HUSBAND AND WIFE.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2279, 22 September 1899, Page 1 (Supplement)

HUSBAND AND WIFE.

" Viola," in the ' Age,' thus discourses :—The question of the wife's allowance came in for serious consideration at the Woman's Congress. Not only women speakers, but men urged that under the present system the average wife, get anything but fair play, and that some legal arrangement by which the husband at marriage should be obliged to make a contract with his wife, bestowing upon her a reasonable, portion of his income, would obviate much bickering between well-to-do married folk, and much injustice among the poorer classes. We all know that if we sum up the happiest of our married acquaintances, cases in which the wife has means independent of her husband are distinctly in the majority, and we also know instances galore when a whole-hearted, energetic wife has had to wheedle cash out of her husband which she could demand were she merely his servant. Of course, fortunately for humanity, we can set against these many happy couple, where the husband makes his wife an adequate allowance ; but where this allowance is wanting, or has to be asked for, we can sifely reckon on finding domestic friction. It is impossible to see how the law regulating allowances could be enforced, even if it were made. Like certain firms we wot of, who pay their hands good wages and get a very fair per centage. of those wages back by means of unjust lines, we would probably ha\e husbands settling so much a year on their wives and coining down on them for their tailors' bills. The matter really seems to be in the hands of parents first, and of women next. That a girl who has never had the handling of money is incompetent to " housekeep " properly no one will deny. She doubtless learns in time ; hut during that process her husband quite possibly loses all faith in her business capacities. Had she an allowance as a girl, and been taught something of housekeeping into the bargain, her case would have been entirely different, and that domestic training is the parent's business is a fact too often overlooked. Uarring this training, many women are prac tically incapable of a just administration of worldly goods theoretically endowed on them at the altar, and a grave injustice would be done the husbands enforced by law to give them unconditionally " a reasonable proportion of their incomes."