Democrats Risk Losing a Generation to Cynical Libertarianism

[happyslug]

125. At that time you did NOT have to even graduate grade school to become a Lawyer

All you had to do was work with another lawyer who would show you want was expected of a lawyer AND sponsor the candidate for law to the local bar. This was true till quite recently. William Jennings Bryan, in the 1880s after he had married his wife, told her to take a few classes from a law school, but sponsored her as an attorney himself to the local bar (and she was admitted, one of the few lawyers of that time period with a Collage Education, and some class work in law, in this she joined her Husband, who also had collage but did not attend a law school). When I started to practice law in the 1990s, in my county we still had one lawyer who did NOT graduate from a law school (he had attended and then dropped out, he disliked how the teacher was teaching the class), instead he was admitted as someone who had read for the law. He did this in the 1950s and whenever he retired, so did the last lawyer who did not go to law school.

As to your statement that the terms "Youth and Adult were interchangeable by the time you were 16 or 17: was NOT correct. Under the law till the 1970s, 21 was the age the law PRESUMED you were an adult. If you were below 21, you were legally presumed to be a child under the care, control and supervision of someone else (Mostly your parent). This had been the law since the middle ages and no one changed it, even in the colonial period.

In fact during the 1700s and 1800s, you could NOT enlist in the Military till you were 21 unless your parents agreed to your enlistment OR you could convince the recruiter you were no longer under the care, control or supervision of your parents, due to the acts of your parents (i.e. running away from home did not show a lack of Care, Control or Supervision by your parents, it requires some ACT by your parents that they were no longer exercising "Care, Control or Supervision" over you).

Once enlisted, if you were under 21, you could NOT be shipped overseas. You could fight within the US Borders (as in the Civil War) but not overseas. In fact during the Draft of WWI, you had to be over 21 to be drafted till September 1918 when Congress dropped it to 18 (During WWII the draft was always age 18).

If you were under age 21, living at your parent's home, AND earning money you were still NOT viewed as an adult, by law you were still a minor (Even through you could marry at age 12 without your parent's permission, you just could not move out of their home, again the law since the middle ages).

As to learning three languages, that is easier then you think. We tend to remember our high school foreign language courses. In many ways by the time we are in High School it is really late to learn another language (the best time is before age five). When they do MRIs of people brains, those people who learn a language before age five, use a different part of the brain when they are speaking or reading that language then if they were using a language learned after age five. Given the limited number of books then in print, it was often the only way to read up on a subject was to read it is the language it was first published in. Thus you had a lot of books, even in America, published in foreign languages (Greek, Latin and French were the three big languages of the time period, people who had access to books had books in all three languages and to read them you had to learn the language). It appears, Jefferson was exposed to all three before he was five and thus learned them as he learned English. If exposed to a language it is easy to learn.

As to going to William and Mary at age 16, I think he was a little old. Collages before the mid 1800s were NOT the Collages of today. They were more like high schools (in fact when High Schools were invented in the mid 1800s, Collages had to reinvent themselves, for what they had been teaching was by the mid 1800 being taught in High Schools). Thus William and Mary was more like a High School (in terms of Education) then a modern Collage, through to be accurate, since it was only taking the elite of society it was something in between modern High Schools and Modern Collages.

Sorry, I admire Jefferson for what he did, but his educational achievements reflect his background more then what he could do himself (and that included his passing the Bar). On the other hand his achievements, such as writing the Declaration of Independence is his own product and reflects what he himself could do.

By the way, no one looked to Jefferson for Legal Advice, he was NOT considered a Great Lawyer (appears to have become a Lawyer for the prestige of being one, not for any desire to practice law). My comments is that most people were about the same in the 1700s as today. One of my favorite Statistics is the one involving the average age of first marriage. I first ran across it in the 1970s and saw it again since 2000. The problem is the US Census bureau has been keep track of ages at first marriages since the 1890 Census but no one uses that start date. If they want to show age of marriages is increasing, they start in 1970, if they want to show a decline in age of first marriage, they stop in 1960. Why? Because the Statistic is like a smile, it is high on both ends (18901 and today) but low in the middle (1960-1970).

In simple terms, the age of first marriages DECLINED from 1890 till 1960, a slight increase was seen in 1970, but then a slow, but steady increase since 1970 (Males matched their age of first marriage by the early 1980s, women by the early 1990s and both has increased since). What we do know of marriages in the late 1800s, we appear to be at about the same level of age of first marriages. Another statistics is how many people are living together without being married. Those numbers appear to drop from the late 1890s till the 1960s. Since the 1960, the number of people living together without marriage have return to the numbers we were at in the late 1800s (This also reflected in the percentage of children born outside of wedlock, while the numbers per women is down, the percentage of such children to all children appears to run into the same numbers believed to have existed in the late 1800s).

This also reflects the period where the percentage of national income became more equal (1945-1970) and that reversal of that trend (1980 to present). i.e. as income became more equal, people tended to get married, as income became less equal, marriages decline. Please note I am talking about the share of money based on class not sex (i.e. as the top 1% got less of the share of total income, but the bottom 60% got more, you had more marriages, but as the percentage of total income increases for the top 1%, but goes down for everyone else, the number of marriages decline).

In many ways we are slowly returning to the norms of the late 1800s. People complain that the GOP wants us to return to the 1950s, most people would be happy with the 1950s, most people had a larger percentage of the GDP in the 1950s then they do today. On the other hand, as we return to the economic norms of the late 1800s, most people will have a much lower percentage of GDP then they had in the 1950s and in many ways today. Yes, today we have cars and Computers, instead of horse drawn wagons and a pencils, but we live among others, which is characteristics of people and it is the fairness among the group as a whole that makes them content not the latest bells and whistles.