But the multiple-marriages unearthed during the past week have a
certain homey flavor lacking in some of those which have gone before.
For instance, the man in New Jersey who had two wives living right with
him all of the time in the same apartment. No need for subterfuge here,
no deceiving one about the other. It was just a matter of walking back
and forth between the dining-room and the study. This is, of course,
bigamy under ideal conditions.
But in tracing a tendency like this, we must not deal so much with
concrete cases as with drifts and curves. A couple of statistics are
also necessary, especially if it is an alarming tendency that is being
traced. The statistics follow, in alphabetical order:
In the United States during the years 1918-1919 there were 4,956,673
weddings. 2,485,845 of these were church weddings, strongly against the
wishes of the bridegrooms concerned. In these weddings 10,489,392 silver
olive-forks were received as gifts.
Starting with these figures as a basis, we turn to the report of the
Pennsylvania State Committee on Outdoor Gymnastics for the year
beginning January 4th, 1920, and ending a year later.
This report being pretty fairly uninteresting, we leave it and turn to
another report, which covers the manufacture and sale of rugs. This has
a picture of a rug in it, and a darned good likeness it is, too.
In this rug report we find that it takes a Navajo Indian only eleven
days to weave a rug 12 x 5, with a swastika design in the middle. Eleven
days. It seems incredible. Why, it takes only 365 days to make a year!
Now, having seen that there are 73,000 men and women in this country
today who can neither read nor write, and that of these only 4%, or a
little over half, are colored, what are we to conclude? What is to be
the effect on our national morale? Who is to pay this gigantic bill for
naval armament?
Before answering these questions any further than this, let us quote
from an authority on the subject, a man who has given the best years, or
at any rate some very good years, of his life to research in this field,
and who now takes exactly the stand which we have been outlining in this
article.
"I would not," he says in a speech delivered before the Girls' Friendly
Society of Laurel Hill, "I would not for one minute detract from the
glory of those who have brought this country to its present state of
financial prominence among the nations of the world, and yet as I think
back on those dark days, I am impelled to voice the protest of millions
of American citizens yet unborn."
Perhaps some of our little readers remember what the major premise of
this article was. If so, will they please communicate with the writer.
Oh, yes! Bigamy!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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