“Wanna get married?”: The taxi driver transportation network at the marriage mill of Elkton, Maryland, 1913–1941

Abstract

This article examines the development of a taxi drivers’ transportation network in the “marriage mill” of Elkton, Maryland between 1913 and 1941. It explores how legal conditions for marriage engendered particular forms of spatial organisation meant to accomplish the intensive production of weddings. Social policy impacted how space was organised and connected, but in ways different than authorities expected. The network drivers sought to maintain took direction from the conditions set by political authorities yet simultaneously threatened those conditions’ corruption in the eyes of many. Local and state authorities’ further attempts at regulation as well as changes in transportation together created a greater need for more durable associations between drivers, clergy, and technologies such as vehicles, trains, and advertising signs that they enlisted in their efforts. The article contends that a full accounting of the social consequences of marriage policies should encompass the networks that those policies facilitated.