MONEY=MAKING WIVES.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 209, 15 September 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

MONEY=MAKING WIVES.

WHAT THE HUSBANDS THINK. "I say, I wish you'd do something for me," pleaded a man yesterday. " I want you to use a little of your influence on my behalf." "It's no good," I said. "I can't do Anything with the War Office or.the Admiralty, or even the Bpard.o* Trade. Sorry, try- " "If you'll only listen a minute i'a tell you. It's my wife. I want you '-•> talk to her. I'm frightfully worried about it all." "She looks very well and seems frightfully happy." "I know, that's the trouble. She is making so much money and she won t leave off. The whole thing is absurd. A man in my position has no business to have a wile working and earning money. Goodness knows she has always had everything she wantis. I feel it rather reflects—mean people might, think —income tax and all that sort of thing, you know. But there it is and I can't stop her, and what puts the cap on the whole thing is that she is actually saving it. I never knew her do such a thing before. I've spoken to one or two other people about it. Old Wrightson says that he thinks his daughters have gone crazy too. It comes to this —that people's houses are just dormitories where everyone has breakfast at different times and where they may meet at dinner on Saturday, but it is not likely. Uh! you are l.ke all the rest of the women. < Speak to you about it and you laugh !"' Of course we laugh. These men nha worry about the amount of work their womenfolk are now doing are the most absurd crcattfres Before the war, long, long ago, we worked just as hard. \Vo wore ourselves to shreds over social duties. Wo changed our clothes four or five times a day. We went to and gave parties, worked ourselves into frenzes over committees and meetings and other people's affairs which did not matter in the least, wasted time over domestic matters, golfed and motored, and spent his money or pledged his credit. And HE grumbled at our extravagance. But now Ave have very few, if any, "social duties." Entertain. :ng is only when the boys are at home. We do not work nearly so strenuously as we used to, and we are being paid for our time. Greatest sin of all, we no longer spend and owe his money, but we save our own; and the ridiculous man thinks that it reflects upon him to his disadvantage and shame. Woman is not the only human being who .s inconsistent. * * * * The fact of the matter is that no women are ever idle, and that when they find that one sort of work lias dsappeared, they will take up any other that comes handy. To a certain extent work in her home has gone, but there is any amount to be had outs : d ; .-, and paid work. The time has gone when the woman with a comfortable home was under the slur of Weing a pocket-money worker who kept mon-iv from needier women if she worked; and since war conditions prevailed wont for wages is no longer a thing to Lo apologised for socially. From top to bottom- of the social scale women have se ; zed the opportunity of working for wages, and while the well-to-do man complains that his wife saves, the working man is equally pa thetio in his plaint that "it makes her so independent-like she fetches home her own money and SHE SPENDS 11'

JUST AS SHE THINKS." Further, the money-making women acknowledge no age limit. In many eases mothers and daughters go off together in the mornings. Everyone knows or has heard of whole families where the women are working together in Government offices 01 business houses, and, strangest anomaly of all, where mothers are working under thendaughters, the latter, for double the wages of the former, neither of them having done a day's serious work since their school or college days. One of the reasons of this craze' for work ;s that no girl or woman can bear to see another doing anything which she th'nks she is capable of doing too ami htill remain tranquil and content. I know a dear lady of over sixty—no one now dares to call her " old" lady—who every time another of her daughters obtained work was in a fever to get some too. It began with the "Red Cross" and " V.A.D."" and it has ended in a Government Department where the very excellent linguistic knowledge of the " old - ' lady has come n usieful at last. The four languages of which she has always been proud are now something more than a selfish delight; thet are of use an dare paying her fares to the office, her lunches, and buying war savings certificates. Other women, wives and sweethearts of soldiers, are delighted to work themselves for the comforts they send to Flanders and Mesopotamia and Egypt, and all tho other places where their men are soldiering. An unbleached calico-covered tin box holds something much more precious since its contents are filled bv "my own money" rather than money "equeezed out of father" or out of the housekeeping purse. Even a mother finds more satisfaction in sending something "I worked for myself."

I suppose that no man can fully rea"» he the pure joy experienced by a dowerless wife when she nrst spends her own money. "John is a dear." said a woman to me the other day,' " but to-day for the first time since 1 have been married I have been able to call a taxicab without the horrible feeling that 1 should hayo to steal the cost from tin housekeeping money. Never mind the war, I am going to have another tax - - eah to-morrow."

Everything very easily for the woman money-maker too. For her the war came at the rght moment. !>ho was sufficiently emancipated to go about by herself; the days when "no lady was out by herself after dusk" were long past. She had become practical in many details, well educated :i a general modern manner, and if she iiad never wage-earned before eertainlr knew others in her own class who had done so. That very much of the Suffragette trouble was caused by lack (I work for wages, we know. That money paid to women now :s out of all proportion, too much or too little, for their labours we also realise, but Vine will right that. Th,e fact that very maty women are earning money they really do not, want does not affect the fa t that this rush of work has been tit' saving of us both mentally and physically in these awful times! The war will Ik l over for some of us some day, and the saver will drop out of the money-making, wage-earning woman's market, leaving the conditions of all work, clerical or manual, all the Utter for her brief and happy entrv into it, So do not worry, Mr. Man : there ; s no "reflection" upon your ability an.: willingness to keep your wife in comfort and bappness. So let her make money while she can. because you cannot prevent it. GRACE CURNOCK.