[Indexed as: Gibbons, Roy J., “Militant Wife Launches War Against Alimony in Chicago,” syndicated (NEA), Ogden Standard Examiner (Ut.), Jul. 12, 1927]

CHICAGO, July 12—A modern Joan Arc has risen here in the person of one Mrs. Bessie Cooley, and round her standards are gathering recruits from Chicago’s pretty badly defeated army of alimony payers.

Her cry is: “Down with alimony gold-digging.” “Millions for defense, but not one cent for alimony,” the heartened troops under her command are singing as a march song. Mrs. Cooley is the wife of Dr. Vernon P. Cooley. Cooley was married once before and the first wife is still receiving alimony, which makes the present militant Mrs. Cooley angry.

The Illinois appelate court recently ruled on Dr. Cooley’s petition to have the alimony to the first Mrs. Cooley stopped. The court supported his contention that Mrs. Cooley No. 1 was spending the money he was paying her in riotous living, but that fact, so the court ruled, as a mere moral issue, did not warrant any order for the discontinuance of payments.

It was a long legal treatise on morality and alimony. And the upshot of the whole thing was that Dr. Cooley was ordered to keep paying and probably would have done so if it hadn’t been for Mrs. Cooley No. 2.

No, sir,” she said. “Let them put you in jail. But don’t pay another cent. No woman without children, who is able to support herself, is deserving of alimony.

“If while she is living with him and is still his wife, a woman, conducts herself in an improper, manner, a husband can go into court and rid himself of her completely.”

“But if after she divorces him and lives riotously, on the alimony he is forced to pay her, it is irreconcilable that his duty to her should be greater than while he is married to her.

“The two theories don’t harmonize. There are too many gold-diggers among divorced women, and half of them aren’t deserving of consideration.”

FORMS ANTI-ALIMONY LEAGUE

As the first part of her drive Mrs. Cooley is forming the Society of Disgruntled Alimony Payers.

Eligibility to membership will be based on experience only.

A big mass meeting of members is being planned and will-take place here just as soon as the society can whip its battle plans into shape. Many Chicago judges agree with Mrs. Cooley that there is need for a movement such as she has set in motion.

They concur that alimony, to healthy and able-bodied ex-wives without children is as out of date in the changed order of social conditions as a horse and buggy.