The Federal Take-Over of Marriage

This paper comments on the eugenic practices involved in the federal takeover of marriage in the United States during the 1920s and ‘30s. It offers a content analysis of the 1937 propaganda/exploitation film Are You Fit to Marry? (a.k.a. Damaged Goods, USA 1937) to show the influence  of the era's "breeding" professions on public mandates, and expounds on the traits that factor into the making of "degenerates" who get netted by marriage prohibitions.