Are Women Really Mean?

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIII, Issue XVII, 22 October 1904, Page 64

Are Women Really Mean?

( Ilt< I'MSTANC ES OFTEN COMBINE TO MAKE A REALLY GENEROI S AND OPEN HEARTED WOMAN APPEAR “STINGY.” Women are constantly accused of lx*iiig wasteful and extravagant. But they are more often taunted with being •■stingy.” The question is how much is training and how much is temperament? it is extremely doubtful that girl babies are born thrifty and careful, while their infant brothers come into the world generous and open-handed. On the contrary, it is more likely true that the instinct to economise which so many women undoubtedly possess is mainly a matter of training. In nearly all households the scraping, economising, and "doing without” falls on the feminines. The public school boy gets far more pocket money from his parents than his His ter —-also at a public school—reIf a rich, generous uncle “tips” his nieces and nephews, the boy gets a sovereign, when rtie girl has to content herself with ten shillings. The young man at Oxford or Cambridge receives an allowance wildly beyond the dreams ot a Girton girl of the same social standing. Girls are always being taught to deny themselves, to do without the things their hearts crave. Boys, on the other hand, know if they run into debt, and lavish generously on schoolmates and ‘‘chums.” money their parents can ill afford, that pater will “pay up" with a “boys will be boys. ’ or that mater will manage to provid'* the money somewhow. Erom the moment of his birth allow ances arc made for the boy’s tendency to extravagance. Girls, on the other hand, are so cramped as to pocket money and allowance-,, evrn in well to do families, that it is no wonder lhe\ often grow up into stingy women. “I don’t like my boy not to be able to pay his way on the same footing as his friends.” is a sentiment heard constantly from fathers. Rut the sentiment >td;i-> short at tin* boys. L’he least tendency to extravagance in girls is treated with a severity wuk-n should only apply to one of the servo cardinal >ins. My iong observation of boys and girls lead- me to think that the latter are far more generous than the former. A girl will nearly always deny herself :.i order to give. I have never yet m“t a boy v. bo will do this. l’he apparent open-handedness ami generosity of a boy to his schoolmates is very often mere ostentation. lie* shows oil* by exceeding his weekly al lowance and then writes a begging let ter to his mother, who usually supplies 1 he deficit. If a girl shows off by spending more I ha n sb.* can afford, she doesn’t cadge from her mother or anybody else. Stir goes without things for two or three weeks, till her pocket money balance is all square. In fifty per cent, of a schoolboy’s apparent generosity he is playing to the gallery, and “forks out” lest his fellows shall call him a stingy brute. 'l’he boy known at school as a firstrate chap, ready to lend or give, is often frightfully stingy to his sisters, because he is not afraid of their criticism. The opinion of the “other fellows” at school counts. What girls think it doesn't matter. All through life it's the same. Economy a ways begins at home, if a man’s business is doing badly his daughters must wear.last year’s frocks, his wife must manage with a maid less. I he sons and father go on in much the same style as to clubs, cigars, and amusements. But the chief factor in making women appear “mean" lies in the circumstance that very few women are spending their 'ery own money. In most cases their expenditure is more or less from a trust fund. Ami no honourable person likes to spend other |>eople's money quite so lavishly as though it were their own. Added to this, there is usually somebody in the background to whom a woman has to give an account of how much money has been spent. Even though

a husband be the most generous of men, he knows exactly how much his wife spends in a year. He is a sort of monetary conscience behind her own. And this fact tends to make her more “careful” of pence and pounds than she would be were nobody to check her accounts. A man may (‘very now and then launch into all sorts of extravagances, secure in the knowledge that his wife will never discover it unless he chooses to confess. ”1 never told my wife how much that iittle trip cost me, or how much 1 lost «n that speculation which turned out so badly,” is a confidence one often receives from husbands. A wife. on the other hand, unless siie have a separate income, can never indulge in an extravagance without being “found out.” Dine out or go on a little excursion with a married man whose wife is not i.ne of t’ne party, and note how well he entertains his guests, what a big tip he gives the waiters, and how open-hand-ed he is all round. Join a similar parly in which the wife shares, and you will be struck with the different style in which things are done. You get hock where previously you had champagne, and so on through the sliding scale of hospitality. The reason is obvious. A “check” is presetn in the wife, who will kn >w exactly how much the little dissipation costs. A wife always has this check upon her. And it is just this consciousness at the back of everything which makes a woman expend threepence when a man will “go the whole sixpence.”