TAX ON CELIBACY.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 108, 8 May 1909, Page 10

TAX ON CELIBACY.

<» " Irreclaimable bachelors " are now having a bad time in the State of Maine, where a legislative Bill has been proposed with the object of taxing ting allant citizens and providing a small pension fo- old maids with the proceeds. Kansas has bravely taken up the cudeels in behalf of the ladies, and, from what I hear, a grand assault against selfish, unsociable man is being developed in other progressive States, which will require much bachelor stiategy to defeat (writes a New York correspondent). In America, it is urged, -\\heie divorce is so easy and inexpensive, there ib less excuse tor celibacy than anywhere else, and yet celibacy here, since the money panic in 1907, hns become fashiorabk. Representative Campbell's Bill, introduced the other day into the Legislature of the State of Maine, is framed on a basis that men who muke no reasonable attempt to marry by the time they are thirty years old should help to support the spinsters who have ne\er received a proposal on reaching the age of toity yeai-s. ~Slv. Campbell proposes to mulct e\cry iDirsnrried man of thiity or o\er at the rate of £2 a year, the tund thus raised to be applied to the support and relief of deserving women who are still spinsters, although willing to marry if they get a fair chance. The law has some relief measures for bachelors or widowers who can show that they havo made a reasonable effort to get a wife by proposing three times, either to three different women or to one woman. "Reasonable" offers are held to be any proposal of ' matrimony made in good faith^ by any man not an inmate of an insane asylum, and unconvicted of felony or infamous crime. No benefit exceeding £20 a year is to be paid to any spinster. Mr. Campbell has received assurances of support, and in the meantime his Bill ig being warmly discussed