Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty.”
Shall our Daughters have Dowries?
Those who occupy themselves reading that writing on the wall which we call “signs of the times” may ponder awhile the question which Mr. Messinger puts with such plaintive appeal to the parents of this generation: “Shall our daughters have dowries?” But in the very commencement of his argument he abandons the case he has voluntarily taken up, and enters a plea, not for the daughters, but for the young men who may wish to marry the daughters. Also in urging upon parents the duty of endowing their daughters he seems to have lost sight of the fact that “dowry,” in its very spirit and intention, does not propose to care for the husband, but is solely in the interest of the wife.
He asserts, doubtless with accuracy, that the average income of young men is $1,100 57 a year, and he finds in this fact a sufficient reason for the decrease of marriage among them. It is no reason at all; for a large and sensible proportion of young men do marry and live happily and respectably on $1,100 a year, and those who cannot do so are very clearly portrayed by Mr. Messinger, and very little respected by any sensible young woman.
But it is not to be believed that they form any preponderating or influential part of that army of young men who are the to-morrow of our great republic. Let any reader count, from such young men as are known to him, the number who would divide their $1,100 as Mr. Messinger supposes them to do:—
| Dress for self and wife | $600 |
| Apartments | 400 |
| Amusements | 100 |
I venture to say the proportion would be very small indeed.
For the majority of young men know that nothing worth having is lost in the sharing. They meet in their own circle 58 some modest, home-making girl whom they love so truly that they can tell her exactly what their income is, and then they find out that their own ideas of economy were crude and extravagant compared with the wondrous ways and means which reveal themselves to a loving woman’s comprehension of the subject. The Oranges, Rutherford, and every suburb of New York are full of pretty little homes supported without worry, and with infinite happiness, upon $1,100 a year, and perhaps, indeed, upon less money.