The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1922-04-06
Dorothy Dix Talks
Old Maids2.
ny DOROTHY DIX
woxIa's- highest Paid Woman Writes.


! The woman who earns a good sal
airy in definite working hours. looks
at her married sister. shaving over
| cook stove, and sewing machine. and
wash tub in a home whose work is
never done. She compares her own
good clothes with the poor ones that
are all her sister can afford after she
had bought Johnny's suit and Mary's
frock, and the baby's shoes She con-
siders her own freedom, and the serf-
dom of the women who must forever
cater to the whims of husband and
children first, and think of herself
, a great and overwhelming love can
make marriage worth while TO a wo-
man.
For there are not enough fairy
princes in the world to go around.
The men who can assure their wives
lives of ease and comfort are few and
far between. Most CT the women who
marry commit themselves to a life
sentence at hard labor with scant pay.
and no thanks as its reward, and so it
is no wonder that women now have
the shoe on the other foot, and it IS
the old maid who pitieS the married
woman. and not the married woman
who is sorry for the spinster.
The idea that a woman is an old
maid because she couldn't marry is
too absurd to discuss seriously. Wo-
men remain single for just as many
reasons as men do. Some are old
maids because they are congenitalIy
celebrates. They are born with dis
taste for the opposite sex. and no man
! has the attraction for them that their
own latchkey has.
Some women do not marry because
of the idiotic convention that prevents
woman from openly choosing her
mate. Such a woman sets her heart
upon some man who embodies all
that she admires and desires in a hus-
band, but he Is too blind, or careless
or perhaps too humble to sense her
attitude towards him, and pick her out
of the herd. She cannot WOO him.
and so as she will not lower her ideals
and marry a man of commoner clay
she drifts into old maidenhood.
Some women do not marry because
they are too foolish. The woman who
has a career opening before her is not
willing to sacrifice this for any man.
The woman who is Succeeding in bust
ness is not willing to give up her good
office position to go into some mans
kitchen. Many women are enamored
of their own freedom. and. are not
willing to marry because they do not
wish to be tied down to a husband
and home.
Other women do not marry because
they are too unselfish. Many a girl
gives up the man she loves because
she has an old mother or father whom
she has to take care. Many a. girl
gives up all thoughts of having
husband and home of her own in or
der that she may educate and rear
her little brothers and sisters and give
them a chance in the world. She
makes of her youth and her romance
a ladder on which they climb to sue
cess, and which only too often they
kick over when they have no further
use for il. She is the most pathetic
type of all old maids because she is
the woman who would have liked to
marry, and who gave up her happiness
to others.
oh. there is every reason under the
sun why women don't marry, except
the one attributed to them by fools,
which is, that they didn't marry be-
cause they couldn't. For every woman
can marry if she is willing to take
what is offered. But the trouble with
women is that they are getting
choosey. Hence the spinster crop
grows apace.
Let US thank God for old maids
They are among the nobIest of their
sex, and they do the work of the world
that the balance of us leave undone