The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe

by Booker T. Washington; Robert Ezra Park

While I was studying the different kinds of work which women are doing in Austria-Hungary I was reminded of the complaint that I had heard sometimes from women in America, that they were denied their rights in respect to labour, that men in America wanted to keep women in the house, tied down to household duties.

In southern Europe, at any rate, there does not seem to be any disposition to keep women tied up in the houses. Apparently they are permitted to do any kind of labour that men are permitted to do; and they do, in fact, perform a great many kinds of labour that we in America think fit only for men. I noticed, moreover, as a rule, that it was only the rough, unskilled labour which was allotted to them. If women worked in the stone quarries, men did the part of the work that required skill. Men used the tools, did the work of blasting the rock. If women worked on the buildings, they did only the roughest and cheapest kinds of work. I did not see any women laying brick, nor did I see anywhere women carpenters or stone-masons.

In America Negro women and children are employed very largely at harvest time in the cotton-fields, but I never saw in America, as I have seen in Austria, women employed as section hands on a railway, or digging sewers, hauling coal, carrying the hod, or doing the rough work in brickyards, kilns, and cement factories.

In the Southern States of America the lowest form of unskilled labour is that of the men who are employed on what is known as public works—that is to say, the digging of sewers, building of railways, and so forth. I was greatly surprised, while I was in Vienna, to see women engaged side by side with men in digging a sewer. This was such a novel sight to me that I stopped to watch these women handle the pick and shovel. They were, for the most part, young women, of that heavy, stolid type I have referred to. I watched them for some time, and I could not see but that they did their work as rapidly and as easily as the men beside them. After this I came to the conclusion that there was not anything a man could do which a woman could not do also.

In Poland the women apparently do most of the work on the farms. Many of the men have gone to Vienna to seek their fortune. Many, also, have gone to the cities, and still others are in the army, because on the Continent every able-bodied man must serve in the army. The result is that more and more of the work that was formerly performed by men is now done by women.

One of the most interesting sights I met in Europe was the market in Cracow. This market is a large open square in the very centre of the ancient city. In this square is situated the ancient Cloth Hall, a magnificent old building, which dates back to the Middle Ages, when it was used as a place for the exhibition of merchandise, principally textiles of various kinds. On the four sides of this square are some of the principal buildings of the city, including the City Hall and the Church of the Virgin Mary, from the tall tower of which the hours are sounded by the melodious notes of a bugle.

On market days this whole square is crowded with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of market women, who come in from the country in the early morning with their produce, remain until it is sold, and then return to their homes.

In this market one may see offered for sale anything and everything that the peasant people produce in their homes or on the farms. Among other things for sale I noted the following: geese, chickens, bread, cheese, potatoes, salads, fruits of various sorts, mushrooms, baskets, toys, milk, and butter.

What interested me as much as anything was to observe that nearly everything that was sold in this market was carried into the city on the backs of the women. Practically, I think, one may say that the whole city of Cracow, with a population of 90,000 persons, is fed on the provisions that the peasant women carry into the city, some of them travelling as far as ten or fifteen miles daily.

One day, while driving in the market of Cracow, our carriage came up with a vigorous young peasant woman who was tramping, barefoot, briskly along the highway with a bundle swung on her shoulder. In this bundle, I noticed, she carried a milk-can. We stopped, and the driver spoke to her in Polish and then translated to my companion, Doctor Park, in German. At first the woman seemed apprehensive and afraid. As soon as we told her we were from America, however, her face lighted up and she seemed very glad to answer all my questions.