Life, 1906-07-19 · page 16 of 28
Life — July 19, 1906 — page 16: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes America's restrictive divorce laws through savage irony. The masthead "Ditties on Divorce" frames the critique. The argument: Progressive America has abolished child labor, freed slaves, established public institutions, and reformed countless abuses—yet refuses to allow divorce, even when marriages become destructive. The cartoons illustrate the hypocrisy: "Human Menageries, Wild Hippodromes" depicts squalid domestic misery; "The Wife That's Deserted May Starve But Must Wait" shows abandoned women in poverty. The text mocks religious doctrine (invoking Calvinist condemnation) and legal logic that prioritizes the sanctity of marriage over human welfare. The poet argues that if society rescues children from sweatshops and horses from abuse, why abandon spouses trapped in cruel or abandoned marriages? This appears to be early-20th-century advocacy for divorce reform, challenging laws that forced people—especially women—to remain legally bound to deserting or abusive partners.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
on the increase—yes, yes ! And so are free thought and free sf and free press, Free suffrage, free governments, free education, Libraries and hospitals, State sanitation, Free playgrounds and parks and clean streets and free sch Free piers and free bath-houses, free swimming pools, asylums for blind and insane; nized charities, rich and humane, ‘To guard and to shelter the lowliest beast Yes, such things as these have immensely increased. We shield the poor Naboth from Nabob, his neighbor; We rescue young children from factory labor; We save them from parents who starve them and beat them: We even save horses from those who maltreat them. “HUMAN MENAGERIES, WILD HIPPODROMES" Why should we, then, leave without refuge the wives Whose husbands make pitiful wreck of their lives? Is wedlock the one institution so holy To touch it or mend it the law is too lowly ? “THE WIE THAT'S DESERTED MAY STARVE BUT MUST WAIT” Why rescue some children from sweatshop and mine, And calmly the fate of yet others consign To dens of iniquity which are not homes, But human menagerics, wild hippodromes ? Old Calvin said,“ Unbaptized infants be d—d ! On childred's-sized gridirons they shall be slammed.” So churchmen to-day would damn babes to that hell Where undivorced, misallied parents must dwell. They calmly observe the drug-fiends and dram-demons Regaling their young with delirium tremens. ‘The wife that’s deserted may starve, but must wait; ‘The husband deserted must turn celibate; No such coalitions shall suffer disbandment, However they fracture the Seventh Commandment. It matters not what cause shall prove their unfitness;