In matters of divorce and personal relation, such as the guardianship of children, the tendency has also been to put women on an equality with men and more so.  That is to say, divorces are awarded women which for similar reasons would not be awarded men, both by statute and by usual court decision, and although a very few States, such as recently developed in the conservative State of South Carolina, retain the common-law idea that the father must be the head of the family, many States provide that the rights of the parents to the custody and education of their children shall be equal.  In other words they are to be brought up by a committee of two.  Nevertheless, in California and other code States of the West it is still declared that the husband is the head of the family and may fix the place of abode, and the wife must follow him under penalty of desertion.  Such matters are more often determined by custom or by court decision on the common law than by written statute; and it is apprehended that the judges will usually follow the more conservative rule of giving the custody of infant children to the mother, and of more mature children, particularly the boys, to the father.

Divorce statistics on the subject are extremely misleading for two great reasons:  First, because in the nature of the case, and perhaps of the American character, in two cases out of three a divorce is granted for fault of the husband.[1] And in the second place, because a false cause is given in a great majority of cases.  In England until recently the rule was absolute that a woman could not get a divorce for adultery alone, but there had to be cruelty besides; while the man could be divorced for the first-named cause.  No such rule has ever prevailed in any State of this country.  Desertion and failure to support, on the other hand, are much more easily proved by the wife.  In short, it is not too much to say that in all matters of divorce she stands in a position of advantage.

[Footnote 1:  U.S.  Labor Bulletin, Special Reports on Divorce, 1860, 1908.]

The same thing is in practice true as to marriage.  Under liberal notions, prevailing until recently in all our States, certainly in all where the so-called common-law marriage prevails, it is extremely easy for a woman to prove herself the lawful wife of any man she could prove herself to have known, and sometimes even without proving the acquaintance.  The “common-law” marriage, by the way, is not, so far as I can determine, the English common law, nor ever was.  If any common law at all, it is the Scotch common law, the English law always having required a ceremony by some priest or at least some magistrate, as does still the law of New England.  Under the influence of the State Commissioners for Uniformity of Law this matter has been amended in the State of New York, so that if there be no ceremony there must at least be some written evidence of contract, as in the case of a sale of