In discussing any question which involves the welfare and happiness of
people who live to-day, or are to live hereafter, I think we may take
it for granted that we must consider it in the light of conditions
now existing or those likely to exist in the future. We must clearly
understand to what domain the question fairly belongs; whether it is a
question of vital importance between human beings in their relations
to each other, and whether it is a matter in which the law is the final
appeal. We may fairly assume that the questions of marriage and divorce
have to do with this world only. Indeed, that point is yielded by the
marriage service adopted by the various Christian churches when it says,
"until death us do part," and by the reply said to have been given by
Christ himself, to the somewhat puzzling query put to him as to whose
wife the seven times married woman would be in heaven.
According to the record, he evaded (somewhat skilfully it must be
admitted) the real question; but his reply at least warrants us in
saying that he held the view that the marriage relation had nothing
whatever to do with another life, but belonged to the province of this
world only, and the necessities and duties of human beings toward each
other here.
This point is conceded, too, by every church when it permits the widowed
to re-marry, and gives them clerical sanction.
Therefore the religious and the civil basis of discussion are logically
on the same premises, and in America, at least, where there is no
contest as to the established fact that all divorces must be legal and
not ecclesiastical, it is clear that the law does not recognize religion
at all in the matter. While a religious marriage service may hold in
law, a religious divorce would be illegal, in fact, fraudulent. It is
conceded on all sides then, as we have seen, that marriage is a matter
pertaining strictly to this world. It affects the happiness or misery of
men and women in their relations with each other, and not at all in any
assumed relation with another life, or a supposititious duty to a Deity.
This would logically take marriage, as it has already taken divorce,
out of the hands of the clergy, since religion and its duties are based
primarily and necessarily upon the relations of human beings to another
life and to a supernatural or Supreme Being. The terms of marriage and
divorce--so far as the public is concerned--are questions of morals and
economics.
That is to say, if there were but one man and one woman in the world
it would be for them to say whether they would be married at all,
or--having been married--whether they would stay married, if they
discovered that the relation was productive of misery to one or both.
They could divorce themselves at will without injury and without fear.
But since humanity is associated in groups constituting what is called
society or the state, and since under present conditions men are the
chief producers and owners of wealth and the means of livelihood, the
support of women and children is a matter which affects the welfare of
all so associated, in case the parents separate. The question of divorce
is, therefore, partly in the field of economics and has to do with
the general welfare. This being the case, law and not religion rightly
regulates its terms. People marry because they believe that it will
promote their happiness to do so. I am talking now of ordinary
people under ordinary circumstances, and not of those victims of
institutions--such as kings and princesses--who are married for state
reasons. Nor am I writing of those still greater victims who are taught
that it is their "duty" to marry in order to produce as many of their
kind as possible in a world already sadly overpopulated by the very
class thus influenced and controlled by greed and power. That is to
say, they are so taught by those who are benefited by the unintelligent
increase of an ignorant population.
Since marriage is the most important, solemn, aed sacred contract into
which two people can enter, and since it affects--or may affect--others
than themselves, the State requires that it be public, that the form of
contract be legal and that its terms be respected by both parties, to
the end that others may not be deceived or left helpless.
But if the parties to this contract learn to their sorrow that the
association is productive of misery, if they grow to loathe each other,
if instead of happiness, it results in sorrow or ill health, then surely
the State is not interested in forcing those two people to continue in
a condition which is opposed to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. It is however, concerned in the terms of the separation since
these do or may affect others than the two principals, and since one or
both of these, having entered into a contract (in which the State was
a witness) and now being desirous of terminating said contract, may be
defrauded in a manner which vitally affects society. It can hardly be
claimed that society is benefited by forcing two people to live in the
same house and become the parents of children, when these two people
have for each other only loathing or contempt. If it cannot benefit
society, then who is benefited by the forced continuance of the marriage
relation? The children? Can any rational person believe that it is
well to rear children in an atmosphere of hatred, of contention, of
rebellion?
Do not our penal institutions answer this question? Are the inmates of
these from homes where harmony reigned? Statistics show plainly that
they are not; and they also show that an enormous per cent, of them
come from the families of those who are not allowed by their church the
relief of divorce from bonds grown galling. Children conceived by hatred
and fear, overpowered by the lowest grade of passion known to the world
(which cannot be called brutal, because the brutes are not guilty of
it), bred in an atmosphere of contention, deception, and dread, are fit
material for, and statistics prove that they are the class from which
are recruited the inmates of, the reformatory and penal institutions.
Is it fair to a child that it be so reared? Is it not right--is it not
the duty of the State to secure, so far as it may, quite the opposite
conditions of life for its helpless future citizens? Are the highest and
best types of character bred in discord? Is the State interested in
the high character of its future citizens? All these questions and many
others are involved.
But setting aside these most important features I would like to ask
who is benefited by keeping together those whom hate has separated? The
wife? Not at all. She is simply degraded below the frail creatures of
the street whom men deride. She becomes the helpless instrument of her
own degradation. The woman of the street may own herself, she may
change her life, she may refuse to continue in the course which has lost
her her self-respect. The unwilling wife is helpless. She has lost all.
She has no refuge. She is a more degraded slave than ever felt the lash,
for her slavery is one which sears her soul and will, if she becomes a
mother, sear the bodies and souls of children borne by her unwillingly.
It can hardly be urged that it could add to the dignity or honor of
womanhood for a tie to be indissoluble which in itself, under such
conditions, is a degradation and an insult. Take for example a drunken,
a dissolute or a brutal husband. Can it be said to strike at anything
dear or noble for womankind that some wife is absolutely freed from such
companionship? That she be no longer forced to bear his society or even
his name? Surely no good end can be served by the outward continuance of
a tie already broken in fact. No one can be made better, no one happier.
If it is urged that a God is to be considered, surely such a state of
things could hardly excite his pleasure or admiration. If marriages are
made in heaven those that prove a misfit--so to speak--can scarcely
be claimed by believers in an all-wise ruler to emanate from there.
Religious people will, I fancy, be the last to assert that wrong had its
source in such a locality; while people who look upon this question as
wholly outside of sacramental lines will be slow to see beauty or good
in a relation which is a servitude and a degradation on the one side and
a brutal domination on the other.
How does the question stand then? The wife is degraded, the children
are brutalized--are born with evil tendencies--a God can hardly be
overjoyed; society is endangered and robbed, is deprived from its
very cradle of its inalienable right to happiness. Who is left to be
considered? The husband?
Would any man worthy the name wish to be the husband of an unwilling
wife? If he has a spark of honor or manhood in him could such a
relationship, held by force, give him happiness? Would it not be
unendurable to him?
If he is so far below the brutes in his relationship with his mate that
he can hold his position only by force is he a fit father of children?
Is the State interested in reproducing his kind?
It is true that there are several reasons why divorce is far more
important to women than to men--notwithstanding which fact the question
is usually discussed in the Press and Legislature by men only, the
other interested party not being supposed to have enough at stake to
be consulted or heard in the matter at all. But it is also true that an
uncongenial marriage deprives a man of all of the best that is in him;
it reduces his home to a mere den of discomfort and wretchedness; it
forces him to be either a hypocrite at or an absentee from his own
hearthstone and deprives him of the blessedness and sympathy--the holy
tenderness and beauty--that should be the star in the crown of every man
entitled to the name of husband and father.
But he still owns his own body. He cannot be made an unwilling father
of timid, diseased, or brutalized children; he is not a financial
dependent. For these and other reasons an unhappy marriage can never
mean to a man what it must always mean to a woman.
There is an argument frequently put forward that divorce is wrong
and unfair to the children of those so separated in case the divorced
parties remarry and other children are added to the family. One great
Prelate asked in his article on this subject: "Can we look with anything
short of horror upon such a condition of things? Here is a family, we
will say, composed of the children of three divorced fathers--all by one
mother."
This is an extreme and not a pleasing case, we may admit; but suppose
the divorce were by death would the distinguished Prelate be so shocked?
Is it especially uncommon, indeed, for the most devout men and women to
marry three times? Are "half" brothers and sisters and "step" children a
subject of moral shock to the most rigid religionists? Jesus appeared to
approve of a woman marrying seven times. How about a mixed family there?
Does the distinguished Prelate take issue with his Lord? No, the whole
question hinges on the continuance of the life of the parties separated
or divorced. If one of them dies the mixed family relation is not
counted either a sin or a shame. If they live and the divorce is granted
by law instead of by nature it is pronounced both.
In whose interest is this distinction maintained? We have seen that it
is not for the honor of the wife that a loathsome marriage relation
be indissoluble, that it can lend neither dignity nor happiness to the
husband, that it is one of the fruitful causes of diseased and criminal
childhood and that it is, therefore, necessarily, a menace to society.
Legally, morally, economically, then, it is a mistake, and it is
productive of great misery. Who then is benefited? Why is the attempt
so strongly made to revise the laws and check the growing liberality in
divorce legislation?
Who are the movers in that direction and upon what do they base their
arguments? What is the final appeal of these combatants? I shall answer
the two last questions first. The orthodox clergy and their followers,
basing their arguments on the Bible as the final appeal, demand that
this reform go backward. Why?
Because their creeds and tenets have always claimed that marriage is a
sacrament and not a legal contract, that it is or should be under the
control of the clergy, and that the Bible and St. Paul say so and so
about it. The Catholic Church has, by keeping control of the marriage of
its believers, made sure of the children--their education--and therefore
insured to itself their future adherence. It has perpetuated itself and
its power by this means. It is, therefore, not difficult to see why that
church so warmly opposes any movement which can only result in disaster
to its growth and power. Her communicants are taught that it is their
duty to increase and multiply, and this in spite of the fact that
poverty and crime, want and ignorance stare in the face a large per
cent, of the very class which it is thus sought to swell. The Catholics
are the most prolific and furnish _by far_ the largest per cent, of both
paupers and criminals of any other class of the community. With
them marriage is a sacrament; divorce is not allowed, or if allowed,
remarriage is prohibited. Children are born with astounding frequency
of subject mothers to brutal fathers. They are bred in a constant
atmosphere of contention, bickering, and in short, warfare. The result
is inevitable. Contest--war--brings out all the worst elements and
passions in human nature. This fact is well understood where war
is conducted between large bodies of men; but in such case there is
supposed to be a motive--some patriotic principle involved to stir and
call out, also, some of the better nature; but in the petty warfare of
the wretched household there is nothing to redeem life from the basest.
But suppose all this is true, say the advocates of the forced
continuance of the marriage relation; the Bible--our creeds--teach us
to refuse the relief of divorce, and we are bound at any cost to sustain
the indissolubility of the marriage bond. True, for those who accept
these creeds or the Bible as a finality; but to those who do not, the
State owes a duty. Church and State are separated in America, it is
claimed. A magistrate can marry a man and woman, just as he can draw up
another contract. When the State went that far it told the people that
it did not hold marriage as a sacrament. It then and there took the
ground that it was a legal contract, and had no necessary connection
with religious belief or observance. It logically follows, then, that if
the State deals with marriage as a thing not touched by religious belief
or Biblical injunction, that the question of divorce--the terms of the
contract--are also quite outside of the province of the clergy. This
being the case, it appears as futile and as foolish to discuss this
question--making of it a religious one--from the basis of the creeds or
the Bible, as it would be to discuss the rate of interest on money or
the wages per day for labor, from the same outlook.
Believers in the finality of Biblical teaching are at liberty to hold
their marriages as indissoluble, but have no right to insist upon
forcing their religious dogmas upon others, nor to attempt to
crystalize them into law for those who believe otherwise. No doubt
the Bible gave the best light of the Jews, in the day in which it was
written, on these and other subjects. We are quite willing to suppose
that the various creeds and usages of the churches did the same, for the
people whom they represented, but the creeds and the Bible have nothing
whatever to do with the social and economic problems of our day, nor
with the legal questions of our time.
The more they are dragged into places where they do not belong, the more
it is discovered that "revision" is necessary. The old creeds and the
Bible are fast undergoing revision and are recut to fit the people and
the present. It is quite impossible to revise and recut the people and
the present to fit the old creeds and the literature of the Jews.
Let us have done with such trifling with the serious problems of the
day. It is not at all a question of whether St. Paul said or thought
this or that about divorce. It is not at all important what some dead
and gone Potentate said; the question before us is: What is best for
society as it is now? Indeed it appears to me futile to discuss this
subject at all if it is to be done from a theological basis. Every
fairly intelligent person knows what the church teaches in the matter.
One paragraph and a half dozen Biblical references with a notable name
appended is all the space necessary to consume. We all know that in
substance the Catholic church's answer to the question "Is Divorce
wrong?" is emphatically, "Yes."
We are also aware that that church revises its opinions more slowly than
does any other.
It is equally well known to the intelligent reader that the variations
from the emphatic Yes of the Catholic church, run the scale in the
Protestant denominations from a moderately firm yes to a distinctly
audible no. Given the denomination and a slight knowledge of its
history--whether it claims to be infallible and divine, as the Catholic
and Episcopal, or only partly so as the Methodist, Presbyterian, and
Congregational, or whether as the Unitarian and Universalist they claim
to be human only--and you are prepared to state what the adherents
of those churches will hold as to the marriage and divorce questions
without resort to long papers or circumlocution. Now, for the various
sects to teach or believe what they please on this and other subjects
is their undoubted right so long as they do not attempt to control other
people in matters which are outside of the province of the church, and
so long as their own adherents are satisfied to abide by the decisions
of the communion to which they belong.
The question is, then, what is best for society as it is and as it is
likely to be? What is best for society as it is now? Who is benefited or
who harmed by the continuance of a loathesome relationship? Is the State
and are the people interested in refusing to allow two people to correct
a mistake once made? Is it for the good of anyone to make mistakes
perpetual?
I repeat that it is a question in economics and morals. It has nothing
whatever to do with religion.
Let us keep our minds clear of rubbish, and above all let us request
that our legislators do not tamper with a question of such vital
importance to women, in any manner (as is just now proposed) to
crystalize the divorce laws into national form and application,
until women be heard in the matter, freely and fully, without fear or
intimidation. If it were proposed to make a national law for railroads
without giving a hearing to but one side of the question; if it
were suggested that Congress pass an educational bill of universal
application without permitting any but its friends to be heard; if a
general measure to control interest on money were up, and none of the
money-lenders were given a hearing--only borrowers--there would be a
great stir made about the injustice and inequity of such legislation.
But it is deliberately proposed to pass a national marriage and divorce
law, to regulate the one condition of life which is absolutely vital
to women under present conditions, and to make this law a part of the
national Constitution, without taking the trouble to hear one word from
her on the subject. Let us agitate this question thoroughly. Let us
discuss it on the basis where it belongs; where our laws have already
put it--the economic, and moral, and social basis. Let us clear the
track of both sentimentality and superstition. Let us hear from both
sides--from both parties interested. We do not drag religion into the
interstate commerce debate. When a bill comes up for street-paving,
nobody inquires what kind of stone St. Paul was interested in having put
down. When the Chinese bill is before us, it is not necessary to know
what St. Sebastian thought of the laundry business. Their views may have
been sound; but they do not apply. I repeat, therefore, let us keep to
the subject, keep the subject on the basis where it belongs, have our
conclusions at least blood relatives of our premises, and let us hear
from both sides of the fireplace. And finally, let us discuss this
matter thoroughly but let us keep clear of passing a national law until
both parties to the contract be heard, not only in the press, but in the
legislative deliberations.
A recent writer of one of the ablest and clearest papers yet
contributed on this subject, in arguing in favor of an amendment to
the Constitution, which shall make divorce laws uniform, says: "Let it
clearly be shown that Congress can best legislate in the interests of
the _whole people_ (the italics are mine) upon the subject, and the
people, and their representatives, the legislative assemblies, can be
trusted to authorize it." It does not occur to even this able writer
that half of the "whole people" will have no representation in either
the legislative assemblies nor in Congress, and that on this subject
above all others, this unrepresented half has far more at stake than has
the other, and that when an amendment to the national Constitution is
accomplished, it is a very much more difficult thing to correct any
blunder it may contain, than it would be if the blunder were not made a
part of that instrument.
All men appear to agree that marriage is preeminently woman's "sphere."
Certainly under existing conditions, and under conditions as they are
likely to be for some time to come, it is the one field open to her--it
is her "lot." At present she has nothing to say as to the laws which
control--as to the terms of this single contract of her life--the one
disposition she is free to make of herself and still retain her social
status and secure support. It would seem only humane to place no farther
thorns in her path. Until she has a voice--is represented--the "whole
people" cannot amend the Constitution in respect to marriage and
divorce--in respect to the "one sphere" which all men concede is woman's
one peculiar right.
No laws on these subjects--above all others--should be crystalized into
national form and appended to the Constitution until it is done by the
help and with the consent of the half of the people whom it will most
seriously affect.