THE FAMILY PURSE.
In the last chapter I touched, firmly, as became the importance of the
subject, upon the pocket question in its bearing upon the happiness of
home-life. The matter is too grave to be disposed of in half-a-dozen
paragraphs. It shall have a chapter of its very own.
There are certain subjects upon which each of us is afraid to speak
for fear of losing temper, and becoming vehement. This matter of "The
Family Purse" is one of the few topics in all the range of theory and
practice, concerning which I feel the necessity of putting on curb and
bridle when I have to deal with it, and conscience urges just dealing
with all parties.
I have set down elsewhere what I crave leave to repeat here and with
deliberate emphasis.
If I were asked, "What, to the best of your belief, is the most
prolific and general source of heart-burnings, contentions, harsh
judgment, and secret unhappiness among respectable married people who
keep up the show, even to themselves, of reciprocal affection?" my
answer would not halt for an instant.
"_The crying need of a mutual understanding with respect to the right
ownership of the family income_."
The example of the good old Friend, who, in giving his daughters in
marriage, stipulated that each should be paid weekly, without asking
for it, a certain share of her husband's income, is refreshing as
indicating what one husband had learned by his own experience. It goes
no further in the absence of proof that the sons-in-law kept the
pledge imposed upon them as suitors, or that in keeping it, they did
not cause their respective wives to wish themselves dead, and out of
the way of gibe and grudge, every time the prescribed tax was doled
out to them.
Nor do I admit the force of the implication made by a certain writer
upon this topic, that the crookedness in the matter of family finances
is "separation and hostility between the sexes, brought about by the
advancement and equality of women." Wives in all ages and in all
countries, have felt the painful injustice of virtual pauperism, and
struggled vainly for freedom.
The growth toward emancipation in the case of most of them amounts
merely to the liberty to groan in print and to cry aloud in women's
convocations. If the yoke is easier upon the wifely neck in 1896 than
it was in 1846, it is because women know more of business methods,
and are more competent to the management of money than they knew fifty
years ago, and some husbands, appreciating the change for the better,
are willing to commit funds to their keeping. The disposition of
fathers, brothers and husbands to regard the feminine portion of their
families as lovely dead weights, was justified in a degree by the
Lauras and Matildas, who clung like wet cotton-wool to the limbs of
their natural protectors. Dependence was reckoned among womanly
graces, and insisted upon as such in _Letters to Young Ladies, The
Young Wife's Manual, A Father's Legacy to his Daughters_, and other
valuable contributions to the family library of half a century ago.
Julia, as betrothed, assured wooing Adolphus that absolute dependence,
even for the bread she should eat, and breath she should draw, would
be delight and privilege. Julia, as wife, fretted and plained and
shook her "golden chains inlaid with down," when married Adolphus took
her at her word.
It is surprising that both parties were so slow in finding out how
false is the theory and how injurious the practice of the
cling-and-twine-and-hang-upon school.
From my window as I write I see an object lesson that pertinently
illustrates the actual state of affairs in many a home. At the root
of a stately cedar, sprang up, twenty years ago, a shoot of that most
hardy and beautiful of native creepers, the wild woodbine or American
ivy. It crept steadily upward, laying hold of branch and twig, casting
out, first, tendrils, then ropes, to make sure its hold--a thing of
beauty all summer, a coat of many colors in autumn, until it reached
the top of the tree. To-day, the only vestige of cedar-individuality
that remains to sight, is in the trunk, the bare branches, stripped of
all slight twigs, and at the extremity of one of these, a few tufts of
evergreen verdure, that proclaim "This was a tree."
In the novels and poems that set forth the eternal fitness of the
cling-twine-and-depend school, the vine is always feminine, the oak
(or cedar?) masculine. Not one that I know of depicts the gradual
strangling of the independent tree by the depending parasite.
Leaving the object-lesson to do its part, let us reason together
calmly upon this vexed subject. When a man solemnly, in the sight of
Heaven and human witnesses, endows his wife at the altar with his
worldly goods, it is either a deed of gift, or an engagement to allow
her to earn her living as honestly as he earns his, a pledge of an
equal partnership in whatever he has or may acquire. That it is not an
absolute gift is proved by his continued possession of his property
and uncontrolled management of the same; furthermore, by his custom of
bestowing upon his wife such sums, and at such periods as best suit
his convenience and pleasure--and by his expectation that she will be
properly grateful for lodging, board and raiment. If he be liberal,
her gratitude rises proportionably. If he be a churl, she must submit
with Christian resignation.
The gossips at a noted watering-place where I once spent a summer,
found infinite amusement in the ways of a married heiress, whose
fortune was settled so securely upon herself by her father that her
husband could not touch the bulk of it with, or without her consent.
Her spouse was an ease-loving man of fashion, and accommodated himself
gracefully to this order of things. She loved him better than she
loved her money, for she "kept" him well and grudged him nothing. It
was in accordance with her wishes that he made no pretence of business
or profession. "Why should he when she had enough for both?" she
urged, amiably. His handsome allowance was paid on the first of every
month, and she exacted no account of expenditures. Yet she contrived
to make him and herself the laughing stock of the place by her _naïve_
ignorance of the truth that the situation was peculiar. She sportively
rated her lord in the hearing of others, for extravagance in dress,
horses and other entertainments; affected to rail at the expense of
"keeping a husband," and, now and then, playfully threatened to "cut
off supplies" if he did not do this or that. In short, with
unintentional satire, she copied to the letter the speech and tone of
the average husband to his dependent wife.
"Only that and nothing more." Her purse-pride was obvious, but as
inoffensive as purse-pride can be. She lacked refinement, but she did
not lack heart. She would have resented the imputation that she
reduced her good-looking, well-clothed, well-fed, well-mounted
"Charley" to a state of vassalage against which any man of spirit
would have rebelled. He knew that he could have whatever it was within
her power to bestow, to the half of her kingdom. Her complaints of his
prodigality meant as little as her menace of retrenchment, and nobody
comprehended this better than he. The owner of the money-bags is
entitled by popular verdict to his or her jest. Her pretended railing
was "clear fun."
The deeper and juster significance of the much derided clause of the
marriage vow is the second I have offered. "Live and let live" is a
motto that should begin, continue and be best exemplified at home. The
wife either earns an honorable livelihood, or she is a licensed
mendicant. The man who, after a careful estimate of the services
rendered by her who keeps the house, manages his servants, or does the
work of the servants he does not hire; who bears and brings up his
children in comfort, respectability and happiness; who looks after his
clothing and theirs; nurses him and them in illness, and makes the
world lovely for him in health--does not consider that his wife has
paid her way thus far, and is richly entitled to all he has given or
will ever give her--is not fit to conduct any business upon business
principles. If he be sensible and candid, let him decide what salary
he can afford to pay this most useful of his employés--and pay it as a
debt, and not a gratuity. The probability is that he will find that
the sum justifies her in regarding herself as a partner in his craft
or profession, with a fair amount of working-capital.
There is but one equitable and comfortable way of relieving the
husband from the charge and the fact of injustice, and the wife from
the sorer burden of conscious pauperism. She ought to have a stated
allowance for household expenses, to be disbursed by herself and, if
he will it, to be accounted for to the master of the house, and a
smaller, but sure sum which is paid to her as her very own, which she
may appropriate as she likes. He should no more "give" her money,
than he makes a present of his weekly wages to the porter who sweeps
his store, or to the superintendent of his factory. The feeling that
their gloves, gowns, underclothing--everything that they wear, and the
very bread that keeps life in their bodies, are gifts of grace from
the husbands they serve in love and honor, has worn hundreds of
spirited women into their graves, and made venal hypocrites of
thousands. The double-eagle laid in the palm of the woman whose home
duties leave her no time for money-making, burns sometimes more hotly
than the penny given to her who, for the first time, begs at the
street-corner to keep herself from starving.
The strangest of anomalies that have birth in a condition of affairs
which everybody has come to regard as altogether right and becoming,
is that the wife whose handsome wedding portion has been absorbed by
her husband's business is as dependent upon his favor for her "keep"
as she who brought no dot. She does not even draw interest upon the
money invested. Is it to be wondered at that caustic critics of human
nature and inconsistencies catalogue marriage for the wife under the
head of mendicancy? Would it not be phenomenal if women with eyes, and
with brains behind the eyes, did not gird at the necessity of suing
humbly for really what belongs to them?
I have known two, or at most three women, who averred that they "did
not mind asking their husbands for money." Out of simple charity I
preferred to believe that they were untruthful, to discounting their
disrespect and delicacy to the extent implied by the assertion. Yet
the street beggar gets used to plying his trade, and I may have been
mistaken.
Let us not overlook another side of the question under perplexed
debate. The woman who considers herself defrauded by present
privations and what seem to her needless economies, loses sight,
sometimes, of what John keeps before him as the load-star of his
existence and endeavor; to wit, that toil and economy are for the
common weal. He is not a miser for his individual enrichment, nor does
he plan with deliberate design for the shadowy second wife. It is not
to be denied that No. 2 often lives like a queen upon the wealth which
No. 1 helped to accumulate, and killed herself in so doing. But John
does not look so far as this. Much scrimping and hoarding may engender
a baser love of money for money's self. In the outset of the task, and
usually for all time, he means that wife and children shall have the
full benefit of what he has heaped up in the confident belief that he
knows who will gather with him. Men take longer views in these matters
than women. To "draw money out of the business" is a form of speech
to a majority of wives. To him whose household expenses overrun what
he considers the bounds of reason, this "drawing" means harder work
and to less purpose for months to come; clipped wings of enterprise,
and occasionally loss of credit. He who has married a reasonably
intelligent woman cannot make her comprehend this too soon. If he can
enlist her sympathies in his plans for earning independence and
wealth, he has secured a valuable coadjutor. If he can show her that
he is investing certain moneys which are due to her in ways approved
by her, which will augment her private fortune, he will retain her
confidence with her respect.
Each of us likes to own something in his or her own right. The custom
and prejudice that, since the abolition of slavery, make wives the
solitary exception to the rule that the "laborer is worthy of his
hire," are unworthy of a progressive age. The idea that such having
and holding will alienate a good woman from the husband who permits
it, degrades the sex. He whose manliness suffers by comparison with a
level-headed, clear-eyed wife capable of keeping her own bank account,
makes apparent what a mistake she made when she married _him_.