better wages are being paid them, because they have demonstrated that they excel in many kinds of work. With the law so firmly on her side; with the best schools open for her culture; with a shield of sympathetic protection in the manly sentiment of the country ; and with commercial enterprise extending its favors to her, the American woman has cause to be thankful. Atlanta Constitution.