=The divorce problem.=--That God-ordained and God-honored institution, the home--in its purity, strength, and influence, was never more in danger than now. The home is an organized institution, consisting of husband, wife and one or more children, bound by the most sacred vows, the purest love and harmony. The home, the basis of society, the church and the nation is in danger. Homes are being wrecked nearly as fast as they are being built. Divorce is on the increase; marriage and births are on the decrease. In 1870, we had one divorce to every thirty-eight marriages. In 1900, we had one divorce to every fourteen and one-quarter marriages. Now we are having one to every eleven marriages. Last year Canada had only seventeen divorces. An Ohio daily gave one county in that state the credit of one hundred and thirty-two divorces in twelve months. Canada has better social customs, better marriage and better divorce laws than we have. There, a girl rarely keeps company with a young man before she is eighteen and rarely gets married until after she is twenty. Here, she is often teased about sweethearts when she is five, taught to avoid being an old maid when she is seven, when ten she is making goo-goo eyes at the boys, when eleven she is passing notes to every Tom, Dick and Harry in the schoolroom, when twelve she is desperately in love, when thirteen she is engaged and goes buggy riding and roams the streets at late hours with boys, when fifteen she is in the divorce court, and six months later she has her second husband. =Social dangers.=--A nation whose social customs encourage innocent, playful, fourteen-and fifteen-year-old girls to enter society and meet the temptations and dangers incident to matured womanhood need not be surprised when she finds that one-half of her 300,000 erring women fell before they were seventeen and that one-half of her divorces are among women who married before they were seventeen. Our social customs should be changed so as to safeguard the virtue of our boys and girls during the stormy period of early adolescence.