SOCIAL CONTROL AND FAMILY FUNCTION 705 



theless it is fallacious to represent the institution of divorce as in 

 itself a menace to social morality. It is a result and not a cause; 

 a remedy and not the disease. It is not immoral. On the contrary, 

 it is quite probable that drastic, like negligent, legislation is some- 

 times immoral. It is not necessarily a virtue in a divorce law, as 

 appears often to be assumed, to restrict the application of the remedy 

 regardless of the sufferings of the social body. If it were, the only 

 logical course would be to imitate South Carolina and prohibit 

 divorce entirely. The most enlightened judgment of the age heartily 

 approves of the policy of extending the legal causes so as to include 

 offenses other than the one " scriptural " ground, as being equally 

 destructive of connubial happiness and family well-being. Indeed, 

 considering the needs of each particular society, the promotion of 

 happiness is the only safe criterion to guide the lawmaker either in 

 widening or narrowing the door of escape from the marriage bond. 



The divorce movement is a portentous and almost universal 

 incident of modern civilization. Doubtless it signifies underlying 

 social evils, vast and perilous. Yet to the student of history it 

 is perfectly clear that it is but a part of the mighty movement for 

 social liberation which has been gaining in volume and strength ever 

 since the Reformation. According to the sixteenth-century reformer, 

 divorce is a " medicine " for the disease of marriage. It is so to-day 

 in a sense more real than Smith or Bullinger ever dreamed of; for 

 the principal fountain of divorce is bad matrimonial laws and bad 

 marriages. Certain it is that one rises from a detailed study of 

 American legislation with the conviction that, faulty as are our di- 

 vorce laws, our marriage laws are far worse; while our apathy, our 

 carelessness and levity regarding the safeguards of the matrimonial 

 institution are well-nigh incredible. The centre of the dual problem 

 of protecting and reforming the family is marriage and not divorce. 



In fact there has been a great deal of hasty and misdirected 

 criticism of American divorce legislation. Often it rests upon the 

 facts as they were eighteen years ago, when the government report 

 was compiled. Meantime great improvements have been made. 

 Little by little the codes of the fifty-two states and territories, freed 

 from their most glaring faults, are approximating to a common type. 

 If American legislation is on the average more liberal than that of 

 other lands, it would surely be rash to assume that it is worse on that 

 account. The question is: Has American social liberalism, in this 

 regard as in so many other respects, increased the sum of human 

 happiness? Is there any good reason for believing that what De 

 Tocqueville said fifty years ago is not to-day true? " Assuredly," 

 he wrote, " America is the country in the world where the marriage- 

 tie is most respected and where the highest and justest idea of con- 

 jugal happiness has been conceived." 



