The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1920-05-07
Dorothy Dix Talks
By DOROTHY DIX
worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer.


Among my acquaintances is a fam
lily which consists of mother and
her three daughters and one son. The
girls are all in business, and every
Saturday night turn in their unopened
pay envelopes to their mother. That
supports the family. There is no
other income.
The son, big, husky young fellow
with plenty of intelligence, who is ten
times as able to work as his sisters
and who could earn twice or three
times what any one of them does,
| works only when the spirit moves him,
Which is seldom.
He doesn't have to work. lie
doesn't really need to because whether
| he works or not, he is sure of three
good meals day, better than his Sis
tiers get for mother saves up the It'd
| bits for him; good place to sleep,
and a little pocket money for which
! he can always stand mother up.
The sisters are naturally very much
| outraged at this state of affairs, but
| when they protest against it, and tell
their mother that they do not feel
| called upon to support a lazy loafer,
even il he is their brother, the mother
turns upon them in fury and demands
| to know what sort of stony hearts they
| have that they begrudge their poor
brother a bite of food and a place to
! lay his head. Then she weeps and
says that she will never turn her own
son out of her house and shut her
door in his face; that as long as she
has a crust she will divide with him,
and give him her last penny
| So the scene ends, and when the
parasitic son comes in. mother cooks
| him up something extra to make up
| for the way his mean sisters treat him
| in not being willing to support him.
| Then she gives him the last of the
housekeeping money, and runs an &C
| count with the grocer which the girls
have to pay in the end.
And what are we going to do about
it?" inquire the girls. I'VE love our
mother and hate to hurt her, but We
| feel that it is neither right nor just
| for three frail, delicate wemen to have
1 to support an able-bodied man, and
be able to lay up nothing for the fu-
| ture because all Of their excess earn
| ings go to pay for his excuses"
OF course it is neither just nor right
either to the girls, or to the boy for
that matter. for their mother to take
their money to keep him in idleness,
| but how anybody is going to get JUS
| tice out of a woman where her idol
lied son is concerned, is a problem
far beyond my poor ability to solve.
Biologists tell us that mothers can
| not help loving their sons better than
their daughters and having a different
| feeling toward them. 1t has some
thing to do with boy inheriting more
from his mother than his father.
Anyway they say that 1t is fixed
law of nature, and the mothers can
| not help it, poor things since loving
| is not a matter of volition, but of
some mysterious attraction that we
can neither understand nor explain.
|. Perhaps this accounts for the case
| cited above. and a hundred similar
ones that each of us can recall in
which a mother who was a good
woman, and really loved her daugh-
tiers dearly, nevertheless sacrificed
| them without a pang of compunction
| to their brothers.
| Copyright. 1919. by the Wheeler Syndicate
| Incl