The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-08-20
DOROTHY DIX TALKS
By DOROTHY DIX
Werld's Highest Paid Woman Writer.
The Two Points of Views.

'.And could weep with disappoint-
ment for myself. i thought we would
have such fun going out together in
society, and the only place she wants
to GO to is a business office. thought
I would have such Joy in dressing her
I'D, and all the clothes she will have
are plain little tailor made things. i
thought we wouldT have such good
times gossiping together, and the only
things she is interested in discussing
are heavyweight topics, about the bet
terment of social conditions. or the fu-
ture of the steel trade, or the price Of
stocks.
Eyes, Ellen is pretty girl, and a
good girl, and a clever girl. but she is
fem daughter is a Eillion times more
of a problem than the problem son."
And the girl says:
ST am awfully sorry that I am such
a disappointment to mother. I know
how she feels about me. She feels
like a swan who has Matched out an
ugly duckling, and who wonders how
she came to do it.
what mother would like would be
for me to be just the same sort of a
girl that she was. 1 would If I could.
just to please her, but you can't turn
back the hands of the clock. When
mother was my age, she had nice.
dainty little tootsie wootsies and wore
number two shoe. I have played
golf and tennis and taken hikes all
my life, and I wear a number four
shoe. Mother had worn a tight cor
eighteen inch belt measure. I have
got a natural waist line.
,"A1l of that goes mentally as we'll
as physically. and I can no more get
into mothers point of view about what
a girl should be and do than I could
N1nfhaG rryEa
she was a girl. They don't meet on
me by six inches. Poor mother, and
poor mel
Mother can't understand why I
want to go to work and do something
worth while in the world, some real
work that counts. and that shows re-
suits in dollars and cents. I can't
make her see why it seems to me ut
terly silly for q human being, who has
brain, and has spent ten years in
cultivating it at good school, to
spend her time in doing what is called
woman's work, in embroidering dinky
little doilies, or crocheting miles OF
silly little edging, or fussing over put
ting in miles of hand work on under
clothes that nobody sees.
criminal waste OF time, call
about nine-tenths of the work that
women do, but mother thinks it is
the refined and proper thing for a
gentlewoman to do, and that there is
something abnormal in a girl who
can't feel that it is her great mission
in life to run pink and blue ribbon
in her lingerie.
And as for trotting around in go
ciety, and going from party to party,
and lunch to lunch, and dinner to
dinner, meeting the people who have
never done anything else all of their
lives, and to whom the most impor-
tant question in the world Is what
sort of an entree is going to be served,
to whom the greatest discovery of the
age is new cocktail, and the most
vital issue Of the times, whether the
Joneses have new car, or the Smiths
can afford the style in which they
are living, why I simply haven't the
strength to do it, not even to please
mother, for I am not the stuff of
which martyrs are made. would
| perish of softening of the brain in a
| year if I had to listen to that twaddIe
Il know that people consider those
| or us girls who don't have to work
ana yet insist upon working, as freaks
Iney say We are career mad If we &C
| in for professions, and that we are
notoriety hunters IL we get Jobs as
stenographers or clerks, but because
we don't need money is no indication
that we don't need something thai
money can't buy. And one of those
things that money can't purchase is a
real. vital interest in life. We have
to find that thru our own efforts
I by work.
| Il am sorry for mother. wish J
| could go back and get her point OF
view, that woman is a parIor ornament
| instead of a cog in the machine OF
life but 1 can't. I belong to my da,
and she belongs to hers, and there il
a gulf of thirty years between us. thai
neither of us can cross. That is al
there is to it,"