Dowries for the Destitute

In the mountain regions of Greece, where old traditions die hard, a girl without a dowry has about as much chance of getting a husband as a girl without a nose. The birth of a boy to a poor family is celebrated in the tavern; baby girls are greeted with laments.

To give some measure of hope to the 70,000 girls that are born each year in Greece, King Paul and his pert, social-minded Queen Frederika have worked out a new kind of welfare-state benefit: dowries for all. Urged on by the King and Queen, 132 citizens' committees all over Greece have conducted drives to raise money for a national dowry fund. Each time 1,000 drachmas ($33.33) is added to the collection, a bank book is issued in the name of some future bride, selected at the age of one to three years by the committee from the poorest families in the village. With compound interest, by the time a girl of 26 has found her man, the value of each book will have grown to some $400, or enough to buy a few fertile acres and a cow.

Last week, as the number of dowries reached 11,500, the King and Queen themselves were busily handing them out in person at the end of a two-month tour covering 50 towns and villages. "The royal couple," said one grateful Greek, "have changed the birth of a girl from a curse to a hope."

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