"The experience of the English divorce court tends to confirm the opinion that a great deal of the misery to which the working classes are subjected in their homes arises from the inability of women, when they get married, to render their homes comfortable and attractive. In other words, a great many of the women who get married are unfit for married life."

Divorces are most frequent where women are most emancipated, and the percentage granted to the wife in such communities is excessive. For the whole country the percentage to women is increasing. In the first year, 62 per. cent., in the last, 66 per. cent., were granted to the wife.

§ 40. Growth of Cities.

The proportion of our population living in cities of over 8000 inhabitants has increased from about 16 per cent. in 1860 to about 25 per cent. in 1890. The native urban population so the census of Massachussetts indicates, are more prone to divorce than the same class of population in the country. Hence the massing of that population in cities at the east and north has probably influenced the divorce rate, although the effect is masked by the presence of the foreign born urban population.

§ 41. Increase of Industrialism.

The life of the race on this planet has been divided into four stages, each distinguished from the others by a predominant manner of obtaining food. They are the hunting and fishing stage, the pastoral stage, the agricultural stage, and the industrial stage. It has been further argued that permanent monogamous marriage makes its appearance with the dawn of the agricultural stage. However that may be, it is obvious that we are in the midst of the transition from the agricultural to the industrial stage. Not that hunting, fishing, herding or farming has passed away or is likely so to do. But the characteristic feature of the present day lies in none of these; they have existed in the past; trade, commerce and manufacturing in anything like their present importance, have not. This advance into the industrial period is apparently attended by a modifica

tion in the relations of the sexes, and perhaps in the nature of marriage. Industrialism tends to eliminate all sexual differences except the physical ones, and to reduce even these to a minimum. It centers in cities, has grown faster and farther at the north than at the south, and perhaps faster in New England than in the middle Atlantic states.

Industrialism involves a close relation between all parts of a community. The newspaper and periodical press mediate the exchange of ideas and information, as the railway and telegraph do of material products; the knowledge that divorces are obtainable is disseminated by the former, the opportunity for cheap and easy transportation to a more alluring field of work is offered by the latter. The number of divorces granted for desertion alone is two-fifths of the whole, and nearly one-half involve this ground as principal or accessory cause. The proportion, too, of divorces for this cause has steadily risen from 34 per cent. in 1867 to 40 per cent. in 1886. The mental and economic emancipation of women has weakened the ties binding a wife to her husband; the facilities for transportation and the reports of golden harvests in California, the Black Hills or Oklahoma have increased the motives for a husband to abandon home and wife.

Industrialism involves a wider knowledge, action under more complex and changeable conditions, and thus a vastly greater mental activity. As the mental life increases, the general differences of sex and the specific differences of persons are accentuated, and the dangers of quarreling increase. A savage finds one squaw about as serviceable as another in attending to the few tasks of the wigwam; in our higher civilization dissensions ending in divorce may begin (Report, pp. 172-178), over a curly dog, or a woman's bangs, or a man's buttons, as well as over spiritualism or religion.

This demand for higher mental life many fail to meet; they succumb under the strain. The growth of industrialism is attended by an increase of insanity, as well as of divorce.

§ 42. The Spread of Discontent.

So closely related to the growth of industrialism as hardly to deserve treatment as a separate cause, is the spread of a spirit of restless dissatisfaction. Mr. Bryce has called this "the age of discontent," and this characteristic of the time in this country and Europe manifests itself in a theoretical questioning and criticism of marriage, and, perhaps, in the weakening of its hold upon the community.

Even more characteristic of the industrial age than the increase of insanity is the increase of suicide. This is the highest and deepest expression of discontent with the sum total of conditions constituting one's life. Every suicide involves, for the individual concerned, and practically, not theoretically, a negative answer to the question, Is life worth living? Likewise every divorce involves, for one or both of the parties, and practically, an affirmative answer to the question, Is marriage a failure? Therefore it is not surprising to find a close and constant relation between the statistics of divorce and of suicide. Both are much more common among Protestants than Catholics, in cities than in the country, among the Teutons than the Celts; and both are rapidly increasing. The rates of divorce and of suicide in the particular countries show a close and constant relation, and the proportion of suicides among divorced persons is abnormally large.

The discontent with marriage in its present form shown by the increase of divorce may be compared, not only with the discontent with life shown by suicide, but also, perhaps, with the discontent with the present organization of industry shown in strikes and combinations, and in visions of an entirely new economic organization or of an ideal socialistic state. The discontent in all its phases indicates a desire and hope of great change. For the suicide, even, must regard annihilation as a change and an improvement. Whether the changes will be realized or can be without a fundamental change in human nature, we need not attempt to decide; but ob

viously the first condition of their realization is that they be desired.

$43. Two Ideals of the Family.

Once before in the history of the world women have been emancipated legally and economically. It was in the days of the Roman empire. Wives were given by law and by custom greater freedom than ever before; but they gained it by the sacrifice of family life, and under a theory that the wife was a member, not of her husband's, but of her father's household. The legal emancipation of women was attended by a loosening of the ties between husband and wife, a disregard of marriage vows, the moral degradation of the sex and of the community. The family was sacrificed to the wife.

When Christianity obtained the power to legislate, the family was reinstated in supremacy, and the wife again made legally subordinate to her husband. Since the Reformation the legal and economic emancipation of women has made frequent advances; and the problem of the present day in this matter is: How shall the legal and economic emancipation of women be made compatible with the true interests of the family? A clue to the answer may, perhaps, be found in recognizing that there are two ideals of family life, and that, while the emancipation of women is impossible without destroying the one, as it did at Rome, it may be reconciled with the other.

The Roman theory of the family is based on the complete supremacy of the husband and father, manus and patria potestas. This despotic theory, abandoned by the later Roman jurisprudence, was substantially restored by the canon law, and extended over Europe by the power of the ecclesiastical courts. The view that the wife was owned by her husband, and the not very dissimilar view that her legal personality during marriage was merged and lost in his, were natural and inevitable in times when property in persons, as slaves, was universally recognized and justified, and the original depen

dence of legal rights upon force hardly lost from sight. Slavery has been perpetuated into our own age. Its central idea, that property in persons is natural and legitimate, still lives and flourishes. Many a man feels himself the owner of wife and child, and treats them as his property.

This

The kernel of the other ideal of marriage, the democratic ideal, is found in the Teutonic emphasis upon freedom and individuality, and the Teutonic honor of womanhood. ideal bases the family, not upon the despotic authority of a single head, but upon the consenting and harmonious wills of two equals; not upon manus, but upon marriage. The development and establishment of this ideal of the family have been retarded by the influence of the ecclesiastical courts denying the equality of women in marriage, and also by the prevalence of slavery and constant appeals to war and force as final arbiter of all disputes. Even down to the present time, this ideal has not made itself at home in the minds and hearts of all our people, and many a dispute between husband and wife is at bottom a clashing of the old and new, the despotic and democratic theories. As a democracy requires more knowledge and political virtue than a despotism, so the successful and harmonious management of a family on a democratic basis of equality and delegated powers demands more fidelity and more adaptation than when a single will holds sway.

$44. The Remedy.

The whole argument of this monograph has gone to show that legal provisions of whatever sort have little direct and permanent influence upon divorce. Restrictions on marriage, restrictions on divorce and restrictions on remarriage after divorce, have been tried in various places and at various times, and have proved of little effect.

Law emphasizes rights; at all times of great change in the state or in law, that emphasis becomes excessive. The religious wars to assert the right to freedom of conscience, the French Revolution to proclaim the rights of man, the