MORE DIVORCES

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 269, 3 February 1928, Page 7

MORE DIVORCES

ALARMING INCREASE AMERICA ANXIOUS Divorce is increasing faster than marriage in the United States, according to a report issued by the Department of Commerce, which shows that marriages increased 1.2 per cent, during 1926, as compared with 1925, while divorces increased 3.1 per cent, in the same period. The marriages performed in 1926 numbered 1,020,079, an increase of 13,745 over the number for 1925; and the divorces for 1926 numbered 180,868, an increase of 5,419 over the divorces for 1925. In 1926, the first year that statistics of annulments were collected by the Census Bureau, 3,523 marriages were annulled, making a total of 184,691 broken homes. In comparing the increases in marriage and divorce with the increase in population, the Census Bureau estimates the population of the United States on July 1, 1926, the beginning of the Government fiscal year, at 117,136,000, as compared with 115,378,000 on July 1, 1925. On the basis of these estimates, the number of marriages per 1,000 of population was 10.26 in 1926, as against 10.30 in 1925. On the same basis of estimating, the number of divorces granted in 1926 was 1.54 per 1,000 of population, as against 1.52 in 1925. Decrease to be Expected This increase in divorce is, no. doubt, in harmony with the spirit of the times, says th© Boston “Transcript” in commenting soberly on the situation. Th© childless marriage, we are told, is now a common thing, and the easy divorce is the concomitant, the copartner of the childless marriage. As the “Transcript” looks at it gravely: “We have a great many theories on the subject of marriage and divorce, but the condition recorded is the thing that all, have to face. Step by step, year by year, this country, once the most rapid in the world in its increase, approaches the stationary condition. Th© yearly increase of population has now fallen to 1.5 per cent. It will fall still further. Religious leaders like Bishop Manning preach most earnestly against lax ideas and practices with regard to mariage and divorce. They seem to be but slightly heeded.” The problem is much too big and complicated to be met by any single expedient, thinks the Kansas City “Star,” which believes “it is quite likely that as long as human beings remain imperfect there will be many divorces; or that, if the divorces could by any means be reduced to a negligible number, evils just as great or greater would remain.” Of course, the reassuring feature in the present situation, points out the Dallas “Morning News,” is that, even with the.relative increase in divorce there were still seven marriages for every divorce. But “the optimism to be reaped from this phase of the statistics is not great. It is easier to say that our divorce situation is bringing into light what we have always had i nsecret than it is to wax happy over such a situation either in disclosed or undisclosed state.”