(9) Increasing laxity of the laws regarding divorce and increasing
laxity in the administration of the laws has certainly been a cause of
increasing divorce in the United States, though back of these causes
doubtless lie all the other causes just mentioned, and also increasing
laxity in public opinion regarding marriage and divorce. To assume that
laxity of the laws and of legal administration has no influence upon the
increase of divorce in a population is to go contrary to all human
experience. The people of Canada and of England, for example, are not
very different from ourselves in culture and in institutions, yet there
is almost no divorce in England and in Canada as compared with the
United States. Canada has a few dozen divorces annually, while we have
over seventy thousand. Unquestionably the main cause of this great
difference between Canada and the United States is to be found in the
difference of their laws. This is not saying, however, that instability
of the family does not characterize Canada and England as well as the
United States, even though such instability does not express itself in
the divorce courts.

Interesting statistics have been collected in numerous places in the
country to show the laxity of the administration of the divorce laws. In
many of the divorce courts of our large cities, for example, it has
repeatedly been shown that the average time occupied by the court in
granting a divorce is not more than fifteen minutes. In other words,
divorce cases are frequently rushed through our divorce courts without
solemnity, without adequate investigation, with every opportunity for
collusion between the parties, so as to favor a very free granting of
divorces. On the other hand, about one fourth of all the applications
for divorce which come to trial are refused by the courts, showing that
the courts are not so lax in all cases as they are sometimes pictured to