“In Fuhkien province,” says Williams, “especially in the department of Chang Chau, infanticide prevails to a greater extent than in any other part of the Empire yet examined. Mr. Abeel extended his inquiries to forty different towns and villages lying in the first, and found that the percentage was between seventy and eighty down to ten, giving an average of about forty per cent. of all girls born in those places as being murdered. In Chang Chau, out of seventeen towns, the proportion lies between one fourth and three tenths in some places, occasionally rising to one third, and in others sinking to one fifth, making an average of one fourth put to death. In other departments of the province the practice is confessed, but the proportion thought by intelligent natives to be less, since there is less poverty and fewer people than formerly.”
“Infanticide, which until now has gone unpunished,” says Dr. Lauterer, “is practised especially in Pekin and Fuhkien. A large per cent. of female infants meet with an unnatural death because of their parents’ poverty or their niggardliness. The unfortunates are simply cast into the nearest stream and the corpse left until the morning when the government’s wagon collects them, or they are exposed in the open where, not being protected from the cold, they soon perish. Lately a decree has been made to prohibit it.”[95]
“The province of Fuhkien,” says Douglas, “is that in which this crime most obtains. Inquiries show that in many districts as large a portion as one fourth of the female children born are destroyed at birth. At Pekin, on the other hand, it cannot be said to exist at all. But in this as in so many social offences in China, the sword of the law, which is alone capable of putting down crime, is allowed to hang like a rusty weapon on the wall. It is true that occasionally proclamations are issued in which the heinousness of the evil is explained with all the impressiveness that could be desired, but so long as natural affection finds no support from without it will continue, in China, to yield to the requirements of daily food.”[96]
AN OVERBURDENED CHINESE CHILD CARRYING MORE THAN HIS WEIGHT IN TEA
(COPYRIGHT BY UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD, N. Y.)
“LITTLE MOTHERS”—THE ONE FIVE, THE OTHER EIGHT, YEARS OLD—CHINA
“The custom of infanticide,” wrote Professor Krausse, “is one which has obtained in many parts of China for ages. It does not, as a rule, take the form of actual murder, but consists rather in assisting the laws of Nature. Thus an infant will be neglected and permitted to perish, or if it sicken, will be put aside and allowed to take its chance.”[97]
“Outside the wall [of Wie Hsien],” writes A. J. Brown, “we saw a ‘Baby House,’ a small stone building in which dead children of the poor are thrown to be eaten by dogs!
“I wanted to examine it, but was warned not to do so as the Chinese imagine that foreigners make their medicine out of children’s eyes and brains, and our crowds of watching Chinese might quickly become an infuriated mob.”[98]