Wealth & Money Quote by Kin Hubbard

Hubbard lands the punch by treating marriage like a job site and wealth like a spouse you clock in for. The line is built on a neat inversion: we expect the rich man to have it easy, but the man who marries money, Hubbard insists, earns every cent - not with sweat, but with submission. Its comedy comes from swapping the heroic American myth of self-made labor for a darker kind of labor: emotional management, social performance, and the constant vigilance of staying acceptable to the paycheck.

The intent is less to moralize than to needle a culture that worships both romance and upward mobility. Hubbard was a Midwestern newspaper wit watching the early 20th-century churn of status, consumer aspiration, and the era's not-so-subtle gender economics. "Marrying it" conjures the familiar caricature of the fortune-hunter, but the joke quietly acknowledges the trap on both sides: money buys comfort and also hires you. The spouse with the fortune becomes employer, the marriage becomes contract, and the "kept" partner becomes an employee with no weekends and no HR department.

Subtextually, it’s also a jab at masculinity. A man who marries for money violates the period's script of male provision, so Hubbard twists the knife: fine, you got the cash - now watch you work for it in a way that can’t be bragged about. The line endures because it punctures the fantasy that wealth is freedom; sometimes it’s just another boss, only closer to your bed.