CHAPTER LI

COURTSHIP, MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE

=The modern girl.=--A quarter of a century ago a community knew a year ahead when one of its young women was going to be married. In this fast age, some parents don’t find it out until after their daughter has been married six months or more. When the author was a boy, the engaged girl spent her spare time piecing quilts, making feather pillows and beds, drying apples, peaches and pumpkins, making preserves, gathering garden seed and raising a flock of chickens. She had religious convictions. The Bible idea of a woman is a “help meet.” She was preparing to help meet the expenses of a home. The modern girl too often helps spend her gentleman friend’s hard-earned money at the soda fountain, on livery rigs and at the ten cent shows. Thousands of young men are not getting married to-day, because they are afraid of the expense of these modern help-eats, help-wears and help-spends.

=Customs have changed.=--True, times and customs have changed and much of the work of women a quarter of a century ago is no longer profitable. The

same is true of the work of men. But these changes do not justify a large number of girls idling away a number of years waiting for men to come along and marry them. Such girls make extravagant wives. They cannot know the value of a dollar.

=The independent girl.=--Parents should furnish their daughter with remunerative labor, or they should see that she is fitted for some position that will enable her to be independent. The independent girl is no more likely to fall than the idle girl at home. The independent girl who gets out into the world with her brother, shoulders the same burdens, masters the same difficulties, fights the same battles, acquires a poise and dignity, a freedom of action and speech, a knowledge of business and economy that give her an attractiveness that the idle fashion-plate girl on the bargain counter of the marriage market cannot compete with. This class of girls do not have to marry the first chance that comes around in order to have a home.

=Parents too anxious to get their girls married.=--The financial burden of supporting from two to four idle girls is no small item. Many parents are anxious to get them married as soon as possible. The girls soon find it out. When ten years old, such girls are making goo-goo eyes at the boys; when eleven, they are passing notes to every Tom, Dick and Harry in the schoolroom; when twelve, they are desperately in love; when thirteen and fourteen, they have their mother’s consent to marry; when fifteen, they are in the divorce courts, and three months later they have their second husbands.

One of the St. Louis dailies, over one year ago, had a notice of two “runaways.” One girl was twelve and the other thirteen. When overtaken by their fathers, brought back home and locked up in a room, to prevent a second attempt, one admitted to a reporter that up to that time she had not learned that Santa Claus was not a real being and the other sent for her dolls to play with.

=Another case.=--In one town in which I lectured I was told of a mother who accompanied her thirteen-year-old-daughter and an eighteen-year-old boy to the county clerk’s office and gave her consent to her daughter’s marriage. To the clerk’s question, “Don’t you think your daughter rather young to be married?” she replied. “Gee, I got married when I was thirteen and my oldest daughter got married when she was fourteen.” Didn’t she need the protection of an asylum?

=A woman in Arkansas.=--In Arkansas, you know what does not happen anywhere else sometimes happens in that state. I found a woman who ran away to get married when she was thirteen, had been married three times, had three divorced husbands, three families of children, aggregating twelve in number; was still a young woman and trying to get married the fourth time. That was courtship, marriage and divorce with a vengeance!

=In this country anything can get married.=--A confirmed degenerate criminal can marry, as soon as his term expires in a reformatory, or penitentiary. A feeble-minded person can improve a little, be returned home, and get married. A few years later we are supporting them and their delinquent progeny. We can never empty the reformatories, penitentiaries and asylums until we quit producing these classes. Immature marriages can no more produce perfect offspring than can the mating of immature domestic animals. The girl is not mature until she is nineteen or twenty and a boy until he is twenty-two or twenty-four.

=Better customs and laws needed.=--We are in need of social and legal reform in the social relations of young people, marriage and divorce. In England and Canada, rarely does a girl keep company with a young man as a sweetheart before she is eighteen and rarely married before she is nineteen or twenty. She is usually chaperoned by an older woman when she goes out to drive, attend a lecture or to take a stroll with a young man. In this country, little, innocent, undeveloped, irresponsible girls are permitted to go buggy riding at night, attend cheap shows and go on excursions unchaperoned, with young men whose reputations are not the best. We are reaping the fearful harvest. One-half of our erring girls fell before they were seventeen, and over one-half of our divorces occur among women who married before they were seventeen. Our social customs make it possible for one-half of our erring girls to fall before they know the name of the act that involves their character and destiny. Girls sixteen years old have not had time to develop mentally to where they can safely choose a companion for life. If a girl, one day younger than eighteen, should buy a pig without her father’s consent, the law gives him the right to compel the former owner to take the pig back and to return to him the money. The state reasons that a girl under eighteen is not sufficiently developed in judgment to be held responsible for buying a pig. But, according to our customs and laws, a girl can intelligently tie herself up for life to the unfortunate appendix to the wet end of a cigarette, or a miserable old jug-handle, and be held responsible for her choice. In other words, we think that it takes less judgment for a girl to choose a life partner than it does to buy a half-grown hog.

=Divorce is on the increase.=--Births and marriages are on the decrease. In 1870, we had one divorce to every thirty-eight marriages. In 1900, we had one divorce to every fourteen and a half marriages. Now we are having one divorce to every eleven and a quarter marriages. I noticed in one of the Ohio dailies a few days ago that one county had one hundred and thirty-two divorces in twelve months. All last year, Canada had only seventeen divorces. Several counties in the United States, each had ten times as many divorces last year, as did the entire Dominion of Canada. Canada has more stringent marriage and divorce laws than the United States.

It is the maternal and paternal instincts that prompt the lower animals to pair off and mate. Their love for each other and their young is the child of their sex nature. The desexed lower animals are devoid of the instinct that prompts wooing and mating.

It is the promptings of the paternal and maternal natures, which are inseparable from the normal sex nature, that lead to a beautiful and joyful courtship, to a harmonious, happy marriage and to a family of fair daughters and lusty sons.

=Causes of wrecked homes.=--“Intemperance,” “abuse,” “non-support,” or “desertion,” reply the jury in the court room and the judge on the bench. These are, usually, only indirect causes. The one main cause of wrecked homes, the abuse of marital rights, is rarely mentioned in the court room. If all married people were normal in their sex natures, unselfish love would reign in the homes and divorce courts would be largely a thing of the past.

Through universal ignorance of the true nature and functions of the God-given, God-honored and sacred sanctuary of reproduction, the youth, by mental and mechanical abuse of these functions, becomes more or less sensual. Sexuality is slowly transformed into sensuality and love into lust. Ignorant of the laws of life, the duties and responsibilities of marriage and parentage, men are often prompted more by uncontrolled desire than by unselfish love in their choice of a wife, they are largely governed by physical attractions, or wealth. The present ethics of marriage makes the wife submit to the sensual demands of the husband. This view of marriage converts love into lust, prevents the harmonizing of their differences, the proper blending of their personalities and the two never become one.

=Divorce is not the cause of wrecked homes.=--Wrecked homes are the cause of divorce. The divorce problem will be solved in the solution of the home problems. The home problems will be largely solved when children and youths receive proper sex instruction, when young people are properly safeguarded in their social relations as friends and lovers, and when they are properly educated in home-building.

=Marriage a civil and Divine institution.=--The sacred institution of marriage is being trifled with. Easy to get married, and easy to get divorced, are a nation’s shame and will quickly bring a nation’s fall. By a system of sane education and legislation the paramount importance, dignity, responsibility and sacredness of marriage over other institutions would be impressed on the mind of the masses. Marriage is both a civil and religious institution. Civil law should protect the rights of marriage and judiciously determine who shall and who shall not marry. The marriage ceremony should be performed, when possible, in a church and a minister of recognized qualifications should officiate. The church should be decorated not only with flowers and foliage, but also the nation’s flag and colors should have prominent display. Not only should some of the church officers be present, but also, some of the civil officers should be present. The church and state should bear this expense. No marriage fees should be charged or expected from rich or poor. The parties to be married and the community would see that the state and church are substantially interested in home and nation building. In this way marriage would be placed on a high and dignified basis. When a man and woman take the marriage vows, they have assumed duties and responsibilities more vital and far greater than does a governor or president-elect assume, when he takes the oath of office. The primary purpose of marriage is to increase the species. In this function they are to serve the nation by helping to furnish the next generation of citizens. The most illiterate and poverty-stricken couple, who faithfully do their best to raise a family of children, are of far more value to a nation’s strength and perpetuity than a millionaire home consisting of husband, wife and a poodle dog.

=New marriage laws.=--We should have uniform state laws restricting the marriage of men and women who are in advanced stages of consumption, of the feeble-minded, the confirmed criminal, the degenerate and the venereally diseased. We need uniform state laws requiring a reasonable knowledge of the laws of life, of marital rights, of heredity and prenatal culture and of the duties and responsibilities of marriage and parentage. To make such restrictions and education possible all candidates for marriage should be required to register their proposed marriage with the county clerk at least three months before the license is granted. At the expense of the state, this proposed marriage should be announced through at least one paper during this period. This publicity would prevent all clandestine marriages and would rob the white slave procurer of one of his chief methods of securing his victims. In recent years, in nearly every community, a stranger has won the affections of an unsuspecting girl and the confidence of her family, married her, and in six months time it was whispered that he had another family somewhere that he ought to be supporting. The white slaver uses the love method very effectively. The law suggested would prevent these impositions and crimes against society.

When the proposed marriage is registered, the state should furnish each with a book presenting in simple language the information to which reference was made in a preceding paragraph. At the expiration of three months, let them give satisfactory evidence of a reasonable knowledge of the teaching of the book.

Before the marriage license is finally granted, each should furnish the state with a certificate of good health. This would prevent the marriage of the physically and mentally unfit.

If properly enforced, these new marriage laws would promote domestic harmony, prevent untold misery, stop the crime of feticide, reduce the annual birth of defective children and increase the birth-rate of normal children. The young man should have not less than five hundred dollars in money or property, or he should have a fair education and a position with adequate income to support a wife.

EIGHTH DIVISION

VITAL FACTS FOR THE MARRIED OR UNMARRIED, OF MIDDLE LIFE AND OLD AGE