“Nurse and Child,’’ by Mary Cassatt (1844-1926)
{Massachusetts} “became a ‘nanny state’ well before the term was born. In the 1630s, the General Court {legislature} prescribed dress codes for citizens and imposed wage and price controls….In 1894, well before the advent of automobiles, Massachusetts implemented an array of restrictions on bicycle riding….And long before Prohibition (or the abolition of ‘happy hour’ in the 1980s), the state had banned the sale of liquor to anyone receiving public assistance.’’
— Robert David Sullivan (born 1968), American journalist and editor