AGE OF LEGAL CONSENT: 12.
POPULATION: Male 1,090,227; female 1,056,947.
HUSBAND AND WIFE: Husband controls wife's earnings. Curtesy and dower are equalised. After the death of either husband or wife, the survivor is given a life interest in one third of the realty of the deceased and an absolute estate in one half of the personalty. Wife controls her personal property, but cannot dispose of real estate without husband's consent; the husband can convey real estate without his wife's signature, but it is subject to her dower. Husband is legal guardian of children. He must furnish support according to his condition, but if he has only his wages there is no law to punish him for non-support.
DIVORCE: Absolute to both husband and wife for impotence or inability to copulate and for living apart for five consecutive years without any cohabitation. Also to the party not in fault for desertion for one year, adultery, condemnation for felony, concealment of any loathsome disease at time of marriage or contracting it afterwards, force, duress, or fraud in obtaining marriage, uniting with any creed or religious society requiring a renunciation of the marriage covenant or forbidding husband and wife to cohabit. To the wife, when not in like fault, for confirmed drunkenness of husband leading to neglect to provide, habitual behaviour by husband for six months indicating aversion to wife and causing her unhappiness, physical injury or attempt at it. To the husband for wife's pregnancy at time of marriage unknown to him, adultery of wife, or such conduct as proves her to be unchaste without proof of adultery, and habitual drunkenness of wife.
Limited divorce for any of these causes or any other cause as the court may deem sufficient.
LABOUR LAWS: Forbidden to let or employ any children under 16 in any acrobatic or mendicant or immoral occupations. No Sunday labour. No child under 14 shall work in factory, mill, or mine unless said child shall have no other means of support. No child under 16 shall work more than ten hours per day. Seats and suitable dressing-rooms must be provided for female employees.
SUFFRAGE, POLITICAL CONDITION, INDUSTRIAL AND PROFESSIONAL STATUS: In the country districts any widow having a child of school age and any widow or spinster having a ward of school age may vote for school trustees and school taxes. In Louisville, five third-class, and twenty or more fourth-class cities no woman has any vote. Women may be notaries public. 39 women in ministry, 4 dentists, 21 journalists, 16 lawyers, 98 doctors, 5 professors, 35 saloon keepers, 3 bankers, 20 commercial travellers, 9 carpenters, etc.
Louisiana
AGE OF LEGAL CONSENT: 16.
POPULATION: Male 694,733; female 686,892.