The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1904-11-09
10 Vol HELP Or HINDER
Are You a Help or Ilindrancc to
Your Husband?

opened UP an intcrc sting discussion
by asking its feminine readers who
are married the point blank question
Are you help or hindrancc to your
husband?
This is regular Judgment day in
quiry that few women will care to
face and answer honestly, for most Of
US prefer to deal with glittering gen
cralitics 30 far as our conduct is con.
cerned, and to believe that we strike
pretty good general average as wife,
rather than TO conine ourselves to
any specific acts. Nevertheless it is
q question that every married woman
may well pause and put to herself, for
there can be no other thing il; the
world 50 important to her as whether
she is helping or hindcring her hus-
band.
In a way it may be said that wo-
mans position on the subject Of wo-
mans influence is always an extreme
one. Before she i. married she be
licves in it implicitly. After she is
married she disbclicvcs in it absolute
ly. Before she is married she thinks
that her husband will be in her hands
like clay in the hands Of n potter, and
She gets into matrimony with all sorts
Of noble and altruistic ideas Of using
this great influence for his uplifting
to the higher life. After she is mar
ried, when she finds out that she
hasn't got enough influence over her
husband to break him from chewing
tobacco, or sitting on the back Of lis
neck, or to get him to dress for din
ncr, the pendulum swings to the other
extreme, and she rushcs to the con-
clusion that she has little or no in
fucncc on his life.
Men encourage this opinion in wo-
men by treating them too often as
dolls to be dressed up and played
with, or burdens to be borne, yet it is
a very solemn truth that on the day a
man marrics he casts the die of his
fate and that his future depends on
whether his wife is going TO be help
or a hindrancc to him. Very, very
few men have the strength and ability
to succeed in spite of their wives,
but almost any man can succeed if
helped by his wife.
Now every woman is either help
or hindrance to her husband. In
o relationship so close as that of mar
rage there is no middled groun, and
a wife is either the ladder on which a
man climbs upward, or else she is the
millstone about his neck that drags
him down. From the dawn Of civil
ization history has been full
of the achievements of men who were
made by their wives. and in thous-
and suicides graves lie the wrecks of
genius who were ruined by their
wives. A wife is either hoodoo or a
mascot for her husband, and it is
up to her to decide which one she will
be.
The woman who is honest enough
to ask herself this question: Am
help or hindrance to my
husband, must look at it from many
points of view. The first one is the
financial one, and she must ask her.
self: "Am l running him in debt or
am helping him to get ahead, and to
lay up something for the future2''
The majority Of American men marry
on no capital but their nerve. They
have seldom saved up anything, and
the bride goes to them equally empty.
handed. To large degree this puts
the decision of their future in her
hands. If she starts out living ex.
travagantly, spending all that her hus.
band makes or perhaps even running
him in debt they will be poor to the
end Of the chapter.
No man, unless he hss the genius
Of Rockefeller, can combat wo-
mans extravaganza. Any woman can
throw more out of the back door With
teaspoon than her husband car
shovel in with scoop at. the front
door, and 80 ninety. nine times out Of
hundred it is the woman who set.
ties whether her husband shall spend
his life on the stool of clerk or rise
TO he one Of the partners. Any wo.
man whose husband is not getting
along does well to ask herself: Am I a