FOOTNOTES:
[20] Code Napoléon: “La recherche de la paternité est interdite.” This provision was expunged in 1913. In Massachusetts, the father’s name may not be given in the record of birth except on the written request of both father and mother. No similar protection against publicity is provided for the mother.
[21] Lecky, “History of European Morals.” Chapter V.
[22] A recent decision in the State of New York declared that a husband is not required to fulfil his promise to return money loaned him by his wife, when she has accumulated it through economy in her housekeeping; because every saving of the kind is the property of the husband, as are the services of the wife. The wife has no money of her own.
[23] The State of Wisconsin has made men and women equal before the law.
[24] In countries where the custom of dowry persists the parents are obviously in a position to exact a great degree of regard for their wishes, more particularly where economic opportunity is no longer plentiful. In this country, where abundance of free land made the support of a family comparatively easy and secure, marriage early became a matter to be arranged by the contracting parties. In modern France, on the other hand, it is still largely a matter to be arranged between families.
[25] Several feminists have already, indeed, urged public sanction of extra-legal sexual relations, and C. Gasquoine Hartley, with a genuinely Teutonic passion for order, has even advocated their regulation by the State. This is probably impossible, for people who choose such relationships usually do so to escape regulation.