“You are right, child,” said I; “women are by nature, as compared with men, the care-taking and saving part of creation,—the authors and conservators of economy. As a general rule, man earns and woman saves and applies. The wastefulness of woman is commonly the fault of man.”
“I don’t see into that,” said Bob Stephens.
“In this way. Economy is the science of proportion. Whether a particular purchase is extravagant depends mainly on the income it is taken from. Suppose a woman has a hundred and fifty a year for her dress, and gives fifty dollars for a bonnet; she gives a third of her income;—it is a horrible extravagance, while for the woman whose income is ten thousand it may be no extravagance at all. The poor clergyman’s wife, when she gives five dollars for a bonnet, may be giving as much, in proportion to her income, as the woman who gives fifty. Now the difficulty with the greater part of women is, that the men who make the money and hold it give them no kind of standard by which to measure their expenses. Most women and girls are in this matter entirely at sea, without chart or compass. They don’t know in the least what they have to spend. Husbands and fathers often pride themselves about not saying a word on business-matters to their wives and daughters. They don’t wish them to understand them, or to inquire into them, or to make remarks or suggestions concerning them. ‘I want you to have everything that is suitable and proper,’ says Jones to his wife, ‘but don’t be extravagant.’
“‘But, my dear,’ says Mrs. Jones, ‘what is suitable and proper depends very much on our means; if you could allow me any specific sum for dress and housekeeping, I could tell better.’
“‘Nonsense, Susan! I can’t do that,—it’s too much trouble. Get what you need, and avoid foolish extravagances; that’s all I ask.’
“By and by Mrs. Jones’s bills are sent in, in an evil hour, when Jones has heavy notes to meet, and then comes a domestic storm.
“‘I shall just be ruined, Madam, if that’s the way you are going on. I can’t afford to dress you and the girls in the style you have set up;—look at this milliner’s bill!’
“‘I assure you,’ says Mrs. Jones, ‘we haven’t got any more than the Stebbinses,—nor so much.’
“‘Don’t you know that the Stebbinses are worth five times as much as ever I was?’
“No, Mrs. Jones did not know it;—how should she, when her husband makes it a rule never to speak of his business to her, and she has not the remotest idea of his income?