THE EXTRAVAGANT SEX

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 121, 27 June 1914, Page 6

THE EXTRAVAGANT SEX

DIFFERENT IDEAS OF VALUE T " There are few more frequent or more fruitful topics of social controversy than the relative extravagance of men and women; nor will the controversy ever be stilled. Whole batteries of argument can be brought into action on either side, and each party will be as grimly entrenched in its own position as when the warfare started, the truth undoubtedly being that we are all slike, regardless of sex, much more extravagant than "we ought to be. The sweet diversities of human nature, moreover, make generalisation impossible. No demonstration can be so admirably complete, no argument to prove the wickedness —or the virtue —of either sex so exhaustive and categorical that its whole fabric cannot "Sihmediately be exploded by a mere "Well, look at Uncle Charles" or, "Oh, but think of Aunt Sarah!' 1 Over-tipping by Men. It may be because men are accustomed to be more in- contact with work, whether they work for pay themselves or pay others to work for them, that they set a higher value on personal service. Women are not habituated to measuring either their time or their labour an terms of money; and the consequence is that when a "woman tips a railway porter for trundling her luggage to the train she considers only what the service is worth to her. Viewed in that light, it is but an annoying and trivial incident in a journey, and is recompensed as such. A man recognises that the tip is a definite item in the porter's income and that w r hat he pays for is two minutes of trundling added to two hours of waiting for another job. In most other ways women are more careful of "their little money. They detest wasting a penny stamp ■when a postcard will do, and will submit to incon- ■ veniences in crowded omnibuses of which a man merely shudders to think. The shops which cater for feminine , trade encourage this attention to minutiae by offering bargains in terms of farthings. But the. average man "would^ rather pay ?>/• for a necktie than 2/11-Jd, having , -some vague idea at the back of his mind that the haberdasher who would think to tempt him by a halfpenny economy will probably sell him cheap goods. Men's tailors rarely permit them to remember that there is any difference in the costliness of materials going to make a suit; and unless it be a detail of onyx buttons oh a waistcoat or some such the sordid detail i of price is hardly likely to be touched upon when clothes are ordered. The customer knows his tailor's (or he will when the bill comes in), and the other is content that discussion of the subject should be shirked. Such a system is abhoirent to the feminine mind. Few women, moreover, have any habit of selfindulgence on which they spend as much as most men ; lavish on their lunches, on cigars, and That ; is one v solid fact from which every advocate of- the feminine cause in the controversy draws infinite comfort. On the face of it, with man's incorrigible tipping habit and woman's vastly keener appreciation of ►the value of halfpence, it would seem as if there was hardly room for controversy left. How can women fail to be the better economists? And yet. *. * Difference in Point of View. Once more, it is probably all a matter of training; of the different point of view from which the two sexes have been taught to look at the world. The man will give the same scrupulous attention to narrow margins in his business as the woman does in her housekeeping or her shopping; but the spending of his money is not Imsiness. He knows more or less exactly what liis income is, and the ordinary man budgets roughly in accordance therewith. He knows what proportion of the whole revenue must be apportioned to the various departments—to the house, to rates and taxes and insurance, to clothes, to the education of the children, to the car or stables—and of the balance he knows jroughly how much will be consumed by what he counts his normal scale of personal expenses—in holidays and trips, in charities and presents. Looking at the whole, he calculates that the extra shilling with which he tips a porter, the cost of an individual taxieab, or the price of a necktie will make 110 traceable difference at the end of a quarter or a year. These things, with the cigars and liqueurs, are all allowed for as part of the ordinary overhead expense.

The woman lias rarely been taught thus to see ihe details in relation to the whole; She has no need of a budget, except in so far as she operates on an allowance, which in the vast majority of cases is elastic. Tho sudden yielding to a single temptation may any 4»y more than neutralise the admirable/.economies of a month. So that if a man and a woman had each to live, keeping up equivalent social appearances, for a >ear on the same income, though the man was-careless of his change and rarely asked the price of anything lie bought, while the woman wrestled earnestly with odd pennies in her housekeeping and scrimped herself in divers ways impossible to man, the chances are that at the end he would come nearer to living within the utatcd sum than she.

It is not that women are less capable of self-denial thai; men; and they have as a rule much less false pride in allowing the self-denial to be seen. It is f. matter of training and bringing up which has induced two different habits of mind. Man eomroonlv, with whatever incompetence, budgets for his extravagances. When he exceeds, he has still a general scale of expenditure in mind, though he allow himself consciously to violate it. Woman seldom has such a scale. She confronts the temptation of each day as if it were an individual emergency, and yields or resists not in obedience to any standard but according to" "the dictates of her own sweet will.