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Show Every man who ha, a woman dependent on him should protect her from making heraelf one of those ;! forrunates who has to eat the bitter bread of dependence J By DOROTHY DOC, The World . iligatlMff TVn?r j Anion? those whom we are all called upon to help, there la Invariably some, pathetic widow who has seen "bettef .lavs," hut who In her old age Is de pendent upon charity for her dnily bread. Always the story of this woman i.v ;ho same. She is a charming woman, gently bred, refined, educated, a worn-sn worn-sn wiih all the little marks and graces and culture of a lady. She was mar. rled to a prosperous man who made B good livinjr. and left her a tidy Hula fortune when ho died enough monpy for her to have been comfonable and independent on as long as she lived if she had kept it Intact. But. she lost it. Nobody knows how. She, least of all. It simply slipped through her fingers like ater through a sieve. Some of it was stolen stol-en from her. Some of it she lost through foolish investments. Some ot it she simply lived up. One way and another she lost it, and then on bitter dav she woke up to find tho rent overdue, bills everywhere, and not a cent in ber pocket book. Those of us who knew her husband in his life time, and knew how he adored bis wife, and how be tried to -,ie her from every hardship, and how he actually cut short his own life bu working too hard to try to lay up enough money to safeguard her future, fu-ture, hope that the dead in that far country where they have gone cannot ( v.,. u ilewn and how it fairs with , , loved ones the) have left on earth. For if ho could see bis wife's, plight and realize that her suffering, her destitution, her humiliation in his own fault, it would turn heaven itself into hell for him. For what has happened to her has happened to B thousand and other similar women that he knew What baa happened to her was what was Incicallv hound to happen under the Hrrnmstanres A woman who has never handled any money in her life bigger lhan a monthly allowance has a few thousand dollars drop suddenly in her lap. The : woman is accustomed to spending every eent of her monthlv allowance, because she has the certainty that the next month the same amount of money mon-ey will be coming to her again. Sub-consfiously Sub-consfiously she entertains the happy belief thni money miraculously repeats re-peats itself, and so when her husband, d;e?, and she gets hpr little Insurance! money, or he money from the estate, she doesn't realize that the moneymaker money-maker is dead, and that so long as she F 1; f. ".ill nrrr receive another I inet.Tlnient She hf never had to distinguish bft. tween capital and income, and she doesn't know how to do it. If bet husband's estate amounted to twenty thousand dollars, she thiyks she's ricn, and fhe goes spending it as if it was twenty thousand a year, instead of rutting down her expenses to meet a thousand dollar income, which is all that she's entitled to spend if she lives on her interest and not on her principle. prin-ciple. The woman has never made a dollar of real money. No one has ever talked to her about making mone Neither hei father nor her husband ever tried to teach her the first thing about investments, and so when she Comes into her little inheritance she doesn I know the difference betwen the safety of wildcat preferred and goernment bonds. Her idea of making n special investment invest-ment that shows what a Hetty Green she really is, is to refuse the advice of those who tell her lhat five or six per cent is all the Interest she can even Lope to get on a safe investment and to put her money into some fly-' fly-' 6y-nlghr concern that promises her fifteen fif-teen or twenty per cent. "You see," the says blithely, "I couldn't afford to buy what you call a gilt-eged bond, because I have so little money I real-1 real-1 rouct ret a very high interest," Then, because her husband was al- ways so good to her and took BUCh 'STV,-?"6. f hcr' Ph holds to the fMd-Uke faith that every other man la going to do the same for her and so she turns over the monev that stands between her and the poor house to rousin John, or Deacon Jones or some other one of the financial wolves that prey on guileless widow- u.l that s the last she ever sees ol the ; money that her poor husband toiled ror for years, so that his Marv might be safe when he could protect her no longer And the widow, utterly helpless, is thrown penniless on a world that has no place in it for the middle-aged woman untrained to any work, too old to learn, too old to adapt herself to i new conditions, too softened by a lifo of luxury and protection to fight the hard battle for hread for herself. This tragedy )s pitifully common. A .prominent life insurance company has ! studied the history of the estates of 1 five thousands dollars, or over, created ' by its payments to beneficiaries, and j i it finds that within seven years ninety' per rent of these estates have been wholl dissipated. Common obseration of the fate of the estates of the people we know back up these figures of the life in surance company, and n surely should, convey a warning to every husband and father, and teach him to safeguard the future Of his wife and children b leaving his money in trust for them I in such a shape that they cannot get hold of it to spend, but will have it doled out to them In monthly allowances allow-ances in sums that their experience will enable them to handle Not one man in ten thousand would trust his wife to manage his estate while he is alive. Why does he think that she will posse.-s any more financial finan-cial acumen and judgment after he Is dead" Indeed, she will be less capable capa-ble of dealing with money questions then than she is now. because with her mind befuddled with grief and the bewilderment of los. she iil be easily eas-ily beguiled into taking the advice of any unecrupulous sharper who offers to relieve her of the necessity of deciding de-ciding upon investments. Every man who has a woman dependent de-pendent on him should n nz that he owes it to her to make a will before j another day passes over his head. And in that will he should tie up whatever property he leaves iier beyond the possibility of her throwing it away. In that way onlv can he protect her from becoming one of those poor unfortunates unfortu-nates who has to eat the bitter bread of dependence, instead of feasting on j angel food at ber own table. |
