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.
