Essay（s） by Lemuel K． Washburn
Disgraceful Partnerships
Lemuel K.Washburn
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Six marriages out of ten are disgraceful partnerships. The ones to question our assertion will be the married men, and the very ones, too, responsible for the disgrace. Marriage is a union where the two partners should share alike the profits and the losses. There should be no head of the firm in the sense of making one subservient in any way to the other. The wife has just the same right to handle the money of the firm as the husband. The family purse should not be carried in the husband’s pocket unless he is willing to pass it out whenever his partner requests it, and no questions asked.
Most men treat their wives worse than servants. If a wife asks for some money, the husband, in most instances, wants to know what she is going to do with it and how much she wants, instead of giving her what is her right. Married men do not recognize their wives as equal partners in the family concern. They think they should have what they want and their wives what they are pleased to give them. How many homes have been broken up by carrying out such a principle as this? More than men will confess.
This state of things is not confined to the homes of poverty. Not at all. It exists where there is plenty. Many a proud woman is almost daily humiliated by a man to whom she is obliged to go for what money she needs. The pain that niggardly husbands inflict upon sensitive wives is only known by themselves. Many a woman has said: “I would rather go without the money than have so much trouble to get it from my husband.” What must a woman have suffered to be forced to make such a confession as that!
A marriage in which a woman is daily made to feel her dependence upon a man, is attended with the gravest moral perils. The only just rule is for the husband to allow his wife a fair share of his income, for her to do with as she pleases. Not only marital harmony would be promoted by such an arrangement as this, but love would burn longer and purer on the family altar, private morality would be conserved, and all the relations of life elevated and dignified thereby.
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The most beautiful thing is the beauty we see in those we love.
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The money that men waste would make them rich, and the time they waste would make them wise.
[The end]
Lemuel K. Washburn's essay: Disgraceful Partnerships