It is difficult to imagine a life of greater dreariness and vacuity than that of the average Chinese woman.  Owing to her bound feet and resultant helplessness, if she is not obliged to work she rarely stirs from the narrow confinement of her courtyard, and perhaps in her entire life she may not go a mile from the house to which she was brought a bride, except for the periodical visits to her father’s home.

It has been aptly said that there are no real homes in China and it is not surprising that, ignored and despised for centuries, the Chinese woman shows no ability to improve the squalor of her surroundings.  She passes her life in a dark, smoke-filled dwelling with broken furniture and a mud floor, together with pigs, chickens and babies enjoying a limited sphere of action under the tables and chairs, or in the tumble-down courtyard without.  Her work is actually never done and a Chinese bride, bright and attractive at twenty, will be old and faded at thirty.

But without doubt the crowning evil which attends woman’s condition in China is foot binding, and nothing can be offered in extenuation of this abominable custom.  It is said to have originated one thousand years before the Christian era and has persisted until the present day in spite of the efforts directed against it.  The Empress Dowager issued edicts strongly advising its discontinuation, the “Natural Foot Society,” which was formed about fifteen years ago, has endeavored to educate public opinion, and the missionaries refuse to admit girls so mutilated to their schools; but nevertheless the reform has made little progress beyond the coast cities.  “Precedent” and the fear of not obtaining suitable husbands for their daughters are responsible for the continuation of the evil, and it is estimated that there are still about seventy-four millions of girls and women who are crippled in this way.

The feet are bandaged between the ages of five and seven.  The toes are bent under the sole of the foot and after two or three years the heel and instep are so forced together that a dollar can be placed in the cleft; gradually also the lower limbs shrink away until only the bones remain.

The suffering of the children is intense.  We often passed through streets full of laughing boys and tiny girls where others, a few years older, were sitting on the doorsteps or curbstones holding their tortured feet and crying bitterly.  In some instances out-houses are constructed a considerable distance from the family dwelling where the girls must sleep during their first crippled years in order that their moans may not disturb the other members of the family.  The child’s only relief is to hang her feet over the edge of the bed in order to stop the circulation and induce numbness, or to seek oblivion from opium.

If the custom were a fad which affected only the wealthy classes it would be reprehensible enough, but it curses rich and poor alike, and almost every day we saw heavily laden coolie women steadying themselves by means of a staff, hobbling stiff-kneed along the roads or laboring in the fields.