“After Alimony Racketeers”: New York - 1940

FULL TEXT: State Senator Edward J. Coughlin, a Brooklyn Democrat, has started a little racket busting campaign by introducing at Albany a bill under which (to use the senator’s words) “any female having been divorced once, and, after remarrying” again sues for divorce, will be prohibited from making any application whatever for alimony.

We think the senator has something. As he puts it, “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.”

Though Senator Coughlin is, perhaps, a little eloquent and a little sweeping and overincluslve in a part of his statements there is a great deal in what he says.

Alimony has its proper place in the adjustment of domestic schisms. Some women are entitled to it as a matter of common right, common justice and in the interest of public morality.

But the alimony racket which the Senator excoriates is different matter. It is of a piece with the breach of promise and alienation of affections rackets now outlawed in several states, including Michigan.

As sometimes worked. It is about on a plane with cold-blooded, sordid and carefully planned robbery.

It seems to us that Senator Coughlin has aimed a shrewd blow at an evil abuse.

[“After Alimony Racketeers,” From Detroit Free Press, The Pampa News (Tx.), Mar. 31, 1940, p. 15]

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

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