union between man and woman. In this respect the question is very like that of illegitimacy; and as the most careful students of the latter subject agree that almost no trustworthy inference regarding the moral condition of a community can be derived from the proportion of illegitimate children born, so one may say regarding the prevalence of divorce that from this fact almost no inferences are warranted regarding the moral or social condition of the population. It is by no means impossible, for example, that the spread of divorce among the negro population in the South marks a step in advance from the condition of largely unregulated and illegal unions characteristic of the race immediately after the war. The prevalence of divorce in the United States among the native population, in urban communities, among the New England element, in the middle classes of society, and among those of the Protestant faith, indicates how closely this social phenomenon is interlaced with much that is characteristic and valuable in American civilization. In this respect, too, the United States perhaps represent the outcome of a tendency which has been at work in Europe at least since the Reformation. Certainly the divorce-rate is increasing in nearly every civilized country. Decrees of nullity of marriage and decrees of separation not absolutely terminating the marriage relation are relatively far less prevalent than they were in the medieval and early modern period, and many persons who under former conditions would have obtained relief from unsatisfactory unions through one or the other of these avenues now resort to divorce. The increasing proportion of the community who have an income sufficient to pay the requisite legal fees is also a factor of great importance. The belief in the family as an institution ordained of God, decreed to continue “till death us do part,” and in its relations typifying and perpetuating many holy religious ideas, probably became weakened in the United States during the 19th century, along with a weakening of other religious conceptions; and it is yet to be determined whether a substitute for these ideas can be developed under the guidance of the motive of social utility or individual desire. In this respect the United States is, as Mr Gladstone once wrote, a tribus praerogativa, but one who knows anything of the family and home life of America will not readily despond of the outcome.
The great source of American statistical information is the governmental report of over 1000 pages, A Report on Marriage and Divorce in the United States 1867 to 1886, including an Appendix relating to Marriage and Divorce in Certain Countries of Europe, by Carroll D. Wright, Commissioner of Labour; together with the further report for 1887 to 1906. The statistics contained in the former volume have been analysed and interpreted in W. F. Willcox’s The Divorce Problem: A Study in Statistics (Columbia University, New York, 1891, 1897). Further interpretations are contained in an article in the Political Science Quarterly for March 1893, entitled “A Study in Vital Statistics.” The best legal treatise is probably Bishop on Marriage, Divorce, and Judicial Separation. See also J. P. Lichtenberger, Divorce: A Study in Social Causation (New York, 1909). (W. F. W.)
DIWANIEH, a small town in Turkish Asia, about 40 m. below Hillah, on both banks of the Euphrates (31° 58′ 47″ N., 44° 58′ 18″ E.), which is here spanned by a floating bridge. Formerly a military post for the control of the Affech territory, and a telegraph station, it was in 1893 made the capital of the sanjak, instead of Hillah, on account of its more strategical position. This transfer of the seat of government represented a step in the development of Turkish control over the central regions of Irak.
DIX, DOROTHEA LYNDE (1802–1887), American philanthropist, was born at Hampden, Maine, on the 4th of April 1802. Her parents were poor and shiftless, and at an early age she was taken into the home in Boston of her grandmother, Dorothea Lynde, wife of Dr Elijah Dix. Here she was reared in a distinctly Puritanical atmosphere. About 1821 she opened a school in Boston, which was patronized by the well-to-do families; and soon afterwards she also began teaching poor and neglected children at home. But her health broke down, and from 1824 to 1830 she was chiefly occupied with the writing of books of devotion and stories for children. Her Conversations on Common Things (1824) had reached its sixtieth edition by 1869. In 1831 she established in Boston a model school for girls, and conducted this successfully until 1836, when her health again failed. In 1841 she became interested in the condition of gaols and almshouses, and spent two years in visiting every such institution in Massachusetts, investigating especially the treatment of the pauper insane. Her memorial to the state legislature dealing with the abuses she discovered resulted in more adequate provision being made for the care and treatment of the insane, and she then extended her work into many other states. By 1847 she had travelled from Nova Scotia to the Gulf of Mexico, and had visited 18 state penitentiaries, 300 county gaols and houses of correction, and over 500 almshouses. Her labours resulted in the establishment of insane asylums in twenty states and in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, and in the founding of many additional gaols and almshouses conducted on a reformed plan. In 1853 she secured more adequate equipment for the life-saving service on Sable Island, then rightly called “the graveyard of ships.” In 1854 she secured the passage by Congress of a bill granting to the states 12,250,000 acres of public lands, to be utilized for the benefit of the insane, deaf, dumb and blind; but the measure was vetoed by President Pierce. After this disappointment she went to England for rest, but at once became interested in the condition of the insane in Scotland, and her report to the home secretary opened the way for sweeping reforms. She extended her work into the Channel Islands, and then to France, Italy, Austria, Greece, Turkey, Russia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and a part of Germany. Her influence over Arinori Mori, the Japanese chargé d’affaires at Washington, led eventually to the establishment of two asylums for the insane in Japan. At the outbreak of the Civil War she offered her services to the Federal government and was appointed superintendent of women nurses. In this capacity she served throughout the war, without a day’s furlough; and her labours on behalf of defectives were continued after the war. After a lingering illness of six years she died at Trenton, New Jersey, on the 17th of July 1887.
See Francis Tiffany, Life of Dorothea Lynde Dix (Boston, 1892).
DIX, JOHN ADAMS (1798–1879), American soldier and political leader, was born at Boscawen, New Hampshire, on the 24th of July 1798. He studied at Phillips Exeter Academy in 1810–1811 and at the College of Montreal in 1811–1812, and as a boy took part in the War of 1812, becoming a second lieutenant in March 1814. In July 1828, having attained the rank of captain, he resigned from the army, and for two years practised law at Cooperstown, New York. In 1830–1833 he was adjutant-general of New York. He soon became prominent as one of the leaders of the Democratic party in the state, and for many years was a member of the so-called “Albany Regency,” a group of Democrats who between about 1820 and 1850 exercised a virtual control over their party in New York, dictating nominations and appointments and distributing patronage. From 1833 to 1839 he was secretary of state and superintendent of schools in New York, and in this capacity made valuable reports concerning the public schools of the state, and a report (1836) which led to the publication of the Natural History of the State of New York (1842–1866). In 1842 he was a member of the New York assembly. In 1841–1843 he was editor of The Northern Light, a literary and scientific journal published in Albany. From 1845 to 1849 he was a United States senator from New York; and as chairman of the committee on commerce was author of the warehouse bill passed by Congress in 1846 to relieve merchants from immediate payment of duties on imported goods. In 1848 he was nominated for governor of New York by the Free Soil party, but was defeated by Hamilton Fish. His acceptance of the nomination, however, earned him the enmity of the southern Democrats, who prevented his appointment by Pierce as secretary of state and as minister to France in 1853. In this year Dix was for a few weeks assistant U.S. treasurer in New York city. In May 1860 he became postmaster of New York city, and from January until March 1861 he was secretary of the treasury of the United States, in which capacity he issued (January 29, 1861) to a revenue officer at New Orleans a famous order containing the words, “if any one attempts to haul down the American flag,
