[828] By the Custody of Infants Act, 1886: see the discussion of Caird, Morality of Marriage, 49, 55 ff.
[829] Bishop, Marriage, Div., and Sep., II, 452 ff.
[830] Pearson, "The Decline of the Family," in his National Life and Character, 240, 234, 235. In many of the American states the wife may bring action against the seducer of her husband: Bishop, Mar., Div., and Sep., I, 568.
[831] This fact is seized upon in one of the most powerful books produced in recent sociological discussion. According to Mrs. Stetson "we are the only animal species in which the female depends on the male for food, the only animal species in which the sex-relation is also an economic relation. With us an entire sex lives in a relation of economic dependence upon the other sex." The wife may toil unceasingly; but the labor which she "performs in the household is given as a part of her functional duty, not as employment." She is therefore not her husband's "business partner;" for as an intended equivalent for what she gets she contributes neither labor nor capital nor experience nor even motherhood. She contributes her sex-attractions. Sex-distinctions are therefore excessively developed; and the "sexuo-economic relation" becomes inevitable. "By the economic dependence of the human female upon the male, the balance of forces is altered. Natural selection no longer checks the action of sexual selection, but coöperates with it;" for "man, in supporting woman, has become her economic environment." Under "sexual selection the human creature is of course modified to its mate, as with all creatures. When the mate becomes also the master, when economic necessity is added to sex-attraction, we have the two great evolutionary forces acting together to the same end; namely, to develop sex-distinction in the human female. For, in her position of economic dependence in the sexual relation, sex-distinction is with her not only a means of attracting a mate, as with all creatures, but a means of getting a livelihood, as is the case with no other creature under heaven. Because of the economic dependence of the human female on her mate she is modified to sex to an excessive degree. This excessive modification she transmits to her children; and so is steadily implanted in the human constitution the morbid tendency to excess in this relation, which has acted so universally upon us in all ages, in spite of our best efforts to restrain it." While in man the immediate dominating force of sexual passion may be more conspicuous, in woman it holds more universal sway. "For the man has other powers and faculties in full use, whereby to break loose from the force of this; and the woman, specially modified to sex and denied racial activity, pours her whole life into love." Useful to the race as was this evolution originally, its influence for good has long since reached its limit. Excessive sex-energy has threatened to "destroy both individual and race." Hence woman is declining longer to be confined to her highly specialized sexual function and is demanding an equal place in the social organization. She is gaining a social consciousness: Stetson, Women and Economics, 5, 12 ff., 37 ff., 48, 122-45. Cf. Schreiner, "The Woman Question," Cosmopolitan, XXVIII, 183 ff., on "sex-parasitism."
[832] Cf. Stetson, op. cit., 156 ff. "The woman's club movement is one of the most important sociological phenomena of the century—indeed, of all centuries—marking as it does the first timid steps toward social organization of these so long unsocialized members of our race;" for "social life is absolutely conditioned upon organization."—Ibid., 164. On woman's clubs see Croly, Hist. of the Woman's Club Movement in America; Henrotin, Attitude of Women's Clubs Toward Social Economics; Livermore, North Am. Rev., CL, 115; Anstruther, Nineteenth Century, XLV, 598-611; and a symposium in Arena, VI, 362-88. The financial dependence of the wife is discussed by Cooke, "Real Rights of Women," North Am. Rev., CXLIX, 353, 354; and by Ives, "Domestic Purse Strings," Forum, X, 106-14, showing the hardships and temptations of wives dependent upon the husband for current supplies of money.
[833] According to Cardinal Gibbons there are "two species of polygamy—simultaneous and successive": "Is Divorce Wrong?" in North Am. Rev., CXLIX, 520.
[834] The epigram of Father Yorke, of San Francisco.
[835] Wilhelm v. Humboldt, Sphere and Duties of Government: cited by Mill, On Liberty, 185, 186.
[836] For examples see Sewell, in Westminster Review, CXLV, 182 ff., suggesting a form of private contract; and Besant, Marriage, 19, 20, who asks: "Why should not we take a leaf out of the Quakers' book, and substitute for the present legal forms of marriage a simple declaration publicly made?... but as soon as the laws are moralized, and wives are regarded as self-possessing human beings, instead of as property, then the declaration may, with advantage, seek the sanction of the law." She mentions the well-known cases of Mary Wollstonecraft, her daughter and Shelley, Richard Carlile, and that of George Henry Lewes and George Eliot. Mrs. Caird would not go so far. The state, she concludes, hes no right to interfere in the marriage contract. "How can it withdraw its interference without causing social confusion? The answer seems plain. By a gradual widening of the limitations within which individuals might be allowed to draw up their private contracts, until, finally, moral standards had risen sufficiently high to enable the state to cease from interfering in private concerns altogether."—The Morality of Marriage, 126. Donisthorpe, "The Future of Marriage," Fort. Rev., LI, 263, recommends a system of free private contract for one year, renewable at the pleasure of the parties. He is criticised by Malmsbury, ibid., 272-82. Cf. also "Marriage and Free Thought," ibid., L, 275 ff.
[837] Tocqueville, La démocratie en Amérique, II, 215.