Dr. Frank Crane says that while traveling in China he encountered a philosopher who undertook to explain the advantages to a gentleman in having a large number of wives. Some of them, the oriental gentleman explained, were necessary as “eye-rests” for the lord of the househehold. This put the Doctor to musing and he decided that if he should have a number of wives he would like to have them divided up somewhat like this: “In the first place, it seems to me, if I were a young man and starting a collection, I would want to pick out first of all three or four business ladies, say department store managers, traveling sales ladies or expert bookkeepers, whose duty it would be, and privilege, to skirmish around and make a living for the bunch, thus relieving me, their lord and master, of the necessity of doing any work.
“Preferably I would have one of these working wives keep the millinery store. While she was employed in the establishment, I could sit out in front under the cool awning, smoke a cigar and discuss politics with the judge and the preacher, occasionally going down to the post office for mail, when I needed exercise. “Another wife would have charge of social matters. She could to the calling go to receptions and teas and bridge parties, and chat with visitors when they dropped in. She would have nothing else to do and could devote all her attention to this. It is pretty hard on a woman to have to take her hands out of the dough and come into the parlor and attend to company.
“Another wife would look after the cooking. She would see that there was always plenty of doughnuts in the jar and apple pies on the pantry shelf. Not being bothered with parlor work, she could study cookery assiduously and bring the food level of the family up to a fascinating pitch.
“Another wife, preferably a stout one, could do the washing and ironing. As it is, laundrymen and hired wash women are expensive and lots of trouble. It seems much more rational to have a wife to do all of this just for her board and keep.
“Another wife would look after the highbrow matters. She could entertain me with literary conversation, read for me the poetry that bores me, and otherwise keep me posted in all things intellectual.
“It might also be well to have a sort of cabaret or flapper wife whom I could occasionally take to frolics, where the wash woman wife would be out of place and the intellectual wife would really not care to go.”
The Doctor might have added that a man with a large strong of wives like that would be a powerful figure in local politics under the new dispensation.
Lead editorial in The Goldsboro News, Sept. 23, 1923
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