Lasciviousness accounts for fewer desertions than might be supposed. A close study of over two hundred deser dons reveals scarcely a dozen in which the attraction of another woman can positively be said to have led to the desertion. There is a much larger proportion in which the deserter eventually takes up with another woman, who is often ignorant of the previous marriage and supposes her self to be a lawful wife, but in these cases the acquaintance is made subsequent to the desertion, and where this is not so, there is often no reason to suspect a design to form the new alliance as the prevailing motive for desertion.
One deserting husband died of consumption within a few weeks of his departure ; another was mentally unbal anced and finally died as a patient in a hospital for the insane ; another was driven away from home by his wife's rasping tongue and shrewish temper ; another, by his wife's bad cooking and general inefficiency in household affairs.
Despondency resulting from physical ailment or from unstable mental equilibrium, incompatibility of temper and lack of judgment in the direction of family and house hold affairs, may indeed account for many separations and for the otherwise unaccountable failure in some cases to provide for the needs of wife and children.
Since there are bona fide cases of these kinds, and since it is natural to generalize from the particular instances encountered in one's personal experience, even if they are few in number, it is not surprising that sermons have been preached and articles written in denunciation of the wives whose frivolity, ignorance, and irritability makes the home repellent to husband and children. It cannot well be denied that there is need for better training both for young men and for young women in the qualities needed for success ful and happy domestic life. Candor, however, compels the social student to point out that the typical family deserter is not the discouraged sick man, or the meek " hen pecked " unfortunate, or the dyspeptic driven to despera tion by indigestible food, or the reformed drinker seeking relief from the associations of his earlier unregenerate days, or the remorseful deserter from an earlier marriage bond seeking to make amends for his misconduct.
Nor does it appear that the deserters who leave their family dependent upon others for support are driven to this step as a rule by dire necessity. They are for the
most part young men 1 and they leave young wives with but two or three more than the mother alone can well care for and support, but not enough to discourage any man with self-respect and average working capacity. Moreover, many of them are skilled workingmen. Their average earnings when at work are $12 or $15 a and a large proportion are actually employed at the time of their desertion, or just previous to it.
The only possible conclusion to which one can come from a study of these cases is that the deserters are with out that normal standard of conduct which is accepted by human society at large, that they are lacking in a sense of moral responsibility, and that their failure is of a criminal character which must be dealt with as theft, or the obtain ing of money under false pretences, or even, in an extreme case, as assault and manslaughter are dealt with ; for the maintenance of helpless women in the throes of child birth, the lives and welfare of innocent children, are at stake, and as long as the family is the unit of human so ciety, the obligation to provide for the family must be recognized voluntarily or compulsorily enforced.
Before leaving the more general aspects of the subject, it may not be amiss to point out that there is a reciprocal obligation on the part of the wife and mother not to abandon the home, and that desertion of husband and children is by no means unknown. Sons and daughters who have grown to maturity are, likewise, under obligation to support infirm or aged parents, and at least a similar moral obligation may rest upon grandparents and grand The words " desertion " and " abandonment " imply physical absence on the part of the breadwinner. The es sence of the evil, however, is not, of course, bodily absence, I Of 191 deserters, 48 per cent were under 36, and 68 per cent under 40, years of age.
2 The 191 deserters above mentioned left in all 514 children under 14 years of age, an average of 2.69 in each family.
3 Of 100 deserters whose wages were known, 75 were earning $9 or more, 15 of them $20 or more. Among 437 families who suffered in the General Slocum disaster, June 15, 1904, there were 63 widows and 10 deserted wives.