WEBVTT - Selects: How Mail Order Marriages Work 0:00:00.920 --> 0:00:03.360 You may not know this, but the original purpose of 0:00:03.400 --> 0:00:06.280 Stuff you Should Know was to change people's minds about 0:00:06.320 --> 0:00:10.440 male order marriages, and we certainly did with this episode. 0:00:11.000 --> 0:00:13.680 We were so successful that we decided to keep the 0:00:13.720 --> 0:00:17.160 podcast going. I'm just kidding for those of our listeners 0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:19.960 who have trouble detecting that kind of thing. What is 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:23.240 true is that it's a surprisingly interesting episode and it 0:00:23.280 --> 0:00:26.200 may very well change your mind about male order marriages. 0:00:27.080 --> 0:00:29.120 I was serious, just not for those of our listeners 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:31.920 who always think I'm kidding. How about we all just 0:00:32.120 --> 0:00:38.040 enjoy this episode? Shall we? 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:43.800 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:47.840 --> 0:00:50.840 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:50.960 --> 0:00:53.640 Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you 0:00:53.680 --> 0:00:57.760 should Know about male order marriages. 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:00.840 Murky Waters. 0:01:01.680 --> 0:01:04.360 Yeah, really, yeah. 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:05.800 This is one of those where. 0:01:07.040 --> 0:01:11.360 We researched and researched and read and read, and I 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:14.000 think it's one of those deals for me that's like 0:01:15.240 --> 0:01:19.880 and this is just my opening statement where it can 0:01:19.959 --> 0:01:26.920 be a positive thing, like a dating service in some ways, 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:31.960 but there is certainly a darker side to the whole situation. 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:35.480 I already know how you feel about it, and I 0:01:35.480 --> 0:01:37.040 feel like it's coming through clearly. 0:01:37.959 --> 0:01:39.920 Yeah, I mean, it's just it's very It's one of 0:01:39.959 --> 0:01:43.160 those really murky things where sometimes you hear these really 0:01:43.200 --> 0:01:46.280 great stories about people that do find are looking for 0:01:46.360 --> 0:01:49.160 love and find love with someone from another country and 0:01:49.200 --> 0:01:52.040 it works out for everybody. And then sometimes you hear 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:57.520 about stories where it's sort of what the National Organization 0:01:57.600 --> 0:02:03.880 for Women's sonya Asario calls a softer version of human trafficking. 0:02:04.840 --> 0:02:07.640 Or even worse, occasionally someone turns up murdered. 0:02:08.240 --> 0:02:12.799 Yeah, I mean, that's the truest dark side. So that's 0:02:12.840 --> 0:02:15.919 just me level setting and we can talk about the good, 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:16.640 the bad, and the ugly. 0:02:17.080 --> 0:02:19.840 I think that was a great level saying. I generally 0:02:19.919 --> 0:02:23.080 agree with it. But for me, the jury is still 0:02:23.120 --> 0:02:26.680 out in thinking about it as a whole because there's 0:02:26.800 --> 0:02:30.560 so little hard data on this stuff. Yeah, almost everything 0:02:30.680 --> 0:02:34.240 is anecdotal, true, and when like you condemned something based 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:36.960 on anecdotal data, what you've got there as a moral panic, 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:41.320 not necessarily something in reality. So I'm a little hesitant 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:43.400 to go all the way. The jury's still out for me, 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:46.320 but I definitely recognize the same stuff you do. For sure. 0:02:46.360 --> 0:02:48.959 It's definitely there. It exists, it's just for me. The 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:51.200 question is how much does it exist and does the 0:02:51.200 --> 0:02:54.079 good outweigh the bad? And I don't know. So yeah, 0:02:54.120 --> 0:02:57.760 we should probably like actually define what we're talking about here, 0:02:57.800 --> 0:03:01.600 because most people, I would guests are familiar with mail 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:06.600 order brides. They're more recently they've come to be called 0:03:06.600 --> 0:03:09.280 mail order marriages because they've been extended to same sex 0:03:09.320 --> 0:03:12.400 couples in the United States. But then also like even 0:03:12.440 --> 0:03:16.880 more generally, it's called international marriage brokerage. 0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:20.440 Right, yeah, I mean there's a full industry built around this, 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:26.200 with thousands of websites and agencies that are brokering these marriages. 0:03:26.320 --> 0:03:29.000 And you know, from looking into it, it seems like 0:03:29.120 --> 0:03:33.520 there are some really above board ones that kind of 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:40.280 act like an international dating surface in some ways where 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:43.600 they group, you know, match like people together. And then 0:03:43.640 --> 0:03:45.720 it seems like there are a lot of really sketchy 0:03:45.760 --> 0:03:50.000 ones that charge people a ton of money and aren't 0:03:50.000 --> 0:03:53.320 looking out for the men or the women. 0:03:53.920 --> 0:03:56.960 And I know that money is sunk back into making 0:03:57.000 --> 0:04:00.400 their website look at all nonclude. 0:04:00.560 --> 0:04:03.960 I saw some really really bad websites, I mean so. 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:07.320 Bad, man like comic Sands at one. 0:04:07.200 --> 0:04:10.360 Point Yeah, it's hard to see those and not think, well, A, 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:13.160 this is a scam or B this is a front 0:04:13.680 --> 0:04:15.680 for some sort of CD trafficking operation. 0:04:15.960 --> 0:04:18.920 Right, Yeah, it is tough not to think like that. 0:04:19.000 --> 0:04:21.960 But but what we are talking about generally is a 0:04:23.240 --> 0:04:29.920 marriage where the husband and the wife are generally unknown 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:33.120 to each other. Maybe have met once, but if they did, 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:35.919 it's possible it was just a day or two before. 0:04:37.640 --> 0:04:39.719 Or maybe they've met once or twice and have done 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:42.840 some correspondence back and forth for an extended period of time. 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:47.600 But that's pretty new. And the classical definition it's they're 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:52.279 generally unknown to one another, and one of them, usually 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:55.880 the bride travels a very long distance from home to 0:04:56.000 --> 0:05:00.240 move to the husband's home and make a life there 0:05:00.520 --> 0:05:04.839 and be married. That's not the Webster's definition. There's a 0:05:04.839 --> 0:05:07.720 lot more stumbling in my definition, but I think that 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:08.960 generally gets it across. 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:11.640 Yeah, and you know, the kind of the classic thing 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:15.960 that you think of is lonely American man who has 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:19.240 a little bit of money in his forties or fifties, 0:05:19.440 --> 0:05:25.080 can't find American woman and ends up getting a young, beautiful, 0:05:25.120 --> 0:05:28.640 young Ukrainian woman who doesn't speak much English. And would 0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:33.359 love to live in the United States and fall in 0:05:33.400 --> 0:05:36.040 love with an American man and that sort of And 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:38.000 you know, of course it happens from all countries, but 0:05:38.040 --> 0:05:40.080 a lot of times you think of Russia and the 0:05:40.160 --> 0:05:44.320 Ukraine or maybe in Southeast Asia or something like that. 0:05:44.320 --> 0:05:47.480 That is sort of I feel like when people say 0:05:47.480 --> 0:05:50.320 that term, most people, that's probably what pops into their head. 0:05:50.560 --> 0:05:53.400 Yeah, or I think you're being rather generous. I think 0:05:53.400 --> 0:05:55.440 a lot of people would be like, you know, some 0:05:55.600 --> 0:05:58.360 sad sack who can't like find a woman in America 0:05:58.480 --> 0:06:01.360 has to go look elsewhere to get really judge about it, 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:04.400 and I think people are really judging about male order marriages. 0:06:04.839 --> 0:06:07.839 I think there's a long standing tradition in the United 0:06:07.880 --> 0:06:12.160 States of considering people who who go outside the traditional 0:06:12.200 --> 0:06:14.680 channels of marriage and basically take it into their own hands, 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:19.080 like through male order marriage are they're very much judged 0:06:19.160 --> 0:06:23.240 harshly and criticized, maybe fairly, maybe not. But I think 0:06:23.240 --> 0:06:26.560 there's another component too, especially these days, is that the 0:06:26.640 --> 0:06:30.560 men who who are looking for women for male order 0:06:30.560 --> 0:06:36.880 brides are also dominant, domineering, possibly abusive, and they're looking 0:06:36.960 --> 0:06:41.560 for docile women who will do whatever they say, because 0:06:41.560 --> 0:06:43.440 they're the husband, so they have to go to other 0:06:43.480 --> 0:06:46.240 cultures where that might be more prevalent and where they 0:06:46.320 --> 0:06:50.440 can select from women who might respond to that kind 0:06:50.480 --> 0:06:52.560 of thing a lot better than an American woman who 0:06:52.600 --> 0:06:54.200 wouldn't put up with his guf. Yeah. 0:06:54.240 --> 0:06:57.520 I mean that is certainly a part of what happens sometimes, 0:06:57.560 --> 0:07:02.119 and some of these agencies promote that the submissive nature. 0:07:02.440 --> 0:07:05.760 There was one that literally said that these young women 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:09.880 are quote unspoiled by feminism, and you have potential homemaking 0:07:09.920 --> 0:07:12.960 savings of one hundred and fifty dollars a week because 0:07:13.000 --> 0:07:15.240 you're essentially getting a you know, sort of a living 0:07:15.320 --> 0:07:16.200 domestic servant. 0:07:16.280 --> 0:07:16.800 Good lord. 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:19.640 So you know, that's the underbelly and the dark side. 0:07:20.040 --> 0:07:22.000 But we you know, I did find some that do 0:07:22.040 --> 0:07:25.560 seem very above board and people that do genuinely look 0:07:25.720 --> 0:07:28.320 like they're looking for love and have struck out at 0:07:28.320 --> 0:07:29.560 home so they're looking elsewhere. 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:31.920 Yeah, so I said, Chuck, And we should also say 0:07:31.960 --> 0:07:35.640 one other thing too, Like, you know, it's pretty like 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:38.040 it's a pretty well known thing in America. It's not 0:07:38.080 --> 0:07:40.240 like on everybody's lips. You don't hear it in every 0:07:40.280 --> 0:07:42.960 monologue on the Late night talk shows or anything like that. 0:07:43.040 --> 0:07:48.480 But like, generally people in America are familiar and know 0:07:48.600 --> 0:07:52.000 about male order marriages, but it turns out it's even 0:07:52.080 --> 0:07:55.800 bigger in other countries like Taiwan and South Korea have 0:07:56.120 --> 0:08:00.800 huge male order marriage industries that may even dwarf the 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:03.360 United States. And it's pretty I don't want to say 0:08:03.360 --> 0:08:05.160 it's huge in the United States, but it's not like 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:08.800 just some small speck of sliver of like an arcane 0:08:08.840 --> 0:08:11.040 group of people. Like it's bigger than you'd think, but 0:08:11.120 --> 0:08:13.640 it's even bigger in some other Asian countries as well. 0:08:14.480 --> 0:08:17.200 Yeah, And Dave Ruse helped us put this together, and 0:08:17.240 --> 0:08:20.400 this was a tough assignment for him, but he used 0:08:20.880 --> 0:08:25.080 a lot of information from a book by a legal 0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:28.760 professor originally from University of South Carolina named Marsha Zugg 0:08:29.240 --> 0:08:36.280 called Buying a Bride insert colon music Jerry, an Engaging 0:08:36.400 --> 0:08:40.480 History of mail order Matches, where it seems like she 0:08:40.600 --> 0:08:44.600 gives a you know, a fair but fairly full throated 0:08:44.679 --> 0:08:48.600 defense of its history through the ages as far as 0:08:48.640 --> 0:08:50.800 and we'll get into this, but as far as an 0:08:50.800 --> 0:08:53.360 opportunity for a lot of women to gain more agency 0:08:53.480 --> 0:08:56.360 and to gain more rights at a time when they 0:08:56.440 --> 0:08:59.640 might not have any, all the way up through today, 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:05.199 where she still defends it to a certain degree and says, 0:09:05.880 --> 0:09:08.760 you know, like, sure, these situations can be bad, but 0:09:09.240 --> 0:09:13.640 what's really bad is what undocumented immigrants have to suffer 0:09:13.640 --> 0:09:16.559 through in this country because they have no legal rights. 0:09:16.600 --> 0:09:19.920 They can't go to the police, they can't leave their 0:09:21.600 --> 0:09:26.400 spouse or their partner for fear of deportation. And it's 0:09:26.440 --> 0:09:29.760 an interesting take, I think, and I'm glad that Dave 0:09:30.720 --> 0:09:32.840 found this book, you know, because I'm not sure that 0:09:32.880 --> 0:09:33.800 I would have been as fair. 0:09:34.640 --> 0:09:37.199 Yeah, yeah, no, she definitely almost I get the impression 0:09:37.240 --> 0:09:42.680 that she is defensive on behalf of the industry just 0:09:42.720 --> 0:09:46.199 because of how mistreated it's been, in her opinion, unfairly 0:09:46.360 --> 0:09:47.440 in large part. 0:09:48.160 --> 0:09:50.400 Yeah, because you know, I think it very much has 0:09:50.440 --> 0:09:53.200 an anti feminist rap for good reason. But she does 0:09:53.240 --> 0:09:56.760 make some compelling arguments that throughout history it wasn't that 0:09:56.840 --> 0:09:58.800 way at all, And I guess we can go ahead 0:09:58.800 --> 0:10:02.200 and dive into some of that. In the early days 0:10:02.240 --> 0:10:05.840 of male order marriages in the American colonies, there was 0:10:06.720 --> 0:10:10.000 a lack of women problem in the early colonies. 0:10:10.200 --> 0:10:12.840 I mean, like the earliest colonies. We're talking like James 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:13.520 Town here. 0:10:13.880 --> 0:10:16.720 Yeah, like you know, the Puritans and Pilgrims, they may 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:18.880 have come over with their families, but there are a 0:10:18.920 --> 0:10:21.880 lot of single men that came over, and a lot 0:10:21.920 --> 0:10:25.200 of them some of them may like run off with 0:10:25.360 --> 0:10:28.600 an indigenous woman and live with among her tribe and 0:10:28.640 --> 0:10:31.120 be like, you know what, I'm kind of done building 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:34.680 things for Jamestown. I'm out of here. So that's no 0:10:34.760 --> 0:10:37.559 good if they're looking for young men to like kind 0:10:37.559 --> 0:10:40.360 of help build up these young colonies. And then other 0:10:40.400 --> 0:10:44.959 ones were just lonely and said, hey, like there are 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:46.800 no women over here, what are we supposed to do? 0:10:47.440 --> 0:10:53.880 So very early on they started sort of advertising and 0:10:53.920 --> 0:10:58.960 bringing women, you know, supposedly volunteers over who wanted to 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:02.520 come to the colonies and sort of have maybe even 0:11:02.559 --> 0:11:03.920 more rights than they had back home. 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:06.160 Yeah, And this is a really good example of kind 0:11:06.240 --> 0:11:09.600 of like a thread that ran through the first couple 0:11:09.679 --> 0:11:16.920 centuries of America's founding, which was government sanctioned and supported 0:11:18.280 --> 0:11:22.520 mail order marriages in order to help build more stable communities. Right, 0:11:22.600 --> 0:11:26.959 So the legislatures did things like create laws that made 0:11:27.000 --> 0:11:30.040 it more attractive for a woman to become a male 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:34.600 order bride in this area, Like apparently in England, if 0:11:34.640 --> 0:11:37.640 you became a widow you got a third of the 0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:40.680 estate and that was it. And in places like Virginia 0:11:40.679 --> 0:11:43.040 and I think Maryland as well, they set up laws 0:11:43.120 --> 0:11:46.080 that basically said, hey, you're going to keep a lot 0:11:46.120 --> 0:11:48.360 more than that, you can run your own business afterward, 0:11:48.480 --> 0:11:51.160 like being a widow's going to rock And did we 0:11:51.240 --> 0:11:54.839 mention also the men are dropping deadlight flies over here, 0:11:55.120 --> 0:11:57.880 so yeah, your husband's probably going to die pretty quick. 0:11:57.880 --> 0:11:59.800 So if you don't like them, who cares. You still 0:11:59.840 --> 0:12:02.319 get to keep all this inheritance and you get to 0:12:02.400 --> 0:12:05.360 keep the business and you can't do quite that well 0:12:05.400 --> 0:12:08.240 for yourself in those circumstances back in England. So that 0:12:08.280 --> 0:12:11.160 attracted people. And that was like the government saying like, 0:12:11.200 --> 0:12:13.720 please come over here and marry these strangers that you've 0:12:13.760 --> 0:12:14.600 never met before. 0:12:15.160 --> 0:12:16.880 Yeah, and you know, it made sense for a lot 0:12:16.920 --> 0:12:21.000 of these young women because many of them were you know, 0:12:21.040 --> 0:12:23.080 they were from like the servant class, let's say, so 0:12:23.120 --> 0:12:26.959 they were looking at years of servitude in England and 0:12:27.000 --> 0:12:29.719 then they basically were like, well, hey, forget all that, 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:32.440 why don't you just come over here, get married and 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:35.320 like you said, I think the status even one in 0:12:35.400 --> 0:12:37.440 three marriages lasted ten years. 0:12:37.640 --> 0:12:39.040 Yeah, so they. 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:41.560 Did kind of sell them on the fact that, yeah, 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:44.160 it's not so great, you'll probably be dead soon enough. 0:12:44.360 --> 0:12:46.160 Yeah, and then you can have his stuff. 0:12:46.480 --> 0:12:49.520 Yeah. And it actually, I mean like that actually did 0:12:51.240 --> 0:12:55.040 like attract some women. I think, at least I don't 0:12:55.080 --> 0:12:57.760 know if we have the number, but there definitely were 0:12:57.800 --> 0:13:01.920 what they called tobacco wives who came to marry new 0:13:01.960 --> 0:13:04.560 tobacco planters who were setting up their own fortune. And 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:07.320 I actually had to prove that they were of financial 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:10.880 means by donating one hundred and fifty pounds of gold 0:13:10.960 --> 0:13:14.680 leaf tobacco to the Virginia Company to take part in 0:13:14.720 --> 0:13:19.200 this right. And so that lasted as long as it lasted, 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:20.880 or as long as it needed to. And as the 0:13:20.960 --> 0:13:25.560 Eastern colonies started to like become more self sufficient, became 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:28.840 less rowdy, became more family oriented as far as the 0:13:28.880 --> 0:13:34.240 Europeans were concerned, the need for like those mail order 0:13:34.320 --> 0:13:38.800 schemes kind of went away. But then as America kind 0:13:38.840 --> 0:13:43.760 of expanded further and further west, the frontier kept recreating 0:13:43.800 --> 0:13:48.000 itself in different places. So you know, it went from 0:13:48.040 --> 0:13:51.599 the eastern colonies to you know, along the Mississippi, and 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:53.560 then further and further out west. And every time it 0:13:53.600 --> 0:13:57.000 did that, this new iteration of the frontier was settled 0:13:57.080 --> 0:14:00.520 by rowdy men, and they would have to figure out 0:14:00.559 --> 0:14:02.600 a way to get women to attract women to come 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:04.360 out to marry the rowdy men so they would stop 0:14:04.400 --> 0:14:07.280 beating each other up in bar fights and become more 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:11.640 productive citizens. And that kept going on throughout the eighteenth 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:14.160 and nineteenth centuries in the United States. 0:14:14.440 --> 0:14:18.000 Yeah, and you know, if you're already thinking, guys, this, 0:14:18.000 --> 0:14:22.280 this already sounds terrible, these marriages based on these financial arrangements. Yeah, 0:14:22.360 --> 0:14:25.960 and you know, despite these promises of a better life, 0:14:26.040 --> 0:14:28.880 like that's kind of what we're talking about, like welcome 0:14:28.920 --> 0:14:31.560 to marriage in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. 0:14:31.640 --> 0:14:32.920 Yeah, don't be so naive. 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:36.000 Yeah, that's not that's kind of what it was. 0:14:36.080 --> 0:14:39.320 And they've made a good point, like the notion of 0:14:39.400 --> 0:14:42.480 marrying for true love, that's a very much like a 0:14:42.520 --> 0:14:46.440 twentieth century proposition. Yeah, even if it wasn't a male 0:14:46.560 --> 0:14:51.640 order bride situation, it was someone's dowry or parents sort 0:14:51.680 --> 0:14:54.800 of arranging marriages and saying these family this family should 0:14:54.800 --> 0:14:57.280 marry this family, which still goes on today. I should 0:14:57.280 --> 0:15:00.240 point out among like the blue chip in the high Societ, 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:03.480 like and Arthur had to marry Susan. 0:15:03.840 --> 0:15:05.120 You know, let's not forget that. 0:15:05.280 --> 0:15:08.680 Everybody with a Habsburg jaw was an arranged marriage. 0:15:08.920 --> 0:15:10.160 He could marry Liza Minelly. 0:15:12.560 --> 0:15:15.440 I didn't realize you were making the movie reference. I 0:15:15.440 --> 0:15:18.800 thought you were thought Arthur and Susan. I thought you 0:15:18.800 --> 0:15:24.760 were using like Biff and Muffy, like generally Arthur and Okay, yeah, yeah, 0:15:24.880 --> 0:15:26.000 I got it. Now I got it. 0:15:26.320 --> 0:15:28.520 But the point is is that marriage was a financial 0:15:28.640 --> 0:15:31.800 arrangement many in most times back then. I'm not saying 0:15:31.840 --> 0:15:33.440 no one ever married because they were in love. I'm 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:36.440 sure that happened, uh, but it had to take a 0:15:36.440 --> 0:15:37.560 lot of boxes back then. 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:39.600 So it was just sort of the way it was. 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:44.160 And so this solved problems for early settlers and for 0:15:44.240 --> 0:15:48.840 westward expanders. They made things really attractive in California for women. 0:15:49.200 --> 0:15:52.240 They made it easier to divorce your husband if you 0:15:52.240 --> 0:15:56.400 wanted to. They made it easier to or just legal 0:15:56.480 --> 0:15:59.520 to own and sell, buy and sell land, which is 0:15:59.520 --> 0:16:01.760 not something you could do at other places in the country. 0:16:02.280 --> 0:16:05.120 So they were trying to make it an attractive situation 0:16:05.280 --> 0:16:08.760 for women to move west because they needed men and 0:16:08.800 --> 0:16:11.880 women out there. And I think the between eighteen fifty 0:16:11.920 --> 0:16:17.720 and eighteen sixty, the population of women in California increased 0:16:18.160 --> 0:16:22.440 from three percent to nineteen percent of the total population. 0:16:22.640 --> 0:16:24.680 So it was working, Yeah. 0:16:24.480 --> 0:16:28.080 It was. And it wasn't just California, but Washington State 0:16:29.040 --> 0:16:33.160 also participated. I think Oregon may have as well. And 0:16:33.200 --> 0:16:36.400 there would be these schemes and I don't mean scheme 0:16:36.480 --> 0:16:38.720 like you know, like dastardly scheme, but like a. 0:16:39.800 --> 0:16:40.720 Plant good scheme. 0:16:40.840 --> 0:16:44.120 Yeah, where like a guy would go around to the 0:16:44.720 --> 0:16:47.520 bachelors out in like Washington Territory and be like, give 0:16:47.520 --> 0:16:49.760 me a one hundred bucks or I think three hundred bucks, 0:16:49.800 --> 0:16:53.160 which is about five grand today, and I will bring 0:16:53.200 --> 0:16:57.560 you a suitable wife. And at least one guy did this. 0:16:57.840 --> 0:17:00.920 Asa Mercer was a marriage broke and he would go 0:17:01.000 --> 0:17:05.560 back east say hey, there's like this great booming economy 0:17:05.560 --> 0:17:07.480 out west, why don't you come with me, And like 0:17:07.840 --> 0:17:09.959 he would return with like one hundred women and some 0:17:10.000 --> 0:17:13.159 of them would get married immediately, some would wait. But 0:17:13.240 --> 0:17:15.560 it was like another It was another thing where there 0:17:15.640 --> 0:17:20.280 was a need for women to stabilize it out of 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:21.719 control male population. 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:22.280 Yeah. 0:17:22.320 --> 0:17:25.199 And you know, Zug points out very fairly in her 0:17:25.200 --> 0:17:27.800 book that some of these Mercer girls from as they 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:31.760 were called, from ace of Mercer's operation, became abolitionists, some 0:17:31.840 --> 0:17:36.320 became women's rights advocates and social reformers. One of them's 0:17:36.440 --> 0:17:42.480 name was this great name, Mihitable Haskell Elder, and she 0:17:42.760 --> 0:17:47.000 organized the eighteen seventy one Women's Rights Conference in Olympia, Washington, 0:17:47.600 --> 0:17:51.680 and recruited one Susan B. Anthony as the territory delegate 0:17:51.880 --> 0:17:55.719 for the National Women's Suffrage Association convention. So, you know, 0:17:55.760 --> 0:17:59.640 in a lot of cases, these women did find agency 0:17:59.800 --> 0:18:02.959 and they did get out of a better situation than 0:18:03.000 --> 0:18:04.119 they were in back east. 0:18:04.400 --> 0:18:06.360 Hey, So you want to take a break and then 0:18:06.640 --> 0:18:10.679 we'll talk about the probably what was the real birth 0:18:10.960 --> 0:18:15.720 of mail order marriages? Sure, Okay, we'll be right back, 0:18:35.280 --> 0:18:37.800 all right, Chuck. So we've been talking to this point 0:18:37.840 --> 0:18:43.080 about basically like government sanctioned schemes to kind of stabilize 0:18:43.080 --> 0:18:46.800 male populations. There was also at the same time, beginning 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:50.919 in the nineteenth century, I think starting in England actually 0:18:50.920 --> 0:18:54.280 in the eighteenth century, that was kind of simultaneously unfolding. 0:18:54.560 --> 0:18:59.560 And that was the matrimonial advertisement industry, which to me 0:18:59.760 --> 0:19:03.200 is like the real birth of the mail order marriage 0:19:03.200 --> 0:19:06.240 industry that we understand today. But it was basically the 0:19:06.280 --> 0:19:07.040 personal ads. 0:19:07.440 --> 0:19:09.639 Yeah, it was the birth of personal ads, the birth 0:19:09.720 --> 0:19:16.160 of dating services. It's really interesting in that women would 0:19:16.240 --> 0:19:19.040 put ads in London and then later on in the 0:19:19.160 --> 0:19:22.920 United States, ads in the paper basically saying, you know, hi, 0:19:23.040 --> 0:19:25.000 this is who I am, this is what I'm looking for. 0:19:25.320 --> 0:19:27.199 I mean, much like you would see these days in 0:19:27.240 --> 0:19:30.199 like a dating profile. And it was a way for 0:19:30.280 --> 0:19:33.960 them to, you know, to take some agency over avoiding 0:19:33.960 --> 0:19:36.199 the arranged marriage that their parents had set up for him, 0:19:36.640 --> 0:19:39.360 and maybe get a little bit of choice of suitors. 0:19:39.200 --> 0:19:43.040 Right, And I mean like that is like taking control 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:47.719 of your own of your own marriage prospects. And it 0:19:47.760 --> 0:19:50.520 was I guess radical is probably a pretty good word. 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:54.359 But it picked up. It caught on, especially in the 0:19:54.480 --> 0:19:57.440 US by the end of the nineteenth century, it really 0:19:57.480 --> 0:20:00.600 started to catch on to where they were like magazines 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:05.639 that were like dedicated just to matrimonial advertisements. Right. Yeah, 0:20:05.720 --> 0:20:08.959 Like there was the Matrimonial News, which is actually the 0:20:09.000 --> 0:20:10.600 most straight ahead of all of them. 0:20:11.920 --> 0:20:15.080 Yeah, I like Cupid's Messenger. That sounds like a cute one. 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:18.880 What about Heart and Hand, Heart. 0:20:18.680 --> 0:20:21.680 In Hand, and then to me this one, I guess 0:20:21.680 --> 0:20:23.320 they were just trying to play it really safe, the 0:20:23.440 --> 0:20:25.320 standard correspondence club. 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:28.680 Right, good day to you, right exactly. 0:20:29.160 --> 0:20:31.480 So yeah, so these things were like kind of popular 0:20:31.520 --> 0:20:33.600 by the end of the nineteenth century. But then it's 0:20:33.640 --> 0:20:36.840 like you said earlier, by the end of the nineteenth 0:20:36.840 --> 0:20:39.960 century the beginning of the twentieth century, our ideas about 0:20:39.960 --> 0:20:43.879 what constituted marriage or the reasons for marriage had transitioned 0:20:43.880 --> 0:20:48.320 from financial arrangements into love in America, right, And so 0:20:49.160 --> 0:20:53.520 there was simultaneously a popularity of matrimonial advertisements and people 0:20:53.560 --> 0:20:56.960 taking control of their own marriage prospects, and at the 0:20:57.000 --> 0:21:04.080 same time a criticism and a society generally looking down 0:21:04.240 --> 0:21:07.280 upon people who did that kind of thing. So there 0:21:07.280 --> 0:21:10.560 would be stories in the paper of people like sad 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:15.760 sack bachelors or lonely heart widows getting conned or swindled 0:21:15.880 --> 0:21:19.240 or getting fool catfished basically is what you'd call it today. 0:21:20.400 --> 0:21:22.240 And people love to read that kind of stuff and 0:21:22.320 --> 0:21:25.199 laugh at their misfortune and look down on these people. 0:21:25.840 --> 0:21:29.200 And that's where like the root of what people still 0:21:29.240 --> 0:21:32.280 do today to the mail order marriage industry, at least 0:21:32.320 --> 0:21:36.960 in America, really finds its roots in the twentieth century. 0:21:37.840 --> 0:21:41.560 Yeah, and this is when things started transitioning to overseas, 0:21:42.720 --> 0:21:46.040 when American men started bringing in women from foreign countries, 0:21:46.920 --> 0:21:50.040 and that's when I think that's when it became a 0:21:50.040 --> 0:21:54.040 bit more of an industry. And this is when Congress 0:21:54.440 --> 0:21:57.920 got kind of full on racist and trying to control 0:21:57.960 --> 0:22:02.840 this thing because there was you know, there were women saying, 0:22:02.920 --> 0:22:05.159 I don't want these women coming into our country and 0:22:05.160 --> 0:22:09.200 disrupting our feminist agenda that we're trying to push. There 0:22:09.200 --> 0:22:14.800 were men saying, we don't want this people from China 0:22:14.920 --> 0:22:18.320 or Japan coming in here, and you know, they can 0:22:18.400 --> 0:22:21.080 have babies once a year, and they like there were 0:22:21.080 --> 0:22:24.080 senators literally saying these things. Yeah, and so they would 0:22:24.240 --> 0:22:27.119 enact laws like, you know, we're going to be overrun basically, 0:22:27.440 --> 0:22:30.960 So they would enact laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act 0:22:31.000 --> 0:22:35.760 of eighteen eighty two to ban Chinese immigration. There was 0:22:35.800 --> 0:22:39.119 a loophole for Japan with a nineteen oh seven Gentlemen's 0:22:39.160 --> 0:22:44.000 Agreement which basically said, I you that a Japanese woman 0:22:44.640 --> 0:22:47.360 and their kids could come over if they were married. 0:22:47.960 --> 0:22:50.480 So there were Japanese single men already in the United 0:22:50.520 --> 0:22:53.560 States that immigrated over here that would get married sight 0:22:53.680 --> 0:22:57.120 unseen from like a catalog basically in order to gain 0:22:57.400 --> 0:23:00.159 immigration status for the Japanese women. 0:23:00.240 --> 0:23:03.159 That ultimately got shut down in nineteen twenty four with 0:23:03.240 --> 0:23:06.240 the Immigration Act and they just said no Japanese immigration 0:23:06.320 --> 0:23:09.560 of any kind now after that. So there was a 0:23:09.680 --> 0:23:13.159