"The Decay of Modern Marriage"

Christianity introduced a new attitude which has not yet been erased from the marital ceremony and institution. The concept of sex as a sin is intruded as an ethical attitude at this time, and the theory of indissoluble monogamy was forced upon the world. Divorce was destroyed. The words of Jesus: "What, therefore, God hath joined together, let not man put asunder," served as the cardinal doctrine for the Christian marriage.

If we say that marriage has decayed, we do not mean that people do not still marry, or that they will not marry in the future. It is marriage as we know it, therefore, the marriage of modern monogamy, of the binding-contract variety, our system of marriage, in other words, that has broken down, and today is bankrupt.

A monogamy which is interrupted by frequent divorce is a monogamy only in fiction, but not in fact. The essential idea of monogamy, as we said, is a relationship of life-long duration. Otherwise Mr. Mencken's witticism: "Certainly I believe in monogamy, one woman at a time," is sound doctrine. In other words, if merely living with one woman at a time is monogamy, then many forms of free-love are mentally monogamous. Many an individual, then, classified by conventional society as a profligate or demirep, is genuine monogamist. But everyone knows that it is not in such ways that monogamy is construed.

Let us observe some of the developments in divorce, which have effected this "consecutive polygamy" that has taken place in our modern world. In Holland there is now a divorce rate of fourteen for every one thousand marriages. In Sweden, there were seven divorces per thousand in 1899, 84 per thousand in 1904, and 97 per thousand in 1909. In Denmark divorces have increased from 550 to 650 out of a total of only 850,000 married persons. In the United States the figures are even more of a revelation. In 1880 the United States had thirty-eight divorces per hundred thousand of the population, and in 1900 it had 73 per hundred thousand. This increase was so startling and appalling that it attracted the attention of the world. Only Japan with an average of 215 per hundred thousand surpassed the American record. Between 1867 and 1886 there were 328,716 divorces, while between 1887 and 1906 there were 945,625. The following comparisons will illustrate the extensity of this increase:

The increase of divorces between 1870 and 1880 was two-and-two-thirds times greater than that of the increase in the population; between 1890 and 1900 it rose to three times. In 1924, for instance, this number had risen to 151. An effective comparison is to be seen in the statistics as to domestic relations in 1887 and 1924. In 1887 there was one divorce to every 17.3 marriages; in 1924 there was one divorce to every 6.9 marriages.

"There were in 1924," writes Professor William Fielding Ogburn, "about 15 to 16 times as many divorces as there were in 1870, and yet the population is only about three times as large."

In specific states, for instance, the conditions are even more astonishing. In Oregon, as we pointed out before, there is one divorce for every 2.6 marriages; in Wyoming one divorce for every 3.9 marriages; and in California one divorce for every 5.1 marriages. If we study divorce libels the conditions are even more astonishing. Divorce libels in Boston, for example, (or in Suffolk County) have increased almost three times as fast as marriages during the twenty years from 1900-1920.

If people are not legally free to contract as they wish in their sexual relations, which would be equivalent to a form of free-love, they modify the law in such ways as to get this effect without being aware of it. They turn monogamy into such a malleable thing that it is no longer monogamy but a chaos of voluntary changes, rejections, and novelties, and yet in still calling it monogamy their fear of convention is pacified. They convert marriage into a kind of experimental liaison, with legal trappings to sanctify it, and convince themselves that by still calling it marriage the institution remains unassailed.

It is instructive also to observe the causes that are assigned for divorces. For example, among 945,625 divorces effected, 642,476 were granted to women, and 316,149 to men. Over two divorces, then, were granted to wives for every one that was granted to husbands, which signifies, in statistical form, an attitude on the part of woman that is distantly removed from that of her Victorian predecessors. In the nineteenth century divorce sought by woman was a sign of stigma. Women then were not to "take arms against a sea of trouble," but to accept it with resignation. Such response was supposed to be part of the innate nobility of her nature. Today woman is in a state of protest and revolt. At one time the double-morality was accepted as a phase of the inevitable. Today, as we know, it is denied. In the matter of desertion, we see a similar situation. Among 367,502 divorces granted on the basis of desertion, 211,219 were given to women, and 156,283 to men. This change is directly connected, of course, with the economic independence of woman that has become so marked in the present generation and which has so decisively influenced the new feminine psychology.

In America the grounds for divorce vary with almost every state in the union. The chaos is extremely annoying and troublesome. It is almost as bad as certain of the marital laws that exist in different states. One white man, for instance, who had married a colored woman in Chicago, where intermarriage between white and colored people is legal, found that when he moved to Maryland he would be imprisoned if he lived with his wife. When he insisted upon his natural rights as a husband he was informed that he could not even get a divorce since in the eyes of Maryland he had never been married. Such cases are numerous. In Reno one can get a divorce after a residence of three months, on the ground of cruelty or one year's desertion. In New York one can get a divorce only on the grounds of adultery, or proof of the unchastity of a wife before marriage. At the same time New York permits a common law marriage. In one case there was a man who was a bigamist in one state and a monogamist in another. There are other instances in which children can be legitimate in one state and illegitimate in another. South Carolina, curiously enough, permits no divorce at all. Nevertheless, its compensations are in other directions. It does not make adultery an indictable offense, and it has actually passed a law, regulating the amount of property a man can bestow upon his concubine. This is one of the most unique gestures of compromise on record. Rather than modify its marital code, and concede the existence of necessary difficulties and deviations in marital relationships, it invents another law to circumscribe these deviations without violating the original statute. Thus the old seems firm and unchanged, although in reality it has been fundamentally altered.

Divorce has menaced the marital institution in every country in Europe as well as America. In Germany divorces rose from 13,344 in 1918 to 36,542 in 1920; in Switzerland from 1,699 in 1918 to 2,241 in 1920; in Sweden from 1,098 in 1918 to 1,455 in 1923. In the United States, with 180,868 actual divorces (an advance of 3.1% over the 1925 record) and 3,823 annulments in the year 1926, it is apparent, the increase has been the most widespread and profound.

It is not surprising, then, that Professor John B. Watson's prognostication that: "the present marriage system will end in fifty years . . . that (since) the mystery of marriage has been broken down. . . we must have a new kind of ethic, based on a scientific study of human behavior as a way to more simple marital adjustments" did not disturb nor terrify the public. Such predictions are no longer uncommon. A century ago, or even two generations ago, however, such a declaration would have aroused horror and disdain. Such utterances, then, were considered the attributes of lunacy and far-flung fanaticism. A few radicals might entertain and cherish such notions, but these radicals scarcely constituted a fragmentary fringe of the public opinion which prevailed. They were social pariahs, and their ideas isolated dogmas that touched the imagination only of the maniac. In the last generation the change has occurred. We have been rushed and plunged across so many new horizons and twisting seas that the very tempo of our life has been broken and changed, and its rhythm shaken into somersaulting jerk and recoil.

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