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rights of the wedded wife and her children, in a case in which it appeared that both the husband and the wife had been living in adultery since the separation.

Evidently this is not an uncommon condition in that State, for Justice Nott, speaking for the Supreme Court of South Carolina,1 said: "In this country, where divorces are not allowed for any cause whatever, we sometimes see men of excellent character unfortunate in their marriages, and virtuous women abandoned or driven away homeless by their husbands, who would be doomed to celibacy and solitude if they did not form connections which the law does not allow, and who make excellent husbands and virtuous wives still."

President Woolsey some years ago, speaking of South Carolina, said: "The white wife has often to endure the infidelity of her husband as something inevitable which no law could remedy and which public opinion did not severely rebuke." 2

In another opinion of the South Carolina Supreme Court it is said: "The most distressing cases, justifying divorce even upon Scriptural grounds, have been again and again presented to the Legislature, and they have uniformly refused to annul the marriage tie." Justice O'Neall, who writes the opinion, asserts that the working out of this stern policy has been to the good of the people and of the State in every respect.

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The results of this restricted legislation, so far as the same are available, do not lead to the conclusion that the solution of the divorce problem lies either in abolishing or in unduly restricting the causes for which divorce may be granted.

Each State in the Union has enacted its own divorce laws. As a consequence, Mr. Dooley insists that one can be divorced for any cause, from baldness to inclemency of the weather, if he knows where to lodge his complaint. While South Carolina refuses an absolute divorce under all circumstances, New Hampshire recognizes fourteen causes therefor.

In Connecticut resided a certain Mr.

12 Mill (S. C.) 279.

2 27 New Englander, 523, 32 Strob. (S. C.) 6, 11,

Haddock, who, under a recent decision of the Federal Supreme Court,' when in Connecticut is, by decree of the Connecticut courts, lawfully divorced from his first wife, who still lives in New York, and legally married to a second wife living with him in Connecticut. But the moment Mr. Haddock crosses that imaginary line that divides Connecticut from New York, this Dr. Jekyll is, in the twinkling of an eye, transformed into a matrimonial Mr. Hyde who is still the legal husband of the New York wife.

As the Connecticut court was, under its law, required to divorce Mr. Haddock, so the courts of every State of the Union are required to grant the divorce when a statutory ground therefor has been established by the evidence. Yet, under this decision of the Supreme Court, unless the defendant appears in the action or is served with process in the State in which the action is brought, every other State may refuse to recognize such divorce, as did New York in the Haddock case.

Let Mr. Haddock travel across the continent, he may find that in one State he is the lawful spouse of his second wife; in the next, of his first wife; in the next, his second, and so to the end of his journey. The lawful wife in one State becomes the husband's mistress in another; children legitimate in State become the offspring of an illegal union in another. The condition of such a spouse is worse than that of the Roman matrons of whom Seneca speaks, who reckoned their years by their husbands rather than by the consuls. Under existing conditions one should never think of marrying one who has been divorced until a careful abstract of that person's career has been examined by some lawyer skilled in matrimonial law, and the title to single blessedness declared free and clear of all impediments of whatever

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nature.

Archbishop Messmer, speaking of present conditions, recently said: "The difference between the Mormon and the every-day American is one of degree. The Mormon has several wives simultaneously, while many who criticise the Latter-Day Saints have several wives

1201 U. S. 562.

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successively." It is a question of intensive or extensive marriage, of polygamy on the installment plan.

So serious are the evils that arise from existing divorce laws that all but four States of the Union (South Carolina, Kansas, Mississippi, and Nevada) have co-operated in drafting a uniform divorce law, which is to be presented to the Legislatures of the forty-one States represented at the Congress by which the bill was drafted. If adopted by the. various States, this law will bring order out of chaos. Most of the States have adopted a uniform law upon the subject of promissory notes, checks, and drafts. Let us hope that the States will be as ready to protect their daughters as their ducats.

Under the proposed uniform law, divorce, either from the bonds of matrimony or from bed and board, may be granted for adultery, bigamy, willful desertion for two years, habitual drunkenness for two years, conviction, sentence, and continuous imprisonment for at least two years, or extreme cruelty "such as to endanger the life or health of the other party or to render cohabitation unsafe." A divorce from bed and board may also be granted for hopeless insanity of the husband after marriage.

obtain a divorce for no cause which was not a ground for divorce in the State where the cause of action arose. This will effectually prevent a resident of New York, for example, from coming to Wisconsin to procure a divorce for any other cause than adultery, as long as New York adheres to its present law.

The act also proposes to remedy the chaotic condition arising from the rule of law applied in the Haddock case, by providing that full faith and credit shall be given to all decrees entered by the courts of other States. Divorce shall be denied where the suit was brought by collusion or where the plaintiff has procured or connived at or condoned the offense charged.

No case can be heard before a master or referee, but must be tried in open court. A disinterested attorney may be appointed to defend actively all uncontested cases. No decree shall be entered upon any admission of the defendant, thereby preventing parties who agree to separate from making a case by false, unsworn admissions of guilt.

As a

Important as is the adoption of a uniform law, there is greater need for reform in the administration of our divorce laws. Unlike all other lawsuits, the divorce action is one in which the A marriage may be annulled for phys- defendant is often eager that the plainical impotency, relationship within the tiff shall recover judgment, for that judgprohibited degrees, insanity of either ment will release him as well as the party before marriage, or when the party plaintiff from the marriage bond. bringing the action was below the age consequence, in from eighty to ninety of consent (sixteen years for the wife per cent. of the cases the court hears and eighteen years for the husband), only the story of the spouse that brings unless such marriage has been confirmed the action. In sixty-one of the sixtyafter arriving at the age of consent. A eight cases in which divorce was granted marriage brought about by fraud, force, in Dane County, Wisconsin, in 1905 and or coercion, or one contracted by a per- 1906, the defendant did not present his son having a husband or wife living, may side of the story, his attorney did not subalso be annulled. ject the plaintiff to the test of cross-examination. In order that the court may arrive at the truth of any matter, it is essential that both sides be heard. But in the average divorce action the court has little or no protection from false and perjured testimony. In fact, the trial judge becomes little more than part of a judicial machine to put the stamp of legal approval upon the separation."

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The act will, when generally adopted, do away with such scandals as have accompanied the administration of the divorce laws of South Dakota, for no divorce action (except for adultery or bigamy committed in the State) can be begun until two years have passed after the cause of action arose. If the plaintiff has moved from another State, he cannot begin the action until after a bona-fide residence of two years, and can

I venture the suggestion that there are few husbands or wives with an

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imagination strong enough to magnify a sufficient number of times some family unpleasantness and a conscience elastic enough to permit them to give such magnified ills under oath, who could not secure a legal separation if neither the other spouse nor any one representing the public opposed the application. Must we not conclude that it is the duty of the public to adopt such procedure that all of the facts shall be brought to the knowledge of the court?

The parties too often have no interest in the matters that most concern the public. It is my experience that divorce actions are rarely contested, except where there is property subject to division between the parties. Old Hammond in "News from Nowhere "observed that all the cases that came into our nineteenthcentury divorce courts were matters of property quarrels. Far too many parents are ready to give up their children if they may have in return therefor cattle, horses, household furniture, lands.

In the divorces granted in this country from 1867 to 1886 the custody, the training, the future, of 267,739 children were determined by the court. No State has fully performed its duty until it has done all in its power to protect the children of these unfortunate homes. This duty will never be performed until the public puts before the court all the facts that shall enable it to determine which parent can best care for and maintain the children of the marriage.

In Wisconsin and in most of the States of the Union a divorce may be granted without the other spouse knowing that an action has been begun, if the plaintiff I will take oath that she does not know where to find the defendant. So far as the facts appear in the Federal report on divorce, nearly one-third of the divorces (9,944 out of 29,665) were granted without personal service on the defendant.

Where the papers are served on the defendant personally, a divorce may be granted as soon as the time for answering expires (twenty days in Wisconsin), if the defendant does not appear to contest the If he appears, he may stipulate that the case be heard at once and elect to make no defense to the action. So it is possible for a husband and wife

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to quarrel as they leave a late breakfast, each hurry to a lawyer, who will put the matter through the necessary legal forms early enough to permit each spouse to dine in peace and begin to build castles in the air for some new matrimonial venture.

These are the conditions that bring the administration of the divorce laws into disrepute. This is the field where the legislature may do much to aid in the solution of the divorce problem. The lawmaking power should provide that no divorce be heard until some disinterested lawyer representing the public has investigated the case, participated in the trial, and presented the facts as he finds them to be. Eleven States1 have already protected the rights of the public in this way. Letters from lawyers and judges, as well as the statistics of divorce, show most beneficial results from the enactment of such laws.

Let me illustrate the need of some such "next friend" of the court by a leaf from my own experience: A wite. who had sworn that she did not know where her husband was, came into court, without giving him notice other than that published in a newspaper, and told such a tale of absolute want of food and clothing by herself and her two little children that she was clearly entitled to separation. Hardly had the judgment. been signed when the husband appeared and produced proof that the wife knew his exact address. The judgment was set aside and the defendant permitted to defend the action.

On the trial the husband produced letters in the handwriting of his wife, written at the very time that she swore that she and her children were destitute. Let me quote from one of her letters. You will remember that she and her children were hungry. She writes: "We have had all kinds of fruit and vegetables for over a month, except melons and pears, and last week we had plenty of them. Our neighbors out in the country bring us a sack or two a week. There is one crop after another, so that there is always plenty." You will recall that her children were in the most piti

I Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington.

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able condition so far as clothing was concerned. Listen to her letter again: "She [the baby] had three bonnets given her, one white mull trimmed with lace, one white embroidery, one white China silk, and the lady next door is making her a tatting cap." Whatever may have been the condition of the rest of her little body, there was certainly no reason why her head should have been uncovered. The letter continues: "Alva [the boy] don't do much but wear out his clothes and eat. He has a half of melon and spoon, and helps himself whenever he wants to, and that is most all the time between meals." Certainly there seems little reason why that boy should have been hungry. The letter continues: "It is beautiful here. I would like to come and see you all, but would never be satisfied to live there [in Wisconsin]." Yet within one year from the time that this latter was written she left her husband in the land flowing with melons and tatting caps, telling him that she was going to visit her people, came to Wisconsin, started a divorce action, swore that she had lived in Wisconsin one year, and actually secured the judgment of divorce before her husband learned of her sudden change of heart. Had the public been represented in this action, the facts could readily have been presented to the court, and the court would not have been misled into granting that divorce.

We have no means of knowing the number of improper divorces granted where the whole truth has not been disclosed to the court. If every divorce action had to pass the scrutiny and examination of some lawyer representing the public alone, few actions would be begun unless the plaintiff believed that there was a meritorious cause for divorce.

Divorce should be attended with more serious consequences. One may take a holiday excursion into matrimony and return to single blessedness simply by paying lawyer's fees and alimony. Our Puritan ancestors were wiser than we. In 1680 the General Court of Massachusetts, in granting the wife a divorce, "centansed" the husband" to be severely whip att the post." This sounds quite like President Roosevelt.

Home-breaking is a more serious offense against society than house-breaking. We pursue the burglar to the farthest limits of the country, but we turn the man who destroys a home out on the world unpunished, if not encouraged to repeat the offense. If imprisonment at hard labor followed proof of breaking a home as certainly as it follows the breaking of a house, uncontested and improper divorces would be less common. It is time that society came to recognize that it has some interest in the home, some duty in regulating its formation, some right to say when it shall be destroyed, some power to punish those guilty of wrecking it.

The fundamental causes for the evils of our divorce system are deep in the imperfections of our social system, especially in false sentiments regarding marriage and the family. The solution of the problem will be found in the slow process of education. We must put aside false modesty and deal frankly and unflinchingly with the fundamental relationships, duties, and responsibilities of the family. We can never solve the problem until our children go from the home and the school as fully equipped for the responsibilities of the family as for the other duties and responsibilities of life. They must have an understanding of the unselfishness, the patience, and the loyalty, through sorrow and sickness, ill fortune and fading fairness, and the clash of temperaments, which the marriage bond requires. More than this, they must have a character that shall be equal to all the duties and responsibilities that arise out of this relationship.

The divorce problem is one of practical importance to each of us. The inmates of these broken homes fill our hospitals, almshouses, and prisons; they spread contagion and disease; they endanger the future physical, mental, and moral welfare of every child in the land. Organized vice can make little headway against wholesome domestic life. The evil of the saloon, the brothel, the almshouse, and the prison shrink to small proportions when the conditions of the family and of home life are generally sound.

No nation has withstood the test of

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time that did not regard the marriage tie. When Rome reached that stage where her jurists were in doubt whether the performance of a second marriage ceremony did not of itself dissolve the first marriage, she fell from her place as mistress of the world, broken by the indulgences and vices of the people of the East. "That which makes a people is domestic life. The loss of it degrades a people to a horde."

The problems of the family, of marriage and divorce, can be solved only by studying them in their relation to economic and social conditions. To solve them there must be a rational study and understanding of the facts of life. The family and its related institutions should be subjected to the same careful, scientific examination as are the facts of modern political or industrial life. The promotion of the social well-being and the welfare of the family and of its members are the criteria by which to test the solution offered for the divorce problem.

All of us believe that marriage should be a lifelong union; that the ideal relationship is one that shall keep husband and wife together in sickness and in health until death does them part. But when the marriage vows are violated every day, when the married life becomes a living lie, when the home fails entirely to secure the divine purpose for which it was created, then, for the sake of children yet unborn, for the protection of ourselves and our homes, for the future welfare of the State, we must sever those ties that bind husband and wife to a bondage more galling than the galley, that condemn little children to lives in the blasting influence of these so-called homes, foul with corruption, where lust

poisons, brutality rules, and hate usurps the place of love.

It is easier to call divorce an evil than it is rationally to discuss the problem and work out a solution. Bad divorce laws, laxly administered, do invite crime and domestic infelicity. But drastic divorce legislation may be as immoral and lead to even more disastrous consequences to society and to the individuals most concerned. A wise divorce law, properly administered, is not a menace to social morality. Cases come to the courts every day where divorce is a social duty.

If you feel that divorce should not be granted, go sit in the court-room and listen to the tales told by these wretched men, women, and children; soon will you repeat, with Carroll D. Wright, "I do not believe that divorce is a menace to the purity and sacredness of the family; but I do believe that it is a menace to the infernal brutality, of whatever name, and be it crude or refined, which at times makes a hell of the holiest human relations. I believe the divorce movement finds its impetus outside of laws, outside of our institutions, outside of our theology; that it finds its impetus in the rebellion of the human heart against that slavery which binds in the cruelest bonds of the cruelest prostitution human beings who have by their foolishness, by their want of wisdom, or by the intervention of friends, missed the divine purpose as well as the civil purpose of marriage. I believe the result will be an enhanced purity, a sublime sacredness, a more beautiful embodiment of Lamartine's trinity— the trinity of the father, the mother, and the child"-to preserve which "in all its sacredness society must take the bitter medicine labeled 'Divorce." "

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AGAIN

BY JOHN HUTCHINS

See where the dogwood stretches out white arms
And wild bees revel, drunk with Flora's charms!

The brooks are full, and all the channels where life flows

Are brimming over. For the old earth knows

The thrill of ecstasy, again, which Maytime brings,
The wood-bird's love-song and the whir of wings.

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