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The Evening Bulletin
Philadelphia, Pa.
12 B
Tuesday, January 30, 1945

Fannie Hurst, Bea Lillie and Betty Smith Agree That

'More Time for Bath Salts' Won't Prove A Good Substitute for a Husband

By FLORENCE FEILER

NEW YORK, Jan. 30.-For a single woman, there is no substitute for a husband despite the suggested panacea of sociological careers and more time for bath salts offered by Dr. Margaret Mead, anthropologist, at a recent Camp Fire Girls professional conference. Fannie Hurst, Ya-Ching Lee, Beatrice Lillie and Betty Smith shake their heads and wag their tongues in violent disagreement. 

Fannie Hurst's explosive remarks make the medieval furniture in her apartment tremble. Even the stiff calla lilies above the massive stone fireplace wilt a bit. 

"Spinsterhood is a cosmic itch, a spiritual eczema," she tartly observes. "Successful and free, the unmarried woman would trade it all for even a miserable husband, since to lose this way is to win! Activities are mere compensations, not substitutions for a man. 

Brains and Spinsterhood

"I shed no tears for the dour old maid - she's outdated. Single women aren't a new phenomena. In the past they've managed to eke out a place in society. But they can't dismiss their frustration with Bath salts!" Miss Hurst jeers.

"Single women I know are alive, alert, stimulating. And they can't afford to become shoddy in thinking or appearance, for there's always a chance to acquire a husband." Miss Hurst smiles and the calla lilies straighten up.

INTERVIEWED next, Ya-Ching Lee, Chinese flier and lecturer, recognizes but one difference in women's marital status: The single woman can devote even more time toward China's reconstruction.

"It is every Chinese woman's duty to devote her talents to her country, single or married," she states firmly. "There is no room for the parasite who marries just to gain support.

Less of a Problem in China

"Actually China has a better distribution of the sexes than here, so the number of single women is not such a problem," Miss Lee adds. "Singleness is mostly a matter of choice. Girls are more independent now and able to take care of themselves.

"We never think about women's marital status and titles of address don't indicate domestic roles. Single women have equal importance with married women if they are doing worth while work - social stigmas don't exist," she concludes.

Traveling from east to west, Beatrice Lillie is found relaxing between acts on a chaise longue in a quick-change dressing room where costumes fill a rack and colored fezzes line a window shelf.

"In England women are doing jobs they never thought of before, and after the war single girls probably will continue working where they're needed. The words 'old maid' and 'spinster' are antiquated," she says.

Is Remarriage an Answer? 

Miss Lillie agrees that divorces and remarriage might be a solution to the problem of too few men after the war but her opinion is not strong. "I've never really given much thought to it - maybe because I don't know many single women," she admits

The call boy stops at her door and Miss Lillie dashes to her makeup table. "I wish I could add more," she says, "but so much depends on the individual. Certainly there are no real substitutions for a man unless it's work a woman is accustomed to doing."

Having the last word, Betty Smith eyes a couch full of photographs of characters from her book, "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." Behind her are two connecting tables littered with papers and dominated by a typewriter. 

"Many women put marriage behind them because they're nursing a broken heart or its equivalent," she says thoughtfully. "Our best career women choose professions that follow natural lines. Trouble starts when their competition in a man's field arouses masculine ire. Teachers, actresses and writers don't have to get married - they belong to their public.

Form of Polygamy Possible

"Perhaps divorce will absorb the many single women after the war." Her voice is quiet but absolute. "It may become a matter of third wife but first husband - a close relative of polygamy really. Many divorces and widows will not remarry; they will have achieved the marriage goal set by society. And women without the temperament for marriage will feel encouraged to further their careers and stop cheating girls who really need a husband," Miss Smith adds.

The unmarried woman's role may be stylized as desirable by Dr. Mead but another speech on "bath salts instead of husbands" may provoke feminine commentators to use stronger fighting words.

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Fannie Hurst

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Ya-Ching Lee 

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Bea Lillie

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Betty Smith

Point-Saving Egg Dishes for Emergencies

By FRANCES BLACKWOOD

AN egg is an adaptable thing for an emergency.

You can even manufacture your own emergency if you want to and so achieve a canny saving of red ration points.

When you buy less than a pound of ready cooked luncheon meat for instance. Don't stand and fret about what that means in lost fractions of red points - have the butcher add a slice or two of boiled ham or something of that sort to make the mathematics of the point part come out even, then plan for a luncheon dish like this:

EGGS EN COCOTTE
4 cocotte dishes
1 good sized tomato
2 slices boiled ham
4 eggs
asparagus or broccoli

Any individual little baking dishes make "cocotte" dishes. Grease them well with margarine or butter. Peel the tomato and then cut it into small chunks. Heat 1/2 a tablespoon of oil or butter and let the tomato simmer just enough to get softened a bit, then divide it between the four cocottes. Cut the slices of ham into small bits and add this to the tomatoes in the dish. Next lay in some cooked asparagus or broccoli (obviously this is a very nice spot for leftover vegetables).

Break an egg into each dish. Give it a dusting of salt and pepper and put on it a small dab of either butter or margarine. Set the dishes on a flat pan for easy handling and put them into a moderate oven to bake until the eggs are done to the degree you like best. With toasted English muffins and a small but well baked potato it makes a very nice lunch.

So do eggs Renaissance. For this, butter cocotte dishes and put a spoonful of cream sauce in each. Then break an egg into it and season this with salt and pepper. Add a few sliced mushrooms that have simmered to tenderness in their own juice in the top of a double boiler. Cover these with more cream sauce and sprinkle with broken bits of two or three slices of cheese. Dot with small bits of butter or margarine and bake in the oven.

Philadelphian's Talk Sought to Solace Single Girls

PHILADELPHIA-born Dr. Margaret Mead, who is probably the country's most noted woman anthropologist, often breaks into news headlines with thought-provoking pronouncements.

Her address in New York, which brought the accompanying comment from several noted women, was aimed at heartening girls who, because of the war, may be doomed to spinsterhood.

The gist of Dr. Mead's talk was that there are many pleasures to be found in unmarried life and that those women who now and in the future can't find husbands should not feel that their lives are blighted.

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Dr. Mead

She said: "We must teach girls that it is not desperate, whatever happens. There are all sorts of disadvantages to having a husband, as well as advantages." (Here she added: "There is, for example, lots more time for bath salts if you aren't married!")

"The single woman sees men in the daytime, and works with them. There's a certain advantage to that. The married woman sees her husband from 7.30 o'clock at night until the early commuters' train pulls out in the morning. He is doing work entirely different from hers, and work that she doesn't always understand."

Dr. Meade's compensating view for the spinster was that married life is often overestimated, the single state underestimated.

Dr. Mead, 44, is associate curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History, New York. In 1936 she married Gregory Bateson, also an anthropologist. Her father, Dr. Edward Sherwood Mead, is professor of finance at the Wharton School.

Following her academic training at de Pauw University and Barnard College this Phi Beta Kappa went to the Southwest Pacific, to islands since ravaged by war, where she lived among head hunters and experienced hair-raising adventures.