Household Papers and Stories

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

“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 120 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, 121 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?

“Thus multitudes of good, conscientious women and girls are extravagant from pure ignorance. The male provider allows bills to be run up in his name, and they have no earthly means of judging whether they are spending too much or too little, except the semi-annual hurricane which attends the coming in of these bills.

“The first essential in the practice of economy is a knowledge of one’s income, and the man who refuses to accord to his wife and children this information has never any right to accuse them of extravagance, because he himself deprives them of that standard of comparison which is an indispensable requisite in economy. As early as possible in the education of children, they should pass from that state of irresponsible waiting to be provided for by parents, and be trusted with the spending of some fixed allowance, that they may learn prices and values, and have some notion of what money is actually worth and what it will bring. The simple fact of the possession of a fixed and definite income often suddenly transforms a giddy, extravagant girl into a care-taking, prudent little woman. Her allowance is her own; she begins to plan upon it,—to add, subtract, multiply, divide, and do numberless sums in her little head. She no longer buys everything she fancies; she deliberates, weighs, compares. And now there is room for self-denial and generosity to come in. She can do without this article; she can furbish up some older possession to do duty a little longer, and give this money to some friend poorer than she; and ten to one the girl whose bills last year were four or five hundred finds herself bringing through this year creditably on a hundred and fifty. To be sure, she goes without numerous things which she used to have. From the standpoint of a fixed income she sees that these are impossible, 122 and no more wants them than the green cheese of the moon. She learns to make her own taste and skill take the place of expensive purchases. She refits her hats and bonnets, retrims her dresses, and in a thousand busy, earnest, happy little ways sets herself to make the most of her small income.