DIVORCE IN AMERICA

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 44, 1 June 1910, Page 6

DIVORCE IN AMERICA

Two large blue-books which have just been published in the United States support the belief that America is a country when divorce is made easy. In 1870 the number of divorces granted in the States was 10,902, but in 1900 it had readied the enormous total of from 28 to I'S per 100,000 of the population. At this rate of increase exports are prophesying the time when one out of every sixteen marriages in the United States will be utssolved by the courts'. The only country in the world which has a 'higher divorce rate than America is Japan, where divorce is about three times as frequent. It is worthy of note, however, that America has the highest marriage rate of all the countries in the world, with the exception of Western Australia, Hungary and Saxony. The marriage rate, too, is larger in the Southern States than in any other part of the Union, but the West is reported to be making rapid headway. There are gross and vulgar and shameful abuses of divorce laws in the United States, and the abuses that the rich are able to command are a blot upon the 1 administrative methods of the giant continent. One such scandal filled the American newspapers a little while ago. A very rich woman in New York brought a suit for divorce against her husband. A referee was appointed, who took the evidence in secret; the husband sailed away in his yacht; the lawyers came before the court, submitted the report signed by the referee, and in live minutes the divorce was granted. The name of neither party was mentioned in the court room, and the newspapers were effectually sealed. A poor couple, of course, would have had to face the customary unenviable publicity. It is all very well for our cousins over-seas to claim that they are "hustlers," but judging from their own figures the.y have quite as ready a knack of hustling out of their responsibilities as they have of hustling into them.