custom, society, all recognize this fact of equality in the one case, why,
in the name of common-sense, should they not equally recognize it in the
other?

And, again, it may often be far easier to assign a sphere to each partner
in marriage than in business; and therefore the double headship of a family
will involve less need of collision. In nine cases out of ten, the external
support of the family will devolve upon the husband, unquestioned by the
wife; and its internal economy upon the wife, unquestioned by the husband.
No voluntary distribution of powers and duties between business partners
can work so naturally, on the whole, as this simple and easy demarcation,
with which the claim of suffrage makes no necessary interference. It may
require angry discussion to decide which of two business partners shall
buy, and which shall sell; which shall keep the books, and which do the
active work, and so on; but all this is usually settled in married life by
the natural order of things. Even in regard to the management of children,
where collision is likely to come, if anywhere, it can commonly be settled
by that happy formula of Jean Paul's, that the mother usually supplies the
commas and the semicolons in the child's book of life, and the father the
colons and periods. And as to matters in general, the simple and practical
rule, that each question that arises should be decided by that partner who
has personally most at stake in it, will, in ninety-nine times out of a
hundred, carry the domestic partnership through without shipwreck. Those
who cannot meet the hundredth case by mutual forbearance are in a condition
of shipwreck already.




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