The Canton times., 1899-10-13
ARP AND DIVORCES.
Says the Increase from Year to
Year in Them Is Alarming.
1t Was Different Years AgO-BiII Says
He Does Not Know What the
Poor Girls VIII Do If Mnt-
ters DO Not Mend.

Who are the manageable girls GO
ing to marry? This generation cannot
judge the future by the past, for the
past does not interest them. The pres
ent is their chief concern. Only the
old people who married half a century
ago can appreciate the contrast be-
the worse is alarming. The marriage
relation has lost much of its serious
ness, its solemnity, its dignity, and
consequently separations and divorces
have increased far more rapidly than
population. During the past 20 years
population has increased 60 per cent,
while divorces have increased 157 per
cent. What a record of broken vows
and conjugal misery. DR.. Landrum,
the eminent Baptist preacher Of At
lanta, said in a recent sermon: "Our
homes are in peril. The foundations of
society are threatened. Marriage is
too often mockery. Divorces are rap
idly multiplying in our courts and do
mestic depravity grows apace."
But legal divorces are but a small
proportion of the number of separa-
tions, and a still smaller proportion of
unhappy married people who suffer and
endure their conjugal misery rather
than mortify their children or excite
a public scandal. 4 notable lady of
our town declared recently that she
knew Of but two happily married
couples in our whole community. Only
two who are as loving and devoted as
when they started at the marriage al
tar. We all know many who if not as
happy as when first married are as low
ing and kind TO each other, and their
happiness is only marred by the anNi-
cites incident to married life.
St. Paul said: "Thc love of money is
the root of all evil and Ben Franklin
said: The lack of it is the cause of all
misery" Neither of these assertions
are altogether true but they approNi-
mate the truth. | was Illuminating
about the greed and selfshness Of man
these trusts so much of late that. like
the city of Shushan, have become per
picked and don't know what is going TO
ne the end of it. In the Saturday Re
view of September I'd and 9th, which is
a ladies' Journal of great excellence,
published in Atlanta, there are two
articles on trusts, written by DR.. Al
fred f. Seddon. an Engishman. | be
lieve. but now a citizen of Atlanta,
which for cogent and classic thought
eXcites both admiration and alarm.
After setting forth the many evils that
will follow these great combinations
of capital, he asks "What is pushing
Oil this mighty movemeut-this great
iceberg that is going counter to pow
erful currents and billoVs? Popular
denunciation, the press, the enactments
of congress and legislatures are like
so many waves spending their impotenr
wrath in vain upon the monster. Trusts
will continue to move ON. They will
grow in power and viii in time corral
all the wealth, the transportation, the
produce of our mineS and fields, They
will enlist in their service a vast army
of toilers whose dependence on them
will be sou-crushing and absolute. and
they will bar ont another army of
would-be toilers, who will have no Wis
ible means of support-and then what
To what goal artS we fastening? Cos
gress might rs well try to prevent the
sun from setting in the west. or to stop
the down-rushing of Niagara as to at
tempt by law to arrest this universal
trend of modern commerce towards
trust"
Then DR.. Seddon writes of the new
factor in American society the factor
of poverty-and says that its presence
and its power is not yet realized. He
quotes from the address of welcome by
the Chicago Federation of Labor to the
trades assembly: I'VE bid you wei
come in the names of a hundred monop-
olists and $4,000 tramps. Here nam
mon holds her carnival in palaces, While
mothers are heart broken and children
are starving and men look in vain for
work, We welcome you in the name of
a hundred thousand idle men and to-
night we will show you hundreds of
strong men lying on the rough stones
in the corridors of this very building
no home, no food-men able and willing
to work, but for whom there is no
work"
In New York city there were over So
600 families turned out last year for
unpaid rent. There were 25O suicides
and one person in every ten who dies
is buried in the potter's field. Oh, the
pity of 1.-THE pity of it! When viii
the millennium come? Dr. Seddon be
lieves it because he knows that God is