YOUR HUSBAND'S INCOME

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 124, 26 May 1923, Page 18

YOUR HUSBAND'S INCOME

When wives are being attacked everywhere for wasting the substance of their husbands upon riotious dressing it is but just to look on the other side of the pie- . tur.e, writes' Margaret Garden, in the "Daily Chronicle." Is the husband who revolts against his traditional duty of signing the cheque.when his wife's bills come in always quite the Innocent victim he pretends to be? ' If we are to bfelieve Judge Parfitt, who declared the other day that he "had never yet known a husband who told his wife what he earned," some of them at least have only themselves to thank if their better halves assume those earnings to be a great deal more than they actually are. I am not trying to excuse the wiferare as the dodo—who, having an income or her own, throwß her dressmaker's bills at the head' of her hard-working husband just because the law allows her to "pledge his credit." X am thinking of the wife of the average professional man who is dependent upon what he chooses to'think sufficient to pay for the pretty, frocks he expects her to wear. WELL-DRESSED WIVES. With very few exceptions all husbands want their wives to be well dressed. However small the sum they think good dressing demands, they feel instinctively that a dowdy woman is a reproach either to their taste or to their generosity. Likewise, most women, especially when they are young, strain every shilling in order to look their best, as much for their husband's sake as for their own. It Was the idealist Tolstoi \vho said in one of his .novels that "more love has been lost through an unbecoming gown than through the basest treachery." And every woman knows the risk involved in letting her husband realise that his wife is the least smart and the least attractive woman in the room. If occasionally a wife,, through her love of dress and her desire to keep her husband's admiration, runs up a bigger bill that is strictly necessary, is she so very much to blame? Yes—if she knows he xea-lly can't afford that masterpiece in chiffon and that Parisian hat. But supposing she had only a vague idea of what her husband'e income is? Supposing his own suits and boots are legion, and she knows be is in the habit of giving "business" lunches vat expensive restaurants ?

EVERY WIFE SHOULD KNOW. No husband, I submit, has the right to complain of his wife's extravagancs unless lie has taken her fully into his confidence concerning those mysterious J earnings. They may indeed be an uncertain quantity. He may be rich one year and poor the next But the more variable his income is the more incumbent is it upon him to tell his wife the truth about the extent of his resources. ' Few women after all are. either so wicked or so foolish as to ruin their husbands for the sake of a full wardrobe— foolish because such extravagance ultimately recoils on their own heads. When they do squander, the reason often is that they attribute their husband's reproaches to meanness rather than to poverty. Trust, everyone admits, is the best policy in love—in married life njost of all.. In regard to money, it is tlie best policy too. ,