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Show PROSPERITY AND DIVORCE. When tho statisticians of tho country coun-try haven't anything else to do they egt out tho tables and adding machines ma-chines and da6h off a few intollectual sparks on the divorce problem, and thoy can proo with equal ease and convincingness that this, that or tho other thing causes marital unhappi-ness, unhappi-ness, ort promotes domoBtlc tranquillity. tranquil-lity. The divorce proctor of Kansas City announced not long ago that poverty pov-erty was the groat cause of this evil, as he was prepared to show, but scarcely had his figures been perused by the reading public when along came Prof. William H. Bailey of Yalo university with a neatly tabulated set of observations jwhlcb, he claimed, prove conclusively that posterity has been responsible for the severance of so many marriage bonds. Prof. Bailey finds that the divorce rate In this country increases as one goes westward In 1867, he finds, there were 8,937 divorces, and in 190G, 72,0G2. In 1870 there were 2S divorces in 1,000 of iopulation, while In 1900 there were 73. He reports, as a result re-sult of his observations, that In periods peri-ods of commercial depression the Increase In-crease in divorce is less than In por. iods of prosperity, and that adversity tends to strengthen fnmlly ties From Reno comes a report that since January 1 35 divorce suits have been filed, which was the monthly average av-erage during 1911, and that this flourishing flour-ishing colony now Includes more persons per-sons of "second-class prominence," by which doubtless is means persons of lesB wealth than heretofore. Prof. Simon N Patten, head of the department of economics of the University Uni-versity of Pennsylvania, himself divorced, di-vorced, adds to the symposium with the observation that nine out of ton divorces aro due to the oconomic personal per-sonal and political dependence of women. wo-men. He has a thoory that every wife should oarn at least three-fifths as much as her husband; to which his former wife replies that matrimony is a sufficient occupat.on for a woman, and that none Is strong enough to be both housekeeper and breadwinner. Such a variety of opinion, pro and con, such a glittering aray of figures, leaves the average, well-regulated no-, mal man and woman In considerable doubt, and leads one to the conclusion that, with the complexities of mod ern life, the Industrial, economic and political changes that are going on, the wonder is, not that there are so many unhappy marriages, but that there are so few At least the statisticians statis-ticians have made It clear, as thoy usually do, that tholr figures are valueless, val-ueless, and that what thev prove today to-day some one else will disprove tomorrow. to-morrow. Washington Post. |