Furthermore, the woman who does all her own housework, including the cooking, scrubbing, washing, ironing, and the multitudinous details of housekeeping, in addition to the bearing and rearing of children, does more than any human being should do.  It is very well to say, “See what the women of a past generation did,” but could we look at the thing objectively, we would see that they were little better than slaves.  That is the long and short of it,—­the Emancipation Proclamation did not include them.

Aside from the physical effects of poverty on the housewife, there are factors of psychical importance that call for a hearing.  After all, what is poverty in one age is riches in another; what is poverty for one man is wealth to his neighbor.  More than that, what a man considers riches in anticipation is poverty in realization.  Here again we deal with the mounting of desire.

The philosophical, contented woman, satisfied with her life even though it is poor, is exempted from one great factor making for breakdown.  Contentment is the great shield of the nervous system, the great bulwark against fatigue and obsession.  But contentment leads away from achievement, which springs from discontent, from yearning desire.  Whether civilization in the sense of our achievements is worth the price paid is a matter upon which the present writer will not presume to pass judgment.  Whether it is or not, Mankind is committed to struggle onward, regardless of the result to his peace of mind.

There are two principal psychical injuries with poverty—­fear and worry—­and we must pass to their consideration as factors in the neuroses of some women.

Worry is chronic fear directed against a life situation, usually anticipated.  Man the foreseeing must worry or he dies,—­dies of starvation, disease, disaster.  It is true that worry may be excessive and directed either against imaginary or inevitable ills; ills that never come, ills that must come, like old age and death.

Men in comfortable places cry “Why worry?” meaning of course that the most of worry is about ills that are never realized.  That is true, but the person living just on the brink of disaster, ruined or made dependent on charity by unemployment, a long illness, or any failure of power and strength, cannot be as philosophical as the man fortified by a nice bank account or dividend-paying investments.  These well-to-do advisers of the poor remind one of the heroes of ancient fables who, having magic weapons and impenetrable armor, showed no fear in battle.  One wonders how much courage they would have had if armed as their foemen were.

For the poor housewife who sees no escape from poverty, whose husband is either a workman or a struggling business man always on the edge of failure, life often seems like a wall closing in, a losing battle without end.

Especially in the middle-aged, in those approaching fifty, does this happen.  Aside from the condition produced by “change of life”, the so-called involution period, there is a reaction of the “time of life” that is found very commonly.  For old age is no longer far off on the horizon; it is close at hand, around the corner, and the looking-glass proclaims its coming.  The woman wonders whether her husband will long be able to keep up,—­and then “what will become of us?”