High Cost of Living? Blame the President.

The federal government’s regulatory involvement in the economy has grown greatly since the 1910s. The incongruities of fiscal politics, though, resembled those of today. A Democratic administration tolerated massive borrowing—to meet wartime needs then and a pandemic emergency recently—while Republicans condemned as inflationary actions they might well have taken themselves (and did during Trump’s administration). Unlike in Wilson’s era, today’s Federal Reserve Board bears much of the responsibility for curbing inflation. Yet politically, the president’s administration still faces most of the criticism when consumer prices have risen sharply. Then and now, the budgetary pressures of competing policy needs and the sheer difficulty of lowering prices virtually guarantee voter discontent.

Understanding Comstock Through Primary Sources

In addition to reading and assigning the posts in this blog series, instructors may want to bring a discussion of Anthony Comstock and the Comstock Laws into their classes through primary sources. This piece introduces a few readily accessible and rich options.

Anthony Comstock, Abortion, and the Arrest of Madame Restell

Anthony Comstock arrested many people, but perhaps none was so famous as Madame Restell, whom he arrested on February 11, 1878, for selling contraceptives and abortifacients. Because Restell remains best known as an abortion provider, and because Comstock succeeded in passing a federal statute that bears his name, one might assume that abortion occupied a central place in his campaign, or that Restell was arrested for performing an abortion. Neither is completely accurate. By taking the arrest of Restell as a case study, this post considers the various legal modes by which Comstock did his work, and the way he understood abortion as related to his greater campaign against obscenity and sexual license.