Crossing over the Line: Legislating Morality and the Mann Act (Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society

by David J. Langum

Crossing over the Line describes the folly of the Mann Act of 1910—a United States law which made travel from one state to another by a man and a woman with the intent of committing an immoral act a major crime. Spawned by a national wave of "white slave trade" hysteria, the Act was created by the Congress of the United States as a weapon against forced prostitution.

This book 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 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.

"Crossing over the Line is a work of scholarship as wrought by a civil libertarian, and the text . . . sizzles with the passion of an ardent believer in real liberty under reasonable laws."—Jonathan Kirsch, Los Angeles Times

Genres: History

324 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 1994

Reviews

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

America has a long history of scares and panics arising during times of rapid societal changes. We seem to be a rather anxious nation, beneath all the blustery confidence and American exceptionalism. In the early part of the twentieth century there were a lot of changes that many Americans were unhappy with. Immigration was now coming from Southern and Eastern Europe, including Catholics and Jews. Urbanization and industrialization meant that large amounts of people were moving to cities for employment, including many young women. Being able to earn their own money, while usually not much, enabled them to live independently with other young woman, rather than being dependent upon their families until marriage. The working classes had come up with this shocking new activity called dating, where young people met in ice cream parlors, vaudeville theatres, dancehalls, and other public venues away from the prying eyes of parents and chaperones. Some of them even engaged in premarital sex—as people throughout history have been wont to do.

Both Progressive thought and the Protestant Purity Movement were very (perhaps overly) concerned with young women falling into prostitution, particularly because there was little distinction at this time between a professional who performed sex acts for money and a sexually active, unmarried woman. The result was a panic over predatory men (often assumed to be immigrants and foreigners) luring and kidnapping naïve young women from the safety of their families and trafficking them into sexual slavery, imprisoned in brothels. Except as far as any historian can tell, this was never happening, certainly not in the extraordinary numbers claimed. (I'm very much reminded of the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, which seemed to be about daycare centers, women working more outside the home, and falling numbers in church attendance.) As a response to the hysteria, the White Slave Traffic Act of 1910, popularly known as the Mann Act after its sponsor Congressman James R. Mann, was drawn up and passed. And, it’s still on the books today.


60,000 girls per year were being imprisoned in brothels, according to Ernest A. Bell in his book, Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls, or War on the White Slave Trade. (1910) Alarmist? You bet. True? Not much. Source.

This is a very informative book, and surprisingly up to date for being published in 1994. (There's been a few additional amendments of the Act since then, but not many.) It gives a chapter of background that laid the foundation for the panic and the too-broadly written law. It presents a rundown of enforcement of the Mann Act over the decades, and shows how it was used less as a law against actual prostitution or sexual trafficking and exploitation, than as a means to police consenting adults who were having sex outside of marriage. Eventually, it became completely unenforceable with the Sexual Revolution. Before it got there, though, it ruined many lives, including from the blackmail boom it created in the 1920s.

The Mann Act is a splendid example of the failure of American democracy and the federal government, as least so far as the politicization of morality is concerned. The statute was enacted by federal politicians in response to their constituents’ hysteria over white slavery. These same bumptious congressmen thereafter lacked all courage to tame their Frankenstein’s monster by amendment. The statute was interpreted by federal judges wearing blinders, not acknowledging the real concerns the Congress had addressed, and staying aloof from the collateral consequences caused by the Act’s enforcement, and the cowardice of the elected politicians to address those evils in a straightforward manner. The statute was enforced by hundreds of local prosecutors guided until 1962 by national guidelines that were often ignored.

More than anything else, this book is a legal history, both of a law, and its consequences in the real world. It’s both alarming and strangely comforting to know we’ve seen this cycle before. If you've been upset with the U.S. Supreme Court lately over politicking through a overly broad or narrow case ruling, it's nothing new. Congress passing badly written laws quickly so as to be seen as doing something in response to a crises, real or invented? We've been here before, many times. Most of all, despite laying claim to being a free country, with the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness enshrined in our Declaration of Independence, we have repeatedly demanded government coercion to force people to be “good.” Every time, it works about as well as you would expect.

[Lauren Levitt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Since the argument of this book is that legislating morality is bad, I don’t understand why Langum refuses to make a statement advocating for the decriminalization of prostitution. The Mann Act was intended not only to prevent interstate transportation in cases of commercial sex, but forced commercial sex. Also, sometimes feels like a laundry list of court cases rather than a historical narrative.