Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1916-02-16
BY Dorothy Dix

In every household, save possibly
that of millionaires, the one eternal
conundrum that is never answered Is,
where does the money go?"
On Monday you had in your purse
hundred dollars-fifty dollars
twenty dollars - ten dollars - as the
case may be, and on Saturday night
you are the possessor of a lone and
solitary jitney. You haven't bought
any furniture, or clothes, or given a
party, or gone on spree, or been
robbed, or done anything that would
account for the expenditure. You've
got nothing to show for your good
money. Yet it is gone, and the ques-
tion is. how did it go?
Answering the question for women,
can say truthfully that most of the
money that slips between womens fin
gers goes for foolishness, just silly lit
tie indulgences and fallalls that they
really don't care for, nor want, and
that they waste money on, because they
have never really sensed the fact that
twenty nickels make dollar, and that
ten dollars make an K spot. For, cur
iously enough, a woman will hesitate
about spending good round dollar on
an article, and then blithely blow in
twenty nickels on nothing.
When a man contemplates matri-
mony, he figures out the cost of wife
in terms of French millinery and fine
frocks. That's where he misses his
guess. 1t isn't the money that a
woman spends on good clothes that
plays hob with the family finances. It's
the money she wastes on foolishness.
The Beauty Shop
Take the beauty shop, for instance.
A woman drops in to have her hair
shampooed. There is fifty cents gone
to start with. The girl who is brush
ing her hair heaves a sigh of startled
apprehension, and says, your scalp is
getting tight, and if you do not wish to
get bald and gray, you should begin
scalp treatments at once" Bing! An
other fifty cents, or seventy-five, if
little electric roller is passed a few
times over the Easy Marks head.
Then comes wave-seventy-five
more, and a face massage, another sew
enty-five, manicure at fifty, and a
treatment from the chiropodist at dol
lar-fifty. Fifty cents is as little as one
can distribute in tips, and before she
knows 1t the woman has spent five dol
lars and twenty-five cents, totally un-
necessary, for she could have done her
own beautifying at home herself had
she had sufficient energy and thrift.
OF course, it's luxury to have all
these things done for you, but 1t ex-
plains where lots of the money that
women handle goes.
The street cars get lot more of the
lost nickels, for the average woman
considers 1t crime to walk where she
can ride, and takes the car even when
she is going only few blocks. That
Is why street cars can pay dividends
on seas of watered stock.
There Is no earthly reason why the
average woman who has to go shopping
shouldn't eat before she leaves home.
But she doesn't. She stays herself
from time to time on sundaes and ice
cream, and hot chocolate-always
at ten or fifteen cents per stay, even
when she doesn't treat a friend-and
this just works up to the matter of
lunch, and afternoon tea at smart
hotel, where some other dollar or two
fits mysteriously from her handbag.
Many Other Ways
Foolish little treats for the children.
silly toys that break within the hour,
and stray nickels and dimes to buy
everything that every other child on
the block has account for much more
than vanishes, leaving no trace behind.
So do the movies; so cheap that the
whole family can afford to go every
night. Only ten cents apiece, but when
there are five in the family it amounts
to fifty cents a night, or three dollars
week.
The main way that women's money
goes, however, is for jimcracks. Good
furniture and good clothes are an in
vestment. They last. They give good
service, and they are worth their price,
but there is scarcely a house In the
land that has not in 1t hundreds and