Attention has already been called to the confusion created by the lodger in the home and the special temptation to the woman to desert her husband for the lodger. The relative scarcity of women in the group, the presence of large numbers of men who cannot enter a legal marriage relationship because they have wives in the old country, the spiritual separation that often results from physical separation caused by the man's coming ahead to prepare a place--all these are undoubtedly factors that enter in to make difficult the wise use of her freedom. Native endowment, moral as well as physical and mental, varies among these women as among other women. Confronted with this confused and difficult situation, the change from the old sanctions, the old safeguards, even the old legal obligations, is difficult. It is inevitable that a few will find themselves unequal to the task of readjusting their lives. The father of one family came to the Immigrant's Protective League in Chicago, asking help because his wife had turned him out of his home. He said that she drank and was immoral. Instead of caring for the home and the two-year-old child, she spent her time behind the bar in her brother's saloon, having "a good time" with the customers. She had deserted six weeks before, but he had found her and had had her in the Court of Domestic Relations, where he had been persuaded to take her back. He said she was still drinking and still neglecting the child. Shortly after asking the help of the league, the father ran away, taking with him the child whom the mother left alone in the house while she went to the "movies." The women who assert themselves in their new rights are in a small minority. A young Polish woman complains that the women of her group are too submissive even in this country, and "bear beatings just as their mothers did in the old country." In the great majority of foreign-born families, as in all families, the question of the legal rights of the woman is never raised. The habits and attitudes formed under the old system of law and customs are carried over into the life in the new country, and are changed so gradually and imperceptibly that no apparent friction is caused in the family group. Moreover, in many cases where the woman perceives her changed position she is able to make her husband see it too, and she herself is able to work her way through to a new understanding. It is interesting to note that the women of the foreign-born groups who have worked their way through are now bending their energies toward helping the women who have not yet started. FOOTNOTES: [1] Thomas and Znaniecki, _The Polish Peasant_, vol. ii, pp. 298-455. [2] See _Report of U. S. Immigration Commission_, vol. viii, pp. 662-664. Also _Report of Massachusetts Immigration Commission_, 1914, pp. 64-69. Also "Studies in Chicago Housing Conditions," _American Journal of Sociology_, vol. xvi, no. 2 (September, 1910), pp. 145-170.