Denver labor bulletin., 1917-08-04

sense of security, or the same degree
of independence.
1t is idle to argue that young men
and young women could if they would
dispense with frills and fads and so
fare as well as did their ancestors.
These things cannot be dispensed with;
they represent different mode of liv-
ing and have become a part of life.
People living in the narrow quarters
of city flats and apartments can no
more return to the earlier modes of
life than the chick can re-enter the
egg. The hand loom is gone; even the
making of clothing has passed into
factories. The city wife could profit
nothing by attempting to do the things
done by the housewife of one hundred
years ago. If she would spin and
weave and make up garments she
must enter the factory or the shop.
Hence it is that when the young man
of today reaches the age at which his
grandfather married he is merely en-
tering upon his wage-earning career,
and is barely able to keep himself. 1t
is only in exceptional instances that
he is warranted in assuming the re-
sponsibilities of husband and father
at the age of twenty-five. He must
wait until he has advanced to higher
earning power. But while he waits,
enters commercial life and establishes
herself upon an independent and self
sustaining footing. And even tho her
wages be meager, and her home max
ing instincts be suppressed, she enjoys
freedom, and enough of the luXuries
of the day to make her hesitate to
commit her fortunes to the keeping of
small-waged man.
Thus the young man who would have
-NI ,t L.,
income is confronted with the neces-
sity of a larger expenditure than he
can now afford and must continue the
struggle for economic advancement
at the age of twenty-five. He must
time, both he and the young woman be-
come accustomed to their single life;
their habits become settled, their
tastes grow fnicky, and they have less
and less inclination to make the ven
ture.
The growing reluctance with which
men and women resort to marriage and
the frequency with which they remain
childless is due to no changes in ma
ture, but solely to economic conditions.
And the way to restore the customs
under which youths and maidens marry
at appropriate ages is to recast
industrial conditions to a degree that
will enable the machines that save la
Dor TO save the labOrer( that Will
equitably divide the increase of wealth
that comes of the use of the machine
between the operator and the owner
Thus does the marriage question,
like all other social and moral ques-
tions, lead back to the economic queS-
ton. General Gorgas says the federal
authorities abolished the slums and
drove disease from the Panama zone
by doubling the wages of the men. He
declares the same thing would follow
in the tenement house districts il. any
American city. The New York health |
authorities have found that intemper-
ance decreases as wages advance: the |
domestic courts find that wife deser-
tion grows less with greater demand |
for labor; it is the common experience |
of mankind that child labor stops with |
the increase of the family income, for |
it is only among the poor that child |
labor prevails.
1t must be apparent to the rejecting |
mind that the great problem before the
people of this country is not whether
we should have been lesa or more Sc
we're with Germany, whether we should
have recognized Huerta or Carranza,
or whether we should build the largest
navy, but what causes the economic
strain that is turning awry our social
forces and interfering with the moral
development of the country. The ma
tion can bear many ills, but it cannot
long survive the deterioration and dis
appearance of the nome and family.