PAYING OF ACCOUNTS

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1500, 10 May 1924, Page 2

PAYING OF ACCOUNTS

WOMEN MOST NEGLECTFUL.

It may seem quite amusing, on the stage, to see the improvident young man-about-town sitting at ease in a gorgeous gown, with a costly cigar dangling from his lips, negligently perusing his morning mail and carelessly consigning every unglued halfpenny stamped envelope to the waste paper basket. But do the tradesmen among the audience find this particular joke at all humorous, or do their fingers itch for the scruff of the young hero's neck? Of course, the great Bill Joke has come to be an accepted one, though to do us justice, few of us who talk airily of what we owe, seriously intend to continue owing it for many more days. Unfortunately, it is often just those persons who are in comparatively comfortable circumstances who are the most careless about bills, or shall we say the most careful not to pay them.

It is considered even a little vulgar and "middle-class" to be conscientious in.the matter of settling bills, by a certain type of mind —the type which is unable to perceive that it is not only vulgar but dishonest to live on credit.

It must be admitted that women are often more careless in the matter of bills than men. And the reason is that a man who oinits to settle his dehts in time comes to be looked upon as unscrupulous, thus impairing his hopes of success in business, whereas a woman merely impresse her creditors with the fact that she is "not very business-like." However, in these days, when so many girls have a business training, it is no longer a feminine asset to be unbusinesslike. The plea has lost any appeal it may have possessed, and the woman who borrows money, or runs up accounts, and forgets her debts, bears little, in the eyes of most folk, to distinguish her from the tribe which is not above pilfering from a sale counter Avhen the tradesman's l back is turned.

Many wise folk, knowing the frailty of womankind where pretty apparel is concerned, advise young girls never to run accounts. On the other hand, in the case of a girl earning, say, £ls a month, of which she pays out £lO in board, if she wants a new frock costing a few pounds, it means, unless she runs an account and pays off half the cost the following month, that she will find herself extremely short of cash, and probably be obliged to borrow before the month is out.

The girl who is unable to keep an account within reasonable limits would probably run into debt in other ways. It is not the account system that is wrong, but the growing carelessness about such points of honour as the paying of debts. Often, too, it is the girls who do not care to run accounts themselves who impose on the good nature of friends who do, as in the case of one woman who got so much into the habit of asking a friend to oblige her by letting her enter items to her account, that the time came at last when she not only omitted to ask permission, but also omitted to pay. It is such a tiny step from carelessness about bills and even personal debts to active dishonesty, that it is time that the old joke about the tailor's bill ceased to raise a smile, and that plodding, middle-class respectability came to receive the honour it deserves.