mining factors in applying for separation.
But all these figures combine in establishing that divorces increase
much faster than population; and that they _increase_ while marriages
_decline_. About this, more later.

On the question how the actions for divorce distribute themselves among
the several strata of society, there is only one computation at our
disposal, from Saxony, but which is from the year 1851.[77] At that
time, to each 100,000 marriages, there were actions for divorce from the
stratum of

Domestic servants 289 or 1 application to 346 marriages
Day laborers 324 or 1 application to 309 marriages
Government employes 337 or 1 application to 289 marriages
Craftsmen and merchants 354 or 1 application to 283 marriages
Artists and scientists 485 or 1 application to 206 marriages

Accordingly, the actions for divorce were at that period in Saxony 50
per cent. more frequent in the _higher_ than in the _lower_ social
strata.

The increasing number of divorces signifies that, in general, the
marriage relations are becoming ever more unfavorable, and that the
factors multiply which destroy marriage. On the other hand, they also
furnish evidence that an ever larger number of spouses, women in
particular, decide to shake off the unbearable oppressing yoke.

But the evils of matrimony increase, and the corruption of marriage
gains ground in the same measure as the struggle for existence waxes
sharper, and marriage becomes ever more a money-match, or be it,
marriage by purchase. The increasing difficulty, moreover, of supporting
a family determines many to renounce marriage altogether; and thus the
saying that woman's activity should be limited to the house, and that
she should fill her calling as housewife and mother, becomes ever more
_a senseless phrase_. On the other hand, the conditions can not choose
but favor the gratification of sexual intercourse outside of wedlock.
Hence the number of prostitutes increases, while the number of marriages
decreases. Besides that, the number increases of those who suffer from
unnatural gratification of the sexual instinct.

Among the property classes, not infrequently the wife sinks, just as in
old Greece, to the level of a mere apparatus for the procreation of
legitimate offspring, of warder of the house, or of nurse to a husband,
wrecked by debauchery. The husbands keep for their pleasure and physical
desires hetairae--s