I am not surprised that some make shipwreck, but that any come to port.—Stevenson.

A SOCIAL marriage is based on the idea of a high and lofty friendship, an indissoluble partnership, an intimacy of relationship unknown in any other phase of existence.

Such a marriage was not intended by Nature. A new element is introduced when a social marriage occurs of which Nature had no thought, and we should reckon with this, not without it.

This new element is the intellect. Nature does not recognize it in the cosmic urge. So the meeting of man and woman on an intellectual plane, on a basis of the sweetest friendship imaginable, is the only condition by which Nature can endure the social marriage tie—which so often binds, imprisons, and makes slaves.

Even at this time man considers that he owns a woman; that he has purchased her freedom, her will, her habits, her aspirations, her time, her love, her energies, her future, every activity of her life. She is in very truth under a master. And the woman, as well, usually considers this true.

The woman thinks, because she is owned, that there are certain rights connected with her husband which she also has. In the majority of cases the wife realizes her inferior strength when might makes right, and the husband is not trusted. He must give an account of himself, morning, noon and night; of his money, his letters, his attentions.

The woman has certain laws which she, too, tries to enforce. He must support her, with all that the term implies.

“Didn’t he promise to do this on the wedding-day?” Certainly, yes! So far as I know, humanity is one in its nature, and neither male nor female. No woman naturally wants to be owned and possessed. Humanity rebels against tyranny; and there is more discord, more heartaches, more wrangling, more unhappiness among married people than among the unmarried.

Were it possible for men and women when they marry to realize that they own nothing more in “rights” after marriage than they did before, and would make no more demands upon each other, marriage even with its present accepted meaning would not be a failure.

The import of marriage, as it is understood today, is on the basis of intellectual friendship, a business partnership, mutuality in all interests of life. Few people know this.

We have mixed methods. Nature makes no compulsory laws in this matter of living together.

Society has done this. The laws man makes, man must enforce. But what God hath joined together, no man can put asunder. What God hath not joined together, man is not very successful in combining.

We have demonetized woman, taking away from her the natural strength, courage and independence that belong to the mother; made of her a slave, under which condition she does not thrive.

And neither does man thrive in being master, for the chain that holds the one is fastened to the wrist of the other.

Woman must make herself economically free, find work that exercises her body and her mind, and most of the cause of discord, unrest and unhappiness will have disappeared.