The following is said over the baby's toes very much as "This little pig went to market:"
"This little cow eats grass,
This little cow eats hay,
This little cow drinks water,
This little cow runs away,
This little cow does nothing,
Except lie down all day.
We'll whip her."
The Chinese loved their children and yet infanticide existed with them, but mostly only that of girls. The greatest cause was poverty. Being too poor to care for their children parents thought best to kill them than to sell them into slavery. This perhaps was not large over the whole country and existed to a great extent only in certain parts, sometimes as high as eighty per cent. of all girl babies born. The following conditions as given as found some time before the year 1840, shows its prevalence in certain districts at that time, as this refers to a small village on the Amoy island. "On a second visit, while addressing them, one man held up a child, and publicly acknowledged that he had killed five of the helpless beings, having preserved but two. I thought he was jesting, but as no surprise or dissent was expressed by his neighbors, and as there was an air of simplicity and regret in the individual, there was no reason to doubt its truth. After repeating his confession, he added with affecting simplicity, 'It was before I heard you speak on this subject, I did not know it was wrong; I would not do so now.' Wishing to obtain the testimony of the assembled villages, I put the question publicly, 'What number of female infants in this village are destroyed at birth?' The reply was, 'More than one-half.' As there was no discussion among them, which is not the case when they differ in opinion, and as we were fully convinced from our own observations of the numerical inequality of the sexes, the proportion of deaths they gave did not strike us as extravagant."[82]
It is difficult to judge this matter correctly when such contrary opinions are placed before us as in the following quotations, the first by an American who spent many years in China and the second by a Chinaman who spent many years in America. "Much has already been done by those who have had most opportunity to learn the facts, toward exhibiting the real practice of the Chinese in the matter of destroying female infants. Yet no more can be safely predicted than that this is a crime which to some extent everywhere prevails, and in some places to such a degree as seriously to affect the proportion of the sexes. It seems to be most common in the maritime provinces of the southern part of China, in some districts of which it is by the Chinese themselves regarded as a terrible and a threatening evil."[83] "I am indignant that there should be a popular belief in America that Chinese girls at birth are generally put to death by their parents because they are not wanted. Nothing can be further from the truth. In a country like China, where women do not appear in public life, it must follow that sons are more to be desired, for the very good reason that family honor and glory depend on them and ancestral worship necessitates either the birth or adoption of sons to perpetuate it. I venture to say that in proportion to population and distribution of wealth that infanticide is as rare in China as it is in this country."[84]