same is true of the work of men. But these changes do not justify a large number of girls idling away a number of years waiting for men to come along and marry them. Such girls make extravagant wives. They cannot know the value of a dollar.
The independent girl.—Parents should furnish their daughter with remunerative labor, or they should see that she is fitted for some position that will enable her to be independent. The independent girl is no more likely to fall than the idle girl at home. The independent girl who gets out into the world with her brother, shoulders the same burdens, masters the same difficulties, fights the same battles, acquires a poise and dignity, a freedom of action and speech, a knowledge of business and economy that give her an attractiveness that the idle fashion-plate girl on the bargain counter of the marriage market cannot compete with. This class of girls do not have to marry the first chance that comes around in order to have a home.
Parents too anxious to get their girls married.—The financial burden of supporting from two to four idle girls is no small item. Many parents are anxious to get them married as soon as possible. The girls soon find it out. When ten years old, such girls are making goo-goo eyes at the boys; when eleven, they are passing notes to every Tom, Dick and Harry in the schoolroom; when twelve, they are desperately in love; when thirteen and fourteen, they have their mother’s consent to marry; when fifteen, they are in the divorce courts, and three months later they have their second husbands.
One of the St. Louis dailies, over one year ago, had a notice of two “runaways.” One girl was twelve and the other thirteen. When overtaken by their fathers, brought back home and locked up in a room, to prevent a second attempt, one admitted to a reporter that up to that time she had not learned that Santa Claus was not a real being and the other sent for her dolls to play with.
Another case.—In one town in which I lectured I was told of a mother who accompanied her thirteen-year-old-daughter and an eighteen-year-old boy to the county clerk’s office and gave her consent to her daughter’s marriage. To the clerk’s question, “Don’t you think your daughter rather young to be married?” she replied. “Gee, I got married when I was thirteen and my oldest daughter got married when she was fourteen.” Didn’t she need the protection of an asylum?
A woman in Arkansas.—In Arkansas, you know what does not happen anywhere else sometimes happens in that state. I found a woman who ran away to get married when she was thirteen, had been married three times, had three divorced husbands, three families of children, aggregating twelve in number; was still a young woman and trying to get married the fourth time. That was courtship, marriage and divorce with a vengeance!
In this country anything can get married.—A confirmed degenerate criminal can marry, as soon as his term expires in a reformatory, or penitentiary. A feeble-minded person can improve a little, be returned home, and get married. A few years later we are supporting them and their delinquent progeny. We can never empty the reformatories, penitentiaries and asylums until we quit producing these classes. Immature marriages can no more produce perfect offspring than can the mating of immature domestic animals. The girl is not mature until she is nineteen or twenty and a boy until he is twenty-two or twenty-four.
Better customs and laws needed.—We are in need of social and legal reform in the social relations of young people, marriage and divorce. In England and Canada, rarely does a girl keep company with a young man as a sweetheart before she is eighteen and rarely married before she is nineteen or twenty. She is usually chaperoned by an older woman when she goes out to drive, attend a lecture or to take a stroll with a young man. In this country, little, innocent, undeveloped, irresponsible girls are permitted to go buggy riding at night, attend cheap shows and go on excursions unchaperoned, with young men whose reputations are not the best. We are reaping the fearful harvest. One-half of our erring girls fell before they were seventeen, and over one-half of our divorces occur among women who married before they were seventeen. Our social customs make it possible for one-half of our erring girls to fall before they know the name of the act that involves their character and destiny. Girls sixteen years old have not had time to develop mentally to where they can safely choose a companion for life. If a girl, one day younger than eighteen, should buy a pig without her father’s consent, the law gives him the right to compel the former owner to take the pig back and to return to him the money. The state reasons that a girl under eighteen is not sufficiently developed in judgment to be held responsible for buying a pig. But, according to our customs and laws, a girl can intelligently tie herself up for life to the unfortunate appendix to the wet end of a cigarette, or a miserable old jug-handle, and be held responsible for her choice. In other words, we think that it takes less judgment for a girl to choose a life partner than it does to buy a half-grown hog.
Divorce is on the increase.—Births and marriages are on the decrease. In 1870, we had one divorce to every thirty-eight marriages. In 1900, we had one divorce to every fourteen and a half marriages. Now we are having one divorce to every eleven and a quarter marriages. I noticed in one of the Ohio dailies a few days ago that one county had one hundred and thirty-two divorces in twelve months. All last year, Canada had only seventeen divorces. Several counties in the United States, each had ten times as many divorces last year, as did the entire Dominion of Canada. Canada has more stringent marriage and divorce laws than the United States.