One day McEwan came home with a face of despair.  His creditors, he told his wife, had descended on him, seized his business, and threatened to take possession of the boarding house.

“But it is mine,” protested the woman, with spirit.  “I bought every bit of furniture with the money my boarders paid me.  Nobody can touch my property or my earnings to satisfy a claim on you.  I am not liable for your debts.”

One of the boarders was a lawyer, and to him that night she took the case.  “A woman’s earnings are her own in Massachusetts, are they not?” she demanded.

“You are what the law calls a free trader,” replied the lawyer, “and whatever you earn is yours, certainly.  That is—­of course you are recorded at the city clerk’s office?”

“Why no.  Why should I be?”

“The law requires it.  Otherwise this property, and even the money your boarders pay you, are liable to attachment for your husband’s debts.  Unless you make a specific declaration that you are in business for yourself, the law assumes that the business is your husband’s.”

“If I went to work for a salary, should I have to be recorded in order to keep my own money?” Mrs. McEwan was growing angry.

“No,” replied the lawyer, “not if you were careful to keep your income and your husband’s absolutely separate.  If you both paid installments on a piano the piano would be your husband’s, not yours.  If you bought a house together, the house could be seized for his debts.  Everything you buy with your money is yours.  Everything you buy with money he gives you is his.  Everything you buy together is his.  You could not protect such property from your husband’s creditors, or from his heirs.”

Mrs. McEwan’s case is mild, her wrongs faint beside those of a woman in Los Angeles, California.  Her husband was a doctor, and she had been, before her marriage, a trained nurse.  The young woman had saved several hundred dollars, and she put the money into a first payment on a pretty little cottage.  During the first two or three years of the marriage the doctor’s wife, from time to time, attended cases of illness, usually contributing her earnings toward the payment for the house or into furniture for the house.  In all she paid about a thousand dollars, or something like one-third of the cost of the house.  Then children came, and her earning days were over.

Unfortunately the domestic affairs of this household became disturbed.  The doctor contracted a drug habit.  He became irregular in his conduct and ended by running away with a dissolute woman.  After he had gone his wife found that the house she lived in, and which she had helped to buy, had been sold, without her knowledge or consent.  The transaction was perfectly legal.  Community property, that is, property held jointly by husband and wife, is absolutely controlled by the husband in California.  In that State community property may even be given away, without the wife’s knowledge or consent.