Hence it is not astonishing that in the South American houses of ill-fame there are so many Russian girls. The agents in the white slave trade need not make very extravagant promises of “good wages” to find willing followers.[102] A workingwomen’s club has existed since 1897 in St. Petersburg. There are 982,098 women engaged in industry and mining; 1,673,605 in domestic service (there being 1,586,450 men domestic servants). Of the women domestic servants 53,283 are illiterate (of the men only 2172!). In 1885 the women formed 30 per cent of the laboring population; in 1900 the number had increased to 44 per cent. Of the total number of criminals in Russia 10 per cent are women.
The legal status of the Russian woman is favorable in so far as the property law provides for property rights. The Russian married woman controls not only her property, but also her earnings and her savings. As survival of village communism and the feudal system, the right to vote is restricted to taxpayers and to landowners. In the rural districts the wife votes as “head of the family,” if her husband is absent or dead. Then she is also given her share of the village land. She votes in person. In the cities the women that own houses and pay taxes vote by proxy. The women owners of large estates (as in Austria) vote also for the provincial assemblies. Although constitutional liberties have a precarious existence in Russia, they have now and then been beneficial to women.
With great effort, and in the face of great dangers, woman’s suffrage societies were formed in various parts of the Empire. They united into a national Woman’s Suffrage League. The brave Russian delegates were present in Copenhagen and in Amsterdam. They belonged to all ranks of society and were adherents to the progressive political parties. Since the dissolution of the first Duma (June 9, 1906) the work of the woman’s suffrage advocates has been made very difficult; in the rural districts especially all initiative has been crippled. In Moscow and St. Petersburg the work is continued by organizations having about 1000 members; 10,000 pamphlets have been distributed, lectures have been held, a newspaper has been established, and a committee has been organized which maintains a continuous communication with the Duma.
The best established center of the Russian woman’s rights movement is the Woman’s Club in St. Petersburg. Through the tenacious efforts of the leading women of the club,—Mrs. v. Philosophow, (Mrs.) Dr. med. Schabanoff, and others,—the government granted them, in the latter part of December, 1908, the right to hold the first national congress of women. (The stipulation was made that foreign women should not participate, and that a federation of women’s clubs should not be formed.) The discussions concerned education, labor problems, and politics. Publicity was much restricted; police surveillance was rigid; addresses on the foreign woman’s suffrage movement were prohibited. Nevertheless, this progressive declaration was made: Only the right to vote can secure for the Russian women a thorough education and the right to work. Moreover, the Congress favored: better marriage laws (a wife cannot secure a passport without the consent of her husband), the abolition of the official regulation of prostitution, the abolition of the death penalty, the struggle against drunkenness, etc. The Congress was opened by the Lord Mayor of St. Petersburg and was held in the St. Petersburg town hall. This was done in a sense of obligation to the women school teachers of St. Petersburg and to those women who had endeared themselves to the people through their activity in hospitals and asylums. The Lord Mayor stated that these activities were appreciated by the municipal officers and by all municipal institutions.
Although the Congress was opened with praise for the women, it ended with an intentional insult to the highly talented and deserving leader, Mrs. v. Philosophow. Mr. Purischkewitch, the reactionary deputy of the Duma, wrote a letter in which he expressed his pleasure at the adjournment of her “congress of prostitutes” (Bordellkongress). Mrs. v. Philosophow surrendered this letter and another to the courts, which sentenced the offender to a month’s imprisonment, against which he appealed. After this Congress has worked over the whole field of the woman’s rights movement, a special congress on the education of women will be held in the autumn of 1909.[103]
Since the Revolution of 1905 the women of the provinces have been astir. It has been reported that the Mohammedan women of the Caucasus are discarding their veils, that the Russian women in the rural districts are petitioning for greater privileges, etc. An organized woman’s rights movement has originated in the Baltic Provinces; its organ is the Baltic Women’s Review (Baltische Frauenrundschau), the publisher being a woman, E. Schütze, Riga.
CZECHISH BOHEMIA AND MORAVIA
| Total population: about 5,500,000. The women predominate numerically. No federation of women’s clubs. No woman’s suffrage league. |
The woman’s rights movement is strongly supported among the Czechs. Woman is the best apostle of nationalism; the educated woman is the most valuable ally. In the national propaganda woman takes her place beside the man. The names of the Czechish women patriots are on the lips of everybody. Had the Liberals of German Austria known equally well how to inspire their women with liberalism and Germanism, their cause would to-day be more firmly rooted.