Laws have been passed in most States making family desertion a
misdemeanor, and in New York a recent law has made it a felony.
Unfortunately there has been devised no machinery to enforce these laws,
so they are practically non-existent. It is true that if the deserting
husband is arrested he may be sent to jail or to the rock pile.

But that does not cure him nor support his family. Mostly he is not
arrested. He has only to take himself out of the reach of the local
authorities. In New York a deserting husband, though he is counted a
felon, needs only to cross the river to New Jersey to be reasonably
safe. Imagine the State of New York spending good money to chase a man
whom it does not want as a citizen, and whom it can only punish by
sending to jail for a short period. The State is better off without such
a man. To bring him back would not even benefit his deserted family.

Women, far more law abiding than men, insist that a system which evolved
out of feudal conditions, and has for its very basis the assumption of
the weakness, ignorance, and dependence of women, has no place in
twentieth century civilization.

American women are no longer weak, ignorant, dependent. The present
social order, in which military force is subordinated to industry and
commerce, narrows the gulf between them, and places men and women
physically on much the same plane. As for women's intellectual ability
to decide their own legal status, they are, taken the country over,
rather better educated than men. There are more girls than boys in the
high schools of the United States; more girls than boys in the higher
grammar grades. Fewer women than men are numbered among illiterate. As
for the great middle class of women, it is obvious that they are better
read than their men. Their specific knowledge of affairs may be less,