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.