Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men

[187]

XXXVII. trust funds.

The laws and the courts have much to say about “trust funds;” but is not almost all the property owned by women really a trust fund, in the sense that they usually intrust it to somebody, without pretending, or seeking, or even desiring to know anything about it for themselves? Their comfort and the usefulness of their lives, the health and prosperity of their children, may depend upon that property's being well cared for. If they keep house, they feel themselves responsible for the proper preservation of the house as to repair and drainage and all the rest. If they keep a dog, or even a horse, they exercise some supervision over it, and do not leave it wholly to others. But the money that buys the horse or dog, and supports the whole establishment, this they leave absolutely under the control of some man known to them, or sometimes actually unknown. If he tells them to buy a certain stock, they buy it; if he bids then sell, they sell. Whatever legal papers he brings them, they sign-very likely without even reading them. And yet they