WOMAN'S CIVIL STATUS

I herewith cite to you, absolutely from memory, things which I have gleaned from different sources at various times, for loyalty to my sex

has been my life's hobby, and I have always noted everything bearing upon woman's condition. And let me beg just here, as I have promised the strictest secrecy towards you that you will never divulge that I told you all these things; for no American woman can publicly announce such truths and not be crucified. Instead of attacking the arguments the individual who makes them will be attacked, and I am not seeking martyrdom.

A diplomat has said: "In the United States Republic marriage is easily made, boys and girls entering into it with little or no ceremony and at an age when they should be at school. But if marriage is easy, divorce is no less so, and is so frequent it creates no comment. When we consider that, in addition to legal divorce, there is an appallingly large number of separations

and desertions; and when we reflect on the noble nature and unselfish devotion of women, their maternal instinct and their dislike of publicity— we can safely assume that an enormous proportion of the marriages contracted therein result in misery. Not only are the various easy marriage and divorce laws most unfortunate for these women, but the whole social organization bears most heavily upon them. The prevailing belief amongst people in Europe is that women in the Republic enjoy an enviable lot; whereas a glance at the laws and customs affecting them shows how helpless and unprotected they are. They have no legal claim upon parents except in childhood, and so feel forced to marry, but with the melancholy consciousness that marriage is no certain or reliable bond. As a disguised selfishness prevents the father from giving a dowry, the husband also selfishly makes no settlement, and the poor dowerless girl enters married life with no assurance of any provision for herself and children, save that which depends solely upon the good will of her husband, Worse than all, the ease with which divorce can

be obtained renders the length of married life very uncertain. The different systems of laws, the sovereignty of the States, the existence of trust estates, render any decree of court for allowance or alimony practically nugatory."*

"Yet from a glance at the Constitution of this government and the utterances of its public men, a stranger would imagine that an ideal condition of society exists therein for women. But such are transparent screens which deceive none but novices."

Women are often imprisoned, fined, or punished there for immorality (the men never are);

*"There are over 20,000 divorces granted annually in the American Republic. Ten years of the most thorough and impartial investigation has convinced me that for every woman who has been divorced, at least 100 were legally entitled to divorces; and that 98 men in every 100 (in the upper and middle classes) who are entitled to divorce obtain such. Practically the entire womanhood of the lower classes is lewd. On account of children or financial dependence, wives submit to wrongs which husbands would not countenance for a moment. At least 90 per cent. of the men whose wives divorce them, or who desert their families, are nativeborn."

and the number of victims of men's passions and selfishness has multiplied and grown until in no land on earth are there vaster armies of them. Drunkenness and gambling are also alarmingly prevalent, the percentage of gambling amongst these men being larger than in any other country; and their per capita use of alcohol also being larger than that of any other men.* No men hold more rigidly to one social scale for themselves and to another for women, and yet any good which might be accomplished by honesty, publicity or truth, is always paralyzed by that vice of vices-hypocrisy—which clings to the male Yankee like the shirt of Nes

sus.

Bellamy has said: "At the very bottom of the heap, bearing the accumulated burden of the whole mass, is woman in every republic. So far beneath the estate of man is woman therein, that

*In making up their tables of the use of alcoholic drinks, statisticians include women. But as women only consume one per cent. thereof, they should practically be excluded, and this (when reduced to pure alcohol) shows that American men consume more per capita than the men of any other country.

it would be a mighty uplift for her could she attain the level of even its lowest man!"

Richard Henry Savage said: "Women are far more dependent in America than in Europe. It will offend the habitually boastful Yankee to be told that the personal and property rights of women are generally more safely guarded in Europe than here, but it is true nevertheless."

Mrs. J. K. Henry said: "As if to sound a note of warning to our rich girls, the American press teems with recitals of domestic woes of our women who have married titled foreigners, but they need not go abroad to find domestic woes. Marital infidelity has well-nigh turned our own Republican domestic system into pandemonium, as our court records everywhere attest, but not even the smallest fraction of it has been told there."

I shall now quote to you an opinion which I value far above any ever expressed, not only because it is the opinion of one of the greatest statesmen of the Nineteenth Century, but chiefly because it is that of a thinker who could