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8. Womanpower-And How It Is Used

InAmerica of mid-twentieth century, Midas is a lady.

You, Mrs. or Miss America, are now the dominant owner of the stocks of our great industrial, utility, and railroad corporations.

You are more and more the acknowledged as well as the actual money manager in the home. In most families, you either do all the family's banking or you split the job with your husband, and in half the families you and not your husband handle the more intricate banking jobs, such as arranging personal loans or the mortgage.

Of course, you always have been the undisputed boss in the department store, the supermarket.

You are womanpower. To find out to what extent, read on.

Midas Is a Lady

A long time ago, in one of the first articles I ever wrote for a national magazine, I quoted an estimate that the Ameri­can woman spends 85 per cent of all the money spent in this country to emphasize a point that then wasn't nearly as generally recognized as now—namely, the stupendous economic power of the American woman. Shortly after the article appeared, I re­ceived a call from the editor.

"What was the source for your 85 per cent figure?" he asked.

Promptly, I gave him the name of the organization.

I recall vividly his silence before he said, “Well, this is interest­ing. Your 'source' just phoned us to ask permission to quote your article as the authority for the statistic. They said they have been using the figure without knowing where it came from and they were glad to be able to trace it to you."

That taught me a valuable lesson. It also sent me on a long search for the origin of the statistic—a search which finally led me to the conclusion that it was strictly folklore. In recent years, I've often explained that the claim that women buy 85 per cent of all America's goods and services is undoubtedly an exaggera­tion, but that it's close enough to the truth to be accepted until someone does a real research job.

What prompts me into print about this is that Fortune mag­azine (a magazine aimed mostly at men) has finally presented a detailed breakdown of the spending done by the American female. It is an impressive research job. Does it prove the 85 per cent claim? No. But it does indicate that the American woman directly spends more than half the money going into goods and services—and, of course, her direct spending is just the beginning of the tale.

To be more specific, in 1954, the year Fortune used for its study, all of us—men, women, and children—spent an enormous $236,500,000,000. And here is how we spent it:

Food and tobacco, $78,600,000,000. Of this, $28,600,000,000 went for meals eaten out, liquor, and tobacco—purchases weighted on the male side. But $50,000,000,000 went for food consumed at home, most of which was bought by women. Women clearly dominate spending for food.

Clothing, accessories, and jewelry, $24,500,000,000. Of this, $15,000,000,000 went for women's clothes and their cleaning, and women spent most of the $6,000,000,000 going for men's and boys' clothing. Women dominant.

Personal care, $2,800,000,000. This included mostly toilet articles and preparations and beauty parlors. Women dominant by a wide margin.

Housing, $29,700,000,000. Women and men share here.

Household operation, $30,800,000,000. Men today help buy much household equipment and furnishings, but women still dominate this category.

Medical care, $11,800,000,000. Women account for 63 per cent of spending for major medical expenses.

Transportation, $27,000,000,000. Of this, $24,000,000,000 went to cars and car operation. While men dominate in this sphere, Fortune's research indicates they may not dominate as much as people think.

Recreation, $12,200,000,000. This included books, magazines, theater admissions, toys, etc. Women hold their own in this classification.

The balance of $19,000,000,000 went to education, religion and welfare, foreign travel, and business services. Men obviously dominant.

But this accounts only for direct spending by women! Since practically every family contains a woman—as wife, family head, or housekeeper—women profoundly influence spending by others. And women's economic power is intensified by the fact that one-third of all workers today are women.

So even when the exaggerated 85 per cent statistic is reduced to Fortune's more modest 50 to 60 per cent, you have to start building up all over again to grasp the extent of the American woman's power.

At the end of 1960, the total spending of all of us was up to $328,200,000,000. Apply the percentages to this bigger chunk.

How Brides Equal Business

Leading the list of times when the American woman spends freely is when she is becoming a bride. Since most of the brides-to-be in the next twenty years already are born, an accelerating rate of marriages through the sixties and seventies is a virtual certainty.

This is a business story of significance, for during the period she is engaged and is a bride the American girl spends at the fastest rate of her entire life. Right now, the bridal market is placed at a towering five billion dollars annually (not including housing, rents, and the like). As the number of brides climbs and their purchasing power rises too, this market will balloon.

Government statistical agencies have never even tried to assess the impact of the bride on this country's economy. But the magazine Modern Bride recently did some unprecedented re­search into the dimensions of its market and some of the findings are decidedly provocative.

For instance, one thought-stimulating disclosure is that be­tween the moment of her engagement and eight weeks after her marriage the American bride buys most of the housewares she will purchase in her whole lifetime. She'll buy 75 per cent of all the sheets and towels, 64 per cent of all the blankets, glassware, pots and pans, 60 per cent of all the china and flatware, 51 per cent of all electric housewares. She'll even buy more than a third of all her furniture, almost a third of all her major appliances.

Another impressive finding is that the average spending per wedding today comes to more than $3,000—and this is a con­servative figure, including only wedding expenses, gifts, immediate furnishings, etc.

A third angle that surprised me is the "evenness" of the bridal market in this era. No longer are spring and June the wedding periods. Actually, last year more marriages took place between July and December than during the first half—and June's lead has been cut way down.

The buying patterns of the young marrieds differ markedly from those of any other group. Simply because they are young marrieds and usually start housekeeping from scratch, they are purchasers of a myriad of products and services in volume and the biggest buyers of any income class on the installment plan.

The upsurge in marriages beginning in the mid-sixties, there­fore, will mean a housing spurt of unmatched proportions. As the 1950s ended, we considered one million plus new houses a year as a vast spur to business. As the 1960s end, two million additional homes a year will be the new "normal."

And what is true of houses will be true of all the things and services that go into houses, of cars and of products not yet known to us. And as the new brides have babies, the upswing in our population will take on renewed strength and the cycle will start again.

In many other lands a zooming population is a terrifying prob­lem. In our nation the equation is: brides equal babies equal business equals boom. . . .

A Profile of the Woman Investor

Among the millions of adult Americans who own stocks today, women outnumber men by 52.5 to 47.5 per cent. Among the millions who have become stockholders for the first time during the past three years, women outnumber men by an even fatter margin, 56.3 to 43.7 per cent.

Today, over 6,347,000 individual women are shareholders, about double the total as recently as seven years ago. Today, more than 4,000,000 housewives own stocks, the largest single group in the stock market.

These disclosures are startling confirmation of the extent to which stock ownership has become a mass movement in Amer­ica, and to the extent the American woman has gone into the stock market as an individual on her own.

Who is this woman investor? What sort of female is she? From interviews with Wall Street brokers, personal talks with hundreds of women in every part of the country in recent years, and author­itative surveys of women stockholders, these following points emerge about her.

She is generally more conservative in her investments than her male counterpart, but when she does gamble she goes to ex­tremes. She adores stock tips, immediately responds to hot rumors. She usually prefers to deal with men brokers and men advisers. She often buys a stock of a corporation because she uses or likes the products the corporation makes.

She frequently becomes attached to specific stocks—notably, American Tel & Tel—and she won't sell no matter what the advice. She views the stock market as an exciting hobby as well as a serious business from which she expects to profit. She is likely to be much more active if she is in the middle-income class than if she is wealthy and surrounded by top advisers. She is exceedingly anxious to learn and, once she has bought a share of stock, she is a devoted listener at financial forums, as eager a reader of stock market lore as any man (or more so).

Sure, these are generalizations and some appear contradictory. Yet there's more than a pinch of truth to each. You can see the basic conservatism in the fact that women are by far the domi­nant owners of such traditional blue chips as American Tel & Tel, du Pont, and Eastman Kodak. The desire to protect capital and to stick to the established corporation is obvious—and en­tirely proper considering that many women stockholders are widows who must preserve their nest eggs.

At the same time, you can see the gambling fringe in the fact that the names of women dot the stockholder lists of the risky glamour companies. When a woman goes for a gamble, she goes!

You can see her preference for men advisers in a comparison of the client lists of men and women brokers and the fact that in most cases successful women brokers find it necessary to be part of a firm headed by a man. And again and again, brokers report their women customers will insist on buying the stock of a corporation making a product they like (instinctive reasoning which is pretty sound, incidentally).

You can see her eagerness to learn in the way hundreds of thousands of women have been jamming finance forums in recent years, taking courses in the stock market, joining investment clubs, etc.

The New York Stock Exchange's census suggests only that the woman stockholder is the average stockholder—meaning she is in her late forties, has a household income of $7,000, and has some savings outside the market. But these other points help bring her to life. And towering over all other facets is the sheer size of our lead over men in share ownership today. In just a few years the woman investor has ceased to be a freak. She is now in the majority!

The Part-Time Woman Worker

Florence literally ran into the house and fell into a chair. "What I ought to do is get a job," she gasped. "I've never been so exhausted from doing things that leave me frustrated. It seems to me that all I do all day long is chauffeur the kids around and slave for charity affairs that don't make money. You don't know how right you were when you once told me that you don't work as hard with a job as I do without one."

"Well, why not?" I came back. "You're becoming a natural for a part-time job." And Florence is (and perhaps so are you) becoming a natural for a part-time job. She is now a married woman in the thirty-five-to-forty-four age bracket—typical of the woman part-time worker in our land. Her children are moving up in the teens, a period when women frequently seek interests outside the home. She easily can qualify for work in any of dozens of service or trade occupations. More women are working part time in our country today than ever before in our nation's history. The number of women with part-time jobs has been rising much faster than the number of women or men employed full time in the past several years. The number of women working part time has been increasing much faster than the number of men so employed.

Even the experts may be startled by the finding that over nine million women who will be working this year will be part-time job-holders, almost one-third of all women workers. During the past decade, the rise in women part-time workers has been a spectacular 47 per cent, compared with a rise in the number working full time of 15 per cent. Almost three-fifths of all part-time workers are women.

The biggest increase in the number of women working part time has come in the group working the year round, and more than half of the increase has been due to the influx of older women—over forty-five—into this job market. Sixty per cent of women working part time are married and living with their husbands.

Women are working part time in every major industry and occupation in our country. While the majority still are in such traditional occupations as sales clerks, waitresses, and beauty operators, they also are employed part time as teachers, nurses, librarians, and social workers. And most women work part time not because they can't get full-time jobs. They choose part-time work because of competing demands of home and school, because they don't want full-time jobs. A major aim is to make money, of course, but factors also are a desire to maintain a skill, develop outside interests, and gain work experience.

Big as the female part-time work force is, it'll get bigger. In 1959, Mrs. Alice K. Leopold, Assistant to the Labor Secretary, predicted the female part-time work force will swell another 18 per cent in the next five years, 30 per cent in the coming ten. For more and more businesses are discovering the value of the part-time woman worker to meet peak business periods and to relieve regular employees from unusually long hours. More and more women are simultaneously discovering the advantages to them of part-time jobs.

Florence may not realize it yet, but she is on her way back to a part-time job. And if she is as responsible about meeting her job schedule as she is about meeting her daughters' date schedules, she'll be a jewel to her employer and a new woman to her over­worked self.

Older Working Women

If I were to ask you to guess the average age of women workers in this country today, I'll wager the first picture that would cross your mind would be of a young woman behind a desk or counter, and probably you'd say, "Oh, the average is between twenty and thirty years."

I have just asked close to one hundred people in my office and around my home this question; the overwhelming majority of replies pinpointed this range; the highest guess I got was thirty-two years. Well, the people I interviewed were way off base, and if you answered this way you'd be wrong too.

The average age of women working in America today is over forty!

The median age is forty. "Median" is the midpoint, so this means half of the 23,000,000 American women now working are over forty.

Just since 1940, the average age of women workers has ad­vanced as much as in the preceding forty years of this century. Among all women workers, almost two-fifths are forty-five or older. Among management and household workers, the percentage in the forty-five-to-sixty-four age bracket is much higher.

It's a fascinating aspect of our economic life which cries out for analysis. Why is this happening? What does it mean? The Department of Labor offers no explanation beyond saying that in this country, "when their children are partly grown and no longer need constant attention, many women return to work," and, "there was a considerable movement of women beyond 35 into the labor force during wartime and many of them remained at work after the war."

I can go beyond these obvious reasons. More and more older women are holding down jobs because of their need and desire for a higher standard of living than they could achieve with just one paycheck in the family. This is the basic economic force, which is as powerful in this phase of relative price stability as during the past cycle of skyrocketing living costs.

More and more older women are holding down jobs because this era of high employment has opened job opportunities to them and has helped tear down the prejudices against older women workers. A lot of older women who needed and wanted to work in the depression thirties couldn't because they couldn't get the jobs. Now there are jobs and the prejudice against the older woman worker has in many instances been replaced by a prejudice for her. And more and more are working because our "push-button" way of life has given them more free time and they're bored with staying home.

And what does it imply—to businessmen particularly? It under­lines again the really insatiable market for any devices and ap­pliances that will save time and energy in the cleaning of houses, the preparing and serving of food, the care of clothes, etc. It emphasizes that there's a virtually unlimited market for cosmetics that will help improve the older woman's appearance and for foods and drugs that will make her healthier, more energetic. It suggests there's a vast, unprobed market for clothes designed strictly for the older woman worker, clothes that are youthful and stylish yet appropriate and durable. It is astounding to me how much our designers are ignoring this older career woman market. It indicates there's an immense unprobed travel market too, a market geared to this older woman who has money to travel but who often doesn't know how or where to go or what to do when she gets there.

We have become a nation of working women; now we are becoming a nation of older working women.

I can only make stabs at the whys and implications, for our generation is experiencing this for the first time in all history, and we have no books to which to turn for answers. The older American woman is the expert writing the book as she lives and works.

How To Be an Ideal Corporate Wife"

Are you, Mrs. America, a good "executive wife"? Do you, Mr. Executive, have a wife who is helping you to succeed in business?

All over the nation today, corporations developing and training young men to be executives also are studying what kind of wives they have. Says William Biehl, vice-president of George Fry & Associates, consulting management engineers of Chicago: "We know of cases where promotions are or are not being made, with the wife figuring prominently in the decision!" Adds Mr. Fry: "Whenever an executive is to be employed from outside the company, employers now usually ask to meet his wife before a hiring decision is made."

This facet of our corporate society may sicken you but it's real. This aspect of our business life may strike you as an Ameri­can version of "Big Brother," but it has been fact, it is fact, it will be fact.

To find out the "Role of the Executive's Wife," the Fry firm recently conducted a panel consisting of a cross section of execu­tives, their wives, and Fry's management engineers. Here's the panel's profile of the "ideal corporate wife."

1. The "ideal corporate wife" should have had some previous business experience, preferably as a private secretary to an executive, so she has insight into office routine and business pressures and tempos.
2. She should have a college degree or at least be of the "college type" with experience in mingling with other women.
3. She should be well adjusted, the product of a happy home and have a background as similar as possible to her husband's so she may "grow with him."
4. She should be able to maintain a happy home for her husband, to keep the children from underfoot when he is obviously on edge, and to create an atmosphere of calmness and relaxation when he's in such moods.
5. She should have no qualms about moving when her husband's job requires it, and she should be able to entertain well either at home or when she travels with him to trade shows or conventions.
6. She should know about her husband's business and be able to listen and ask intelligent questions so she can help him out of the mental doldrums when the need arises.
7. She should keep abreast of marketing procedures and public desires so she can give a worthwhile opinion on a new product or problem.
8. She should be able to keep a confidence and to get along well with wives of her husband's associates or subordinates.
9. She should be able to keep pace with her husband's thinking as he learns to act and think like an executive.
10. Of course, she must not drink excessively or be jealous of her husband's job, his secretary, luncheon partners, or working time.
11. She should be able to represent her husband in the community and church—be a "symbol of everything her husband stands for."
12. She should not keep up a constant campaign to get her husband a raise, regardless of how she feels, for this can cause a "slight inferiority complex in some men."
13. She should be a good planner and be able to co-ordinate their family life and his business schedule. For instance, some wives contact their husband's secretaries weekly to inform them of coming social engagements and the secretaries keep the wives up to date on business plans. "This system saves clashing and arguing."

Well, there she is—an angelic person indeed. Revoltingly so, if I may be permitted a biased judgment. In fact, if you—or your wife—score 50 to 60 per cent on this test, I'd say you are about as ideal as I could take.

Seriously, check yourself, see how closely you come to the "ideal" partner of a corporate executive in America, 1954.

Also seriously ... I flunked.

How To Rebel Discreetly

To all the wives of America's businessmen who resent being "married" to their husband's corporation, I send a warning: Rebel at the destestable concept of the "corporate wife" by all means— but do it discreetly. Even if your husband's boss encourages you to speak up, don't say publicly that you resent being forced to conform to the corporation's standard for the "ideal" wife and that you doubt whether corporation life is or should be One Big Happy Family. Under no circumstances indicate that you question the need for his devoting so many evenings to wining and dining visiting firemen. And don't talk to newspapermen about your ideas of the role of the executive wife until you've cleared your statements with your husband's corporation. For as the following true story will underline, ignoring these warnings can get you and your husband into a lot of trouble.

The wife of a key executive of one of America's top and best-known corporations was among several wives recently interviewed by the Chicago management engineering firm of John A. Patton on the way corporations could improve protection of their executives' energies and health. Confident that she was making a contribution to businessmen's understanding of their own em­ployees, she said: "Companies should spread the feeling that they have not bought every moment of a man's time. Very often, a successful executive's wife can make no plans until his business schedule has been filled. Then it is too late for any plans, and anyway there is no spare energy in the man. He must rest for next week's schedule."

These hardly seemed inflammable remarks and they were in­cluded in a number of quotations that appeared in a Sunday feature article in a newspaper. Shortly after, the corporation's public relations men called on Mr. Patton. This is what happened —in Mr. Patron's own words to me.

"When they were finally satisfied with the authenticity of the quote and the permission of the wife to quote her, they switched to a tirade on the subject.

" 'The article was anti-business. If the chairman of the board got wind of this, he would blow his top. Would I delete it from further publication? This company has been damned good to

Mrs.–––for the past thirty years, what's she shooting off her

mouth for? We checked up on her (Gestapo) and found out that she's the type that likes opera (whatever that has to do with it). She doesn't even have a family, but likes to sit around and generalize about issues. Our president has preached just the opposite of what she's said for years. We have an exemplary record on this issue/ and so on and on."

"All because of those few mild comments?" I asked incredu­lously.

"Yes," answered Mr. Patton, "which leads us to believe that some of our snow-white industry leaders are hypocritical. They will issue a glowing release, stating that the wife does not have to marry the business. All is well in executive wifeland, but she had better not make any statements without clearing them with public relations."

Hints about Traveling Husbands

Joe recently was made vice president of his company, a research outfit with clients all over the country. His wife was elated at the size of his raise; she was considerably less so at the news that his new responsibilities would necessitate his being away from home about two hundred nights a year.

Harry chalked up a superb cost-cutting record for his company in the first quarter of this year, is obviously on his way up. His wife is thrilled at the salary increases he has received; she is taking an exceedingly dim view of the fact that he is traveling more and more to branches of his company, last month was home for only two weekends.

I know Joe and Harry and their wives well. But I hadn't thought of them as an "economic problem" until the other day when I heard that a management engineering firm had analyzed "the plight of the wife with the traveling husband," because, increasingly, corporations were calling in this firm to suggest ways to ease the hardship which traveling places on wires.

What's more, the problem will get worse before it gets better, and it is particularly acute in the manufacturing business where most firms have nation-wide commitments. Because transporta­tion is becoming so easy and fast, most clients expect personal calls from their suppliers, most top management men expect their junior executives to inspect personally what's going on in branches around the country.

So the man who is "getting ahead" in our complex industrial society is becoming as traveled as the proverbial salesman. His wife is being compelled to accept a limited social life. She also is being forced to take on chores that normally would be assumed by her husband—to sign contracts, handle business deals, etc.

What recommendations are being made to companies which at least are socially aware of the problem? Some penetrating, refreshing things.

(1) Bring the husbands home every weekend at company ex­pense if they are less than 500 miles away. Let them come home free every other weekend if 1,000 miles away, and every third weekend if 1,000 to 2,000 miles distant. Or as an alternative, suggest that the wife visit the husband—at the company's expense.
(2)        Check the morale of the wives just as you check the morale of your employees. One survey highlighted the fact that wives of men who traveled a lot were deeply envious of wives whose husbands  "never got out-of-town  assignments."  The  company fixed that in a hurry; all the men were put on the same traveling basis.

(3)        Let the wives travel with their husbands, the company paying the transportation, whenever feasible.

(4)        Be fair in assigning men to jobs. Rotate them so that the man who is sent on an assignment far from his family one time gets his next job within commuting distance of his home.

(5)        Accommodate employees who need special arrangements. One engineer travels by car with his wife and small child. The firm always gives him enough advance notice so he can make his assignment using an automobile.

It's the "Great White Father" approach in some ways, admit­tedly, but it makes sense. Corporations which frequently hire, fire, or advance a man on the basis of the sort of wife he has might as well carry it a step farther and do their best to keep the wife content.

The head of the management engineering firm's masculine conclusion, by the way, is that "the ideal arrangement, of course, for companies with this (a traveling) problem is to hire single men." (But as a female, I have news for him. If the man is worth hiring, he won't stay single long. No corporation yet has discovered the substitute for that.)

How Much Is a Wife Worth—In Dollars and Cents?

Surrounding our retreat in the country are homes run by women whose husbands and children leave early each weekday to go to work and to school. All have the latest appliances; all are en­thusiastic users of prepared foods; all appear to enjoy considerable leisure. Despite appearances, though, if any of these women were to die suddenly, the dollars-and-cents cost to her husband of replacing her would be immense and the expense would go on and on. I'm writing here solely in money terms, not touching on emotional or social aspects.

Yet, what dollars-and-cents and replacement value does our society place on the work of the woman at home? So little that "85 per cent of all life insurance policies are bought by men, only 8 per cent by women, and the average value is more than four times as great for men as for women." So little that more and more women, unhappy in their role at home, "look for prestige and recognition outside the home, usually, although not necessarily, in paid employment." So little that it has become popular to satirize the American wife as an "overprivileged, pampered, useless parasite . . . giving her husband ulcers and heart attacks in exchange for a mink coat and diamonds."

As a dedicated career woman in a generation which has wit­nessed the greatest advances in employment of women in history, I understandably have written mostly about the contributions made by women in jobs.

But here I am switching, as a result of just having read a fascinating book, A Changing America: At Work and Play by the nationally known economist, A. W. Zelomek. For in the process of examining the dynamic, contradictory forces at work in our society in mid-twentieth century and asking probing ques­tions about our standards of values, Mr. Zelomek takes a long look at "Modern Woman." And he comes up with some judg­ments that command attention.

Today, 35 per cent of all adult women are in the working force and 24 per cent of all married women are holding down paid jobs. But what about the other tens of millions, the house­wives at home?

For her work, the housewife is not only unpaid, she isn't even recognized as a contributor to our economy. When a textile company produces a fifty-dollar pair of curtains, for instance, that fifty dollars is counted in our nation's total production. But when a housewife buys ten dollars worth of material and by her sewing and design, turns it into a fifty-dollar pair of curtains, the only "production" counted is the ten dollars worth of ma­terial.

For her work, our society reserves few sincere compliments. In fact, with extraordinary insight, Mr. Zelomek points out that much of the housework today "is the most unrewarding kind of maintenance work, like the housecleaning that nobody notices unless it's not done."

For her vitally important work in community affairs, she even may be condemned and ridiculed. Far too little attention is paid to some of the spectacular things she has achieved—permanent registration and extension of civil services in many States, passage of the Pure Food and Drug Law, passage of school attendance laws, modern milk codes. The attitude that the woman who goes in for civic affairs is neglecting her duties for "a nonessential activity" is deplorable at a time when we so desperately need a politically mature citizenry.

"Women drive themselves in an attempt to be a combination mother (which includes chauffeur, nurse, PTA participant, etc., etc.), community worker, and career girl, and with it all to remain a glamour girl," declares Mr. Zelomek. And he adds, "there are more women standing on subways and buses today than on pedestals being worshiped."

Over and over in his book, the economist asks questions lead­ing up to his final message: "It is good to be able to boast of our standard of living; we should also be able to boast of our standard of values." Nowhere does he make the point so strongly as in his appraisal of the American woman who works in the home as well as outside of it. For all of us, I murmur, "Thanks, Mr. Zelomek."

How Much Does Built-in Maid Service Cost?

Which would you rather do, Mrs. America? Spend $4.90 to feed your family this Sunday and take five and one-half hours to prepare the meals? Or spend $6.70 to feed your family and take only a little over one and one-half hours to prepare the meals?

Even if you're operating on a rigidly limited budget, you're in a shrinking minority if you choose to save money rather than time. For you're becoming increasingly devoted to the so-called convenience foods—foods that you buy ready to cook and serve. You're showing a rising awareness that these foods really do represent built-in maid service in your home. You're demanding an expanding variety of the foods so you can avoid time-consum­ing kitchen tasks even when you serve your family and friends elaborate or unusual meals. And most significantly, you're demon­strating in an unmistakable way that you're willing to pay the extra dollars it costs to buy the convenience foods—and it costs you plenty.

That $1.80 difference between the cost of a day's home-pre­pared meals for a family of four and a day's ready-to-serve meals adds up to an impressive $657.00 over a year. This official estimate of the cost of a day's meals by the Department of Agriculture is an average for the nation, and, as many housewives know, it's a most conservative one.

But the popularity of convenience foods—most dramatically illustrated by the upsurge in the consumption of frozen foods-is one of the great food developments of this century. And here is a fundamental reason our food bills go up, up, up, and the powerful uptrend continues in periods of declining as well as rising farm prices.

In my home last Sunday when, instead of four, we were sud­denly ten for cocktails and dinner, I lived this story of built-in maid service and its cost to the hilt. What did we do? In the deepfreeze, we found boxes of prepared hors d'oeuvres, packages of frozen vegetables, of cleaned and cut-up poultry, partially baked rolls, etc. In less than a half-hour, the snacks were de­frosted, heated, and ready to serve. In less than two hours, the entire meal was ready.

Expensive? By any standard, definitely. But it was convenient and timesaving beyond anything ever dreamed of only a decade ago. Had we tried to prepare that meal from scratch, it would have taken at least a half day. For the advantages of convenience and leisure I was and am willing to pay—and so obviously are you.

This is why, from zero thirty years ago the number of prepared frozen foods has grown to more than three hundred items today, according to the National Association of Food Chains. This is why sales of frozen foods in grocery stores are now crossing the two-billion-dollar-a-year mark and frozen foods now account for 4 per cent of all grocery store sales. This is a prime reason why the total of items in the average modern supermarket has sky­rocketed from a thousand in 1933 to about six thousand today, and the association estimates that about twenty new products are offered buyers every working day of the year.

What it means is ever-increasing pressure on our food budgets; we're paying for the convenience, and let's not kid ourselves about it. What it means is a constant upgrading in our food standards, which will go on despite temporary ups and downs in the economy.

"And what's coming next?" I asked John A. Logan, president of the Food Chains Association, after he had given me the statistics.

"Dehydrated frozen apples," said he. "Excellent for pie fillings."

"Okay," said I, "put the item on the market and I'll buy it and try it. If I like it, I'll add it to my list, even though this hikes my food bill some more pennies." And I’11 wager you would say the same.

How To Make Your Husband Hate You

All True, The Man's Magazine wanted to prove when it hired the Starch research organization a short time ago to make a survey of buyers of life insurance was that the American male is the dominant influence in the purchase of life insurance. All it was trying to get was a good argument to coax more life insurance companies into advertising in its pages.

Simple enough. But what has come out of the research is a lot more than evidence to back up the obvious point that the husband usually picks out the insurance company and type of policy. I have just read the entire study. When I started reading, I planned to glance at just a few pages and then to throw the thing into the wastepaper basket. Instead, I have been staring at each page with fascination, for here are some of the startling disclosures of this survey.

On the surface a husband may appear quite reasonable and calm about the purchase of insurance on his own life. Under­neath he hates the whole idea. His hostility is shattering. In direct questioning he won't voluntarily reveal his "shameful" attitudes toward life insurance. But when permitted to attribute his own attitudes to someone else, he reveals irrational, deeply rooted anxieties about life insurance agents, his beneficiaries, and death. The possibility that some unappreciative spouse or close relative might profit financially from his death terrifies and enrages him.

If he could, he would avoid in real life any contact with life insurance. But since he recognizes his financial responsibilities as a husband and father, he knows he can't do that, and so he tries to minimize his discomforts. If there are no children in the family, he may limit the influence his wife exerts on his life insurance program. In most cases, he'll try to hide his fear about "collusion" between his wife and the insurance agent by pretend­ing that while insurance agents in general are "only interested in making a fat commission," his own agent is a "friend."

This is an aspect about life insurance purchases I have not seen suggested before. Here is a bitterness the life insurance in­dustry may not even realize exists.

By scientifically approved methods, the research organization chose in thirty-one city areas a sample of homes having both a husband and wife and reporting purchase of a life insurance policy in the previous twelve months. As part of the interview each husband was shown a crude drawing of a wife receiving a $10,000 life insurance check from an agent. The drawing was deliberately ambiguous so that the viewer's interpretation of it would come from within himself and not from the illustration. Here are typical comments:

"Boy, will she have a good time! She will blow the whole thing in less than a year . . ."

"She's thinking, 'Thank God he died while I'm still young enough to go out and hook some other slob—not when I'm sixty. Now I'm free/ . . ."

"She might be thinking he's worth more dead than alive. . . ."

Each husband was shown another crude drawing of a wife, husband, and insurance agent in the agent's office. The wife is speaking and the agent is looking toward her. Typical interpre­tations:

"She might even be saying, 'We could afford a larger amount, dear, don't you think?' And the husband thinks he is being taken advantage of in front of the agent. . . ."

"You can see that the man isn't too anxious to sign those papers, but he'll get worn down by his wife and the insurance man. . . ."

If this is the way it really is—and the more I think about it, the more I suspect it is—then the whole concept of how to sell life insurance to us needs a thorough reappraisal. A purchase so vitally important to the entire family should not involve such fear and hostility.

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