Little Problems of Married Life. V

Little Problems of Married Life. BY WILLIAM GEORGE JORDAN, V.— The Wife's Settled Income. The most vital problem of married life is its simplest problem. It is the money question in the home. It is the division of the family income in a domestic partnership. Its solution means putting the home firm on a business basis. If unmet and unanswered it has more assorted possibilities of disillusion, discord, dissatisfaction, deception and disunion to the square inch than any other subject in the vocabulary of matrimony. It can be settled for a lifetime — in a single hour. Before the honeymoon reaches its first quarter this problem should be quietly promoted from the ranks of the unsolved. In a spirit of loving confidence and conference, in the interest of their united happiness, this question of the wife's settled income should be clearly and definitely understood between them. The amount of money involved may be only a trifle; but the principle means justice, and justice is no trifle. She seems in an atmosphere of swTeet thoughtfulness and loving watchfulness over her happiness when he is the one who proposes this plan — a regular income for her as household queen with a private purse of her own. But should he, just driftingly, let it remain in the realm of the unspoken, she should not permit pride to make her an accomplice in his silence. When a man says at the marriage altar, "With all my worldly goods I thee endow," and two months later makes it necessary for her to resort to diplomacy to get seventy cents from him to pay the ice man, his memory needs repairing. Diplomacy in the home, is the kindergarten class in duplicity. When she sits preoccupied at the breakfast table, playing nervously with her knife and fork, and thinking so loud that she does not hear his request for a second cup of coffee; when she is so awed by the realization that somehow she must work up the "■Copyright, 1910, by Fleming H. Re veil Company.

30 IMPROVEMENT ERA courage to ask him for two dollars, and she turns over one plan after another for introducing the subject, giving an occasional side-glance at the clock to see how much time she still has left before he goes for the day, there is something wrong in the home financial system. This is not a situation for humor; it is intense with pathos; there is in it an undertone of tragedy. It is a degradation of the dignity of wifehood, to make her feel a pensioner, a beggar in her own home. When a man puts his wife's love and her respect for him in pawn for two dollars, or any amount of money, he is likely to lose the ticket and be unable later to redeem the pledge. When she fears to speak to him about money, and undergoes sacrifice, self-denial and humiliation to avoid the ordeal, her love is sched- duled for adjournment. It is true that "perfect love casteth out fear"; it is equally true that perfect fear finally casteth out love. The husband who dolorously doles out dollars, under protest, on the installment plan, to meet family expenses, as if they were reluctant contributions to an outside charity, is viewing home from a wrong perspective. When he requires his wife to mark down in a little book every item of expense, not to guide her in wise management but for his personal satisfaction, and then goes over it as an auditing committee, quizzing her in civil service style, on the wisdom of this expenditure, and the reason for that, he is mitaken about wanting a wife. What he needs is — a housekeeper, without pay. To be consistent, he should set up a cash register in the kitchen and have every purchase rung up and a voucher put in the drawer. When he leaves on the corner of the mantelpiece, in the morning, just enough money to last through the day, while he is selfishly humouring every whim or wish of his own, there is a suggestion of running a home on the slot-machine principle — the mechanical delivery of scant supplies, through small investments, for im- mediate use. There is an irritating assumption of superiority in man's managing of money, and a cowardly insistence on woman's irre- sponsibility and extravagance that is characteristic of some men. If a wife can be trusted with the motherhood of his children and their guardianship and training and the management of his home, surely she should be trusted with what ever amount he can afford to run the house, not to be extracted from him by daily "assessment,"

PROBLEMS OF MARRIED LIFE 31 but weekly or monthly allowance that will permit her to take a broad view of income and expenditure, to plan wisely and prudently If she be extravagant she must be taught economy through money responsibility; she can never learn by any other method. In the running of a household there are constantly little rills of incidentals that trickle away the funds; they can be known and realized only by the one who is spending: a week later the detail may be forgotten but the wife knows only that it was necessary at the time; but to be forced into the humiliating position where she has to give elaborate explanations of every trifle of expense is degrading to her and to him. A man would not risk subjecting his partner at the office to such indignity; how can ho dare to do it to his partner at home? The husband who splashes money in the home one week may let the weeks following be as dry as the bed of a mountain brook after a long, parched, rainless summer. You cannot keep the house wheels running by the water that is past. With this spas- modic supply of domestic funds there is usually an air of conscious generosity as if he were donating this money to his wife as a per- sonal gift for which she should be grateful. In reality much of it may be already preempted by bills; the margin left for current expenses may be little. He usually has a vivid memory of the amount of his contributions, but a fine forgetfulness of the long intervals between them. She may have to face, too, that most humiliating and mean of all questions in home management: "What did you do with that ten dollars I gave you in February?" This method means unhealthy alternations between extravagance and penury. It is death to wise planning and systematic manag- ing. It makes her the helpless slave to his moods and his emotions. The wife should be the treasurer of the home funds, payable to her in the form of a settled income. Peculiar circumstances may modify methods in individual instances but if the spirit be re- cognized as just and fair, the details can readily be adjusted. When husband and wife, sitting in executive session, at the earliest possible moment in their married life, work out this little problem together, they will find themselves nearer and; dearer, more deeply conscious of the realness of their partnership, for they are consecrating money to love, not desecrating love to money. The wife's pride in being trusted, in being in his confidence, in being a factor in every plan of his, in having her advice and sug-

32 IMPROVEMENT ERA gestions count with him, adds a tender, sweet, inspiring touch of new dignity to her wifehood. He is appealing to her head as well as her heart. She is to have real responsibility and she wants to prove worthy of it — and of him. Responsibility is a great gift; it is a great privilege. It develops, it strengthens, it unifies energy and increases mental and moral reserve. It is like the women burden-bearers of Martinique, who carry baskets on their heads — the heavier the burden the more erectly they walk. In arranging the division of the family funds, the two, know- ing the income upon which they may reasonably count, can figure out together what are the absolutely essential expenses that must be met, rent, food, insurance, and the incidentals of the household, including what business men term an allowance for depreciation, for wear and tear. This amount should be set aside weekly or monthly and assigned to the wife for her management. In addi- tion there should be an allowance for her clothes on whatever scale their social standing, her needs and justice to the fund, demands. She should further have some amount, decided upon between them, for her own private purse, her personal spending money to use just as she chooses. It is a minimum amount for trifles that increase her comforts, convenience, and pleasures. It is to be all her own, without inquiry, inquisition or interference. In arranging the domestic finances the question of saving for the future, of accumulating a reserve for emergencies should be carefully considered by this house committee and the method accepted that represents their united wisdom. The whole problem is simplified in many homes by the wage-earner turning over to the home treasurer his weekly money and receiving for his personal expenses what his needs demand and the income warrants. He has not that petty feeling that he is being placed on an "allowance," for he is merely being relieved of a responsibility. He knows that whatever he gives will be wisely consecrated to their united inter- ests, a fund administered by one for the happiness and good of both. But business men, handling larger sums for use, investment and more ambitious planning, must be custodians of the bulk of their resources, leaving the stated income to the discretion of the home treasurer. Sweet conference on expenditures outside of the usual routine or on special economies in times of stress and storm

PROBLEMS OF MARRIED LIFE 33 make a joint session of the home partners a new strengthening of the bonds of unity and confidence. Many men thoughtlessly fail to realize the importance of the wife's private purse. Whether the amount be large or small, whether it include additions to her wardrobe or not, is a matter of adjustment, but in itself it must ever bring a sweet sense of indi- viduality and independence in trifles that is refreshing and inspiring. It is not giving "wages" as some husbands indignantly protest; it is assigning to one of the partners part of the dividends from the firm's success. This is simply attesting the husband's sense of justice, not debarring his generosity from occasional extra divi- dends. There are husbands, generous by instinct and impulse, kind, loving, attentive and genuinely solicitous for the comfort and happiness of their wives who, by some strange kink in their mental working, would no more think of providing them with spending money of their own than they would of endowing a home for aged canaries. The wrives may have charge accounts in half a dozen stores and the bills may be paid by check with never a word of protest and hardly a glance at the items. The household expenses may all be met on a scale of equal liberality; but of ready money of her own the wife may have little or nothing. She is living a life of poverty in a de luxe edition. She may have to wait for her carriage because she has no money for a car or a cab. She wants to send a little money present to the old folks at a Christmas time or as a little birthday remembrance, and may be forced to seem mean because she really does not have it, and pride makes explanation seem disloyalty. She receives little favours from her women friends and feels humiliated at not being able to reciprocate. She foregoes the luxury of little charities, except they may be manifest in some form that she can have "charged." She may resort to subterfuges, lies, tricks, and petty devices that may mark the initial stage of the weakening of a strong, fine character. She may borrow from her milliner and have the amount of the loan disguised on the next bill as "feathers." She may sell her dresses she has worn but two or three times, knowing she can easily "charge" new ones. She may surrender to a friend some prized little article of jewelry for far less than its value, swallowing with a sob the memory of its associations. She may plunge into bridge,

34 IMPROVEMENT ERA on borrowed capital, with a feverish desire to win, as a desperate man may seek to repair his fortunes at Monte Carlo. The hus- bands may never guess the cost of their meanness or their thought- lessness. There are wives who have a strange dread, a misguided sense of humiliation, they can never quite master by reason of "asking for money." This may lead many of them to "doing without" what they really need. Their lips may be mute, but their minds are working overtime; their hearts are filled with a restless, rankling rebellion. They feel a hurt pride that is not healthful for either husband or wife. The thought that comes uppermost, that rises persistently is, "If he really loved me, he would realize it. I would suffer anything rather than get money merely because I ask for it." And the husband, in blind blunder- ing, may never know the real cause of many subtle changes in her attitude towards him and towards life. Other women, after studying the husband's mood as an aviator studies air currents, may secure by policy, flattery, wheed- ling or other artifice, as a concession what should be given them as a right. Others stint on the housekeeping, save at the expense of their own energy, health or strength, in order to get a little money of their own. The humorous papers tell stories of the seemingly absurd value some women put on money, without realizing the substratum of pathos and injustice. They picture cleverly the episode of two women in a street car; each frantically insisting on paying the fares, each struggling vigorously to come in second on the hunt for an elusive dime. They portray the easy, nonchalant way in which a man pays the two fares for himself and his friend. The man is not more generous than the woman; one of these women may be his wife who cannot afford the liberality that distinguishes the husband. The bargain-hunting instinct of women exploited in newspaper stories as humorous, may again be but an instance of the false estimate of money value into which they are forced. A man is unjust to his wife and to his children if he permits her to be untrained in the management of money, and the respon- sibility that comes with it. Should h's disability or death throw suddenly upon her shoulders the burden of wage-earning or of business management, she should not have to meet this crisis