Weekly journal-miner., 1908-12-09
ARIZONA MARRIAGES END FREQUENTLY
 IN DIVORCE
Separations In Territory Show Considerable
 Increase
From Saturdays Dailyp

tIOm ShluTudy Ddigf
 From 1867 to 1886 there were 23I divorccs granted in the courts of Ari. zona. and between 1887 and 1906 the total nnmber of dvorccs was 23s0. In 1880 the divorce rate per 100000 pop. ulation was 45, and in 1900 it aad in. creased to l20.
 These figures are announced by the bureau of census in the department of commerce and labor at Washington, h. C., as the result of exhaustive in. vestigation made of the marriage and divorce records of every state and ter. ritory a few months ago.
 For several weeks one of the agents of the department was in Arizona, spending several days in Phoenix, during which he searched through the records in the district court here and also in Phoenix, Tucson, Globe and Tombstone, which. with Prescott, made the seats of the five district courts in Arizona.
 Compared with New Mexico Arizona has the divorce habit 10 much great. CT degree. From 1867 to 1886 New Mexico had 225 divorces and from iss7 to 1906 i, had 2437. In 1880 the divorc. rate per 100000 population was l2 and in 1900 it increased to 73.
 The total number of marriages re. corded in the United States during the twenty years from 1887 to 1906, inclusive, was l2,s32,0i4. The nun. Der annually reported increased from is3,o in the year lsS7 to S53,seo in the year 1906.
 The total number of divorces re ported for the twenty years, lssI to 1906. inclusive. was 945,625. For the earlier investigation covering the twenty years, 1867 to 1886, inclusive, the number reported was 32s,7l6, or hardly more than oncthird of the number recorded in the second twenty years.
 Two-thirds of the total number of divorces granted in the period covered by this investigation were granted to the wife.
 The most common single ground for divorce is desertion. This accounts for 3s.9 per cent of all divorces (pe' riod lss7 to l906); 49.4 per cent, or almost one.half of those granted 10 the husbands and 33.5 per cent or one third of tnose granted to the wife.
 Only l5 per cent of the divoree' were returned as contested, and pro Nably in many of these cases the con testing Was hardly more iban for mality. of those divorees in which notice upon the defendant was served personally, 20 per cent were contested while in those cases in which notice was served by publication in newspa pers only 2 per cent were contested The average duration of marriages terminated by divorce is about ter years. Sixty per cent, or three-hitnS last less than ten years and 40 pe cent last longer.
 Children were reported in 39.s ps cent of the total number of divoree' } eases. The proportion is much large for divorces granted to the wife thsi for divorees granted to the husband , children being present in 46.s per cen ] of the former class of divorces and 2 , per cent of the latter. A reason sus gested for this is that the children ar usually assigned by the court to tn , mother, and to her, therefore, divore does not imply separation from he , children, while to the husband it ir , wolves n severance of the parental a |. well as the marital relation.