DISCUSSION.

One readily grants that the recognition of the importance of personal relations is growing. The only kind of a family clinic we now have exists for the purpose of helping the social order. This assumes that those persons in the clinic responsible for this social order know what standards in family relations and in the relations of the family to the community will serve this purpose. If these standards are of the scientific sort, they must be based on verifiable data. In reality, we are lacking not only scientific data in this field but even agreement on standards of the popular and legal sort. Keeping the discussion within our own country the stage of development in social standards is illustrated by our state laws and by the administration of relief. The laws in the forty-eight states bear evidence to the confused definition of that which is contrary to social well being. In Indiana, adultery is a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum penalty of six months in jail, less than the penalty in some places for a man's stealing food to keep his family alive. In Vermont, adultery is a felony punishable by five years in state prison. In a third state, a Court of Domestic Relations recently found that a couple's pleading guilty to adultery was the most constructive solution to a tangled affair-that is, the most constructive solution in the opinion of certain people, and apparently one that was equally satisfactory to the representatives of society and to the individuals.