Still, a social standard is a fact. Just as much so as if it could be laid off with a tape. And there is sense in it.
"After all," thought Mary, "if we had only $1,000 a year we couldn't live where any of our friends do, and John would be cut off from being on daily intimate terms with people who could help him; and if we had children—Well, there you are! We surely couldn't give our children what our children ought to have. That settles it."
The influence of social standards is greatly increased and complicated in a world in which women earn their living before marriage and have a chance to make social standards of their own in place of the ones they were born to.
We here insert a few notes on cases which are not compositely imagined—like Mary and John—but are individually (though typically) existent in real life in one of the large American cities:
R——J——. Makes $6,500 a year. Only man she was ever "real sweet on" was a teamster. When she was selling in the perfumes at five a week he used to take her to the picnics of the Social Dozen Pleasure Club. They would practice the Denver Lurch on Professor DeVere's dancing platform. At midnight he would give her a joy-ride home in his employer's delivery wagon. He still drives that wagon. She is in charge of suits and costumes and has several assistant buyers under her. She has bought a cottage for her father, who is an ingrain weaver in a carpet factory. She wears a stick-pin recently presented to her by her teamster. "I like him all right," is her notion about it, "but I ought to have took him ten years ago. Now he can't support me."
S——V——. Makes twelve dollars a week as a manicurist. Thinks a man ought to have at least thirty dollars a week before marrying.
T——V——. Sister of S——V——, who doesn't think much of her. She works in a paper-box factory at five dollars a week and is engaged to a glove cutter who makes eleven.
T——A——. Saleswoman. Thinks women ought to be paid as much as men. "Then they wouldn't be so ready to marry ANYBODY." Works in the cloak department. Is a star. Makes about eighteen dollars a week. Says that most of the men she knows who could support her would certainly get in a terrible row at home if they married a cloak-department girl. Families are stuck up. "But I don't care; let it run awhile. Tell you something. I was born in the steerage. I've been right where the money isn't. I'm not taking any chances on getting there again. Let Georgina do it."
R——B——. Sub-bookkeeper. Seven dollars a week. Engaged to clerk who earns thirteen. Says: "Of course I'm not earning much, but I'm living with my folks and when we're married I'll have to give up a lot of things. Kinda wish I hadn't got used even to the seven."
This last case, of the bookkeeper engaged to the clerk, is the modern situation at its happiest normal. The modern marriage, except among the rich, is a contraction of resources. It is just the reverse, in that respect, of the colonial marriage.