Walska Triumphant

Ganna Walska d'Eighnhorn Fraenkel Cochran McCormick, assertive Polish second wife of Chicago's harvester tycoon, Harold Fowler McCormick, has three passions: Music, Perfume, Feminism. For Music she has labored many a weary year without spectacular success. For Perfume, she has founded and guided to success Ganna Walska Perfumes, Inc., of Paris and New York. For Feminism she gained a victory last week when the Third Division of the U. S. Customs Court unanimously conceded her a legal residence other than that of her husband.

More than a year ago Mme. Walska landed in New York with 15 trunks and (she said) $2,500,000 of personal effects. Claiming that, as a separate human entity with a home and business in Paris, she was a nonresident, she refused to pay $1,000,000 in duties. Though her customs liability dwindled to $40.20 when she proved that she had bought most of her possessions in the U. S. before going to France, she fought with characteristic tenacity and much publicity for the principle involved (TIME, Oct. 8, 1928).

That principle she established, at least so far as tariff duties go, when the Customs Court ruled: "The wife is now a distinct legal entity . . . upon terms of equality with her husband in respect to property, torts, contracts and civil rights. . . .[She] may acquire a domicile separate and apart from her husband by reason of his misconduct or abandonment or by his agreement either express or implied." (The McCormicks had agreed to live separately.)

Concurring but not satisfied was Justice Genevieve R. Cline, only woman member of the court, first woman appointee in the Federal judiciary. In a separate opinion she objected to the court's implication that a separate domicile was to be taken as an exception, not as an accepted rule: ''. . . I can discern no reason why they [wives] should not have equal rights as to the selection of a domicile. . . . The common law has been practically expunged."

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