otested the woman, with spirit. "I bought every bit
of furniture with the money my boarders paid me. Nobody can touch my
property or my earnings to satisfy a claim on you. I am not liable for
your debts."

One of the boarders was a lawyer, and to him that night she took the
case. "A woman's earnings are her own in Massachusetts, are they not?"
she demanded.

"You are what the law calls a free trader," replied the lawyer, "and
whatever you earn is yours, certainly. That is--of course you are
recorded at the city clerk's office?"

"Why no. Why should I be?"

"The law requires it. Otherwise this property, and even the money your
boarders pay you, are liable to attachment for your husband's debts.
Unless you make a specific declaration that you are in business for
yourself, the law assumes that the business is your husband's."

"If I went to work for a salary, should I have to be recorded in order
to keep my own money?" Mrs. McEwan was growing angry.

"No," replied the lawyer, "not if you were careful to keep your income
and your husband's absolutely separate. If you both paid installments on
a piano the piano would be your husband's, not yours. If you bought a
house together, the house could be seized for his debts. Everything you
buy with your money is yours. Everything you buy with money he gives you
is his. Everything you buy together is his. You could not protect such
property from your husband's creditors, or from his heirs."

Mrs. McEwan's case is mild, her wrongs faint beside those of a woman in
Los Angeles, California. Her husband was a doctor, and she had been,
before her marriage, a trained nurse. The young woman had saved several
hundred dollars, and she put the money into a first payment on a pretty
little cottage. During the first two or three years of the marriage the
doctor's wife, from time to time, attended cases of illness, usually
contributing her earnings toward the payment for the house or into
furniture for the house. In all she paid about a thousand dollars, or
something like one-third of the cost of the house. Then children came,
and her earning days were over.

Unfortunately the domestic affairs of this household became disturbed.
The doctor contracted a drug habit. He became irregular in his conduct
and ended by running away with a dissolute woman. After he had gone his
wife found that the house she lived in, and which she had helped to buy,
had been sold, without her knowledge or consent