The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-03-15

Heretofore in this country matri-
mony has been run on the bread. and
cheese, and kisses basis. 1t hes been
assumed that love was all that any
young couple needed to start house
keeping on, and that if they had plen-
ty of sentiment it didn't matter wheth-
er they had any beefsteaks and pota-
toes or not
Also it has been our cheerful and
romantic theory that every youth was
able to support a wife better than the
style in which she had been accus-
toned to live, and that it behooved
him not to consider such material
things as rent and grocery bills, or
even to inquire whether his lady love
! possessed a fortune of her own, or
came to him merely with the clothes
on her back.
We have been nightly scornful of
what we considered the sordid manner
| in which marriages were conducted
/ abroad, and have been particularly
severe upon the custom which requir-
ed every girl to have dowry. THANK
| heaven we have piously exclaimed,
| I'VE don't have to give chromos with
OUR girls to get men to marry them!"
| 1t is beginning to dawn upon US of
| late, however, that the older civiliza-
ton has simply worked out the matri-
monial problem a little farther than
we have, and that the doWry system
for girls is the only logical and just
| SOluliOn It. Likewise II Is TIE only
solution, for it is becoming obvious
| that unless the girl of the future can
bring her quota of money to the matri-
moniai firm. there won't be any matri-
mOnial firm.
There are tens of thousands of fine,
clean. worthy young men who would
like to marry, and found homes and
families of their own. Under present
social and financial conditions they
cannot make enough money to support
| HI e-I.,, ia
ed efforts, because it takes years for
a man TO build up a business, or
practice in law or medicine. There
fore, these men atrophy their hearts.
and strangle their emotions, and avoid
matrimony, and grow into cynical and
bitter bachelorhood, and the best and
sweetest years of their lives are
wasted.
But they could marry if the girls
had dowries, and the wife could pay
her part of the running expenses of
the home. In that way she would
Iadd to the prosperity of the firm, and
strengthen it financially, instead of be-
ing a drain upon its resources that
would land it in bankruptcy.
The idea of a woman helping her
husband with money is a shocking
one to many people, and robs matri-
mony of all of its halo. This is
foolish way to look at it. Matrimony
without money gets its aura knocked
into a cooked hat before you can say
scat, and the only way in which you
can preserve sentiment and cherish
loves young dream is by not letting
them get hungry or shabby.
| And, anyway, inasmuch as it is con-
ceded to be a wife's first duty to help
ner husband, why, in heavens name,
shouldn't she help him with money,
if that's where he needs help the
most?
Whether we like it or not has got
nothing to do with the case, and we
had we'll face this fact soon as
late-that unless the girl of the fu-
ture can help out on the money ques-
ton, there will be mighty few we'd
ding bells The working girl must
fcontinue after marriage at her job and
add her salary TO her husbands. The
home keeping girl who has no way OF
making money, must bring her dowry
with her to the altar or else therel1
be weddings.
And this state of affairs is no re-
Election on the young men. 1t is sim
ply an economic necessity brought
about by forces for which they are not
responsible. 1t is simply case of
where a young couple who love each
other can marry if they can go it
Dutch treat, so to speak, whereas
they cannot marry if the man has to
bear all the expenses alone.
Personally, 1 have always been an
ardent advocate of the dowry system,
for many reasons. For one, it cuts out
the everlasting IrlcllOn between nus
band and wife over the money QueS-
ton that is inevitable where the wife
is economically dependent upon the
husband.
No matter how much a woman loves
a man, it is always humiliating to her
to have to go to him for every cent
she spends. No matter how generous
he is to her, it gals her pride to the
quick to know that she has nothing
of her own, that if she wants to help
: 10, l., l.,
sisters, she has to take his money to
do it with, and thus make them pen
sionerS upon his bounty.
If a woman has one vestige of in
, dependence of character, she yearns
for financial independence just as
much as a man does. Moreover, the
sight of the constantly increasing
army of women with pocketbooks of
their own makes this feeling more and
more acute in every feminine breast,
and so for a Woman's own happiness,
as well that of her husband, it has
become necessary for her to bring
either money that has been given her
, by her father, or money that she
earns, into her married life.
Another reason l believe in dowries
IS because 1 have never seen the JUS
tice of fathers unloading their daugh-
ters' support on other men. We do
nothing to fit a girl for matrimony
except to cultivate expensive tastes
and habits in her, and then We ex-
, pect some poor, foolish youth to come
along and marry her. and spend the
balance of his life toiling like slave
to supply them.
I have always contended that the
father who brought up a girl with
silk stockings and automobile tenden-
cies was in honor bound to settle
7 enough money on her to provide the
| silk stockings and automobiles. Every
| father should settle on his daughter a
| dowry commensurate with her station
| in life when she marries, or else the
girl should have some good trade by
| which she can make money
= And if you ask where this money
is to come from for the girls dowry
g saw from the same place that it