Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1921-06-23

an attractive man with an assured income
of ten thousand a year would be rejected by
only about one-tenth Of 1 per cent of these
bachelor girls.
Most of them are working because they
have to, and most of them have not mar
ried because the good chance has not come
along. No doubt many of them do appre-
ciate their independence and they probably
appreciate it more after they have made some
progress in their work and have become ac-
customed to the blessings of flee1om. But
they are workers above all from necessity.
Not only ten thousand-dollar men, but five
thousand-dOllar men are lamentably scarce.
They quickly captured by the more at
tractive girls, and usually by girls with So
cial setting and enough money to dress in
style, rather than by stenOgraphers living on
SIS week. WHAT the ;tenographer actual
lv finds available in the way of a spouse is
usually a clerk Iii the same office, making
anywhere from $4,000 to $4,000 year. She
herself may be making as much as 1000.
If sh9 is past tue flapper stage of indiscreet
enthusiasm, she will think ong time be-
fore giving up her independent income to
share one less than twice as large Yet that
is often what the man wants her to do. He
does not want his wife to hold a job.
Working Couples
But there are more and more cases IN
which the man abandons this point Of view
for the more sensible one. They marry and
lish an attractive home and to save money
for the deferred enterprise of having chill
dren. The resultant home and family is just
as much founded on the Womans earnings
as on the mans. There is, in such cases
and there are now many such cases-no
more justification for discharging the woman
because she has husband than there would
be for dscharging the man because he has
a wife.
The whole argument was vigorously
thrashed out a few years ago, when there
was widespread effort to deprive married
teachers of their jobs. The conclusion in
both cases seems to be unmistakable. Leav-
ing out all feminist theory, women in this
country more and more have to have gainful
employment in order to live. Often they have
to work in order to marry and have chill
dren. You may deplore this, if you please,
as condition which threatens the home and
our ideal of womanhood and all that. Or
you may rejoice over it as the beginning Of
a new era of independence and usefulness
for women. But you cannot blink the fact.
And as long as women have to work, COM
mon justice demands that they must not be
Disseminated against because of their sex.
That is why women have taken up cudgels
against these department missionaries. The
first great object of the National Woman's
party, and of all the other political organiza-
tions of women, is to get for women who
have to work fair deal To this end they
intend to push another amendment to the
federal constitution which is to provide that
woman shall not he Disseminated against
because of sex or marriage. Laws of similar
intent to be introduced into the state
legislatures.
The feminists seem to differ greatly as to
just what part woman should play in life
Some of them seem to think that she should
be primarily wife and mother and others
that she should have the whole, world of
work open to her. But on one point they
woman who has to work for her living, and
perhaps for the livings of her children,
should not be deprived of her job or paid
lower salary because of her sex.