8. The natural-footed is stronger, more patriotic, and can achieve heroic deeds.
9. The nation benefits from her vigorous spirit and devotion to study.
10. She is unhampered by bad roads and can travel freely everywhere, both in China and abroad.
The effect of the natural-foot societies was considerable. A ladies society which was formed in Shanghai in 1895 had a concurrent educational objective. A proposal was made two years later to establish a school for girls in which those with bound feet would gradually be refused admission. One school in Tientsin insisted that all girls entering it remove their bindings and introduced a song encouraging foot emancipation into the school curriculum. In 1909, it was still being taught to students there. An orator proposed to the Shanghai society that fines be levied on the tiny-footed to promote national prosperity. If each of these eighty to ninety million women contributed a hundredth of an ounce of silver daily for a year, remarked a Mr. Hsu, the likin tax on goods being transported could be lowered and official salaries raised. “With one-tenth of the contributions, the Empress Dowager’s flower gardens can be maintained, with one-half of the money we can train our soldiers, and with the remainder we can reward 
the women who don’t bind their feet and the foot investigators.”
Foreign observers in China near the end of the nineteenth century were appalled by footbinding and made known their critical impressions. Circulation of these views abroad aroused international indignation and made the Chinese appear half-civilized to Western eyes. Chinese intellectuals realized this and tried to eliminate the practice by bringing about a national consciousness of the loss of international face and prestige which it caused. There must have been a common Western belief that footbinding was achieved through wearing an iron or wooden shoe, for this was often explicitly denied by experts on China. Bound feet were decried as useless; Swatow women, for example, were described as getting from one room to another by putting their knees on stools to avoid having to touch the floor with their feet. They threw their weight upon one knee at a time and alternately moved the stools forward by hand. One American wrote about a young girl treated in a Christian hospital for gangrene caused by footbinding who finally died of blood poisoning. Another girl died shortly after having had her leg amputated at the thigh. To Western observers, tiny-footed girls usually looked as if they were in pain, for instead of jumping about happily they needed help in walking, as if they were wounded. The victim of fashion was sympathetically portrayed. She was described as being forced to sleep only on her back, her feet dangling over the side of the bed, with the edge of the bedstead pressing on the nerves behind her knees to slightly dull the pain. “There she swings her feet and moans, and even in the coldest weather she cannot wrap herself in a coverlet, because every return of warmth to her limbs increases the aching. The sensation is said to be like that of having the joints punctured with needles.” Footbinding was denounced as an evil which crippled half the population, added to the misery of the poverty-stricken, increased infanticide, prevented women from supporting themselves and from caring adequately for their children, kept their homes filthy and cheerless, and confined woman and her thoughts to the narrowest of spheres.
American eyewitnesses in China in the eighteen-nineties reported seeing tiny-footed women being carried on the backs of servants. They were carried pickaback in the south, but in the north they were tied on, with arms around the neck and legs bent, while the servant supported the knees with his hands. Chinese writers explained that foreigners in north China had merely seen a northern custom in poorer regions of transporting prostitutes to places of assignation. Chinese criticism of foreign comments as being prejudiced and one-sided did not, however, minimize the impact of criticism abroad or among the Western-oriented and liberal-minded at home.
There was a foreign natural-foot society in Shanghai, in addition to the Chinese organizations, which in 1897 announced its intention “to petition the Emperor that children born after 1897 should not be recognized as of standing unless they had natural feet.” Liberal Chinese intellectuals and influential officials, including prominent viceroys like Chang Chih-t’ung, gave their support to the emancipation movement. Orthodox Confucianists joined its ranks; near the turn of the century, a lineal descendant of Confucius named K’ung Hui-chung was quoted as having said:
I have always had my unquiet thoughts about footbinding and felt pity for the many sufferers. Yet I could not venture to say it publicly. Now there are happily certain benevolent gentlemen and virtuous daughters of ability, wise daughters from foreign lands, who have initiated a truly noble enterprise. They have addressed our women in animated exhortations and founded a society for the prohibition of footbinding.
Christian missionaries exerted a strong influence and were instrumental in accelerating change. Footbinding among converts was discouraged. In many cases, only pupils with natural or unbound feet were accepted into boarding schools; sometimes this was made a condition for entering the church. The zeal with which Gladys Aylward served as a provincial foot inspector was characteristic of the uncompromising and positive efforts by missionaries in the field to do away with the custom. Foreign reaction against footbinding was international. In 1895, ten women of different nationalities formed a natural-foot society and, in order to request support from the Empress Dowager Tz’u-hsi, drew up a memorial to which “nearly all foreign ladies in the Far East added their names.” The memorial is believed to have reached the palace, and it may have influenced the Anti-footbinding Edict of 1902 which the Empress Dowager finally issued.
Bound foot bare and bound foot shod
There must have been official discussion two years later as to whether still another edict was needed, for a news editorial appeared on September 10, 1904, commenting on a proposal by a Minister Chou to abolish footbinding by imperial decree. The writer took exception to the need for further legislation and favored moderation. He noted that footbinding, which had existed for more than a thousand years, had been started by the upper class and imitated by the rest. He therefore proposed that eminent families renounce the practice to initiate a reverse trend. He advised that the youth of China be taught that woman was man’s equal and not his inferior. By using persuasion from above and teaching at all levels, he concluded, the custom of footbinding would naturally end. Opponents of coercive measures repeated these views in the two decades following the Revolution and criticized officials in charge of eliminating footbinding because they physically beat recalcitrants, levied harsh fines to increase their personal incomes, and used regulations as a pretext to amuse themselves with helpless women. The advantages of peaceful persuasion and education over blind coercion were stressed in news editorials throughout the twenties: “Use peaceful means to change this custom. Once the peasants understand its evils, they will change of their own accord.”
Natural-foot societies used various techniques to advance their objectives. Memorials and letters were sent to viceroys and provincial governors, and public meetings were held in provincial capitals and large cities. Over a million tracts, leaflets, and placards were sent out from Shanghai alone, in addition to a large number from other cities. The internationally organized society in Shanghai seems to have functioned until 1908, when it handed over its operations to a committee of Chinese ladies. It then stated that “. . . the custom has been abandoned by practically all people of the official classes and, though it is still widely practiced among the lower ranks, especially in the North, its extinction can hardly be far distant.” Mrs. Archibald Little, an influential leader in the anti-footbinding movement, was instrumental in organizing opposition near the turn of the century among both Christians and important officials. She described her unceasing efforts to found the natural-foot society at Shanghai and to enlist support from many areas of China in the early and formative years of the abolition movement, and she stressed the significant contribution made by Western missionaries.