Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1879-03-28
Mean Men.

lie LpllOWluk, luhOh AAoAh oA GA tACAO
in the New York Times, shows up nu-
merous class of persons in language
that will command the endorsement of
many who have had experience in aid
ing the families of shiftless and unde-
serving men:
1t is shown almost daily by unim.
peached and unimpeachable testimony
that husbands and fathers assuming to
be reputable, and frequently held to
be so until detected as base counter
feits, have for years done nothing to-
ward the subsistence of wife and chill
dren. In many cases, they have not
even looked after themselves but have
meanly eaten the bread-and yet it did
not choke them-earned by the woman
they have solemnly promised to love,
honor, and protect.
The popular opinion that woman is a
dependent creature that she cannot
make her own way in the world that
she needs to be guarded, hedged round,
cared for by noble man, Is pitiably con-
troverted on every side of each city,
town and village in the country. II
would be supremely notifying to all
of us if we should know how large O
proportion of women furnish food,
shelter, and clothing for their hus.
bands and the offspring these have
begotten. The actual figures, could
they be gathered, would put all man
hood to shame, and expose wide
spread error. 1t has always been the
boast of the Anglo.S Saxon, particularly
of the Anglo-American race, that its men
are manly /; that they respect and revere
their women that they stand between
them and the battle of life that they
Twill not let their women drudge and
toll as so many foreigners do when
they have the health and strength to
save them. And the great mass make
good their boast. is SO much and SO
uniformly the Saxon habit that they
who shirk the obligation may we'll be
regarded as of alien blood, as they I'M
questionably are of alien spirit. Still,
it must be conceded that the exceptions
are humiliatingly many ; that there are
men and Americans really, and men
and Americans nominally, and that the
two are irreconcilably different.
The first duty of any and every man,
whatever his breed or creed, whether
civilized or uncivilized, to provide for
her he pretends to love, and for those
who are or should be the product of
his love. is ignominiously neglected,
though seldom openly diregarded, over
all the land. Divorce suits unveil but
portion of them. There are fathers
innumerable who support their mar
ried daughters, and their daughters
children because their husbands make
no effort to do so are absolutely lost
to shame have fallen in this respect
below the lowest brutes. There are
brothers without end that feel called
upon to maintain their sisters or broth
ers' families because unnatural hus-
bands and unnatural fathers are too
lazy, too unprincipled, too contempt
BILE, to take care of their own. There
are honorable, conscientious men who
have RETAINED from marriage and from
having children because they have
aver seen their way clear to their
roper rearing, and yet are expected
TO- and do, give up their hard-earned
substance to sisters and brothers,
and the progeny of these that have
elected to marry and reproduce
their kind in the face of prudence,
Justice, and the common good. The
sacrifices which many make that in no
sense appertain to them for uuwisely
welded kindred, unworthy from reck-
lessness and indisposition to be advised
OF such sacrifice or of the generous de-
Votlon shown, are more pathetic and
magnanlmous than most of us could be
led to believe without detailed facts
and the unroofing of countless homes.
what meanness, what injustice, is
perpetually practiced in the name of
wife and children. Men fawn and beg
and lie and swindle and seek to excuse
deceit aud dishonor for their assumed
ib,ehoof, while they are really degrading
themselves for purely selfish ends.
hundreds OF undeserving husbands
and fathers say that they cannot do
what they would for their own. "Can-
not" is ansunmanly phrase, and there
fore BETTING them. Few of them fair
ly try. They dawdle and whine, and
appeal to kind hearts, and get what
they should be ashamed to mention.
II would not do it but for my wife
and children" He who ia ever ready
to say SC. is mendicant in spirit, O cur
IN conduct. Wife and children should
be noble stimulants to exertion and en-
terprise, not acquittals for abiectness
and establishment. A man who can
not, or will not, provide for his wife
and children has no right to have them.
Before he takes or begets them he
should understand his powers. Even
wife and children may exhaust his
; ci&im to indulgence.
~
J A railway from Jaffa to the interior
al =