The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-02-07
DOROTMY DIX TALKS
BY DOROTHY DIX
HOW to Help Your Husband.

How to Help Your Husband.
Nearly every woman who gets mar
ried enters into the holy estate with a
cor scientious desire to do her duty to
her husband and to make him a good
wife.
Many fail. They are curses instead
OF blessings to the men they marry.
They are millstones about the necks
of their husbands instead OF being
helpmeets to them. They drag their
husbands down to disaster instead OF
boosting them up to success
And the curious thing about these
women who fail as wives is that they
do not often fail thru lack of love for
their husbands, but thru sheer inabil-
ity to grasp the meaning of the situa-
tor in which they find themselves
and to meet it with intelligence.
They desire with all their hearts to
help their husbands and they sigh be-
cause they cannot help them by max
ing some big tremendous sacrifice or
rendering some great service, and they
never do one of the millions of little
daily Services, or make one of the mill
lions of little sacrifices that would
really help
For it is sadly true that many a
woman who would be willing to die
for her husband isn't willing to live
for him. Women adore the spectacu-.
lar and it is hard to convince them
that the most effective way in which
a woman can help her husband is by
feeding him the right sort of food,
making him comfortable home. and
giving him the atmosphere in which
he can best do his work.
1t is unromantic but true that the
woman behind the door OF the success
of ninety-nine men out of a hundred
is not \ vamp who pulls the strings
and exercises occult influences over
those in power which induces them to
give preferment to her husband, but
just a wise quiet little woman who is
a good housekeeper.
Perhaps it is because the domestic
woman has never taken any part in
the struggle for money and power and
place in the outside world that she so
sisnally fails to realize the effect that
home conditions have upon man.
She knows nothing of the fight that
leaves a man at the days end with
spent body, ragged nerves and an
guished soul. and that brings him
weary and despairing to his own door,
and that delivers him thus into his
wife's hands to either be built up by
her so that he goes on to victory or
else so further exhausted and discour-
aged by her that he runs up the white
flag and surrenders.
If women could only realize what a
mans nome means to him. how it
makes MIN or mars him. there would
be such a revolution worked as would
usher in domestic millennium For
women's sins in this respect against
their husbs nds are mostly sins of ig-
norance. That's the pity of it.
The first thing that a woman can
do to help her husband is to feed him
properly. We are having it impressed
on us just now that an army fights
on its stomach, and it is just as true
of the individual man in business as
it is of the army at war.
The undernourished man cannot
stand the strain of the long hard pull
of grue1ling applications to his task.
He breaks down at some critical point
in his career. The man who is fed on
badly crooked, indigestible messes gets
nerves and dyspepsia and is SO ir-
ritable and disagreeable he frightens
opportunity away from his door.
+ 1t would be interesting to know
how many times a bad breakfast of
soggy biscuit, greasy tough steak and
watery coffee has brought about a
mans ruin by sending him to work
with a sour stomach and a brain
clouded by the poisons of indigestion
that made him so pessimistic and saw
age that he insulted his best customer,
and took the bear side of the market,
because the whole world was colored
by his own bilious outlook.
After having fed him properly the
next big thing a woman can do for
her husband is to give him peace and
quiet at home. The man has had all
the fighting he wants in his struggle
with other men all day. He has had
all the criticisms he can endure. He
yearns for peace as the war worn
veteran does. He wants to get out
of the trenches for little while, at
least, and forget for a few hours the
things that vexed and annoyed him.
Every woman could secure this
peace to a husband if she were will
ing to make the sacrifice of posing
as martyr herself, and bidding for
her husbands sympathy by telling her
own tale of woe. and if she had the
determination and energy to manage
her own household affairs without lay
ing the burden of them on his
shoulders.
It is nothing but rank selfishness
that makes woman recount to her
husband at night everything that's
gone amiss in the household and
deluge him with whines and COM
plants over things that he can't help
and with which he should not be
bothered.
And it is worse than selfish, it is
actually criminal, for a wife to drag
her poor tired husband around to
places of amusement every night.
Many a brilliant career is sacrificed
to silly wifes love o. dancing, thea
tiers ~and gadding about. The man
who has gone to bed at 1 or O'Clock.
after an evening spent feverishly at
some place of amusement, and after
later supper at which he has eaten
and drunk and smoked too much. is
no match in business or the profess
sions for the man who has spent a
quiet restful evening at home and had
an eight or ten hours sleep. You
never hear of the husband of a shrew
or a wilmer or society butterfly get
ting on in the world. No man can
win the race carrying such handi-
cap.
The third way in, which a woman
can help her husband is by giving
him the atmosphere in which he can
work and by not interfering with his
work A great many men fail be-
cause their wives are Obsessed by
jealousy of their husbands business
or profession.