Chapter XVIII: Statistics of Divorce in America

Under these lax laws, and the not less lax administration of them, the number of divorces has in the United States risen with formidable rapidity. In 1867 there were 9,937 granted, in 1886, 25,535, an increase of nearly 157 per cent. in twenty years. The total number recorded to have been granted in those twenty years (and the record is probably not quite complete) is 328,716, a ghastly total, exceeding all the divorces granted in the same years in all other Christian countries[218]. The population of the Republic increased about 60 per cent. within the same twenty years. Taking the two census years 1870 and 1880, the percentage of increase was, for the population, 30·1, for divorce, 79·4, or more than twice as great; and while in many States the percentage of divorce increase is far larger than 79·4, there are only five in which divorce has not grown faster than population.

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Footnote 218:

In Canada during the same twenty years only 135 divorces were granted
in a population which was, in 1881, 4,324,000. In some provinces of
the Dominion divorces could be obtained only by private Act of
Parliament.

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The increase is most rapid in the south-western States, in several New England States, and especially in the States of the far West, less marked in the north Atlantic States generally, and in those between the Atlantic and the Mississippi. It is greater in cities than in rural districts[219].

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Footnote 219:

In an interesting article in the _Political Science Quarterly_ for
March, 1893, Mr. W. F. Willcox (now (1900) of the U. S. Census Office)
argues that the divorce rate is influenced by depression of trade,
declining when the lower middle and working class, among whom it is
frequent, are less able to afford it.

Mr. Willcox quotes some remarkable figures from Japan showing an
extremely high divorce rate there. In 1886 there were in Japan 315,311
marriages and 117,964 divorces. This is four and a-half times the rate
in the U. S. of America, which comes next.

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It is, in the South, apparently somewhat greater among the coloured people than among the whites[220]. It is greater among native-born Americans than among immigrants from Europe. And it need hardly be said that it is far larger among Protestants than among Roman Catholics. These points deserve to be remembered, because they throw some light on the causes which have produced the increase.

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Footnote 220:

The conditions prevailing among a coloured population which had, under
slavery, no legal marriage, go far to explain this phenomenon.

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Some other facts to be noted before we pass on to consider those causes are the following.

The grounds on which divorces have been granted are often trivial, even frivolous. I select a few from a long list given in the American Official Report dealing with the subject[221].

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Footnote 221:

This Report, published in 1889 by the United States Labour Bureau at
Washington, contains many instructive data. The Annual Reports of the
voluntary Association, called the League for the Protection of the
Family, also deserve to be consulted. Its corresponding secretary is
the Rev. Dr. S. W. Dike of Auburndale, Mass., who has written a number
of thoughtful articles upon the subject, and to whom I am much
indebted for documents supplied to me and for the expression of his
own views.

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A wife alleges that her husband has accused her sister of stealing, thereby sorely wounding her feelings.

Another says, ‘During our whole married life my husband has never offered to take me out riding (= driving). This has been a source of great mental suffering and injury.’

Another complains that her husband does not wash himself, ‘thereby inflicting on plaintiff great mental anguish.’

Another says that her husband ‘quotes verses from the New Testament about wives obeying their husbands. He has even threatened to mash the plaintiff, and has drawn back his hand to do it.’ The decree which awarded a divorce to this wife contains the following: ‘I find that when plaintiff was sick and unable to work defendant told her the Lord commanded her to work, and that he was in the habit of frequently quoting Scriptural passages in order to show her she was to be obedient to her husband.’

A wife alleges that her husband does not come home till ten o’clock at night, and when he does return he keeps plaintiff awake talking. He also keeps a saloon, which sorely grieves mind of plaintiff. He replies, saying, ‘Plaintiff should not be ashamed of him because temporarily in the liquor business: that he may do better some day: his father was a high State Officer in Germany.’ This wife gets a divorce on the ground of ‘mental cruelty.’

In all these cases, and in many others enumerated in the Report where the grounds are equally slight, the divorce is granted. And similar cases are given in which the husband obtains divorce on the ground of the wife’s cruelty.

‘Mental cruelty’ is of course a term hard to define, as may be seen by examining the views that have been expressed by English judges on cruelty, and it is not wonderful that the easy-going courts of most American States should give a wide extension to such an elastic conception.

Of the causes recorded as those for which marriages are dissolved, the most frequent are Desertion, which represents 38·5 of the whole number of divorces; then Infidelity; then Cruelty; then Intoxication. Of the total number of divorces granted during the twenty years 1867-1886, 65·8 per cent., very nearly two-thirds, were granted to wives and 34·2 per cent. to husbands. Of the total number granted for infidelity 56·4 per cent. were granted to husbands and 43·6 to wives. But in the other chief causes wives are more frequently the successful applicants. In cruelty they obtain seven times as many decrees; in desertion one and a-half times as many; in intoxication eight times as many. The Report, however, shows that intemperance is either directly or indirectly responsible for a larger proportion of the total cases than its place in the table represents.

I take from a valuable paper by an Ohio lawyer (Mr. Newton D. Baker)[222] some facts which illustrate the state of things in one of the so-called ‘Western Reserve’ counties in that great State. In Cuyahoga county the total yearly number of marriages is about 3,400, and the number of divorce suits annually brought is about 500. In the year 1898-1899, the whole number of divorce suits brought in the Court of Common Pleas was 562 out of a total number of 3,848 suits for all causes, _i.e._ about 12 per cent. In the State of Ohio the annual number of marriages is from 33,000 to 40,000; the total number of divorce suits brought from 3,700 to 4,200; and the total number of divorces granted annually about 3,000 in a population of about 4,000,000. Mr. Baker observes that ‘five of the causes on which the law allows divorce, viz. wilful absence of either party from the other for three years, extreme cruelty, fraudulent contract, any gross neglect of duty, and habitual drunkenness for three years, are all so vague and elastic as to amount to unrestricted licence in the matter of divorce.’ Out of 366 divorces granted in the year 1898-1899, wilful absence and gross neglect of duty accounted for 150, extreme cruelty for 109, habitual drunkenness for 88, and infidelity for 14 only (five being unaccounted for). He adds, ‘The personal temper and disposition of individual judges (there are more than eighty in the State entrusted with power to dissolve marriages) have come to be so well recognized as the limits of the jurisdiction of the Common Pleas Court in granting divorces, that now it is the practice of many lawyers to continue and delay the hearing of divorce causes until some judge, known to be lenient in this matter, rotates to the bench of the Court in which such cases are set for hearing.... Many of the judges appear to be oblivious to the fact that one of the most important interests of society is at stake in every divorce proceeding, and either out of unscientific ideas upon the subject, or out of mere complaisancy towards attorneys and litigants, they have lent themselves to a looseness of practice which is in some degree responsible for the deplorable results.’

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Footnote 222:

_Western Reserve Law Journal_ for October, 1899.

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In the United States applications for divorce are mostly made after a marriage of short duration. In one-half of the cases divorce was granted within six years from the date of marriage. Oddly enough, the average duration of a marriage terminated by divorce varies much between State and State. It is shortest in the southern States, falling to 6·48 years in Arkansas, and 6·91 in Tennessee, highest in the north-east, rising to 11·69 in New Jersey, and 12·12 in Massachusetts. This may be partly due to the fact that the more conservative States require a longer period of desertion to be proved. The duration of marriage is somewhat longer in cases where the wife applies, which may indicate either that she is more patient under her lot than the husband, or that her comparative ignorance of the world makes her less able to resort to the Courts. The fact that desertion is the cause most frequently assigned by wives may also have its effect.

It would be important to know what proportion the desire to marry some one else bears to the other causes which induce persons to seek to escape from their existing wedlock. Unfortunately American statistics of marriage, which are in many States loosely kept, do not enable us to answer this question[223]. Practising lawyers say that nothing is commoner. It would appear, however, from some European[224] figures that there is in reality no greater tendency for divorced men, and scarcely any greater tendency for divorced women, to remarry within a few years of the dissolution of their marriage than there is for widowers and widows to do so after the death of a consort; and it has often been observed that persons who have been most happily married are among those most likely to marry again.

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Footnote 223:

The Report for 1891 of the League for the Protection of the Family
says: ‘Connecticut for two years reports the number of divorced
persons married each year. In 1889 there were 286 such—135 men and 151
women, which is a little above one-third the number divorced in the
year. In 1890 there were 477 divorces granted, or 954 individuals
divorced; and there were 350 divorced persons—this year 207 women and
143 men—who married again during the year. An extended induction along
this line should be possible. Guesses based on mere observation are
untrustworthy guides in legislation or social reform.’

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The rapid growth of divorce under the hasty legislation which marked the first half of the present century began about thirty years ago to create some alarm in the United States. The subject was much discussed, an association was formed to grapple with the evil, and in several States laws were passed restricting a little the causes entitling persons to be divorced[225]. In those States there has accordingly been some slight diminution in the number of divorces granted, but elsewhere the rate has gone on increasing, though apparently (for there are no very recent statistics) a little more slowly than it was doing down to 1886. In some States it seems, after increasing, to have now reached a stable average to the population. This would appear to be the case in Switzerland also.

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Footnote 224:

This point has been worked out by M. Bertillon, a well-known French
statistician. I owe my knowledge of it to an acute and suggestive
paper (some of whose conclusions however seem to me questionable) by
Mr. W. F. Willcox, of Cornell University, New York. ‘The Divorce
Problem’: New York, 1891.

Footnote 225:

Efforts have recently been made to induce States to adopt identical
legislation on this among other topics; and there seems to be a
prospect that a certain number will do so.

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