The Eureka sentinel. [volume] (Eureka, Nev.) 1902-current, 1913-03-29
LETTER TO ANY YOUNG Man
By Dorothy Dix

My Dear John-You are 20 years old. You earn a salary of
$40 a week, and you are thinking of getting married, and want to
know what I think about it.
My boy, 1 think that any man, rich or poor, who marries be-
fore be is rs years old is a fit subject for a lunacy commission to
sit upon. When a poor young man, who has his way to make in
the world, even considers getting married before he is 25 years old,
his next frend-as the law puts it-should lock him up in a pad
ded cell until he RECEIVERS from his suicidal mania.
For that's what an untimely marriage is for a man It's sui
eide. It's harikari. It's self destruction by lingering torture.
It's letting yourself in for having your nose kept on the grindstone
for the balance of your lfe-and there is some pain in that Whats?
Of course you will say that there have been cases when men
married young and when they were poor, and that they later on be-
came rich and prominent citizens. Yes, Miracles do happen oc-
casionally, but they are as rare as hens teeth. What you have got
to figure on is not the occasional exception, but the great majority;
and if you will contemplate that for a while you will see that there
is not one chance in ten thousand for the man who burdens himself
with a family in his boyhood to ever win the prize in the race of
life. He is too heavily handicapped to even run.
To make marriage a success, it must be properly financed, as
much SO as any other business partnership; and to marry before you
have the means to do this, son, is to invite certain disaster. When
the day comes that a woman represents to you the eternal sacrifices
that you have to make for her, that hour you will hate her.
If had a son I would have the old proverb, ga young man
married is a young man marred, . painted in letters a foot high above
his dressing table, and on another wall I would emblazon Kiplings
immortal sentiment about those travelling fastest who travel alone
l have seen SO many young men full of ability. full of ambition
full of promise, full of enthusiasm and hope, extinguished by early
marriages. their spirits broken by the petty cares of the family man,
the strength that should have taken them to fame and fortune
wasted on walking the collie, and trying to get along with their silly
historical, nagging wives with which they had saddled themselves
in the blind ignorance of their youth. Behind the failure of nearly
every might-have-been you will find a boy marriage.
To put the proposition at its baldest, it costs more than twice
as much to support two people than it does one, and when you add
to this the expense of babies you can see that the poor young man
never has any chance to save a part of his salary. And success in
business depends on what you've got on deposit in the bank when
opportunity knocks at your door.
Then if you are married you are not free to go where fortune
beckons. You have got your wife and kids to think Of Many a
man is tied down to a poor job all his life because his wife wouldn't
leave her sewing society to go with him to the distant city where
he could have become rich.
So, son. if you want to be happily married wait until you are
at least 25 before you pick out a wife, and for heavens sake don't