The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-01-26
Gloomy Picture of Life and Business
Painted by GrumbIers Who Write
Letters to the Newspapers.
Discomfort WITH EVERYTHING
DOMESTIC HEARTH AND MATRIMON-
IAL MARKET NOT EXCEPTED.
Writers of All Sorts Discuss the Lat
ter Question and Give Reasons
for Decay of Home Life.
OF the indianapolis Journal.

~
English are saying of themselves. affairs
generally in this country in dread
flu y bad way. A high dignitary of the
church has suggested a day OF national
humiliation, but this isn't necessary. The
people are humble enough already Their
proverbial self-complacency seems to have
been routed for the time being by spirit
OF the blacklist pessimism. Nothing is quite
right. They still bank on the valor of their
troops. and with good reason. but their
army as whole they've lost faith in. and
they are not sure as they used to be that
they have an impregnable defense even in
the navy. What looks big on paper may
not be so formidable when put to the test
water Commercially things are going
from bad TO worse. The British workman
and the British merchant are alike under
the ban. Under the ban. that is OF British
condemnation. for this gloomy picture is
not a picture of England as others see her.
but Of England as she sees herself. From
the range Of these blue goggles of self
depreciation nothing is excluded, not even
the domestic hearth or the matrimonial
market. The dyspeptic British woodsman
might at least have spared his own roof
tree But he Is in mood 10 spare any
thing, and so, of late. various newspapers
have made themselves vehicles for the ex-
preston Of popular discomfort with home
life and for the ventilation of such ques-
ttOns as why domesticity is decaying why
there are now more bachelors and more
self-elected spinsters than formerly and
why the birth rate is so rapidly tumblng
When people are on the stool of repent
anee they are likely TO exaggerate their
own shortcomings. This country is per-
haps not so badly off in these matters as
she thinks she is. In one paper recently
there was article headed, Homeless
England" In this the broad statement was
made that no one, man or woman, wants 10
have a home nowadays. People who could
command every domestic comfort prefer to
live in hotels or to eat at restaurants If
the men shirk domesticity so equally do the
women, and we are rapidly developing into
a homeless nation. This is from the Lady
an eminently respectable journal which
makes a speciality Of matters appertaining
10 social life. But it is an exaggeration,
whoever said II. Far more just the obser-
walton Of one who signs herself "A Com
nonsense Girl Domesticity, she main
tains is not decaying in country places, but
she adds. Tin that great wicked city where
society encourages marriage without love,
where theaters and places of amusement
abound. the majority of people get such
thirst for pleasure that they entirely blot
out Of their lives all that is pure and noble
and good" To thus discriminate between
the metropolis and the country at large is
sensible The boast across the channel is
that Paris is France. but it happily cannot
yet be said that London is England. nor
that outside of this seething center of
decline in what is vital to home life
YOUNG WOMEN BLAMED.
In a prize essay on why bachelorhood is
so much more common than formerly. the
author lodges much Of the blame at the
door of young womanhood. The business
mans office work is now done by female
labor. which. he says. is discouraging to
matrimony in two ways. The young lady
no longer jumps at the first offer, but, Sc
cure in her billet, feels that she can AFFORD
TO wait At the same time he says, her
offers are not likely to come so thick and
fast as of yore. because, by DOING at a
much cheaper rate work for which CORE
spondence clerks OF the male gender used
TO be paid from ten 70 fifteen dollars a
week she necessarily reduces TO financial
hopelessness those who might otherwise
have been her suitors. The writer of this
prize-wfnning essay doesn't believe that
amongst people high UP in the social scale
marriages are any less frequent than ever
nor does he think the marriage rate shows
any decline amongst the lower working
classes and the farm laborers. The change
he says, is in the middle classes, who feel
so keenly the squeeze OF commercial com
petition and so many of whom have to get
along on a salary wretchedly inadequate to
their style OF life.
The limited supply Of candidates for mat
rimony is, in part attributed by this essay
ist TO the growth OF the limited company
system, with its inevitable swapping of
small businesses. Twenty years ago Smith,
Brown Jones and Robinson. he says each
ran n small business. bringing them in a
modest competency of ESQ a year apiece. /
To-day the four businesses belong 10 one
company, with the result that while Smith |
IS drawing $500 a year as managing di-
rector. Brown. Jones and Robinson are !
merely salaried branch managers at 500
year. the remaining 500 going 10 the share
holders in dividends. For that sluggish /
ness Of the matrimonial market which is /
due 10 beggarly wages he especially blames /
the government. which, he says, must OF 1
necessity be looked to to set the pace. and
that every Englishman might well be
ashamed of IT, In the army il has long
ceased 10 excite comment that the average /
officer under forty cannot possibly support 4
a wife on the pay he gets. and this. he says.
would be equally proverbial of naval Of
fcers only that they are at sea under re-
duced expense. so much Of the time
PUBLIC SALARIES.
In the civil service. salaries SAYS this
writer. are so low that one can reconcile
himself 10 matrimony under such a regime
or parsimony only when he has made I'D
his mind 20 a life OF unending penury and
hardship. The young man just quitting his
teens Is started. after stiff competitive ex-
animation, upon the munIdcent income of
$40 year. and rises al the rate OF Sl2 per
annum 10 an equally starvation maximum.
IT, however. ne grfnds away at the pre-
scribed subjects. he may pass a higher ex-