I pondered. "But—what sort of home life do you have?"
"Think for a moment of what we used to have—even in a 'happy home.' The man had the whole responsibility of keeping it up—his business life and interests all foreign to her. She had the whole labor of running it—the direct manual labor in the great majority of cases—the management in any case. They were strangers in an industrial sense.
"When he came home he had to drop all his line of thought—and she hers, except that she generally unloaded on him the burden of inadequacy in housekeeping. Sometimes he unloaded, too. They could sympathize and condole, but neither could help the other.
"The whole thing cost like sin, too. It was a living nightmare to lots of men—and women! The only things they had in common were their children and 'social interests.'
"Well—nowadays, in the first place every body is easy about money. (I'll go into that later.) No woman marries except for love—and good judgment, too; all women are more desirable—more men want to marry them—and that improves the men! You see, a man naturally cares more for women than for anything else in life—and they know it! It's the handle they lift by. That's what has eliminated tobacco."
"Do you mean to say that these women have arbitrarily prevented smoking?" I do not smoke myself, but I was angry nevertheless.
"Not a bit of it, John—not a bit of it. Anybody can smoke who wants to."
"Then why don't they?"
"Because women do not like it."
"What has that to do with it? Can't a man do what he wants to—even if they don't like it?"