o inquire which of
these two a woman was, so long as she was a good mother and "seemed
worthy." No wonder that the pioneering social agencies, busy forging
tools out of the very ore, took a rigid stand on such a question of
social policy as this. Although their deterrents failed to eradicate the
evil of desertion or indeed to touch its sources, there is little doubt
that they did lessen its volume by creating a wholesome respect for the
power of the law in the mind of the would-be deserter and by fostering
in his wife a disposition to stand up for her rights. The more lenient
and more constructive policies now in force have been made possible in
part by these changes of attitude. The very fact that the collusive
desertion, once fairly common, is now seldom met with, illustrates the
salutary effects of the earlier methods of treatment.

But the fact remains that no marked change has been seen in the
desertion rate, that successive desertions have not been prevented in
individual cases. Hardly any statistical figure in the work of family
social agencies shows so little fluctuation from year to year and
between different cities, as the percentage of deserted families. It
generally forms from ten to fifteen per cent of the work of any such
society.

Gradually, therefore, the repressive features of the earlier treatment
have been abandoned, and there has come about a realization of the
complexity of causes that bring about family breakdowns. In particular,
the relation of sex maladjustments to failure in marriage have received
the serious attention of the social worker. On the question of court
intervention there has been almost a right-about face; the best social
practitioners now say, unhesitatingly and unequivocally, that they take
cases into court only as a matter of last resort, after case work
methods have been tried and have failed. In no other case where court
action is undertaken by one individual against another does the relation
between them remain unchanged. One could not conceive of a business
partnership failing to be annulled by one partner who brought suit
against another; yet we expect the marriage relation to survive this. As
a matter of fact, such is its vitality that it often does. But many
times the result of court action is only to deaden once and for all the
tiny spark from which marital happiness might have been rekindled. As
long as it survives, both man and wife feel in their inmost hearts that,
n