WEBVTT - How Mail Order Marriages Work 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcome to Stuff you should know a production of I 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.720 Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:16.560 and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, And this is 0:00:16.600 --> 0:00:24.200 stuff you should know about mail order marriages, the murky waters. 0:00:25.040 --> 0:00:28.920 Yeah really, Uh yeah, this is one of those where 0:00:30.400 --> 0:00:34.720 we researched and researched and read and read, and I 0:00:34.760 --> 0:00:37.240 think it's it's one of those deals for me that's 0:00:37.320 --> 0:00:42.519 like and this is just my opening statement where it 0:00:43.000 --> 0:00:48.280 can be a a positive thing, like a dating service 0:00:48.360 --> 0:00:53.000 in some ways, but there is certainly a darker side 0:00:54.040 --> 0:00:58.040 to the whole situation. Uh. I already know how you 0:00:58.040 --> 0:01:01.520 feel about it, and I feel like it's coming through clearly. Yeah, 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:03.520 I mean, it's just it's very It's one of those 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:06.800 really murky things where sometimes you hear these really great 0:01:06.840 --> 0:01:09.960 stories about people that do find are looking for love 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:12.640 and find love with someone from another country and it 0:01:12.680 --> 0:01:15.720 works out for everybody, And then sometimes you hear about 0:01:16.240 --> 0:01:21.080 stories where it's sort of what the National Organization for 0:01:21.120 --> 0:01:26.679 Women's Sonya Sario calls a softer version of human trafficking, 0:01:28.200 --> 0:01:32.399 or even worse, occasionally someone turns up murdered. Yeah, that's 0:01:32.440 --> 0:01:36.199 I mean, that's the truest dark side. So uh, that's 0:01:36.200 --> 0:01:39.320 just me level setting and we can talk about the good, 0:01:39.319 --> 0:01:41.319 the bad, and ugly. I think that was a great 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:44.920 level saying. I generally agree with it, But for me, 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:48.560 the jury is still out in thinking about it as 0:01:48.560 --> 0:01:52.880 a whole because there's so little hard data on this stuff. 0:01:53.200 --> 0:01:57.280 Almost everything is anecdotal, and when like you condemned something 0:01:57.360 --> 0:02:00.320 based on anecdotal data, you've got there is a moral hannock, 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:04.240 not necessarily something in in reality. So I'm a little 0:02:04.240 --> 0:02:06.400 hesitant to go all the way. The jury is still 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:08.959 out for me, but I definitely recognize the same stuff 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:11.520 you do. For sure. It's definitely there. It exists. It's 0:02:11.560 --> 0:02:13.800 just for me, the question is how much does it 0:02:13.840 --> 0:02:15.800 exist and does the good outweigh the bad? And I 0:02:15.840 --> 0:02:20.040 don't know, So we we should probably like actually define 0:02:20.120 --> 0:02:23.440 what we're talking about here, because most people I would 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:27.160 guess are familiar with mail order brides, they're more um 0:02:27.520 --> 0:02:30.440 more recently they're they've come to be called mail order 0:02:30.520 --> 0:02:33.120 marriages because they've been extended to same sex couples in 0:02:33.120 --> 0:02:36.519 the United States. But then also like even more generally 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:41.679 it's called um international marriage brokerage. Right, Yeah. I mean 0:02:41.760 --> 0:02:45.240 there's a full industry built around this, with thousands of 0:02:46.120 --> 0:02:50.920 websites and agencies that are brokering these marriages. And you know, 0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:53.840 from looking into it, it it seems like there are some 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:59.280 really above boardwines that kind of act like uh an 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:04.240 international dating surface in some ways UM where they group 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:07.360 you know, match like people together. And then it seems 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:10.639 like there are a lot of really sketchy ones that 0:03:10.800 --> 0:03:13.919 charge people a ton of money and aren't looking out 0:03:14.080 --> 0:03:17.880 for the men or the women, And I know that 0:03:17.919 --> 0:03:21.639 money is sunk back into making their website. Look at 0:03:21.639 --> 0:03:27.359 all nonlu that saw some really really bad websites so 0:03:27.800 --> 0:03:31.960 man like comic sans at one point. Yeah, it's hard 0:03:32.000 --> 0:03:34.280 to see those and not think, well, A, this is 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:37.400 a scam or b this is a front for some 0:03:37.440 --> 0:03:40.440 sort of ceed trafficking operation. Right, yeah, it is tough 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:43.000 not not to think like that. But but what we 0:03:43.080 --> 0:03:48.360 are talking about generally is UM A a marriage UM 0:03:48.440 --> 0:03:53.400 where the husband and the wife are generally unknown to 0:03:53.480 --> 0:03:56.480 each other, maybe have met once, but if they did, 0:03:56.640 --> 0:04:00.880 it's possible it was just a day or two before UM. 0:04:01.000 --> 0:04:03.120 Or maybe they've met once or twice and have done 0:04:03.120 --> 0:04:06.280 some correspondence back and forth for an extended period of time. 0:04:06.760 --> 0:04:10.440 But that's pretty new. And and in the classical definitions, 0:04:10.720 --> 0:04:14.880 they're generally unknown to one another. Um, and one of 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:18.760 them usually the bride travels a very long distance from 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:22.880 home to move to the husband's home, uh and make 0:04:22.920 --> 0:04:26.240 a life there and and be married. Um. That's not 0:04:26.360 --> 0:04:30.520 the Webster's definition. There's a lot more stumbling in my definition. 0:04:30.560 --> 0:04:33.480 But I think that generally gets it across. Yeah. And 0:04:33.520 --> 0:04:35.240 you know, the kind of the classic thing that you 0:04:35.279 --> 0:04:39.720 think of is lonely American man who has a little 0:04:39.720 --> 0:04:43.359 bit of money in his forties or fifties, can't find 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:48.680 American woman and ends up getting a young, beautiful, young 0:04:48.800 --> 0:04:52.240 Ukrainian woman who doesn't speak much English and would love 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:56.640 to live in the United States. Uh, and and fall 0:04:56.680 --> 0:04:58.960 in love with an American man. And that's sort of 0:04:59.279 --> 0:05:01.279 and you know, of course it happens from all countries, 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:03.320 but a lot of times you think of Russia and 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:07.679 the Ukraine or maybe in Southeast Asia or something like that. Uh. 0:05:07.720 --> 0:05:10.840 That is sort of I feel like when people say 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:14.160 that term, most people, that's probably what pops into their head. Yeah, 0:05:14.360 --> 0:05:16.800 or I think you're being rather generous. I think a 0:05:16.839 --> 0:05:19.279 lot of people would be like, you know, some sad 0:05:19.320 --> 0:05:22.000 sack who can't like find a woman in America has 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:24.760 to go look elsewhere to get really judge you about it, 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:27.760 And I think people are really judging about mail order marriages. 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:31.240 I think there's a long standing tradition in the United 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:35.520 States of considering people who who go outside the traditional 0:05:35.600 --> 0:05:38.400 channels of marriage and basically take it into their own hands, 0:05:38.440 --> 0:05:41.920 like through mail order marriage, are they're they're very much 0:05:42.040 --> 0:05:46.320 judged harshly and criticized, maybe maybe fairly, maybe not. But 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:49.400 I think there's another component too, especially these days, is 0:05:49.440 --> 0:05:53.280 that the men who who are looking for women for 0:05:53.400 --> 0:05:59.599 mail order brides are also dominant, domineering, possibly abusive, and 0:05:59.600 --> 0:06:03.080 their look king for docile UH women who will do 0:06:03.120 --> 0:06:06.159 whatever they say because they're the husband. So they have 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:08.240 to go to other cultures where that might be more 0:06:08.320 --> 0:06:12.640 prevalent and where they can select from women who might 0:06:12.720 --> 0:06:14.760 respond to that kind of thing a lot better than 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:17.560 an American woman who wouldn't put up with his guff. Yeah. 0:06:17.600 --> 0:06:20.880 I mean, that is certainly a part of what happens sometimes, 0:06:20.920 --> 0:06:25.800 and some of these agencies UH promote that the submissive nature. UM. 0:06:25.800 --> 0:06:29.119 There was one that literally said that these young women 0:06:29.160 --> 0:06:33.280 are quote unspoiled by feminism, and you have potential homemaking 0:06:33.320 --> 0:06:36.359 savings of a hundred and fifty dollars a week because 0:06:36.360 --> 0:06:38.520 you're essentially getting a you know, sort of a live 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:42.160 in domestic servant. So you know, that's the underbelly in 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:44.800 the dark side. But we you know, I did find 0:06:44.839 --> 0:06:47.680 some that do seem very above board, and people that 0:06:47.760 --> 0:06:50.599 do genuinely look like they're looking for love and have 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:54.360 struck out at home, so they're looking elsewhere. So I said, Chuck, 0:06:54.400 --> 0:06:56.360 and we should also say one other thing to like, 0:06:56.560 --> 0:06:59.880 you know, um, it's pretty like it's a pretty well 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:02.640 own thing in America. It's not like on everybody's lips. 0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:04.560 You don't hear it in every monologue on the late 0:07:04.680 --> 0:07:08.160 night talk shows or anything like that. But like, generally 0:07:08.279 --> 0:07:12.680 people in America are familiar and I know about mail 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:16.000 order marriages, but it turns out it's even bigger in 0:07:16.080 --> 0:07:20.320 other countries like Taiwan and South Korea have huge mail 0:07:20.440 --> 0:07:25.080 order marriage industries. Um that may even dwarf the United States. 0:07:25.080 --> 0:07:27.080 And it's pretty I don't want to say it's huge 0:07:27.080 --> 0:07:29.440 in the United States, but it's not like just some 0:07:29.520 --> 0:07:32.880 small speck of sliver of like arcane group of people 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:35.240 like it's bigger than you think, but it's even bigger 0:07:35.240 --> 0:07:38.840 in some other Asian countries as well. Yeah, and Dave 0:07:39.280 --> 0:07:41.200 Ruce helped us put this together, and this was a 0:07:41.240 --> 0:07:44.480 tough assignment for him, but he used um a lot 0:07:44.520 --> 0:07:49.960 of information from a book by a legal professor originally 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:53.360 from University of South Carolina and Marcia's zug called Buying 0:07:53.360 --> 0:08:00.320 a Bride insert colon music Jerry and engaging history of 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:04.360 mail order matches, where it seems like she gives a 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:08.720 you know, a fair but fairly full throated defense of 0:08:08.760 --> 0:08:12.280 its history through the ages as far as and we'll 0:08:12.320 --> 0:08:14.920 get into this, but as far as an opportunity for 0:08:14.960 --> 0:08:17.000 a lot of women to gain more agency and to 0:08:17.160 --> 0:08:20.040 gain more rights at a time when they might not 0:08:20.160 --> 0:08:24.680 have any, all the way up through today, where uh 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:28.600 she still defends it to a certain degree and and says, 0:08:29.240 --> 0:08:32.199 you know, like sure, these situations can be bad, but 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:37.000 what's really bad is what undocumented immigrants have to suffer 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:39.959 through in this country because they have no legal rights. 0:08:40.000 --> 0:08:43.559 They can't go to the police, they can't leave their 0:08:43.600 --> 0:08:48.280 their uh spouse or or their partner for fear of deportation, 0:08:48.520 --> 0:08:52.280 and uh, it's an interesting take, I think. And and 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:55.400 I'm glad that Dave found this book, you know, because 0:08:55.400 --> 0:08:56.760 I don't. I'm not sure that I would have been 0:08:56.760 --> 0:08:59.880 as fair. Yeah, yeah, no, she definitely almost. I get 0:08:59.880 --> 0:09:04.160 the impression that she um is defensive on behalf of 0:09:04.200 --> 0:09:07.800 the industry just because of how mistreated it's been, in 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:12.600 her opinion, unfairly in large part, yeah, because you know, 0:09:12.760 --> 0:09:15.079 I think it very much has an antifeminist rap for 0:09:15.160 --> 0:09:18.040 good reason. But she does make some compelling arguments that 0:09:18.080 --> 0:09:21.360 throughout history it wasn't that way at all. And I 0:09:21.360 --> 0:09:23.080 guess we can go ahead and dive into some of 0:09:23.080 --> 0:09:26.800 that in um the early days of male order marriages 0:09:26.840 --> 0:09:31.080 in the American colonies, there was a lack of women 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:33.920 problem in the in the early colonies, I mean like 0:09:33.960 --> 0:09:37.800 the earliest colonies. We're talking like Jamestown here. Yeah, like 0:09:37.880 --> 0:09:40.400 you know, the Puritans and Pilgrims. They may have come 0:09:40.440 --> 0:09:42.560 over with their families, but there are a lot of 0:09:42.600 --> 0:09:46.120 single men that came over, and a lot of them, 0:09:46.440 --> 0:09:48.880 Uh some of them may like run off with an 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:52.240 indigenous woman and live with among her tribe and be like, 0:09:52.280 --> 0:09:54.880 you know what, I'm kind of done building things for 0:09:54.960 --> 0:09:58.400 James down. I'm out of here. So that's no good 0:09:58.960 --> 0:10:01.199 if they're looking for young into like kind of help 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:04.320 build up these young colonies. And then other ones were 0:10:04.360 --> 0:10:08.320 just lonely and said, hey, I like, uh, there are 0:10:08.360 --> 0:10:10.160 no women over here. What are we supposed to do? 0:10:10.800 --> 0:10:16.120 So very early on, uh, they started UM sort of 0:10:16.160 --> 0:10:21.280 advertising and bringing uh women, you know, supposedly volunteers over 0:10:21.679 --> 0:10:24.600 who wanted to come to the colonies and and sort 0:10:24.640 --> 0:10:27.840 of have maybe even more rights than they had back home. Yeah, 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:29.680 And this is a really good example of kind of 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:33.040 like a thread that ran through the first couple of 0:10:33.040 --> 0:10:39.480 centuries of America's founding um, which was government sanctioned and 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:44.160 supported UM mail order marriages in order to help build 0:10:44.160 --> 0:10:48.600 more stable communities. Right, So, the the UM legislatures did 0:10:48.640 --> 0:10:51.400 things like create laws that made it more attractive for 0:10:51.480 --> 0:10:55.080 a woman to become a mail order bride in this area, 0:10:55.240 --> 0:10:59.120 like um, apparently in England, Uh, if you became a widow, 0:10:59.559 --> 0:11:01.679 you you got a third of the estate and that 0:11:01.760 --> 0:11:04.400 was it. And in places like Virginia and I think 0:11:04.440 --> 0:11:08.080 Maryland as well, they set up laws that basically said, hey, 0:11:08.280 --> 0:11:10.240 you're gonna keep a lot more than that. You can 0:11:10.320 --> 0:11:13.440 run your own business afterwards, like being a widow's gonna rock. 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:17.040 And did we mention also the men are dropping dead 0:11:17.080 --> 0:11:20.559 like flies over here, so yeah, your husband's probably gonna 0:11:20.559 --> 0:11:22.720 die pretty quick. So if you don't like them, who cares. 0:11:22.880 --> 0:11:25.440 You still get to keep all this inheritance and you 0:11:25.480 --> 0:11:28.240 get to keep the business and you can't do quite 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:31.120 that well for yourself. And those circumstances back in England, 0:11:31.320 --> 0:11:34.080 so that attracted people. And that was like the government 0:11:34.160 --> 0:11:36.760 saying like, please come over here and marry these strangers 0:11:36.800 --> 0:11:39.360 that you've never met before. Yeah, and you know, it 0:11:39.440 --> 0:11:41.319 made sense for a lot of these young women because 0:11:41.440 --> 0:11:45.040 many of them were you know, they were from like 0:11:45.080 --> 0:11:47.160 the servant class, let's say, so they were looking at 0:11:47.240 --> 0:11:51.480 years of servitude uh in England and then they basically 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:54.000 were like, well, hey, forget all that, why don't you 0:11:54.040 --> 0:11:56.439 just come over here get married. And like you said, 0:11:56.679 --> 0:11:59.920 I think the status even one in three marriages last 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:03.280 a ten years. So they did kind of sell them 0:12:03.280 --> 0:12:06.240 on the fact that yeah, it's not so great, they'll 0:12:06.280 --> 0:12:09.000 probably be dead soon enough and then you can have 0:12:09.040 --> 0:12:11.880 a stuff. Yeah, and it actually I mean like that 0:12:11.880 --> 0:12:16.400 that actually did um like attract some women, I think 0:12:16.440 --> 0:12:18.840 at least, uh, I don't. I don't know if we 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:21.720 have the number, but there definitely were what they called 0:12:21.720 --> 0:12:26.480 tobacco wives who came to marry new tobacco planters who 0:12:26.480 --> 0:12:29.080 were setting up their own fortune. And I actually had 0:12:29.120 --> 0:12:32.400 to prove that they were a financial means by donating 0:12:32.440 --> 0:12:35.720 a hundred and fifty pounds of gold leaf tobacco to 0:12:35.800 --> 0:12:38.559 the Virginia Company to to take part in this right 0:12:39.160 --> 0:12:42.600 and so UM that that lasted as long as it lasted, 0:12:42.640 --> 0:12:44.280 or as long as it needed to. And as the 0:12:44.320 --> 0:12:48.520 Eastern colonies started to like become more self sufficient, um 0:12:48.559 --> 0:12:52.120 became less rowdy, became more family oriented. As far as 0:12:52.160 --> 0:12:56.800 the Europeans were concerned. Um, the the need for like 0:12:56.840 --> 0:13:00.680 those mail order schemes, UM kind of went away. But 0:13:00.760 --> 0:13:04.120 then as America kind of expanded further and further west, 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:10.800 the frontier kept recreating itself in different places. So you know, UM, 0:13:10.800 --> 0:13:13.920 it went from the Eastern colonies to you know, along 0:13:13.920 --> 0:13:16.400 the Mississippi, and then further and further out west. And 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:18.560 every time it did that, this new iteration of the 0:13:18.559 --> 0:13:23.320 frontier was settled by rowdy men, and they would have 0:13:23.360 --> 0:13:25.480 to figure out a way to get women to attract 0:13:25.480 --> 0:13:27.160 women to come out to marry the rowdy men so 0:13:27.200 --> 0:13:29.320 they would stop beating each other up in bar fights 0:13:29.640 --> 0:13:32.840 and and become more productive citizens. And that kept going 0:13:32.880 --> 0:13:36.280 on throughout the the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the 0:13:36.360 --> 0:13:40.840 United States. Yeah, and you know, if you're already thinking, guys, 0:13:40.960 --> 0:13:43.960 this this already sounds terrible, these marriages based on these 0:13:43.960 --> 0:13:48.760 financial arrangements, and you know, despite these promises of a 0:13:48.800 --> 0:13:50.880 better life, like that's kind of what we're talking about, 0:13:51.400 --> 0:13:55.080 like welcome to marriage in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. 0:13:55.320 --> 0:13:58.640 Don't be so naive. Yeah, that's not that's kind of 0:13:58.760 --> 0:14:01.200 what it was. And and've made a good point like 0:14:02.040 --> 0:14:05.280 the notion of marrying for true love. That's a very 0:14:05.400 --> 0:14:09.440 much like a twentieth century proposition, even if it wasn't 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:13.680 a male order bride situation, it was someone's dowry or 0:14:14.080 --> 0:14:17.200 or parents sort of arranging marriages and saying these family, 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:20.280 this family should marry this family, which still goes on today. 0:14:20.320 --> 0:14:22.840 I should point out among like the blue chip in 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:26.880 the high society, like and Arthur had to marry Susan. 0:14:27.200 --> 0:14:29.920 You know, let's not forget that everybody with a Habsburg 0:14:30.040 --> 0:14:33.520 Jaw was an arranged marriage. He could marry Liza Manelli. 0:14:35.920 --> 0:14:38.800 I didn't realize you were making the movie reference. I 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:42.280 thought you were Arthur and Susan. I thought you were 0:14:42.400 --> 0:14:48.200 using like Biff and Muffy, like general Jenual Arthur and yeah, yeah, 0:14:48.240 --> 0:14:50.240 I got it. Now I got it. But the point 0:14:50.360 --> 0:14:52.920 is is that marriage was a financial arrangement many and 0:14:53.000 --> 0:14:55.680 most times back then. I'm not saying no one ever 0:14:55.720 --> 0:14:58.880 married because they were in love. I'm sure that happened, Uh, 0:14:58.920 --> 0:15:00.960 but it had to take a lot boxes back then. 0:15:01.040 --> 0:15:02.960 So it was just sort of the way it was. 0:15:03.040 --> 0:15:07.520 And so this solved problems for early settlers and for 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:11.800 westward expanders. Uh. They made things really attractive in California 0:15:11.840 --> 0:15:15.360 for women. They made it easier to divorce your husband 0:15:15.400 --> 0:15:17.960 if you wanted to. Uh. They made it easier to 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:22.040 or just legal to own and sell, buy and sell land, 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:24.480 which is not something you could do at other places 0:15:24.480 --> 0:15:27.240 in the country. So they were trying to make it 0:15:27.360 --> 0:15:30.880 an attractive situation for women to move west because they 0:15:30.960 --> 0:15:34.000 needed men and women out there. And uh, I think 0:15:34.040 --> 0:15:39.200 the between eighteen fifty and eighteen sixty, the the population 0:15:39.200 --> 0:15:43.240 of women in California increased from three percent to nine 0:15:43.560 --> 0:15:47.880 percent of the total population. So it was working. Yeah, 0:15:47.880 --> 0:15:50.920 it was. And it wasn't just California, but um, Washington 0:15:51.080 --> 0:15:56.360 State also participated. I think Oregon may have as well. Um. 0:15:56.400 --> 0:15:59.240 And there would be there these schemes, and I don't 0:15:59.280 --> 0:16:01.800 mean scheme like you know, like dastardly scheme, with like 0:16:02.040 --> 0:16:06.040 a a plan good scheme. Yeah, where like a guy 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:09.800 would go around to the bachelor's out in like Washington 0:16:09.920 --> 0:16:12.120 Territory and be like, give me a hundred bucks or 0:16:12.160 --> 0:16:15.760 I think three hundred bucks, which is about five grand today, um, 0:16:15.800 --> 0:16:19.120 and I will bring you a suitable wife. Um. And 0:16:19.720 --> 0:16:22.720 at least one guy did this. ASA Mercer was a 0:16:22.720 --> 0:16:26.240 marriage broker and he would go back east say hey, 0:16:26.280 --> 0:16:29.920 there's like this great booming economy out west, why don't 0:16:29.920 --> 0:16:32.040 you come with me, And like he would return with 0:16:32.080 --> 0:16:33.880 like a hundred women and some of them would get 0:16:33.920 --> 0:16:37.000 married immediately, some would wait. Um. But it was like 0:16:37.160 --> 0:16:40.160 another it was another thing where there was a need 0:16:40.280 --> 0:16:45.640 for women, uh, to stabilize it out of control male population. Yeah. 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:48.600 And you know, Zug points out very fairly in her 0:16:48.600 --> 0:16:51.160 book that some of these Mercer girls from is they 0:16:51.160 --> 0:16:55.520 were called from ASA Mercer's operation became abolitionists. Some became 0:16:55.880 --> 0:17:00.880 women's rights advocates and social reformers. One of them's name was, uh, 0:17:01.120 --> 0:17:06.560 this great name, Mehitable Haskell Elder uh, And she organized 0:17:06.600 --> 0:17:11.880 the Women's Rights Conference in Olympia, Washington, and recruited one 0:17:11.920 --> 0:17:15.879 Susan B. Anthony as the territory delicate for the National 0:17:15.880 --> 0:17:19.359 Women's Suffrage Association CAN mention. So you know, in a 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:23.680 lot of cases, these women did find agency and they 0:17:23.840 --> 0:17:26.680 did get out of a better situation than they were 0:17:26.720 --> 0:17:29.159 in back east. Hey, so you want to take a 0:17:29.200 --> 0:17:32.639 break and then we'll talk about the probably what was 0:17:32.680 --> 0:17:38.440 the real birth of mail order marriages? Sure, Okay, we'll 0:17:38.440 --> 0:18:00.879 be right back alright, Chuck. So we've talking to this 0:18:00.960 --> 0:18:05.600 point about basically like government sanctioned schemes to kind of 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:09.680 stabilize male populations. There was also, at the same time, 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:13.639 beginning in the nineteenth century, um, I think starting in 0:18:13.680 --> 0:18:15.919 England actually in the eighteenth century, that was kind of 0:18:15.960 --> 0:18:22.280 simultaneously unfolding, and that was, um the matrimonial advertisement industry, 0:18:22.400 --> 0:18:25.200 which to me is like the real birth of the 0:18:25.320 --> 0:18:29.000 mail order marriage industry that we understand today. But it 0:18:29.080 --> 0:18:31.640 was basically the personal ads. Yeah, it was the birth 0:18:31.680 --> 0:18:36.160 of personal ads, the birth of dating services. Uh. It's 0:18:36.200 --> 0:18:40.720 really interesting in that, Uh, women would put ads in 0:18:40.880 --> 0:18:43.520 London and then later on in the United States, ads 0:18:43.520 --> 0:18:46.680 in the paper basically saying you know, hi, this is 0:18:46.680 --> 0:18:48.920 who I am, this is what I'm looking for. I mean, 0:18:49.040 --> 0:18:50.800 much like you would see these days in like a 0:18:50.880 --> 0:18:54.000 dating profile. And it was a way for them to, 0:18:54.720 --> 0:18:57.880 you know, to take some agency over avoiding the arranged 0:18:57.880 --> 0:19:00.119 marriage that their parents had set up for him and 0:19:00.160 --> 0:19:02.800 maybe get a little bit of choice of suitors, right, 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:06.639 And I mean like that is like taking control of 0:19:06.680 --> 0:19:11.080 your own um, of your own marriage prospects. And it 0:19:11.119 --> 0:19:13.840 was I guess radical is probably a pretty good word. 0:19:14.160 --> 0:19:17.560 But it picked up, It caught on um, especially in 0:19:17.600 --> 0:19:20.480 the US. By the end of the nineteenth century, it 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:22.760 really started to catch on to where they were like 0:19:22.960 --> 0:19:28.240 um magazines that were like dedicated just to matrimonial advertisements. Right, 0:19:29.080 --> 0:19:32.359 Like there was the Matrimonial News, which is actually the 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:35.960 most straight ahead of all of them. Yeah, I like 0:19:36.400 --> 0:19:39.480 Cupid's Messenger. That sounds like a cute one. What about 0:19:39.640 --> 0:19:43.359 heart and Hand, Heart in Hand And then to me 0:19:43.480 --> 0:19:45.880 this one. I guess they were just trying to play 0:19:45.880 --> 0:19:49.920 it really safe, the standard correspondence club. Right, good day 0:19:49.960 --> 0:19:53.840 to you, right exactly. So yeah, so these things were 0:19:53.880 --> 0:19:56.280 like kind of popular by the end of the nineteenth century. 0:19:56.440 --> 0:19:59.360 But then it's like you said earlier, the by by 0:19:59.400 --> 0:20:01.119 the end of the night teenth century the beginning of 0:20:01.119 --> 0:20:05.280 the twentieth century, our ideas about what constituted marriage, the 0:20:05.320 --> 0:20:09.440 reasons for marriage had transitioned from financial arrangements into love 0:20:09.520 --> 0:20:14.720 in America, right, And so there was simultaneously the popularity 0:20:14.720 --> 0:20:18.280 of matrimonial advertisements and people taking control of their own 0:20:18.320 --> 0:20:22.880 marriage prospects, and at the same time, UM, a criticism 0:20:23.000 --> 0:20:28.639 and a uh like society generally looking down upon people 0:20:28.640 --> 0:20:31.040 who did that kind of thing. So there would be 0:20:31.200 --> 0:20:35.040 stories in the paper of people like sad sack bachelor's 0:20:35.160 --> 0:20:39.919 or lonely heart widows getting conned or swindled or getting 0:20:39.960 --> 0:20:43.440 fool catfish basically is what you call it today, UM. 0:20:43.800 --> 0:20:45.600 And people love to read that kind of stuff and 0:20:45.680 --> 0:20:49.160 laugh at their misfortune and look down on these people. UM. 0:20:49.240 --> 0:20:51.960 And that that that's where like the root of what 0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:54.920 people still do today to the mail order marriage industry, 0:20:55.320 --> 0:20:58.720 at least in America. UM really finds its roots in 0:20:58.800 --> 0:21:02.359 the in the twentieth tree. Yeah, and this is when 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:07.960 things started transitioning to overseas, when American men started bringing 0:21:07.960 --> 0:21:12.520 in women from foreign countries. And that's when I think 0:21:12.560 --> 0:21:14.680 that's when it became a bit more of an industry. 0:21:15.000 --> 0:21:18.840 And this is when Congress got kind of full on 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:23.439 racist and trying to control this thing, because there was 0:21:23.600 --> 0:21:27.000 you know, there were women saying, I don't want these 0:21:27.000 --> 0:21:30.440 women coming into our country and disrupting our our feminist 0:21:30.440 --> 0:21:34.000 agenda that we're trying to push. There were men saying, 0:21:34.560 --> 0:21:38.800 we don't want this, uh people from China or Japan 0:21:38.920 --> 0:21:41.720 coming in here, and you know, they can they can 0:21:41.760 --> 0:21:44.439 have babies once a year, and they like there were 0:21:44.440 --> 0:21:47.879 senators literally saying these things, and so they would enact 0:21:47.960 --> 0:21:50.879 laws like, you know, we're gonna be overrun basically, so 0:21:50.920 --> 0:21:54.360 they would enact laws, uh, like the Chinese Exclusion Act 0:21:54.359 --> 0:21:58.880 of eighteen eighty two UH to to ban Chinese immigration. UH. 0:21:58.880 --> 0:22:01.080 There was a loophole for pan with the nineteen o 0:22:01.200 --> 0:22:06.439 seven Gentleman's Agreement, which basically said if you that a 0:22:06.520 --> 0:22:09.640 Japanese woman uh and and their kids could come over 0:22:09.760 --> 0:22:13.000 if they were married. So there were Japanese single men 0:22:13.040 --> 0:22:15.720 already in the United States that immigrated over here that 0:22:15.760 --> 0:22:19.040 would get married sight unseen from like a catalog basically 0:22:19.400 --> 0:22:22.760 to in order to gain immigration status for the Japanese women. 0:22:23.080 --> 0:22:26.560 And then that ultimately got shut down in four with 0:22:26.600 --> 0:22:29.639 the Immigration Act and they just said no Japanese immigration 0:22:29.680 --> 0:22:32.800 of any any kind now after that. So there was 0:22:32.840 --> 0:22:36.400 a huge anti Asian thread from the late nineteenth century 0:22:36.440 --> 0:22:40.480 in the early twentieth century, um based on immigration, and 0:22:40.520 --> 0:22:45.080 a lot of that kind of centered on mail order marriages. UM. 0:22:45.119 --> 0:22:47.960 But then uh, one of the other things that that 0:22:48.520 --> 0:22:51.240 really kind of cropped up as a result of mail 0:22:51.359 --> 0:22:54.280 order marriages going from like women back east or women 0:22:54.280 --> 0:22:57.680 coming from Europe, to women coming from Asia U to 0:22:57.840 --> 0:23:01.840 marry white American men. Um. Was there there was this 0:23:01.920 --> 0:23:05.560 idea that the women were nothing more than like looking 0:23:05.680 --> 0:23:10.119 for um, a green card basically American citizenship, trying to 0:23:10.280 --> 0:23:14.000 escape their own country. And you run into that criticism today, 0:23:14.680 --> 0:23:16.360 I mean just as much as you would have back 0:23:16.359 --> 0:23:21.399 in when they passed the the Immigration Act against Japanese people. 0:23:22.080 --> 0:23:24.880 Oh yeah, because you know, uh, and this is from 0:23:25.080 --> 0:23:29.480 Zug's book. She talks about you know, Mexican women, Greek women, 0:23:29.560 --> 0:23:33.320 Asian women, Jewish women, Italian women, they were much more 0:23:33.400 --> 0:23:38.000 likely to be deported under an LPC charge, which is 0:23:38.040 --> 0:23:40.760 a person that is likely to become a public charge 0:23:40.800 --> 0:23:43.440 basically like to come over and sort of live off 0:23:43.480 --> 0:23:47.040 the government. Uh. If they were from these countries, in 0:23:47.119 --> 0:23:49.080 a way around that was to get married and get 0:23:49.080 --> 0:23:52.640 that green card. So that criticism like came pretty straight away, 0:23:52.640 --> 0:23:55.960 I think, right. And then the other one is that 0:23:55.960 --> 0:23:59.480 that they were basically all just sex workers in disguise, 0:23:59.560 --> 0:24:03.240