e establishment of a court of
domestic relations, which already exists in several cities, and has
made an enviable record. In the early experiments it seemed
practicable in Kansas to make such a court a branch of the circuit and
juvenile courts, so arranged that it would be possible to deal with
the relations of the whole family; in Chicago the new tribunal was
made a part of the municipal court. By means of patient questioning,
first by a woman assistant and then by the judge himself, and by good
advice and explicit directions as to conduct, with a warning that
failure would be severely treated, it has been possible to unravel
hundreds of domestic entanglements.

84. =Tendencies.=--There can be no question that the present tendency
is in the direction of greater freedom in the marriage relation.
Society will not continue to sanction inhumanity and immorality in the
relations of man to woman. Marriage is ideally a sacred relation, but
when it is not so treated, when love is dead and repulsion has taken
its place, and especially when physical contact brings disease and
suffering, public opinion is likely to consider that marriage is
thereby virtually annulled, and to permit ratification of the fact by
a decree of divorce. On the other hand, it is probable that increasing
emphasis will be put on serious and well-prepared marriage, on the
inculcation of a spirit of mutual love and forbearance through the
agency of the church, and on the exhaustion of every effort to
restore right relations, if they have not been irreparably destroyed,
before any grant of divorce will be allowed. In this, as in all
problems of the family, the spirit of mutual consideration for the
interests of all concerned is that which must be invoked for a speedy
and permanent solution. Education of young people in the importance of
the family as a social institution and in the responsibility which
every individual member should feel to make and keep the family pure
and strong as a bulwark of social stability, is the surest means of
preventing altogether its dissolution.

READING REFERENCES

"Report on Marriage and Divorce," 1906, _Bureau of the Census_,
I, pages 272-274, 331-333.

"Reports of the National League for the Protection of the Family."

POST: _Ethics of Marriage and Divorce_, pages 62-84.

DEALEY: _The Family in Its Sociological Aspects_, pages 96-108.

HOWARD: _History of Matrimonial Institutions_, III, pages 3-160.