The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-07-05
Dorothy DiG Says
Playing the Game.
BY DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer

I
of sporting blood in your VEINS said
a man the other day. You are gam
blers at life without the gamblers
merit of nerve and pluck to stand by
your own bet. You plunge-and then
| WEIGH when luck goes against you.
You don't play the game fairly
and squarely, and that's why so many
of you fail all along the line.
IT'S your worst handicap in bust
ness and why no man wants to do
| business with you if he can avoid it.
He's afraid of you. A man goes into
! a deal with another man. If it turns
! out prosperously, well and good. If
| it fails, the other man shrugs his
| shoulders. He took a sporting chance
and he lost, and that's an end of it.
He never dreams of holding anybody
| responsible for it.
but If you go into business deal
with a woman and it fails, she consid-
| ers YOU robber and a thief to the
end of the chapter. She would have
gladly shared in the profits had the
venture succeeded, but when it comes
to paying her part of the loss, she
reneges. That's why ladies are per-
soma non grata around respectable
stock brokerages.
| Personally, 1 often have it in my
power to help my women friends to
| make little deals that would net them
much needed pin money, but 1 don't
dare do it. 1 could say to Brown,
Say. old man. P. D. @. looks mighty
good to me. L happen to have some
inside information that it is making
money hand over fist, and the divi-
dend is going to be increased
Brown Would know that I was Civ
ing him the best advice I had in the
shop and he would take it or leave it,
as his own judgment dictated, and
! whether he made or lost would never
hold me responsible. But 1 couldn't
say that to Mary Brown because if
| nv any noSSihle chance nv tin tnrOe6
out wrong and she lost her money
she would always believe that was
a deep, designing villain who lured
her into making a bad investment for
my own nefarious ends.
''And L find the same fault with my
women employees. They are not
sporting either, as our English
friends say. They want mans
mans pay, and they don't want to be
treated like a man. They want you
to always remember that they are
| ladies instead of just cogs in a big
machine for grinding out dollars,
which is all that any business is
"One of the chief reasons that wo-
men so seldom rise to high places in
business houses is not their lack of
ability, but because they have not
enough sporting blood to stand the
punishment by which a young man
gets mauled into the shape in which
he is most useful. BY that I mean
that when l get hold of a promising
boy, 1 go after him with a sledge
| hammer when he makes mistakes or
shows symptoms of slackness, and if
there is any Stamina in him he doesn't
sulk, but learns how to do his work
efficiently, and eventually is worth
good money to himself and the firm
i But when l cell my stenographer
that she is balling up business by
coming to her work an hour late, or
that / prefer the spelling of the late
Noah Webster to her peculiar person.
al variety, or that it doesn't add to the
credit of a business house to send out
smeary and untidy letters, why she
bursts into tears and sobs out that I
don't treat a poor working girl as if
she was a lady.
It's easier on the nerves to fire an
incompetent girl than to stand for her
mountaineering while you are try
! ing to teach her, and that's where the
young business woman loses out thru
not having the sporting spirit-one of
the most valuable assets that her
| brother has.
And it's women's lack of game
ness that's at the bottom of half of
the domestic misery in the world.
Statistics show that more than three
} fourths of the divorces are asked for
by women. This is not because men
make so much worse husbands than
women make wives, but because the
average man is pretty good loser,
and the average women is a bad loser.
There are just as many men who
have made fatal mistakes in their
choice of a life partner as there are
women. There are just as many men
married to women who do not under
stand them, women who make their
lives unbearable by temper or ma G.
5 g1ng, women who are lazy and shift
l less and eXtravag CANT as there are wo-
men married to men who are brutes
but the man generally shuts his teeth
/ on his misery and bears it, while the
woman tells her troubles to all who
will listen or goes with them 20 the
| ! divorce court.
| And look at the way women
! plunge in matrimony, and the way
they back out of their bargains when
they get just exactly what was COM
3 ing to them, There are the women
s who fall in love with poor men and
= who marry them knowing perfectly
y well how little the men earn. But is
? such woman game enough to accept
: her man on the plane on which she
:, married him and go cheerfully tc
q work to do her own cooking and
housework and be perfectly happy
| tho wearing a last years suit and
| riding in the street cars?
< Not once in blue moon. She
frets and fumes because she CAM
have Paris gowns and motor cars like
s her rich acquaintance have and nags
: the poor fellow because he doesn't
know how to make money, which i:
playing the matrimonial game pretty
t low down, in my opinion
Consider also the women who de-
q Hberately pick out drunkards fol
husbands and then consider them
, selves poor prosecuted martyrs wher
Il | their spouses come home intoxicated
II I were a woman who mar
e ried a man who, I knew, drank Tt
be sport enough never to say a WORD
o to him in reproach, and I'd spend my
time applying wet cloths to his fever
q ed brow and mixing him brono self
n zers.
And there are the women who are
r married to good, ordinary fellows, thu
:, sort of men who are working like