Protect & Exclude

ED: So Brian, that’s some complicated stuff, it seems to me.

BRIAN: Welcome to the 20th century, Ed.

ED: Yeah, OK. Yeah. And I know things move faster in the 20th century, supposedly, though.

BRIAN: Right.

ED: But on the other hand, the law seems to be moving kind of slowly in some ways.

BRIAN: Yes.

ED: So what’s the larger legal context, Peter, in which people are trying to find their way through this kind of rapidly changing landscape?

PETER: Well, Ed, the law is deeply conservative, as you suggest. The common law is based on precedent. And in the common law, Anglo-American tradition, property is based on family. I think that’s the key thing. We had a revolution in which we overthrew the great protector, the King, because presumably, white household heads could protect themselves, and they could mobilize, and they could win a war. But when we abandon the idea of protection on that global level, it accentuates the need, the natural need, for protection on the local, familial level.

ED: So let me get this right. The guys could protect the women, as long as they were in the household.

PETER: That’s right. But then the question is when girls, factory girls and women, leave the home, mostly for economic necessity, well, how does the patriarch father protect? I mean, in effect, it’s an admission of his failure that the women aren’t in his household anymore.

BRIAN: Yeah, Ed. I’m thinking of the Lowell Mills, these textile mills in New England where these young girls are now working in a factory setting. Who is going to watch out for them in ways that, ostensibly, the father did in the household, when women were working just in the household?

ED: You know, ironically, Brian, that would be easier, because they’re all together in big dormitories. You could take care of them.

PETER: Right.

ED: The process that Peter’s talking about takes place all across the country, all across the 19th century. And it could be something as seemingly non-revolutionary as a young woman going off to become school teacher. Now see, she goes off to the normal school, and then she’s on her own at age 20 somewhere in a school out in the middle of nowhere or in a big city–

BRIAN: Where here students are older than her, sometimes. [LAUGHS]

ED: Exactly. Exactly. And so, and every young woman who goes to town or to the city by herself– you know, the literature of the time is just filled with this deep anxiety about the–

PETER: Yeah.

ED: So I don’t think that our guest was denigrating a protective legislation, but we need to remember just how necessary it was when you don’t actually have the father or the husband there. The exploitative nature of women’s work throughout history has been enormous. And so I think that we look on it now, we’re struck by its opposite discriminatory quality.

But I think, if you went back and asked people at the time, they’d say, look. We’re just trying to extend some of the same kind of protection, literally, that a good father should. And as good fathers, we’re not really doing it now, because we’ve got our daughters out there working in factories.

PETER: And I think that’s the business about law being conservative, Ed. The repressed returns, you might say that notion of patriarchal authority, of monarchical authority even, of hierarchy, how are you going to be protected, if you don’t have somebody looking out for you?

ED: And what, I guess Brian, it seems to me the big change was it went from being a male family member, to some kind of local law, to federal law. And now we’re trying to figure out if that makes sense. Is it too sweeping?

BRIAN: And the other big change is notions about what families are. Should there be a hierarchy within the family? And I’m guessing, Ed, that that was pretty commonly accepted to be the case in the 19th century.

ED: Yeah. I didn’t seem obvious to people.

BRIAN: Yes. And across the 20th century, that very notion of what relations in the family itself should be really up for grabs.

PETER: Well, yeah.

BRIAN: And I think that might be the most disruptive force here.

PETER: Right.

ED: You know, for some reason, what leapt to mind was the fact that both Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin do “respect,” which is give it to me when I come home, you know? I’m out working hard. I’m bringing home the money. But what I want is a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T when I get home.

PETER: Right.

[MUSIC PLAYING – ARETHA FRANKLIN, “RESPECT”]

BRIAN: You’re listening to BackStory. We’ll be back in a minute.