It is true there are some states which represent an advanced industrial development as is found in the country where divorce is granted only for adultery. But in these states such restriction is felt to be oppressive. This is evident by the number who seek release from conjugal ties in other than their home state. What is true of England is true of certain American states, that is, the low divorce-rate is the result of the difficulty of obtaining legal separations. For example the home life in New York is not any more admirable than the home life in the extreme west where the divorce-rate is the highest. Unless the industrial development and economic conditions are similiar it is impossible to measure the moral standards of communities by a comparison of their divorce-rates. Legislation dealing directly with family relations ought to take into consideration the industrial habits of the community as well as the moral and social ideals arising out of existing conditions. It is true, a high divorce-rate has been a symptom of a decadent race, but on the other hand it does not necessarily follow that a deteriorating race is characterized by a high divorce-rate, or that a high divorce-rate signifies a retrogressive people. It may be a symptom of a decline of moral conceptions, but it may also mean a higher conception of morality, and a decline of respect for property rights in women. The frontiersman is not inspired with the same awe of wealth as the man who remained at home in a settled community; and his moral conceptions tend to conform less to tradition and custom and more to his own individual conscience. Howard says, “Divorce is a remedy and not the disease. It is not a virtue in a divorce law, as it appears to be often assumed, to restrict the application of the remedy at all hazards, regardless of the sufferings of the social body. If it were always the essential purpose of a good law to diminish directly the number of _bona fide_ divorces, the more rational course would be to imitate South Carolina and prohibit divorce entirely. Divorce is not immoral. It is quite probable on the contrary, that drastic, like negligent, legislation is sometimes immoral. It is not necessarily a merit, and it may be a grave social wrong, to reduce the legal causes for a decree to the one ‘scriptural’ ground.”[98] Divorce is an expression of revolt. It may be an expression of revolt against conditions imposed by one individual upon another, or against a position of inferiority in the family group imposed upon women by tradition. Instead of a wide spread incompatibility of temperaments of two individuals held together by wedlock, the incompatibility may exist in part between the social institution called “the home” and the ideas and ideals of a democratic community.