The colonial bride, marrying into Industry, brought her full economic value to her husband.
The modern bride, marrying out of Industry, leaves most of her economic value behind. And the greater that value was, the sharper is the shock of the contraction of resources.
Of course, the case of the department-store buyer and the teamster is irrelevantly extreme. But aren't there thousands and thousands of cases which, while less advanced, are pointed in the same direction? The more a woman earns, the fewer become the men who can support her. How can the clerk support the cloak saleswoman who has had eighteen dollars a week of her own? How can the barber support the manicurist who has had twelve?
The cloak saleswoman may talk flippantly about it, but, at heart, isn't she seriously right? She has pulled herself up to a certain level. Except in response to a grande passion she will not again drop below it. She will bring up her children at a point as close to her present level as she can. That is instinct.
Meanwhile, she isn't married. But what can you do about it? She went to work, like almost every other working woman, because she had to. And you can't pass a law prohibiting her from earning more than five dollars a week.
"It's all economic," thought Mary. "Nothing else." She had much reason for thinking so.
Did you ever see Meitzen's diagram showing the relation between the price of rye and the number of marriages in Prussia during a period of twenty-five years?
Cheap rye, easy living conditions—number of marriages rises. Dear rye, hard living conditions—number of marriages drops. The fluctuations are strictly proportional. In the twenty-sixth year, given the price of rye, you could predict very closely the number of marriages.
It's like suicides. It's the easiest thing in the world to predict the number of men and women who will next year "decide" to take their own lives.
The marriage rate responds not only to the economic conditions of a whole country but to the economic conditions of its various parts.