p. 521 | PIN MONEY

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 26, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 33.

PIN MONEY.

"I NEVER have a five cents even for postage stamps without asking for it." The speaker was a young wife, who, in her girlhood, earned regular wages as a seamstress, and when married, found her financial position changed. Eben held the purse strings, and made plenty of money. But new machinery was often needed, improvements must be made, hired hands cost a good deal, and so no allowance was thought of for the wife, who held the position of "nurse, housemaid, seamstress, cook," with the added duties of motherhood. "I always have a lump in my throat when I ask for a dollar," she said, "and I used to go to his pocket book for spare change, for at the marriage service he said, 'With all my worldly goods I thee endow.'

"But when little Tom began to steal pennies because he wanted something and could not get it, I began to wonder if I had done wrong and the sin was visited on him." It was a sad contrast, this little mother's tender conscience, with a world of trickery and knavery. Nowhere is this lack of pocket money felt so much as among farmer's wives and daughters. Many of them go from positions in the city—teachers, typewriters, saleswomen, with a regular salary—a good cook can earn $15 a month. She may marry a young farmer, and, with all her life before her, decide to be his help and money saver. How they work and struggle to pay off the farm, to get the necessary improvements made! But the young wife has a feeling of envy on Saturday nights when her husband pays the "hands" who have worked for him, and has not a dollar for her, for she knows that they have been fed, while she has served; that they have slept, while she lost hours of slumber with the precious babe in her arms, and that they can buy clothes that she would feel it extravagant to wear.—Montreal Witness.