JUNE 251 



expected to undertake this heavy labour, for which they are un- 

 suited by nature. It may be answered that women work in the 

 fields in other parts of the world ; among the African tribes, for 

 instance, or, to come nearer home, in Normandy and Brittany. I 

 have often seen the Zulu and Basuto women at their toil, which 

 chiefly consists of hoeing, but I cannot say that it ever impressed 

 me as being of a character likely to do them harm. Natives are 

 very kind to their female folk and children, and for the most part 

 would not overwork them. The horrors that we read of in the 

 police-court reports, or, let us say, in the monthly journal of the 

 Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, are unknown, 

 and would, indeed, be impossible, among those sections of the Bantu 

 people with whom I have mixed. It is in Christian monogamous 

 Britain that the enlightened and educated citizen beats the last 

 breath out of his wife with a poker, or devises fiendish tortures 

 for the bodies of his little children ; the poor misguided black 

 man shrinks from such things. 



Perhaps the native women know that at the worst they have 

 nothing more than a scolding to expect, or perhaps the pressure of 

 competition has not yet overtaken them ; at any rate, they always 

 seemed to me to lighten their work with the pleasures of gossip, 

 and, should any excuse arise, to be quite ready to postpone it for a 

 while. How different it is in France, where one may see women, 

 prematurely old and haggard, struggling up some hill bearing 

 on their backs a great basket filled with filthy manure, or even 

 playing the parts of animals to drag an implement through the 

 soil. Let us be thankful that the day of such things has gone by 

 in England. 



I do not mean to imply, however, that even singling beet is 

 child's play, for, until one gets used to it, I cannot imagine any 

 more back-breaking task, especially in a hot sun. Still, it is a 

 means of earning a few shillings, of which some of the older school 

 of labourers' wives, whose children are off their hands for the 

 young women will do nothing are glad to avail themselves ; 

 moreover, it is healthful, and does them no physical harm. 



