The Indianapolis Journal

GIRLS IN SWITZERLAND

They Are the Beasts of Burden, Doing the Most Servile Work.

German Letter.

No sooner are the girls large enough to possess the requisite physical strength than they are set to the most servile work the land affords. The child has a panier basket fitted to her shoulders at the earliest possible moment, and she drops it only when old age, premature but merciful, robs her of power to carry it longer. I have seen sweet little girls of twelve to fourteen staggering down a mountain side or along a rough pathway under the weight of bundles of faggots as large as their bodies, which they no sooner dropped than they hurried back for others. I have seen girls of fifteen or sixteen years, barefooted and bareheaded, in the blistering rays of an August sun, breaking up the ground by swinging mattocks heavy enough to tax the strength of an able-bodied man.

And I have known a young miss no older than these to be employed as a porter for carrying the baggage of travelers up and down the steepest mountain path in all the region round about. She admitted that it was sometimes very hard to take another step, but she must do it. And she carried such an amount of baggage! A stout-limbed guide is protected by the law, so that he cannot be compelled to carry above twenty-five pounds, but the limit of the burden often put upon girls is their inability to stand up under anything more. But the burden increases with the age and strength of the burden-bearers, till by the time the girls have come to womanhood there is no sort of menial toil in which they do not bear a hand, and quite commonly the chief hand.