South Bend news-times. (South Bend, Ind.) 1913-1938, 1914-09-21
WHAT IS WRONG
WITH AMERICA?
Too Many Marriages and Too
Many Divorces is Rev. C. A.
DeCker'S Answer = Moral
Education the Only Cure.

Declaring that there are too many
Of the wrong kind Of marriages and
that moral education is the only eff
fective way Of stopping it. Rev. c. A.
Decker talked on There Are Too
Many Marriages" in the second OF a
series OF sermons on Whats the Mat
ter With America ?" at the First Bap-
fist church Sunday night. Even moral
education is a slow process, but still
the only effectual one, he said.
Roughly speaking. American prob
lens are of two kinds-moral and in
dustrial. OF course there is no real
division. We separate them this way
for convenience only. But if we may
make this distinction / think We all
viii agree that the problems relating
TO marriage and divorce lie at the
heart Of the moral evils of our land.
I'm saying that there are too many
marriages / want 10 be understood
mean there are too many of the wrong
kind. OF the right kind there are not
too many. Marriage is a holy institu-
ton because IL is a natural one. The
thousands Of we'll considered, happy
marriages resulting in moral lives,
happy homes and healthy children are
a blessing to the country and it is to
the credit OF America that we have
so many Of this kind.
Two Kinds of Marriages
There are two kinds OF marriages
of which there are too many and
should be condemned:
First, those that lead directly from
the marriage ceremony to the divorce
court There are many Of which this
can be predicted as surely, as that
sparks will fly upward and that wa
ter will run down hill. IL is not un-
common to read that a marriage has
been performed over the telephone, or
on a merry go-round. or in a cage at
a circus. or in a balloon at a country
fair. People can always be found who
are willing to lend themselves to this
kind of thing for the notoriety it
brings. But these lead directly TO the
divorce court.
Marriages of this sort show how
lightly esteemed Is the marriage vow
and relationship among a large num-
Der of people
Second. the other kind to be con-
demned are those which lead from
the divorce court to the marriage GER
emory.
II do not say that divorce is wrong
in all cases. There are conditions that
day. But it is not this kind that is
condemned. l speak Of the people
who use the divorce court merely as
a preliminary step for remarriage. If
one Will take time TO note the in
crease in divorces in America he will
feel alarmed over the condition. From
one divorce to "a marriages in 1870
the number has increased to one in
10 in 1914 So that at the present
ratio Of progress it Will take but %
years for every other marriage to end
in divorce. In some cities il is al
most there now. Kansas City has the
distinction OF granting one divorce to
every four marriages. the state Of
Maine one TO six, the state OF Iowa
one to seven. In 1913 there were
100000 divorces i'm the United States.
Many Want to Remarry.
Now, a large number of these di-
vorces were obtained with view to
remarriage While divorce may not
be wrong in all cases. nor the remar-
riage of divorced people, the divorces
that are obtained for this reason
should be condemned
1T ought TO be made clear that di-
vorce is not the disease but the symp-
tom of the disease. The disease is
bad marriages and this is why | say
there are too many marriages, not
that there are too many divorces. To
purify the mouth of the stream at
tention should be directed to the
source. We are getting at the wrong
end if we think TO eliminate the d.
vorce evil by trying TO legislate against
that. The trouble is st the other end"