WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
separation and divorce were provided for by the law. Slowly, but inevitably, the links of the chain of wedlock have been loosened, and the new divorce measures show a wider appreciation of human needs. The enforced fettering of the unfortunately married will be one day regarded as a relic of a barbarous age. Until then indissoluble marriage will continue to be one of the sources of polygyny in Europe and America.
Another cause of polygyny, especially in Great Britain, is to be sought in the preponderance of women in the population. The surplus of marriageable women who remain single is often overstated. Nevertheless, there is an immense army of compulsory celibate women. Certain city areas are inhabited chiefly by unmarried women. Such a phenomenon utterly bewilders the intelligent Eastern visitor. He asks, reasonably enough, how we reconcile the boast of our advanced and humane civilisation with the fact that tens of thousands of our women are deprived of the primary rights of love, marriage, and the reproduction of offspring.
This multitude of spinsters might be cited as evidence that polygyny is not common in England. Unfortunately, it proves nothing of the kind. What it proves is that marriage is becoming less popular among both sexes; that the number of men is disproportionate to the number of women, and that men find
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