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WOMAN ASKS $2,500,000 HEART BALM
BY NIXOLA GREELEY-SMITH
New York, May 29. Testimony is
now being taken in New York in the
suit brought by Baroness "Ursula von
Kalinowski against Michael J. Hurley,
paint manufacturer of Sfc- Louis, for
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Bareness?
v Vl A
Ursula. .Barbara
von Kalinowski
$2,500,000 damages for blighted af
fections. Affection to the value of two and
a half million dollars is certainly
SOME affection even when you con
sider that it was lavished upon the
fickle and unworthy Hurley by a
high-born German baroness.
In her deposition the noblewoman
said that she. had followed Hurley
from one city to another in Europe
and finally acjpss the ocean in re
sponse to telegrams in w,hich he
promised to marry.
I think nearly all women FEEL the
same way about breach-of-promise
suits, to-wit, that' they are sordid, dis
graceful, and that no really self-respecting
woman is ever involved in
one.
But if we accept the logic of the
present economic status of woman
we simply cannot THINK as we
FEEL on the subject.
A woman like the Baroness Kalin
owski has NO ACTUAL VALUE.
Without either trade or profes-
,sional training, her economic worth
is represented by zero. She has
nothing ja give anyone save the
problematical quantity called "af
fections." Now affections when they
are offered for sale are worth pre
cisely what you can get for them.
The baroness thought she had ar
ranged a life transfer of that ex
ceedingly perishable commodity to
a man worth millions. If the buyer
backed out of his contract assum
ing there was one then the baroness
is damaged to the full value of her
blighted hopes.
Admitting that the woman who
puts a commercial value upon her
love sets herself before the world as
livestock. she is entitled to damages
nevertheless, just as any other prize
animal is damaged in reputation and
saleability if the man who has ar
ranged fortius purchase refuses to
complete the bargain.
There is no getting away from the
fact that so long, as sex is generally
regarded as something which women
have to sell and men to buy, we shall
have breach-of-promise suits, the
sex-pension known as alimony and all
similar social weeds which owe their
noxious being to the economic de
pendence of women.
Until women regain the eugenic