{"id":29036,"date":"2016-04-19T07:35:04","date_gmt":"2016-04-19T11:35:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?p=29036"},"modified":"2016-04-19T07:35:04","modified_gmt":"2016-04-19T11:35:04","slug":"childrens-cowboy-chaps-and-big-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/04\/childrens-cowboy-chaps-and-big-government.html","title":{"rendered":"Children’s Cowboy Chaps and Big Government"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

These days, Republicans spend a lot of time decrying big government. This is ironic given that they want the government to keep trans people out of public restrooms<\/a> and require women to bury or cremate miscarried fetuses and embryos<\/a>, among other things, but it is problematic for several other reasons as well. When conservatives\u00a0talk about \u201cbig government,\u201d they\u2019re usually thinking of social programs such as welfare or Medicaid, which\u00a0they\u00a0perceive as transferring their hard-earned money to those who choose not to work or better themselves. We can talk about the problems with that perception\u2014and there are many\u2014but what\u2019s less talked about are the whole host of ways government benefits even those who have never had a need to use the public programs pilloried as \u201chandouts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s leave aside the benefits we receive from well maintained roads, a national network of libraries, and our national park system, and instead look for a moment at consumer protections. Let\u2019s start with cowboy chaps.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

With this image in mind, let\u2019s look at an excerpt from an article published by<\/a> Barbara Young Welke in the Journal of American History in 2014:<\/p>\n

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About a month before Christmas 1944, Milton Henry asked the doorman in his apartment building how many children he had and how old they were. \u201cBy Christmas,\u201d Mr. Henry had promised, \u201che would have something for the two younger boys; he was in that business, toys.\u201d And, indeed, a few days before Christmas, Mr. Henry invited James McCormack up to his apartment and presented him with a gift: two cowboy suits, \u201cGene Autry Offcial Ranch Outfits\u201d that included hat, vest, kerchief, holster, and chaps for McCormack\u2019s two youngest sons, Jimmie, age ten, and Tommy, age seven. . . .\u00a0Neither man in his darkest dreams would have imagined that two weeks later the gift would leave seven-year-old Tommy McCormack so horribly burned over his lower body that his blood simply clotted in the veins and arteries of his legs or that after suffering four months of agony along with their son, James and Catherine McCormack would bury their youngest child.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Why and how was\u00a0Tommy McCormack so badly burned?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Tommy\u2019s death, his family\u2019s loss, was all the more tragic because Tommy was not the first child to be injured or die in an accident involving a Gene Autry cowboy suit. Between late 1942 and continuing to at least 1954, an untold number of children were horribly burned when the fuzzy fabric on the chaps of the Gene Autry cowboy suits they were wearing came in contact with a naked flame or spark and were consumed by flames in a matter of seconds. It was three long years from the first incidents before families, fire and medical personnel, the media, lawyers, and legislators began<\/em> to understand the fabric that manufacturers had used on the chaps of the Gene Autry cowboy suits as the cause of these tragedies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It seems the cloth used in these children\u2019s cowboy suits was so flammable that the entire outfit would go up in a matter of seconds, before the child or parents had time to even attempt<\/em> to put the fire out\u2014or register what was going on.<\/p>\n

Even then news of and response to the tragedy remained fragmented and incomplete. And so more children were injured and died. Ultimately, at least one hundred families whose children had been injured or died in incidents involving Gene Autry cowboy suits brought lawsuits against those involved in the manufacture and sale of the children\u2019s suit and its component parts. Most of those who brought suit received a financial settlement for their loss. And after eight long years of wrangling, in 1953, Congress passed the first federal law intended to protect consumers against \u201cflammable fabrics.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you\u2019re like me, I\u2019m guessing you literally did not know that there are laws ensuring that the fabrics we wear are not ultra-flammable like the cloth used in the cowboy chaps discussed above. In fact, children\u2019s pajamas in particular are required by law\u00a0to be made with cloth that is fire-retardant<\/em>. Even cloth that is not treated to be specifically fire retardant, though, is not permitted to be as flammable as the cloth in Tommy McCormack\u2019s cowboy chaps.<\/p>\n

Welke explains that in the decades after WWII, Americans became increasingly dependent on a consumer-based economy even as the distance between the consumer and the manufacturer\u00a0grew. Americans no longer personally knew those from whom they purchased ready-made goods, and the supply chain itself became more complicated. Consumer culture had previously relied on the idea that the buyer should be on guard against a bad deal, but buyers no longer had the information they needed to identify what products could be trusted. It was in this context that consumer protections were born.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just clothing or other related products, either. It\u2019s also food. Remember that Abraham Lincoln\u2019s mother died from<\/a> \u201cmilk sickness\u201d after drinking milk from a cow that had eaten snakeroot. I remember learning\u00a0about this as a child and wondering how this could have happened. After all, the\u00a0milk we got from the grocery store was all packaged and labeled\u2014milk always seemed so safe<\/em> to me, and that\u2019s because, thanks to the FDA, it is<\/em>. We sometimes hear of vegetables being recalled for salmonella, but the fact that these vegetables are quickly identified and removed\u2014and that it happens infrequently enough to make the news\u2014speaks to the efficiency\u00a0of consumer protection agencies.<\/p>\n

We can walk into a grocery store confident that there is nothing for sale there that will cause us to sicken and die upon eating it because of the government<\/em>. I don\u2019t think we realize how significant this is\u2014or how important. This is perhaps a case where government protections and regulation have been so successful that we as a population have largely forgotten\u00a0why we needed them in the first place. Today, let\u2019s take a moment to remember, and to appreciate having a government big enough to create and maintain such protections.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We can walk into a grocery store confident that there is nothing for sale there that will cause us to sicken and die upon eating it because of the government. I don’t think we realize how significant this is—or how important. This is perhaps a case where government protections and regulation have been so successful that we as a population have largely forgotten why we needed them in the first place. Today, let’s take a moment to remember, and to appreciate having a government big enough to create and maintain such protections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":29038,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[587],"class_list":["post-29036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-government"],"yoast_head":"\nChildren's Cowboy Chaps and Big Government<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We can walk into a grocery store confident that there is nothing for sale there that will cause us to sicken and die upon eating it because of the government. I don't think we realize how significant this is---or how important. 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