The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-12-23

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WOMAN AS A BUSINESS MAN.
A woman of superior sense and power
as writer writes the New York Sun as
follows:
Let no woman be eeduced into matrimony.
that fearful and tremendous responsibility in
volving the future race, without settlements,
life assurances, provision for the expected chill
dren. and without clean bill of health from
her own doctor. both for herself and her pro-
posed husband.
In mercy's name let US make struggle against
another class OF paupers, "the reduced gentle
woman or else let Us return to the degradation
OF the East Indian or Turkish harems! And If
sweet womanly dependence and loneliness and
weakness is the ideal of culture, and If it must
be fed and clothed and housed let it be done in
order, on rose leaves and sherbets and pome-
granases. or whatever the Turkish houris fat
ten Oh, and let it be bought aud sold, and pray
God for kind master; but don't try and make
barbaric Eastern manners and customs models
OF behavior and call the ex ponents gentlewomen.
There is a deal of sense in this view that
every woman, who is without property of
her own, insist on marriage that provision
be made for her against sickness, infirmity
and old age, if her husband has property.
oAN "a iC haS uot tudt Ht
his life for her benefit for an amount suit
able to their position in life. The idea of
this woman is that . woman who under
takes matrimonv should never lose sight
of the fact that it is her duty to look at its
possibilities, probabilities, as we'll as its
immediate, present responsibilities, not
only with the eye of sentiment, but in a
financial view, and protect herself in the
start when she marries as well as she can
against the chance of becoming beggar or
dependent by the death of her husband.
When We remember that women are not
seldom called upon to support not only
their children. 'bdt their shiftless hus-
bands, why should not forethought in pc
cuniary matters, financial prudence and
providence be urged upon women, among
whose possibilities always is the question
of self-support.
Women who are comfortably off and
happily married are generally Indifferent
to this question of the advancement of
women in the matter of this kind of edu-
cation to self-protection for the future,
because they are not called upon to solve
1t by an unwelcome or unworthy marriage.
or worse, If there be anything worse. Their
good-natured indifference is as natural as
the contempt that men of inherited wealth
feel tor the complaints of that large class
of their fellows who have to win their
joys by hard work instead of checking
them out of the bank. If marriage, happy
and prosperous, W as the ultimate of every
woman's career, it might do to have the
sex lean with confidence on the shoulder
OF some man who ylcariously atones for
their ignorance and Indifference by doing
public duty for two, but as long as domes-
tic calamity and bitter battle with the
world for bread is often a woman's lot; as
long as marriage can not come honestly
and happily to all, and as long as it often
brings the woman face to face with out
door responsibilities and business burdens
that man has either lodged, deserted or
failed to decently discharge, or from the
care of which he has been snatched by
sickness or death. why should not
woman be encouraged to educate herself
as far as possible for the possible, if not
probable, grim necessities of the future?
This woman who writes the Sun writes
like keen woman of business, but she is
none the worse for that, and her argument
is that woman's surest escape from pov-
erty and dependency is to be early taught
to have keen "eye to business" in the
same sense that a sensible, provident,
honest. prudent, non-sent,mental man
always has IAN eye to business" She is
right. If marriage means anything
=, ~1,a 4 l.
hysteria of sentimentalism, it means
very intimate and perfect partnership, a
partnership not only in the sense of social
and moral compromising. but in the
sense of an Identical interest in all prac-
teal affairs relating to the worldly welfare
of both parties to the marriage. Why
should one partner have all the practical
knowledge in this partnership more than
in any other in this world?
Before marriage, on marriage and dur
ing marriage. it is as sound wisdom for
woman as for man to never forget that
she owes il to herself to provide as far as
possible when she can and while she can
for future of pecuniary independence.
The needless husband should be educated
to lay aside property from his business to
secure his wife and children against
calamity; if he has not property he should
insure his life, and it is wise not to marry
men so reckless, improvident. unjust and
inhuman that they do not honor woman
who has an eye for business always to the
extent of guarding herself and her chill
dren against poverty and pecuniary de-
pendence.