All laws governing property naturally applied to women and aimed alone at protecting the rights of men. Transgression against these matrimonial rights of a man was an offense against property and punished accordingly. It was not an offense against the moral sense of the community, or of the individual, for wife-loaning was looked upon with favor by many while the usurpation of the same privilege was punishable by death. It was a crime against property and not against the woman in question.
Women were often treated with great brutality, but this abuse did not follow necessarily because they were women—the male is naturally more considerate at all times of the female than of his own kind—but because they possessed no rights which were synonymous with economic strength. Their relative economic value did not inhere in them personally but in the economic strength of their fathers and husbands.
The rights of women increased with the increase of their economic importance in the household. During the period of domestic industry, divorce was almost unknown. When it was practiced, it was the exclusive privilege of the leisure class, or of those whose financial well being was secured.
It is true the church took a decided stand against divorce and did much toward counteracting the supposed evil, but a far greater force was the development of the medieval town with its domestic industries.
Agricultural occupations were also a strong unifying force in the family relation. Where people are attached to the soil by virtue of their occupations and property rights, the home is an economic unit just as is true of the diminutive factory carried on within the family group.
When the economic habits of man necessarily attach him to a plot of ground, or to a definite group of industrial workers who make up in part the family group, there exists naturally strong sentiments opposed to the breaking up of the group. Although recognized as fundamentally social, these sentiments arise out of an economic bond.
The unifying of the economic interests of the family brought about an increased sense of family responsibility on the part of men. It was also of the utmost importance to women that the marriage bond should be a permanent one; thus assuring them a protection for themselves and their children against the outside world.
When the home was the center of practically all economic activities, the family was given a measure of stability by virtue of its economic importance. To leave the family circle meant, not only the severing of ties of sentiment, but the cutting loose from economic moorings.
We now come to a period in history when machine industry is revolutionizing the home and rapidly changing its economic significance. Woman’s work is being transferred to the factory, and necessity is forcing her to follow it, or to seek other fields of work that promise her a livelihood. Leaving the home hearth for a wider industrial field, is giving her the same outlook as man, and allowing her to determine her relations to the world outside the home. Her economic independence is secured, and it is no longer necessary for her to be attached to a household in order to secure employment as a means of securing her subsistence. Thus is made possible the breaking of the marriage bond on the part of women and escape from conditions which formerly were tolerated.
The census reports show a constant tendency for the divorce-rate to increase in the United States. Undoubtedly it would be higher than it is at present if more women possessed means of support which would not necessitate the losing of their social status, for there are many women who have had no practical training, nor training of any kind to make their own living. If thrown upon their own resources they would be forced into the ranks of the unskilled workers. As married women they hold enviable positions of social prestige. But the income of the husband is not sufficient to keep both husband and wife on the accustomed plane of living when separated, although such separation may be mutually desirable.