THE DIVORCE EVIL.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7960, 26 January 1888, Page 4

THE DIVORCE EVIL.

. The fact that over one hundred cases yere recently disposed of in a single day in five Chicago divorce courts illustrates a tendency which is becoming everywhere apparent in American society. The American people are not yet fully alive to the serious extent to which family life in undermined by the facility ot divorce. Marriage has ceased to bo looked upon by many people as a lifelong union, and has . oome to be regarded as a union between one. man and one woman for so lons a time only as is mutually agreeable. The woman who said that she got married after knowing her husband only a week, ! " because, if we do not like each other, we can be divorced," is the exponent of many women and many men. We have no ' superstitious worship for marriage as marriage ; but we have a regard for marriage as the foundation of the family, and we have a regard for the family as • the foundation of all social order and national existence. Therefore, whatever tends to destroy the marriage relation, 1 tends to destroy, through the destruction ' of family life, the life of tha whole people. It is not in Chicago alone that this monstrous evil is appareut. Other great cities, both east and west, ato suffering from it. ' 7 Much might be said as to a remedy .for this condition of affairs, but we ltmitour. selves to two or three suggestions. In the first place, the divorce laws of the dilferebt States should ba made more strict. Loose laws tend to promote the evil ; strict laws, to restrain it. For the •■' simple fact is that if a man and woman once married know thut they can ba divorced easily, this knowledge tends to promote dissension and aversion ; but if they realise that they are legally tied togetliT, and that they enn be separated oulv for the gravest and most reasons • alight and trifling causes for separation are not suffered to have undue weight. Knowing that they mu-st live together, they seek to make the best of their union. And not simply should the dirorse laws of the different States he made more strict, but this leg>il condition would also lie aided by the enactment of a tmti'inil marriage awl divoicelsiw Such a statute WiinKl ti»n I tt 'i'wi svmne'.ry to tue statutes of the different Shite*. Tlio Anisric.in nation is now pacing through a peiiod Rnmeuhtt like that through whiuli the Rom in R jpublio passed when divorce was exceedingly common, and when aensual sins were conspicuously rife. la this condition it becomes every citizen to do all he can to stay these perils of the social and politic body. Much, it; i» true, is being done ; societies are formed ior the arrest of these evils. A National Divorce Reform Association is doing most excellent service. The commissioner appointed by the last Congress to. collect statistics as to divorce in the different States is now at work. The public rtess is publishing articles upon this vital subject. All these are favorable signs. We do_ not assure ourselves, however, that this evil is to be at once stayed ; but /we are confident that within a decade this flood tide of divorce, which now is sweeping through the great cities and through many of the country districts, will be, if the agitation of the subject is maintained, In large part arrested. — Leslie's Illustrated Nttcspaqcr.