The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1878-08-17
DOMESTIC ECONOMY.

| eXtrdVdSanC naDltS OF wives ana daughter
of our business men. This ought not
to be so. The credit of the husband
and father ought to be carefully guard
ed, instead of destroyed, by the wo-
men of the household. Nothing ismor
melancholy than to see the perplexitieS
into which the merchant, already loaded
with counting house difficulties, is drawn
by those whom he ought to be able to
trust when all others fail him, by those
whom ought to be a comfort and a
source of rest, a support in affliction,
rather than added burden to his already
overtaxed financial resources.
How many father has been driven
to desperation and forced to throw up
the sponge by the constant clamoring
for silks and furbelowS by daughters,
had they more desire to fill their heads
with common sense and less to deck an
empty Uranium with the latest novelty
in fashionable bonnets, might have saw
ed themselves and their supporter from
ruin How many husbands have been
forced over the brink of despair, made
|
cides' graves, become defaulters, stolen,
cheated, perjured themselves, swapped
integrity for brief reign of luxury and
then headlong tumble down a never
ending preCipice, by the incessant, in
season and out of season, drawing upon
their pocket books for dress, for travel,
for ramusement, for conviviality, for dissi-
patton, fashionable perhaps, but still
worthy of the name, by the very ones
who above all others ought to have been
the conservators of their fortunes-their
wives Go through the long list of fail
ures for the past three or more years and
trace back the hidden causes which have
led thereto and it will be found that do
mestic extravaganza, born during an era
of imitation and perpetuated by habits
of luxurious living, which, when once
formed, are extremely hard to break,
have had more to do with them than
the depreciation of stock, the tightness
of the money market or the defaulting
of creditors.
Those who have visited the fashiona-
BILE seaside and country resorts and wit
messed the sumptuous manner in which
the American hostess has been want to
entertain her guests while the husband
is pouring over his ledgerS, with only
brief spells of recreation-those who
have had the opportunity of enjoying
the munifcent hospitality of the matronS
of the city households, the splendid and
costly fetes and balls and other enter
tainmenls, gotten up by the wives of our
business men, will not be slow in ac-
knowledging that the fortunes of those
business men have been jeopardized and
the downfall of many of them brought
about by the ambition of the gentler sex
to equal, and, if possible, to rival their
sisters in that magnifcence of display
which must lead to ruin, unless there are
heavy resources, constantly replenished,
to back it.
One of the great and growing evils of
our time is the desire on the part of the
servant to equal her mistress in the elab-
orateness of her toilet, the desire on
the part of the wife of the man with
small business to equal the wife of the
man of the greater sesources in all the
various means of display. We do not
mean to assert that men are entirely inno-
cent on this score-that they might not, if
they would exercise sufficient firmneSS,
prevent to a great extent, the misuse on
the part of their female relations of funds
which ought in many cases to be devo-
ted to the payment of business debts.-
What we do mean is, that if proper
spirit actuated the wife, the mother, the
daughter, there would be no necessity
for the exercise of firmness, often lack
ing on the part of the master of the house
to check style of living not warrant
ed by the incoming means. What we
do mean is: that is the duty of the fe-
male members of the family partnership
to be economizers Of the family means,
independent of any prompting from the
head of the household that it is their
especial province to husband rather than
squander those means, to set an example
of economy before their lords rather
than wait to be checked in extravaganza
by them. To the man belongs the force,
the energy necessary to winning in the
strife of life, and to the woman belongs
the conserving of the effects that force
and energy, not its dissipation.
Such train of thoughts as this might
have laid claim to appropriateness, we
think, any time during the last quarter
of the century, but particularly is it ap
propriate, in out view, at the present
time. Towers of business strength are
falling all around us. Meanwhile houses
whose regulations are a century old and
have been carefully treasured and trans
mitted from father to son-firmS whose
integrity was once as mistaken as the
everlasting hills, have succumbed to the
stringency of the times and gone down,
leaving waste where they once -four
ished and still others are being added
to the long list week after week. Is it
not the duty of American women to rise
up to the plane of self-denial which the
emergency demands? ? Should they not
stimulate themselves to avert by every
means in their power and particularly
by fostering an era of economy among
themselves a catastrophe that will engulf
them as we'll as their protectors in ruin3
The hardness of the times has caused a
decrease in our imports to the amount
of many millions. and chiefly, we are
happy to note, in the class of articles
known as luXuries but we must also add
that from all appearances that this evi-
dence of economy is the evidence of a
t0rced economy, and does not result from
the spontaneous resolve of the luxury
loving to forego theh cherished desires
because of the forming of ahigh resolve
tto curtail unnecessary expenditures for
the purpose of having funds to pay honest
debts.
Let the mothers and daughters of our