In 1856 the Rev. T. Giliarofski, gold-medalist and corresponding member of the Russian Geographical Society, published an inquiry into the frequency and causes of infant mortality in the province of Novgorod, the results of which are true to this day concerning the greater part of Central, Eastern and Northern Russia. Let those who believe that it is wise and merciful to subject women to hard work read the ghastly story. In the first place, the reverend author mentions the notorious fact that the statistics of illegitimate births in Russia, in which they are stated to be but one-thirtieth of all the births, are kept down by the great prevalence of certain practices, to which it is not necessary to make further allusion here than to say that they put to shame all the implications contained in Dr. Storer's erroneous pamphlet as to the habits of Massachusetts women. Next, the Russian priest states that the number of births is nearly the same in each month of the year, and that out of 10,000 children born, 5537 die during the month of their birth. Three out of four registered births in the months of July and August are deaths before the termination of those months severally. By the twelfth month death summons three-fourths, five-sevenths, or even six-sevenths, of the infants born in some districts of Novgorod.
Now listen to the cause of this frightful waste of human life: "It is the great mortality in July and August that causes the terrible destruction of infant life in Russia. Those months are the months of harvest, when the peasant-women are forced by necessity to leave their newborn infants to be nursed by children four or five years old, or by old women whose hands can no longer grasp the reaping-hook. Fed on sour rye bread and cabbage- or mushroom-water, working as much as the men, having less sleep, keeping more religious fasts, the peasant-women are only exceptionally capable of rearing their children by the natural process."... "I have seen children not a year old left for twenty-four hours entirely alone, and in order that they should not die of hunger feeding-bottles were attached to their hands and feet." In other cases poultices of rye bread, oatmeal, curds, etc. are placed over the infants' mouths by the miserable mothers who are obliged to leave them to work in the fields. These poultices frequently choke or suffocate the child. Domestic animals invade the hut, and deprive the infant of even this wretched food. The cries of the child for sustenance produce internal distensions which result in hernia and other disorders of a like nature, which are very common in Russia. We shall see presently to what degree these sad marks of neglect affect the strength and physical capacity of those who survive such an infancy and become men.
Meanwhile, let us regard for a moment the sufferings of the peasant mothers. Their confinement frequently takes place in a hut devoted to the purposes of a steam-bath, or, in summer, in a barn, stable or outhouse. Many a poor woman is obliged to bear her great trial unattended—perhaps even without those appliances the absence of which will compel her, even against her better nature, to follow the instinct of brutes. In three days, at the utmost, she leaves the scene of her unspeakable agony and resumes her household duties, even her hard field-work. Cases occur in which the mother of only one day is forced by the hardship of circumstances to take to the field. Of course, these women, so cruelly enslaved, are to the last degree ignorant. What time, even if opportunity offered, have they for schooling, or even discourse? None whatever. They are but little superior in intellect to animals. Naturally, this ignorance begets superstition, and from this source arise new perils for their miserable offspring. On the third day after birth it is considered necessary to baptize the child by complete immersion in water, from which it is held by the Russian Church to be a sin to remove the chill. A large proportion of the deaths of infants in the colder months of the year are attributed by native writers to this cause.
Mothers who have been able to suckle their own children generally wean them at the expiration of twelve months, and popular custom, which takes rank as a superstition, has appointed two days in the year for that purpose—one in July, the other in January. Both of these periods are unfavorable to the child: in July the cattle are mostly afflicted with disorders, and their milk is hurtful; in January they give but little milk. Various devices, more or less prejudicial to health, are resorted to by the mother to effect a purpose to which the grossest ignorance and superstition alone impel her. One of the mildest of these is separation from her child for a week or longer: frequently she returns to find it a corpse.
And now let us see what sort of men are born of these overworked women. According to the statistical tables of Brun and Zernof, the number of persons of both sexes alive between the ages of fifteen and sixty was in Russia only 265 in 1000; in the United States in 1870 the number was 558. In Great Britain there are 548 adults to every 1000 population, and in Belgium 518; so that Russia, which, from the subjection of the weaker sex and their exposure to hardship, should, according to some persons, produce the greatest number of heroes, in fact produces but half as many adults, heroes or otherwise, as the other countries named, where women do but little field-labor.
Even among those who from their ages are to be classed in Russia as productive, great allowance must be made for physical incapacity. A large number of the men are afflicted with deformity or disease: many of them can scarcely drag themselves along. Out of 174,000 men brought up from the villages to recruiting centres to supply the annual contingent (84,000 men) of 1868, more than one-fourth (44,000) were rejected for disease and other physical defects, not inclusive of short stature. In Prussia, the other principal European country where women are compelled to field-work, out of every 1000 men liable to military service in 1864, no less than 467 were rejected for disease and other physical defects, not inclusive of short stature. These are the heroes whom female slavery brings forth!
Woman is an invalid, says Michelet, therefore she must not work. Woman is not an invalid, therefore she is willing to work, and does work. But that work has its proper sphere at the domestic hearth; and so long as fortune does not lift the family above the cares of daily want, or genius elevate the individual to the rank of teacher or leader, there should it be suffered to remain.
Alexander Delmar.
SPRING JOY
The wet red glebe shines in the April light,
The gray hills deepen into green again;
The rainbow hangs in heaven; thin vapors white