Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1912-01-31
WHO SCOLDS MY MOTHER?
Only One Man i'm the World Who
Can Do it.

A man walked hastily out of a
house one morning slamming the
door behind him with an energy
that, if harnessed and properly util-
lied, would have shaken the dust
out of every rug in the neighbor-
hood, and disappeared down the
street
A stranger who had heard the
door slam watched the man with
interest Turning to boy who was
playing in the ward he asked
who is that MANI
He" replied the boy, lis the
man who scolds my mother"
All" you will say: "a problem
in kinship. l am to be asked TO
figure what relation the man is to
the woman he scolds, and you get
pencil and paper and go to work.
That is, you do this if you are a
man. A woman knows, if she knows
enough to boil an egg, that the man
who scolds mother is mothers hus-
band; she knows that a woman's
father and brother may sometimes
grow critical, but the only man on
earth who dares to scold her is her
husband the man she is working for
with no pay but her board and
clothes.
She spends her days in working
in the kitchen, in raising his chill
dren, in trying to be his wife, moth
er, nurse, cook, laundress and seam
stress with not as much wages as one
of these laborers alone would de-
mand, and when he comes home at
hot
would have made her leave home if
her father had given it, or that
would part her from the best friend
she had on earth if that best friend
were as abusive.
He scolds because he takes the
annoyances of his days work home
with him; Ire piles them on his desk
and carries them carefully lest one
fall off, and when he reaches his
wife he dumps them onto her lap,
though that lap be filled with babies
and darning baskets. He scolds be-
cause he is cross and tired, and, be-
ing man, he believes he has a
monopoly of grievance; he scolds be-
cause the grind of his life, refusing
to see that the life of a man who
labors is one delightful round of
pleasant surprises compared with the
life of his wife, who also labors, and
turns from one task TO another with
babies i'm her arms and AT her heels.
He imagines that she has much to
be grateful for, and she has; she is
grateful because the baby bumped
its head instead of breaking it, she
is grateful because it was bright and
sunny on washday; she is grateful
when her children scream and howl
that they have the strength to do it:
she is an optimist every minute Of
the day because she has to be- She
is even grateful that her husband
isn't meaner than he is.
He sits in an Office near an cleo
trio fan; there is no electric fan
turned on her ironing board He
has the most modern tools inventive
wisdom has produced for making
work lighter. She has none, bat if
he did the Homework he would buy
machine to spread molasses on the
children's bread.
Liberty is always pictured as a
woman, but every married woman
knows that the woman who poses
for Liberty wears no wedding ring.
When she is scolded at night for the
best she could do all day, she is
satisfied that the lady on the silver
dollar doesn't represent a married
I woman. When she is scolded in the
morning because baby was restless
/ in the night, she knows that the wo-
man who was the model for the
Statue of Liberty looks the part be-
cause she is single. The wife of the
man who scolds sentenced herself to
! hard labor and i'll usage for life the
day she married, and hasn't more
liberty that chicken in grocers
coop.
She is the underpaid slave OF the
man who scolds mother" she is Civ
/ ing her life and the best that goes
with IL to a man whose only distinc-
ton, if he were compelled to show
some claim to recognition, is that he
has never been tattooed.
She Is the burden bearer of man
SO small, so weak and so Contempt
bic that he can't bear in patience his
Httle annoyances, but makes biz
ones Of them and dumps them on
the mother Of his children.
The man who scods mother"
describes more men than the world
will ever know.
-.--