The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-09-29
Dorothy DIG Says
BY DOROTHY DIX
worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer
Wives and Business.


her reason for asking for separation
from him.
My husband is a fine and noble
man." she testified on the witness
stand. He has been kind to me and,
so far as l know, has been faithful,
but he is a concert singer and can
not stand to see the way in which
women make fools of themselves over
him 1t drives me mad to look at
them hanging around him, and ador-
ing him after he has sung some pa
thetic and heart touching song. or
course I know that women are the
chief patrons at concerts and that his
success depends upon his pleasing
them, but l can no longer endure wit
Messing them making eyes at him and
trying to fiirt with him
This woman's action illustrates one
of the most peculiar and inexplicable
of all feminine vagaries of tempera-
ment. and that is the almost univer-
sal jealousy that wives feel of their
husbands business. Naturally this is
most pronounced in the cases where
mans occupation throws him in con-
tact with other women, but it extends
thru every ramification of employ
ment, even to the work that men do
solely among other men. A wife can
be just as jealous of her husbands
job if he is lone fisherman as she
can be of his being a professional
connoisseur' of feminine pulchritude
for Broadway girl show.
The thousands of matrimonial
wrecks that strew the theatrical
shores. for instance, are the direct re-
suit of fOolhardy actors having taken
unto themselves wives without giving
heed to this idiosyncracy of the fair
sex. The result was disaster, for no
amount of argument or logic or proof
could convince the mans wife that
stage business was purely stage BUSH
ness and nothing more, and that the
passion that he threw into the WOO
ing of the beauteous heroine had no
more real significance than would
have had the eloquence he would have
extended in persuading a lady to buy
a silk dress had he been in the dry
goods line.
Nor can the singers wife be per-
suaded that when her husba nd is sing
ing to the hearts of an audience of
women his efforts are really directed
at their pocketbooks. She's no be-
lever in art for arts sake. She's
bound to make it personal and indi-
vidual, and connected with women
who are no better than they should
be, and thereby enabled to torture
herself, whether she has any reason
to or not.
and singers wives would take the first
prize. The second prize would go to
doctors wives, who are so filled with
jealousy and suspicion of their hus-
bands occupation that they scare
many young physicians off from en-
tering the holy estate at all.
when 1 think of my husband
spending his days going from one
woman dressed up in pink and lace
negHgeeS to another, and holding their
hands and having to look sympathetic
and jolly them along, and listen to
Z oil %1JI
their own husbands or mothers, it
drives me Wild said the pretty young
wife of doctor to me not long ago.
And then she added bitterly, Il know
it's business, and that if he didn't do
it we would starve, but sometimes
think 1 would rather starve than have
him do it,
And that was why women as a
whole sympathized with Mrs. Carman
when she put a dictagraph in her hus-
bands office so that she could listen
to what he said to his patients and
what his patients said to him. They
could understand the gnawing jecl-
ousy that drove woman to do any
act to find out what went on in that
secret and mysterious place devoted
to the exercise of a mans profession,
and into which a mere wife may not
penetrate.
But it is not only the professions
! in which mems patrons are chiefly
wives. It's any and all business. Lis
ten to the talk of wives. They almost
always refer in invidious terms to
that hateful old office or that
horrid old shop in which their hus-
bands earn their living, and their tones
drip venom when they speak of their
husbands being so absorbed in their
business that they have no time or
though for anything else and can't be
dragged away for winter trips and
summer excursions.
When man is late for dinner or
has to break an engagement with his
wife, and gives some exigency of bust
ness as his excuse, she feels just as
much injured and that she has Just
as much of a grievance as if he had
| been detained by some fascinating
siren.
1t is business that takes up her
husbands time and thought and keeps
him away from her, that absorbs him
so in the market report of a morn
ing that he does not notice that she
, has a headache and looks pale, and
that exhaust him that he's too tired
to amuse her in the evenings. Obser-
walton teaches her that no woman who
has been married to a man five years
can raise the thrill in his bosom, or
bring the light to his eyes that a ten
point rise in stocks does. And so the
wife unconsciously comes to look upon
her husbands business as her deadly
foe.
If it wasn't for the "old store" and
the "old office she feels sure that
her husband would resume the lover
like attitude of their honeymoon when
he put aside all business and spent
the time in telling her how beautiful
and wonderful she was, and marveling
at his luck in securing such an angel
for a wife
In their jealousy of their husband s
occupations women overlook the fact
that they live upon the bounty of
their hated rivals, and that it is out
| of the vampire store and office that
comes the money that keeps them soft
and comfortable. If they would re-
fleet while on the connection be-
tween a mans devotion to his occu-
patton and the number of new frocks
] and hats and jewels and automobiles
that they enjoy, they might cease
| h