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Domestic trouble in America would cease for want of aliment.
Most of this trouble may be traced directly to the disproportion of the sexes.
If the males and females were so fairly mixed, that every man who felt inclined to marry could find a wife, he would be likely to leave his neighbour's wife alone.
If every woman had the chance given to her by nature of securing one man's preference, and no more, she would be less dreamy and ideal, less exercised about her rights and wrongs, less moved about her place in creation.
A woman with one mate, and no visible temptation to change her partner for another, and still another, would pay scant heed to those quacks of either sex, who come to her with their jargon about affinities and passionals.
She would want no higher laws, and seek no greater freedom than her English mothers have enjoyed in wedded love.
But how is moral order to be kept in regions where there are two males to each female, as in Oregon, three males to each female as in Nevada and Arizona., four males to every female as in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana?
No other civilised and independent commonwealth shows the same phenomena as America.
1875.
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