The Divorce Mill

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8, 27 February 1908, Page 9

The Divorce Mill

It is, unfortunately, only too true that, among the wealthy lower orders in America, divorce is frequently (as the ' Foolish Dictionary ' defines it) ' a formula that immediately precedes a fashionable marriage '. From the Philadelphia ' Catholic Standard ' we learn that tJhere is, among the miners of Pennsylvania, a movement against the divorce evil, and that it has been, aroused by circumstances which appear to us to dovetail neatly into the waggish definition given above. ' The , raining population of Pdttsburg, according to our Philadelphia contemporary, ' is scandalised at- the spectacle of men who once worked with pick and shovel, now that they have grown wealthy, casting off "the wives who bore the battle of poverty with them and seeking new partners.' And the disgust of the miners has-been voiced

by one of their candidates for the State Legislature, who denounces tho- scandals of the present system, and declares that 'it has come; to such a pass that it requires no more thougfit or trouble to get rid of a wife and take on _ a new one in Pennsylvania than it requires to make a horse trade down ""South. It is', he added, « a disgrace to the State,,, and if I am elected, there will be. a stop to it, if it is possible to enact new laws '.