The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-03-20

conservative ana substantial Dond
house, with n large clientele, has
opened an investment department for
women that is in charge of woman.
This announcement is of interest
because it shows that women have
arrived in business-that women are
beginning to be a factor in the world
of higher finance as well as in the
working world. In word, 1t is a
public recognition of the fact that
women not only know how to make
money but how to invest it, and that
their accounts are courted instead of
scorned as they used to be-
Heretofore a superstition has exist
ed that woman and finance were as
antagonistic to each other as oil and
water, and that there was some cur
ious and inexplicable quirk in the fem
mime brain that prevented it from
grasping the idea that you could do
ANYTHING else with money except to
go shopping with it.
That theory has been the excuse
that millions of tightwad husbands
have offered for never giving their
wives an allowance, and for forcing
the Door creatures to do the humble
mendicant act for every cent on
which they ran the house and cloth
Women haven't got any business
sense; you can never make a woman
understand the simplest business
proposition" has likewise been the
reason given by thousands of other
men for never telling their wives
word about their affairs, thus leaving
the women to founder along bHndly
in the dark, not knowing when they
were extravagant or thrifty, because
they did not know the extent of their
husbands income. and who were left
utterly ignorant and helpless, and at
the mercy of whoever wound up their
husbands estate, when their nus
bands died.
Heaven alone knows how the idea
ever originated that women are in
capable of comprehending anything
pertaining to finance and are not TO
be trusted to handle money. Certain
ly we don't get it from our daily eX-
perience and observation.
In ninety-nine families out OF
| hundred it is the wife and not the
husband who is the economist, and
every ordinary, commonplace little
| woman who runs a fiat, clothes and
feeds her husband and children, and
| keeps the bill collector away from
! the door on eighteen or twenty dol
| lars a week, performs prod1g1es OF
| financiering that would make a Wall
Street stock juggler green with envy.
1t is a practical tribute to woman as
| a financier and economist that the
| bargain sale exists. Men would not
| bother with it for the sake of saving
| the penny or two on things that are
marked down from two dollars to
| one ninety-seven. When man wants
n thing, and has the price Of it, he
walks in to the handieSt shop and
| buys it regardless of what it costs,
but woman scours the town until
! she finds the thing she wants at the
| least possible price.
| Any woman can make a dollar go
70 hnr. O.
| significant that in business houses
where the men and women get an
| equal wage, or even where the women
get a smaller wage, the women are
not constantly borrowing as the men
are, and a far greater proportion of
women then men have savings bank
| accounts
If the ordinary domestic woman,
who has never had the handling of
| any money seems stupid when man
tries to explain to her the intricacies
of banking or stock transactions or
| the difference between first and sec
| ond mortgages, it is because she has
never been taught anything about the
| handling of money.
| The men of her family have not even
| talked to her. or before her. about
| financial problems. Understanding
them is a matter of teaching, and
not a proof of native intelligence, and
| she's not a whit more stupid in grasp
ing the fine points than Mr.. Morgan
or Mr.. Rockefeller would be if some
woman undertook suddenly to explain
| to him the mysteries of the Batten-
burg stitch in embroidery or how to
| make a lace trimmed boudoir cap.
| Indeed, so far from women having
no turn for business, most of them
| display a singular aptitude for it and
| take to it like ducks to water when
they love it, and 1 have yet to meet
the woman. no matter how well off
she was, who hasn't expressed a wish
that she could do something that made
| money. not wholly for the sake of
| the money, but because the great
American game 1ured her and called
| to her.
And that is instructive Biologists
tell US that daughters inherit more
directly from their fathers than they
| do from their mothers, and so it is
perfectly natural that the daughters
of keen, alert, hustling American bust
ness men should feel in their own
veins not only the same urge that sent
their fathers up the financial ladder
from office boys to heads of the firm,
but that they should have a lot of the
! inherited talent for money making
that made their fathers millionaires.
What Hetty Green and Mrs. Harri-
man have done has passed into finan-
cial history. One of the most success
full department store merchants in Chi
cago is a woman. New Orleans has
a woman who took the wreck of a
lumber business that her husband had
reduced to bankruptcy and made it
one of the leading lumber concerns OF
the south Every town and village has
a similar story of some woman who
has shown extra ordinary business abiI-
ity, and it is quite within the bounds
of possibility that when women go gem
orally into business the trust magnates
of the future will wear petticoats in
stead of trousers.
ness that should put them far along
, the road to success. They have thrift
They are conservative. They have
initiative. and they have a world lone
training in details in doing patiently
over. day by day, little things
You will hardly ever find a woman