WOMAN HAS ALWAYS EARNED HER LIVING.
The New York "Sun" Disposes of the
Old Notion That She is the Mere
"Beneficiary of Man."
The Rev. John L. Scudder, of Jersey City, recently preached a sermon on the subject, "Business Women—Do They Reduce the Number of Marriages, and Do They Make Good Wives?" He said, among other things, that if the business woman marries, she marries "as an equal and not as a dependent"; that, therefore, we must expect fewer marriages in proportion to the population. But he added:
The business woman of to-day refuses to be a moon revolving around a masculine earth—she will be a twin star or nothing. I believe her industrial training will make her a better wife, for she will know the value of a dollar and be able to sympathize with her husband in his daily toil.
She will apply business methods to domestic economy. Should her husband attempt to maltreat her, she has courage enough to separate from him and return to self-support. What she has done once she can do again. Being fearless and decided, she will be respected and well treated. The broader outlook she has acquired in the business world will make her a superior wife and a more capable mother.
The era of feminine imbecility and cowardice is passing away, and in its place we see about us a new age of well-rounded, exalted womanhood.
An Equal Partnership.
The New York Sun does not agree with Mr. Scudder. In the course of an editorial on the subject it says:
It may be remarked that nobody who enters into a partnership of any sort can expect to retain absolute personal freedom. The rule is equally true in business and marriage. The attempt to exercise absolute personal freedom by one or both partners is pretty sure to result in disaster to any enterprise of any description.
But this is not the main point. Mr. Scudder's most serious fallacy lies in the notion that in any healthy marriage relation the woman is non-self-supporting and the mere "beneficiary of man." The proposition is as absurd as it would be to say that the member of a law firm who pleads in the courts is a mere tender, a mere appendage, a mere beneficiary of the gentleman who sits in the office, sees the clients, and collects the bills, or that the expert engineer at the head of a steel plant is a mere tender to the man who manages the finances of the concern.