If the poor were unwilling to enter into binding agreements of marriage and kinship by consent, then the state was quite happy to conjure up these unions out of thin air and impose them as a legal obligation of mutual support. If a male servant refused to pay for the support of his presumptive bastard child, then he would be called upon to perform unpaid labor to pay off his debts to the parish. If recently freed slaves continued to live together outside of wedlock, the state would compel them to marry and threaten them with forced labor if they refused to comply. These laws remained very much in vigor right up until the mid-twentieth century, when they came into conflict with the principles of state-managed social insurance championed by New Deal reformers. In many instances, they were never completely overridden.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 218