It is so desperately practical that the land is literally covered with the deplorable results, in hospitals, in prisons, in imbecile asylums and in mad houses; but when he goes on to "thank God that this vice is hidden, and that thousands of wives and daughters do not know of even its existence," it impresses me that the Inspector is, in deploring the ignorance of fathers and commending it in mothers, attempting to still farther hedge boys about with a condition which inevitably makes of them sex maniacs in more directions than one. Is not his mother as deeply interested in her boy's welfare as is his father? Is it not to her eyes and wisdom his younger days are most left and to whose watchfulness, intelligence and information he must be trusted not to develop or acquire fatal habits? or if he has them in his blood as a heritage from his father, or from his father's father, by whom vice was looked upon as "safe" if only kept from the ears and eyes of wife and daughter; is it not imperative that the trained eye and mind of a woman who is not ignorant of nor blind to the very earliest indications that Nature has sent a message that there is a blood taint, so that, in so far as it is possible she may labor to modify and control his awful inheritance before it has him in a fatal grip?
Instead of this being the case it is advocated as desirable that she be even "ignorant of the existence of such vice!" It is due more to the fact that she has been ignorant than to any other one thing that, later on, the boy's developed hereditary curse, or his acquired bad habits, have so fixed themselves upon his young mind and body that the Inspector and the boy's father find themselves in a position to choose between a straight jacket for the boy himself, or first a wrecked and outraged womanhood and later on descendants that are marked with a brand that is worse than Cain's.
The Inspector says that such disclosures as Dr. Talmage's sermon before innocent women and girls do vastly more harm than a host of sin that is compelled to hide its head.
Now what is the implication? Did he mean to imply that those places have, since the sermon, been thronged with the "wives and daughters of Brooklyn?" If not, how did he know that it "polluted their minds?" Has he not jumped at that conclusion and cast a slur upon the wrong sex? the sex that did not "squander its money in patronizing these resorts?" Was not that a rather desperate effort to sustain an argument by a non-sequitur?
Are women's minds polluted by a knowledge of vice which they avoid intelligently rather than simply escape from ignorantly? Are ignorance and innocence the same thing? Did the Inspector believe that a knowledge of the degradation into which their sons are led and pushed by just such theories as these backed by a blind hereditary impulse which has no intelligent care from a wise parentage, did he believe that such knowledge would drive or lure "wives and daughters" into polluting vice? And is it not strange to hear of a condition of things which can be spoken of as good and desirable for boys and men which is in the same breath depicted as pollution even to the ears of women? Can good women live with these same men and not be polluted? How about the children?
Man has for ages past, claimed to be the logical animal. Beasts have no logic at all, and in this regard woman has been gallantly classed, if not exactly with the beasts, certainly not with man. We may say she has been counted by him as a sort of missing link. She had logic – if she agreed with all he said. Otherwise she was an emotional, irrational, unclassified creature.
Now, when it comes to dealing with his fellows, man has – in the main – a fair amount of reason and logic; but the moment he is called upon to think of woman as simply a human being like himself, to deal with and for her as such, to give her a chance to do the same with, and by, and for herself, that moment man becomes an emotional, irrational sex maniac. He is absolutely unable to look upon woman as first of all, a free individuality, a human being on exactly the same plane as himself. She is instantly "wife," "daughter," or victim to his mind always. Never for one instant does he contemplate her as an entity entitled to life and liberty, for, and because of herself. Always it is her relation to him that he sees and deals with – and alas for his theories of justice, gallantry or right – always it is as his subordinate, for his use, abuse, or pleasure, that he thinks of and plans for her.
Why confine gilded houses to one quarter? To keep their vicious inmates away from "our wives and daughters, and the streets which they are on," says the Inspector. But that is making sex irregularity a reason for restricting liberty of residence and resort – even of promenade and pleasure. That is to say, it restricts the liberty of one party to the vice – to the irregularity of sex relations. And unfortunately it is the wrong party who is restricted to compass the object claimed! The one whose vice can and actually does injure – the wife and daughter – (the pure woman who is his victim in marriage, and the daughter who is his victim in heredity) the one who can do infinite wrong, is left to roam at large!
It is the wrong partner in vice from whom State regulation seeks to "protect" "our wives and daughters." It is the one who can do the intelligent wife or daughter no harm whatever!
Man, we are told, is the logical animal. Why not apply a bit of logic right here? Why not set a watch on and restrict the one who does the real and permanent harm to the race?
Men claim that it is necessary to their health, happiness and comfort to sacrifice utterly the characters, health, lives, and even liberty of locomotion of thousands of women every year. This is simply infamous and Nature teaches its infamy and unnaturalness.
From the protozoan to the highest beast or bird there is no distinction of right, or opportunity or privilege as to the occupation, life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness anywhere in nature between the sexes until we reach the one species of animal where one sex has been subordinated to the other by artificial industrial conditions – by financial dependence.
Now, it so happens that as civilization goes on, Nature is taking a most terrible revenge upon the human race for this sex perversion. Asylums multiply, weaklings abound, criminals and lunatics blossom out from heretofore honored ancestry. Nature is a terrible antagonist. Having the power, man may pollute the fountain of life if he will, but Nature revenges herself on him still.
He may cover his vice with the shimmer of gold, but the curse of the serpent is there as of old. He may bind up the eyes of justice and right; but he learns at the last 'tis a desperate fight. A cover for vice in the father may be as fatal as ignorant maternity. Combined they sow broadcast on the air the horrors of life and breed its despair. It is to the "ignorance of our wives and daughters" on these points, combined with the silence of law-protected vice for men and "regulated" infamy for women that is due the possibility of passing in some states a bill to reduce to ten years the "age of consent" at which a girl is held legally responsible for her own ruin. If there was one good woman in the legislature no such bill would have a ghost of a chance to pass, or be kept from the public knowledge and rushed through a "secret session." Yet fathers of daughters pass such bills!
Is it true, after all, that men are not so good protectors of women as is woman of her sister? Ten years of age! Why, a girl is a baby then! Think of your own little girl at ten! Do not dare to stop thinking and talking and writing on the subject until such infamous laws are an impossibility!
Do not allow any one to make you believe that it is not "modest" or becoming for a woman to know about – and fight to the bitter death – any and all such laws! You have no right not to know it! You have no right to dare to bring into this world a child who shall be subject to such a law! It seems beyond belief but it is true. And then men talk of "protecting" women! Men who hold that a girl is not old enough to give lawful consent to lawful marriage or to the sale of property until she is 18 years old, say she is, at the age of ten, to be held old enough to give consent to her own eternal disgrace, ruin, degradation!
That such atrocious acts are possible is largely due to the fact that "our wives and daughters" do not know these things. The ignorance of one sex in all the vital affairs of life coupled with its financial dependence upon the other sex has gone far to make of all men sex maniacs and of so many children the victims of a polluted ancestry and the future progenitors of an enfeebled race.
A famous physician who is an expert in these matters says in one of his articles, read before his brother practitioners: "There are few families in this country not tainted with one or another form of sex pollution. If it is not physical in its demonstrations it is mental. Often it is both, and to the trained eye, and thought, of a student of anthropology and heredity, the present outlook is pitiful, indeed."
And again he says – and remember that it is not said by a woman about man. It is the serious warning of a famous expert to his fellows who were to meet and guard, in their profession, against the hereditary results of just the sort of legislative provision which has gone far to make of man the sex maniac he is. He said: "The wild beast is slumbering in us all. It is not necessary, always, to invoke insanity to account for its awakening." And if you will take the trouble to understand those few sentences by a great specialist you will have found the whole of my essay a mere illustration.
DIVORCE AND THE PROPOSED NATIONAL LAWS
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.