The Alimony Racket: Quotations

Here is an example of a contemporary alimony reform writer who has accepted the fake history of the American family perpetuated by the universities. The history of the family is an academic subject virtually monopolized by scholars whose ideology causes them to produce a false narrative in an effort to promote present-day policy:

“While divorces in Florida are technically “no-fault,” they reflect attitudes and realities from America in the 1950s, when the divorcing husband was the sole breadwinner and always considered ‘the bad guy’ in divorce, while the wife was considered ‘the helpless victim.’
[“What’s Wrong with Florida Alimony Laws?” October 2011, Prepared by Florida Alimony Reform]

The fact is that mandatory alimony was already in the 1920s recognized by judges and a huge number of women editorial writers as obsolete. Conclusion: History Matters!

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1901 ~ “[I] can see no reason why, if a woman marries again, her second husband should not support her and her first husband be relieved from paying alimony.” – Justice Henry A. Gildersleeve, Supreme Court, New York, N.Y. (source)

1909 ~ Although divorced fifty years … and although no mention of alimony was made in the decree, no divorced man is safe from payment of that peculiarly irksome obligation so long as his former wife lives and fails to remarry. … In other words – that is, in plain American language – a wife who obtained a divorce twenty-five years ago, or even fifty, according to Judge Ball, can bob up unexpectedly and, having discovered that her former spouse has become wealthy or merely well fixed, may go into court and successfully demand her “rights.” – Judge Ball ruling, Chicago (source)

1909 ~ Because she had no child as the issue of her marriage with William Welch, and wished to secure alimony from him, Mrs. Cora Welch, plaintiff in a divorce suit borrowed a baby from an orphanage in Georgetown, Wash., and attempted to palm it off on her husband and the court as her own child, born in wedlock. (source)

1911 ~  “The ‘million dollar alimony girl’— Ethel Stewart Elliott—went into bankruptcy the other day, giving as her main asset unpaid alimony amounting to $28,000. Eleven years ago as Ethel Stewart, dancing in the extravaganza ‘Chris and the Wonderful Lamp’ she danced her way into the heart of John Love Elliott, millionaire mining man. For a few years they were happy. Then came the break and – divorce in 1907. Elliott at that time, it is said, settled $1,000,000 on his wife and allowed an extra $28,000 yearly to support her and her daughter. In the years since then Mrs. Elliott satisfied her craving for fine clothes, for travel and a life of ease. The million dwindled away and now she’s ‘broke.’” (source)

1920 ~ “The matrimonial profiteer,” says Judge Graham, “is a thousand times more dangerous than the economic profiteer who can more readily be reached by law.” … “Thousands of young men in the heat of war married women who lived with them perhaps two or three days, then put in claims for alimony. I know of one case in which a woman married five soldiers and for long time collected allotments from each.” – Judge Thomas F. Graham, San Francisco (source)

1925 ~ “There stream into my court sobbing and hysterical examples who imagine that by furtive dabs to moist eyes with their handkerchiefs that they will be entitled to keep their hands in their former husbands’ pocketbooks forever. The courts now are flooded with ‘gimme’ divorces. These are the remain Shylocks without chick or child and possessed only of a great desire to keep a financial stranglehold on the husbands they have released through law.. … 

Furthermore, under our modern standards woman is no longer man’s inferior. If you would find out whether this is true ask any one of them and see what she says in reply. Yet there appear before me every day unobligated women who seek from $15 to 50 a  week from their former husbands’ earnings to add to their own comfortable salaries and for no other reason, pretext or cause than that they were once married to the men. How unfair and terrible! Heavens knows, it’s hard enough in these days trying to support one household without, being compelled by law to support two. And no childless divorced woman in good health is going to get any assistance from me from now on in continuing this injustice. Marriage is an institution and not a collection business.” – Judge Harry A. Lewis, Chicago (source)

1925 ~ Judge Strong’s decision recognizing the new situation, according to the press reports, was expressed in no uncertain terms. “Everything considered, he said, “I believe alimony should be discontinued because it keeps certain women lazy, gratifies their revenge, makes men miserable and serves no good ends.” – Judge Selah B. Strong, New York (source)

1925 ~ Judge Taulane in discharging the husband stated that he believed “that when a woman has been separated from her husband for ten years, as this woman has, and then concludes to sue for divorce, she is not entitled to alimony while her action is pending, regardless of what her allegations may be. It would seem as though she wanted to create a fund to pay the expenses of her suit.” – Judge H. Taulane, Philadelphia (source)

1926 ~ “The whole business of alimony grabbing is degrading. It cheapens the relations between men and women. I truly believe alimony keeps thousands of couples from being reconciled. The woman being supported by her husband under order of the court isn’t anxious to effect a reconciliation. She is dawling in idleness, free, irresponsible. She’s making him suffer, so she gloats.” – Judge Selah B. Strong (source)

1926 ~ “We love and honour the ladies,” Hoebert said, “but we want to leave to our descendants once more real mothers and wives, and to prevent their being killed off by the alleged emancipation of the woman.” – Sigurd Hoeberth, activist, The World’s League for the Rights of Men, Vienna (source)

1926 ~ “The feminist, hysterical and degenerate cafe scribblers have helped cunning woman to forge intolerable chains for men.” – Herr Wollner, activist, The World’s League for the Rights of Men, Vienna (source)

1926 ~ I am convinced that very few of the actions for separation with alimony by childless women are sincere; that is, based on their honest belief that they are really entitled to what they ask. – Judge Selah B. Strong, Chicago (source)

1927 ~ “With alimony from one man,” they argued. “I can just manage to exist. But if I can collect from three or four at a time then I’ve a settled income tor life.” – Soviet wives (source)

1927 ~ “[Married women] have become parasites and consumers instead of producers, taking no share in their husbands’ burdens, and are worse chattels than their grandmothers. The vast army of women seeking divorce are mainly after easy alimony from men they have ceased to love – surely one of the most despicable forms of barter that can exchange human hands.” – Fannie Hurst, novelist (source)

1927 ~ Sally thinks she’s a dear, sweet home girl. She’s not. She’s the meanest kind of a slacker and cheat. She let a man build his faith on her. She went with him into a Going Business. She tied up all he had to give of youth and ambition and love. And then, because she was too stingy of soul to do her share, she took her children and left him bankrupt of faith or hope. Some day Sally is going to hear how Ed is “carrying on” and she’s going to be perfectly furious and divorce him and feel frightfully abused if he won’t give her alimony. Would you give an absconding cashier heavy alimony? For that’s what Sally is! -- Elsie Marlowe, journalist (source)

1927 ~ “Down with alimony gold-digging. Millions for defense, but not one cent for alimony.” -- Bessie Cooley, activist, Chicago (source)

1927 ~ “I feel myself not altogether adequate to the task I have set for myself, but nobody else seems anxious to lead in the new crusade. What we really need is a new and eloquent Dickens, to write in burning words of the wrongs of the alimony slaves, and dissipate forever the idea that there is something intensely funny about a man paying tribute to a lazy, selfish, worthless woman willing to live on his bounty while denying him a husband’s rights.” – Robert Ecob, Alimony Payers Protective Organization (source)

1927 ~ “Alimony is the plague of the country. There are only two ways to beat it: have oodles of money or die.”

            “All over the country there are thousands of men in the same boat we are in – victims of designing wives.” said Gasteiger. “But we are organizing against them and will win out in the end. There is too much ‘shaking down’ of men with money. Why, there is an army of childless divorced women living in luxury on the revenue of alimony.” – John Gasteiger (source)

1927 ~ “Polite blackmail is committed every day in the name of alimony, perjured testimony is suborned in sadly too many instances; unscrupulous women, in our state of New York, have actually contracted marriages with wealthy men of wistful affections, just to bring about a speedy quarrel and collect the alimony ever after.” – Robert Ecob, activist, President of AAPPA (source)

1928 ~ “The rising tide of divorce has brought us a new industry, the ultimate refinement of golddigging, the perfection of blackmail within the law—marriage for alimony,” said Faith Baldwin, the well-known writer. “Women who do not want husbands or children have found a joker in our marriage laws by which they can establish themselves comfortably for life; free, respectable, rich, safe—without personal cost or sacrifice.

There are thousands and thousands of women who are being supported by men to whom they are no longer wives. There is no doubt that this business of alimony is getting to be a serious menace, it may be all right when a man has plenty of money. To pay a former wife a few thousand dollars in alimony may mean nothing to him. But, on the other hand, just consider how many men are forced to pay alimony who cannot afford it. You will find in the majority of cases that there is no good reason why they should pay it, either. The women are well able to take care of themselves. If they did not lack pride and self-respect, they would not accept money from men who no longer mean anything to them.” – Faith Baldwin, novelist (source)

1928 ~ “The tyranny of modern women, who demand all rights and refuse all duties, who are marrying men only to lead a careless, workless and childless life, or to obtain a divorce and a lifelong alimony, this shameful tyranny is the underlying cause of all evils. “Look at the insane asylum Steinhof  in Vienna. Fifty percent of the unfortunate inmates were brought to this place because of their marriage.’’ – Leopold Kornblueh, president of Justitia, Vienna (source)

1928 – Arthur J. Eyring, Cleveland Court’s alimony clerk, who has paid out alimony for many years declared that although many women are deserving in being supported by their former husbands, it is unbelievable the number of women who are receiving checks from two or maybe three misguided former husbands. He said these divorcees have developed a highly skillful technique of marrying, divorcing and suing for alimony, then remarry some wealthier man, divorcing and suing again for alimony. Where there are children, Eyring believes it is no more than light for the former married man should aid in supporting his former wife and “kiddies.” It is contended, however, that the familiar “gold-diggers” far outnumber all other alimony receivers. – Arthur J. Eyring, Cleveland Court’s alimony clerk (Ohio) (source)

 
1929 ~ “America is still under woman’s rule,” said the official spokesman of the league, “and it might, therefore, be embarrassing to our new members to have their names published. In America the women mistrust us because they think our object is to reestablish the tyranny of men. In reality, all that we ask for men is a fair deal.” – Secretary of The World’s League for the Rights of Men, (Weltbund für Männerrechte) Vienna (source)

1930 ~ “I’m an engineer on the B & O ,” explained Steven Wasilewski. “I’ve got two children by my first wife, and two by my second. The four live with my second wife, and my first wife had me thrown in here because I owed her $600. I can’t pay her off when I’m not earning anything — and here I got four kids and a second wife starving.”

“Christmas in jail?” he murmurs gently. “Oh, I guess I might as well get used to it. I tell you what’s wrong with this alimony business — we shouldn’t ‘a’ got married in the first place.” (source)

1930 ~ “The gold-digging divorcee hires the highest-priced lawyer obtainable. Her former husband has to pay the counsel fee, so he probably has to hire a cheap lawyer for himself." “Usually at the advice of her lawyer, she declares the man’s income to be larger than it really is, and mentions hidden assets which may not exist. The defendant may file a correct answer regarding his income, but only one in 200 ever is granted a referee’s decision. So long as he owes a dollar, he has no legal standing and cannot plead his case. Physical disability or loss of his position or business has nothing to do with it.” Temporary alimony is awarded and the case set for trial. If the man is in arrears on these payments, or has not paid counsel fees, he cannot go to trial. The trial may be delayed for years, and the ex-husband may be sent to jail in contempt of court. – Dr. Alexander Dallek head of the legislative branch of the National Sociological League, (source)

1930 ~ The youngest alimoniac ever confined in jail was 19. He met a gold-digger one week, married her the next, and the third week found him behind bars. (source)

1930 ~ Three Chicagoans who have either been cited for contempt or committed to jail for failure to pay alimony, today sought incorporation of the Alimony Club of America. (source)

1931 ~ “The alimony racket has become the great woman’s industry. A sobbing pretty woman before the court — and what chance has the husband? In many cases the amount of alimony is so large in proportion to the man’s earnings that it completely nullifies any chance of happiness or of another marriage. And why – one cannot help but ask – should a divorced man be denied the right to a normal family life?” – Ruth Brown Reed (source)

1931 ~ “Counsel states no matter how just my claims are he will not give me a chance to go to trial until I pay him the $100. His exact words were ‘You will rot in here before I will get you out.’” (source)

1932 ~ “They know that under the law when a man has been put in here neither the mayor nor the governor nor the President himself can spring him. Under certain circumstances the governor can release a convicted murderer; he can’t do anything for a delinquent payer of alimony. Neither can the judge who signs the order. It’s not contempt of court, but just plain contempt of wife! And maybe most of the little women don’t know it, but oh, what contempt!” – Adolph Wodiska, activist, President the New York County Alimony Club (source)

1932 ~ “I get letters from women all over the country charging me with being a traitor to my sex,” Mrs. Gompers said. Her young face, under a cloud of snow-white hair, into a smile. “Well, I’m certainly an enemy of gold-diggers, if that’s what they mean.” – Mrs. Samuel Gompers, activist, National Divorce Reform League (source)

1933 ~ Today New York city alone has 80 men who are imprisoned just because they cannot pay alimony. Poverty is no excuse for the law. For instance, 58-year-old John Pettet has all the earmarks of becoming an “alimony lifer.” Seven contempt-of-court orders to pay alimony accrued during his incarceration and his formerly flourishing radio business has been shattered. He has no chance of making money to get him out again. (source)

1933 ~ “There have been several instances [in California] where women have been collecting alimony from two or three ex-husbands and when they failed to pay it was jail for them. Because such practices smack of racketeering the state decided to put a stop to it. If a woman can't get by on the income of one husband she should take lessons in management and clamp the brakes down on her expenditures.” (source)

1933 ~ There is nothing in our alleged modern civilization that is so disgraceful as the fact that divorce has become just as much a racket among unprincipled women as bootlegging has among men. A large class of women as bootlegging has among them. A large class of women as bootlegging has among them. A large class of women have made a gift wrecking homes and breaking up men’s lives. They enter into the most binding of all human contracts with no intention whatever of fulfilling it. They perjure their souls without even a qualm of conscience by taking upon their lips the most solemn of all oaths that they do not even mean to keep. – Dorothy Dix, journalist (source)

1933 ~ “Even a lowly alimony prisoner has constitutional rights,” Justice Bonygne had some crisp things to say about “petticoat government” and “waspish wives.” … “Let a waspish woman pluck the sleeve of the judicial gown or nudge the elbow concealed therein,” his Honor meditated, “and … restraint is immediately cast aside and the delinquent spouse faces the possibility of unending imprisonment through successive adjudication of contempt. This carries the supposed rights of woman to absurd, not to say unconstitutional, lengths.” – Judge Paul Bonygne, Brooklyn, N.Y. (source)

1934 ~ I joined this club primarily because I wanted to see justice done, and I feel that that very often a woman can attack her own sex with more effect than can a man. I am intensely against the ‘woman chiseler’ who marries not for a home and a husband, but for alimony and a good time at some decent man’s expense. – Mrs. Rose Fox, activist, New York Alimony Club (source)

1935 ~ What do you suppose an ex-wife is thinking about when she has her husband put under the jailhouse for not paying alimony? That question has bothered thousands of former husbands who from the inside of the jail saw no rhyme or reason in it. It led to formation of the Alimony Reform League of New York, which inquired into the subject. Now the story can be told.

Such women are psychopathic cases almost every time! And they are sadistic! At least they are bordering on some kind on some on some kind of psychosis that approaches sadism.

The Alimony League got back about one-half of 2,000 questionnaires it sent out. The first three questions ran: “Why did you send him to jail? How long are you satisfied now that he is in jail? How long would you like to have him remain there? More than one-fourth of the women answering the first question declared he belonged in jail, deserved it. About 63 per cent were tickled to death with the status of everything in answering the second question. They were satisfied. About 21 per cent were sorry, the rest, undecided. (source)

1935 ~  “Alimony caused the suicide yesterday of Mrs. Faye Wegener, a wife whose husband was compelled to pay a substantial part of his earnings in a divorced wife. Police found her body and a note voicing her despair in a gas-filled apartment.” (source)

1937 ~ The alimony racket is a definite livelihood for thousands of women. And until men do something about it it will flourish like a green bay tree. – Kathleen Norris, novelist, journalist (source)

1937 ~ Women who marry that they may divorce for money are high-class chiselers who have so far got off scot-free. It’s an old con game with streamline trimmings, and even if the men are dumb enough to fall for it, the women are still responsible for it as they who put over the idealistic and romanticized picture of womanhood which still makes a man believe that the little woman really does want a vine-covered cottage when she says, “Yes.” It’s all too easy these days for a woman to reason along these lines when she is momentarily bored or angry, “Why should I go on putting up with this guy? A divorce, with alimony to take care of the money problem, and I can live my own life as I please.” – Maxine Garrison, journalist (source)

1937 ~ Missouri’s lone woman legislator has offered a bill for the “relief of alimony-ridden” men, or those in danger of being classed in that state. Mrs. Gladys B. Stewart, Republican member from Douglas-co and a former assistant district attorney, has sponsored a measure which she believes will tend to curb “alimony grabbing tendencies” of some members of her sex. (source)

1937 ~ Few people realize how easy it is to have a man thrown into jail for non-payment of money owed. A person who owes as little as $5 may be put behind the bars in New York City even before being tried and found guilty of not paying a debt. …

But let me tell you there’s nothing funny ahead for the man who is escorted to a county jail to serve three months or so just because he is unable to beg, borrow or steal enough money, to satisfy (temporarily, at least) some hysterical or vindictive woman who is his former spouse. If he has a job, he’ll probably lose it; if he has a business, it will probably go to pieces in his absence. He can’t earn any money while he is in jail, so when he is released three months later he will be broke” and jobless, and that Ol’ Debbil Alimony will catch up with him so fast that it is almost a sure-thing bet that his ex-wife will have him back behind the bars in no time.– Lois Maddox Miller, journalist (source)

1937 – “Alimony has become a racket. …After all, the theory of alimony is to protect a woman who has relinquished her ability to support herself. She deserves this protection. But like many other laws that were well conceived, the alimony law is being abused. It not only is providing thousands of undeserving ex-wives with a comfortable living, but it has been twisted into a weapon by which women vent their hatred on the men they once loved.” – Spring Byington, actress, anti-alimony activist (source)

1938 ~ While we Americans sneer at the medieval domesticity of other nations, which makes the husband the master in no uncertain terms, those other nations have laughed right back at us for our idiotic glorification of the American wife. The American husband, it is claimed, makes the money but his wife gaily tosses it away. He is expected to stick to his job, but she sloughs off her housekeeping with a flip of the dust mop and spends most of her time in beauty parlors or at the bridge table. If she decides that she wants her “freedom,” she gets not only that but enough alimony to keep her from having to lift a finger for herself. And our European cousins think that such goings-on can hardly be turned be termed marriage. – Maxine Garrison (source)

1939 ~ “Alimony often amounts to holdups with the aid of barbaric laws,” declared Doctor Katzoff, medical director and consulting psychiatrist of the San Francisco Institute of Human Relations. (source)

1939 ~ You may be young and comely when you marry him. You may still be young and comely when you leave him and file suit for separate maintenance. You may be capable of supporting yourself, yet the law provides that he be your slave for life, your husband in name and checkbook only. Woman’s present economic status no longer justifies this, Judge Joseph Sabath, dean of the divorce judges of Cook county, declared yesterday. He said that as the separate maintenance law, with its condoned abuses, stands, it is merely an open door to “alimony, alimony, alimony.” (source)

1939 ~ As for alimony, one of the profound mysteries of the world is why men, who make the laws, have not long ago done away with the cruel and unjust and medieval status that govern the whole subject of divorce and under which they suffer, whenever they find it impossible to live with their wives, or their wives get tired of living with them.

That many women marry for the sole purpose of getting divorces a matter of common knowledge. The women who practice this hold-up game marry men they don’t love. They  don’t make an effort to get along with them, or do their duty as wives in any respect, and in the course of a year or two they pick a quarrel and fly to Reno.

Then their poor dupes have to pay them enough money to live on luxuriously ever after Why should this be possible? Why should a man have to spend the remainder of his life supporting a woman who has made his life a hell on earth? Why should a first husband have to go on supporting his former wife and her second husband? Why should a poor fellow who can't pay his alimony be put in jail where he can't make any money? My own idea is that no young and able-bodied woman without children should ever be given a nickel of alimony. She took her chances on marriage just as the man did, and she should be enough of a sport to be a good loser. – Dorothy Dix, journalist (source)

1940 ~ Every woman is entitled to one mistake, but when you have a woman casting aside her second or third husband, you find she is doing it because she is seeking a better, bargain, in, the form of larger alimony allowances. … You will invariably find that each succeeding male is wealthier than his, predecessor, and consequently a better contributor to the alimony-racket. – New York State Senator Edward J. Coughlin (source)

1944 ~ And another, and a bitter and a shameful reason, why women ask for divorces oftener than men is because they have found out how profitable is the alimony racket and how easily it can be worked by any pretty woman. Thousands of women marry men for whom they have no affection, and with whom they have no intention of living, just because a marriage license delivers their husbands into their hands as the victims of the lowest holdup game ever practiced. – Dorothy Dix, journalist (source)

1946 ~ It made me consider afresh what I often have thought of alimony; that alimony is essentially unfair, and that men who make and change laws so easily, are rather stupid that they don’t regularize this one. The childless woman I quote above was about 28. It is possible that “he,” whoever he is, will be paying her $6,000 a year for more than 40 years. A quarter of a million dollars for the 24 months she spent in disillusioning him and breaking his heart. Such a woman, if I judged her rightly, will not re-marry while this golden river is rolling in. She will have her love affairs and her freedom; she will feel herself infinitely superior to the quiet girl who sticks to her bargain, keeps her man happy and secure, and raises children. – Kathleen Norris, novelist , journalist (source)

1951 ~ “After World War I, which opened up new business horizons to multitudes of women, these laws became a legal device for picking husbands’ pockets. Something must be worked out from the present hodge-podge of laws to protect children, and at the same time prevent the hard-boiled sisterhood from using marriage as a high-jacking scheme. … Men and women must be equally responsible for the support of their children – as they have always been. Any effort on the part of either to shun that duty should be punished severely. But certainly, society can no longer tolerate the parasitic woman.” – Mrs. Walter Ferguson, journalist (source)

1952 ~  “We have a man who is so mad about alimony rackets, he’s written a book. ‘Alimony, The American Tragedy,’ is the title and Dr. Charles Wilner of New York is the author. …

Dr. Wilner’s most startling charge is that alimony laws are creating an ever-growing group of American spinsters. The lawyers connive with wives to extract every last dollar from an ex-husbands purse, he contends. Thus, the divorced men can’t or won’t remarry, because they are disillusioned and hate the opposite sex.

‘Millions of women pine away in unwed loneliness, merely because predatory alimony-wives devour their prey so publicly that many men are frightened away from matrimony into bachelorhood,’ says Dr. Wilner.” (source)

1954 ~ “IT’S BAD enough to have to pay that woman more money than I can afford. She always gets it, by mail, right on the nose. But I don’t think it’s fair for her to poison my daughter’s mind against me.”

Another father says tearfully that, after he complained his alimony payments were too high, his son told him on his next visit, “I hate you, Daddy! Go away from here! I never want to see you any more!”

One other weapon the wife can, and docs, use: the Alimony Jail. Under the law, failure to meet alimony payments is contempt of court, punishable in some states by up to a year in jail. Although a jail term doesn’t solve the problem of payment (husbands, of course, can’t pay while behind bars), many wives don’t care.

“I don’t want the money. I just want him to rot in jail for what he did to me,” one woman told her attorney. – Divorced men (source)

1954 ~ Will we ever have a new Lincoln to free the alimony slave? In New York’s Manhattan telephone book you’ll still find the entry: Alimony Jail. At various times it’s been my job as reporter to interview inmates of this jail, which is at 434 West 34th Street (appropriately in the Hell’s Kitchen district). Each time I was ashamed of my sex. – Helen Worden Erskine, journalist (source)

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For more revelations of this suppressed history, see The Alimony Racket: Checklist of Posts

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[3529-9/4/18]
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