[Reprinted from Boston Transcript]
The domestic relations court which was established in New York city
exactly one year ago has already taken its place as a permanent
institution of the city. The tremendous work of this court arouses
wonder that the idea had not been adopted years ago and that it is not
more widely emulated in other cities throughout the country. Chicago
and Washington are the only two other cities where similar courts
exist, and even in these cities the jurisdiction of the courts is not
quite the same as in New York. There are two domestic relations courts
in New York city, one located in East Fifty-seventh street in the same
building with a magistrate’s court and a municipal civil court, and
serving the needs of the residents of the two boroughs, Manhattan and
the Bronx; the other is in Brooklyn, administering to that section of
the greater city.
The domestic relations court is essentially a poor man’s court. In
its prime office, indeed, it partakes of the nature of a conciliatory
court, similar to the conciliatory courts of France, through which
all domestic difficulties pass before any divorce or other serious
case involving domestic infelicity, abandonment or non-support can
enter the courts proper. Like the judges of the conciliatory courts
in France, the judges of the domestic relations court in New York are
chosen for their tact, patience, knowledge of mankind and sympathy
with the frailties of men and women. Every case that comes into the
domestic relations court these judges first try to adjust without legal
procedure.
In the next instance the domestic relations court is a woman’s court.
In almost every case that has appeared here the complainant has been a
woman. It is not more than once in several months that a man appears
as a complainant in this court. This is, of course, largely owing to
the fact that man is not usually dependent upon his wife for support,
and even if deserted by his wife a man is not likely to be exposed to
hardship and suffering as is the case with a woman. Furthermore, this
court has no power to grant divorces. It merely adjusts differences,
punishes abandoning husbands, and advises separation when separation
seems the only wise course, and determines the amount of money that
the man must contribute towards the support of his wife, children or
other relatives. The law under which the domestic relations court was
established provides that to this court “shall be taken or transferred
for arraignment, examination or trial, or to which shall be summoned
all persons described as disorderly, all persons compelled by law to
support poor relatives, and all persons charged with abandonment or
non-support of wives of poor relatives under any provision of law,
conferring upon magistrates summary jurisdiction or the authority
to hold for trial in another court.” The law further provides that
“the commissioner of public charities shall establish and maintain
an office of the superintendent of outdoor poor in or convenient to
the building in which is situated the domestic relations court.” This
latter provision is to insure the supervision over delinquent husbands
and also to provide against any miscarriage of support money. In other
words, it is a sort of clearing house and controlling office after the
case has passed through the domestic relations court.
The functions of the domestic relations court in New York, therefore,
are clearly defined and extremely limited. In Chicago the domestic
relations court has a much more ample scope, for it has jurisdiction in
any of the following violations of state laws: Abduction of children
under twelve years of age, abandonment of wife or child, bastardy,
improper public exhibition or employment of children under fourteen
years of age, contributing to dependency or delinquency of children,
violation of all laws relating to child labor, violation of all laws
relating to compulsory education and truancy, climbing upon cars by
minors, permitting minors to gamble in saloons, permitting minors to
enter dance halls where intoxicating liquor is sold, sale or gift of
deadly weapons to minors, having or procuring intoxicating liquors
for minors, sale of tobacco to minors. And also the Chicago court
has jurisdiction over violations of the following city ordinances:
sale of cigarettes to minors, sale of cigarettes within 600 feet from
schoolhouse, gathering of cigar refuse by minors, sale of tobacco
to minors under sixteen years of age, sale of intoxicating liquors
to minors, purchasing of intoxicating liquors by minors, obtaining
intoxicating liquors by minors by false pretences, sale of materials
saturated with liquor to minors under sixteen years of age, giving
samples of intoxicating liquors in bottles or otherwise to minors,
gambling by minors in saloons, jumping up on moving cars by minors
under eighteen years of age, employment of minors under sixteen years
of age in pawnshops, receiving pledges from minors by pawn brokers,
sale of deadly weapons to minors. Thus it is apparent that the Chicago
domestic relations court is almost a combined children’s court. If the
jurisdiction of the New York court were anything like as large, the
calendar would be constantly glutted, and cases would have to wait as
long as cases on the Supreme Court calendar must needs wait now. As it
is, the domestic relations court handles all of its cases promptly,
although it is perhaps the busiest court of the city, owing to the fact
that the docket is cleaned up every day.
The two judges who sit in the Manhattan court are Magistrates Harris
and Cornell. Each magistrate sits fifteen days alternately, then five
days in one of the regular criminal magistrate’s courts, and then
ten days holiday. Under Judge Harris and Judge Cornell the domestic
relations court experiment has been tried out and proved successful.
Under these two magistrates there has been established a progressive
procedure in regard to husbands who refuse to live with and support
their wives and families. When a woman appears in this court the judge
listens to her story and if he feels that there is ground for action
or need of legal interference, he will issue a summons which is really
a legal form of request to the husband to appear in court on a certain
day. The wife is then told to come back on the same day. If the husband
appears in response to this summons, all well and good.
On the other hand, if he fails to take cognizance of the summons, a
warrant is issued for his arrest, and he is brought to court willy
nilly. When the moment for trial comes, the woman is put on the
witness stand and after being duly sworn, proceeds to tell her story,
without let or hindrance. If the corporation counsel happens to be
present he represents the woman, and the defendant is entitled to
counsel, although most of them are willing to tell their side of the
story and abide by the decision of the judge. In the absence of the
corporation counsel the presiding magistrate questions the woman, not
in a hostile way at all, but with the idea of drawing from her all the
facts which shall enable him to attain a wise decision. When she has
finished the defendant takes the stand in the usual way and the judge
questions him with a similar desire to elucidate the trouble. If the
case is flagrant it is within the power of the court to sentence the
man to the workhouse for a period of not more than six months. Many
women urge that their neglectful husbands be sent away, but it is in
this connection that the law is perhaps not all that it should be.
If sending a man to prison provided his wife and children with bread
and butter and rent it might frequently be a good thing for society
in general and the family in particular to have the man locked up.
Unfortunately, a man sent to Blackwell’s Island for six months is
obliged to do work for the state, but this precludes all possibility
of his contributing to the support of his family during the period of
his incarceration. Furthermore, the law will not allow the prosecution
a second time of a man who has just served a term of imprisonment for
non-support or abandonment within one year of the first prosecution,
so that if a woman asks the court to lock up her husband and the court
complies, that woman voluntarily surrenders all legal right to take
further action against him or collect money from him for a whole year.
There is an agitation just now to have the state pay a prisoner for
the work he does during his term of imprisonment and have the money
forwarded to his family. This surely is a wise and reasonable provision.
If the court stipulates that a man making nine or ten dollars a week
must contribute three dollars and a half or four dollars a week to the
support of his family, that man is either placed on probation to one of
the two regular probation officers attached to the domestic relations
court, or he is placed under the supervision of the department of
charities, alimony division. Money to be paid through the department
of charities is regulated in this way. The defendant is instructed to
bring or send the stated amount to the office of this department, at
the foot of East Twenty-sixth street, a certain day in the week, and
then the wife or whoever is to receive the money must call in person
the following day and, upon accepting the amount, is required to give
a receipt which is duly sent to the remitter. These receipts often
figure in court at a later date as evidence of the amount of money
which has actually been paid by the payee. It frequently happens that a
man will contribute faithfully for several weeks and then payments will
cease. In some instances this secession of payment is for a legitimate
reason--the man may be sick, or may have lost his position, whereupon
he is given an opportunity to explain in the court the reason for his
delinquency. When the wife appears in court and tells the magistrate
that her husband has become delinquent, the clerk of the court sends
out a printed form which reads as follows:
Dear Sir--I have been informed by your wife, So-and-So,
that you have failed to comply with the direction of the
court to pay her----so much----per week. I desire to inform
you that unless the direction of the court is complied with
at once, a warrant will be issued for your arrest and you
may be compelled to furnish a bond to insure the payment of
the said money for the support of your family.
Respectfully,
If the man appears in court in response to this notice, all well and
good, otherwise he is arrested by an officer and brought before the
judge to explain his failure to comply with the direction of the court.
The work of the domestic relations court is constantly increasing as
the functions of the court are being more widely heard of throughout
the city, especially among the foreign population. The largest
number of cases that come before this court are classified under the
nationality of Russia. There is an injustice in this classification,
however, inasmuch as the “Russians” are 99 per cent. Russian or
Polish Jews. Very many of the cases brought by the Jewish women are
extremely difficult to handle owing to the fact that the desertion
has oftentimes taken place in Europe. A man living in the ghetto of
Warsaw or Bialystok or Wilna will decide to come to America to seek
his fortune. Not having money enough to bring his wife and family, he
starts out alone leaving behind him the assurances that he will return
for them, or will send them money to bring them over. As a rule two or
three letters at least are sent back to the old country, containing
money orders for little sums of money, then the letters will cease.
Sometimes the wife waits for four or five or six years before in
despair she sets out in quest of her husband. Sometimes she finds him
married to some American woman or some woman he has met over here, and
then she goes to court with her trouble. The law here is confronted
with the situation obviously impossible to handle with equal justice
to all parties concerned without working hardship somewhere. The wife
from the Old World with her children certainly has first claim upon the
man, but at the same time the wife whom he has married here has perhaps
married him in good faith, knowing nothing about the other family, and
so have her children been born.
The Italians are the second largest nationality in the classification
of the domestic relations court cases. The Italians are very apt to be
disorderly persons. They are hot tempered, quick to strike and a great
many times an Italian wife appeals to the domestic relations court
because her husband has been cruel to her and struck her, and this
court is obliged to send her to the magistrates court in order that
her husband may be treated as a disorderly person. In justice to the
Italians of Northern Italy, it should be stated that it is very rare
to find an Italian in the domestic relations court who originally came
from any province in Italy north of Rome. The great mass of Italians
who get into this court are Neapolitans, Calabrians and Sicilians.
The third group are from Central Europe, Hungarians, peoples from the
Balkan states, Galicia and other provinces of Austria. The French
rarely are obliged to appeal to the domestic relations court. The
French are naturally a home-loving people, and anything like a domestic
break is rare among them. Only two or three times since this court was
established have French couples been obliged to appear there. A great
many people classify themselves as Americans when as a matter of fact
they are foreign born, so that the figures in regard to the number of
Americans in this court are misleading. Negroes, however, turn up here
in great numbers. Colored men often have no sense of responsibility
whatever and they are constantly forsaking their wives and families or
going off with somebody else’s wife. The excuses offered by colored men
who are haled into this court are often very amusing.
For the most part, however, this is not an amusing court. The long
line of people who press before Judge Cornell and Judge Harris day
after day, is for the most part a sordid, hideous line, and the tales
the complainants tell fill one with contempt and sourness toward
humanity. The domestic relations court offers an even seamier picture
of life in this city than the magistrates courts. While it is true that
occasionally a family of the better class makes appeal to this court,
for the most part the clients are illiterate and very poor. A very
large per cent. of the cases that are brought here are people who, if
abandoned, would become public charges. That is why the state interests
itself to the extent of providing a counsel for complainants, in order
to protect itself from the burden of caring for helpless women and
little children, whom some individual has simply deserted. There are
people who pretend to find amusement in the rehearsal of the marital
woes of the poor. To be sure, occasionally a case turns up with its
funny side, but to me the recitals are heartbreaking and dreary.
In the state of New York the failure of a man to support his wife,
if there are no children, the crime ranks as a misdemeanor, and six
months in the workhouse is the maximum penalty which can be imposed
upon him. The domestic relations court, in specializing on this phase
of law, will undoubtedly lead to certain reforms and amendments to
the existing law tending ultimately to develop a system of domestic
relations jurisprudence. It is a great boon, as it stands today, to
suffering poor women. Any woman without a dollar in the world can walk
into the domestic relations court, tell her troubles to the clerk of
the court, and then if her case is a worthy one, she is within a few
minutes placed on the witness stand, where she can repeat the recital
to the judge. The whole proceeding of bringing her husband to the
bar of justice and getting the court to forcing him to provide for
her is speedy and absolutely without cost. A woman under our present
system of life ought to have a court of this kind in which she may take
refuge, because the world at large is, at the present time, so unfair
to women. A woman can serve a man for years, bear him a large family of
children, and suddenly be deserted and left with the burden of support
for herself and family on her. If her husband is faithless, all she
can do is to appear before the supreme court and apply for a divorce,
but in this domestic relations court the judge will make her husband
contribute to her support and to the support of his children.
Drink is frequently at the bottom of domestic troubles, but not nearly
so often as most people would think. Drink, especially whiskey,
frequently makes a man irritable and quarrelsome, which leads to family
rows and frequently to disorderly conduct. The greatest number of cases
that come into this court are against shiftless, worthless, idle men
who seem to belong naturally to the submerged tenth. One day this week
I sat with Judge Cornell for an entire session of the court and the
run of cases which appeared that day gave ample indication of the tone
of the court. One case was of a colored girl who has been married less
than a year, who had brought her big black husband into the court to
explain why he had abandoned her. The explanation was frankly given.
He was so accustomed to living with white women, he said that he
could not bring himself to live any longer with the wife of his own
color. He was bonded to pay his wife $1 a week. Another woman, neat,
pretty and intelligent, a California girl, not yet twenty, had had her
husband arrested because he insisted that she go on the streets and
make money, not only for herself but for him, as a public prostitute.
An Irish woman complained that her husband who made good wages drank
it all up. He countered by stating, under oath, that his wife was an
habitual drunkard, which made no impression whatsoever on the court,
because the woman was particularly prepossessing and without a single
incriminating mark upon her. There were the usual number of Jewish
women whose husbands had simply gone off saying they would have nothing
more to do with them. And one or two Italian women, with small babies
in their arms, whose husbands had got angry with them and put them out
of the house or struck them.
It is a miserable, pitiable phase of life that one sees in the domestic
relations court, but that the court is so overworked, so constantly
busy, is justification enough for its establishment and indication
that any large community requires some such institution to placate
and bring together men and women, husbands and wives, whom oftentimes
trifling difficulties are about to separate, and to make it impossible
for husbands to desert their wives with impunity. That there should
be only three such courts in this country is a striking commentary
on the life we lead when it has been proved and demonstrated so
extraordinarily by the domestic relations court in New York city that
the need is so great. A visit to the domestic relations court will not
insure a pleasant afternoon or an amusing hour, but it will prove an
enlightening experience.