Women of Belgium: Turning Tragedy to TriumphKellogg, Charlotte
History
Women of Belgium: Turning Tragedy to Triumph
Kellogg, Charlotte
Commission for Relief in Belgium; World War, 1914-1918 -- Hospitals
The following day, I visited another kind of toy factory. Madame ...,
who had lost her only son early in the war, works probably in the most
inconvenient building in Brussels, which she has free of charge. She
works there all day long, every day, furnishing employment for between
30 and 40 girls, who would otherwise have to be on the soupes. I went
from one room to another, where they were busily constructing dolls,
and animals, and all sorts of fascinating toys out of bits of cotton
and woolen materials—cheap, salable toys.
This is one of the things that we must remember if we wish properly to
appreciate the work the women are doing—most of it is being carried on
in buildings that we should consider almost impossible—no elevators;
everywhere the necessity of climbing long flights of stairs; no
convenient sanitary arrangements—but nothing discourages them.
Madame began by making bouncing balls in the Belgian colors, stuffed
with a kind of moss. They cost only a few centimes, and sold as fast as
she could make them. When the order came that they were no longer to be
made in these colors, she ripped up those she had on hand, and began
new ones, omitting the black. The balls must go on. Another day all the
stuffing for her balls was requisitioned. She rushed out, up and down,
street after street, seeking a substitute, and by night the little
storeroom was filled with a kind of dry grass—and the balls could go
on.
The day of my first visit there were 6 of the 32 girls absent because
of illness. Madame said she usually had that large a percentage
out because of intestinal troubles of one sort or another. They
get desperately tired of their monotonous food, and whenever they
can scrape together a few extra pennies, they go to one of the few
chocolate shops still open and make themselves ill.
Here, too, they are looking to America. If only they could get their
toys to our markets, they could take in many who are suffering for want
of work—and one feels that America would be delighted with every toy.
It is Madame herself who designs them. She is trying always to get
something new, striking. In the C. R. B. office one day I noticed a
representative off in a corner, busy with his pencil, and found him
struggling to represent some sort of balancing bird—a suggestion for
Madame.
[Illustration: TOYS CREATED BY WOMEN OF BELGIUM]
She makes these lovely toys from the veriest scraps of cloth, old
paper, straw, with pebbles picked up from the roads for weights.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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