AMERICAN HUSBANDS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 3783, 30 January 1908, Page 3

AMERICAN HUSBANDS.

- • Are they Domineering ? New York, December 8. Now is the winter of the discontent of American men, more particularly of American husbands. It is charged against them that they boss and domineer Jheir womankind most shamefully, and that in this respect they are v orse than English husbands, who, if we believe many American writers, and plays, are martinets and disciplinarians comparable only to Turkish pashas. Professor Thomas, of the University of Chicago, who is amongst the defenders and leaders of our down-trodden women, is urging them in season and out of season to cut lose from marital tyranny. In effect be says;—“ Be free. Don’t be housedogs, docile, affectionate, friendly, unquestioning any longer. The day of your freedom is at hand.”

To make matters worse for American husbands, Mrs Cobden Sanderson, the Women’s Suffragist leader in England, has come to the professor’s support by declaring that the American woman, as regards emancipalion, is generations behind English women. This, of course, is a cruel blow to the patiiots here who have been taught from childhood that American women hold a unique place in history as the “ most enfranchised, most beautifiul, and most cultured creatures the world ever saw.” Mrs Cobden Sanderson invaded the United States by way of Canada, fearing, as she says, that she would be ‘‘deported as a convict” if she landed in New York, because, as she has explained to scores of interviewers, she has “done time” in an English gaol fighting for her down-trodden sisters on your side of the Atlantic. Mrs Cobden Sanderson will address a mass meeting here next Thursday, with the idea of urging; American women to take part in politics and throw off their bondage. She forgets, apparently, that in several of the States women vote for all elections, can hold any office open to man, and that, generally speaking, the experiment, of the fair sex themselves, has not proved a great success. But nevertheless American husbands of the middle and poorer classes are exceptionally loyal and painstaking creatures. Nowhere on earth do you find so many men pushing perambulators, helping the wife to wash up and make tne beds, scrub floors, etc., likewise doing the household shopping. These remarks from the Chicago professor and the English agitator have cut them to the quick, and hastened a revolt of husbands, which is nowin full blast. Women writers for the magazines and newspapers have taken up the cudgels for the wives, declaring that American husbands expect too much. To satisfy some, said Miss Greenly Smith, on Saturday, “ there should be three wives—one for intellectual companionship, one to minister to the emotions, and one strong woman to bear children.” And so the strife which has temporarily eclipsed every other topic of human interest is waged fiercely, and sometimes amusingly, on all sides. Doubtless the dispute will'run itscourse in due season ■ without leaving many killed and. wounded on the battlefield, but in the meantime there is hardly a newspaper which does not give a column or more to the discussion of American husbands and wives, their defects, their virtues, and so forth. Speaking from experience on both-.-sides of the Atlantic, it can be- asserted that American wives of the ‘‘house-dog” type are extremely, rare over here, and that the woes of the American husband of the middle and poorer classes are usually greater than those of his fellows in England. As regards the rich and cultured classes in America, the complaint one is always hearing is that the wives are too prone to segregate themselves in clubs and associations to the detriment of their homes; but on the other hand, it is urged with truth that their husbands are generally so completely absorbed in hunting the almighty, dollar that they have less time than Englishmen or other Europeans to entertain their womenfolk.