Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1917-06-22
DOROTHY
DIX SAYS
AMERICAN WIVES.
by DOROTHY DIX.

WHENEVER foreigners or expatri-
wv ated Americans run out OF any
thing else to say, they take q
few whacks at the American wife,
whom they accuse of heartlessness, ex-
travagance, laziness and general tri-
hingness.
The latest individual to heave a few
verbal brickbats at his countrymen Is
a preacher, who has just come back
home after living in Munich for twelve
years, and the things he has to say
about American wives would raise the
very hair on their heads with horror
and Indignation If they weren't so ao-
customed to IT and hadn't heard 1t all
so often before.
The reverend gentleman's remarks.
however, have greatly impressed a
man, who writes me a letter In which
he echoes the preachers charges, and
tells a pathetic story OF a friend Of
his wose wife deserted him because
he lost his money. This is the way
the selfish American wife treats her
husband in the day of adversely" says
nv correspondent. THE European
woman, devoted only to her husband
and family, would not act So"
Piffle. Also, nonsense There are
good wives and bad wives. faithful
wives and unfaithful ones, the world
limitations. One swallow does not
make a spring, nor should one selfish
American wife queer the whole race of
patient Grizeldas in this country.
Judge women by the majority and
not the exception. One American wife
may have left her husband when he
lost his property, but how many thou
sands OF women have you seen roll up
their sleeves and go to work to help
I'D
their fine houses into boarding houses
ness?
Can't you recall plenty of women
who have dismissed their servants and
gone into the kitchen to do the work.
who have made over their old clothes
and trimmed their hats, and pushed
their own baby. carriages when their
husbands became q cropper in business,
and who not only turned smiling
face upon the world, but kept their
husbands courage so that the men
were able to make a fresh start In
the world?
For any one American wife who Is a
milestone about her husbands neck you
can find a thousand who are the power
behind the throne, who are making of
their tender shoulders a ladder on which
their husbands are climbing to sue
cess.
Some extravagant American wives
there are, but the great majority are
far more thrifty and economical than
their husbands, which is abundantly
proven by the fact that not one man in
ten ever saves any money until he gets
married. A great many salaried men
turn over their entire pay envelope to
their wives not because the wives de-
mand 1t, but because experience has
shown the husbands that their wives
can take better care of the money and
get more out of 1t than they can.
AS for the American wife not be-
ing as good a wife as the foreign woman
is, that's all tommy rot. At any rate.
she suits the American man better than
any other wife would, because she has
been evolved according to his tastes and
needs. That she fills the bill to his
satisfaction Is amply shown by the fact
that while the American woman often
marries q foreign man, the American
man very rarely marries foreign
woman.
The clergyman referred to at the be-
ginning of this article criticises the
American woman because he says she
is always gadding about instead OF
spending her time in the kitchen as does
the German hausfrau. Well, what OF
enough to plan her work better, to have
more kitchen convenieOces, and to get
through her domestic labore so that
she has time for clubs and reading and
outside interests, she should be praised
for 1t rather than blamed.
Certainly nobody will claim that
American husbands and American chill
dren don't get plenty of good. we'll
prepared food Their looks show that
they do, and statistics declare that only
one family in ninety keep servants. So
the wife must do the housework.
Another thing the clergyman lam
basis American women for is for Dress
ing too we'll and not looking dowdy,
as middle class foreign women do.
Score again for the American woman.
She can take a cut paper pattern,
few yards of cheap cloth, and sew
ing machine, and evolve a creation THAI
looks forty-nine dollars instead of for
ty-nine cents. Moreover. a certain
taste and style and way of wearing
things are Indigenous with the females
of this country that makes the poor
woman look as we'll dressed as the
well-to-do woman does abroad. We
have no peasant women in the u. S. A,
and none that look like peasants.
No man need be afraid Of marrying
an American girl. She'll do her part
If he will do his And there's no dan
ger of losing her in time of need. She'll
stick through adversely as well as
prosperity. If you will go down and
attend a session Of the domestic rela-
tions court, you will observe that there
are practically no husband deserters'
but the wife deserters keep the judge
busy handing out warrants. 1t is the
men who have quit on the Job when
things got bad at home. not the women
1t i'll becomes anyone in this country
to speak disparagingly of American
wives when practically all of us are
the children and grandchildren of those
heroic women who followed their men
into the wilderness, and with their own
hands helped blaze the path of civili-
zation from the Atlantic to the Pacific
and from the gulf to the St Lawrence.
All the hardships that the men endur-
ed the women endured twofold. All
the perIls that the men dared, the
women dared a thousandfold, because
they braved the dangers of mother
hood with no science or skill of a ply
stefan to help them In their extremity.
And these women, who had the
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