A Terrible Indictment.

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 211, 10 March 1897, Page 3

A Terrible Indictment.

The Rev. Dr Parkhnrst has created some slight sensation by a sermon he preached tbe other day in New York on the snbject of marriage. He asserted :— " I do not know how many unfaithful wives and husbands there are in this city, but I calculate there might be a quarter of a million. I would not, at any rate issue an insurance policy for more than five years on any couple's conjugal felicity unless on the contingency of offspring." A number of reporters have interviewed him, and to them he said : — " I have not made the statement without careful observation, Tbe snbject for months has bad my carefnl scrutiny, and I have found the condition of affairs to be absolutely damnable. When I said a quarter of a million, it was a round figure coming near tbe truth." Mrs Elizabeth G ranis, President of the National Christian League for the Promotion of Social Purity, has been interviewed on the subject. She stated: — "Dr Parkhnrst erred in placing tbe figure at a quarter of a million. Tbere are more tban tbat, and most of them are in th 6 upper circles of society. Here we are trying to save some 40,000 publicly depraved women in this city, but what are they compared to 250, 000 married women who are no better ? What we want is a law on the subject. There is not a semblance of a law pretecting marriage."