Page:The case for women's suffrage.djvu/97

 crying out for legislation to prohibit wage-earning by married women. In view of all this, one would expect to find married women in the full enjoyment of a definite and well-secured right to maintenance by their husbands.

What are the facts of the case? I quote the unemotional words of a well-known legal textbook: "The marriage imposes on the husband the duty of maintaining her  although the direct methods assigned by law to enforce it have for their objects anything rather than the vindication of the rights of injured married women. The only legal reason why a husband should support his wife is that she may not become a burden on the parish. So long as this calamity is averted the wife has no claim on her husband, and, in fact, she has no direct claim on him in any circumstances whatever; for even in the case of positive starvation she can only come on the parish for relief, and then the parish authorities will insist that her husband shall provide for her to the extent at least of sustaining life."

There is another means whereby a wife may compel her husband to provide her with the necessaries of life: she can pledge his credit. In ordering necessaries, she is presumed to be acting as his agent, and he becomes liable to pay for them. Obviously, this protection exists only in cases where tradesmen are willing to give credit, and it will be lost if the husband forbids his wife to pledge his credit. One frequently hears men complaining that it should be