[Indexed as: “Bargain Counter Divorces in Kansas City,” The Galveston Daily News (Tx.), Nov. 23, 1907]

It seems that Kansas City is sorely afflicted with “divorce snitches.” It happens to be the very same city from which there went up a month or so ago sad wall against the advertising agents. It would appear that that remarkable community is teeming with professionals who catch the butterflies going and coming. It is not at all improbable that some of these agencies have in them, first, a general advertising agent for matchmaking purposes, and second, a batch of snitches to promote domestic brawls and procure divorces as remedies therefor.

The Kansas City Journal urges that the movement to suppress the “divorce snitches” — by which are meant the attorneys who advertise that they will secretly and quickly” obtain divorces or all and sundry — is in line with good public policy. “The mere fact that attorneys advertise is nothing to their general discredit, though they may thereby violate the arbitrary ethics of their profession. So long as they connect the employment of their services to legitimate purposes they can hardly be criticized. outside of their profession, for letting the public know they have honorable services for sale. But neither inside nor outside have they any right to conspire to evade the law, to bring it to disrepute or bend it to conserve ends contrary to the public, good.”

As the Journal says, it is peculiarly appropriate that the bar itself should set about the task of putting a stop to reprehensible practices. There can hardly be any question that attorneys who cater to the clandestine divorce trade reflect discredit upon the entire profession, and the bar is only protecting itself when it takes steps to place such attorneys beyond the professional pale. The bench can, of course, wield an immense influence for good in this respect, and can practically nullify the sharp practice to which pettifogging lawyers resort. The ethics of the divorce question are not necessarily involved in the case. But the secret evasions of the law, often involving collusion between the parties chiefly concerned, and again involving the opposite extreme of gross injustice toward one of the parties, are not to be tolerated.

We seem to have in Texas less of this sort of thing than they have in Kansas City and in certain other places; but that we have entirely too much of it all sane and sound people will admit. With us the trouble begins largely with the wrong sort of training and education. In all lines of life many girls and boys are brought up without the necessary lessons in industry, economy and self-denial. “Go, go, go. Spend, spend, spend.” Such is the motto of many of the young people who reach the marriageable age with an overload of great expectations and without the necessary intelligence, skill, energy or stamina to materialize them. The results of such self-conceit and such lack of self-restraint are apt to be disappointment and despondency soon after they are married and the illusion is dispelled. The next step is toward the divorce court. This is about the course such affairs take with us and the results are sad and bad enough. Of course they are even worse where both ends of the business are worked up by sharp professionals who make and break matches as their regular calling at counter rates, and while you wait.