Why Men Fear Marriage.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVI, Issue 17, 28 April 1906, Page 60

Why Men Fear Marriage.

Women and statisticians complain that the bachelor grows more wary year by year. To a certain extent this is true. The average age of the bridegroom of 1904 was twenty-eight. Ten years ago it was twenty-six, and ten years from now it will, at the present rate of progression, be thirty. The wonder is not that the British bachelor grows shyer of entering the bonds of matrimony, but that he does not strike altogether. At present, people are being married in England and Wales at the rate of 625 couples a day. If every bachelor could possibly have had just one year’s experience of married life before being irrevocably bound to the lot of the married man, it is not only possible, it is quite certain that the rate would immediately drop by more than half. The writer is no misogynist. He is not even a savage bachelor. THE JOYS OF THE BACHELOR. In the above remarks he does not for one moment desire to east the slightest aspersion upon English wives, or upon the state of marriage from an ethical point of view. He simply wishes to emphasise the fact that this country permits the bachelor to go on his own way rejoicing, while it treats the married man as a person little better than a criminal. Serious articles in the reviews, preachers in the pulpit, lecturers on the platform, dwell upon the shocking depravity

of the bachelor who is too selfish to get married. Never yet in history was the lot of the bachelor more envibale than at present. No matter what his profession or occupation—unless, perhaps, it is that of a clergyman or doctor—there is absolutely no need for him to be a householder. HE CAN CALCULATE HIS EXPENSES. He can have rooms of his own, with meals, accommodation suited to his income, at a fixed weekly or monthly price. Excellent restaurants, with fare of the most varied character and cost, are to be found in every town. Clothes are so eheap that the services of a mender and repairer are by no means so indispensable as they once were. In any case, professional valeting companies, excellent steam laundries, dyers and repairers, are easily accessible in towns of any size. The bachelor can live where he likes, how he likes, and on any scale of expense he pleases, and more than this, lie can calculate to a nicety what his necessary expenses will be,' and what surplus he will have over to spend upon his own hobbies, pleasures, or amusements. Nor is there any longer the slightest cause for that dividing line in point of appearance which used to be visible between the bachelor and the benedict. In fact, in these days the former, even when his resources do not run to a valet, is usually the better turned out man of

the two. A wife is no longer essential for the process which Mr Hilbert described as “mend him. tend him. air his linen, dry his tears.’’ We need say little of the bachelor's advantages in the fact that his time, outside his work, is his own—that he can keep any hours he pleases, have his meals when he likes, go to bed when it suits him. keep any company that is most congenial. The bachelor, living in his own diggings, ‘‘on his own hook.” is not legally burdened with any responsibilities whatsoever. If his income considerably exceeds one hundred and sixty pounds a year, it is possible that the income-tax collector may get upon his track and dock the customary shilling per pound from the surplus. But even this is by no means certain. THE JOURNALIST AND ARTIST. If the young man be a journalist or artist, and not in receipt of a fixed salary, and if his name be not on the register as a voter, it is at least even betting that he will be overlooked altogether—in which case he contributes not one penny directly* to the revenue of the country. Indirectly he pays a little on his tobacco and beer, but otherwise taxes are only a name to him. There is hardly another country on earth—with the possible exception of the United States—where the bachelor has so easy a time of it as in our grand-motherly-governed islands As for municipal taxation, the young bachelor with two to five pounds or so a week, living in rooms, never gives it a thought. Someone pays for the streets and their lighting, the drains and the parks. Not he. So, when the gay. careless young man marries a wife and lakes a house, the shock of change is all the greater. WHEN THE HONEYMOON IS OVER. Before the honeymoon is over, and when its pleasant extravagances have depleted his bank balance, a nasty bit of blue paper arrives by post; and. struggling with its intricacies, the poor fellow discovers that, because he has done what is called his duty and become a married man and a householder, certain unknown persons demand of him one pound seven and eightpence for the relief of the poor. He has hardly’ recovered from the shock and returned to his little villa, before a man calls for the water-rate and arrears for the last quarter. Then swoops down the gas company’s man, and after a little while there is another paper, this time a yellow one, demanding house duty. No fear now that the income-tax collector will forget young benedict, or pass him over. Lucky* for him. indeed, if he be not assessed at twice his real income, and forced to go to the trouble and waste of time of an appeal against this most common and abominable injustice But these are only the beginnings of troubles. There are more to come, ami there is no escape from them.