- Author:
- Hannaford, Ebenezer
- Publication Info:
-
Springfield, O:
The Crowell and Kirkpatrick co,
1900,
pg 37
Text on page 37
A LAND OF WOMEN'S RIGHTS
37
is himself impecunious and dependent on their generosity for support; at the same time he is compelled by law to manage their affairs while minors, and at their majority to render a strict account of his stewardship. A married woman continues to use her maiden name, to wrhich she adds her husbanda s with the prefix de.
This she abandons when left a widowT, save for purposes of business or for convenience. Children also bear the names of both father and mother; that of the mother comes last, and is a consequently the more prominent. It is, how-over, only since 1844 that the mass of natives have adopted family designations. In that year a list of Spanish surnames was sent to the priest of every parish, from which the head of each household chose the cognomen which best pleased him. Thus one may find such noble names as Legaspi, de Salceda, Lopez de Vega, ote., borne by the dusky-hued natives of the interior of Luzon.a
The same observant author tells us how the almost exclusive employment of women and girls in the great cigar-factories (formeily run as a government monopoly) virtually debarred the men from the staple industry of Manila, and how under these conditions various occupations usually considered feminine were perforce tajven up b) the
Filipinas, Three in Favorite Native Squatting Posture
other disconsolate sex. a Into male hands,a she says, a have fallen to a great extent the manufacture and embroidery of the gauze made from the long silky fibers of the pineapple-plant. By the men are also woven, on primitive hand-looms, the dainty, jusi-striped gauzes made from Chinese silk and Manila hemp. In their homes, too, while the wife is earning the family breada or rather rice, their staple fooda the husband looks after the children and cooks the dinner. It is also very difficult to get women to act as nurses and maids in European families. More than one English family of my acquaintance found themselves under the necessity of drafting into the nursery one or more of the native a boysa of the household, often finding these male nurses more satisfactory in many respects than the women.a But even into this Eden of the equality of sexes comes the serpent. a The stern necessity of lovinga is not escapable by a Filipina. Almost sure she is to succumb to the weakness and get married. Then the usual lot is many and frequent children, of whom one fourth, it is believed, die under a month old. There are numerous deaths among the
