“The Columbian World’s Exposition will be international because it will hospitably welcome and entertain the people and the products of every nation in the world. It will give to them the fullest opportunity to teach us, and learn from us, and to open new avenues of trade with our markets, and discover materials which will be valuable in theirs. But its creation, its magnitude, its location, its architecture, and its striking and enduring features will be American. The city in which it is held, taking rank among the first cities in the world after an existence of only fifty years, is American. The great inland fresh-water sea, whose waves will dash against the shores of Jackson Park is American. The prairie, extending westward with its thousands of square miles of land, a half century ago a wilderness, but to-day gridironed with railroads, spanned with webs of electric wires, rich in prosperous farms, growing villages, ambitious cities, and an energetic, educated, and progressive people is purely American.
“The Centennial Exhibition of 1876 celebrated the first hundred years of independence of the Republic of the United States. The Columbian Exhibition celebrates the discovery of a continent which has become the home of peoples of every race, the refuge for those persecuted on account of their devotion to civil and religious liberty, and the revolutionary factor in the affairs of this earth, a discovery which has accomplished more for humanity in its material, its intellectual, and its spiritual aspects than all other events since the advent of Christ.”
CHAPTER VI.
SOCIETY’S FOUNDATION-STONE.
THERE ought to be a radical change in marriage customs in the United States, if we would avoid a terrible deterioration of social life.
In the early days of our country, when most of the inhabitants were representatives of the classes which have supplied populations for all new countries, marriage, as among the lower order of peasantry everywhere else in the world, and among the savages besides, was a mere mating of male and female. Women were brought over by shiploads to be disposed of, as wives, to the earlier Virginia planters; no stories have come down to us of cruelties or mismatings, yet the transactions were as plainly a matter of purchase and sale as any in the subsequent trade in black slaves. The rapid settlement of the country, the improvement in civilization, which has come through the multiplication of large villages and of cities, the general facilities for obtaining education, such as exist in no other country, have made ours the land above all others in which generations may rise rapidly from the social position of their ancestors. Consequently there is no part of the world in which the marriage relation should be so closely guarded as here.
Does this seem over particular, in this land of freedom and era of emancipation from narrow views? Then look carefully over a list of the richest and most influential men who have come to the front within the past few years, particularly in the newer States; regard their marital relations—this will do no harm to any of them who are respectable—and consider the nature of the influence which these people exert upon society around them. The subject is not easy or pleasant to discuss, but, fortunately, there are not many people who cannot discuss it for themselves.
To expect to bring about the desired change by religious means, which are the first to suggest themselves either to the Christian or the philosopher, is impossible. However desirable it may be our political system has made it impossible for us as a body of people to go back to the customs of a period which was superior to ours in regard to the sanctity of marriage relations. However much these relations may be regarded as sacraments by some, and as specially sanctified by others, the making of the marriage relation a matter of mere civil contract has become so generally a fact in law that it is impossible any longer to expect the majority of people to abide by the precedents and customs of different churches. The fact is, the churches don’t do it themselves. Divorced people who have no moral right to remarry are continually taking new partners and ministers are performing the ceremony.
The danger, aside from easy divorce, of which more anon, is in the probable change of social condition of the contracting parties. Men and women, mating in their very early years, as is the custom in all small villages and agricultural districts, frequently find themselves, by some happy accident, raised to a higher degree of financial standing than they had expected, and in the newer portions of the country, which contain a large majority of our population, such change of material condition carries social importance and influence with it. As would be the case anywhere else in the world, the change of condition shows itself differently in man and woman. The man of means quickly finds himself a man of mark among his fellows, and rapidly receives a vast amount of that valuable education which comes from what some philosopher has called “the attrition of minds.” His wife, relieved of the drudgery which is almost inseparable from poverty, does not follow her husband intellectually, unless such is her natural bent. She consequently devotes her leisure and improved material condition to luxury and to show. From this difference of conditions in a family which was once united can be found the basis of many thousands of divorce suits.
You take exception to the expression “intellectual?” You are wrong. I know it is the fashion to regard literature, law, theology and other so-called learned professions as sole possessors of the world’s intellect, but this is all nonsense. It requires just as much intellect—intellect of just as high order—to put a railroad through a new country, or to invent a new threshing machine, or to manage a turbulent town-meeting, or to work a bill through the Legislature, as to write a poem, sermon, or novel, or to plead a case in court. Edison and Ericsson are as much men of intellect as Longfellow or Lowell; the difference in their lives is one of taste and detail—not of brain and intellectual endeavor. The position in which money places a man anywhere, except in the large cities—and it isn’t safe to except these much—compels him to use his intellect a great deal, and to sharpen it frequently. Unless his wife is his partner in every sense of the word, she is going to be left behind. That is not the worst of it; there are plenty of bright women lying in wait for the man who has plenty of money and a stupid wife.
Among those not yet married the same danger is ever apparent. Men have always been guided more by impulse than reason in the selection of their mates, and to this day philosophers often marry fools. Consequently it is not surprising that young men of strong natural intelligence and great energy, who nevertheless have not yet received their fair start in life or developed their powers to the uttermost, select their brides through some mere fancy or caprice, which might never lead to bad results were their condition in life always to remain as it was in the beginning. But the reports of hundreds of divorce cases, which have amused the public to some extent, disgusted it still more, and horrified the thinking portion, show that alleged incompatibilities are generally the results of changes of condition, which have caused husband and wife to drift apart for reasons not at all related to the conjugal state.