5. What can be done through physical and mental examinations, by experts, of all children, to prevent development of criminality, vice, and waywardness? 6. In 1724 the English law held any one legally responsible for action subversive of law and order unless he was "totally deprived of his understanding and memory and doth not know what he is doing, no more than an infant, than a brute or a wild beast." Since 1843, the criterion of responsibility under the law is "knowledge of what is right or wrong in the particular case." Following the same line of change, our statutes now ask, in addition, if the person on trial is generally competent to understand and to obey social rules of conduct. Is this trend toward the lessening or toward the increase of crime and vice?

7. What does social well-being require shall be done for and with those proved incapable of social habits?

8. Read "The Socially Inadequate; How Shall We Designate and Sort Them?" by Harry H. Laughlin, Carnegie Institution, Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, in American Journal of Sociology, July, 1921. This is an attempt to introduce a blanket term under which feebleminded; insane; criminalistic, including delinquent and wayward; epileptic; inebriate, including drug habitués; diseased, including tuberculous, lepers, and others with chronic infectious diseases; blind, including all of seriously impaired vision; deaf, including those with seriously impaired hearing; deformed, including the crippled; and dependent, including orphans, old folks, soldiers and sailors in "homes," chronic charity-aided folk, paupers, and ne'er-do-wells, may be listed. This article attempts to make a classification inclusive, yet subject to minute subheading, which may make reports more definite in listing human beings.

Is such an attempt wise, and if so, how would each member of this group classify the "socially inadequate?"

CHAPTER XII

THE BROKEN FAMILY

"EVERY Social ill involves the enslavement of individuals. Freedom is that phase of the social ideal which emphasizes individuality. -All mankind acknowledges kindness as the law of right intercourse within a social group.-The ideal of service goes with the sense of unity.-A likeness of spirit and principle is essential to moral unity. The creation of a moral order on an ever-growing scale is the great historical task of mankind, and the magnitude of it explains all shortcomings."-CHARLES H. COOLEY, in Social Organization.

"The sanctity of oaths

Lies not in lightning that avenges them,
But in the injury wrought by broken bonds
And in the garnered good of human trust.
"Tis a compulsion of the higher sort,
Whose fetters are the net invisible
That holds all life together.

'Tis faithfulness that makes the life we choose
Breathe high and see a full-arched firmament.
We may see ill

But over all belief is faithfulness

Which fulfils vision with obedience.

No good is certain, but the steadfast mind,
The undivided will to seek the good;
'Tis that compels the elements, and wrings
A human music from the indifferent air."

-GEORGE ELIOT.

"Genuine government is but the expression of a nation
Good or less good; even as all society

Is but the expression of men's single lives—

The loud sum of the silent units."-E. B. BROWNING.

"There is no other genuine enthusiasm than one which has travelled the common highway-the life of the good man and woman, the good neighbor, the good citizen."-THOMAS GREEN HILL. "Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.”

-SHAKESPEARE.

The Problems of Divorce.-Having treated in some detail the subject of "Problems of Marriage and Divorce" in a former book, Woman's Share in Social Culture, and also in articles published in The International Journal of Ethics, The Harvard Theological Review, Harper's Weekly, and other magazines, this chapter, to avoid repetition, will simply rehearse in brief outline the points of view previously expressed.

In the valuable and suggestive treatment of the family by Professor Ellwood in his book, Sociology and Modern Social Problems, he says that "divorce is but a symptom of more serious evils that in certain classes of American society have apparently undermined the very virtues upon which the family life subsists." If that be so, then no tinkering with the laws which aim at preventing divorces will reach the seat of the difficulty. The treatment must be more radical, and the character of individuals be made more noble and strong, if the family is to be made more stable and marriage more successful.

Frequency of Divorce in the United States.-The first point to be noted in any discussion of the broken family is the frequency of that social tragedy in the United States. The pioneer study by Professor W. F. Willcox, made in 1885 and reported in his volume entitled The Divorce Problem, showed the fact that we

had in this country at that time more divorces per year than were recorded in all the other so-called Christian countries put together. For 1905, statistics show nearly 68,000 divorces in the United States as against the highest number from Germany, which is only a trifle above 11,000, and from France, 10,860, and running down rapidly to the number of 33 in Canada. In England, in 1905, there was but one divorce to 400 marriages. In the United States, in the same year, one divorce to every 12 marriages. Since that count was taken, there has been no evidence of a halt in the tendency of the United States to lead the rest of the Christian world in this matter of separation of those once joined together by marriage vows. In some of the States, the showing is more pronounced on the side of free divorce than in other States, since in Washington, Oregon, and Montana one divorce to every five marriages is reported, in Colorado and Indiana one to every six, and in Oklahoma, California, and Maine one to every seven marriages. We need not accept the doleful suggestion of Professor Willcox that if we go on this way, "by 1950 one-fourth of all marriages will be terminated by divorce, and by 1990 one-half so terminated," for it is not necessary or likely that we shall "go on" in this particular. Already, movements toward the strengthening of family ties and the better training of youth to responsibility, movements that tend to make marriage less brittle, are inaugurated.

Cannot Now Make Family an Autocracy.-There are several points that all must agree upon if we are to stay the rush to the divorce courts and yet not attempt the futile task of turning the family order back to the patriarchal or the monarchical types. In those types there was little or no legal divorce, it is true, but in them inhered social evils that often killed the spirit of marriage, and doomed the children of enforced unions to physical weakness, mental defectiveness, moral taint, and affectional suffering.

First of all, it should be noted that, although the divorce statistics are serious indictments of American life and bode ill to American society, they are not wholly a testimony to bad conditions. They are also a testimony that he who runs may read, to the determination of men, and especially of women, to exact a higher reality of mutual love, mutual respect, mutual service, and mutual coöperation within the marriage bond.

New Standards of Marriage Success.-When it was decided to investigate the causes for the backwardness of school children, why so many "failed to pass" and were "retarded” in the march from grade to grade in the elementary classes, the first inquiry took no note of the exactions of the grade standards. All who failed to move on at the scheduled moment for "promotion," in any school examined, were listed as "backward." Later, it occurred to the investigators, that the first thing to find out was whether or not a given grade standard was one that true pedagogy would approve, and second, whether there was a serious discrepancy in that grade standard between the different schools from which the children came for examination.

In much the same way the first inquiries as to the evil of frequent divorce seemed to take for granted that all who sought divorce were in circumstances that might have been socially and usefully continued within the marriage bond. We know better now. We know that the first question to ask about a broken family is: What was its condition before the break? Did justice, and a fair estimate of the quality of the union and its effects upon the man and the woman involved, and their children, demand that the family hold or be held together, or was there a condition that made society more interested in the ending than in the continuance of that union?

If, as is beginning to be understood, it is not for the interest of society that men and women should marry who are so physically diseased, or mentally defective, or morally perverted as to make them injurious members of a family circle, is it not as clear that in many cases such persons when married are not helpful members of any family; and if so, again, is it not clear that there is justification in social need itself for the removal of such persons from the family circle they have already polluted or injured in vital ways, to prevent their doing more harm to family life?

Whatever may be thought by many who view all divorce with horror, there is a tendency within that movement toward free divorce, toward the freeing of the currents of generative life from evil influence, from despotism, from degenerative tendencies, and from the worst forms of social wrong-doing. There is, also, of course, in that movement, a testimony which should make