for him. His brother placed him in the first position he had after his marriage. Through a friend he had been able to get work with the X Company; his sister had found one of his recent jobs for him; one of his brothers-in-law, another; and there had always been someone to "speak for him" in each placed where he had been employed since leaving the X Company. "He always thinks someone else is a better man than he is," one of his former fellow-workmen remarked about him. The visitor knew that if he were at home without a job for very long, the strain would be too great on his wife's new understanding and techniques. In the past she had often said that one reason she nagged him so much was that it got on her nerves to see him sitting around the house while she supported the family. The visitor encouraged him to believe that he could make a good impression on a prospective employer, and suggested that he apply at the W Company, where she had been told there was a vacancy. He did make his own application, and secured the position. She was not surprised when he gave it up after working about a month. But she was not prepared for the seed of "speaking for yourself" that she had sown bearing fruit in quite the way it did so shortly after its planting. The minute he gave up his job he began to talk once more about getting back with the X Company. All his past efforts at reinstatement had been made through other people. A few days after he left his last job, he told the visitor he had written a letter to the president of the X Company. This was his own idea, and if he had any help in carrying it out, it was only the assistance in writing the letter given by his eldest son, who had gone through two years of the high school. In a few days he received a reply stating that he could not be re-employed because he had passed the age limit. It was a great blow to him, and his wife said he wept practically all day after the letter came. Mrs. Seldon's skill in helping him over this crisis was evidence of her new understanding of his problem. As soon as he had recovered from the first shock, he was calm and philosophical about it. The age limit, which applied to everyone alike, seemed to be sufficiently objective for him to accept the decision, and the visitor believes that one big stride, if not the final one, has been made in his giving up the possibility of returning to the X Company.

Among other intermediate steps the visitor had been considering the possibility of helping Mr. Seldon develop some other interests, and also the desirability of their moving to a new neighborhood. For the twenty years of their married life they have lived in the same neighborhood, where Mrs. Seldon spent her childhood and where her brothers and sisters have settled with their families. It meant not only that Mr. Seldon was constantly under the critical eye of his relatives-in-law, but also that they were near enough to be a daily stimulus to Mrs. Seldon's all-too-ready tendency to nag. Even the insurance collector, who had been coming to the house for years, joined them in characterizing him as a "lazy bum," and in urging her to have him arrested so he would be forced to work. The visitor's feeling that a new neighborhood would have many advantages became a conviction when Mr. Seldon confided to her a chapter in his

relations with Mrs. Seldon which occurred eight years ago when he was in the hospital. Mrs. Seldon had an affair with his sister's husband. Two or three years later the sister's husband died. Not enough time has elapsed since the telling of the story for the visitor to know how disturbing a factor this is in the relations of Mr. and Mrs. Seldon, but judging by Mr. Seldon's emotion in relating the experience it still has a great deal of meaning for him. Certainly here is one more component of his sense of inferiority. Mr. Seldon had never talked with anyone about it before except in the family group, and it plainly was a relief to tell it to someone whose response to it was not an emotional one. Like everything else in the Seldon family, this seemed to have been well known by all the relatives on both sides of the family.

Now the visitor was determined to try to persuade them to move from the scene of so many things that meant failure to Mr. Seldon. But how could this be accomplished? Mrs. Seldon's work, which adds a substantial amount to the family budget, is only a few blocks from their house. This factor and the associations of years were some of the obstacles in the way. On the other hand, it takes the oldest boy, who has never been very strong, over an hour to get to his work, and then there is the long trip home after a hard day's work. As he is still in the first year of a four years' apprenticeship there was reasonable assurance that he would be employed in the same place for the next three years. Here was the visitor's main motivation, for both the father and mother are devoted to him. From time to time she had talked with them about moving, but had never pressed the point. A recent physical examination of the boy provided her with a convincing argument and an emotional appeal. At the time of writing she believes that the family will move as soon as a suitable house can be found near enough to the boy's work.

Now that it seems to be settled that the family is to move, some of the plans for developing new interests for Mr. Seldon will have to be postponed. The children are a great deal interested in their Sunday school, and the visitor hopes that she can capitalize this in some way. His one success in life has been with his children. More than once the visitor has used this to arouse him from a depression, but she has always been careful not to overdo this motivation, remembering Mrs. Seldon's sensitiveness about her own failure with them, and fearing it might prove to be a boomerang. The visitor is watching for an opportunity to get him interested in other children, and when they are settled in a new neighborhood, she hopes this can be found for him in some of the group activities in the church.

This brings us to the end of the visitor's first six months' acquaintance with the Seldons. If she were asked what she hoped for the future, I think she would prophesy no miraculous transformation, but would say that she believes if the right job is found for Mr. Seldon, she can count on Mrs. Seldon giving up her work; on the real affection of Mr. and Mrs. Seldon for each other, in spite of the episode of eight years ago; on the interest of both of them in providing oppor

tunities for the children, especially the oldest boy; on the changing attitudes of the family; and on the response of both Mr. and Mrs. Seldon to her interest in them, as factors in a slowly but progressively developing situation. There are too many intermediate goals still to be reached for her even to formulate the steps on the way to the more distant goal of regularity of work.

However, the visitor recognizes that this habit of irregularity of work is bound up with Mr. Seldon's dependency on his mother, which he carried into his adult life and transferred to his sister at his mother's death. She is also aware of his present dependency on her, and how important a factor her use of this will be in the treatment of this habit. In these four months she has made wiser use of it than his mother and sister did in a lifetime, as indicated by her successful attempt to get him to make his own application for work. And the visitor has carried Mrs. Seldon and the sister along with her in the understanding of the significance of Mr. Seldon's dependency.

The cornerstone of the treatment in this family was the careful personality study which the visitor made of Mr. Seldon, revealing the shadow his childhood habits had cast on his adult life, the effect on him of the attitudes of his wife and all their relatives, and the emotional significance of his work. The foundation of this cornerstone was the good contacts the visitor made with Mr. and Mrs. Seldon and their relatives. The treatment thus far has been for the most part indirect. The visitor's efforts to change Mr. Seldon's habits have been made through attacks on his social environment-changing the attitudes of his wife and relatives; trying to find work that would give him as much prestige as he had in his former position, and that would compare favorably with the occupations of his relatives; moving from the old neighborhood with all its associations with his failures and looking forward to the possibility of new interests for him in the group activities of the children in the church. The visitor herself and her attitude toward his problems are not to be overlooked as new factors in his social environment, to which Mr. Seldon and all the others are responding. The nearest approach to a direct method of modifying his attitudes was the visitor's encouragement of Mr. Seldon to apply for his own work, and the germination of this idea of initiative, which was manifested in his writing the letter to the president of the X Company. Here it was a suggestion from a person in whom he had confidence and whose good opinion he cared about more than a facing of the facts, as we ordinarily think of it.

Can we evaluate the treatment in this case in terms of success or failure? When we have worked out even some crude measures of growth, it will be a simpler task to make such evaluations. Mr. Seldon is far from being a steady, dependable breadwinner, but is he traveling in the right direction, though over a roundabout road, to that goal? In geometry a straight line has been proved the shortest distance between two points, but it seems to be otherwise in the change of habit. If we are trying to make people conform to fixed behavior patterns we shall probably pronounce the treatment in the Seldon family a

failure. If we conceive of life as a developing experience we may feel that it has been, so far, a success.

It is a truism that the changing of habit is a long, slow process. Even in children it is not an overnight process; much less in adults. The behaviorists who have been making laboratory experiments with habit as a repetition of a particular act have found that it takes an adult at least a third longer to set up a habit than it does a child. Habit in the market place is a complexity indeed in contrast to habit in the laboratory. It is not unlikely that case workers, when they have made more experiments with this new dynamic habit, will discover that the difference in time between adults and children is much greater when social behavior is being modified than when an habitual performance of a particular act is being set up. The hopeful thing for the future is that case workers are experimenting with the change of habit. From the analysis and comparison of their experiences we may look for light on the process as well as the time element in the change of habit.

WHEN PEOPLE APPLY AT A MARRIAGE LICENSE BUREAU Mildred D. Mudgett, Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

The increase in the divorce rate which is being much heralded in the newspapers and current periodicals is viewed with more indifference by social workers than by the lay public. In the first place, to the social worker it is "old stuff." Even the worker in training is so submerged in the wreckage of human marriage that the most glaring newspaper headlines on divorce fail to shock her. In the second place, she is skeptical of the solution which is usually suggested, namely, some change in the divorce laws of her own state or of the country as a whole. Adjustment of divorce laws comes pretty nearly to being a case "of locking the barn after the horse is stolen"; or, to be more modern, installing a burglar alarm in the garage after the Ford is gone! The real tragedy has occurred long before the couple reaches the divorce court, and for that reason social workers are turning their attention more and more to a consideration of marriage reform.

The method used by social workers in the attempts to solve the problem of divorce is really similar to the technique employed by the public health authorities in handling a typhoid epidemic. As soon as the victims of the epidemic have been given remedial treatment, the search for possible sources of pollution begins. Until these sources have all been discovered and removed the community is not free from possibility of a recurrence of the epidemic. In handling divorce problems our first step has been to establish family courts, or courts of domestic relations, to care for the families which have already gone to pieces, but we have all realized that these were merely remedial measures. We have

accomplished very little in finding out the real causes of divorce, and still less
in removing them.

To continue the analogy of the typhoid epidemic, let us suppose for a
moment that all other possible sources of the pollution have been eliminated
except the water supply, and the epidemiologists of the community have gone
outside the town and into the hills to examine each little stream as it enters
the main river. To purify and to keep pure each of the thousand tributaries
would be a stupendous task, so they recommend that a reservoir be built,
through which the water supply shall pass. A process of purification is estab-
lished, the unfit streams are diverted from the water supply of the community,
and the danger of future epidemics is removed.

We have attempted to do the same thing in handling our marriage problem. We have tried to build reservoirs, in the form of marriage license bureaus, and have sought to have all applicants pass through them, but we have not been very successful. In the first place, many of the tributaries have failed to enter the reservoir and have run off down the hillside as independent streams. These are our common-law marriages. Then, we have not been very successful in discovering the polluted streams before they entered the reservoir. These are the marriages of the unfit. Some of the streams which come to the reservoir may be all right, but before they enter, their content needs to be analyzed, and such analysis means that a period of time must elapse before they are admitted. We have not been very careful to introduce this waiting period in our marriage license bureaus, and to make the investigation it is designed to facilitate, and consequently we have the problem of hasty marriages, largely recruited from the ranks of youth. Is it any wonder that the community suffers from epidemics of marital typhoid, and homes are broken up by divorce?

Minnesota has just passed through an unsuccessful campaign to remedy some of the defects in its present marriage law, of the type just mentioned, and in addition certain details of the administration of the law. Because our experience is probably not unique, I should like to consider some of the reasons for failure, and possibly to suggest the next steps in the program.

Early in the campaign we discovered that opposition to the proposed marriage bill might center upon the first section, which would make marriage valid only when a license had been secured and a ceremony performed, thus abolishing common-law marriages. Minnesota statute law says that a marriage shall be recognized as such when a license has been obtained and a celebration held, but is silent as to common-law unions. The latter, however, can be, and have been, recognized by judicial decision. The popular protest against abolishing common-law marriage was somewhat of a surprise to proponents of the new bill, because the opposition came from conservative, law-abiding citizens whose own marriages are undoubtedly recorded properly with some marriage license bureau. The rigorous plea for the preservation of common-law marriage was found to be based on a total misapprehension of the subject. The argument was