The Washburn times. [volume] (Washburn, Wis.) 1896-1976, 1899-09-20
Copyright. Louis klopsch. 1900

as difficult as it is urgent. The text is
Matthew xix, 6. what therefore God
hath joined together let not man put
asunder."
That there are hundreds and thousands
of infelicitous homes in America no one
will doubt. If there were only one skeie-
ton in the closet, that might be locked
I'D and abandoned, but in many home
there is skeleton in the hallway anu
skeleton in all the apartments. "Unhap-
PLY married" are two words descriptive
of many homestead. 1t needs no Or
thodox minister 10 prove to a badly mat
cd pair that there is a hell. They are
there now. Sometimes grand and gra-
cious woman will be thus incarcerated,
and her life will be crucifixion, as was
the case with Mrs. Sigourney, the great
poetess and the great soul. Sometimes
a consecrated man will be united to a
fury, as was John Wesley, or united TO
vixen, as was John Milton. Sometimes,
generally, both parties are to blame and
Thomas Carlyle is an intolerable grum-
bier, and his wife has pungent retort
always ready, and Froude the historian,
pledged to tell the plain truth, has to pull
aside the curtain from the lifelong SQUAD
y
Some say that for the alienation Of all
these domestic disorders of which we
hear easy divorce is good prescription.
God sometimes authorizes divorce as GER
tainly as he authorizes marriage. l have
just as much regard for one lawfully dl-
vorced as / have for one lawfully mar
ried. But you know and | know that
wholesale divorce is one of our national
scourges. | am not surprised at this
when | think of the Influences which
have been abroad initiating against the
marriage relation. For many years the
platforms of the country rang with talk
about free love millennium. There
were meetings of this kind held in the
Academy of Music, Brooklyn: Cooper In
stitute, New York; fremont Temple, Bos-.
ton, and all over the land. Some Of the
women who were most prominent in that
movement have since been distinguished
for great promiscuosity OF affection. Pop
ular themes for such occasions were the
tyranny Of man. the oppression Of the
marriage relation. women's rights and
the atfinties. Prominent speakers were
women with short curls and short dresses
and very long tongue, everlastingly at
war with God because they were created
men with soft accent and cowed de-
meanor, apologize for masculinity and
holding the parasols while the termagant
orators went on preaching the gospel Of
free love. That campaign of about TWEEN
~ years set more devils into the marriage
relation than will be exercised in the next
fifty. Men and women went home from
such meetings so permanently confused
TO 4hf,i,.
that they never got out of the perplexity,
and the criminal and the civil courts
tried to disentangle the Had of woes,
and this one got alimony, and that one
got limited divorce, and this mother
kept the children on condition that the
father could sometimes come and look at
them, and these went into poorhouses,
and those went into an insane asylum,
and those went into dissolute public life,
and all went to destruction. The might
est war ever made against the marriage
institution was that free love campaign,
sometimes under one name and sometimes
under another.
The System of Po1ygamy.
Another influence that has warred up
on the marriage relation has been polyg-
amy in Utah. That is stereotyped carl
cature OF the marriage relation and has
poisoned the whole land. You might as
well think that you can have an arm in Il
state of modification and yet the whole
body not be sickened as to have any ter
ritories or States polygamized and yet the
body of the nation not feel the putrefac-
ton. Hear it, good men and women of
America, that so long ago as 1862 law
was passed by Congress forbidding polyg-
amy in the territories and in all the
places where they had jurisdiction. Thir-
ty-seven years have passed along and
nine administrations, yet not until the
passage of the Edmunds law in 1882 was
any active policy of polygamic suppress
sion adopted Armed with all the power
of government and having an army at
their disposal, the first brick had not
till then been knocked from that fortress
of libertinism. Every new President in
his inaugural tickled that monster with
the straw Of condemnation and every
Congress stultitied itself in proposing
some plan that would not work. Poivg-
amy stood in Utah and in other of the
territories more intrenched, more brazen
more puissant, more braggart and more
Internal than at any time in it's history
James Buchanan. much abused man of
his day, did more for the extirpation of
this viliainy than all the subsequent ad-
ministrations dared to do up to 1882. Mr..
Buchanan sent out an army, and, al
though it was halted III its work, still he
accomplished more than the subsequent
administrations, which did nothing but
talk. talk. talk. Even at this late day
and with the Edmunds act in force the
evil has not been wholly extirpated.
Polygamy in Utah, though outlawed is
still practiced in secret 1t has warred
against the marriage relation throughout
the land. 1t is impossible to have such
an awful sewer of iniquity sending up its
miasma, which is waited by the winds
north, south, east and west, without the
whole land being affected by it.
Another influence that has warred
against the marriage relation in this
country has been a pustulous literature,
with its millions of sheets every week
,choked with stories of domestic wrongs
and nfidelties and massacres and out
RACES, until it is a wonder to me that
there are any decencies or any common
sc Oft fha subj of ,.;o