THE LATEST EXPERIMENTS IN MARRIAGE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 95, 30 July 1910, Page 9

THE LATEST EXPERIMENTS IN MARRIAGE.

Mr. R. (Newton Crane contributes to the Eugenics Review an interesting paper upon "Marriage Laws and Statutory Experiments in Eugenics in the United States." The forty-six States of the American Republic, each of which has got its own marriage code, form a wonderful sociological laboratory for the trying of expericents. It is the general rule that males under the age of twenty-one and females under the age of eighteen may not marry without parental consent. California forbids the issue of a license when either party is an imbecile, insane or drunk. Indiana adds to this a prohibition of marriage when either of the contracting parties is epileptic, or has been within five years an inmate of any county asylum or poorhouse. New Jersey requires a certificate from two regularly licensed physicians to the effect that those who wish to marry have been completely cured of insanity, epilepsy or feeble mind, and that there is no probability that such persons will transmit any such defects or disaJbilities_ to the issue of such marriage. ■ln the majority of States marriage between first cousins is forbidden, and in some of them such marriages are declared incestuous and void. In Michigan any persons who marry before they are cured of certain diseases are liable to imprisonment for five years. It is now almost an invariable ride that the subsequent marriage of parents legitimatises children born out of wedlock provided the father recognises the child so born. Mr. Crane thinks that facility for divorce in the United States is an encouragement to marriage. Out of every fifteen marriages one at least is dissolved by divorce, and this, although bad from the point of view of morals and religion, tends to improve rather than to impair; the breed. .In four States—Maine, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona —marriages become void without a decree of divorce whore either party is sentenced to imprisonment for life, and no pardon grant.fed restores the convicts to conjugal rights. j