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BY HENRY F. HARRIS.

ISHOP Thomas F. Gailor, of Tennessee, recently delivered some remarkable utterances in a Sunday newspaper article on the subject of the remarriage of divorced people, which should not remain unchallenged. Bishop Gailor's views are shared by a large and influential body of ecclesiastics and are therefore worthy of serious consideration. Moreover, the question which he raises is an important one and bears directly on the social status of many men and women, who, after having passed through the fires of a deep experience, have found the peace, the joy and inward satisfaction which right living and the consciousness of a true and consistent relation to their God, to the world and to society, bring. Their children dwell in an atmosphere of love and devotion rather than hatred and contention. The little ones daily hear words of tenderness and affection instead of vexation and bitterness.

And yet, Bishop Gailor says: "Hundreds of little children who are to be citizens and voters in Tennessee, are every year condemned to the homelessness and the immoral environment of a life where the father or mother is living with a new partner while the first wife or husband is still living."

Is it possible that the people of Tennessee are the creatures which this assertion would lead us to infer? Children "condemned to homelessness and immoral environment" forsooth! Not a word about the immoral environment which indeed exists in a home where mutual love and respect have flown or never existed, except in some misshapen or mistaken form. Not one sentence from the Bishop regarding the utter "homelessness" of a home where children must listen to language and observe conduct on the part of their parents which proves all too well that home to the older

ones has lost every semblance of sacredness. To bring children up in such an atmosphere and with so degrading an environment is to rob them of all sense of the sacredness of marriage or the beauty of an ideal home life.

The good but sadly mistaken people who allow ecclesiastical training and dogma to shape their utterances, if not their thoughts, on this question, are helping to perpetuate this very condition. They are urging and imploring unhappy people to live together as man and wife even though that association be abhorrent and distinctly immoral in its effects upon both themselves and their children.

Bishop Gailor, go with me to the home of a refined and sensitive woman whom I know. She is the very essence of virtue and goodness. When a mere child of eighteen she married a man whom she loved and trusted with all the wealth of a first love. He was her knight-errant, her king, yet an hour after their wedding he confessed to her a life of lewdness, extending to the very night before their marriage, which was appalling. The respect which she had for him fled at that moment, but she remained a true wife in spite of her breaking heart. In a few years the brutality of her husband became unbearable and she "left his bed and board" never to return. In due time this man procured a divorce on the ground of desertion, and a year later the divorced woman became the wife of a widower with several children. He is a good man, a devoted father and husband, while the children simply idolize their step-mother. Go to their home and you will find it radiant with joy and loving tenderness, all that makes home a "foretaste of heaven." Is there any "immoral environment" there? And yet, this is typical of hundreds upon hundreds of homes (and no doubt they exist in Ten

nessee) where the husband or wife has been divorced from a former companion. The ideal marriage is the one which is dissolved only by death, and where mutual love and tenderness exist to such an extent that no other agency can cause a separation. But such marriages are only too rare and their number is likely to decrease in proportion to the efforts of influential people like the Tennessee Bishop, who apparently see nothing wrong in a marriage if it be a first union, or no former partner of either party is living.

Bishop Gailor has not a word in his article against the crying evil of youthful and reckless marriage which is so prevalent everywhere and which usually leads to divorce. Legislators fear to handle this evil and there is no organized moral force to impel the lawmakers to act or to uphold preventive laws after they are on the statute books. Much can be done by systematic educational work, by teaching the young the sacredness of marriage in its highest sense and the wisdom of choosing wisely, waiting in patience until such time in life when blind and unreasoning impulse, combined with selfishness, will give way to nobler feelings and more sublime intent.

Bishop Gailor says: "Christianity declares that marriage is not a contract but a state of life, the most intimate, the most sacred into which men and women may enter, and only the most complete and vile dishonor can disrupt or cancel it." It is this interpretation of Christian teaching that sometimes drives mismated people to crime in order to loosen their galling bonds. We may well pause and ask: Is this the doctrine that Christ taught?

It is not an act of dishonor to withdraw from any degrading association; not discredit to separate from that which crushes hope, stifles ambition and destroys the highest aspirations; not debasement to be divorced, if that condition means a purer life, renewed hope and greater helpfulness. It is dishonor to remain in a state of marriage wherein

the soul cries out in agony of despair, and the bondage robs life of all its sunshine.

The laws of the Roman Catholic Church relative to divorce and remarriage are well known, but the recent action of the Right Rev. Bishop Richard Scannell, of the Nebraska Diocese, in excommunicating a number of prominent and wealthy members of his church for attending the wedding of Congressman Kennedy and Miss Pritchett seems to demonstrate that the Roman Catholic Church is not growing less intolerant on this subject. Mr. Kennedy is a divorced man. He is a Presbyterian and his present wife is an Episcopalian. Bishop Scannell declared that the members of his church who participated in the wedding ceremony and those who attended the reception which followed, are alike culpable and have excommunicated themselves by their action. He further stated that the attendance upon this wedding was an act of sin on the part of his parishioners and that any attempt to justify it on the ground of modern usage could not stand, because the law of morals never becomes antiquated and that "the divine prohibition to put asunder those whom God has joined together is as binding to-day as it was twenty centuries ago."

In commenting on this action by Bishop Scannell, the Catholic Columbian Record, of Indianapolis, said:

"Well done, thou angel of the church in Nebraska! It is time that our rich were taught that they have no more rights in religion than the poor. It is time that we lived apart from the world and its way, a holy people, fearing the Lord and observing His commandments. It is time that we gave public and solemn testimony of our horror for the sacrilege of divorce!"

And so the innocent Roman Catholics who attended the Kennedy-Prichett wedding have excommunicated themselves!

"Henceforth they may have no part in the communion of the saints; they may not approach the sacraments and their souls are dead.' If they were to expire as they are, unrepentant and unshriven, Christian burial would be denied them!"

It is difficult to believe that this exposition of the workings of the law of excommunication will add to popular respect for the Roman Catholic Church -a church which has accomplished a great amount of good, yet which denies freedom of individual judgment and the guidance of an enlightened conscience if these conflict in any degree with her immutable laws. The claim that it was "an act of sin" to attend the wedding of Congressman Kennedy and that the "law of morals" was violated thereby will meet with scant approval on the part of thinking members of the Roman Catholic faith.

That marriage is not so much a contract as it is a state of life, is sound Christian doctrine, for the ceremony, the legal records, the publicity and the seal of the church, together with the vows of the contracting parties are as nothing in the scales against the tiny God of Love-a love so constant, so self-sacrificing and true that right living must be the result. Such love exists in stronger degree, in greater measure, in one who has been unfortunate in a past relation and has found at last the blessed contentment for which his heart longed.

And yet representatives of religious

bodies meet and declare that the Christian law admits only one possible cause for divorce. The weakness of this statement is apparent by its constant reiteration. Comparatively few of the laity believe it. If only perfect people existed such a law would not be thought of, and as humanity at present is made up of those who err, and whose judgment is fallible, many matrimonial mistakes are certain to occur. Shall these unfortunate people be compelled to resort to the "one possible cause" in order that they may become free when they finally determine that life together is impossible? Or shall they be obliged to separate and live a life of self-denial, deprived of the blessings of home and love and remain the constant objects of suspicion and distrust?

There are many who cannot see Divine Mercy in this. An all-wise Father judges our lives by the manner in which they are lived. He interprets our ideals and measures our aspirations. He deals in realities. "God is not mocked."

The most beloved life is the one which is happy and makes others happy; the most useful life is the one devoted to helpfulness, teaching others how to help themselves; the noblest life is possessed by one devoid of selfishness, whose influence goes out daily for cleaner living, purer homes and a better race.

Indianapolis, Ind.

HENRY F. HARRIS.

ONE

THE COLOR-LINE IN NEW JERSEY.

BY LINTON SATTERTHWAIT.

NE OF the striking developments of very recent years is the recrudescence of the prejudice against people of African descent, as expressed in official action. In some states this revival of color antipathy is manifested by statutes avowedly intended to keep the white

and colored races apart in schools, in travel and in other matters. An interesting phase in this development is presented in New Jersey, where a way seems to have been found of satisfying the apparently growing repugnance to contact with colored people on terms of legal

equality, while at the same time keeping on the statute-book a law so sweeping in its insistment on absolute equality that it can be shown to the most zealous opponent of race distinction as proof that perfect justice between the white and colored races is the cherished policy of the state. It would appear from the case whose history is here given that New Jersey has, in the matter of its schools, evolved a system of theoretical admission of colored children to white schools by terms of legislation and simultaneously of actual exclusion by method of administration. Such an achievement can hardly fail to be of general interest, since it may well invite emulation in other

states.

The case has its more serious aspect in that it is another instance-of which we have had so many of late-of disregard in high places of obligation to observe the law, a sort of official and high social anarchy which cannot but tend to breed contempt for law among the humbler classes.

The present school-law of the state provides that "no child between the age of four and twenty years shall be excluded from any public-school on account of his or her religion, nationality or color," and provides penalties for violation of this provision. This clause is a reenactment of a similar provision adopted many years ago and which gave expression to the then existing sentiment in favor of "equality before the law."

The concrete case which reveals the system by which all "mixed" schools may be converted into "white" schools by exclusion of colored pupils is furnished by the city of Burlington. That city has six public-school buildings, three of which are of the grammar grade, one of the latter with high-school grades. One of the combined primary and grammar-grade schools is the William R. Allen School, which is used exclusively for colored children.*

This colored school-building was in existence and maintained as now in 1883,

when a colored minister, Rev. J. H. Pierce, made application to the trustees of the public-schools of the city for the admission of his four children of school-age to the public-school nearest his residence. This application was denied, but the school authorities offered to place the children in the colored school, then conducted by an admittedly competent teacher. Mr. Pierce insisted on his right, under the provision of the then school-lawsubstantially the same as above quotedto the admission of his children, under terms of equality with the children of other citizens, into the public-school nearest his residence, and secured counsel to present hs claims to the Supreme Court of the state on an application for a writ of mandamus, compelling the school authorities to receive his children as demanded by him. The matter was submitted to the court and argued on an agreed state of facts, and the court decided† that the relator "was entitled to have his children educated in the publicschool nearest his residence, unless there was some just reason for sending them elsewhere." The court proceeded further to state that the children, being excluded because their father was a mulatto, that ground of exclusion was not, under the statute, permissible.

This decision, then, settled the question whether the school authorities could, under the law as it then was and as it now exists, exclude from a public-school any child because of color, even where a separate colored school, reasonably easy of access, is maintained as part of the public-school system. Accordingly, from that time until January 4, 1904, colored children were admitted to the "white" public-schools of the city of Burlington, although nearly all the colored schoolchildren attended the colored school, which was conducted by colored teachers.

The school authorities of Burlington,

*Ground for this school was donated by the man whose name it bears that there might be in Burlington a school for the education of colored youth. The school now is part of the public-school system. †46 N. J. Law Rep., 76.

however, evidently determined upon the policy of separating the races in the public-schools, in spite of the law as thus construed. At the close of the school-year of 1903, two colored girls were ready for promotion from the colored grammarschool to the high-school, and received certificates to that effect from the principal, but they were refused admission to the high-school and the principal of the colored school was directed to educate them in the high-school grades in addition to the conduct of the grammar-school. Counsel made application to the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, and pressure from that source induced the local authorities to reconsider their action and to receive the two colored pupils into the high-school classes.

The colored principal of the colored school, who had filled that position for more than fourteen years and who had championed the right of his pupils to admission to the high-school, was about the same time "given notice" and a new principal―a colored woman-substituted. Opposition to the Board of Education's transparent policy of exclusion was not assigned as a cause for removal, but the new appointee had abundant notice that her tenure of office would be secure in proportion to her acquiesence in the new policy, and her testimony in subsequent proceedings to be presently mentioned showed that she was not too dull to profit by that notice.

On January 4, 1904, the supervising principal, by orders signed by him, transferred all the colored children in the city of Burlington-some eight in number who were attending "white" schools to the William R. Allen or colored school. Among these were two, aged thirteen and eight years respectively, the children of one James R. Stockton, a taxpayer and real-estate owner of Burlington. The younger child had attended for three years a primary grade school nearest her father's residence; the elder had attended the same primary-grade school for three years and the nearest grammar-school

for the succeeding three years. There was no grade in the colored school corresponding to the grade of the older child. The father of these children resented the transfer as an infringement of his rights, and more specifically because the colored school was much farther from his residence, necessitating the crossing of a railroad, and because the educational advantages for his children would be less in the colored school than in the schools from which they were transferred.

Counsel was consulted and it was conceived that the exclusion, for no assigned reason, of these children from the publicschools where they had attended, but presumably because of their color, was directly in line with the case of Pierce above referred to.

The state school-law contains a provision that "The State Superintendent of Public Instruction shall decide, subject to appeal to the State Board of Education and without costs to the parties, all controversies and disputes that shall arise under the school-laws.”

The petitioner's counsel, assuming that here was a “controversy or dispute arising under the school-laws, applied on the petitioner's behalf to the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, and February 16th submitted a formal statement or petition asking for an order directing the reinstatement of petitioner's children. Two days later the State Superintendent addressed a letter to the petitioner's counsel, D. Cooper Allinson, stating that the action complained of was the act of the local supervising principal, acting within his discretion, and saying: "I beg leave to advise you that the said complaint can not be entertained nor any legal action taken in connection therewith by this department until presented as an appeal from a decision of the Board of Education, the governing body of the schools of the city of Burlington."

Thus politely bowed out of the office of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, to whom the statute was thought to direct, the petitioner promptly

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