The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-03-12
DOROTHY DIX TALKS
BY DOROTHY DIX
WorId's Highest Paid Woman Writer.
Foolish Jealousy.

man who says:
My husbands stenographer is an
exceedingly pretty young girl. l have
asked him to dismiss her, and to en-
ploy some middle-aged, homely wo-
man as his secretary. He refuses to do
so on the grounds that this girl is ex-
ceptiOnally competent and efficient
and that she saves him an enormous
amount of detail work. He also says
that the girl is very modest and cir
cumspect in her demeanor, and that
neither he nor she have the slightest
interest in each other beyond that of
employer and employe.
Nevertheless, it makes me miser-
a BILE to think of my husband spending
his days in the society of a girl who
| is so much younger, fresher and bet
ter looking than l am. There are
thousands of other wives who feel the
| same way about their husbands and
their stenographers- Do you think that
the pretty girl in the office is
| menace to the wife at homer"
Scat
Why should the pretty girl in the
| office be a more dangerous rival to
a wife than the pretty girl in the
| parlor or at the restaurant or the
country club, or wherever else man
is likely to meet pulchritudinous
maiden? Doubtless, pretty girls,
, wherever they may be are a possible
| source of peril to wives and also,
! doubtless, every married woman in
| the world would make every other
woman uglier than she is, fatter than
! she is and ten years older than she is
| if she could.
Then she could rest in peace, let out
| her corset strings. quit restoring her
hair to it's natural color and take her
| watchful eye off of her own partic-
ular John Henry.
Fortunately. wives possess no such
evil magic. They can't kill off the
pretty girls. much as they might like
to and inasmuch as young women who
are easy on the eyes will continue,
thank Heaven, to flourish in our
midst the only thing for wives to do
! is to use a little common sense and
philosophy in facing the situation.
Undoubtedly. as my correspondent
says, many wives are filled with
jealousy of their husbands stenog-
raphers, and it is a safe bet that If
wives picked out their husbands office
force it would be recruited from the
| Old Ladies Home and there wouldn't
be a woman in it who was under fifty
and who didn't have false teeth, griz-
zled hair, and a rheumatic hitch in
/ her knee.
Yet in all good truth, there is. as
| a rule, no other woman of whom
wife has less reason to be green-eyed
than the woman with whom her hus-
! band works.
| There are many reasons for this.
| One of these is that there is a time,
! and a business office is neither the
time, nor the place, nor the season
| for sentiment, romance and phllan-
| dering. 1t is a place to work in. A
| place to fight in. A place where a
man m&rshals all of his sterner
j faculties. his keennesa, his shrewd-
ness, his hardness to do battle with
those who were trying to wrest from
| him his hard won trade and money.
! To succeed man must cOncen-
|
in hand. For the time being nothing
else Of importance, or interest exists
| for him but the case he is getting
| ready to try, the deal he is endeavor-
ing to put over. the bill of goods he
is selling, and his wife may depend
upon it that he is not interrupting
| the current of his thoughts to make
| love to his stenosrapher, or any other
| woman.
Lovemaking simply isn't done in
| business houses in business hours. A
man INDUCES in sentiment as he does
in cocktails, only afte~ his days work
is done Romance and lovemaking
| belong as strictly to him to the after
clothes and for this reason if the
| wife wants to be jealous of anybody,
let h.r tormen. herself about the
girls d man meets in society, not
| those he meets in business.
Another reason that the wife need
| waste no jealousy on her husbands
stenogrpaher is that it is not a re-
lationship that conduces to sentiment
Quite the contrary. 1t offers to both
parties the same establishment that
matrimony does.
They see each other at too close
range They get each others num-
bers too accurately. They get the
action and reaction of temper and
nerves TOO markedly. II no man is
hero to his valet, assuredly no man
/ is a romantic figure to his stenog-
rapher, nor is any stenographer a
pin feathered angel to her employer
Men fall in love with women whom
thew do not know, women whom they
have only seen dressed up in their
best bib and tucker. with their best
company manners on. They are not
the women they have seen worn,
tagged. cross and tired, with every
feminine cham and grace wiped off
of the slate and only their ability to
do their share in the days work
left.
wives do not know it. but when a
woman goes to work she leaves at
home the little bag of tricks with
which she conjures man in society
Experience soon shows her that they
do not work in an office. The BABY
stare, the artless ignorance, the heip-
less clinging to any strong arm in
sight may be the things that men love
women for in their hours of ease, but
it's not what they pay them money
for in working hours.
So far as the average man is con-
cerned a woman employe is simply
cog in a big machine, and he admires
her according to her ability to spell,
add up figures. sell goods, not for
her hair, her eyes or her complexion.
On her part, the girl is equally in
different. Her employer represents to
her only pay envelope and the
chances of an increase in salary. She
has no more illusions about him than
he has about her and it would aston
ish many a wife, who imagines a
pretty little stenographer casting eyes
at her husband. to know that the girl
calls him "Old Grumpy" and laughs
at how fat, puffy and pretentious he
is and that she thanks God that she