The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-02-07
Dorothy Dix Talks
NJ DOROTHY DIX
WsxiA's highest Psia wonaA WEsaR.
Each to His Trade-2.

| There will be no more wandering
wives when husbands learn how to
cook, and can make the same kind OF
bread, as well as the same kind OF
dough, that father made. Nor will
any temperamental lady need to go
afar to seek her affinity. when she
finds in her own husband one who has
the true feeling about French mil
llinery.
| The broadening effect of the higher
education of man will also do much to
make the common, or garden, variety
of husbands have some sympathy with
woman's work. Up to now, the opin-
ion has universally prevailed with
men, that the domestic woman, who
merely cooked, and washed, and sewed,
| and cleaned, and nursed, and baby
tended for a family, had a sinecure,
land that she lived a life of glorious
ease.
It is officially so declared, for the
census rates the housewife as having
no occupation, altho it takes her about
fourteen hours a day to get away with
her job of doing nothing. Men con-
cur with this opinion, and speak of
supporting their wives" who do moth
ing but work, and are not even sup
posed to earn their board and keep
thereby
The reason that husbands say to
their wives. .'Bosh, wish had moth
ing to do but just stay at home and
look after the house and the chill
dren," is because they have never
tried it. When they have found out
from actual experience that you take
as many steps in cleaning house as
you would in doing the first lap of
champion pedestrian tour around the
world, and that it takes three m1lnon
different ticks to get dinner. ana
four million more to clean up after II,
thew will give the little house mother
the credit that'is due her as the world
hardest laborer. And also, they Will
pick up after themselves, and save ner
a lot of unnecessary toll
However, there is always fly IN the
ointment. a black back to your silver
lining. and the domestic science ex-
pert husband is not going to be the
unauthorized boon to womank1nd
that she may think he is. First OF
all. he is going to be an almost unat-
tainable luxury. 1t is mans lgnor-
ance of cooking and sewing that drives
him into matrimony. Far more men
than women marry for a home. The
CAV Young blade with the stomach of
an ostrich, who does not care what he
eats, or whether he is held together
with safety pins or not, and the foxy
old bachelor, WHO has found club
chef to his liking and subsidies the
little tailor round the corner, are not
apt to marry
1t is the man in between them; the
man who has grown sick and tired of
boarding houses and cheap restau-
rants. the man who has punched holes
thru the ends of his fingers trying. to
sew on buttons, who flies to matri-
mony as to a haven of refuge. But he
will be sufficient unto himself if you
teach him to be an adept with pots
and pans and needles and thin Nes,
and will also eschew matrimony.
There is also this to be considered:
Even the smallest amount of domestic
knowledge goes to a mans head and
makes him unendurably Connected.
No husbands are SO unbearable as
those who always tell about what
wonderful coffee they make when
they go camping, and who think they
have a divine gift for mixing salad
dressing. How, then, would a woman
be able to stand man around the
house who was graduate cook, and
who ate everything as if he were
making a chemical analysis, and told
her what she left out, and what she
put in, that she shouldn't have done?
So perhaps things are better left. as
they are, with each sex dependent on
the other for its comfort and we'll
being. There is truth in the motto
which bids the shoemaker stick to his
last.