This is surely a gross exaggeration, though it furnishes excellent material for satire.  The man still makes the main conditions of life for both; his name is taken, his work sustains the household, his purse supplies the means of existence, his industrial business situation determines the residence, his social standing is theirs.  This does not prevent him from being “henpecked” in many cases, but on the whole it assures his superior status.

Nevertheless it is true that the American woman of whatever origin has a will of her own as no other woman has.  Since the expression of will is one of the chief sources of human pleasures, one of the chief, most persistent activities, man and wife enter into a contest for supremacy in the household.  It may be settled quietly and without even recognizing its existence, on the common plan that the woman shall have charge of the home and the man of his business; it may rage with violence over the fundamental as well as the trivial things of home.  After all, it is not the importance of a thing that determines the size of the row it may raise; men have killed each other over a nickel because defeat over even this trifle was intolerable.

What are the chief sources of conflict?  For to name them all would be simply to name every possible source of difference of opinion that exists.  Let us take as an example Extravagance.

This is a new development.  In the former days the bulk of purchases was made by the husband, in whose hands the purse strings were tightly clutched.  With the growth of the cities and industry, the development of the department store and rise of shopping as an institution, the man gave place to his wife largely because industry would not let him off during the daytime.  So the housewife disbursed most of the funds of her home,—­and there arose one of the fiercest and most persistent of domestic conflicts.

Despite the fact that most American husbands turn over their purses to their wives, they still regard the money as their own.  The desire to “get ahead” is an insistent one, returning with redoubled force after each expenditure.  He finds his entire income gone each week or month, or finds less left than he expected.  “Where does it all go?” is his cry; “Must we spend as much as we do?” “How do people get along who get less than we do?”

To this his wife has the answer, “We must have this, and we must have that.  We must live as our neighbors do.”

Here is the keynote to the situation.  There has been a democratization of society of this nature; there has been a spread throughout the community of aristocratic tastes.  The woman of even the poor and the middle classes must have her spring and autumn suits, her dresses for summer, her summer and winter hats.  Her husband too must change his clothes with each shift of the season.  For this the enterprise of the clothing trade, the splendid display of the department stores are responsible, awakening desire and dissatisfaction.