Eventually, in 1956, Congress passed a law: the Refrigerator Safety Act, banning the manufacture of refrigerators which could not be opened from the inside. (The run-up to the law included tests to determine how much pressure a kid could exert, to make sure the redesigned doors could really be pushed open by an actual child.) This is why they now use magnets and rubber seals. But at the time, this redesign was controversial. I can’t find much about it on the internet, but I recall a newspaper clipping or academic paper I came across while working on a paper in college. It quoted or summarized someone in the appliance industry claiming it was impossible to make fridges that would properly seal without latches. I’m sure there were some free-market objections too. And yet, it worked. Most people today would not argue that the Refrigerator Safety Act was government overreach. But if this were a live issue today, surely somebody would propose that kids these days are just too soft.