Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1913-04-17
NEED WEDDING DOWRY
EUROPEAN YOUTHS NOT SEEK.
ING PoRTiONLEss GIRLS.
Necessity for Certain dot Is an Ac
compartment of Marriage cere-
mony, and Its Absence Means
Life of ceIibacy.

A well known woman artist in Co
penhagen evolved a shrewd idea for
the foundation of an insurance com
pany for the exclusive benefit OF WON
Ell, writes NJ. Winifred Jones in the
London Express. A reasonable pre-
nIum was to be paid to insure against
The possibility OF finding no husband
Ladies who marry before forty lose
al the money they have paid, which
goes to the benefit of those who reach
the age limit unmarried and who re-
ceive an income for the rest OF their
lives.
In France, to which we look as the
home OF the dowry, we have it On the
authority of NJ Brieux, La Femme
Seule," that there are about 2,000,-
GOO single women in France today"
and that many Of these do not marry,
because they have no dot" The
daughter of workingmen who are too
well educated to marry a workman
and the workman does not want to
marry them, because the girls are too
poor
At the same time the system of
the dot obtains in France where the
parents put by a certain sum every
week for a girls dowry when she
grows up. The fate of the dowerless
girl in France is much worse, from the
matrimonial point of view, than that
OF her similarly uncovered sister in
England, where marriages would in
deed be few and far between in any
class were a dowry an indispensable
adjunct to tying the knot
In Germany there is the Stiff (chari-
table institution, described by Mrs.
Alfred Sidwick There are Stifte
from which a woman may absent her
self for the greater part of the year.
and yet draw an income from it's
funds and have room or rooms ap-
pointed to her use; there are others
where residence is compulsory. Some
are open only to descendants of the
founders; some will sell vacancies.
"A woman may have to wait year
after year for chance of getting in
or she may belong to one that will
admit her at a certain age
Some are just sets of rooms with GER
tain privileges of light and firing at
tached. But you cannot be
much among the Germans without
seeing women who have been edu-
Gated, endowed, helped in distress or
supported in old age by one of these
organizations.
In Greece it is considered wrong
for brothers to marry until their sis
ters have been we'd Again girls must
marry in order of seniority. 1t would
not be right for girl to be married
while she had an elder sister who re-
manned single. The men of a family
are thus naturally anxious to see their
sisters settled, and as a dowry is indis-
pensable, its provision is often
matter Of serious anxiety and the
fruit of great self-denial on the part of
the brothers if the parents are
dead
There are cases in which brothers
have remained unmarried and devoted
all their hard earned savings to the
dowries of their sisters. Among the
poorer classes emigration is resorted |
to, not infrequently solely with this |
object, and many dowry comes to a
Greek maiden from across the At
lantic
THE average young woman living
in luxury in her fathers house." says
a famous novelist, lis between the
devil and the deep sea-, on account of
the English system of-in the case
piling the money on the eldest son.
There is a happy medium, and
though it takes a good deal to re-
move hidebound prejudice and Gus
tom. once the Englishman is con-
vinced of the justice of a plea, he is
rarely deaf to it, and money is a
greater necessity to the woman than
to the man, because any man who is
4 real man can work, but many a
woman brought up in sheltered idle
ness can't work; that is, can't work to
gain an income and independence, and |
80, sooner or later without money or
without courage, she sinks sub