TEE LEGAL POSITION OF MARRIED WOMEN. 653 



she be allowed to shirk all family obligations, while presumably having 

 a very considerable influence in determining the scale of living ? Still 

 more, should she be allowed to assist her husband in cheating his cred- 

 itors, by contracting family debts in his name, which he can repudiate 

 by passing his property into her hands, or by merely swearing he is 

 bankrujjt ? 



And, on the other hand, where, as in Iowa, the two heads of the 

 married firm are made equally responsible by law for family expenses, 

 should there not be an accompanying provision making the married 

 partners equal owners of all current incomes f 



And, again, where the principle of equality of rank of husband 

 and wife, father and mother, in the home is fully conceded, how can 

 it be applied in the detail of the unity of name and residence demand- 

 ed ? Man, as the senior partner, now gives the name and determines 

 the legal residence. Some women claim the right to retain their own 

 single names, and demand a legal recognition of that right. Should 

 that be yielded in any case, which parent would then claim supe- 

 riority of child-ownership in giving a name to the children ? These 

 and other delicate questions of adjustment must be determined, not by 

 a priori reasoning, but by an appeal to past and present experience, 

 with these two principles in view, viz., the primary need of family 

 unity as a condition of social order, and the secondary need of in- 

 creasing measure of personal independence for women within that 

 unity. And since our legislative changes have been, for the most part, 

 attempts to limit the power of abuse of the domestic control vested in 

 the man, rather than efforts to secure the freedom of women from that 

 control by the husband, the result is an inconsistent medley of laws, 

 which at one time recognize the married woman as an independent 

 unit, and at another time as the mere ward of her husband. The great 

 practical need for the parties most interested thoughtful, intelligent 

 women is a clear ideal of the just legal relations of men and women. 

 With that ideal in mind, the laws, and esjpecially the actual practice 

 xinder those laics, should be examined, and, where they come short, 

 they may in time be amended by slow, pacific, but persistent methods 

 of educational appeal. 



A great help to this end is the work which contributed so much 

 toward the changes in Connecticut laws, the work recently so ably 

 done for Massachusetts by Messrs. Almy and Fuller, viz., the compila- 

 tion by reliable lawyers of the present laws, with an indication of all 

 inequalities, and the injustice resulting from them. 



Meanwhile, as the band of ancient law, which made woman the 

 domestic slave of man, protected her from a worse fate, and made pos- 

 sible the primitive home, so the inconsistencies of our present laws 

 make that band flexible in adjustment, even by ignorant or uncon- 

 scious workers, to the present and future needs of woman and the 

 home. Protected by these ever-changing codes, the higher uses of 



