The news scimitar. (Memphis, Tenn.) 1907-1926, 1920-03-29

risk the great adventure.
This young man will undoubtedly
be prosperous, and about the time he
Is 45 or so years old, and has gotten
set in his bachelor ways, and his heart
has dried into dust, he will be making
enough money upon which to support
g wife; But IS Is long, ways from
80, and you can't dehydrate loves
young dream and have it come out of
the can fresh after a quarter of CEN
fury, and the young couple want to
marry now while the bloom Is on their
romance and their hearts throb and
culver, and life Is still banquet on
their lips instead Of being dead sea
fruit.
But they can't marry unless the girl,
who is also earning a good salary,
sleeps on with her work, and they have
asked my advice about what they shall
do.
I say to them to get married while
they are still young and still can love,
not to wait until life has pressed all
Of the sentiment and romance out OF
them Let the girl go on with her
work. She will only be doing what
every true wife wants to do, helping
( her husband, and it matters not how,
or where, that is done, whether in an
office, or store, or kitchen.
OF course for a woman to work out
Of her home after she is married is
in defiance Of ancient tradition, but
these are the times when all hoary ira
ditions are being strapped. other
times, other manners. AS Mr.. Cleve-
land would say, it is a condition and
not theory that confronts us.
Therefore, we had as well face the
fact that the average young man now
adays does not make enough money to
enable him to support family alone
and unaided, and unless the wife. also
becomes a moneymaker, who adds to
the family income, there will soon be
no more marriages, and no more ba-
hies except among the rich and the
elderly.
And that will be bad thing for the
race, and for the country.
The alternative is for the young to
marry, and the girl to add her pay
! envelope to the mans pay envelope,
siHce it requires both to support
home. This may not appeal to the
girl who thinks that matrimony is a
graft, and who looKs forward to ac
Quiring husband as a meal ticket,
but to the woman who truly loves a
man the prospect Of being his busi-
ness partner is not without it's charms.
In reality the objections against NJ
woman continuing on with her work
after marriage are mostly founded on
pride and prejudice. A man thinks
that 1t reflects upon him not to be able
to support his wife in supposed idle
ness. The girl fears that people will
think that she has not bettered herself
by marrying II she holds on to her job,
and SO for the sake of appearances
couple drags out nerve wearing and
heart breaking interminable engage
rnent, or else they rashly marry and
starve when they. could be married and
cSSRf;ortabls and happy i only they had
ton frankly and for the wife to con-
tinue her gainful occupation.
Most women who have been In busi-
ness regret giving up their work. They
are accustomed to the pleasant routine
of store, or office, with its gossip, its
cor11raderie it's excitement of big deals,
and they are bored and lonesome when
they change 1t for the solitary toll of
their own little homes. Moreover, they
are trained to sell goods, or do office
work. and they are bungling and in
competent cooks and washerwomen,
and they infinitely prefer performing on
a typewriter to performing on gas
range.
For the poor man, when he takes
his wife out of her place Of employ
ment, does not sit her down on a cush-
ion of ease She has to work about 10
times as hard as she ever did before,
with no pay envelope on Saturday
nights as reward for her labors.
In many ways 1t makes for domes-
tic happiness for wife to be a money
Garner For one thing 1t eliminates
the financial problem which is the ever
present source of friction in most
households. For another, It gives hus-
band and wife something to talk about.
Both have had experiences and ad-
ventures during the day that furnish
them food for conversation that makes
them perpetually interesting to each
other For 1t can not be denied that
the woman who goes out into the world
and rubs wits against it every day,
keeps mentally more alert and wide
awake than her domestic sister whose
interest and knowledge Is bounded by
the four walls of her home
OF course the coming of children
makes complication, but even this
objection to the wife working outside
of her own home is not insuperable
since in practically every family there
Is grandmother or aunt, or cousin
who knows far more about raising ba-
bies than any young mother does, and
whose empty hands ache for just such
job.
And at its worst will not the extra
food, the superior environment, and
the additional advantages of education
that the mothers earning will give the
child be a far greater advantage to 1t
than If she had personally cooked its
food, and washed its little face, and
blown it's little nose?
Undoubtedly the ideal state is when
man shall make enough to support
his family in comfort, and when the
husband and father shall come home
to a vine wreathed cottage where his
wife and children await his return, but
between a no wife, no cottage and no
ki6dies, and a wife who goes fifty-fifty
with the man in earning, the money to
pay the bills--I say, let Mary do ii.
Copyright, 1920, by the Wheeler Syn