Six marriages out of ten are disgraceful partnerships. The ones to
question our assertion will be the married men, and the very ones, too,
responsible for the disgrace. Marriage is a union where the two partners
should share alike the profits and the losses. There should be no head of
the firm in the sense of making one subservient in any way to the other.
The wife has just the same right to handle the money of the firm as the
husband. The family purse should not be carried in the husband’s pocket
unless he is willing to pass it out whenever his partner requests it, and
no questions asked.
Most men treat their wives worse than servants. If a wife asks for some
money, the husband, in most instances, wants to know what she is going to
do with it and how much she wants, instead of giving her what is her
right. Married men do not recognize their wives as equal partners in the
family concern. They think they should have what they want and their wives
what they are pleased to give them. How many homes have been broken up by
carrying out such a principle as this? More than men will confess.
This state of things is not confined to the homes of poverty. Not at all.
It exists where there is plenty. Many a proud woman is almost daily
humiliated by a man to whom she is obliged to go for what money she needs.
The pain that niggardly husbands inflict upon sensitive wives is only
known by themselves. Many a woman has said: “I would rather go without the
money than have so much trouble to get it from my husband.” What must a
woman have suffered to be forced to make such a confession as that!
A marriage in which a woman is daily made to feel her dependence upon a
man, is attended with the gravest moral perils. The only just rule is for
the husband to allow his wife a fair share of his income, for her to do
with as she pleases. Not only marital harmony would be promoted by such an
arrangement as this, but love would burn longer and purer on the family
altar, private morality would be conserved, and all the relations of life
elevated and dignified thereby.
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The most beautiful thing is the beauty we see in those we love.
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The money that men waste would make them rich, and the time they waste
would make them wise.