The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1885-08-01
Women and Money.
". Y. Independent.

Inc poetic glamour IaQeS OUT OF the
question the moment we begin to speak
of the relation of women to so com.
monplace matter as money; and,
constructed as most men are, the poetic
side of womanhood and woman's life is
too near the essence of them to be lost.
This sentiment is, unfortunately, re.
sponsible for a good deal women have
to suffer, and for much of the helpless
ness which strands so many of them on
the hard realities of life. What poetry
there is in it needs to be reconstructed.
There is vast amount of mediavalism
surviving in the romantic aspirations of
the average democratic American for
his wife, his sisters, and his lady friends
generally. He is willing enough to
work and toll and be a plain citizen
with the rest, for his own part. But he
wants the fair lady to sit apart in her
bower, to welcome him with her white
1eafied aT god ia sR;G 81 dJ&sstS pAaue
Organized as society already is in
part, and as it is rapidly coming to be
in the whole, this is hard on women.
1t is a dream whose high price they
have to pay. 1t puts them out OF all
relations to the one means recognized
in modern life which either woman
or man can rely on with confidence
to help or protect himself. 1t goes on
the idea that women have no relations
to money except to spend it as doled
out to them, or, in exceptional cases,
showered on them with demoralizing
profusion. 1t takes away from them
the moral training of earning money
and of administering it, and leaves them
helpless when the masculine support
fails and they are required to win their
own way in world whose thrift begins
for women as we'll as for men, with the
maxim:
"Put money in thy purse"
Money to the well-trained and expert
enced man, is word of large mean
ing. 1t means character, energy, in
dustry, prudence, self-control; and
these are ideas which the function of a
good housewife trains her to compre-
bend. As rule, she gets ahead of the
man in her mastery of them.
But there are other things IN the
mans acquaintance with money, with,
out which his power to get or keep II
would be as small as his wife's, but
which she has no opportunity at all to
so much as look at.
Some far-seeing men that we know
of have met the difficulty by training
their daughters from the first to bust
ness habits, and making them familiar
with the methods and principles or
which it is conducted. Others have
taken them into their employ, and had
them serve with others under pay in
their counting-rooms, offices, or stores,
Mrs. Allison speaks of distinguished
lawyer who took his daughters, one
after the other, into his office as law
yer's clerks. Many gentlemen discuss
every step of their private investment
and private business with their wives
Others commit definite proportions O
their income, and some of them the
whole of it, to their wives to be admin
istered by them.
One lady we know of-and there
might be many such-had been so ia
miliarized by provident father with
the administration of a great stock-farn
that, on his sudden death she took ii
up, and has ever since carried it for
ward with marked success.
This view of the matter does not re
quire the abandonment of home econo
nv as woman's sphere, nor does 1t an
ticipate the entrance of women on any
large scale of competition with men,
into the worlds business operations.
1t goes on the idea that, as society Is
now organized, the risks of life are toe
great to shut women down to the limit.
ed experience acquired in the ordinary
course of woman's life.
The point we make is not that wo
mans sphere, as such, is unworthy Of
her; not that activities, large and abun'
dant, are not open to her; not that, al
a wife and mother, or even as woman
in the sphere of rational and Christian
social life, there is not enough to salts
fy her ambition and occupy her powers
Our point is that, in modern society
the relation of every person, male ano
female, to the potent and marvelously
convertible agent, money, is SO close
and so important that it is not safe to
leave women to grow up with so little
practical acquaintance with it. Iht
| risks of the position are too great. Ih'
chances that any one of them may a
any time be thrown into dificultie
from which nothing but such practica
knowledge will rescue them, are tor
many to be taken. The severest hard
ships that women, as such, have to suffe
in modern life, come, as a rule, from
their helpless situation in this matter
| tho Feat