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 Divorce Legislation By WALTER GEORGE SMITH PRESIDENT OF THE CONFERENCE OF CoMMIssIoNERs 0N UNIFORM STATE Laws

HE action of the recent conference called by the National Civic Federation, which held its sessions in

Washington from January 17 to 19, 1910, in giving a unanimous approval to the Uniform Divorce Act, must have great weight in inﬂuencing public opinion in favor of uniform divorce legislation. The fact that the governors of more than thirty states and territories

were assembled in convention during the sessions of this conference and received

personally

the

resolutions

adopted by it, recommending various commercial acts relative to negotiable instruments, sales of goods, warehouse

receipts,

bills

subjects,

will

of

lading, and

advance

the

other

cause

of

uniformity in commercial matters ap

preciably, for, as was justly said by Governor Hughes in his address to his

fellow Governors, in order to make the cause of uniformity among the different states successful, the move

ment in each state must have the moral weight of each Governor's approval back of it. So far as business and commercial matters are concerned, it seems as if success were within sight. Different

conditions surround the Uniform Divorce Act and the whole subject of divorce. While it is true that the states of Delaware, New Jersey and Wisconsin have adopted substantially all of the cardinal principles of the Uniform Divorce Act and have embodied them

in new statutes, there is a strong under lying opposition which develops when

ever the act, adapted to the form of the statutes of any of the states, is presented for legislative consideration. Even in the legislature of Pennsylvania,

on whose initiative the Divorce Congress was assembled and which in the act creating the commission distinctly stated “that the constantly increasing number of divorces in the United States has

been recognized as an evil of threatening magnitude fraught with serious con

sequences

to the well-being of our

institutions and civilization," a de termined opposition was developed to

the adoption of a uniform act.

Either

in consequence of this, or of indiﬂerence to the subject, the bill has failed to be

voted on out of committee for two entire sessions, and this notwithstanding the fact that it was approved by repre sentatives of practically all Christian denominations in the state and by many of the leading newspapers. It is not to be believed that the lan

guage of the legislature of Pennsylvania, speaking of divorce as an evil, does not represent the sentiment of the vastly preponderating majority of the good people of that commonwealth as it does of those of most of the states; but while, with the exception of a very few radical individuals, divorce is admitted to be an evil, when it comes to the suppressing of that evil, even by so sane, conservative and moderate a measure as the uniform divorce law, alarm is taken and opposition develops which manifests its power by postpone ment and quiet suppression in committee.