possible without
sacrifice of the substance of family life to its outward form.

=Must Work Toward Desired Permanency in Marriage.=--This means a quite
new approach to the problems of marriage and divorce. It means the
inauguration of legal and educational mechanisms in the interest of
making people want to stay married, rather than toward an effort to
make people stay wedded when they wish to separate. In this, more,
even than in any other field of social effort, we should take heed to
and obey the advice of Dr. Lester Ward "to use attractive rather than
compulsory methods of reform."

=Needed Changes in Legal and Social Approach to Divorce.=--What are
the main points of change in our legal and social approach to the
divorce situation, which the modern need for social control through
democratic measures demands most clearly and strongly? They are,
first, a longer period of delay between reception and granting of the
request of a man and a woman for a license to marry. Several State
legislatures are now considering statutes which require an "interval
of three days" between the application for and the granting of
marriage licenses. This is certainly a short enough time in which to
find out if either of the parties is likely to commit bigamy if the
license is granted, if both of the parties are really of adult age
claimed, if either of the parties is afflicted with an infectious
disease that would make marriage dangerous to the other party, if
either of the parties has been a resident of a criminal or pauper
institution, if either or both of the parties are competent to
financial support of the twain, if there is any "just cause or
impediment" against the legal union. We may find it wise to return to
the old "three weeks publishing of the banns" in order to know what
the state is about in granting and what two people are about in
demanding a marriage license. In the second place, there are limits
outside of which society should not allow legal marriage to receive
its sanction. During the legal interval required there may develop
knowledge of facts that make it a social crime for one or the other or
both parties to be allowed to start a new family. This is matter for
serious and long-continued study, and the experimentation of our
different Commonwealths in determining the useful or necessary
restrictions upon legal marriage is not without value. The main thing,
however, is for society to recognize that there are just re