The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-07-15
DOROTHY DIX TALKS
By DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer
Good Men Who Are Bad Husbands

OOOu men ~ no arc DdO 1uSDdBuSs".
There are many wives who look for
ward with shuddering dread to the,
first of every month when the bills
come in, for they know that they will
have to endure insults about their
wastefulness and bad management
that no servant would stand.
There are women who, from the day
they are married to the day they col
lect their husbands insurance money,
never have one cent for which they
do not have to give an account, and
that they can spend as they please.
Such a woman's husband~may con-
slider himself vastly superior to his
neighbor whose commercial character
is shady, but who lavishes what he
has generously upon his wife, but it
would not take the women of the two
households a minute to decide which
they think the better husband, no
matter which is the better man.
There are also thousands of men as
domestic as the house cat, men who
are as sober as the town pump, and
as immune to temptation as a plaster
saint, yet who make their wives lives
intolerable by th-ir tempers. All of
us know families in which the hus-
band never speaks at home, except to
find fault, and at the sound of whose
latch key in the front door the cat
bolts for the cellar, the children hush
their prattle and the temperature of
the whole house falls to the freezing
point.
IN such families the children start
and look guilty il father even speaks
to them, and the wife spends her life
hiding everything that has gone amiss
in the day, covering up every fault of
the children. and doing a juggier act
walking on eggs, trying not to raise
issues that will provoke her husband
into a passion of abuse
Th1s type of man reads in the paper
with horror of the husband who has
been arrested for beating his wife.
and he never suspects that he is a far
more cruel and calloused bullying
brute than the man who merely in
f1cts a physical injury on his wifes
and children. A blow on the face
heals quicker than blow to the heart,
and there are thousands of wives.
married to impecoable gentlemen who
would be incapable of striking
woman, who would gladly exchange
their wounded and lacerated feelings
for a black eye.
And there are religious men, men
who never miss church service, who
pray loudly in public, and who are
deeply concerned over the salvation
OF the heather, who are simply gla-
cial in their own homes. They never
snow their wives one particle of af-
lection, nor do one single, solitary
thing to make their lives happy. After
they are married, they never give their
wives a single kiss that isn't so luke
warm and flabby, it is an insult.
They consider that all that any wife
has right to ask is a husband who
does his duty by her-as if any live
woman with a warm, beating heart
wanted duty affection. Such a hus-
band starves his wife to death emo
tionaliy. He turn her whole married
life into dust and ashes. and never
dreams that he has done her crueIer
wrong than if he had murdered her
on their bridal night
The truth is that no matter how
good man is, he is not good hds-
band unless he is generous and ten
der and sympathetic towards his wife,
and unless he does his part trying to
make life happy for her. Strangely
enough, the man who has no other
virtues seems to possess these con-
nubial virtues oftener than the man
W viPtnd is the model of all the standard
This is the reason that we are so
often amazed when the wife of the
model man Of the community elopes
with some rascally adventurer, who
had an understanding of a woman's
| heart, and a plying tenderness for
| her.
And it is why we so often see a
woman sticking thru thick and thin
| to a drunken husband. or even a GRIM
| inal one whom she has starved and
shaved for and been shamed by, and
| breaking her heart about him when
| he is dead, while the woman who was
| married to the exemplary citizen who
| got an obituary a yard long in the
paper when he died, gives an inspir-
ing example of Christian resignation
to the DEGREES of Providence.
The wives knew which was the bet
ter husband.