e need of divorce.

How does the recommendation of a stringent and uniform law fit in with
these three statements? A strict divorce law might be like New York's: it
would recognize few grounds for a decree. One of those grounds, perhaps
the chief one, would be adultery. I say this unhesitatingly for in
another place the Commission informs us that marriage has in it "the
elements of vested rights."

A strict divorce law would, of course, diminish the number of "divorced
women," and perhaps keep them out of prostitution. It does fit the first
statement--in a helpless sort of way. But where does the difficulty of
divorce affect the causes of it? If you bind a man tightly to a woman he
does not love, and, possibly prevent him from marrying one he does love,
how do you add to his virtue? And if the only way he can free himself is
by adultery, does not your stringent divorce law put a premium upon vice?
The third sentence would make it difficult for the unfit to marry. Better
marriages would among other blessings require fewer divorces. But what of
those who are forbidden to marry? They are unprovided for. And yet who
more than they are likely to find desire uncontrollable and seek some
other "method of expression"? With marriage prohibited and prostitution
tabooed, the Commission has a choice between sterilization and--let us
say--other methods of expression.

Make marriage difficult, divorce stringent, prostitution impossible--is
there any doubt that the leading idea is to confine the sex impulse
within the marriage of healthy, intelligent, "moral," and monogamous
couples? For all the other seekings of that impulse what has the
Commission to offer? Nothing. That can be asserted flatly. The Commission
hopes to wipe out prostitution. But it never hints that the success of
its plan means vast alterations in our social life. The members give the
impression that they think of prostitution as something that can be
subtracted from our civilization without changing the essential character
of its institutions. Yet who that has read the report itself and put
himself into any imaginative understanding of conditions can escape
seeing that prostitution to-day is organic to our industrial life, our
marriage sanctions, and our social customs? Low wages, fatigue, and the
wretched monotony of the factory--these must go before prostitution can
go. And behind these stand the facts of woman's entrance into
industry--facts that have one sourc