Montana

AGE OF LEGAL CONSENT:  16.

POPULATION:  Male 149,842; female 93,487.

HUSBAND AND WIFE:  Wife controls own earnings.  There is dower, but not curtesy.  Wife controls separate property.  Husband is guardian of children and must furnish support; but wife must help, if necessary.  Her personal property is subject to debts incurred for family expenses.

DIVORCE:  Absolute for adultery, extreme cruelty, wilful desertion, wilful neglect, habitual intemperance, conviction of felony.

No limited divorce; but wife may have an action for permanent maintenance, at discretion of court, even though absolute divorce is denied.

LABOUR LAWS:  Children under 16 may not be employed in mines.  Children between 8 and 14 must go to school.  No child under 16 may take part in any acrobatic, mendicant, or wandering occupation.  No Sunday labour.  No child under 16 may work in mill, factory, railroad, in any place where machinery is operated, or in any messenger company.

SUFFRAGE, POLITICAL CONDITION, INDUSTRIAL AND PROFESSIONAL STATUS:  Women may vote for school trustees.  Those owning property may vote on all questions submitted to tax-payers.  They cannot be notaries public. 22 women in ministry, 3 dentists, 6 journalists, 3 lawyers, 16 doctors, 7 saloon keepers, 2 commercial travellers, 2 carpenters, etc.

Nebraska

AGE OF LEGAL CONSENT:  18.

POPULATION:  Male 564,592; female 501,708.

HUSBAND AND WIFE:  Wife controls own earnings and separate property.  Both dower and curtesy prevail; but wife can mortgage or sell her real estate without husband’s consent and without regard for his right of curtesy.  He can do the same with his separate property, but subject to her dower.  Husband and wife are equal guardians of the children.  Husband must provide; but wife’s separate property can be levied on for necessaries furnished the family, if husband has no property.  Wife is not “next of kin” and cannot sue, for example, for damages to a minor child, even though she is divorced and has custody of children.

DIVORCE:  Absolute for adultery, impotence, imprisonment for three years, desertion for two years, habitual drunkenness, imprisonment for life, extreme cruelty, neglect to provide.

Limited divorce also for last three causes.  Annulment for bigamy, when one party is white and other has one fourth or more negro blood, insanity or idiocy at time of marriage, consanguinity, obtaining marriage by fraud or force, when there has been no subsequent cohabitation.

LABOUR LAWS:  Children must go to school between 7 and 15.  Ten hours a legal day’s labour.  Sunday labour forbidden.  Females to be employed between 6 A.M. and 10 P.M.  Seats must be provided.  No child under 14 may be employed in any place where liquor is sold, factory, hotel, laundry, messenger work.  No child under 14 may be employed at all during school term.