Your wife is embarrassed by your tiny paycheck ad: Dec, 1929

This December, 1929 continuing education ad from Modern Mechanix tells men that their neighbors are secretly shaking their heads in pity for their wives because of their paltry paychecks — a mere two months after the Black Friday crash of 1929.

Like it or not, your friends and neighbors size you up by what you EARN –judged by your home and family. Why not surprise them by making good in a big way? Tell them nothing, but on the quiet fit yourself for a bigger place!

ONLY a woman knows how much a wife can suffer when her husband fails to "make the grade"– When she dreads to meet her old school friends–when she skimps on her own appearance "so John can make a good showing at the office"–when she can't give her children things as good as the other children have, and they ask her why.

Brave, loyal woman, she would be the last to reproach her husband because he doesn't earn as much as other men whose wives she is thrown with constantly.

"Money isn't everything," she tells him–yet how she longs for his promotion–for that bigger salary that means better clothes, greater advantages for the children, a new car, more of the comforts and luxuries of life!

What can you, as an ambitious husband, do to help?

Do Your Friends Feel Sorry for Your Wife? (Dec, 1929)