A well-wrought cautionary tale about the dangers of trying to
impose morality by law. Langum (Law/Samford Univ.; Law and
Community on the Mexican California Frontier, not reviewed) traces
the history of the Mann Act of 1910, which prohibited the
transportation of women across state lines for "prostitution or
debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose." Under this law,
people were arrested and imprisoned or fined simply for having sex
out of wedlock after crossing into another state, or for asking
someone to come visit in another state for the purpose of having
pre- or extramarital sex. Those convicted became federal felons who
were consequently unable to vote, closed out of jobs, denied
naturalization. Langum shows how the law grew out of the early 20th
century's "white slavery" scare, a mixture of antimodernism,
racism, and an all but pathological fear of sexuality, as well as a
frenzied response to immigration and urbanization. The author
argues convincingly that, like Prohibition, which came in 1919, the
Mann Act was a classic example of the Progressive movement's social
engineering propensities and notes that it did not produce the
effects Progressives desired; people didn't stop having sex outside
of marriage, and prostitution didn't fade away. The white slavery
hysteria abated (because it never existed), but the law left in its
place a new opportunity for blackmail of unsuspecting men and a
potential for new kinds of prosecutorial misconduct in the service
of a "morals crusade." The act was instrumental in the growth of
the FBI and the rise of J. Edgar Hoover, and Langum thoroughly
exposes Hoover's use of it as a club to beat suspected "radicals"
like Charlie Chaplin. A trifle repetitive in a lawyerly way, but a
thorough, often wryly funny, and closely argued work of legal and
social history. (Kirkus Reviews)
Until 1986 any man who, with romance on his mind, traveled with a
woman other than his wife across the state lines of America could
be guilty of a federal felony. Such was the legacy of the notorious
Mann Act of 1910. Spawned by a national wave of "white slave trade"
hysteria, the act was created by Congress as a weapon against
forced prostitution. It was so loosely worded that the Supreme
Court soon extended its coverage: any man who intended to commit an
"immoral act" with a woman who had crossed a state line, either
with him or to visit him, could be prosecuted. In the 1920s, this
sort of amorous behavior could send a man to prison for up to five
years. Crossing over the Line is the first history of the Mann
Act's often bizarre career, from its passage to the amendment that
finally laid it low. In David J. Langum's hands, the story of the
act becomes an entertaining cautionary tale about the folly of
legislating private morality. Langum recounts the colorful details
of numerous court cases to show how enforcement of the act mirrored
changes in America's social attitudes. Federal prosecutors became
masters in the selective use of the act: against political
opponents of the government, like Charlie Chaplin; against
individuals who eluded other criminal charges, like the Capone
mobster "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn; and against black men, like
singer Chuck Berry and boxer Jack Johnson, who dared to consort
with white women. The act engendered a thriving blackmail industry
and was used by women like Frank Lloyd Wright's wife to extort
favorable divorce settlements. The social costs exacted by the Mann
Act, Langum argues, send a clear warning about the government's
ability to wage "wars"against pornography, drugs, or art considered
"obscene". Complete with archival photographs, Crossing over the
Line will appeal to anyone interested in American history, popular
culture, law enforcement, or the history of sexuality.
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