After he had gone his wife found that the house she lived in, and which she had helped to buy, had been sold, without her knowledge or consent.

The transaction was perfectly legal.

Community property, that is, property held jointly by husband and wife, is absolutely controlled by the husband in California.
In that State community property may even be given away, without the wife's knowledge or consent.
It happened not many years ago that one of the most powerful millionaires in California, in a moment of generosity, conveyed to one of his sons a very valuable property.

Some time afterwards the father and son quarreled, and the father attempted to get back his property.
His plea in court was that his wife's consent to the transaction had never been sought; but the court ruled that since the property was owned in community, the wife's consent did not have to be obtained.
This particular woman happened to be rich enough to stand the experience of having a large slice of property given away without her knowledge, but the same law would have applied to the case of a woman who could not afford it at all.
It is in the case of women wage earners that these laws bear the peculiar asperity.

Down in the cotton-mill districts of the South are scores of men who never, from one year to the next, do a stroke of work.
They are supposed to be "weakly." Their wives and children work eleven hours a day (or night) and every pay day the men go to the mills and collect their wages.