Pornography: Once a Criminal Act Yet Legal Today

The book Licentious Gotham, Erotic Publishing and It’s Prosecution in Nineteenth Century New York’s fourth chapter, called The Publisher’s and written by Donna Dennis, focuses on the banning of “indecent and obscene” pictures in America. A law was passed in 1842 that banned “the importation of ‘indecent and obscene’ pictures”. Unsurprisingly, the vigorous market in pornographic books and photos went on all the same. For example, Henry R. Robinson was the first to be arrested for this crime. A quote from the text itself explains in what formats Robinson’s illegal documents were found:

“The Herald floridly reported that, upon their arrival, ‘such a scene was presented to the eyes of modest men as would cause a blush to gleam from the face of brass.’ They found a huge cache of erotica in a variety of formats, ranging from engravings, etchings, paintings, lithographic sketches, and prints to pamphlets and books ‘of all sizes and shapes, with every possible characteristic of obscenity and lewdness that could be presented to the eyes or ears.’ On the spot, the police confiscated ‘several thousand Prints and Books all of an obscene nature,’ allegedly valued at nearly twenty thousand dollars.” While Robinson was potentially facing charges, he nonetheless continued to sell his prints, “Though he still offered a ‘very large quantity’ of obscene prints for sale, he kept them ‘in a small room partitioned off for that purpose.’”.

Another example of a man not obeying the law was the one of Richard Hobbes in 1842. “Whereas Robinson specialized in lubricious prints, Hobbes was the source, according to the Herald, of ‘nearly all the obscene and infamous books that flood the city’”.  Hobbes also faced charges but seems to have avoided conviction as well. Clearly there were some high profile crackdowns on obscene and pornographic material after the law was passed, but even those major players seemed to have avoided conviction.  

Dennis points out that rather close up shop, “Publishers and dealers in obscene materials, rather than passively accept the strictures of the law, focused on ways to manipulate the rules to serve their own ends”. They seem to have mostly succeeded. Contemporary America has a far more relaxed attitude towards pornography, and much of what would be considered commonplace today would have been extremely indecent in 1842.  Flipping through a playboy magazine or watching porn are considered “normal” in modern society and not signs of sexual deviance.

Of course there are some forms of pornography and imagery that are still illegal, for example child pornography. For the most part it seems that the line has been drawn around consent, and for those who cannot give consent, like children, pornography can never be justified. This line seems fair, logical and intuitive, and seems to be respected by the vast majority of Americans. Donna Dennis’ text however does suggest that the banning and prohibition of certain items gives rise to the difficulty of fighting black markets and that for some problems there may not be easy solutions other than vigilance and making a social commitment to fighting certain terrible acts.

Dangerous Work

In Huyssen’s “Killing Workers for Profit” chapter, in his book Progressive Inequality, the author explains the horrible and violent conditions that working class men and women faced in their jobs at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20st. Huyssen’s chapter is oriented around explaining and ascribing the pervasive violence the working class faced to the powerful and influence of the wealthy.  “Nevertheless, some workers saw clearly that whatever the apparently immediate cause for their foremen threatening them, strikebreakers punching them, private security personnel kicking them, police arresting them, or judge’s fining them and sentencing them to the workhouse on unsubstantiated charges, the primary human movers of violence were almost always numbered among the wealthy.” Given this level of treatment, it would be natural to wonder how these jobs were ever filled. According to Huyssen, the only alternative for these workers was often dire poverty, a life on the streets. This lack of options gave their employers incredible leverage to commit acts of violence against them.

More generally, it meant that people were willing to do extremely dangerous and undesirable jobs for low pay simply because they had no alternative, and employers would fail to pay to make those jobs safe because it was cheaper to simply hire more workers. For example, around the 1870s George Westinghouse started to market air brakes that couple train cars automatically. Rather than pay for the new technology that would have taken their employees out harm’s way, the companies insisted that workers did their job manually “regularly and unnecessarily placing those workers’ flesh and bone between tons of swiftly converging iron and steel.” And as Huyssen later on explains, “Paired with faulty coupling mechanisms, this practice continued to cleave bodies in half at the hips, crush internal organs, and unceremoniously amputate healthy limbs—a veritable production mechanism of agony and death.” The conditions being described by Huyssen did not sound so different to the working conditions in some concentration camps during the Holocaust. Of course there are important and profound differences, the workers under discussion here could after all choose to leave, but the fact that so many chose to stay in such grueling and dangerous circumstances is strong evidence that their available alternatives were very poor. In the end, the result was as theologian Lyman stated,“So long as brakes cost more than trainmen, we may expect the sacrificial method of car coupling to continue.” For the companies the logic was quite simple, “Your device would be more expensive than Paddies are”.

An important question could be how people, customers, politicians or anyone else was able to tolerate this behavior and this violence towards innocent workers? Was there simply a lack of awareness or was there in fact widespread apathy? Huyssen partially explains this question.  Most of the low wage workers were immigrants, especially in New York, or African-American, “The lack of enforceable safety regulations in the building trades meant regular exposure to death and dismemberment for predominantly foreign and African-American workers”. These groups lack the political or social power to push through policies that would have protected them.

Nowadays conditions have clearly improved, even for many low wage workers. While there are definitely some jobs that are safer than others, few if any are as dangerous as a normal factory job a century ago, and most workers have far more options. But it is important to recognize that workplace accidents still occur since there are to this day  many dangerous occupations. On the website of “AFL-CIO” there is an article titled “ death in the job report” which pretty much speaks for itself. It states, “In 2014, 4,821 workers were killed on the job in the United States, and an estimated 50,000 died from occupational diseases, resulting in a loss of 150 workers each day from hazardous working conditions.” To be quite honest the number really shocked me and I wonder how much the WHO examines and suggests appropriate measures to prevent work related deaths.

 

http://www.aflcio.org/Issues/Job-Safety/Death-on-the-Job-Report

 

PROSTITUTION: THEN vs. NOW

 

 

Timoty J. Gilfolye’s chapter “City of Eros” from his book “New York City, Prostitution and the Commercialization of Sex 1790-1920” focuses on the evolution of prostitution in New York in the late 19^th century. The chapter begins by highlighting the goals and values of the social reformer Anthony Comstock. “Comstock tracked down what he considered to be smut, lewdness and filth. By the twentieth century he could brag that he had destroyed over 160 tons of pornography.” Mr. Comstock was determined to fight against prostitution and the ever-present sexual immorality of the city. He would enter brothels as an “ordinary customer” and arrest performers that undressed or engaged in any openly sexual acts. Yet no matter how much Comstock tried to fight it, prostitution was an ever-growing cult that was in fact expanding quite quickly.

The text goes on to explain how there were two different types of brothels at the time: public and private. Public brothels, “bawdy houses”, were easy to access but often were relatively unconcerned with protecting the privacy of their patrons. The private brothels, “parlor houses”, however were much more exclusive. “Prostitutes in such elite brothels charged as much as five dollars per customer, a staggering sum to the average male journeyman or worker, who earned between six and fifteen dollars weekly”.

While prostitution was growing so was the demand for real estate in the city, yet it didn’t stop houses from renting their floors out to prostitutes. Some apartments would be a mixture of saloons on the bottoms with brothels on the top floors. But despite how common brothels were, “The prominent position of the brothel in the city’s underground economy and entertainment culture did not last forever.” Importantly, in the 1880s women were increasingly unhappy with their lives in brothels, “The strict control by the madams and the strenuous physical demands upon a prostitute’s body made residence in brothels short….Finally, the increasing repression of brothels also contributed to their decline.”

Nowadays brothels still exist, yet prostitution has mostly evolved into the form of escort services. Escorts are technically women who “escort” a man for an evening to a party or a dinner, but in actuality are typically engaging in prostitution. Escorts theoretically have the ability to say “no” at the end of the night if a client wishes to engage in sexual behavior, but in reality they are often hired exclusively for sex work. Technology such as telephones and the Internet allows prostitutes to go to their clients, avoiding the need for a brothel that could be easily located by the police. Of course brothels still exist in places like the red light district in Amsterdam, yet they are not as secretive or exclusive as they used to be in New York in the 19th century. Yet while brothels have mostly disappeared from the city, or are at least far less prominent, prostitution has not. Prostitution, like many other industries or black markets, seems to evolve with the times.

PICKPOCKETING: AN EASY WAY TO GET RICH

 

 

In Timothy J.Gilforlye’s A Pickpocket’s Tale, The Underworld Of Nineteenth Century New York his chapter “‘The “Guns’ of Gotham” discusses the history of thievery in New York in the late 19th Century, with focus on the story of George Appo. The thieves under examination in this chapter were called “Pickpockets”, a particularly notorious type of thief that stole wallets and other valuables from their victims in public places. They were known as “profession thieves” and by some even “artists” since they displayed skill and had sophisticated rules and regulations within their own circles. For example, Appo described some other pickpockets as “good fellows”, an insider term meaning they always kept their mouth shut when interrogated. “A good fellow valiantly accepted the consequences and punishment of an arrest, even if the crime was committed by another. A good fellow was a member of a fraternity of thieves.” From building their own language, to their extreme loyalty and avoidance of violence, pickpockets were clearly a unique class of criminal.

Even more interesting is that for a time pickpockets actually made a lot of money, such as in the area around Wall Street before 1880 and during county fairs in places as far away as Toronto. Apparently businessmen, often in a rush, were extremely careless in where they put their wallets or other valuables. Pickpockets in those areas could be successful at stealing up to sixteen thousand dollars, as in the case of J.H Higgins, a market manufacturer, who was carrying that amount as wages for his workers when he was pickpocketed. Female pickpockets were just as successful, if not more so, than men. By being sexually suggestive to attract and distract their targets, female pickpockets often managed to leave their male targets not only unsatisfied but also cash-free.

In 1883 the newspaper Truth described pickpockets as “the meanest of criminals…the sneaking weasel of society”. Headlines and increased attention to pickpocketing generated ever greater anger and opposition to the predations of pickpockets, which over time were reflected in increased prosecution and harsher sentences, “Between 1859 and 1879 the number of pickpockets brought to trial by the district attorney nearly quintupled, increasing from 52 to 242.” Harsh punishments became a primary tool in fighting the war against theft. For only stealing 90 cents one nineteen year old was sent to Sing Sing prison for 5 years. Judge Henry A. Gildersleev was a judge known for his hard and inflexible view toward pickpockets. When George Appo stood before him, convicted of larceny, he sent him to prison for two years and six months of hard labor, all due to the theft of a gold watch.

Nowadays penalties for minor crimes like these are not nearly as harsh.  Enforcement has increased substantially and technology like credit cards has made carrying around lots of cash unnecessary, so there are also far fewer pickpockets. Nonetheless, it is well known that places such as Times Square in New York City or the Champs Elysees in Paris have many pickpockets and there is no alternative to being very careful with your wallet. Yet despite its large decline, pickpocketing is a classic example of an extremely well organized criminal community that for a time made it possible for men and women to steal large sums of money with little fear of getting caught.

The Hard Work Of Being Poor: now and then

 

 

In Seth Rockman’s 6^th chapter of the book “Scraping by: Wage Labor, Slavery and Survival in Early Baltimore” under the heading “The Hard Work of Being Poor”, the author discusses the plight of the impoverished in the late 18th and early 19th century. Rockman succinctly articulated the central thesis of the chapter when he wrote, “Finding a job did not secure men, women, and children from the pangs of hunger or the shivers of winter, though it might postpone the threat of real privation for a time”.  Simply put, no matter how hard one worked, even earning approximately $1 a day, it was often impossible for a poor household to meet its daily needs in terms of food, shelter, and basic necessities.

Rockman begins by discussing how the poor were organized in terms of economic units, specifically discussing the household. Typically but not always a household was a family unit, with a white male head of household, which may also include “unrelated laborers”. Often women contributed to the household’s cash income as seamstresses, housekeepers or maids, to support their families in addition to the many contributions they made within the home, such as preparing food, laundry, and cleaning. But despite the ability of women to earn wages, they did not measure equal to that of a man. Whereas half of houses led by only women, presumably because they were without a husband, were “ too poor to owe city taxes”, only every third male lead household fell below that threshold. This definitely parallels today’s situation, where women still earn less than men, and often struggle when raising a family on their own.

Another factor that Rockman discusses is the issue of race, which also has strong resonances with today. African American households were even poorer than the white poor in the early 19th century, when they were free at all. Often black families would face unique challenges, such as having children, spouses or other loved ones that were enslaved, and whose freedom was extremely expensive. Still today many African American families suffer from low wages and bad jobs as a legacy of slavery, and the continued economic and political discrimination that continued after emancipation. In my opinion the case for reparations is strengthened in light of the strong evidence presented that slavery was still an immense burden to emancipated African Americans, whether it was the cost of freeing relatives or the fear of kidnapping.

It is important to recognize that although the circumstances have changed, and undoubtedly improved even for the poor, poverty still exists. It is often ignored, yet the data show that it is still very much with us. For example in 2015 “The Atlantic” stated that there are “47 million people, falling below the poverty threshold of about $24,000 for the year” in the United States out of a population of 318.9 million citizens. This statistic personally shocked me. Rockman’s focus on women and African Americans has a straight parallel pulled in “The Atlantic” in the quote: “The news was, of course, worse for minorities and women. The rate of poverty among blacks and Hispanics was well over 20 percent. Women, too, remained more likely to struggle to make ends meet, especially elderly women, whose poverty rate was nearly double that of men in the 75 and older age group.” This is not due to any of these minorities being less active, less talented, or less hard working. Contemporary poverty and suffering are due to many of  the same structural factors that have existed since the time Rockmann discusses “The Hard Work of Being Poor.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/americas-poverty-problem/405700/

The Economist vs Baptist

 

In an article for CNN “How Slavery Haunts Today’s America” by Edward E. Baptist, the author responds to the review by the economist about his book “The Half Has Never Been told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism.” Baptist’s book states that the success of the modern American economy is in no small part a consequence of slavery and that this is often underappreciated. In this article Baptist discusses why he believe the British magazine the Economist did not agree with his depictions of slavery and was not pleased that, in Baptist’s words, ”the owners came across as exploiters”.

After reading the economist article Baptist was referring to, the critique’s view can be summed up in these points: Baptist does not sufficiently justify his economic claims about slavery and that it is too biased. Yet the topic of slavery is an extremely delicate one. Regardless of the validity of their points, some claims by the Economist sound quite discriminatory. Statements such as “Almost all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains.” simply makes the British magazine look exceedingly racist. Virtually all black Americans at the time were victims, and still today African Americans continue to suffer from the consequences of racism, for example many relatives are unaware of their mutual existence due to their ancestors being sold and moved around the country.

The fact that not all whites are villains is of course correct as well, yet one only has to look at the specific examples that Baptist examines before generalizing his arguments. Baptist mentions people like Austin Woolfolk, who of course are pure villains and terrible human beings. Even if at the time Austin Woolfolk did not represent the behavior of the average slave owner, most white people did not mind the way he treated his slaves and did not try to intervene in Woolfolk’s affairs. In my opinion this already makes the majority of white people at least passive villains.

Yet the Economist makes a strong point when it states: “But he overstates his case when he dismisses ‘the traditional explanations’ for America’s success: its individualistic culture, Puritanism, the lure of open land and high wages, Yankee ingenuity and government policies.” America’s economic success undoubtedly has other sources than only slavery. Yet Baptist is right to try to explore the important question of slavery’s economic contribution to American prosperity, which the Economist fails to acknowledge.  

It is also not clear at all that the Economist disagrees with Baptist’s claim that the legacy of slavery is still a huge burden for African Americans. Regardless, the comment concerning victims and villains gave readers the wrong impression with its racist tone and it distracted from the Economist’s larger point that Baptist’s main economic arguments were not sound. Race has become a topic that one must address particularly carefully, so as not to cause offense. Sensitivity and a knowledge of the past are required in any attempt to make arguments concerning race. These two factors, however, should not prevent us from talking about race and slavery, just that we must do so carefully and in a considered manner.

Guilty Actors or Guilty Societies? Moral Confusion and the Criminals it Creates

In chapter seven, “Underground on the High Seas” in Capitalism by Gaslight, Craig B.Hollander analyzes the reasons and consequences of Captain Lacoste’s and Captain Smith’s illegal participation in the slave trade. As Hollander points out, “Most Americans did, indeed, feel that the transatlantic slave trade was a grave crime against humanity” during the same historical period that slavery was still legal in the United States. This new law created a new type of “human trafficker”, once legal slavers now gone underground,“brazen enough to break the law, ruthless enough to commit heinous acts, and effective enough to warrant military surveillance”. Lacoste and Smith, captains of the Science and Plattsburgh respectively, became active participants in this illegal activity since the transatlantic slave trade was banned in the 1807 Slave Trade act. Yet despite the illegality of the slave trade, slavery itself would hardly have been unfamiliar to these two men. Smith was from Baltimore where the public was known as “the most willing to break the slave trade laws”. Lacoste was from Charleston, which had been the largest slave port in the US. Needless to say, both of these men were from slave states when their journeys began in 1820. 

The most obvious question is what led these two men to become criminals? Hollander points out that the political philospopher Laurence Thomas once stated “it must be acknowledged that evil can be perpetrated by individuals who were once ordinary people, that is, morally decent people.” This statement argues the case that perhaps both men were not horrible “monsters”, but instead, as we find out later in the reading, came from common families in desperate straits and were simply seeking a means out of their impending poverty. Lacoste was described as a “very good character, young & possessing to the highest degree filial and sisterly love”. As for Smith, a former passenger of his described him as “in almost every respect a good example of an American man”. How are we to reconcile these men and their crimes? Two upstanding fine young men, caught in the act of committing horrendous acts. Lacoste, and Smith were arrested in 1820 yet both were pardoned by the president and released by 1822. Being young and sympathetic figures ended up saving them from being locked in prison. 

It is astonishing to see how social pressure and the desire to provide for one’s family can make a apparently good person commit all sorts of horrendous acts, no matter how horrible those acts may be. Smith was offered ten times his normal salary to captain this ship, enough money to provide a fast and expedient escape from his financial woes. The moral confusion of their age may not excuse them, but it certainly must at least partially explain their actions. Young men or women engaging in illegal trade or crime often enter this market because they lack the education or money to do something else as rewarding. Some individuals participating in the drug trade in places like Mexico can be compared to Lacoste and Smith. What do they risk by driving buses filled with drugs through borders? Apparently not enough to at least give it a try and have the chance of making good money for their families. Are their actions illegal, and will they lead to pain and suffering? Indisputably. But are people like these really criminals or can their actions merely be excused by their situation, and the endless American appetite for drugs? One could almost say that they reluctantly participate, that they don’t kill, they don’t hurt, they just do what they must to survive. Is that a crime?