The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-02-09
DOROfMY DIX TALKS
BY DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman WFiter.
Women as Loafers

This effort of women to rid them
selves of the family pest is both pa
thetic and amusing, because 1t shows
them trying to wrestle at long dis
lance with an evil that they have not
courage to tackle at home. They are
attempting to do in a bunch the thing |
they haven't the nerve to do alone.
There is always something touching |
in the popular. if 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 par
ticular 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 it.
The number of men who graft their
living upon women is simply appall- |
ing 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, daugh-
tiers 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 back
bone 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 vagrant. Also he
| would hotly deny that he is lazy. On
the contrary he is anxious to work if
he could only get into the right thing
| the right thing being some occupa-
| ton that paid a bank presidents sal
airy and carried no labor more severe
| than clipping coupons for a few min
| utes every day. Failing this, the man
| considers himself the child of misfor-
tune. one of those habitually pursued
! by the hoodoo of bad luck.
He never gets "a chance" He is
always the victim of the malevolent
| 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
situation and come back home to
| wife or mother.
In such fashion does the man
camouflage his own despicable mean
| ness and weakness when he let's his
| poor old mother take in boarders to
support him, or his frail wife fight
the wolf away from their door with
| needle, or when he lives on the
money earned by the hard toll of his
sisters, or some foolish girl who has
| set her silly heart upon him.
Of course there should be law to
punish such men, and the punishment
to fit the crime should be something
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
settled and encouraged by his mother,
who is not only willing to sacrifice
herself to him, but insists upon sacri-
ficing his sisters too. 1 get hundreds
| of letters from working girls COM
| planning to me that they are forced to
support lazy and worthless brothers
and asking what they shall do about
| it.
eff my brother was sick I would
cheerfully work my fingers to the
bone for him. girl will say, "but he
isn't an invalid. He is big and husky,
and ten times as able to support me as
am to support him, yet when 1 OBJ
1ect to having my hard-earned money
go to pay for his board and clothes,
my mother weeps and Gale me cruel.
| heartless girl, and wants to know if
| would be willing to see my poor
brother starving and homeless while I
had plenty
Many wives voice similar protests
against gratifying husbands. What
am l to do with an able bodied hus-
band who refuses to work and who
has simply laid down on the job of
supporting himself and lets me do it ?"
is a query that is put to me continu-
ally.
There is only one answer. There is
only one possible way of solving the
problem of the clinging vine man, and
that is to rudely tear him from his
support and force him to stand alone.
The man who is able to work and
0T,r vnr-lr oh + i
And it isn't the law that can do this.
It's an unpleasant duty that is up to
women.
If every woman who has a worth
less, lazy husband or son had the cour-
! age to say to him you've got to pay
your way or get out" and If she had
the strength and firmness to shut and
bar the door on him until he made
good, the vagrancy question would be
settled in ten minutes, and likewise
much of the drink and petty gam
bling questions. Also the foundations
would have been laid for making a
, decent, self respecting man out of a
contemplate panhandler.
AS long as the shiftIess, self indul-
gent boy and man know that they've
got somewhere to go when they are
! out of work, that there's a warm place
by the fire, and a good bed and three
; square meals day waiting for them
for nothing, they give up at the first
obstacle, they let any difficulty dis
courage them, they indulge their tenn
pers in talking back to their bosses,
and throw up job whenever they get
tired of it. If, however, these same
men knew that their food and lodging
and clothes absolutely depended on
their sticking to their work. they
, would stick. When it is a question
| of work or starve even the LATEST
, choose work.
Therefore, the woman who feeds
l nd oil hno y 49, Il,
, and abets him in his vagrancy. She is
accessory to the crime. Above all she
denies him his one chance of making
Ia man of himself, for she softens him
trhara she would harda him irit-