These statutes have been enacted by legislatures composed largely, if not exclusively, of men, and register the general change in the community attitude toward the family group. An unlimited autocracy is gradually becoming what might now be termed a constitutional democracy. But the law of the jurisdictions from which most of the immigrant groups come, undoubtedly represents a theory of family relationship not widely different from that underlying the common law. The South Italian group, in which the right of the father to discipline wife and daughter is passed on to the son, may represent an extreme survival of the patriarchal idea; but almost all the foreign-born groups hold to the dominion of man over woman, and of parents over children.
Immigrant groups evidence their realization of the changed conditions in different ways. Among the Ukrainians in Chicago, for example, it is said that, whereas in the old country the men kept complete control of the little money that came in, here they very generally turn it all over to their wives. Some of them have laughed, and said that America was the "women's country." Among other groups, notably the Jugo-Slav and the Italian, there is said to be a general attempt to keep the women repressed and in much the same position they held in the old country. Sometimes the woman perceives the difference in the situation more quickly than her husband. Then if he attempts to retain the old authorities in form and in spirit, she may submit or else she may gradually lead him to an understanding. But she may not understand and yet may rebel and carry her difficulty to the case-work agency.
One of the settlements in Chicago is said to have become very unpopular with the men in its neighborhood, as it has the reputation of breaking up families, because women who have been ill treated by their husbands have gone to the settlement to complain, and have there been given help in taking their complaints to court.
The Immigrant's Protective League in Chicago receives many complaints from women who have learned that their husbands have not the right to beat them or their children. One Lithuanian woman, who had been in this country six years, came to the league with the statement that her husband often threw her and their eight-year-old son out of the house in the middle of the night. Another Lithuanian woman living in one of the suburbs took her three children and came to Chicago to her sisters, because her husband abused her, called her vile names, and beat her. When the husband was interviewed he agreed not to do so again, and his family returned to him.
Of course, the theory underlying even the feminist "married woman's property laws" included not only her enjoyment of rights, but her exercise of legal responsibility; but the restrained exercise of newly acquired freedom is evidence of high social and personal development. And the women in the foreign-born groups come from the country, the village, the small town. They have had little education, their days have been filled with work, so that there has been little time for reflection, they come from a simple situation in which there was little temptation to do wrong. They find here, on the other hand, a situation which is complex in the extreme, and in which there are elements that tend to make matters especially difficult for women.
Attention has already been called to the confusion created by the lodger in the home and the special temptation to the woman to desert her husband for the lodger. The relative scarcity of women in the group, the presence of large numbers of men who cannot enter a legal marriage relationship because they have wives in the old country, the spiritual separation that often results from physical separation caused by the man's coming ahead to prepare a place—all these are undoubtedly factors that enter in to make difficult the wise use of her freedom. Native endowment, moral as well as physical and mental, varies among these women as among other women. Confronted with this confused and difficult situation, the change from the old sanctions, the old safeguards, even the old legal obligations, is difficult.
It is inevitable that a few will find themselves unequal to the task of readjusting their lives. The father of one family came to the Immigrant's Protective League in Chicago, asking help because his wife had turned him out of his home. He said that she drank and was immoral. Instead of caring for the home and the two-year-old child, she spent her time behind the bar in her brother's saloon, having "a good time" with the customers. She had deserted six weeks before, but he had found her and had had her in the Court of Domestic Relations, where he had been persuaded to take her back. He said she was still drinking and still neglecting the child. Shortly after asking the help of the league, the father ran away, taking with him the child whom the mother left alone in the house while she went to the "movies."
The women who assert themselves in their new rights are in a small minority. A young Polish woman complains that the women of her group are too submissive even in this country, and "bear beatings just as their mothers did in the old country." In the great majority of foreign-born families, as in all families, the question of the legal rights of the woman is never raised. The habits and attitudes formed under the old system of law and customs are carried over into the life in the new country, and are changed so gradually and imperceptibly that no apparent friction is caused in the family group. Moreover, in many cases where the woman perceives her changed position she is able to make her husband see it too, and she herself is able to work her way through to a new understanding. It is interesting to note that the women of the foreign-born groups who have worked their way through are now bending their energies toward helping the women who have not yet started.