The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-10-15
Dorothy Dir'S Letter Bor

Dear Miss Dix: Weak mothers breed weak sons, and late marriages help along the damage. Selfish, self , centered women are directly re-
 sponsible for driving thousands of
 men into reckless habits. The old
 stall about Adam won't do. Your l frilly sex is lodging the issue on | this, and on other questions equally
 vital. Very few women are good enough sports to be able to resist an amorous campaign that flatters their vanity. and they are indifferent to the consequences they may casually inflict on the poor boob who falls for their need of excitement.
 A man without past, forsooth! l There would be more such men if there were more women willing to help feather the home nest not with money, but with real love at that springing age in life when it is irre- sistibly appealing.
 No wonder virility is ebbing here
 abouts, that athletic records are pass | ing westward toward the sunset, that l ignorant, often degenerate immi igrant
 races are seizing control along the eastern portals of our once trench antly vigorous and daring America. After a little while the only people with courage to mate early and be- come parents more. than once will be the descendants of our former slaves the Africo Americans.
 Just a Man Who Would Rather Not Have Had Past.
 | Answer: Poor, dear Adam, still l suffering from that apple complex!
 Blaming it all on Eve, and calling
 upon her to save him from his own
 weakness. Not that I hold brief
 for the lady. Far from it. The woman
 who uses the lure of her sex to tempt | a man has the soul.aof a harlot, no
 matter how technically virtuous she
 may be.
 Undoubtedly early marriages make | for morality and a strong and virile
 race, but l think my correspondent | is entirely wrong when he lays the 1 blame for men marrying late in life. | or not marrying at all, on women. It | has always been women who were | plungers in matrimony. It has all | ways been women who were willing
 to venture all for love, and feminine | nature doesn't change. It's men who
 are afraid, men who are timid men | who are too proud to ask girls to | marry them unless they can give
 them all the flummeries to which
 they are accustomed. Also it is men who dOn [ want to give up tne1r bach elor luxuries; their easy living; their
 soft places in society to live in a shabby apartment, and push a peram-
 bulator on holidays instead of play ing golf at a country club.
 Early marriage demands sacrifice of a man, no less than of a woman. It jeopardizes his chances of success, for in these days of the high cost of living it takes a financial genius to make enough money to support a family and still save enough to be the nucleus of a fortune. Therefore, the ambitious man often feels that love and matrimony aren't worth the price they cost.
 Look about you, MT. Man, and you will see that the men who get mar ried early are the easy going, unam- bilious sort, the very men who have least to offer girl. Does that look as if the girls were not willing to take chance with a poor man. or that they didn't get the opportunity to take the chance? No!
 It isn't that women aren't willing to marry on bread, and cheese, and kisses. It's the men who don't want that Spartan diet. At any rate, I warn any young man who doesn't want to get married not to ask his