Samuel Warren Dike
Samuel Warren Dike was a notable figure in the realm of divorce reform during the late 19th century, born in Thompson, Connecticut. He graduated from Williams College in 1863 and pursued theological training, eventually becoming a pastor in various rural parishes in Vermont. Concerned about rising divorce rates in the 1880s, which surpassed 20,000 annually, Dike became a prominent social scientist after refusing to remarry a divorced man. His investigations into divorce led to the formation of the New England Divorce Reform League, later renamed the National Divorce Reform League, where he served as corresponding secretary. Dike was instrumental in gathering statistical data on marriage and divorce, contributing to significant reports on the subject. He frequently expressed his views through lectures and publications, balancing moral conservatism with liberal social perspectives. Dike's work positioned him as a transitional figure between traditional values and modern reform ideas. He passed away in 1912, leaving behind a legacy of advocacy for family preservation and a nuanced view on divorce.
Subject Terms
Samuel Warren Dike
- Samuel Warren Dike
- Born: February 13, 1839
- Died: December 3, 1913
Divorce reformer, was born in Thompson, Connecticut, the son of George Dike and Hannah Waters (Snow) Dike; he was a descendant of an early settler of Plymouth Colony. He grew up on his parents’ farm and attended the district school and Nichols Academy in Dudley, Massachusetts. After his graduation from Williams College in 1863 he trained for the ministry at the Theological Institute of Connecticut (now Hartford Theological Seminary) and Andover Theological Seminary. Ordained by the Congregational church in 1869, Dike served as pastor of rural parishes in West Randolph, Vermont (1868-77), and Royalton, Vermont (1879-82). In October 1872 he married Augusta Margaret Smith of Montpelier, Vermont. They had four children: Alice Norton (born in 1874); George Phillips (born in 1876); Elizabeth Anderson (born in 1878); and Theodore Williams (born in 1881).
Preservation of the family from the threat of divorce was a subject of much concern in the 1880s. The divorce rate was on the rise and had reached 20,000 a year. Dike’s departure from his first pastorate was occasioned by his refusal to officiate at the remarriage of a divorced man. His subsequent investigation into the subject of divorce brought him a reputation in New England as a social scientist. His lecture “Facts as to Divorce in New England,” delivered in January 1881, inspired a group of prominent Bostonians to form the New England Divorce Reform League. The league was retitled the National Divorce Reform League in 1885 and later, the National League for the Protection of the Family. Dike’s position as corresponding secretary became a full-time occupation, and twenty-eight of the league’s annual reports were written by him. In 1887 he moved to Auburndale, Massachusetts.
Dike’s main contribution to the study of the family was his collection of statistical data. At the invitation of the U.S. Commissioner of Labor, Carroll D. Wright, and using funds provided by Congress, Dike supervised a research project to gather information concerning the effect on families of current marriage and divorce laws. The result was the Report of the United States Commissioner of Labor on Marriage and Divorce in the United States and Europe, 1867-86 (1889).
Dike testified before a number of congressional committees on revisions of divorce law, but he preferred to address his views to the public in such periodicals as The Atlantic Monthly and the Political Science Quarterly; many of his articles were later issued as pamphlets. He was a frequent lecturer at colleges and seminaries. One of the first members of the American Economics Association, Dike was a cofounder, with Washington Gladden, Seth Low, and other reformers and public officials, of the Sociological Group, which sponsored research on alcohol abuse and similar social problems.
As a reformer, Dike was caught between his moral conservatism and his liberal social views. In his Boston lecture he decried immorality and luridly described the licentiousness threatening civilization. Defending the home was as critical as abolishing slavery, he argued. Paradoxically, this speech depended on statistical evaluation rather than evangelical fervor, and it ended with an appeal for education and further research.
Dike was a charitable and modest man, but his ability to obtain the support of the members of the Divorce Reform League depended on his seeming to be a militant moralist. Dike could be said to have been opposed both to divorce and to efforts to curb it. In 1898 and in 1908 he fought proposals urging ministers not to remarry divorced persons. “We must go with the scientists to nature, where Jesus himself went,” he said, “and carefully listen to what comes to us from her.” But this view led to the social sciences, to which Dike, despite his expertise in research, could not fully commit himself. The dilemma was pointed up by the defection from the league in 1911 of psychologist G. Stanley Hall, who by that date was no longer opposed to divorce. Dike was a transitional figure, standing between the conservative moralism of the nineteenth century and the reform ideas of the twentieth.
Dike suffered from arteriosclerosis in his later years and died at Auburndale at the age of seventy-four of heart failure following acute cystitis.
The Samuel Warren Dike Papers at the Library of Congress consist of an incomplete, untitled, typewritten autobiography. Dike’s Boston lecture was published in J. Cook, ed., Christ and Modern Thought: The Boston Monday Lectures (1880-81). Other autobiographical material is contained in the National Reform League Reports and the National League for the Protection of the Family Annual Reports. Biographical sources include Williams College Obituary Record (1913-14); Class of 1863, Williams College, Fortieth Year Report (1903); Who’s Who in America (1912-13); the Dictionary of American Biography (1930); and W. L. O’Neill, Divorce in the Progressive Era (1967).