conscience and an external solicitude enlisted in the interest of every child whose parents have made such a failure of marriage and the home that the divorce court is the only refuge. This does not ignore the fact that many couples separate to the advantage of the children, that many parents are quite innocent of any cause for the broken family, that many times there is a rehabilitation of the family life on other lines that means full nurture and development for the children. The fact remains, however, that the average child of divorced parents has to meet difficulties and face disadvantages in life which the child of permanently united fathers and mothers does not suffer, and, for such, some exterior protection and supervision should be provided. A Uniform or Federal Divorce Law.-Many persons deeply interested in lessening the number of divorces in the United States place much dependence upon a "Uniform Divorce Law" for the whole country, as giving a basis for wise legislation. Recently, Senator Jones, of the State of Washington, introduced in the Senate a resolution proposing a new amendment to the Federal Constitution by which, if it passed, Congress would have power "to establish and enforce by appropriate legislation uniform laws as to marriage and divorce." The fact that a couple may be legally married in one state of our Union and illegally practicing bigamy or adultery in another state gives a plausible reason for such a Constitutional Amendment. And perhaps the searching investigation and discussion which would precede such a definite change in our national law, if such change were made, would be of great use in clarifying the public mind, and securing a consensus of opinion as to what should and what should not be allowed in this matter. Yet it is doubtful if such a law would, in itself, bring down the number of divorces, now estimated by those advocating the law as "one in every eight to ten marriages," or prevent the ratio of increase in divorces to increase in population (now estimated "as increase in population in a given period, 60 per cent., and increase in divorces in the same period, 160 per cent."), or really mend our family ills. The dependency upon Constitutional amendments and upon legislation of every kind has, many believe, reached the utmost limit of social serviceability in this country. The deeper question in all such propositions is this: What, under the Constitution as first affirmed and later amended, is proper subject for Federal legislation, and what should be left to state and local action? We have not reached a political unity as to the basic elements of just and effective political method in the division of social control between the nation and the various states. The habit of rushing to the National Congress for Federal legislation with no plan or logical aim in relation to such division, is one that may well be curbed. Education Our Chief Reliance.-Meanwhile, all must insist that education, character-training for strong, unselfish, noble personalities, is our main dependence, and must ever be in the effort to make family life more stable, and more socially helpful. Men and women must be made competent to self-control, and steadied with a sense of obligation to others, and animated by an ideal of faithfulness to contract, and of devotion to securing mutual rights in a mutual plan of life together. Such education for character, must be our chief dependence in efforts to lessen divorces, as in the effort to do away with all social evils. There is no magic in marriage, there is no magic even in parenthood, to make weak, and selfish and superficial and ignorant and stupid and despotic people into guardians of the best interests of home. A man or a woman is successful in the family order, only on the same basis as is demanded in all other relations of life, the basis of justice, good sense, right feeling, and an honest effort to realize high ideals. Helps Toward Family Unity.-What remains for society to do, after general moral training has worked its full service of individual preparation for good intent and wise choices and competent mastery of family arrangements, must be done or attempted on the basis rather of helps toward permanence, than of prohibition of release from marriage mistakes and wrongs. We have left undone much we should have done to make it easier for young people to find their true mates, to start right in married life, and to bear the burdens of parenthood without stumbling on the way. Let us not add mistakenly to the duties left undone the attempt to do things we should not, namely, to overbear instead of aiding the personal life. There is nothing that works more tragedy of suffering than broken vows in marriage, whether the fact of the actual separation be publicly acknowledged or not. How many a disillusioned man or woman has felt with the poet : "To look upon the face of a dead friend And that dead thing year after year to keep Shall Society Favor the Remarriage of Divorced Persons? -Now that the moral sense of most people allows another trial on Love's Rialto, there are many individuals who can leave "that dead thing" to find its own grave, and in the light of some new and dearer affection go on to a renewed promise and joy of life. Can we think that wrong? Who shall dare to say that alone of all mistakes of youth, a mistaken choice in marriage shall be for all life a sentence of doom? Who shall dare to limit the power of rehabilitation of the family order, even when what has failed is the central heart of married love? Our gospel of hope and courage, and renewal of opportunity, and rebirth of affection must know no limits if we would rightly trust the spirit within our being. But for the shallow, and the selfish, and the pleasure-seeker without reverence for the right way of life, and for the scoffer at all high moods of feeling and of ideal aim, there can be little to justify his flitting about on the very outmost limits of true love. For such, some check must be had in ordered rules and legal bonds, in order that the race-life shall go on in safety and in social health. Meanwhile, although there is much to give us pause and to demand serious study and earnest and wise social work in the situation revealed by the divorce court statistics, there is nothing that need give hysterical alarm lest the home is being destroyed and the family abolished. On the contrary, there probably was never a time when so many people were really happy, each and every member of the family, in the home relation; and hence never a time when it was clearer that to keep the home stable and permanent, and make marriage successful in the vast majority of cases, we have only to get better and wiser people in larger proportion. To understand the real reason for marital unhappiness and for family instability, to know that such reason inheres primarily in personal character and not in any statute, is to begin work for the real cure and prevention of such unhappiness and instability. The broken family may be a sad necessity, alike for individuals concerned, and for the well-being of society. To prevent that tragedy is a social duty than which none is more pressing or more open to social effort. Turning From Compulsory to Attractive Methods of Reform. To undertake that social task, the psychology of social effort must be turned from compulsive methods of prevention of legal divorce, when such divorce is sought, to ways of making marriage choices wiser, marriage experience more sane and better balanced by sense of obligation to the nearer and more remote of social relations, and by putting at the command of all, the helpful sympathy and the social guidance that can alone hold to. firm and noble lines the wavering and the weak. QUESTIONS ON THE BROKEN FAMILY 1. Is the admitted increase in divorce wholly a testimony to moral degeneracy? If so, what can be done about it? If not, what else does it indicate? 2. What are the main points to work for in order to reduce the number of divorces, and to remove the social evils of which divorces are only the symptom? 3. Should the social psychology be directed principally toward preventing people from getting divorce or from remarrying after divorce, or toward making marriage so generally successful that fewer people want to separate? 4. What is specially needed in education both of youth and the adult in the United States in the interest of family stability and family success? 5. Make a list of causes that in your opinion justify legal separation or divorce and find out whether or not these causes are named in the statutes of your State. If they are not, what should be done about it? 6. What is done for and with the children of legally separated and divorced persons in your State? CHAPTER XIII THE FAMILY AND THE WORKERS "IT Is all work, and forgotten work, this peopled, clothed, articulate-speaking, high-towered, wide-acred world. For the thistle a blade of grass, later a drop of nourishing milk, later a nobler man. Man perfects himself as well as the world by working." "Every man's task is his life preserver." -CARLYLE. -EMERSON. "What was his name? I do not know his name. Builded by his hardened hands; Only ten thousand homes, The cheerful play Of love and hope and courage comes; These are his monuments, and these alone, There is no form of bronze and no memorial stone." -EDWARD EVERETT HALE. "Let us now praise the artificer and the workmaster These put their trust in their hands And each becometh wise in his own work. Though they sit not in the seat of the judge, Nor understand the covenant of judgment; Though they declare not instruction nor utter dark sayings Nor shall men sojourn therein. For these maintain the fabric of the world And in the handiwork of their craft is their prayer." -ECCLESIASTICUS. Changes from Ancient to Modern Forms of Labor.-The change from the domestic and handicraft stage in industry to the 246 |