Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1920-12-11
DOROTHY DIX TALKS
BY DOROTHY DIX
The Children's Earnings
Copyright, 1920, by the Wheeler Syndi-
cate, Inc.
kkVTT HAT proportion of my earnings
w should 1 give my parents? Have
they right to take everything /

w should 1 give my parents? Have
they right to take everything !
make ~sy from me?'
These are questions that I am continually
asked, and in reply 1 can only say that il
seems to me that the financial obligation OF
children to their parents depends altogether
upon the parents necessity.
I. III the parents are poor, and old, and tee.
BILE the children should support them, sye al
ii it takes everything they make. II the
parents are not in dire straits of want and
are able to work, then, if the children nav
their board, they have done everything that
their parents should expect or ask of them
For nature lays the responsibility of pro.
viling for the children upon the parents II
is those who have thrust life upon heples.
creatures who are bound by every law, hu.
man and divine, to cherish them. They
have no right to feel that in having children
they have merely propagated lot of slaves
to toll for them.
A great many parents do hold this view
however, and we continually see men and
women who are husky and strong, and per-
tectly able to support themselves, who knock
off work and begin to coddle imaginary all
nlents just as soon as their children get old
enough to be sent out to labor for them
They set up rheumatic knees, and lame backs
as an excuse for turning slackers, just asi
fashionable ladies develop nervous prostra.
ton whenever they want to spend the sea-
son at Palm Beach.
One would think that the last person on
whom fashion and mothers would graft
would be their own child, but so far from
this being the case it is the exceptional par
ents who do not think that they have per-
feet right to everything their children make
OF course, it isn't so easy to hold up a
boy, and take his earnings away from him
as it is girl, so most parents are salts
fled If their sons pay board but the poor
daughter, in the great majority of cases.
cir nnly hos 10 ofn
takes her pay envelope away from her, and
woe to her if she has distracted a penny for
herself, for mother considers that she has
been robbed.
Mother even thinks that she is being gen.
erous in giving, back to the grill who earned
the money, few cents for car fare and q
moving picture, and when she buys her such
clothes as she thinks the girl needs.
Mother justifies her conduct on the ground
that she has better judgment, and it never
seems to enter her head that the girl who
has sense enough to make the money, prob
ably has intelligence enough TO spend it,
aid, in any event, the mere fact that she
has earned the money gives her the right to
do with 1t as she pleases The dollars that
We have made with toll and sweat are OURS
Parents are wrong from every point OF
view in making child turn over all of his or
her earnings to them. For one thing, il
works a great injustice, in that nearly al
ways it forces the Industrious and savine
members Of family to toll to support the
lCafers. In almost every family there &
someone who has been born too tired to
work, and who simply will not stick to Job
as long as he or she is certain of three square
meals day and comfortable shelter. Near
ly always there is butterfly in the famil
who will have good clothes, and go to place
of amusement.
And strangely enough, this idler is nea'
ly always mama's pet, and she will take til
money of the Woodworking children and giJ
it to the spender. I have known dozens 0
cases in which frail girls were made, by thei
mothers, to turn over their money to her s.
that she could give it to their worthless
brother, and I have known other cases in
which brother literally worked to
death to support lazy and extravaganza sis
ters
This is most unfair. but justice has no
place in the repertoire of parents, and they
are ever ready to sacrifice their good chill
dren to the prodigal sons and daughters.
For the parents to require their children
to turn over their pay envelopes to them,
kills all ambition, and strangles the sense of
thrift at its birth. There are few of us who
are so ALFRED Industrious that we work Just
for the pleasure of working. The habit OF
industry may have become SO ingrained in
that we love work, for works sake, when
are old; but when we are young, we work
simply for the sake of the reward We work
for the money that will buy us the pleasures
we want. We work because we have Wis
ion of the kind of house we want to live
in, and the Lort of car we want to own,
and the position we want to hold, when we
forty.
But if, at the end of the week. all we have
worked for is taken from us, II we are no
better off than we were at the beginning of
it, then our incentive is gone, the hope and
inspiration are swept away, and the thing
that turned work into means to an end is
lacking, and it all becomes a purposeless,
endless drudgery
That's the reason that so many boys and
girls who are bright enough, and capable
enough, never take any interest in their work
and never get anywh re. They never receive
the reward for their labor, so they Shrug their
shoulders and say, whats the use?" Their
greedy and grasping fathers and mothers
kill the goose that lays the golden egg when +,
they rob their children of their pay envelope.
I do not mean to imply that childr"n
should not support their parents If their par
ents need to be supported. or that they
should not help their parents. 1t is their
sacred duty to do so, but they should do so
in their own way. They should handle the
money they make themselves, and themselves
be the judge of what is fair and reason
able divide.
The boy and girl who work should not
be made to support idle brothers and sis
up something to start life OH themselves
and they should have the 1neffable JOY of
owning their own individual pocketbooks
MiIlionaires Increasing
country than there were in 1914, and they
arg all located in the eastern cities Most