For the most part, however, this is not an amusing court. The long line of people who press before Judge Cornell and Judge Harris day after day, is for the most part a sordid, hideous line, and the tales the complainants tell fill one with contempt and sourness toward humanity. The domestic relations court offers an even seamier picture of life in this city than the magistrates courts. While it is true that occasionally a family of the better class makes appeal to this court, for the most part the clients are illiterate and very poor. A very large per cent. of the cases that are brought here are people who, if abandoned, would become public charges. That is why the state interests itself to the extent of providing a counsel for complainants, in order to protect itself from the burden of caring for helpless women and little children, whom some individual has simply deserted. There are people who pretend to find amusement in the rehearsal of the marital woes of the poor. To be sure, occasionally a case turns up with its funny side, but to me the recitals are heartbreaking and dreary.
In the state of New York the failure of a man to support his wife, if there are no children, the crime ranks as a misdemeanor, and six months in the workhouse is the maximum penalty which can be imposed upon him. The domestic relations court, in specializing on this phase of law, will undoubtedly lead to certain reforms and amendments to the existing law tending ultimately to develop a system of domestic relations jurisprudence. It is a great boon, as it stands today, to suffering poor women. Any woman without a dollar in the world can walk into the domestic relations court, tell her troubles to the clerk of the court, and then if her case is a worthy one, she is within a few minutes placed on the witness stand, where she can repeat the recital to the judge. The whole proceeding of bringing her husband to the bar of justice and getting the court to forcing him to provide for her is speedy and absolutely without cost. A woman under our present system of life ought to have a court of this kind in which she may take refuge, because the world at large is, at the present time, so unfair to women. A woman can serve a man for years, bear him a large family of children, and suddenly be deserted and left with the burden of support for herself and family on her. If her husband is faithless, all she can do is to appear before the supreme court and apply for a divorce, but in this domestic relations court the judge will make her husband contribute to her support and to the support of his children.
Drink is frequently at the bottom of domestic troubles, but not nearly so often as most people would think. Drink, especially whiskey, frequently makes a man irritable and quarrelsome, which leads to family rows and frequently to disorderly conduct. The greatest number of cases that come into this court are against shiftless, worthless, idle men who seem to belong naturally to the submerged tenth. One day this week I sat with Judge Cornell for an entire session of the court and the run of cases which appeared that day gave ample indication of the tone of the court. One case was of a colored girl who has been married less than a year, who had brought her big black husband into the court to explain why he had abandoned her. The explanation was frankly given. He was so accustomed to living with white women, he said that he could not bring himself to live any longer with the wife of his own color. He was bonded to pay his wife $1 a week. Another woman, neat, pretty and intelligent, a California girl, not yet twenty, had had her husband arrested because he insisted that she go on the streets and make money, not only for herself but for him, as a public prostitute. An Irish woman complained that her husband who made good wages drank it all up. He countered by stating, under oath, that his wife was an habitual drunkard, which made no impression whatsoever on the court, because the woman was particularly prepossessing and without a single incriminating mark upon her. There were the usual number of Jewish women whose husbands had simply gone off saying they would have nothing more to do with them. And one or two Italian women, with small babies in their arms, whose husbands had got angry with them and put them out of the house or struck them.
It is a miserable, pitiable phase of life that one sees in the domestic relations court, but that the court is so overworked, so constantly busy, is justification enough for its establishment and indication that any large community requires some such institution to placate and bring together men and women, husbands and wives, whom oftentimes trifling difficulties are about to separate, and to make it impossible for husbands to desert their wives with impunity. That there should be only three such courts in this country is a striking commentary on the life we lead when it has been proved and demonstrated so extraordinarily by the domestic relations court in New York city that the need is so great. A visit to the domestic relations court will not insure a pleasant afternoon or an amusing hour, but it will prove an enlightening experience.
IN THE PRISONERS’ AID FIELD
PRISONERS’ AID
WORK IN CALIFORNIA
The San Francisco Post reports that:
“A statement of the work of the California prison commission during the past year shows that a remarkable number of men and women, who have been released from prison, have been given employment by this organization through the good work that is being accomplished at Golden Rule Hall. At this place those who have been discharged from prison are provided for until suitable employment is found for them.
“During the past year 465 have been placed in positions, an average of nine a week. Of these 26 were over 60 years of age, and four over 80. Fourteen consumptives were placed either in positions of light employment or in homes or hospitals. More than 200 were sent direct from prison to employment; others, who were either invalids, cripples, or aged, were temporarily boarded at Golden Rule Hall. Another good office of the commission is to look after the wives and children of prisoners.
“All of this work has entailed a great deal of expense. The building and equipment of Golden Rule Hall, to take the place of the building that was destroyed by fire, has put the organization into debt. An appeal is being made to the public to lessen this difficulty, and to help along an institution that is doing much toward preventing a repetition of crimes by ex-convicts.”