till
head of the household. All the humorists emphasize this, and the
novelist depicts it as the common situation. The husband is represented
as yoked to the wheel of his wife's whims, tyrannized over by the one he
works for.

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 h