450 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



equal rights with man, and has achieved her economic, intellectual 

 and moral, as well as legal, independence of man. This has been 

 a good thing in itself, but many women have used their freedom 

 to emphasize their rights rather than their duties, and consequently 

 have rendered the family life less stable. In so far as the move- 

 ment for "woman's rights" has been simply an expression of grow- 

 ing individualism or selfishness on the part of our women, it has 

 tended, like all individualism, to destroy the home. 



If the one million divorces in the country during the last 

 twenty years had been granted for trivial causes, the divorce move- 

 ment would be serious enough. But it is infinitely more serious 

 when the separations take place for grave moral reasons. It is 

 generally recognized that such causes as adultery, desertion, cruelty, 

 imprisonment for crime, habitual drunkenness, and neglect to pro- 

 vide are grave reasons for divorce; and while some of our states 

 have omnibus clauses in their divorce laws, these six principal 

 grounds are the ones recognized by the majority of states. More- 

 over, the statistics of divorces granted show tha£ 97 per cent, of 

 all divorces are granted on these six principal grounds. Only an 

 insignificant fraction of the divorces in the United States are 

 granted for trivial reasons, such as "incompatibility of temper." 

 Again, over 60 per cent., or nearly two-thirds, of the divorces in 

 the United States are granted for the two most serious grounds of 

 all — adultery and desertion. In other words, in two-thirds of the 

 cases, divorce was granted after husband and wife were already 

 practically separated. We must conclude, therefore, that divorce 

 is prevalent, not because of the laxity of our laws, but rather be- 

 cause of the decay of our family life. The real evil is not divorce, 

 but the decay of the very virtues upon which the home rests. The 

 crisis in American home life is whether we are able to build up 

 the virtues upon which a new and higher type of family life may be 

 built — higher, that is, than the despotic semi-patriarchal type of 

 family of o«r fathers which is now passing away, or is rather al- 

 ready extinct. It must be remembered, however, that the first 

 essential element in the home life of a people is stability. 



It is evident, I think, that laws can do but little to check the 

 decay of our family life. Legislation, it is true, can do something 

 to mitigate the grosser evils, and to set moral standards. Here in 

 Missouri our laws have certainly been too lax. We should reduce 

 our eleven grounds for absolute divorce to two or three, leaving 

 the other grounds now recognized as simply grounds for legal sepa- 

 ration. We should prohibit remarriage after the divorce has been 



