Alien Influx Increasing - Divorce Rate Tops 6%

I hear a lot of numbers batted around about the divorce rate in America, seems to me it's been on the order of 50% for years now. I'm generally convinced one of the leading reasons for divorce is that people can afford it, and all those extra "households" have helped drive housing through the prices roof. It turns out that Secretary of War William Taft, who would go on to be the 27th president of our country, was concerned as well. He spoke out on the soaring divorce rate and against the immigration policies of the time at the commencement of Miami University class of '05. The NYT reported on the speech on June 16, 1905 under the headline, "Against Chinese Exclusion - Based on Prejudice and Injures Commerce, Secretary Taft Says."

Touching the application of the Chinese exclusion law, the secretary asked: "Is it just that for the purpose of excluding one hundred Chinese coolies from slipping into this country we should subject an equal number of Chinese merchants and students of high character to an examination of such an inquisitorial, humiliating, insulting and uncomfortable character as to discourage altogether the coming of merchants and students?'

Regarding divorce the Secretary said, "Last year there were 612 divorces out of every 10,000 marriages. Should there not be some radical measures to prevent the looseness with which the marriage bond is tied and with which it is dissolved? If it were given to Congress to pass uniform laws of marriage and divorce, there would be proper divorce restrictions, and we could be certain that administered as divorce law would be by Judges of the Federal courts, subject as they all would be to the general supervision of the Supreme Court of the United States, there would be uniform administration of the law in the court."

The very next day, the Times carries a small story titled "Alien Influx Increasing. Class of Emigrants Less Desirable Than Formerly, Inspectors Say."

Marcus Braun and Maurice Fishberg, the American Immigrant Inspectors who have been investigating emigration from the Continental countries to the United States, having concluded their labors in Austria-Hungary and Russian Poland, respectively, are now looking up conditions prevailing at the embarking points of the big Atlantic liners.

They express the opinion that emigration, which has exceeded all previous records, promises to be even greater in the future. On the whole, the say, the class of emigrants going to the United States is not so desirable as formerly.

That would be my grandparents they were talking about.