Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 117, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1913 — Household [ARTICLE]

Household

WOMEN IN BUSINESS. What Is to Become of the Spinster in Old Age? “What is going to become of all the unmarried business women when they are too old to work?” was the rather startling question propounded at a meeting of a woman’s club. “A business man, member of a leading publishing house, said to me: ‘Have you ever noticed what a lot of nice old maids there are in our employ? What will finally become of them?* “These women are ‘nice.’ They are usually in receipt of a good salary, but they haven’t saved anything. Improvident? No, not necessarily. "They live in accordance with the American standard of living, and they can afford to live in that way with the money they earn, besides it is required of a woman in a good position to dress well. If they were saving, ‘provident’ you would call it, how could they save, at the best, enough to secure them from .want for the rest of their natural lives? Their business usefulness ends at fifty years of age, say. Some firms generously pension women worn out in their employ, but these are few. Something will have to be done to meet this emergency. Proud, independent, superior as they are and so many of them!”

“There-should be»a day for thinking about marriage,’* suggested a member of the club. “Just,as there are Labor Day and Memorial Day and others. Men in the cities are too busy, their lives are too strenuous to think about marriage. If thetre was a day set apart for thinking about it and a parade of all the nice men and women, who would in that -way see each other in the light of candidates for matrimony, something might come of it, and this growing celibacy be put a stop to wftiich threatens to depopulate the world, and these fine women would not then be left to a lonely dependent old age;**

“This is not one to be treated with levity,** remarked the first speaker with a ( frown. “It has not obtruded itself upon the students of social,economy as It will do. Spinsterhood was never so f general before as it is becoming. Jiust) run your mind over the women of this class whom you know. “Mark my wosds,. this question is bound to become the foremost social and economic qnesttton of the next tea; years." / ;