She is also entitled to support for herself and her children, and to a divorce for various causes, including infidelity, brutality, intoxication, desertion, failure to provide, and felony.
In Germany the wife is legally entitled to a certain proportion of her husband's income, a right which women have in no other country. Everywhere else the vague term "support" is used, and even that is not granted in seven of our States.
In Holland, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, and Denmark the woman's movement is recent and slow. The Dutch Queen is the only woman there who is not ruled; and the Dutchman wanted her called "king," so as to lessen their dislike of being subject to a woman's commands.
Switzerland, though it boasts of its democracy, excludes its women from influence and political power. It does not deny them work, but like the German, French, and Russian peasants, the Swiss women carry the heavy burdens of field work and street-cleaning without any reason to believe that there is dignity in labor.
In Italy, Spain, and Portugal the upward movement of women has come mainly from the masses, not, as in Russia, from the aristocrats, or, as among the English-speaking races, from the middle class.
IN GREECE AND THE ORIENT.
In Greece the educated women are leading the crusade. The principal of a girls' college in Athens said recently: "It is true and beyond dispute that the Greece of to-day owes its rapid progress to its women."
While Greek women cannot vote, they take an active part in political life. During campaigns they make speeches for their husbands and brothers, and at other times traverse the country expounding the doctrines of the party they espouse. They resemble the English political woman of the style of Mrs. Humphrey Ward's "Marcella," a type scarcely to be found in any other country.
Even into slumbering Turkey, land of harems, Greek women are carrying modern ideas of education. There is a Greek girls' school in Constantinople; and, principally through Greek influence, Turkish women are studying European languages, reading foreign books, and looking toward the great world where women can be the comrades, friends, and equals of men, instead of their playthings and slaves.
All through the Orient the conditions of Turkey are practically reproduced. In spite of the abolition of the suttee, the poor widows of India have a mournful lot. It is only the most daring of Chinese mothers who would leave her little daughter's feet unbound. A few Japanese women rebel at giving up home and children simply because milord has tired of his wife; but to most the thought of opposing the customs of centuries is still remote.