AMERICAN WIVES

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 June 1922, Page 2

AMERICAN WIVES

“America is hill of shiftless, extravagant wives, who are steering their husbands into gaol,” declared Judge Gibbs, a well-known New York county court justice, in ordering the discharge of a frail-looking, shabby little man charged with receiving stolen goods. Prisoner told the court that a constant struggle to make ends meet caused him to succumb to temptation. The judge’s homily was addressed to the man’s wife, who attended the court expensively dressed in a fur coat and wearing a quantity of jewels. “Women like you,” he told her, “don’t stop to ask where the dollars come from that buy your furs and diamonds. It makes no difference to you, in fact. Your idea of your husband’s job is that’ it is to bring you money to adorn yourselves. Thus modern man is driven into a hysteria of moneymaking to satisfy the demands of his wife. If he cannot do that her interest in him ends. “The old traditions of simplicity have gone and been replaced by an orgy of frenzied spending. Husbands allow their wives to run through money they can supply by honest means until they are obliged to resort to dishonesty to make up the deficit between what they get and what their wives want.”