ENGLISH CRITICISM OF AMERICAN WOMEN.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 10238, 30 August 1909, Page 6

ENGLISH CRITICISM OF AMERICAN WOMEN.

> While American, women are admired | sincl sought by Englishmen and some of the proudest of-British titles are shared by the transatlantic sisters of those doughty islanders, English women have a very keen eye for their foibles. The extravagance of American women is one of their chief faults, says Mary Mortimer Maxwell in the London Daily Mail, evidently lifting a warning linger at her British brothers who appreciate American beauty. "There is no woman in the world who, when she starts out shopping, is capable of spending so much money as the American woman." She never knows where to stop. "She goes out to. buy a veil and returns with a trousseau." Does she need a pair of gloves? "She returns home with nine pairs of boots and slippers and a seventy-five-dollar hat." This seems well calculated to give pause to the Britisher contemplating an America]! match. The writer finds the cause of such reckless expenditure in the fact that the American man will not make the womenkind of his household a definite allowance. Consequently the girl or the matron "spends three times the amount of money she would do if she had a stated sum to spend. The American man, "the most generous man in the world when it comes to providing for his womenkind," objects to giving an allowance. The consequences are simply disastrous, says the English woman from whom we are quoting: "The result is that American women spend money in a hit-or-miss fashion that is absolutely shocking to their more conservative. British sisters. I could name a dozen American women of my acquaintance who, though they have no allowance, have credit accounts at several of the largest shops in New York. Their bills are paid monthly or quarterly by their husbands, sometimes with and sometimes without lifted eyebrows. If they have not accounts at the shops, they delight in having things sent home 'C. O. D.,' as they call it, which means 'cash on delivery.' "It can be seen that such a method of paying for what one buys leads to recklessness which could not exist in connection' with an allowance. The English woman who has a certain sum for 'pin-money' apportions it to cover all the sundries. She buys carefully and thoughtfully, and not Often on the spur of the moment, unless she sees a. really excellent bargain. She knows that her one hundred and fifty must cover the year, and she does not spend it all in September." The New-York husband therefore naturally puts an occasional notice in the daily press to the effect that he will not be accountable for his wife's debts. On this point Miss Maxwell remarks : "Considerable amazement was recently experienced in a certain set of New York people by the insertion of an advertisement in a newspaper to the effect that a certain Mr So-and-So would not bo responsible for any bills contracted by his wife at any 'department store.' The couple were known to be ideally happy, and yet it seemed, if one could judge by the advertisement, that they must bo on the verge of separation. The husband, however, had only inserted the advertisement to protect his wife from herself. It was a disease with her to buy and buy, and she herself had appealed to him to do something to save their small fortune from the hands of the shopkeepers ! "American women buy on a larger scale than do English women. One seldom finds a New York woman buying a solitary pair of gloves. She buys half-a-dozen pairs. She buys stockings, boots, and other things in the same proportion. Veils she buys by the dozen, and she never waits till she has used the last pair of gloves, the last veil, the last pair of stockings, before replenishing. . . . "Thirty pounds is said to lie the sum expended every month by the wife of a well-known millionaire on two hats, with veils to match. A well-known modiste and head of a department store showed me one morning a chinchilla hat, with ospreys, price nineteen pounds; a large hat of corded silk, with ostrich-feather trimming, price nine pounds; and two Parisian veils at a pound apiece." This writer contrasts the behavior of the American and her English cousin during the excitement of "bargain day" :

" 'Bargain day at Tiic Ureal Store,' says the (American) wife to her liitsband one evening. 'Can I have sonic money for hats and gloves?' and he hands her out a sum of money, keeps no account of it, or tells her to buy and have the things sent home, to be paid for subsequently by cheque. " '.Bargain day in Oxford street,' says the English wife to herself, and she casts up her accounts and finds out how much money is left of her quarterly allowance. All this makes for carefulness and harmony, as the American system makes for extravagance."