The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-01-09
GIRLS MARRY CHECK BOOKS.
Love in a Cottage and Men of Modest
 Incomes Are Played Out.

Love in a Cottage and Men of Modest
 Incomes Are Played Out
 A little woman from Kansas took the platform at the convention of the State Federation of Women's Clubs and painted word picture of "The Woman of Today that made 400 fem mine faces flush. She was Margreb M Mather of the College of Agriculture at Manhattan, Kas.
 When the little woman had retired she had projected upon the mind of every mother and every daughter in the audience, an image of g woman with heart shrunk by lack of whole some nourishment and with soul soiled by the stain of tainted money. And this, she said, twas an image of the woman of today
 In the making of her picture, Miss Mather declared that femininity had been crucified upon cross of gold. :" No longer, said she. is young woman willing to marry a man with modest income. The love in a cottage ideal, she declared, ruthlessly, has been destroyed by the onrush toward social ambitions.
 Character, ability and intellectual ity no longer weigh much in the social scales" said the speaker; "and when one mother asks another if her daughtr CT married we'll the usual answer is affirmative or negative, according to the size of the check the happy bride groom can sign. Our ideals have been powdered with gold dust Woman's measure is taken in diamonds and jew els, instead of worth, womanliness and culture
 "The complexity of modern life has reduced the joy of living to a mini- mum There would be fewer embez- clements and defalcations If the house. wife understood the value of a dollar. Few women know how much their hus- bands can afford to have them spend and most women on the topmost rung of the social ladder are living beyond their income.
 Not long ago a girl would have felt she was doing we'll financially if she married man with an income of $1- 800 to $2,000 year Nowadays girls expect their husbands to begin at the place their parents left off. I have heard men with large incomes say they had not the nerve to ask a girl to marry them until they could give them as much as their parents had given them. They forget that possibly it took thegirl's father half a century to ac- cumulate his wealth"
 Miss Mather urged that every wife, son and daughter be given an allow ance, no matter how small, to teach hem the principles of economy and he value of money She said that out f hundreds of families with whom she lad come in contact she had failed to ind a single one in which the daught- ITS and sons were given allowances, and ;nly one in which the wife had an in- come.
 As many women do not know what their income is, so thousands of them are living way beyond that income. We women need more of business education and we need to put our homes on a business basis instead of trusting their management to incom- petent servants.
 "Take up home making and home keeping as a business and society will be revolutionized,
 "No power is so great as that of woman in the home. She is greater than the politician, greater than the voter"
 Miss Mather urged that children be given work in the home and be paid for it in order to give them an appre- citation of the difficulty of making thing by working for it, and they soon money. "Let your children earn some will learn the value of money" she said 'fThen they will not grow up to be spendthrifts.
 The speaker characterized the pop ularity of hotels and boarding houses as a peril to American family life. Every child has a right to home. she said and the cramped existence forced upon children in apartment houses, ho- tels and boarding houses is @ menace to their future. When the speaker sat down she was cheered.-Joliet Dis patch in Chicago Tribune.