DANGER TO MORALS. 24 1 



therefrom, a growing disregard of the sanctity and indis- 

 soluble character and purpose of the marriage vow — the 

 family compact, — we endanger the whole fabric of society. 

 "Any reflecting person, considering these questions, from 

 the point of view of public policy and in the interests of 

 civilization, without any prepossessions upon the subject 

 that can be called religious, must see that the institution 

 of the family is at the base of all our civilization, and it 

 is the duty of every good citizen to repel all assaults 

 upon it." 



Notwithstanding our great accumulations of wealth, 

 our palatial residences with their varied attractions and 

 appointments to make the average city home luxurious 

 and comfortable, the father and husband, as a rule, is 

 less at home than in the ruder days of the early Pilgrims 

 and Puritans. With our development, the modern club- 

 house and the fashionable restaurant have come — a 

 menace to the permanency and nobility of the family. 

 They take the heart out of the family circle, and leave it 

 cold and purposeless. These institutions are growing 

 in America out of all proportion to the increase of 

 population. 



Of the poorer classes, it is becoming strikingly appar- 

 ent, that the number of married women looking for em- 

 ployment at the stores, offices, and factories is alarmingly 

 on the increase. It is said by those who have given this 

 matter attention, that the married who are thus striving 

 for situations in our cities are not fewer in numbers than 

 the unmarried ; that of these the majority are women 

 ■whose husbands have either left them, or who are com- 

 pelled to assist the husband in procuring a subsistence for 

 the family ; that a vast proportion are wives of perfidious 



husbands. There was once a time when the young wife 

 II 



