The Washington herald., 1918-02-08
DOROTHY DIX'S TALKS
WOMEN AS LoAFERS.
The Worlds Highest Paid Women
Writer.

4 A"t "Vrhub nIEueht ful0 women
Writer.
The woman's Citizens League of
Queens Borough. Long Island, has
started crusade against loafers.
;; II has petitioned the legislature to
pass law declaring that all per-
sons not following some visible
gainful occupation shall be punish
ed as vagrants.
This effort of women to rid them
selves of the family pest is both
pathetic and amusing, because II
shows them trying to wrestle at
long distance with an evil that they
have not courage to tackle at home.
They are attempting to do in q
bunch the thing they haven't the
nerve to do alone. ,.......
There Is always something touch
ing in the popular. IL unfounded.
belief in the ability of the law to
right every wrong and reform every
abuse, and this simple faith was
never more poignantly illustrated
than in this particular case. For
the remedy for male parasitism lies
not In the hands of the law makers,
but with the women themselves,
and not all the laws that could be
written into the statute books will
suppress the vice until mothers and
wives and sisters quit coddling and
encouraging 1t.
| The number OF men who graft
their living upon women is simply
appalling. In New York City alone
it has been estimated that there
are nearly a million healthy, husky
men who loaf their time away in
saloons and pool rooms and on
park benches. while their wives and
mothers, daughters and sisters, and
sometimes their sweethearts, toll
to support them and supply them
with the money for drinks.
Indeed there are few families
that are not afflicted with one of
these lily-handed gentlemen, who
was born too tired to work and with
such sensitive temperament he
can never agree with any job for
more than a few weeks at a stretch,
and what to do with him, and do to
him, is one of the problems that
takes more backbone to settle than
one woman in a million possesses
1t would highly insult one of
these masculine lilies. who tolls
not and never spins anything but
yarns. to class him as a vagrant
Also he would hotly deny that he is
lazy. On the contrary he is anx-
ious to work if he could only get
into the right thing-the right
thing being some occupation that
paid a bank presidents salary and
carried no labor more severe than
clipping coupons for a few minutes
every day. Failing this, the man
considers himself the child of mis-
fortune, one of those habituaIly
pursued by the hoodoo of bad luck.
He never gets "a chance" He is
always the victim of the maIevoIent
jealousy of those above him. His i'm
mediate superior always has it in
for him." and treats him with such
brutal injustice that flesh and blood
can't bear it and he has to leave his
situation and come back home to wife
or mother.
In such fashion does the man cam
outage his own despicable meanness
and weakness when he let's his poor
old mother take in boarders to sup
port him. or his frail wife fight the
wolf away from their door with a
needle, or when he lives on the money
earned by the hard toll of his sis
ters, or some foolish girl who has set
her silly heart upon him.
OF course there should be a law to
punish such men, and the punish
ment to fit the crime should be some
thing with boiling oil in it. but no
law can reach them because they
are defended by the very women they
defraud.
And in particular the loafer is cos
setted and encouraged by his mother.
who is not only willing to sacrifice
herself to him, but insists upon sac
rificing his sisters too. get hum
dreds of letters from working girls
complaining to me that they are forced
to support lazy and worthless brothers
and asking what they shall do about
it.
"If my brother was sick I would
cheerfully work my fingers to the bone
for him." a girl will say, but he isn't
an invalid He is big ard husky.
and ten times as able to support me
as I am to support him, yet when /
object to having my hard-earned
money go to pay for his board and
clothes. my mother weeps and calls
me a cruel. heartless girl. and wants
to know if I would be willing to see
my poor brother starving and home
less while I had plenty"
Many wives voice similar protests
against grating husbands: what am