May I quote to John another and a longer extract from the thirty-year-old “Talk concerning Allowances”?
LEARN TO SAY WE
“Set aside from your income what you adjudge to be a reasonable and liberal sum for the maintenance of your household in the style suitable for people of your means and position. Determine what purchases you will yourself make, and what shall be entrusted to your wife, and put the money needed for her proportion into her care as frankly as you take charge of your share. Try the experiment of talking to her as if she were a business partner. Let her understand what you can afford to do, and what you can not. If in this explanation you can say ‘we’ and ‘ours,’ you will gain a decided moral advantage, although it may be at the cost of masculine prejudice and pride of power. Impress upon her mind that a certain sum, made over to her apart from the rest, is hers absolutely, not a present from you, but her honest earnings, and that you would not be honest were you to withhold it. And do not ask her ‘if that will do?’ any more than you would address the question to any other woman. With what cordial detestation wives regard that brief query which drops, like a sentence of the Creed, from husbandly lips, I leave your spouse to tell you. Also, if she ever heard of a woman who answered anything but ‘Yes!’”
Carrying out the idea of co-partnership, should your wife exceed her allowance, running herself, and consequently you, into debt, meet the exigency as you would a similar indiscretion on the part of a young and inexperienced member of your firm. Treat the extravagance as a mistake, not a fault. Not one girl-wife in one hundred, who has not been a wage-earner, has had any experience in the management of finances. The father gives the daughter money when she (or her mother) tells him that she needs it, or would like to have it. When it is gone he is applied to for more. She has been a beneficiary all her life, usually an irresponsible, thoughtless recipient of what is lavished or doled out to her, according to the parental whim and means.
LEARNING BUSINESS METHODS
Teach her business methods, tactfully, yet decidedly.
One young wife I wot of began keeping the expense-book, presented to her by her husband, with these entries:
“January fourth. Received $75.00 (Seventy-five dollars).
“January sixth. Spent $70.25 shopping, etc.
“Balance—$4.75 set down to Profit and Loss.”