The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-02-16
Dorothy Dix Talks
Which Has the Greater Influence
ri DOROTHY DIX
'sslA's Highest Paid wemaA VI

Nhlch Has the GredtSrr lniIuenCe
No woman's influence over man is
great enough to make him risk pneu-
monia by the way he dresses, or even
deny himself a single thing that he
likes to eat. in order that he may pre-
sent a pulchritudinous appearance to
her, and find favor with her.
Such influence as the individual
woman may have over the individual
man, she attains by long and patient
study of his character. By means of
that a few women find out the COM
bination that works their husbands
but you seldom find a husband who
thinks it worth while to take the
trouble to study his wife and ascer-
tain how to influence her to do the
things he wishes her to do.
When you do find such a man, you
observe that his dominance is COM
plete. His wife is as wax in his hands,
and she lives and breathes, and has
her being thru him, and would con-
slider it almost sacrilegious to have a
thought or opinion of her own.
Men have made women what they
wanted them to be. Women have
even been chameleon enough to
change to meet the need of the pass
ing hour with men, as we all wit
messed in the great war. when, at a
moments notice, girls who appeared
to be nothing but silly, useless, painted
butterflies, became stern heroines, as
fit to fight with men as they had been
to dance with men.
But women have no power over
men. When a woman influences a
man, it is along the lines he was
already going. She seldom changes
his course by hairs breadth.
An evil woman can drag a weak
| man down, because he just naturally
follows the line of least resistance.
She can turn him into thief and a
CRATER. She can kill his ambition
and make him a loafer and a tramp,
but the best woman in the world can
not change a crook into an honest
man, nor can she supply spineless
man with a backbone.
The most cruel lie in the world is
the fiction about the power of wom-
ans influence over man. 1t has
wrecked the happiness of untold num-
bers of generous-hearted women, who
had been taught to believe that they
could take any sort of clay of man
and make him over into fine porce-
lain that would be a fit vessel to hold
the incense of their love.
1t has made ambitious girls marry
me er-do-wells under the delusion that
they infuse their own energy into
them. 1t has made pious- women
marry drunkards. and rogues, and
gamblers, under the fatuous faith that
dll l1ey H0edeu was d vile sacred III
fluence to make them lead the higher
| life.
And they found that woman's in
fluence only helps the man to do the
thing he was going to do anyway. If
he is ambitious it speeds him up, but
it doesn't inspire the lazy man with
the desire to work. If he is sober and
| upright, it keeps him that way, but it
doesn't prevent the drunkard from
thirsting for a highball. nor the phil
| anderer from chasing a petticoat, nor
take away the lure of chance from the
gambler. For the thing a man will
not do for the sake of his own man.
hood, he never does for a woman.
Undeniably the two sexes have great
| influence over each other, but mans
influence is far greater over woman
than woman's over man.