A HINT TO HUSBANDS

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 20, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 20.

A HINT TO HUSBANDS.

MRS. DANIEL STEELE, in a leaflet with the above title, pleads for wives to be allowed a sum of money for their independent use, from which they can donate to objects of Christian beneficence in accordance with their own convictions.

She says: "How many really happy wives, who have everything about them for comfort, and luxury even, would gladly sacrifice much of their grandeur if they could have the sole control of the price of only one of the items that go to make up the sum total of the 'fine estate.' There is often an undefined sense of poverty that such a woman dares not confess to herself even, much less to her friends. A careless, childish woman will not hesitate to 'tease' her husband, as a child often does tease, if she knows nothing of his business, his resources, and his liabilities. Such seldom understand this feeling; but the noble-minded, thoughtful, considerate, but timid wife may live for years with an incubus of poverty resting upon her in the midst of comfort and competence. When treated all her life like a child, with no especial possession or portion or allowance, the mistress may sometimes envy the maid, who earns her weekly wages and spends them for herself, her needy relatives, or her church, as she will. The mechanic's or farmer's wife, who labors more hours than her husband, who often carries on several lines of labor simultaneously, who knows much of self-sacrifice for her family, receives no wages, often has no allowance, no portion, no sum whatever with which she can exercise the virtue of generosity.

"That the absolute control of a little money is highly prized by a woman, especially by most wives, is evident if we observe how eagerly every innocent device is made use of by them 'to earn something of their own,' even in cases where plenty seems to reign around them, this, too, sometimes when it would seem that every day was well filled, and every energy expended upon the family work. Witness the work taken from shops to be done in farmers' homes by the wives, who are really already crowded with labor. Shirts are made in such homes for the veriest trifle, when the wife needs that time for rest. In the hours when her husband has finished his work and nods in his chair, or talks with his neighbors on the doorstep, she sits down and cuts and bastes and sews, hour after hour, far into the night, it may be; not because she or her children are actually hungry or ragged or homeless, but because she would like to have a penny in her purse. She wants to be able to drop a nickel into the contribution box, though her husband may consider the cause outside of his sympathy. She would like to subscribe for a periodical, which he thinks they can do without; or buy a toy for the boy, which he calls nonsense; or a plant for the front yard, which seems to him only a 'useless posy.' Yet he may be adding acre to acre all the time.

"But, as is often the case, no such way is open to the wife to create a little portion for herself. What can she do then? Many a good and kind husband thoughtlessly allows her who is the sharer of his labors to have no part of the profits except a bare subsistence. How stoutly he would deny this if accused of it! How little does he imagine it is true! 'Everything is hers as much as mine,' he would say. But let her take all the money, as he does, and let him go to her pocket every time he wishes to go to the store or give his little grandchild a stick of candy, and how different the case would seem!

"What shall we do about it? What, in each case, would be best must be decided by each family. But certainly a wife should not be treated all her life as a minor. To the wife, who labors for the family and is the sharer of her husband's name, something, be it ever so little, should be assigned to do with as she will. Without this there can be no true 'giving' on the part of any woman. All have not the boldness to say to their husbands, as did the Quakeress, 'John, wilt thou please to look in the corner of thy pocketbook where thou keepest the money I have earned, for I feel moved to give this man something.'

"Instances are not wanting—they are known to us all—where women who live well, even richly, are forced to petty meannesses, and often to devices little short of deception, to possess themselves of a dime or a quarter for the support of the gospel, or the various benevolences of the day, or to furnish themselves or their children with some cheap trifles which a really kind husband, even, sometimes sneers at because they form no part of his needs, and appear to him quite superfluous. Few true, self-respecting women will beg for money under such circumstances, and so often a hunger, more imperative than physical famine, gnaws at the souls of noble-hearted, generous, but famished wives. They will be laid down, by and by, beneath princely marble monuments, upon which will be engraved a long list of their virtues; but, alas! they had sighed rather for such memorials as graced the tomb of Dorcas. How many a wife would gladly relinquish the sculptured marble which will press coldly above her coffin, if she might have its price put in her hands in this life to purchase coals and garments for the helpless widows and shivering orphans about her, whose tears at her loss would fall warm and lovingly upon the bare sod above her head!"