The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book Part 12

The late John Philip Sousa, the famous composer and bandmaster, said that the reason why there was not so much great music produced in the twentieth as in the nineteenth century was that religious faith had declined. According to him, creation is based on faith. This may be claiming too much, but his testimony as a composer is interesting.

The American philosopher Paul Elmer More, who died in 1937, and who was one of the most profound scholars in the world, after prolonged thought and study and observation, came from agnosticism into a complete and pa.s.sionate faith in the Christian religion and in the incarnation. He said that while love was the main principle in religion as a way of life, the most important contribution to humanity made by religion was hope. Hope in the destiny of man, in the superlative value of the individual, in the Personality of our Father in Heaven.

I might add that if hope deferred maketh the heart sick, hope destroyed maketh the heart dead.

The most unfair, last word to describe religious faith is the word anesthetic. Religious faith is a comfort to the old, the sick, and the suffering; but in general it is not a sedative, it is a tonic. It is a dynamo; it is a driving force. Henry Drummond, the most effective speaker on religion I can remember, said to a group of students: "I ask you to become Christians not because you may die tonight but because you are going to live tomorrow. I come not to save your souls, but to save your lives."

Religion adds an enormous zest to daily life; it makes everything interesting. It keeps alive the capacity of wonder. I myself am interested in everything in the world, from a sandlot ball game to the nebula in Orion. The mainspring of my existence, the foundation of my happy and exciting life, is Christian faith.

I suggest to those recently married and those about to be married that they are entering into a relations.h.i.+p that can bring them the highest and most lasting happiness or the most crus.h.i.+ng disillusion and despair.

Such a relations.h.i.+p is particularly remarkable because of its intimacy, an intimacy far transcending that of friends.h.i.+p, love of parents, or any earthly emotion. As Thomas Hardy said, marriage annihilates reserve. In this amazing intimacy every care should be taken to insure success. A common interest in religion, saying prayers together, will help enormously toward increasing and preserving happiness.

For a true belief in the Christian religion will improve daily manners.

Husband and wife will not take each other for granted; they will not become stodgy or commonplace or stereotyped.

Tennyson gave in "The Princess" the real kind of marriage which one of my students described in the vernacular: "I am going to be married. It won't be much of a wedding, but it will be a wonderful marriage." Listen to Tennyson:

"For woman is not undevelopt man, But diverse. Could we make her as the man, Sweet Love were slain; his dearest bond is this, Not like to like, but like in difference.

Yet in the long years liker must they grow; The man be more of woman, she of man; He gain in sweetness and in moral height, Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world; She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind; Till at the last she set herself to man, Like perfect music unto n.o.ble words."

A wife may be a civilizing force; this is well. But she may be far more than that. She may be a revelation in daily intimacy more unconsciously impressive than a professional saint.

This is what _Caponsacchi_ said of an imagined union with _Pompilia_, in Browning's "The Ring and the Book":

"To live, and see her learn, and learn by her, Out of the low obscure and petty world-- Or only see one purpose and one will Evolve themselves i' the world, change wrong to right; To have to do with nothing but the true, The good, the eternal--and these, not alone In the main current of the general life, But small experiences of every day, Concerns of the particular hearth and home: To learn not only by a comet's rush But a rose's birth, not by the grandeur, G.o.d, But the comfort, Christ."

_Stanley G. d.i.c.kinson_

CHAPTER ELEVEN

_It Pays to be Happily Married_

Business believe that the happily married man will occupy a bigger position in the business world than will the man who is unhappy at home.

The young men and young women in _Good Housekeeping's_ marriage-relations course have a right to know this, to know precisely the interest which business has in harmonious marriage and the extent to which home life is a factor when men are considered for promotion, employment, or transfer--any one of which means more income, more responsibility, and an opportunity to live more fully.

Business might very logically take another view. It _might_ believe that the single man is the better employee, because single men are free to travel, are not burdened with the expenses of a family, do not run the risk of going home to trouble. It _might_ believe that the home experiences and environment of the people it hires are not its concern.

But business is concerned with these aspects and young people should know in what way and why.

While business negotiates with the husband, it has long since learned that _both_ husband and wife are ent.i.tled to consideration whenever one is being employed or promoted. The more important the job, the more important it becomes to determine whether husband and wife have tried to keep pace with each other, or whether there is discord at home. Business can afford to place responsibility upon the mentally capable, energetic, and tactful man _if_ his marriage relations are harmonious. It cannot afford to gamble with the man who is in trouble at home--not necessarily vicious trouble, but trouble arising from carelessness, maladjustment, and misunderstanding.

As a business consultant advising corporations upon their major objectives and policies, I attend several times each week conferences during which men are discussed for promotion, transfer to new work or new territory, salary adjustments, and sometimes demotion. The business consultant prefers to limit his counsel to such objective matters as plans and operating policies, but this cannot be done actually, because all business situations must be resolved into the persons in them. Hence our discussion is necessarily devoted to men--to what we can do to make them more effective, to how soon we can promote them safely, to how much responsibility they can a.s.sume, to what they are best fitted for doing, and the like. During the past fifteen years, I have discussed such lowly functions as clerks.h.i.+ps at $85 a month and such exalted positions as vice-presidencies at $20,000, with the average running between $4000 and $10,000 a year.

The judgment of executives is not infallible, and some of the men we pick are unable to measure up to the increased load we place upon them.

We try to a.n.a.lyze these failures even more carefully than we a.n.a.lyze the successes. Here is what we find: in the majority of instances, men do not fail because they do not know enough, or because they are lazy; they fail because business cannot always depend upon them--they break at the wrong times. We can find men who know their work and who are capable of learning the requirements of a better job. We can find plenty of men who are willing to work, and who will work even harder for the promise of a better job in the future. But we cannot find enough men whose emotional mechanism is dependable--at least not in sufficient numbers to carry on the responsibilities which business would like to place upon them.

Peculiarly enough, the results of emotional instability are complex, but the chief cause may be defined simply: trouble at home causes more emotional upsets, more instability in business, than any other single factor. By the same token, lack of progress in business causes trouble at home. No home can be run successfully without a degree of financial progress, and such progress cannot be made--except by a negligible few--without harmony at home.

All wives have, by and large, an equal stake with their husbands in their husbands' material progress. The increased income is a major consideration, but it is only the beginning in a chain of useful consequences. Business progress means mental growth, added intelligence to be applied to both working and living. Personal growth means a fuller home life, a finer environment in which to bring up children, an opportunity to become a respected member of the community. Business progress means greater responsibility, and this breeds the ability to take on still more responsibility, both at home and in business.

Progress eventually brings more leisure, more culture, and more of the other refinements of living. Progress is accelerating, feeding upon and multiplying itself.

No one would deny the truth of all this, yet only a searching few have actually created at home the degree of harmony which has been the aim of this series in _Good Housekeeping's_ course on marriage relations. If effective contributions from home to the consistent progress of breadwinners were universal rather than rare, half of our troubles in finding men for added responsibility would be over. The majority of men dissipate their energy in _wis.h.i.+ng_ and _wanting_, but restrict themselves to wis.h.i.+ng and wanting the _result_, rather than the _cause_.

These insist that they want to better their situations, but insist also that business is a thing apart, something to be shut in the office, something which need not be understood or supported at home, and certainly something over which a wife at home has little influence.

These two points of view are not reconcilable; hence everyone loses who tries to hold to both at once.

If you say to a business executive, "Business is a thing apart," he will point out at once that your theory is true only in the least important jobs. The management does not worry much about the home environment of the beginner upon whom no real responsibility rests, but it frequently goes to unbelievable ends to get its more important employees back onto the track if they have lost their heads over a home problem. Again, business does this for no humanitarian reasons; it takes this att.i.tude because its employees produce better where there is harmony at home.

The capable, intelligent, and progressive worker is almost invariably married to a capable, intelligent, and progressive woman. Each acts and reacts upon the other. Men are not so versatile that they can fill $5000 jobs during the day and then go home to become husbands of $1500 women in the evening. Neither are women so versatile that they will remain in contented harmony with husbands who are not their mental equals. Some look negatively at the problem, feeling that "I could have done better if I had had the advantages of so-and-so." The facts are that these envied couples were growing up together, keeping pace mentally, long before the promotion came which is given the credit for their present condition.

When a wife falls down on her part of the job, neglecting either harmony or her personal development, her husband's first natural reaction is to separate his business from his home life--to grit his teeth and go on, hoping to achieve the impossible. This usually sets up a vicious circle of events. Being handicapped in personal effectiveness, he spends more and more time at business. His home goes to ruin; he suffers the most dangerous emotional upsets; his work fails, and conditions get worse and worse. He breaks, in short, at the wrong time--a time inconvenient to business, to put it brutally.

It is dangerous to generalize here, because there is a fine distinction between harmony at home and bringing business into the home. Hasty thinking is likely to confuse the two. The man who takes petty troubles of the routine day home to his wife is a weakling, and business cannot consider him for increased responsibility. The husband who takes none of his problems home is frequently a mystery to his wife, but he probably feels that she is not sufficiently informed to be useful in helping him make decisions on purely business issues. Wives sometimes rebel against this, because they do not make the essential distinction between respect for them as individuals and respect for their information about a specific business question.

The soundness of the belief that wives have a specific and clearly defined responsibility here is verified by the fact that _husbands want, and business demands, one and the same thing_. The approach is different, because the husbands of America are asking primarily for harmony at home, while business is looking for an efficient producer; yet they both are seeking the same thing. The husband asks his wife for harmony at home and a progressive instinct so that she will grow concurrently with him. Business, when evaluating men for promotion, asks whether there is harmony at home so that this man will be free from the greatest single source of emotional unbalance, and whether this man and his wife have demonstrated the ability to grow in the past--the best available indication of their ability to grow in the future. These two questions take in a lot of territory, but the ground must be covered so long as business, in effect, employs or promotes both husband and wife.

Do not be misled for a moment respecting the importance of these two points merely because businessmen do not talk a lot about them. Their sense of good taste makes them hesitate to inquire bluntly into so personal a problem, and so their investigations are conducted quietly.

Numerous confidential sources of information are used, and superiors take their own means to meet husband and wife together, generally under some casual pretext. If we could look behind the scenes, we would find that emotional stability--that elusive product of a satisfactory home environment--is regarded just as highly as knowledge, experience, or any of the other orthodox considerations. We would find executives saying, "We can count on Jones for Chicago now that we have seen his wife and determined to our satisfaction that she will measure up to the promotion" or "It's too bad we can't give this job to Smith, but you know how hard it is to succeed without support from home." Another would be saying, "Brown flew off the handle again yesterday; it must have started at the breakfast table."

Wives, if you can be the Mrs. Jones of these examples, and avoid being the Mrs. Smith or the Mrs. Brown, you will be removing for businessmen the greatest hurdle to promotion which we encounter. You will be doing your part as the wife of a man in business.

You may determine the extent to which you are doing these things now by testing yourself in the light of these ten questions:

_1. Did my husband start for work this morning in a better frame of mind for having married me, or would he have been happier as a single man or married to someone else?_

Remember, as you ask this question and apply your own answer, that we are talking about business; hard, practical business where intentions do not count. You may love your husband dearly, but if the results of your love are not constructive, you must write the word FAILURE across the record.

_2. Do I always treat my job just as seriously as if I were working in an office for a monthly salary?_

Some wives feel that it makes no difference if they linger so long over bridge or c.o.c.ktails or shopping or whatever in the afternoon that they are unable to prepare a suitable meal for their husbands in the evening.

_3. Have I grown in poise and interests like the wives of my husband's a.s.sociates and superiors?_

Wives who keep up with the procession are an a.s.set; those who fail to grow are a liability.

_4. Can I talk in the same terms as his a.s.sociates and their wives?_

This indicates how carefully you have maintained your interest in the source of your income, and how accustomed you are to expressing yourself.

_5. Do I dress and act like the wives of the business a.s.sociates and superiors of my husband?_

You place a heavy handicap upon your effectiveness if your husband cannot be proud of you in the inevitable comparisons with other wives in his organization.

_6. Do I entertain with reasonable frequency the people who are in a position to help my husband in business, or is our social life planned wholly for my own amus.e.m.e.nt?_

Perhaps this question should read, "How long since I have entertained So-and-So?" You may be surprised to find that months have slipped away without your having done a single stroke of good for your husband socially.