Holy matrimony plus shipping and handling: a libertarian perspective on the mail-order bride industry.

• Author: Merriman, Justin S.
• Position: Essay

While I am sure that it would take a lot of stamps to ship a Mail Order Bride I think you might have a problem with customs! Which would you like? Many men have found exactly what they desired in a woman from another country. How did they do this and what are the pitfalls involved in this process? This is where Goodwife.com can help out. This site along with our sister sites Planet Love and Russian Women Discussion are all about the search for this woman and how to have a happy and successful and long lasting marriage to a foreign woman. Are there any good women left in the West? Sure there are. Are they easy to find? Not on your life!

--Goodwife.com, home page (February 26, 2011)

In regard to mail-order brides, certain images and connotations--usually negative ones--have been etched in the American psyche. We are likely to think of eastern European women getting married to American men desperate enough to "purchase" a bride. Western society tends to look down on the use of the Internet or any other means to "purchase" a person to be one's spouse, presumably for the rest of one's life. Yet modern technologies have indeed made access to such opportunities widely available if one's bank account is adequate.

Today's mail-order bride industry is a complicated system, involving two countries, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), fiance visas, green cards, and--if everything else works--an actual marriage. Because of technology and globalization, this industry has become very profitable in the past two decades, with the Internet spurring the current success of placement agencies.

The industry has vociferous critics. Radical feminists assert that the practice of marriage brokerage, with poor women migrating to developed countries, is exploitative. They argue that capitalism allows Western men to use their financial advantage to dominate women in developing countries. However, this assertion falls short in several areas. The mail-order bride industry, although knowingly contributing to the immigration of women from poorer countries, is not exploitative because the migration offers opportunity for women. These female immigrants enjoy a higher standard of living and more rights for themselves because there are more rights for women-the very things that feminists purport to defend.

The mail-order bride industry dates back centuries, if not millennia. During the Middle Ages, marriage brokerage was the term most commonly used. The earliest known operations of marriage brokers occurred in Europe as far back as the thirteenth century in the Jewish community. The Jewish marriage broker, called a "Shadchan," put Jewish men in contact with Jewish women (and vice versa) for purposes of marriage. Men or women might act as initiators. The Shadchan would often bear the responsibility for finding suitable marches for eligible Jews. The trend of finding a bride in one's own ethnic group remained in place until the twentieth century (Peres, Meisels, and Frank 1980, 475).

Christians also practiced forms of long-distance marriage arrangements. Disparity in the number of women and men in the French colonies of Canada influenced King Louis XIV to take action. From 1663 to 1673, King Louis XIV subsidized the travel of nearly eight hundred marriage-age women to Canada. They were also given money to keep for themselves. The contractual agreement provided that they marry eligible Frenchmen upon their arrival. These women became known as the filles du roi, or "daughters of the king" (Library of Congress n.d.). A similar event occurred in the French colonies of Louisiana in 1719 and 1720. Louis XIV transported more than one hundred women volunteers to live and marry in Louisiana. These women came to be known as the "casket girls." Neither of these events involved for-profit business, and at first glance they may appear to pertain more to procreation than to monetary gain. However, Louis XIV's efforts to increase the French population in the colonies did generate revenue, intended or not. The end result was an enhanced income for the French state, whose ventures in transporting women expanded the colonies' workforces and hence their taxable revenue (Library of Congress n.d.).

The next instance of marriage brokerage emerged during the nineteenth century in the United States. It is notable because it was the initial involvement of the country that would be at the center of "purchasing" brides for the next two centuries. Along with the discovery of gold in the American West came settlers to take advantage of the economic opportunity. Most of these prospectors were single men. Indeed, men largely outnumbered women in the overall migration westward. Prostitution met the men's sexual needs temporarily, but men grew lonely for female companionship. Their latent demand led to the creation of the first for-profit marriage brokerage agencies in the United States.

Agencies placed advertisements in western newspapers describing various eligible women and their household skills. In a California newspaper, Dorothy Scaraggs wrote about herself in a matrimonial advertisement:

By a lady who can wash, cook, scour, sew, milk, spin, weave, hoe, (can't plow), cut wood, make fires, feed the pigs, raise the chickens, rock the cradle, (gold-rocker, I thank you sir!), saw a plank, drive nails, etc. These are a few solid branches; now for the ornamental. "Long time ago" she went as far as syntax, read Murray's Geography and through rules in Pike's Grammor. Could find six states on the Atlas. Could read, and you can see she can write. Can--no, could paint roses, butterflies, ships, etc. Could once dance) can ride a horse, donkey, or oxen, besides a great many things too numerous to be named bare. (qtd. in Enss 2005, 51)

This era was also the first time catalogs were used, although photography had not yet been incorporated into them. Women in the East who found a match traveled across the United States alone in dangerous conditions to meet their grooms.

Another method employed by men was placing matrimonial advertisements, in which they described themselves and what they were looking for in a wife. Starting in the 1870s and continuing for the rest of the century, a paper called Matrimonial News was printed solely for the purpose of placing such advertisements. Both men and women placed ads in the paper, which was printed in San Francisco and Kansas City. Ads would be given a number, and interested parties were invited to send their inquiries to Matrimonial News in Kansas City, specifying the number that interested them. One advertisement read: "283--A gentlemen of 25 years old, 5 feet 3 inches, doing a good business in the city, desires the acquaintance of a young, intelligent and refined lady possessed of some means, of a loving disposition from 18 to 23, and one who could make home a paradise" (qtd. in Enss 2005, 25; for another ad, see "Mr. Barnes Wants a Wife" 1889).

At the turn of the twentieth century, male Japanese immigrants on the U.S. West Coast and in Hawaii found themselves in a position similar to that of the American gold prospectors--lonely for female companionship. Their remoteness from their native country made it nearly impossible for them to marry a Japanese woman. In Japan, the Meiji Revolution (1868-1912) was working itself out, and the opportunity to leave the country became attractive to some women. Marriage brokers emerged in Japan, specifically targeting Japanese clients in the United States. This brokerage was the first to use photographs of women in catalogs so that men could view potential brides. Men selected their brides, and the brides came across the Pacific Ocean to join their mate. American politicians became concerned with Japanese "picture brides" showing up on the West Coast. A 1916 New York Times article describes the efforts of Senator James Phelan (D-Calif.): "Senator Phelan gave notice that he would offer...