Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1923-02-20
DOROTHY DIX
DISCUSSES
LIFE
BY DOROTHY DIX
he Best Way to Stay Youthful Is
To Have an Absorbing LifewOrk


WHY is it that the great ma
wv jority of women feel them
selves SO injured and put
upon by fate when they have to do
any useful work?
The woman who has to do her
own homework considers that the
early Christian martyrs had nothing
on her in hardships. The woman who
has to be her own nurSemaid WeepS
tears of self-pity. She who makes
her own frocks believes that the
hand of affliction is laid heavily on
her, while all the multitude of wom-
en- who earn their own bread and
butter beWail the hardships of their
Tot, and speak of themselves as poor
working women"
Somehow, every woman regards
it as her constitutional right to be
born in a limousine, with a gold
spoon in her mouth, and when she
finds out that she didn't even inherit
tin Lizzie, and that she has to
hustle out and work for her living,
it gives her a crouch that she never
gets over.
Not only do women hold that it is
terrible misfortune for them to have
to work, but they have succeeded in
impresSing the point of view on the
world. Every mans ambition is to
support the women he loves in abso-
lutte idleness, and his ideal of the
perfect husband and father is the
man who turns his womenkind into
lazy parasites.
The dearest desire of all parents is
to bring their girls up in Incidence,
and utter ignorance of how to do
any sort of labor, and to this end
father will work himself to death to
keep Mamie from having to get a
job, and mother will toll in the
kitchen so that Mamie may lie on IL
couch and read a novel in the par
lor.
Parents consider no sacrifice of
themselves too great to make to pro-
tect their daughters from having to
work, and they never cease to slosh
over with sympathy for their poor,
prosecuted darlings whom a malign
destiny forces to earn money in
stead of devoting all of their time to
spending it.
In reality instead of work being a
curse to a woman it is her greatest
blessing, for the slightest obserVa-
ton will show that the busiest Wom-
en- are the happiest, youngest and
| healthiest women, and that it is the
idle women who are sickly, neurOtic
women who fill sanitariums and en-
rich doctors, and keep the divorce
mill busy.
No system of gymnastics on earth
will do so much to preserve a will
! Lowry figure as making beds and
| sweeping floors. Nothing keeps the
body well, and strong, and fit like
! having a mind too much absorbed
| in the race to some goal to take
heed of every little indisposition.
Nothing keeps one young like some
vital interest, some absorbing occu-
| patton.
Business and professional women
| working Women-nearly always
| look ten years younger than their
| idle sisters, and they have that alert,
| alive look that no beauty parlor can
| give. 1t is the lazy, indOlent, stall
fed women with nothing to do and
! notIing to think about but teas,
andNbridges, and dinner who get fat.
and dull and loggy before their
! time.
Women need work to keep them
healthy, and young, and they need
work to keep them out of mischief,
! for, because women are restless ana
nervous and highly strung, Satan
finds more Jobs for their idle hands
to do than he even does for men.
You never hear of the woman who
| has to cook, and wash and sew for
a houseful of kids and get up and
! get her husbands breakfast at 6
o'clock, discovering that the man
to whom she is married is not her
soul mate, or clipping with one she
thinks is her affinity. You never
hear of women who are working
shoulder 10 shoulder, with their hus-