The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1920-07-10
Dorothy Dix Talks
What VIII She Do?-2.
BIZ DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman WFie

In a word, let these millions of
women espouse careers instead of
husbands and have business successes
instead of babies. Perhaps the one
may seem "a poor substitute for the
other, but it is condition, and not
a theory, that >confronts US, and under
the circumstances the husbands and
babies are an impossibility, where the
business success is not. Even bread
is not despised when there is no cake.
Nor is this Hobsons choice for the
isuperfIuous woman as bad as it ap-
pears. Theoretically, love is the only
incentive to marriage. In reality girls
marry for many things besides the
grand passion. They marry to get
emancipation from the pretty tyranny
of their parents. They marry because
they want a home of their own that
marry because they want an individ-
ual pocketbook. Most of all they
marry because they are bored with
having nothing definite to do. and
want to be about the business of life.
All of these things the successful
/ business woman secures to herself far
more than the married woman ever
realizes them, and, as plain matter
of fact, her life is fuller of happiness
than that of any women except those
who have drawn the headliner prizes
in the great matrimonial lottery.
The truth is that We have thought
Of women so long in terms of do
mesticity that We are lost when we
try to conceive of them in any other
aspect. Our minds are in chaos when
We attempt to come out of the kitchen
and nursery, and visualize multitude
of women who are not cooking hus-'
bands dinner, and darning little
stockings, and wiping little noses.
OF course the difficulty in the way
of the superfluons woman's accepting
her hus5andless fate philosophically
and making the best of it, is that she
will have to first get over the false
teaching she learned at her mothers
knee. The curse of women is that
their emotions have been developed at
the expense of their reason, and that
they have thought it a credit tsA them
to have more heart than head.
The result is that women put an
undue value on sentiment. They must
revise their estimate of love and mar
riage as factors in happiness, and take
/ the same rational view of them that
men do-a thing to enter into joyfuily
1 if it comes their way. and do without
cheerfully If Cupid fails to knock at
| their door.
But one thing the superfluous wo-
man problem should impress on the
minds of parents and that is the ne
cessity of providing their daughters
with some definite way of making a
! living, not only for the sake of the
money. but to give the girls some in
teresting occupation in life, something
to think about and do. for Satan finds
even more work for idle women's
hands to do than it does for idle mems.
! Not for generations can a father
count securely in handing over his
daughter to some other man to sup
port. No girl is sure of getting mar
ried in these days. It's long shot
with the odds against them in the
misunderstanding game. for there sim
ply aren't enough men to go around.
But the girl needn't mind II she is
self-sustaining. She can do for her
! self as well as the average woman can
do for her, and she has the consoling
Thought that good job is better than
a bad husband. and that, anyway, the
working woman is never the superflu-
Gus woman. The world needs her.