The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-09-08
THE FUTURE OF FREE LOVE.

An article published some time ago in the
World, on the apparent increase of laxity in
marriage and facility in divorce, has stirred
up paper in Chicago which purports to de-
vote itself to Literature, the Spiritual Phi
losophy, and Woman's Independence" and
which does, in fact, devote itself mainly to
the latter, to copy and comment upon the
same.
This paper is the Unj0erSe, and is of itself
one of the most significant symptoms of the
state of things upon which we remarked. 1t
is a sort of vent for the grumblings of all
the discontented husbands and wives in the
West, and discusses social topics with such
extreme freedom that two daily papers
even of Chicago have been constrained to call
it ''nasty. And nasty, according to old
fashioned notions, it unquestionably is. But
the popularity of it, and its value as a sign of
the times, appear to be that it is not nasty in
mOtif. The men and women who write for it
do not seem to be aware that they are doing
anything improper in publishing what they
must have learned in the utmost privacy of
their domestic lives. They are naked, and
not ashamed. Before the fall this sort of thing
was innocence. But now, most people, even
including the pachydermatous journalists of
Chicago, will take it for pruriency. ....
That most wives have occasional disagree
abilities to put up with at the hands of their
husbands; that many men, and possibly some
women, chafe under the connubial bonds
which the present system of things imposes,
and long for larger license and even the
unlimited license which has come to be called
Free Love, all this is no new thing. The
wonder is that such people should rush into
print with their grievances, and glory in what
| generation ago public opinion would have
! forced them to consider as their shame
''Whether the new order of things which is
| to be evolved from this crisis, quoth the
paper in question, twill be no legal recogni-
| ton of sexual union whatever or a system of
purely civil marriage, wherein divorce is at
tainable at little cost of time or convenience,
it is certain that some kind of reconstruction
| is to come"
What the chances are of a radical change
in the prevailing practice, the VOIEd has
heretofore expressed it's opinion. But 1t is
certain that the gamers by any change which
is likely to be made will not be the women
who are foremost in the advocacy of such a
change by way of relief from the tyranny Of
brutal husbands, but the brutal husbands
themselves. The direction which a change is
most likely to take is pointed out in the book
which Boston clergyman has lately written
in praise of polygamy. London review has
been shocking all England by contrasting the
morals of that capital with the morals of Con-
stantlnople to the disadvantage of the former,
and showing that the same multiplicity OF
wives practically obtains in London that theo-
retlcally obtains in Constantinople. The diff
: terence is that in Turkey the female victims
4 OF poiygamy have recognized status, and
e that in England they have none.
, A Turk is compelled to support his wives
t ana treat them decently in outward respects
S whereas an Englishman NAV discard his mis-
It tress at will, and she has no redress The
effect of an increased facility of divorce, or Of
}. the legal establishment of polygamy in this
IS country, would be only to make the lot O
W abused wives worse A woman would per
If haps be tolerably secure of her husband
" favor while she remained young and comely
W but the sort of man who now tyrannizes owe
il her would, in that case, take her for bette
d and not for worse, for richer and not fo
10 poorer, in health and not in sickness, and b.
ct eager to slip the conjugal collar on the ap
IL pearance OF sickness, or Of fading beauty