The money belongs to them under the law.

Even if the women had the spirit to protest, the protest would be useless.

The right of a man to collect and to spend his wife's earnings is protected in many States in the chivalric South.

In Texas, for example, a husband is entitled to his wife's earnings even _though he has deserted her_.
I do not know that this occurs very often in Texas.

Probably not, unless among low-class Negroes.