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

David J. Langum (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226468801 | ISBN-13: 978-0226468808 | Publication Date: December 12, 1994 | Edition: 1

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 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.

"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

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Langum, a professor of law and a historian, discusses the underlying basis of the Mann Act (1910), which made it illegal to transport women across state lines for "immoral purposes," and the difficulties that past and present governments have in enforcing "morality codes." He provides an excellent analysis of broader purposes of the legislation and its effects upon American culture through the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Arguing that this law was "at odds with the American system of limited government," Langum points out that women, who were supposed to be protected under the act, ironically became its chief victims. He also suggests that the Mann Act was a classic example of government tyranny against the moral standards of dissident minorities and that this form of repressive legislation was a failure of the liberal, democratic society. Readers interested in American history, cultural movements, and government enforcement of moral standards will find this book thoughtful and provocative. Highly recommended for academic and larger public libraries.
Steven Puro, St. Louis Univ.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

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. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 324 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (December 12, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226468801
• ISBN-13: 978-0226468808
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,443,284 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars No laughing matter, October 8, 2007

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Night Biggerstaff (Ithaca, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Crossing over the Line: Legislating Morality and the Mann Act (Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society) (Paperback)

Once a leading pop culture touchstone, the Mann Act has gone the way of the hi-fi and bakelite. In a way that's too bad, because as this terrific work of legal and social history shows, the Act was a sad chapter in the history of American efforts to legislate private behavior.

Langum provides a thorough account of the Mann Act's history. Highlights include the more well-known defendants, like Charlie Chaplin and Humbert Humbert. The analysis is at once concise and evocative--his description of the hazards of "affirmative discretion" gave me a new handle on Ken Starr. The narrative sometimes gets bogged down in all the cases, but my only real complaint is that he didn't find space to namecheck PDQ Bach and his immoral porpoises.