rom the time
when they left the wheels of street cars to the time when they
eventually sneaked back home again into the power house, after
having sported clandestinely along gas mains and water pipes, biting
holes into them as they went.

It was a good subject, commercially. At the end of the year he was
engaged as engineer by a street-car company which was being sued by a
gas company for allowing its current to eat the gas company's
property. He was to have a salary of $1,000 a year. He was going
strong.

One thousand dollars! Millions of married couples live on less than
that. But John didn't even think of asking Mary to share it with him.

Mary, when married, was to be supported in approximate accordance with
the standards of the people John knew. Every John thinks that about
it, without really thinking about it at all. It's just in him.

It bothered Mary. How much money would John want to spend on her
before he would take her? It made her feel like a box of candy in a
store window.

Still, a social standard is a fact. Just as much so as if it could be
laid off with a tape. And there is sense in it.

"After all," thought Mary, "if we had only $1,000 a year we couldn't
live where any of our friends do, and John would be cut off from being
on daily intimate terms with people who could help him; and if we had
children--Well, there you are! We surely couldn't give our children
what _our_ children ought to have. That settles it."

The influence of social standards is greatly increased and complicated
in a world in which women earn their living before marriage and have a
chance to make social standards of their own in place of the ones they
were born to.

We here insert a few notes on cases which are not compositely
imagined--like Mary and John--but are individually (though typically)
existent in real life in one of the large American cities:

R---- J----. Makes $6,500 a year. Only man she was ever "real sweet
on" was a teamster. When she was selling in the perfumes at five a
week he used to take her to the picnics of the Social Dozen Pleasure
Club. They would practice the Denver Lurch on Professor De Vere's
dancing platform. At midnight he would give her a joy-ride home in his
employer's delivery wagon. He still drives that wagon. She is in
charge of suits and costumes and has several assistant buyers under
her. She has bought a cottage for her father, who is an ingrain
weaver in a carpet factory. She wears a