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Page 2
In a study of desertion made by the Philadelphia Society for Organizing
Charity in 1902,[1] it was found that 87 per cent of the men studied
had deserted more than once. The combined experience of social workers
goes to show that a comparatively small number of first deserters make
so complete a break in their marital relations that they are never heard
from again, and that an even smaller number actually start new families
elsewhere, although no statistical proof of this last statement is
available. One social worker of experience says that in her judgment
desertion, instead of being a poor man's divorce, comes nearer to being
a poor man's vacation.
A man who had always been a good husband and father was discharged
from hospital after a long and exhausting illness and returned to
his family--wife and seven children--in their five-room tenement.
Ten days later he disappeared suddenly, but reappeared some two
weeks later in very much better health and ready to resume his
occupation and the care of his family. His explanation of his
apparent desertion was that he was unable to stand the confusion of
his home and "had needed rest." He had "beaten his way" to
Philadelphia and visited a friend there.
The reporter of the foregoing remarks that it illustrates "unconscious
self-therapy," and that the patient's disappearance might have been
avoided if the services of a good medical-social department had been
available at the hospital where the man was treated.
It is more difficult to justify the thirst for experience of another
deserting husband who came to the office of a family social agency after
an absence of a few months, with effusive thanks for the care of his
family and the explanation that he "had always wanted to see the West,
and this had been the only way he could find of accomplishing it."
In fact, case work has convinced social workers that there are few
things less permanent than desertion. In itself this provisional quality
tends to create irritation in the minds of many of the profession. It is
upsetting to plan for a deserted family which stops being deserted, so
to speak, overnight. But in their understandable despair social workers
sometimes overlook essential facts about the nature of marriage. The
_permanence_ of family life is one of the foundation stones of their
professional faith; yet they may fail to recognize certain
manifestations of this permanence as part and parcel of the end for
which they are striving. They would see no point in the practice adopted
by a certain social agency which deals with many cases of family
desertion. This society, when it has had occasion to print copies of a
deserter's photograph to use in seeking to discover his present
whereabouts, often presents his wife with an enlargement of the picture
suitable for framing. The procedure displays, nevertheless, a profound
insight not only into human nature but into the human institution called
marriage.
In the next chapter will be considered some of the causes that make men
leave their homes. To deal effectively with the situation created by
desertion, however, we have need of a wider knowledge than this. Not
only what takes men away but what keeps them from going, what brings
them back, what leads to their being forgiven and received into their
homes again, are matters that seriously concern the social case worker.
What is it that makes this plant called marriage so tough of fiber and
so difficult to eradicate from even the most unfriendly soil?
It is fortunate (since the majority of case workers are unmarried) that
simply to have been a member of a family gives one some understanding of
these questions. The theorist who maintains that marriage is purely
economic, or that it is entirely a question of sex, has either never
belonged to a real family or has forgotten some of the lessons he
learned there.
Many volumes have been written upon the history of marriage, or rather
of the family, since, as one historian justly puts it, "marriage has its
source in the family rather than the family in marriage."[2] In all
these studies the influence of law, of custom, of self-interest, and of
economic pressure, is shown to have molded the institution of marriage
into curious shapes and forms, some grievous to be borne. But is it not
after all the crystallized and conventionalized records of past time
which have had to be used as the source material of such studies, and
could the spiritual values of the family in any period be found in its
laws and learned discourses? We might rather expect to find students of
these sources preoccupied with the outward aspects, the failures, the
unusual instances. It is as true of human beings as of nations, that the
happy find no chronicler. "Out of ... interest and joy in caring for
children in their weakness and watching that weakness grow to strength,
family life came into being and has persisted."[3] It is hardly
conceivable that in any society, however primitive, there were not some
real families--even when custom ran otherwise--in which marriage meant
love and kindness and the mutual sharing of responsibilities. And these
families, today as always, are the creators and preservers of the
spiritual gains of the human race. It has been beautifully said of the
family in such a form, that "it is greater than love itself, for it
includes, ennobles, makes permanent, all that is best in love. The pain
of life is hallowed by it, the drudgery sweetened, its pleasures
consecrated. It is the great trysting-place of the generations, where
past and future flash into the reality of the present. It is the great
storehouse in which the hardly-earned treasures of the past, the
inheritance of spirit and character from our ancestors, are guarded and
preserved for our descendants. And it is the great discipline through
which each generation learns anew the lesson of citizenship that no man
can live for himself alone."[4] It follows that the most trying and
discouraging feature of social work with deserted wives; namely, their
determination to take worthless men back and back again for another
trial, is often only a further manifestation of the extraordinary
viability of the family.
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