In inexpensive but well-organized boarding schools the Czechish girls (especially country girls, the daughters of landowners and tenants) are being educated along national lines. An institute such as the “Wesna”[104] in Brünn is a center of national propaganda. Prague, like Brünn, has a Czechish Gymnasium for girls as well as the German Gymnasium. There is also a Czechish University besides the German University. The first woman to be given the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Czechish university was Fräulein Babor.
The industrial conditions in Czechish Bohemia and in Moravia differ very little from those in Galicia. The lot of the workingwomen, especially in the coal mining districts, is wretched. According to a local club doctor (Kassenarzt),[105] life is made up of hunger, whiskey, and lashes.
Although paragraph 30, of the Austrian law of association (Vereinsgesetz) prevents the Czechish women from forming political associations, the women of Bohemia, especially of Prague, show the most active political interest. The women owners of large estates in Bohemia voted until 1906 for members of the imperial Parliament. When universal suffrage was granted to the Austrian men, the voting rights of this privileged minority were withdrawn. The government’s resolution, providing for an early introduction of a woman’s suffrage measure, has not yet been carried out.
The suffrage conditions for the Bohemian Landtag (provincial legislature) are different. Taxpayers, office-holders, doctors, and teachers vote for this body; the women, of course, voting by proxy. The same is true in the Bohemian municipal elections. In Prague only are the women deprived of the suffrage. The Prague woman’s suffrage committee, organized in 1905, has proved irrefutably that the women in Prague are legally entitled to the suffrage for the Bohemian Landtag. In the Landtag election of 1907 the women presented a candidate, Miss Tumova, who received a considerable number of votes, but was defeated by the most prominent candidate (the mayor). However, this campaign aroused an active interest in woman’s suffrage. In 1909 Miss Tumova was again a candidate. The proposed reform of the election laws for the Bohemian Landtag (1908) (which provides for universal suffrage, although not equal suffrage) would disfranchise the women outside Prague. The women are opposing the law by indignation meetings and deputations.
GALICIA[106]
| Total population: about | 7,000,000. |
| Poles: about | 3,500,000. |
| Ruthenians: about | 3,500,000. |
| The women predominate numerically. No federation of women’s clubs. No woman’s suffrage league. |
The conditions prevailing in Galicia are unspeakably pathetic,—medieval, oriental, and atrocious. Whoever has read Emil Franzo’s works is familiar with these conditions. The Vienna official inquiry into the industrial conditions of women led to a similar inquiry in Lemberg. This showed that most of the women cannot live on their earnings. The lowest wages are those of the women engaged in the ready-made clothing industry,—2 to 2½ guldens ($.96 to $1.10) a month as beginners; 8 to 10 guldens ($3.85 to $4.82) later. The wages (including board and room) of servant girls living with their employers are 20 to 25 cents a day. The skilled seamstress that sews linen garments can earn 40 cents a day if she works sixteen hours.
As a beginner, a milliner earns 2 to 4 guldens ($.96 to $1.93) a month, later 10 guldens ($4.82). In the mitten industry (a home industry) a week’s hard work brings 6 to 8 guldens ($2.89 to $3.88). In laundries women working 14 hours earn 80 kreuzer (30 cents) a day without board. In printing works and in bookbinderies women are employed as assistants; for 9½ hours’ work a day they are paid a monthly wage of from 2 to 14 and 15 guldens ($.96 to $7.23). In the bookbinderies women sometimes receive 16 guldens ($7.71) a month.
In Lemberg, as in Vienna, women are employed as brickmakers and as bricklayers’ assistants, working 10 to 11 hours a day; their wages are 40 to 60 kreuzer (19 to 29 cents) a day. No attempt to improve these conditions through organizations has yet been made. The official inquiry thus far has confined itself to the Christian women laborers. What miseries might not be concealed in the ghettos!