The New York "Sun" Disposes of the
Old Notion That She is the Mere
"Beneficiary of Man."
The Rev. John L. Scudder, of Jersey City, recently preached a sermon on
the subject, "Business Women--Do They Reduce the Number of Marriages, and
Do They Make Good Wives?" He said, among other things, that if the
business woman marries, she marries "as an equal and not as a dependent";
that, therefore, we must expect fewer marriages in proportion to the
population. But he added:
The business woman of to-day refuses to be a moon revolving
around a masculine earth--she will be a twin star or
nothing. I believe her industrial training will make her a
better wife, for she will know the value of a dollar and be
able to sympathize with her husband in his daily toil.
She will apply business methods to domestic economy. Should
her husband attempt to maltreat her, she has courage enough
to separate from him and return to self-support. What she
has done once she can do again. Being fearless and decided,
she will be respected and well treated. The broader outlook
she has acquired in the business world will make her a
superior wife and a more capable mother.
The era of feminine imbecility and cowardice is passing
away, and in its place we see about us a new age of
well-rounded, exalted womanhood.
An Equal Partnership.
The New York _Sun_ does not agree with Mr. Scudder. In the course of an
editorial on the subject it says:
It may be remarked that nobody who enters into a partnership
of any sort can expect to retain absolute personal freedom.
The rule is equally true in business and marriage. The
attempt to exercise absolute personal freedom by one or both
partners is pretty sure to result in disaster to any
enterprise of any description.
But this is not the main point. Mr. Scudder's most serious
fallacy lies in the notion that in any healthy marriage
relation the woman is non-self-supporting and the mere
"beneficiary of man." The proposition is as absurd as it
would be to say that the member of a law firm who pleads in
the courts is a mere tender, a mere appendage, a mere
beneficiary of the gentleman who sits in the office, sees
the clients, and collects the bills, or that the expert
engineer at the head of a steel plant is a mere tender to
the man who manages the finances of the concern.
Nobody earns his or her livelihood more honorably or more
directly than the wife and mother of a family who does her
duty. She is her husband's business partner in a phase of
his life which is at least as vital to his interests as the
outside one by which he makes his money under the eye of the
world. If the couple are partners in a poor and struggling
concern, the wife contributes as much to the general success
by the work of her hands as the man does by his; if they are
more fortunate, and prosperous, the woman's busy brain
contriving and ruling in the household is earning by
earnest, eager, expert, and honorable exertion as good a
livelihood as the husband is able to provide her with.
The law holds good in the realms of wealth and luxury. The
woman who creates and maintains an eminent social position
for her family is likely to be her husband's most important
ally, and her share of all the benefits that they enjoy in
common is not a mere gratuity; it does not come to her from
her husband's bounty; it is her compensation for the
services she does in advancing the interests of the
alliance.