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Title: Margaret Sanger; an autobiography.
Author: Sanger, Margaret
Language: English
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MARGARET SANGER
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _Margaret Sanger_]
MARGARET
SANGER
_An Autobiography_
NEW YORK W·W·NORTON & COMPANY PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1938, by
W. W. NORTON & COMPANY, INC.
70 Fifth Avenue, New York
_First Edition_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FOR THE PUBLISHERS BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO ALL THE PIONEERS
OF NEW AND BETTER WORLDS TO COME
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
_My thanks are due especially to Rackham Holt for her discerning aid in
organizing material and for her untiring and inspired advice during the
preparation of this book; as well as to Walter S. Hayward whose able
assistance has helped to make the task lighter._
_In the course of preparing this narrative many books have been
consulted. I trust their authors will agree with me that a bibliography
in a personal history is cumbersome and accept a general but none the
less grateful acknowledgment._
_My admiration has always gone out to the person who can put himself in
print and set down for historical purposes an exact record of his honest
feelings and thoughts, even though they may seem to reflect upon many of
his friends and helpers. I have not in this story hurt any one by
intent. Because its thread has, of necessity, followed dramatic
highlights, many people who played prominent parts have not been
mentioned. These I have not forgotten, nor those numerous others who
made smaller offerings. Some have pioneered in their special fields and
localities; some have given generously and unfailingly of their
financial help; some have volunteered in full measure their time and
efforts as officers and Committee members; some have fought and labored
by my side throughout the years; some have stepped in for only a brief
but significant role. Although on the outskirts of the army, it is to
these last as well as to those in the vanguard that the advance has been
made. And particularly do I wish to thank those co-workers and members
of the various staffs whose contributions can in no way be measured by
their duties, and whose indefatigable, loyal devotion has been a bulwark
of strength to me at all times._
_It has been impossible to carry out my sincere desire to give personal
and individual recognition and expression of gratitude to all. Neither a
history of the birth control movement nor the part I have taken in it
could be complete, however, did I not pay tribute to the integrity,
valiance, courage, and clarity of vision of the men and women who, year
after year, maintained their principles, and never swerved from them in
a cause which belongs to all of us._
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. FROM WHICH I SPRING 11
II. BLIND GERMS OF DAYS TO BE 24
III. BOOKS ARE THE COMPASSES 33
IV. DARKNESS THERE AND NOTHING MORE 46
V. CORALS TO CUT LIFE UPON 58
VI. FANATICS OF THEIR PURE IDEALS 68
VII. THE TURBID EBB AND FLOW OF MISERY 86
VIII. I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP 93
IX. THE WOMAN REBEL 106
X. WE SPEAK THE SAME GOOD TONGUE 121
XI. HAVELOCK ELLIS 133
XII. STORK OVER HOLLAND 142
XIII. THE PEASANTS ARE KINGS 153
XIV. O, TO BE IN ENGLAND 169
XV. HIGH HANGS THE GAUNTLET 179
XVI. HEAR ME FOR MY CAUSE 192
XVII. FAITH I HAVE BEEN A TRUANT IN THE LAW 210
XVIII. LEAN HUNGER AND GREEN THIRST 224
XIX. THIS PRISON WHERE I LIVE 238
XX. A STOUT HEART TO A STEEP HILL 251
XXI. THUS TO REVISIT 268
XXII. DO YE HEAR THE CHILDREN WEEPING? 280
XXIII. IN TIME WE CAN ONLY BEGIN 292
XXIV. LAWS WERE LIKE COBWEBS 306
XXV. ALIEN STARS ARISE 316
XXVI. THE EAST IS BLOSSOMING 327
XXVII. ANCIENTS OF THE EARTH 337
XXVIII. THE WORLD IS MUCH THE SAME EVERYWHERE 349
XXIX. WHILE THE DOCTORS CONSULT 358
XXX. NOW IS THE TIME FOR CONVERSE 369
XXXI. GREAT HEIGHTS ARE HAZARDOUS 376
XXXII. CHANGE IS HOPEFULLY BEGUN 392
XXXIII. OLD FATHER ANTIC, THE LAW 398
XXXIV. SENATORS, BE NOT AFFRIGHTED 413
XXXV. A PAST WHICH IS GONE FOREVER 431
XXXVI. FAITH IS A FINE INVENTION 447
XXXVII. WHO CAN TAKE A DREAM FOR TRUTH? 461
XXXVIII. DEPTH BUT NOT TUMULT 478
XXXIX. SLOW GROWS THE SPLENDID PATTERN 493
INDEX 497
MARGARET SANGER
_Chapter One_
FROM WHICH I SPRING
“_‘Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?’ he asked.
‘Begin at the beginning,’ the King said, very gravely,
‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’_”
LEWIS CARROLL
The streets of Corning, New York, where I was born, climb right up from
the Chemung River, which cuts the town in two; the people who live there
have floppy knees from going up and down. When I was a little girl the
oaks and the pines met the stone walks at the top of the hill, and there
in the woods my father built his house, hoping mother’s “congestion of
the lungs” would be helped if she could breathe the pure, balsam-laden
air.
My mother, Anne Purcell, always had a cough, and when she braced herself
against the wall the conversation, which was forever echoing from room
to room, had to stop until she recovered. She was slender and straight
as an arrow, with head well set on sloping shoulders, black, wavy hair,
skin white and spotless, and with wide-apart eyes, gray-green, flecked
with amber. Her family had been Irish as far back as she could trace;
the strain of the Norman conquerors had run true throughout the
generations, and may have accounted for her unfaltering courage.
Mother’s sensitivity to beauty found some of its expression in flowers.
We had no money with which to buy them, and she had no time to grow
them, but the woods and fields were our garden. I can never remember
sitting at a table not brightened with blossoms; from the first spring
arbutus to the last goldenrod of autumn we had an abundance.
Although this was the Victorian Age, our home was almost free from
Victorianism. Father himself had made our furniture. He had even cut and
polished the slab of the big “marble-topped table,” as it was always
called. Only in the spare room stood a piece bought at a store—a
varnished washstand. The things you made yourself were not considered
quite good enough for guests. Sometimes father’s visitors were doctors,
teachers, or perhaps the village priest, but mostly they were the
artisans of the community—cabinet makers, masons, carpenters who admired
his ideas as well as shared his passion for hunting. In between tramping
the woods and talking they had helped to frame and roof the house,
working after hours to do this.
Father, Michael Hennessy Higgins, born in Ireland, was a nonconformist
through and through. All other men had beards or mustaches—not he. His
bright red mane, worn much too long according to the family, swept back
from his massive brow; he would not clip it short as most fathers did.
Actually it suited his finely-modeled head. He was nearly six feet tall
and hard-muscled; his keen blue eyes were set off by pinkish, freckled
skin. Homily and humor rippled unceasingly from his generous mouth in a
brogue which he never lost. The jokes with which he punctuated every
story were picked up, retold, and scattered about. When I was little
they were beyond me, but I could hear my elders laughing.
The scar on father’s forehead was his badge of war service. When Lincoln
had called for volunteers against the rebellious South, he had taken his
only possessions, a gold watch inherited from his grandfather and his
own father’s legacy of three hundred dollars, and had run away from his
home in Canada to enlist. But he had been told he was not old enough,
and was obliged to wait impatiently a year and a half until, on his
fifteenth birthday, he had joined the Twelfth New York Volunteer Cavalry
as a drummer boy.
One of father’s adventures had been the capture of a Confederate captain
on a fine mule, the latter being counted the more valuable acquisition
to the regiment. We were brought up in the tradition that he had been
one of three men selected by Sherman for bravery. That made us very
proud of him. Better not start anything with father; he could beat
anybody! But he himself had been appalled by the brutalities of war;
never thereafter was he interested in fighting, unless perhaps his Irish
sportsmanship cropped out when two well-matched dogs were set against
each other.
Immediately upon leaving the Army father had studied anatomy, medicine,
and phrenology, but these had been merely for perfecting his skill in
modeling. He made his living by chiseling angels and saints out of huge
blocks of white marble or gray granite for tombstones in cemeteries. He
was a philosopher, a rebel, and an artist, none of which was calculated
to produce wealth. Our existence was like that of any artist’s
family—chickens today and feathers tomorrow.
Christmases were on the poverty line. If any of us needed a new winter
overcoat or pair of overshoes, these constituted our presents. I was the
youngest of six, but after me others kept coming until we were eleven.
Our dolls were babies—living, wriggling bodies to bathe and dress
instead of lifeless faces that never cried or slept. A pine beside the
door was our Christmas tree. Father liked us to use natural things and
we had to rely upon ingenuity rather than the village stores, so we
decorated it with white popcorn and red cranberries which we strung
ourselves. Our most valuable gift was that of imagination.
We had little time for recreation. School was five miles away and we had
to walk back and forth twice a day as well as perform household duties.
The boys milked the cow, tended the chickens, and took care of Tom, the
old white horse which pulled our sleigh up and down the hill. The girls
helped put the younger children to bed, mended clothes, set the table,
cleaned the vegetables, and washed the dishes. We accepted all this with
no sense of deprivation or aggrievement, being, if anything, proud of
sharing responsibility.
And we made the most of our vacations. There were so many of us that we
did not have to depend upon outsiders, and Saturday afternoons used to
put on plays by ourselves in the barn. Ordinarily we were shy about
displaying emotions; we looked upon tears and temper in other homes with
shocked amazement as signs of ill-breeding. Play-acting, however, was
something else again. Here we could find outlet for histrionic talent
and win admiration instead of lifted eyebrows. I rather fancied myself
as an actress, and often mimicked some of the local characters, to the
apparent pleasure of my limited audience of family and neighbors. It was
not long before I slipped into declaiming. _The Lady of Lyons_ was one
of my specialties:
This is thy palace, where the perfumed light
Steals through the mist of alabaster lamps,
And every air is heavy with the sighs
Of orange groves, and music from the sweet lutes
And murmurs of low fountains, that gush forth
I’ the midst of roses!
All outdoors was our playground, but I was not conscious at the time of
my love for the country. Things in childhood change perspective. What
was taken for granted then assumes great significance in later life. I
knew how the oak tree grew and where the white and yellow violets could
be found, and with a slight feeling of superiority I showed and
expounded these mysteries to town children. Not until pavements were my
paths did I realize how much a part of me the country was, and how I
missed it.
We were all, brothers and sisters alike, healthy and strong, vigorous
and active; our appetites were curtailed only through necessity. We
played the same games together and shared the same sports—baseball,
skating, swimming, hunting. Nevertheless, except that we all had red
hair, shading from carrot to bronze, we were sharply distinct
physically. The girls were small and feminine, the boys husky and
brawny. When I went out into the world and observed men, otherwise
admirable, who could not pound a nail or use a saw, pick, shovel, or ax,
I was dumfounded. I had always taken for granted that any man could make
things with his hands.
I expected this even of women. My oldest sister, Mary, possessed, more
than the rest of us, an innate charm and gentleness. She could do
anything along domestic lines—embroidery, dress making, tailoring,
cooking; she could concoct the most delicious and unusual foods, and mix
delicate pastries. But she was also an expert at upholstering,
carpentry, painting, roofing with shingles or with thatch. When Mary was
in the house, we never had to send for a plumber. She rode gracefully
and handled the reins from the carriage seat with equal dexterity; she
could milk a cow and deliver a baby; neighbors called her to tend their
sick cattle, or, when death came, to lay out the body; she tutored in
mathematics and Latin, and was well-read in the classics, yet she liked
most the theater, and was a dramatic critic whose judgment was often
sought. In all that she did her sweetness and dearness were apparent,
though she performed her many kindnesses in secret. She left the home
roof while I was still a child, but she never failed to send Christmas
boxes in which every member of the family shared, each gift beautifully
wrapped and decorated with ribbons and cards.
My brothers were ardent sportsmen, although they might not have been
outstanding scholars. They could use their fists and were as good shots
as their father. For that matter, we all knew how to shoot; any normal
person could manage a gun. Father was a great hunter. Our best times
were when friends of his came to spend the night, talking late, starting
early the next morning for the heavy woods which were full of foxes,
rabbits, partridge, quail, and pheasant.
Someone was always cleaning and oiling a gun in the kitchen or carrying
food to the kennels. The boys were devoted to their fox and rabbit
hounds, but father lavished his affection on bird dogs. Our favorite
came to us unsought, unbought, and I had a prideful part in his joining
the family. One afternoon I was sitting alone by the nameless brook
which ran by our house, clear and cool, deep enough in some places to
take little swims on hot summer days. I was engaged in pinning together
with thorns a wreath of leaves to adorn my head when a large, white dog
ambled up, sniffed, wagged his tail, and seemed to want to belong. This
was no ordinary cur, but a well-bred English setter which had evidently
been lost. How father would love him!
Even though the dog had no collar, I was slightly uneasy as to my right
of ownership. One conspicuous brown-red spot on the back of his neck
simplified my problem. Unobtrusively I slipped him into the barn, tied
him up, selected a brush, dipped it in one of the cans of paint always
on hand, and multiplied the one spot by ten. For a day, waiting for them
to dry, I fed him well with food filched from the rations of the other
kennel occupants, then led him forth, his hairy dots stiffened with
paint, and offered him to father as a special present.
Accepting the gift in the spirit in which it was intended, father
admired the dog’s points, and, with an unmistakable twinkle, lent
himself to a deception which, of course, could deceive nobody. When
Saturday night came, the neighborhood looked the animal over; none knew
him so we named him Toss and admitted him to the house. Later he bred
with an Irish setter of no importance, and one of the resultant puppies,
Beauty, shared his privileges.
Toss, as well as everybody else, subscribed to the idea that the
“artist” in father must be catered to. With the first sound of his
clearing his throat in the morning Toss picked up the shoes which had
been left out to be cleaned, and carried them one at a time to the
bedroom door, then stood wagging his tail, waiting to be patted.
Father’s shoes were always polished, his trousers always creased. Every
day, even when going to work, he put on spotless white shirts with
starched collars and attachable cuffs; these were something of a luxury,
because they had to be laundered at home, but they got done somehow.
Father took little or no responsibility for the minute details of the
daily tasks. I can see him when he had nothing on hand, laughing and
joking or reading poetry. Mother, however, was everlastingly busy
sewing, cooking, doing this and that. For so ardent and courageous a
woman he must have been trying, and I still wonder at her patience. She
loved her children deeply, but no one ever doubted that she idolized her
husband, and through the years of her wedded life to her early death
never wavered in her constancy. Father’s devotion to mother, though
equally profound, never evidenced itself in practical ways.
The relation existing between our parents was unusual for its day; they
had the idea of comradeship and not merely loved but liked and respected
each other. There was no quarreling or bickering; none of us had to take
sides, saying, “Father is right,” or, “Mother is right.” We knew that if
we pleased one we pleased the other, and such an atmosphere leaves its
mark; we felt secure from emotional uncertainty, and were ourselves
guided towards certainty in our future. We were all friends together,
though not in the modern sense of familiarity. A little dignity and
formality were always maintained and we were invariably addressed by our
full names. The century of the child had not yet been ushered in.
In those days young people, unless invited to speak, were seen and not
heard. But as soon as father considered us old enough to have ideas or
opinions, we were given full scope to express them, no matter how
adolescent. He hated the slavery of pattern and following of examples
and believed in the equality of the sexes; not only did he come out
strongly for woman suffrage in the wake of Susan B. Anthony, but he
advocated Mrs. Bloomer’s bloomers as attire for women, though his wife
and daughters never wore them. He fought for free libraries, free
education, free books in the public schools, and freedom of the mind
from dogma and cant. Sitting comfortably with his feet on the table he
used to say, “You should give something back to your country because you
as a child were rocked in the cradle of liberty and nursed at the breast
of the goddess of truth.” Father always talked like that.
Although the first Socialist in the community, father also took single
tax in his stride and became the champion and friend of Henry George.
_Progress and Poverty_ was one of the latest additions to our meager
bookshelf. He laughed and rejoiced when he came upon what to him were
meaty sentences, reading them aloud to mother, who accepted them as fine
because he said they were fine. The rest of us all had to plow through
the book in order, as he said, to “elevate the mind.” To me it still
remains one of the dullest ever written.
Mother’s loyalty to father was tested repeatedly. Hers were the
responsibilities of feeding and clothing and managing on his income,
combined with the earnings of the oldest children. But father’s
generosity took no cognizance of fact. Once he was asked to buy a dozen
bananas for supper. Instead, he purchased a stalk of fifteen dozen, and
on his way home gave every single one to schoolboys and girls playing at
recess. On another occasion he showed up with eight of a neighbor’s
children; the ninth had been quarantined for diphtheria. They lived with
us for two months, crowded into our beds, tucked in between us at the
table. Mother welcomed them as she did his other guests. The house was
always open. She was not so much social-minded as inherently hospitable.
But with her frail body and slim pocketbook, it took courage to smile.
Once only that I can remember did mother’s patience give way. That was
when father invaded her realm too drastically and invited Henry George
to lecture at the leading hotel—with banquet thrown in. From the money
saved for the winter coal he had taken enough to entertain fifty men
whose children were well-fed and well-clothed. This was the sole time I
ever knew my parents to be at odds, though even then I heard no
quarreling words. Whatever happened between them I was not sure, but
father spent several days wooing back the smile and light to her eyes.
After Henry George’s visit we had to go without coal most of the winter.
With more pleasure than _Progress and Poverty_ I recall a _History of
the World_, _Lalla Rookh_, _Gulliver’s Travels_, and _Aesop’s Fables_.
The last-named touched a sympathetic, philosophical chord in father.
“Wolf! Wolf!” and “Sour Grapes” were often used to exemplify the
trifling imperfections to which all human beings were subject. For his
parables he drew also on the Bible, the most enormous volume you ever
laid eyes on, brass bound, with heavy clasps, which was the repository
of the family statistics; every birth, marriage, death was entered
there. The handbooks to father’s work were the physiologies, one of
which was combined with a materia medica. These were especially
attractive to me, perhaps because they were illustrated with vivid
plates, mostly red and blue, and described the fascinating, unknown
interior of the human body.
Neighbors were constantly coming to father for help. “What do you think
is the matter with this child?” Even without a thermometer he could tell
by feeling the skin whether you were feverish. He prescribed bismuth if
the diagnosis were “summer complaint,” castor oil if you had eaten
something which had disagreed with you, and always sulphur and molasses
in the spring “to clean the blood.”
Father’s cure-all was whiskey—“good whiskey,” which “liberated the
spirit.” There was nothing from a deranged system to a depressed mind
that it could not fix up. He never drank alone, but no masculine guest
ever entered the door or sat down to pass the time of day without his
producing the bottle. “Have a little shtimulant?”
The chief value of whiskey to father, however, was medicinal. If mumps
turned into a large, ugly abscess, he put the blade of his jackknife in
the fire, lanced the gland, and cleaned the wound with whiskey—good
whiskey. When my face was swollen with erysipelas, he painted it
morning, afternoon, and evening with tincture of iodine; the doctor had
so ordered. I was held firmly in place each time this torture was
inflicted, and, as soon as released, jumped and ran screaming and
howling into the cellar, where I plunged my burning face into a pan of
cool buttermilk until the pain subsided. This went on for several days,
and I was growing exhausted from the dreaded iodine. Finally father
decided to abandon the treatment and substitute good whiskey. Then I
recovered.
As necessary to father as the physiologies was a book by the famous
phrenologist, Orson Fuller, under whom he had studied. Father believed
implicitly that the head was the sculptured expression of the soul.
Straight or slanting eyes, a ridge between them, a turned-up nose, full
lips, bulges in front of or behind the ears—all these traits had
definite meaning for him. A research worker had to be inquisitive, a
seeker with more than normal curiosity-bumps; a musician had to have
order and time over the eyebrows; a pugilist could not be made but had
to have the proper protuberances around the ears.
One of father’s phrases was, “Nature is the perfect sculptor; she is
never wrong. If you seem to have made a mistake in reading, it is
because you have not read correctly.” He himself seldom made a mistake,
and his reputation spread far and wide. Young men in confusion of mind
and the customary puzzled, pre-graduation state came from Cornell and
other colleges to consult him about their careers. He examined heads and
faces, told them where he thought their true vocations lay, and
supplemented this advice later with voluminous interested
correspondence. I could not help picking up his principles and some of
his ardor, though I have never been able to analyze character so well.
No amount of front or salesmanship could divert him, whereas I have
often been taken in by a person’s self-confidence and estimation of
himself.
In the predominantly Roman Catholic community of Corning, set crosses in
the cemeteries were the rule for the poor and, before they went out of
style, angels in various poses for the rich. I used to watch father at
work. The rough, penciled sketch indicated little; even less did the
first unshaped block of stone. He played with the hard, unyielding
marble as though it were clay, making a tiny chip for a mouth, which
grew rounder and rounder. A face then emerged, a shoulder, a sweep of
drapery, praying hands, until finally the whole stood complete with
wings and halo.
Although Catholics were father’s best patrons, by nature and upbringing
he deplored their dogma. He joined the Knights of Labor, who were
agitating against the influx of unskilled immigrants from Catholic
countries, and this did not endear him to his clientele. Still less did
his espousal of Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, a man after his own heart,
whose works he had eagerly studied and used as texts. Once when the
challenger was sounding a ringing defiance in near-by towns, father
extended an invitation to speak in Corning and enlighten it. He
collected subscriptions to pay for the only hall in town, owned by
Father Coghlan. A notice was inserted in the paper that the meeting
would be held the following Sunday, but chiefly the news spread by word
of mouth. “Better come. Tell all your friends.”
Sunday afternoon arrived, and father escorted “Colonel Bob” from the
hotel to the hall, I trotting by his side. We pushed through the waiting
crowd, but shut doors stared silently and reprovingly—word had also
reached Father Coghlan.
Some were there to hear and learn, others to denounce. Antipathies
between the two suddenly exploded in action. Tomatoes, apples, and
cabbage stumps began to fly. This was my first experience of rage
directed against those holding views which were contrary to accepted
ones. It was my first, but by no means my last. I was to encounter it
many times, and always with the same bewilderment and disdain. My father
apparently felt only the disdain. Resolutely he announced the meeting
would take place in the woods near our home an hour later, then led
Ingersoll and the “flock” through the streets. I trudged along again, my
small hand clasped in his, my head held just as high.
Who cared for the dreary, dark, little hall! In the woodland was room
for all. Those who had come for discussion sat spellbound on the ground
in a ring around the standing orator. For them the booing had been
incidental and was ignored. I cannot remember a word of what Colonel
Ingersoll said, but the scene remains. It was late in the afternoon, and
the tall pines shot up against the fiery radiance of the setting sun,
which lit the sky with the brilliance peculiar to the afterglows of the
Chemung Valley.
Florid, gray-haired Father Coghlan, probably tall in his prime, came to
call on mother. He was a kindly old gentleman, not really intolerant.
Shutting the hall had been a matter of principle; he could not have an
atheist within those sacred walls. But he was willing to talk about it
afterwards. In fact, he rather enjoyed arguing with rebels. He was full
of persuasion which he used on mother, begging her to exercise her
influence with father to make him refrain from his evil ways. She had
been reared in the faith, although since her marriage to a freethinker
which had so distressed her parents, she had never attended church to my
knowledge. The priest was troubled to see her soul damned when she might
have been a good Catholic, and implored her to send her children to
church and to the parochial school, to stand firm against the intrusion
of godlessness. Mother must have suffered from the conflict.
None of us realized how the Ingersoll episode was to affect our
well-being. Thereafter we were known as children of the devil. On our
way to school names were shouted, tongues stuck out, grimaces made; the
juvenile stamp of disapproval had been set upon us. But we had been so
steeped in “heretic” notions that we were not particularly bothered by
this and could not see ahead into the dark future when a hard childhood
was to be made harder. No more marble angels were to be carved for local
Catholic cemeteries, and, while father’s income was diminishing, the
family was increasing.
Occasionally big commissions were offered him in adjacent towns where
his reputation was still high, and he was then away for days at a time,
coming back with a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars in his pocket; we
all had new clothes, and the house was full of plenty. Food was bought
for the winter—turnips, apples, flour, potatoes. But then again a year
might pass before he had another one, and meanwhile we had sunk deeply
into debt.
Towards orthodox religion father’s own attitude remained one of
tolerance. He looked upon the New Testament as the noble story of a
human being which, because of ignorance and the lack of printing
presses, had become exaggerated. He maintained that religions served
their purpose; some people depended on them all their lives for
discipline—to keep them straight, to make them honest. Others did not
need to be so held in line. But subjection to any church was a
reflection on strength and character. You should be able to get from
yourself what you had to go to church for.
When we asked which Sunday School we should attend, he suggested, “Try
them all, but be chained to none.” For a year or two I made the rounds,
especially at Christmas and Easter, when you received oranges and little
bags of candy. It was always cold at the Catholic church and the wooden
benches were very bare and hard; some seats were upholstered in soft,
red cloth but these were for the rich, who rented the pews and put
dollars into the plate at collection. I never liked to see the figure of
Jesus on the cross; we could not help Him because He had been crucified
long ago. I much preferred the Virgin Mary; she was beautiful,
smiling—the way I should like to look when I had a baby.
Saying my prayers for mother’s benefit was spasmodic. Ethel, the sister
nearest my own age, was more given than I to religious phases and I
could get her in bed faster if I said them with her. One evening when we
had finished this dutiful ritual I climbed on father’s chair to kiss him
good night. He asked quizzically, “What was that you were saying about
bread?”
“Why, that was in the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Give us this day our daily
bread.’”
“Who were you talking to?”
“To God.”
“Is God a baker?”
I was shocked. Nevertheless, I rallied to the attack and replied as best
I could, doubtless influenced by conversations I had heard. “No, of
course not. It means the rain, the sunshine, and all the things to make
the wheat, which makes the bread.”
“Well, well,” he replied, “so that’s the idea. Then why don’t you say
so? Always say what you mean, my daughter; it is much better.”
Thereafter I began to question what I had previously taken for granted
and to reason for myself. It was not pleasant, but father had taught me
to think. He gave none of us much peace. When we put on stout shoes he
said, “Very nice. Very comfortable. Do you know who made them?”
“Why, yes, the shoemaker.”
We then had to listen to graphic descriptions of factory conditions in
the shoe industry, so that we might learn something of the misery and
poverty the workers suffered in order to keep our feet warm and dry.
Father never talked about religion without bringing in the ballot box.
In fact, he took up Socialism because he believed it Christian
philosophy put into practice, and to me its ideals still come nearest to
carrying out what Christianity was supposed to do. Unceasingly he tried
to inculcate in us the idea that our duty lay not in considering what
might happen to us after death, but in doing something here and now to
make the lives of other human beings more decent. “You have no right to
material comforts without giving back to society the benefit of your
honest experience,” was one of his maxims, and his parting words to each
of his sons and daughters who had grown old enough to fend for
themselves were, “Leave the world better because you, my child, have
dwelt in it.”
This was something to live up to.
_Chapter Two_
BLIND GERM OF DAYS TO BE
“_I think, dearest Uncle, that you cannot _really_ wish
me to be the ‘mamma d’une nombreuse famille,’ for I
think you will see the great inconvenience a _large_
family would be to us all, and particularly to the
country, independent of the hardship and inconvenience
to myself; men never think, at least seldom think, what
a hard task it is for us women to go through this _very
often_._”
QUEEN VICTORIA _to_ KING LEOPOLD
Often when my brothers and sisters and I meet we remind each other of
funny or exciting adventures we used to have, but I never desire to live
that early part of my life again. Childhood is supposed to be a happy
time. Mine was difficult, though I did not then think of it as a
disadvantage nor do I now.
It never occurred to me to ask my parents for pocket money, but the day
came during my eighth year when I was desperately in want of ten cents.
_Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ was coming to town. On Saturday afternoon I started
out with one of my playmates, she with her dime, I with nothing but
faith. We reached the Corning Opera House half an hour early. The throng
at the entrance grew thicker and thicker. Curtain time had almost come,
and still no miracle. Nevertheless, I simply had to get into that
theater. All about me had tickets or money or both. Suddenly I felt
something touch my arm—the purse of a woman who was pressed close beside
me. It was open, and I could see the coveted coins within. One quick
move and I could have my heart’s desire. The longing was so deep and
hard that it blotted out everything except my imperative need. I _had_
to get into that theater.
I was about to put out my hand towards the bag when the doors were
thrown wide and the crowd precipitately surged forward. Being small, I
was shoved headlong under the ropes and into the safety of the nearest
seat. But I could take no joy in the play.
As I lay sleepless that night, after a prayer of thanks for my many
blessings, the crack of Simon Legree’s whip and the off-stage hounds
baying after Eliza were not occupying my mind. Their places were taken
by pictures of the devil which had tempted me and the hand of God which
had been stretched out to save me from theft.
Following this experience, which might have been called a spiritual
awakening, I began to connect my desires with reasoning about
consequences. This was difficult, because my feelings were strong and
urgent. I realized I was made up of two Me’s—one the thinking Me, the
other, willful and emotional, which sometimes exercised too great a
power; there was danger in her leadership and I set myself the task of
uniting the two by putting myself through ordeals of various sorts to
strengthen the head Me.
To gain greater fortitude, I began to make myself do what I feared
most—go upstairs alone to bed without a light, go down cellar without
singing, get up on the rafters in the barn and jump on the haystack
thirty feet below. When I was able to accomplish these without flinching
I felt more secure and more strong within myself.
But ahead of me still lay the hardest task of all.
Across the Chemung some friends of ours had a farm. Their orchard, heavy
with delectable apples, seemed to me a veritable Eden. But to reach it
by the wooden wagon bridge was three miles around; my brothers preferred
the shorter route over the high, narrow, iron span of the Erie Railroad,
under which the river raced deep and fast. The spaced ties held no
terrors for their long legs, and they often swung them over the edge
while they fished the stream beneath. When I made the trip father and
brother each gave a hand to which I clung fiercely, and they half lifted
me over the gaps which my shorter legs could hardly compass unaided.
Held tight as I was, I became dizzy from the height, and a panic of
terror seized me. In fact, the mere thought of the journey, even so well
supported, made me feel queer.
The younger children were forbidden to cross the bridge unaccompanied.
But I had to conquer my fear; I had to take that walk alone. I trembled
as I drew near. The more I feared it, the more determined I was to make
myself do it. I can recall now how stoically I put one foot on the first
tie and began the venturesome and precarious passage stretching
endlessly ahead of me. I dared not look down at the water; I wanted
terribly to see that my feet were firmly placed, but could not trust my
head.
About halfway over I heard the hum of the steel rails. My second dread
had come upon me—the always possible train. I could not see it because
of the curve at the end of the bridge. The singing grew louder as it
came closer. I knew I could not get across in time, and turned towards
the nearest girder to which I might cling. But it was six feet away. The
engine with a whistling shriek burst into view—snorting, huge, menacing,
rushing. I stumbled and fell.
In those days I was plump, and this plumpness saved me. Instinctively my
arms went out and curled around the ties as I dropped between them.
There I dangled over space. The bridge shook; the thunder swelled; the
long, swift passenger cars swooped down. I was less than three feet from
the outer rail, and a new terror gripped me. I had seen the sharp,
sizzling steam jet out as locomotives drew near the station. I screwed
my eyes shut and prayed the engineer not to turn on the steam.
After the blur of wheels had crashed by I could feel nothing. I hung
there, I do not know how long, until a friend of my father, who had been
fishing below, came to my rescue. He pulled up the fat, aching little
body, stood me on my feet again, asked me severely whether my father
knew where I was, gave me two brisk thwacks on the bottom, turned my
face towards home, and went back to his rod and line.
After waiting a few moments to think matters over I realized that it
would be impossible for me to retrace my course. Common sense aided me.
The journey forward was no further than the journey back. I stepped
ahead far more bravely, knowing if I could reach the end of the bridge I
would never be so terrified again. Though bruised and sore I continued
my cautious march and had as good a time at the farm as usual.
However, I returned home by the wooden bridge, the long way round, but
the practical one.
When Ethel asked me that night why I was putting vaseline under my arms
I merely said I had scratched myself. Foolhardiness was never highly
esteemed by anyone in the family. Though resourcefulness was taken for
granted, running into unnecessary danger was just nonsense, and I wanted
no censure for my disobedience.
We were seldom scolded, never spanked. If an unpleasant conversation
were needed, no other brother or sister was witness; neither parent ever
humiliated one child in front of another. This was part of the
sensitiveness of both. Mother in particular had a horror of personal
vehemence or acrimonious arguments; in trying to prevent or stop them
she would display amazing intrepidity—separating fighting dogs, fighting
boys, even fighting men.
Peacemaker as she was, on occasion she battled valiantly for her loved
ones, resenting bitterly the corporal punishment then customary in
schools. Once my brother Joe came home with his hands so swollen and
blistered that he could not do his evening chore of bringing in the
wood. Mother looked carefully at them and asked him what had happened.
He explained that the teacher had fallen asleep and several boys had
started throwing spitballs. When one had hit her on the nose she had
awakened with a little scream.
Most children had the trick of burying their faces behind their big
geographies and appearing to be studying the page with the most innocent
air in the world. But Joe had no such technique. He was doubled up with
laughter. The teacher first accused him of throwing the spitball, and,
when he denied it, insisted that he name the culprit. She had been
embarrassed by her ridiculous situation, and had turned her emotion into
what she considered righteous indignation. Joe had paid the penalty of
being beaten for his unwillingness to violate the schoolboy code of
honor.
This was injustice and the surest road to mother’s wrath. She started at
once the long trip to the school. When she found no one there, she
walked more miles to the teacher’s home. Reproof was called for and she
administered it. But that was not enough. She then demanded that father
go to the Board of Education and take Joe with him. There would have
been no sleeping in the house with her had he not done so. An
investigation was promised, which soon afterwards resulted in the
teacher’s dismissal.
The teachers at the Corning School were no worse than others of their
day; many of them were much better. The brick building was quite modern
for the time, with a playground around it and good principals to guide
it. Its superiority was due in part to the influence of the Houghtons,
the big industrialists of the town. For three generations they had been
making glassware unsurpassed for texture and beauty of design, and
hardly a family of means in the country did not have at least one
cut-glass centerpiece from Corning. The factories had prospered during
the kerosene lamp era, and now, with electricity coming into its own,
they were working overtime blowing light bulbs.
Corning was not on the whole a pleasant town. Along the river flats
lived the factory workers, chiefly Irish; on the heights above the
rolling clouds of smoke that belched from the chimneys lived the owners
and executives. The tiny yards of the former were a-sprawl with
children; in the gardens on the hills only two or three played. This
contrast made a track in my mind. Large families were associated with
poverty, toil, unemployment, drunkenness, cruelty, fighting, jails; the
small ones with cleanliness, leisure, freedom, light, space, sunshine.
The fathers of the small families owned their homes; the young-looking
mothers had time to play croquet with their husbands in the evenings on
the smooth lawns. Their clothes had style and charm, and the fragrance
of perfume clung about them. They walked hand in hand on shopping
expeditions with their children, who seemed positive in their right to
live. To me the distinction between happiness and unhappiness in
childhood was one of small families and of large families rather than of
wealth and poverty.
In our home, too, we felt the economic pressure directly ascribable to
size. I was always apprehensive that we might some day be like the
families on the flats, because we always had another baby coming,
another baby coming. A new litter of puppies was interesting but not out
of the ordinary; so, likewise, the cry of a new infant never seemed
unexpected. Neither excited any more curiosity than breakfast or dinner.
No one ever told me how they were born. I just knew.
I was little more than eight when I first helped wash the
fourteen-and-a-half-pound baby after one of mother’s deliveries. She had
had a “terrible hard time,” but father had pulled her through, and, in a
few weeks, tired and coughing, she was going about her work, believing
as usual that her latest was the prize of perfect babies. Mother’s
eleven children were all ten-pounders or more, and both she and father
had a eugenic pride of race. I used to hear her say that not one of hers
had a mark or blemish, although she had the utmost compassion for those
who might have cleft palates, crossed eyes, or be “born sick.”
Late one night a woman rushed into our house, seeking protection,
clutching in her shawl a scrawny, naked baby, raw with eczema. When her
hysteria was calmed sufficiently we learned that her husband had reeled
home drunk and had thrown the wailing infant out into the snow. Father
was all for summoning the police, but mother was too wise for that. She
dispatched him to talk to the man while she gave the weeping woman a
warm supper and comforted her. Father returned shortly to say it was
safe for her to go back to the multitude of other children because her
husband had fallen asleep. Ugly and taciturn though he was I could
picture him coming home after a hard day’s work to a household racked
with the shrieks of the suffering little thing. I could see that he too
was pathetic and a victim; I had sympathy for his rage.
But mother did lose one of her beautiful babies. Henry George McGlynn
Higgins had been named for two of the rebel figures father most admired.
The four-year-old was playing happily in the afternoon; a few hours
later he was gasping for breath. Father heated his home-made croup
kettle on the stove until it boiled, and then carried it steaming to be
put under the blanket which rose like a covered wagon above the bed. As
soon as he realized that home remedies were failing he sent for the
doctor. But events moved too swiftly for him. We had gone to bed with no
suspicion that by morning we should be one less. I was shocked and
surprised that something could come along and pick one of us out of the
world in so few hours.
I had no time, however, to consider the bewildering verity of death. We
all had to turn to consoling mother. Perhaps unconsciously she had
subscribed to father’s theory that the face was the mirror to the soul.
She complained she had no picture of her lovely boy, and kept reminding
herself of the fine shape of his head, the wide, well-set eyes, the
familiar contours which had been wiped forever from her sight, and might
soon be sponged from her memory as well.
Mother’s grief over her lost child increased father’s. Because in part
he blamed himself, he was desperate to assuage her sorrow. The day after
the burial he was constantly occupied in his studio, and when evening
fell he took me affectionately by the hand asking me to stay up and help
him on a piece of work he was about to do. I agreed willingly.
About eleven o’clock we went forth together into the pitch-black night,
father pushing ahead of him a wheelbarrow full of tools and a bag of
plaster of Paris. We walked on and on through the stillness for fully
two miles to the cemetery where the little brother had been buried.
Father knew every step, but it was scary and I clung to his hand.
Just beyond the gateway father hid the lighted lantern in the near-by
bushes over a grave and told me to wait there unless I heard somebody
coming. He expected me to be grown up at the age of ten. Nerves meant
sickness; if any child cried out in the night it was merely considered
“delicate.” Consequently I obeyed and watched, shivering with cold and
excitement, darting quick glances at the ghostly forms of some of
father’s monuments which loomed out of the darkness around me. I could
hear the steady chunk, chunk, chunk of his pick and shovel, and the
sharper sound when suddenly he struck the coffin.
Father had taken it as a matter of course that I should understand and
had not explained what he was about to do. But I never questioned his
actions. I did not know there was a law against a man’s digging up his
own dead child but, even had I known, I would have believed that the law
was wrong.
We traveled back the long, weary way, arriving home in the early hours
of the morning. Nothing was said to mother or to the others about that
amazing night’s adventure; I was not told to keep silent, but I knew
there was mystery in the air and it was no time to talk.
For two evenings I worked with father, helping him break the death mask,
mold and shape the cast. I remember the queer feeling I had when I
discovered some of the hair which had stuck in the plaster. On the third
day, just after supper, father said to us all, “Will you come into the
studio?” With tender eyes on mother he uncovered and presented to her
the bust of the dead little boy.
She was extraordinarily comforted. Though to me the model, perfect as it
was, seemed lifeless, every once in a while she entered the studio, took
off the cloth which protected it from the dust, wept and was relieved,
recovered it and went on.
Not one of us dared to utter a word of criticism about mother’s adored
and adoring husband; nevertheless her soul was harassed at times by his
philosophy of live and let live, by his principles against locked doors
and private property. She was merely selfless. Often when one of her
children was feverish she went to the kitchen pump for water so that it
might be cooler and fresher for parched lips. Once, groping her way on
such an errand, she stumbled over a tramp who had taken advantage of the
unlatched door and lay sprawled on the floor. She rushed back to arouse
father, telling him he must put the man out. But he only turned over on
his side and muttered, “Oh, let him alone. The poor divil needs sleep
like the rest of us.”
Another night mother was awakened by noises outside. “Father,” she
called, “there’s somebody at the hencoop!”
“What makes you think so?” he answered sleepily.
“I hear the chickens. They wouldn’t make a noise unless somebody was in
there. Get up!”
Obediently father put on his trousers and coat; not even before thieves
would he appear in his nightshirt out of his bedroom. He proceeded to
the kitchen door, and, holding a lamp on high, addressed the two men,
one of whom was handing out chickens to the other, “Hey, you, there!
What do you mean by coming to a man’s house in the middle of the night
and shtealing his chickens? What kind of citizens are you?”
This seemed to mother no time for a moral lecture. “Why don’t you go
out?” she prodded.
“It’s raining.”
“Give me the lamp!” she demanded, exasperated.
She started towards our nearest neighbor, splashing through the little
brook, getting her feet wet, calling, “Some one’s in our chicken house!”
Our neighbor armed himself and came running. A man with a gun sent the
marauders scurrying up the hill. That was mother’s philosophy. I think
father fell in her estimation for a few days after this. She expected
him to be the guardian of the home, but he was never that. His liberal
views were so well known that our house was marked with the tramp’s
patrin of the first degree. “Always get something here. Never be turned
away.” If it happened to be pay day they could count on a quarter as
well as a meal.
One particular evening we were expecting father home, his pockets
bulging with the money from his latest commission, but by nightfall he
had not yet returned. When mother heard a rap at the door she went
eagerly to open it. Two ragged strangers were standing there.
“Is the boss in?”
“No, but I’m looking for him any minute.”
“We want something to eat.”
With no more ceremony than was customary among the knights of the open
road they pushed through the door and made for the kitchen, plainly
knowing their way about.
“How dare you come into this house!” exclaimed mother indignantly.
“Toss! Beauty!” she cried sharply. The fear in her voice brought the
dogs lunging downstairs with fangs bared and hackles bristling. They
leaped at the backs of the uninvited guests.
Father came in a few hours later. The door was swinging wide, the snow
was blowing in. Torn scraps of clothing, spots of blood were about, and
mother was unconscious on the floor. He poured whiskey down her throat.
“It was only good whiskey that brought you to,” he often said
afterwards, recalling his alarm. He used the same remedy to pull her
through the ensuing six weeks of pneumonia. But he had been so
thoroughly worried that his generosity towards tramps lessened and his
largesse was curtailed.
After this illness mother coughed more than ever and it was evident the
pines were not helping her. Father decided to move; the house was so
obviously marked and he had to be gone so much he thought it unsafe for
us to live alone so far away.
_Chapter Three_
BOOKS ARE THE COMPASSES
So we moved into town, still on the western hills. It marked the
beginning of my adolescence, and such breaks are always disturbing. In
the house in the woods we had all been children together, but now some
of us were growing up.
Nevertheless, there were always smaller ones to be put to bed, to be
rocked to sleep; there were feet and knees to be scrubbed and hands to
be washed. Although we had more space, home study sometimes seemed to me
impossible. The living room was usually occupied by the older members of
the family, and the bedrooms were cold. I kept up in my lessons, but it
was simply because I enjoyed them.
In most schools teachers and pupils then were natural enemies, and the
one I had in the eighth grade was particularly adept at arousing
antagonism. She apparently disliked her job and the youngsters under her
care as much as we hated her. Sarcasm was both her defense and weapon of
attack. One day in mid-June I was delayed in getting off for school.
Well aware that being tardy was a heinous crime, I hurried, pulling and
tugging at my first pair of kid gloves, which Mary had just given me.
But the bell had rung two minutes before I walked into the room, flushed
and out of breath.
The teacher had already begun the class. She looked up at the
interruption. “Well, well, Miss Higgins, so your ladyship has arrived at
last! Ah, a new pair of gloves! I wonder that she even deigns to come to
school at all.”
Giggles rippled around me as I went into the cloakroom and laid down my
hat and gloves. I came back, praying the teacher would pay no more
attention to me, but as I walked painfully to my seat she continued
repeating with variations her mean comments. Even when I sat down she
did not stop. I tried to think of something else, tried not to listen,
tried to smile with the others. I endured it as long as I could, then
took out my books, pyramiding arithmetic, grammar, and speller, strapped
them up, rose, and left.
Mother was amazed when I burst in on her. “I will never go back to that
school again!” I exclaimed dramatically. “I have finished forever! I’ll
go to jail, I’ll work, I’ll starve, I’ll die! But back to that school
and teacher I will never go!”
As older brothers and sisters drifted home in the evening, they were as
horrified as mother. “But you have only two weeks more,” they
expostulated.
“I don’t care if it’s only an hour. I will not go back!”
When it became obvious that I would stick to my point, mother seemed
glad to have me to help her. I was thorough and strong and could get
through a surprising amount of work in no time. But the rest of the
family was seriously alarmed. The next few months were filled with
questions I could not answer. “What can you ever be without an
education?” “Are you equipped to earn a living?” “Is factory life a
pleasant prospect? If you don’t go back to school, you’ll surely end
there.”
“All right. I’ll go to work!” I announced defiantly. Work, even in the
factory, meant money, and money meant independence. I had no rebuttal to
their arguments; I was acting on an impulse that transcended reason, and
must have recognized that any explanation as to my momentous decision
would sound foolish.
Then suddenly father, mother, my second older sister Nan, and Mary, who
had been summoned to a family council, tried other tactics. I was sent
for two weeks to Chautauqua, there to take courses, hear lectures from
prominent speakers, listen to music. This was designed to stimulate my
interest in education and dispel any idea I might have of getting a job.
My impulse had been misconstrued. I was not rebelling against education
as such, but only against that particular school and that particular
teacher. When fall drew near and the next session was at hand I was
still reiterating that I would not go back, although I still had no
answer to Nan’s repeated, “What are you going to do?”
Nan was perhaps the most inspiring of all my brothers and sisters. The
exact contrary to father, she wanted us all to conform and was in tears
if we did not. To her, failure in this respect showed a lack of
breeding. Yet even more important than conformity was knowledge, which
was the basis for all true culture. She herself wanted to write, and had
received prizes for stories from _St. Nicholas_ and the _Youth’s
Companion_. But the family was too dependent upon the earnings of the
older girls, and she was obliged to postpone college and her equally
ardent desire to study sculpture. She became a translator of French and
German until these aspirations could be fulfilled.
At the time of my mutiny Nan was especially disturbed. “You won’t be
able to get anywhere without an education,” she stated firmly. She and
Mary, joining forces, together looked for a school, reasonable enough
for their purses, but good enough academically to prepare me for
Cornell. Private education was not so expensive as today, and families
of moderate means could afford it. My sisters selected Claverack College
and Hudson River Institute, about three miles from the town of Hudson in
the Catskill Mountains. Here, in one of the oldest coeducational
institutions in the country, the Methodist farmers of the Dutch valley
enrolled their sons and daughters; unfortunately it is now gone and with
it the healthy spirit it typified. One sister paid my tuition and the
other bought my books and clothes; for my board and room I was to work.
Going away to school was epochal in my life. The self-contained family
group was suddenly multiplied to five hundred strangers, all living and
studying under one roof. The girls’ dormitory was at one end, the boys’
at the other, but we shared the same dining room and sat together in
classes; occasionally a boy could call on a girl in the reception hall
if a teacher were present. I liked best the attitude of the teachers;
they were not so much policemen as companions and friends, and their
instruction was more individual and stimulating than at Corning.
I did not have money to do things the other girls did—go off for
week-ends or house-parties—but waiting on table or washing dishes did
not set me apart. The work was far easier than at home, and a girl was
pretty well praised for doing her share. At first the students all
appeared to me uninteresting and lacking in initiative. I never found
the same imaginative quality I was used to in my family, but as certain
ones began to stand out I discovered they had personalities of their
own.
I had been at Claverack only a few days and was still feeling homesick
when in the hall one morning I encountered the most beautiful creature I
had ever seen. Long hair flying from her shoulders, she was so slender
and wraithlike that she seemed unreal. I have never since been so moved
by human loveliness as I was by Esther’s. I cried at night because I
sensed it was something I could not reach. Even her clothes were unlike
all others. Many girls envied their taste and quality, but I knew they
belonged to her of right. Of every book I had read she was the heroine
come alive.
Worlds apart though we were in tradition, looks, behavior, experience,
Esther and I had the same romantic outlook. Having aspirations for the
theater, she remained only one year and then left to attend Charles
Frohman’s dramatic school. I had been too overpowered by my admiration
for her to be happy in it, and it kept me from caring particularly about
anyone else. Nevertheless, I am convinced that in any interchange of
affection the balance is unequal; one must give and the other be able to
receive. My second year I was the recipient of devotion from a younger
girl similar to that I had showered upon Esther. The loyalty and praise
of Amelia Stuart, my laughing friend, fed all the empty spaces in my
heart. She was gay and clever, a Methodist by upbringing but not by
conviction. Each Sunday afternoon, given over to the reading of the
Bible, we received permission to study together in my room, and there
occupied ourselves dutifully, I in mending and darning, and she reading
aloud, but interspersing solemn passages with ridiculous exaggerations.
What was intended to be a serious exercise of the spirit was turned into
merriment.
My friendship with these two girls has been interrupted, but never
broken.
Very shortly after my arrival at Claverack I had been infected by that
indefinable, nebulous quality called school spirit, and before long was
happily in the thick of activities. Assembly was held in the chapel
every morning, during which we all in turn had to render small speeches
and essays, or recite selections of poetry. I had a vivid feeling of how
things should be said, putting more dramatic fervor into certain lines
than my limited experience of the theater would seem to explain, and on
this account the elocution teacher encouraged me to have faith in my
talents.
Every girl, I suppose, at some time or other wants to be an actress.
Mary had taken me to the theater now and then, once when Maude Adams was
playing Juliet to John Drew’s Romeo, and had gone to some pains to
explain to me the difference between artistes like Mary Anderson or
Julia Marlowe and mere beauty as such. She would not have been pleased
at my seeing Lillian Russell, which I did during a Christmas holiday in
New York; Lillian Russell was too glamorous and, furthermore, she was
said to have accepted jewelry from men.
One vacation I announced to my family that I was thinking of a stage
career. Disapproval was evident on all sides. Father pooh-poohed; Mary
alone held out hope. She said I had ability and should go to dramatic
school in New York as soon as I had finished Claverack. She would apply
immediately to Charles Frohman to have me understudy Maude Adams, whom I
at least was said to resemble physically—small and with the same
abundant red-brown hair. Lacking good features I took pride only in my
thick, long braids. I used to decorate them with ribbons and admire the
effect in the mirror.
The application was made; I was photographed in various poses with and
without hats. A return letter from the school management came, enclosing
a form to be filled in with name, address, age, height, weight, color of
hair, eyes, and skin.
But additional data were required as to the exact length of the legs,
both right and left, as well as measurements of ankle, calf, knee, and
thigh. I knew my proportions in a general way. Those were the days when
every pack of cigarettes carried a bonus in the shape of a pictured
actress, plump and well-formed. In the gymnasium the girls had compared
sizes with these beauties. But to see such personal information go
coldly down on paper to be sent off to strange men was unthinkable. I
had expected to have to account for the quality of my voice, for my
ability to sing, to play, for grace, agility, character, and morals.
Since I could not see what legs had to do with being a second Maude
Adams, I did not fill in the printed form nor send the photographs, but
just put them all away, and turned to other fields where something
beside legs was to count.
Chapel never bored me. I had come to dislike ritual in many of the
churches I had visited—kneeling for prayer, sitting for instruction,
standing for praise. But in a Methodist chapel anyone could get up and
express a conviction. Young sprouts here were thinking and discussing
the Bible, religion, and politics. Should the individual be submerged in
the state? If you had a right to free thought as an individual, should
you give it up to the church?
We scribbled during study periods, debated in the evenings. Without
always digesting them but with great positiveness I carried over many of
the opinions I had heard expounded at home. To most of the boys and
girls those Saturday mornings when the more ambitious efforts were
offered represented genuine torture. They stuttered and stammered
painfully. I was just as nervous—more so probably. Nevertheless, I was
so ardent for suffrage, for anything which would “emancipate” women and
humanity, that I was eager to proclaim theories of my own.
Father was still the spring from which I drank, and I sent long letters
home, getting in reply still longer ones, filled with ammunition about
the historical background of the importance of women—Helen of Troy,
Ruth, Cleopatra, Poppaea, famous queens, women authors and poets.
When news spread that I was to present my essay, “Women’s Rights,” the
boys, following the male attitude which most people have forgotten but
which every suffragette well remembers, jeered and drew cartoons of
women wearing trousers, stiff collars, and smoking huge cigars.
Undeterred, I was spurred on to think up new arguments. I studied and
wrote as never before, stealing away to the cemetery and standing on the
monuments over the graves. Each day in the quiet of the dead I repeated
and repeated that speech out loud. What an essay it was!
“Votes for Women” banners were not yet flying, and this early faint
bleating of mine aroused little enthusiasm. I turned then to an equally
stern subject. The other students had automatically accepted the cause
of solid money. I espoused free silver. At Chautauqua I had heard echoes
of those first notes sounded by Bryan for the working classes. The
spirit of humanitarianism in industry had been growing and swelling, but
it was still deep buried. I believe any great concept must be present in
the mass consciousness before any one figure can tap it and set it free
on its irresistible way.
I had not seen the “Boy Orator of the Platte,” but the country was
ringing with his words, “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor
this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of
gold.” These rich and sonorous phrases made me realize the importance of
clothing ideas in fine language. Far more, however, they struck a solemn
chord within me. I, also, in an obscure and unformed way, wanted to help
grasp Utopia from the skies and plant it on earth. But what to do and
where to start I did not know.
Due to my “advanced ideas,” for a time, at least, I am sorry to say, it
was chiefly the grinds with whom I “walked in Lovers’ Lane,” nodding
wisely and answering their earnest aspirations with profound advice. But
this did not last. Soon I was going through the usual boy and girl
romances; each season brought a new one. I took none of them very
seriously, but adroitly combined flirtatiousness with the conviction
that marriage was something towards which I must develop. Therefore I
turned the vague and tentative suggestions of my juvenile beaus by
saying, “I would never think of jumping into marriage without definite
preparation and study of its responsibilities.” Practically no women
then went into professions; matrimony was the only way out. It seems
ages ago.
Various pranks occurred at Claverack, such as taking walks with boys out
of bounds and going to forbidden places for tea. Towards the end of my
last year I thought up the idea that several of us should slip out
through the window and down to the village dance hall where our special
admirers would meet us. About eleven-thirty, in the midst of the gayety,
in walked our principal, Mr. Flack, together with the preceptress who
had come for the “ladies.” We were all marched back to school, uneasy
but silent.
The next morning I received a special invitation to call at The Office.
I entered. Mr. Flack, a small, slight, serious, student type of man,
with a large head and high brow, was standing with his back to me. I sat
down. He gave me no greeting but kept on at his books. To all
appearances he did not know I was there. Then, without looking around,
he said, “Miss Higgins, don’t you feel rather ashamed of yourself for
getting those girls into trouble last night, by taking them out and
making them break the rules? They may even have to be sent home.”
Although surprised that he should have known I was the one responsible,
I could not deny it, but it flashed across my mind at first that someone
must have told him. He went on with rapid flow, almost as though talking
to himself, “I’ve watched you ever since you came and I don’t need to be
told that you must have been the ringleader. Again and again I’ve
noticed your influence over others. I want to call your attention to
this, because I know you’re going to use it in the future. You must make
your choice—whether to get yourself and others into difficulty, or else
guide yourself and others into constructive activities which will do you
and them credit.”
I do not quite recall what else he said, but I have never forgotten
going out of his room that day. This could not exactly be called a
turning point in my life, but from then on I realized more strongly than
before that there was a something within myself which could and should
be kept under my control and direction.
Long afterwards I wrote to thank Mr. Flack for his wisdom in offering
guidance instead of harsh discipline. He died a few years later, and I
was glad I had been able to place a rose in his hand rather than on his
grave.
I spent three happy years at Claverack. The following season I decided
to try my hand at teaching, then a lady-like thing to do. A position was
open to me in the first grade of a new public school in southern New
Jersey. The majority of the pupils—Poles, Hungarians, Swedes—could not
speak English. In they came regularly. I was beside myself to know what
to do with eighty-four children who could not understand a word I said.
I loved those small, black-haired and tow-headed urchins who became
bored with sitting and, on their own, began stunts to entertain
themselves. But I was so tired at the end of the day that I often lay
down before dressing for dinner and awakened the next morning barely in
time to start the routine. In very short order I became aware of the
fact that teaching was not merely a job, it was a profession, and
training was necessary if you were to do it well. I was not suited by
temperament, and therefore had no right to this vocation. I had been
struggling for only a brief while when father summoned me home to nurse
mother.
She was weak and pale and the high red spots on her cheek bones stood
out startlingly against her white face. Although she was now spitting
blood when she coughed we still expected her to live on forever. She had
been ill so long; this was just another attack among many. Father
carried her from room to room, and tried desperately to devise little
comforts. We shut the doors and windows to keep out any breath of the
raw March air, and in the stuffy atmosphere we toiled over her bed.
In an effort to be more efficient in caring for mother I tried to find
out something about consumption by borrowing medical books from the
library of the local doctor, who was a friend of the family, and in
doing this became so interested in medicine that I decided definitely I
would study to be an M.D. When I went back for more volumes and
announced my decision the doctor gave them to me, but smiled tolerantly,
“You’ll probably get over it.”
I had been closely confined for a long time when I was invited to
Buffalo for the Easter holidays to meet again one of the boys by whom I
had been beaued at Claverack. Mother insisted that I needed a vacation.
Mary and Nan were both there; I could stay with them, and we planned a
pleasant trip to Niagara Falls for the day.
With me out of the way mother sent off the little children one by one on
some pretext or another. She had more difficulty with father. The fire
bricks in the stove had split and she told him he must go to town and
get new ones. Much against his will, because he was vaguely unquiet, he
started for the foundry. He had left only because mother seemed to want
it so much, but when he had walked a few blocks, he found he could not
go on. For some Celtic mystic reason of his own he turned abruptly
around and came back to the house. Mother was gasping in death. All the
family hated scenes, she most of all. She had known she was to die and
wanted to be alone.
It was a folk superstition that a consumptive who survived through the
month of March would live until November. Mother died on the
thirty-first of the month, leaving father desolate and inconsolable. I
came flying home. The house was silent and he hardly spoke. Suddenly the
stillness of the night was broken by a wailing and Toss was found with
his paws on the coffin, mourning and howling—the most poignant and
agonizing sound I had ever heard.
I had to take mother’s place—manage the finances, order the meals, pay
the debts. There was nothing left for my clothing nor for any outside
diversions. All that could be squeezed out by making this or that do had
to go for shoes or necessities for the younger brothers. Mend, patch,
sew as you would, there was a limit to the endurance of trousers, and
new ones had to be purchased.
To add to my woes, father seemed to me, who was sensitive to criticism,
suddenly metamorphosed from a loving, gentle, benevolent parent into a
most aggravating, irritating tyrant; nobody in any fairy tale I had ever
read was quite so cruel. He who had given us the world in which to roam
now apparently wanted to put us behind prison bars. His unreasonableness
was not directed towards the boys, who were in bed as soon as lessons
were done, but towards his daughters, Ethel and me. Whatever we did was
wrong. He objected particularly to young men.
Ethel was receiving the concentrated attention of Jack Byrne. Father in
scolding her said she should mix more. My beaus were a little older than
the ones I had had at school, and more earnest in their intentions.
Though not one really interested me—their conversation seemed flat,
consisting of foolish questions and smart, silly replies—father scolded
me also about them, “Why aren’t you serious like your sister? Can’t you
settle yourself to one? Do you have to have somebody different every
evening?”
Messages were coming to me from a young man going West, postmarked
Chicago or San Francisco. These daily letters and sometimes telegrams as
well, were not father’s idea of wooing. What could anyone have to say
every day? To his way of thinking, a decent man came to the house and
did his talking straight; he sat around with the family and got
acquainted. Father said, “That fellow’s a scoundrel. He’s too worldly.
He’s not even known in town.”
We had to ask permission whether Tom or Jack or Henry could call.
Without reason or explanation father said, “No,” and that was an end to
it. If we went out, we had to be back at ten and give an account of
ourselves.
Then came the climax. Ethel and I had gone to an open-air concert. On
the stroke of ten we were a full block away from home running with all
our might. When we arrived, three minutes late, the house was in utter
darkness—not a sight nor sound of a living creature anywhere. We banged
and knocked. We tried the front door, the back, and the side, then again
the front. It opened part way; father looked out, reached forth a hand
and caught Ethel’s arm, saying, “This outrageous behavior is not your
fault. Come in.” With that he pulled her inside, and the door slammed,
leaving me in the dark, stunned and bewildered. I did not know this
monster.
Hurt beyond words, I sat down on the steps, worrying not only about this
night but about the next day and the next, concerned over the children
left at home with this new kind of father. I was sure if I waited long
enough he would come out for me, but it was a chilly evening in October.
I had no wrap, and began to grow very cold.
I walked away from the house, trying to decide where I should go and
what I should do. I could not linger on the streets indefinitely, with
the possibility of encountering some tipsy factory hand or drummer
passing through. At first there seemed no one to turn to. Finally,
exhausted by stress of emotion, I went to the home of the girl who had
been with us at the concert. She had not yet gone to bed, and her mother
welcomed me so hospitably that I shall be eternally grateful. The next
morning she lent me carfare to go to Elmira, where I had friends with
whom I could stay.
Meantime father had found me gone. He had dressed and tramped up and
down First Street, searching every byway, inquiring whether I had been
seen. When he had returned at daybreak to find me still missing he had
sent word to Mary, who received his message at almost the same time as
one from me, telling her not to worry; I was all right. Both of them
urged me to come back to Corning, and in a few days I did so, taking up
again my responsibilities. Father and I tried to talk it over, but we
could not meet on the old ground; between us a deep silence had fallen.
Father had almost stopped expounding; instead, he was reading more. Debs
had come on his horizon, and the Socialist papers cropping up all over
the country were appearing in the house. From the Free Library, which he
had helped to establish years earlier, he was borrowing Spencer, who was
modern for that time, and other books on sociology.
I had given up encouraging young men to see me, but I, too, was
patronizing the library. My books were fiction. “All nonsense,” father
snorted at the mention of such titles as _Graustark_, _Prisoners of
Hope_, or _Three Musketeers_. The word “novel” was still shocking to
many people, and he classed them all as “love stories.” “Read to
cultivate and uplift your mind. Read what will benefit you in the battle
of life,” he admonished. But I continued my escape from the daily
humdrum to revel in romances, devouring them in the evenings and hiding
them under the mattress during the day.
One noon when I was waiting for the children to come in to lunch I was
buried in _David Harum_, finding it very funny, and did not hear father
enter. He stood ominously in the doorway. I should have felt trapped,
but, instead, without warning and without reason, the old love flamed up
again. I laughed and laughed. I was no longer afraid nor did I care for
his scowls or his silly old notions. The long silence was broken.
“Do listen to this.” And I started reading. The frown began to melt away
and soon father too was chuckling. This was the first laughter that had
been heard in that dreary household since mother’s death. The book
disappeared into his room, and soon thereafter he was caught seeking
more of “that nonsense.”
At last I realized why father had been so different. He had been lonely
for mother, lonely for her love, and doubtless missed her ready
appreciation of his own longings and misgivings. Then, too, he had
always before depended on her to understand and direct us. He was
probably a trifle jealous, though not consciously, because he considered
jealousy an animal trait far beneath him, and refused to recognize it in
himself. Nevertheless, beaus had been sidetracking the affections of his
little girls. So oppressed had he been by his sense of responsibility
that he had slipped in judgment and in so doing slid into the small-town
rut of propriety. His belated discipline, caused by worry and anxiety,
was merely an attempt to guide his children.
I, however, considered the time had passed for such guidance. I had to
step forth by myself along the experimental path of adulthood. Though
the immediate occasion for reading medical books had ceased with
mother’s death, I had never, during these months, lost my deep
conviction that perhaps she might have been saved had I had sufficient
knowledge of medicine. This was linked up with my latent desire to be of
service in the world. The career of a physician seemed to fulfill all my
requirements. I could not at the moment see how the gap in education
from Claverack to medical school was to be bridged. Nevertheless, I
could at least make a start with nursing.
But father, though he proclaimed his belief in perfect independence of
thought and mind, could not approve nursing as a profession, even when I
told him that some of the nicest girls were going into it. “Well, they
won’t be nice long,” he growled. “It’s no sort of work for girls to be
doing.” My argument that he himself had taught us to help other people
had no effect.
Father’s notions, however, were not going to divert me from my
intention; no matter how peaceful the home atmosphere had become, still
I had to get out and try my wings. For six months more we jogged along,
then, just a year after mother had died, Esther asked me to visit her in
New York. I really wanted to train in the city, but her mother knew
someone on the board of the White Plains Hospital, which was just
initiating a school. There I was accepted as a probationer.
_Chapter Four_
DARKNESS THERE AND NOTHING MORE
The old White Plains Hospital, not at all like a modern institution, had
been a three-storied manor house, long deserted because two people had
once been found mysteriously dead in it and thereafter nobody would rent
or buy. The hospital board, scoffing at superstition, had gladly
purchased it at the low price to which it had been reduced. However, in
spite of rearrangements and redecorating, many people in White Plains
went all the way to the Tarrytown Hospital rather than enter the haunted
portals.
Once set in spacious grounds the building was still far back from the
road; a high wall immediately behind it shut off the view of the next
street and nothing could be seen beyond except the roof of what had been
the stable. The surrounding tall trees made it shadowy even in the
daytime. To reach the office you had to cross a broad pillared veranda.
Parlor and sitting room had been thrown together for the male ward, and
an operating room had been tacked on to the rear. The great wide
stairway of fumed oak, lighted at night by low-turned gas jets, swept up
through the lofty ceiling. On the second floor were the female ward and
a few private rooms. The dozen or so nurses slept in the made-over
servants’ quarters under the gambrel roof.
Student nurses in large modern hospitals have little idea what our life
was like in a small one thirty-five years ago. The single bathroom on
each floor was way at the back. We did not have a resident interne, and,
consequently, had to depend mainly upon our own judgment. Since we had
no electricity, we could not ring a bell and have our needs supplied,
and had to use our legs for elevators. A probationer had to learn to
make dressings, bandages, mix solutions, and toil over sterilizing. She
put two inches of water in the wash-boiler, laid a board across the
bricks placed in the bottom, and balanced the laundered linen and gauze
on top. Then, clapping on the lid, she set the water to boiling briskly,
watched the clock, and when the prescribed number of minutes had elapsed
the sterilizing was over.
The great self-confidence with which I entered upon my duties soon
received a slight shock. One of our cases was an old man from the County
Home. He complained chiefly of pains in his leg and, since his condition
was not very serious, the superintendent of nurses left him one
afternoon in my care. This was my first patient. When I heard the
clapper of his little nickeled bell, I hurried with a professional air
to his bedside.
“Missy, will you please bandage up my sore leg? It does me so much
good.”
Having just had my initial lesson in bandaging, I was elated at this
opportunity to try my skill. I set to work with great precision, and,
when I had finished, congratulated myself on a neat job, admiring the
smooth white leg. My first entry went on his record sheet.
A little later the superintendent, in making her rounds, regarded the
old man perplexedly.
“Why have you got your leg bandaged?”
“I asked the nurse to do it for me.”
“Why that leg? It’s the other one that hurts.”
“Oh, she was so kind I didn’t want to stop her.”
I bowed my head in embarrassment, but I was young and eager, and it did
not stay bowed long.
Within a short period I considered myself thoroughly inured to what many
look upon as the unpleasant aspects of nursing; the sight of blood never
made me squeamish and I had watched operations, even on the brain, with
none of the usual sick giddiness. Then one day the driver of a Macy
delivery wagon, who had fallen off the seat, was brought in with a split
nose. I was holding the basin for the young doctor who was stitching it
up, when one of the other nurses said something to tease him. He dropped
his work, leaving the needle and cat-gut thread sticking across the
patient’s nose, and chased her out of the room and down the hall. The
patient, painless under a local anesthetic, gazed mildly after them; but
the idea that doctor and nurse could be so callous as to play jokes
horrified me.
When pursuer and pursued returned they found me in a heap on the floor,
the basin tipped over beside me, instruments and sponges scattered
everywhere. The patient was still sitting quietly waiting for all the
foolishness to stop. I am glad to say this was the one and only time I
ever fainted on duty.
The training, rigid though it was, would have been far less difficult
had it not been for the truly diabolical head nurse. In the morning she
was all smiles, so saintly that you could almost glimpse the halo around
her head. But as the day wore on the demon in her appeared. She could
always think up extra things for you to do to keep you from your regular
afternoon two hours off. This was particularly hard on me because I had
developed tubercular glands and was running a temperature. In my second
year I was operated on, and two weeks later assigned to night duty,
where I stayed for three awful months.
My worst tribulation came during this period. People then seldom went to
hospitals with minor ailments; our patients were commonly the very sick,
requiring a maximum of attention. There was no orderly and I could use
only my left hand because my right shoulder was still bandaged. I took
care of admissions, entered case histories, and, when sharp bells
punctuated the waiting stillness, sometimes one coming before I had time
to answer the first, I pattered hurriedly up and down the three flights,
through the shadows relieved only by the faint red glow from the gas
jets. I suppose adventures were inevitable.
One night an Italian was picked up on the street in a state of almost
complete exhaustion, and brought to the hospital. He was so ill with
suspected typhoid that he should have had a “special,” but instead he
was placed in the ward. An old leather couch stood across the windows,
and whenever a pause came in my duties I lay down. From there I could
keep an eye on my new patient. Sick as he was he insisted on making the
long trip through the ward to the bathroom. I could not explain how
unwise this was, because he could not understand a word of English. He
must have reeled out of his bed between thirty and forty times.
Just as the early spring dawn came creeping in the window behind me I
grew drowsy. I was on the point of dozing off when some premonition
warned me and I opened my eyelids enough to see the man reach under his
pillow, take something out cautiously, glide from his bed. Spellbound I
watched him slithering soft-footedly as he edged his way towards me. I
seemed to be hypnotized with sleep and could not stir. He came nearer
and nearer with eyes fixed, hands behind him. Suddenly I snapped into
duty, arose quickly, ordered him back to bed, and ran ahead to
straighten his sheets and pillows, not realizing my danger until he
loomed over me, his knife in his hand. Before he could thrust I grabbed
his arm and held it. Though I was small-boned I had good muscles, and he
was very ill.
Meanwhile, another patient snatched up his bell and rang, and rang and
rang. Nobody answered. The nurses were too far away to hear; the other
patients in the ward were unable to help me. But the man quickly used up
what little energy he had, and I was able to get the knife from him,
push him back in bed, and take his temperature. I assumed he had
suddenly become delirious.
About seven o’clock I answered a summons to the front door and found
three policemen who wanted to know whether we had an Italian patient.
“Indeed we have,” I answered feelingly and called the superintendent.
When the red tape was unwound, I learned that my Italian belonged to a
gang which had been hiding in a cave between Tarrytown and White Plains,
holding up passers-by. Amongst them they had committed five murders. The
others had all been hunted down, but this man’s collapse had temporarily
covered his whereabouts. The attack on me had apparently been merely
incidental to his attempt at escape through the open window behind me.
He was carried off to the County Hospital Jail, and I was not sorry to
see him go.
After this incident an orderly was employed and, though he was allowed
to sleep at night, it was reassuring to know he could be called in an
emergency. The emergency soon arose. A young man of about twenty-five,
of well-to-do parents, was admitted as an alcoholic. I remember that I
was impressed by the softness of his handshake when I greeted him. He
had the first symptoms of delirium tremens but he was now perfectly
conscious and needed no more than routine attention.
Sometime in the night the new arrival asked me to get him a drink of
water. When I came back into the room and offered it to him he knocked
me into the corner ten feet away. As my head banged against the wall, he
leaped out of bed after me and reached down for my throat. Though
half-stunned and off my feet, I yet had more strength than the man whose
flabby muscles refused to obey his will. The patient in the adjoining
bed rang and in a few moments the orderly came to my assistance. Between
us we got the poor crazed youth into a strait jacket. The doctor who was
summoned could do nothing and in the morning the young man mercifully
died.
To differentiate between things real and things imaginary was not always
easy at nighttime. One morning about two o’clock I was writing my case
histories in the reception office on the ground floor just off the
veranda. Both window and curtain behind my back were up about ten inches
to let in the cool, moist air. Abruptly I had a feeling that eyes were
staring at me. I could not have explained why; I had heard no sound, but
I was certain some human being was somewhere about. Anybody who had come
on legitimate business would have spoken. Perhaps it was another patient
with a knife. Should I sit still? Should I look behind me?
I turned my head to the window, and there an ugly, grinning face with a
spreading, black mustache was peering in at me. It might have been
disembodied; all I could see was this extraordinary face, white against
the inky background. It was not a patient, not anyone in my charge.
Relief was immediate and action automatic. I seized the long window
pole, twice as tall as I, dashed to the outer door, and shooed him off
the veranda. He ran for the outer gate while I brandished my weapon
after him.
Such instantaneous responses must have been the result of having in
childhood sent fears about their business before they could gather
momentum. Now I could usually act without having to think very much
about them or be troubled in retrospect. They were all in the day’s work
of the night nurse.
Probably the fact that I was low in vitality made me more susceptible to
mental than physical influences. Realistic doctors and stern head nurses
tried to keep tales of the old house from the probationers, but not very
successfully. When the colored patients could not sleep they used to
tell us weird stories, and with rolling eyes solemnly affirmed they were
true. One old darky woman, hearing the hoot owls begin their mournful
“too-whoo, too-whoo,” would sit straight up in her bed and whisper,
“Suppose dat callin’ me? Hit’s callin’ someone in dis hospital.”
Again and again after the owls’ hooting either somebody in the hospital
died, or was brought in to die from an accident. Reason told me this was
pure coincidence, but it began to get on my nerves.
And then stranger events, for which I could find no explanation,
followed. Once when I was making my rounds a little after midnight, I
turned into the room occupied by the tubercular valet of a member of the
Iselin family. I had expected him to be sleeping quietly because he was
merely there to rest up before being sent back home to England, but he
was awake and asked for ice. I started for the refrigerator, which was
two flights down in the cellar. But at the top of the stairs I suddenly
stopped short—“One—Two—Three!” I heard dull, distinct knocks directly
under the stairway.
Not one, single, tangible thing near by could have made those sounds. In
the space of a few seconds I took an inventory of the importance of my
life as compared to the proper care of my patient. I had to walk
deliberately down those steps, not knowing what might be lying in wait
for me below. As I stepped on the first tread the same knocks came
again—“One—Two—Three!”
I tried to hurry but it seemed to me that each foot had tons of iron
attached to it. The little red devils of night lights blinked at me and
seemed to make the shadows thicker in the corners. But nothing clutched
me from the dim and ghostly hall. I got down those steps somehow and
passed through the dining room into the kitchen. There I paused again.
Should I take a butcher knife with me? “No, I won’t do that,” I answered
myself resolutely, and started for the cellar stairs.
For the third time came the knocking. Glancing to right and left, my
back against the dark, I crept down, reached the refrigerator, broke off
some chunks of ice with trembling hands, put them in a bowl, steeled
myself while I chopped them into still finer pieces, and set out on the
return, my feet much lighter going up than down.
I had been away only a brief while altogether, but the patient, for no
apparent cause, had had a hemorrhage, and died in a few minutes.
Many times after that I heard these nocturnal sounds, usually overhead.
They began to seem more like footsteps—“tap, tap, tap, tap,”—very quick
and a bit muffled. Soon I was not sleeping well in the daytime.
One morning I asked at breakfast table, “Who was walking around last
night?”
“I wasn’t.” “Not I.” “Certainly not me,” came a chorus. “What makes you
think someone was up?”
“I distinctly heard footsteps the full length of the third floor.”
“What time?”
“Around four o’clock.”
But nobody admitted to having been up. “Then one of you must have been
walking in your sleep,” I insisted.
The nurse who had preceded me on night duty timidly contributed, “I
always heard somebody. I didn’t want to say anything about it for fear
you’d think I was queer.”
Towards morning of the very next night when I was in the second floor
ward, I heard the patter again above my head. I ran upstairs to the
nurses’ quarters as fast as I could and looked down the corridor. Every
door was tight shut. I tore down two flights to the first floor. The
noise came once more above me. Back to the second floor. All patients
were in their beds. I asked the only wakeful one, “Did you get up just
now?”
“No.”
“Did anybody else get up?”
“No.”
Some nights went by quietly. But I heard the noises often enough to
become truly concerned for fear I might be imagining things. I said to
one of the older nurses, “I’m going to wake you up and see whether you
hear them too.”
“I’ll sit up with you,” she offered.
“No, I’ll call you. They never come until almost morning.”
The next time, at the first tap, I hurried to her room, shook her awake,
led her to the floor below, “There, do you hear it?”
Her expression was confirmation enough.
Leaving her I raced down another flight, and waited. In a moment the
“Tap, tap, tap, tap” came again from overhead. Up I went. She said she
had heard it all right but it had come from over _her_ head. At least my
senses were not playing me tricks. My accounts were given greater
credence, and other nurses sometimes interrupted their slumbers to
listen.
One of my companions told a young and intelligent doctor on the staff
that I had better be taken off night duty before I had a nervous
breakdown. Though he thought this was girlish nonsense, he could see I
was being seriously affected, and anyhow the strain of three continuous
months at such a hard task was far too much. Another nurse relieved me.
After my second glandular operation I was placed in one of the private
rooms on the upper floor. I had not come through very well, and this
same doctor remained in the hospital all night to be on call. Being
restless, I woke up, only to hear the identical noises which had haunted
me for so long. I called him and exclaimed, “There it is. Don’t you hear
it?”
He did, but confidently he strode upstairs to the nurses’ floor. I knew
he would find nothing. When he came back, I asked, “Did you see anyone?”
“No. Apparently everybody was asleep. I looked in all the rooms.”
Immediately the raps came again. He moved a little faster to get
downstairs. In a few minutes he put his head back in the door. “You’re
in bed? You haven’t been up?” I assured him I had not moved, knowing
well he must have heard them as always I had, from above.
Though still believing somebody was walking around the place, the doctor
by this time was determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, and
returned every night for a week. But the sound was a will-o’-the-wisp.
He never could catch up with it. He was so eager to exhaust every
possibility that he even brought the matter before the board. One of
them patronizingly explained that it was probably the echo from some rat
in the walls; they were in the habit of dismissing thus lightly the
superstitions which clung about the old house.
The doctor continued his detective work until one day he appeared in
great good humor. From the rear windows he pointed to the roof which
rose beyond the high back wall. “I’ve found it. That stable is built on
the same timbers as this house. When some horse grows restless towards
morning he stamps and the vibration is carried through them underground
to this building. Now do you believe in ghosts?”
Life was by no means so serious as all this sounds. Amelia had followed
me into the hospital and we continued our gay times together. For that
matter nursing itself often presented amusing aspects. The supply of
registered nurses was very small, and in our last year of training we
were sent out on private cases, thus seeing both the highlights and
lowlights of life, which prepared us well in experience.
One which had romantic overtones took place immediately after Howard
Willett had transferred his house-party from Aiken, South Carolina, to
Gedney Farms Manor in White Plains. The indisposition of young Eugene
Sugney Reynal was pronounced scarlet fever. The contagion began
spreading among the guests and servants, and Dr. Julius Schmid, old and
honored, a noteworthy figure in the community and also our chief of
staff, detailed three of us nurses for service there, practically
turning the place into a hospital for five weeks.
My special charge was Adelaide Fitzgerald, Reynal’s fiancée, but as
necessity arose we shifted around. Reynal’s condition grew steadily
worse. One morning at daybreak when the patient was almost in a coma Dr.
Schmid sent for the priest to administer extreme unction, and said to
me, “You’d better get Miss Fitzgerald and tell her there’s very little
hope.”
She knelt by his bed, “Gene,” she called to him, “Gene, we’re going to
be married—right now.”
Reynal was as near death as a man could be, but her voice reached into
his subconscious and summoned him back. Another nurse and I, hastily
called upon to act as bridesmaids, stood in starched and rustling white
beside the bed. It was extraordinary to watch; Reynal seemed to shake
himself alive until he was conscious enough to respond “I do” to the
priest who had arrived to perform quite a different office.
As an anti-climax to all the excitement, and to my intense disgust, I
myself came down with a mild attack of scarlet fever. I was so
embarrassed that I went right on working and did not take to my bed
until I actually began to peel.
My usual cases offered drama of another sort. Often I was called in the
middle of the night on a maternity case, perhaps ten miles away from the
hospital, where I had to sterilize the water and boil the forceps over a
wood fire in the kitchen stove while the doctor scrubbed up as best he
could. Many times labor terminated before he could arrive and I had to
perform the delivery by myself.
To see a baby born is one of the greatest experiences that a human being
can have. Birth to me has always been more awe-inspiring than death. As
often as I have witnessed the miracle, held the perfect creature with
its tiny hands and tiny feet, each time I have felt as though I were
entering a cathedral with prayer in my heart.
There is so little knowledge in the world compared with what there is to
know. Always I was deeply affected by the trust patients, rich or poor,
male or female, old or young, placed in their nurses. When we appeared
they seemed to say, “Ah, here is someone who can tell us.” Mothers asked
me pathetically, plaintively, hopefully, “Miss Higgins, what should I do
not to have another baby right away?” I was at a loss to answer their
intimate questions, and passed them along to the doctor, who more often
than not snorted, “She ought to be ashamed of herself to talk to a young
girl about things like that.”
All such problems were thus summarily shoved aside. We had one woman in
our hospital who had had several miscarriages and six babies, each by a
different father. Doctors and nurses knew every time she went out that
she would soon be back again, but it was not their business or anybody’s
business; it was just “natural.”
To be polished off neatly, the nurses in training were assigned to one
of the larger city hospitals in which to work during the last three or
six months of our course. Mine was the Manhattan Eye and Ear at
Forty-first Street and Park Avenue, across the street from the Murray
Hill Hotel, and I welcomed the chance to see up-to-date equipment and
clockwork discipline. My new environment was considerably less harsh and
intense, more comfortable and leisurely.
At one of the frequent informal dances held there my doctor partner
received a message—not a call, but a caller. His architect wanted to go
over blueprints with him. “Come along,” he invited. “See whether you
think my new house is going to be as fine as I do.”
The architect was introduced. “This is William Sanger.”
The three of us bent over the plans. The doctor was the only one unaware
of the sudden electric quality of the atmosphere.
At seven-thirty the next morning when I went out for my usual
“constitutional,” Bill Sanger was on the doorstep. He had that type of
romantic nature which appealed to me, and had been waiting there all
night. We took our walk together that day and regularly for many days
thereafter, learning about each other, exploring each other’s minds, and
discovering a community of ideas and ideals. His fineness fitted in with
my whole destiny, if I can call it such, just as definitely as my
hospital training.
I found Bill’s mother a lovely person—artistic, musical, and highly
cultured. His father had been a wealthy sheep rancher in Australia. When
you travel anywhere from there, you practically have to go round the
world, and on his way to San Francisco he had passed through Central
Europe. In a German town he had fallen in love with the Mayor’s youngest
daughter, then only fourteen. When she was of marriageable age he had
returned for her, and it was from this talented mother that Bill had
derived his fondness for music and desire to paint.
Bill was an architect only by profession; he was pure artist by
temperament. Although his heart was not in mechanical drawing, he did it
well. Stanford White once told me he was one of the six best draftsmen
in New York. He confided to me his dream of eventually being able to
leave architecture behind and devote himself to painting, particularly
murals. I had had instilled in me a feeling for the natural relationship
between color and symmetry of line, and sympathized not merely with his
aspirations but was intensely proud of his work. Some day we were going
to be married, and as soon as we had saved enough we would go to Paris,
whither the inspiration of the great French painters was summoning
artists from all over the world.
These plans were nebulous and had nothing to do with my abrupt departure
from New York. One afternoon, about four o’clock, I was standing under a
skylight putting drops in the eyes of a convalescent patient.
Unexpectedly, inexplicably, the glass began to fall apart. Almost by
instinct I pulled my patient under the lintel of the door. A great blast
followed and pandemonium was let loose; the ruined skylight went
crashing down the stairs, plaster and radiators tumbled from the walls,
doors fell out, windows cracked.
I rushed to the bed of the man who needed my first attention. He had
been operated on for a cataract only a few hours previously and my
orders had been not to let him move too soon lest the fluid in his eye
run out and damage his sight permanently. But he with the other
terrified patients was already on his feet.
Rounding up all those under my care and checking their names took
several minutes, and while I was still trying to quiet them, ambulances
from other hospitals came clanging up. By the time I had ushered my
charges down to the ground floor, a way had been cleared through the
debris of fallen brick and wood. Since mine were not stretcher cases I
was able to crowd ten of them into one ambulance, and we were taken to
the New York Hospital. Not until I had them all safely installed did I
learn what had happened to our building. A tremendous explosion in the
new Park Avenue subway had practically demolished it, and it had to be
evacuated.
I returned to White Plains, where Bill came up frequently to see me. On
one of our rambles he idly pulled at some vines on a stone wall, and
then, with his hands, tilted my face for a kiss. The next morning, to my
mortification, four telltale finger marks were outlined on my cheek by
poison ivy blisters. The day after that, my face was swollen so that my
eyes were tight shut, and I was sick for two months; since my training
was finished, I was sent home to convalesce.
_Chapter Five_
CORALS TO CUT LIFE UPON
For a while I stayed at Corning, and then went back to New York to start
nursing in earnest. On one of my free afternoons in August, Bill and I
went for a drive, and he suggested we stop in at the house of a friend
of his who was a minister. All had been prepared. License and rice were
waiting. And so we were married.
The first year is half taken up with love and half with planning a
future together which is to endure forever. These dreams feed youthful
ambitions, but they seldom can come true in their entirety. In our case
the obstacles arose with undue speed.
I was not well. I was paying the cost of long hours in mother’s closely
confined room and of continuous overwork in the hospital. Medical advice
was to go West to live, but I would not go without Bill, and he had a
commission which kept him in New York. Accordingly, I was packed off to
a small semi-sanitarium near Saranac where the great Dr. Trudeau,
specialist in pulmonary tuberculosis, was consulted.
Existence there was depressing. A man might be talking to me one day,
full of life and spirit and hope, and the next morning not appear. The
dead were ordinarily removed in the quiet of the night, and the doctors
made no comment. In this gloomy environment I rested, preparing myself
for motherhood. The flood of treatises on child psychology had not yet
started, and even the books on the care and feeding of infants were few.
But I read whatever I could.
Just before it was time for the baby to be born I returned to the little
apartment on St. Nicholas Avenue at 149th Street, then practically
suburban. Taking every precaution, we had engaged four doctors in a row.
Dr. Schmid had said he would perform the ceremony unless it came at
night, in which case his assistant would have to take charge. The
assistant had provided that, if he were not available, his assistant
would be on call, and this assistant had another assistant to assist
him.
When towards three o’clock one morning I felt the first thin, fine pains
of warning, Bill tried one after the other of our obstetricians—not one
could be located. He had to run around the corner to the nearest general
practitioner. Due almost as much to this young doctor’s inexperience as
to my physical state, the ordeal was unusually hard, but the baby
Stuart, given Amelia’s family name, was perfectly healthy, strong, and
sturdy. I looked upon this as a victory, although it was only partial,
because I had to go right back to the mountains. It was a wrench to
leave again so soon and at such a time, but I could not believe it would
be for long.
With Stuart and a nurse I took rooms in a friendly farmhouse near a
small Adirondack village; I did not want the baby in the midst of sick
people, and, moreover, I was not welcome at Saranac itself, since Dr.
Trudeau did not like to have in residence patients whose illness had
progressed beyond a certain stage. One of the most important parts of
the treatment was stuffing with food. I was being filled with the then
recognized remedy, creosote, and gulped capsule after capsule, which
broke my appetite utterly. Still I had to pour down milk and swallow
eggs, and always I had to rest and rest and rest.
At the end of eight months I was worse instead of better, and had no
interest in living. Nan and Bill’s mother were summoned, and two of Dr.
Trudeau’s associates came to see me. They advised that I should go
nearer Saranac and be separated from all personal responsibilities.
“What would you yourself like to do?” they asked.
“Nothing.”
“Where would you like to go?”
“Nowhere.”
“Would you like to have the baby sent to your brother, or would you
rather have your mother-in-law take it?”
“I don’t care.”
To every suggestion I was negative. I was not even interested in my
baby.
The two doctors left. The younger, however, apparently not satisfied
with the professional attitude, returned almost immediately, not so much
in a medical capacity as one of anxious friendliness. I was still
sitting in the same state of listlessness. He laid his hand on my
shoulder quietly, but I had all the feeling of being violently shaken.
“Don’t be like this!” he exclaimed. “Don’t let yourself get into such a
mental condition. Do something! Want something! You’ll never get well if
you keep on this way.”
I could not sleep that night. I had been rudely jolted from my stupor by
the understanding doctor. Obviously preparations were being made for a
lingering illness which would terminate in death. But if I had to die I
would rather be with those I loved than disappear in the night as a part
of the cold routine.
As the first glimmer of dawn appeared through the curtains I got up and
stared at the steadily ticking clock. It was not yet five. I dressed
quickly, then tiptoed into the bedroom where the nurse and baby were
slumbering soundly. I roused her and told her to pack up; we were going
back to New York. She looked up in drowsy dismay, but obeyed meekly. The
farmer hitched up his horse and we jogged along all the way to the
station in the early summer morning, bright with sunshine and cheery
with birds.
Bill was waiting at the Grand Central Terminal, quite naturally
perplexed. He had that morning received two telegrams, one saying I was
to be removed to Saranac at once, pending his approval as to the care of
the baby by relatives, and the other from me asking him to meet me
because I was coming home. I told him as best I could the reasons for my
sudden decision. Though I probably sounded incoherent he understood and,
instead of scolding, soothed me tenderly and exclaimed, “You did just
the right thing. I won’t let you die.”
“And don’t make me eat! Don’t even mention food to me!” He promised to
let me have my own way.
At the small family hotel in Yonkers in which we settled, I lived pretty
much by myself, keeping the baby and everyone else away from me; I had
by now learned the dangers of contact in spreading tuberculosis. Once
free from the horrors of invalidism and comforted by love and devotion I
began to regain a normal interest in life, and by the end of three weeks
had recovered from my hysterical rejection of food.
As soon as I was strong enough we started to explore Westchester County
for a home site. We wanted something more than a mere house. We wanted
space, we wanted a view, we wanted a garden. At Hastings-on-Hudson we
found what we sought. There on fifty acres of hillside overlooking the
river about ten families—doctors, teachers, college professors,
scientists—had combined to construct the sort of dwellings they liked in
the environment they considered best suited for their children. We too
had in mind a family and a comfortable, serene, suburban existence, and
we joined this Columbia Colony, as it was called, renting a small
cottage until we could build our own.
The other wives and I spent our afternoons conferring over the momentous
problems of servants, gardens, and schools. If we went to town, we took
the children with us, fitting them with special shoes at Coward’s,
introducing them to museums, libraries, or art galleries. Life centered
around them. When Stuart and his little friends began to ask questions,
“Where do babies come from?” I collected them and tried to answer, using
the simple phenomena of nature as illustrations—flowers, frogs, fish,
and animals. I still consider this approach has its place with many
children, although modern sex educationists may smile at this method,
thinking it old-fashioned.
None of the colony played cards. Instead, the women formed a literary
club where we read papers on George Eliot, Browning, and Shakespeare, as
well as on some current authors, and we had occasional political
discussions. Out of this grew the Women’s Club of Hastings.
It was all very pleasant, and at first I was busy and contented. The
endless details of housekeeping did not seem to me drudgery; conquering
minor crises was exciting. Though I was never slavishly domestic, I was
inclined to be slavishly maternal. Bill was a devoted husband. He took
care of me in the little ways—starting for the train and coming back to
put his head in the door and call, “It’s awfully cold. Don’t go out
without your wrap,” or, if it were hot, he offered, “Give me your list
and I’ll send up the groceries.”
I was again leading the life of an artist’s family. Bill was a hard
worker; I can rarely remember one evening of just reading together. I
did the reading and he drew or painted. But I was never quite sure
whether we were rich or poor. He possessed the finest qualities of
creative genius, and with them some of its limitations and liabilities.
When he was paid for a big commission he brought me orchids and
embroidered Japanese robes which I had no occasion to wear, and filled
the house with luxuries. This did not go with my practical sense. If the
grocery account were long unpaid, I protested, “They’re beautiful. Thank
you, but can we afford them?”
“Certainly,” and out of his pocket came tickets for the opera or
theater, his chief pleasures.
“But we shouldn’t,” I remonstrated as I ruffled a sheaf of bills before
him.
Nevertheless, we used the tickets.
Every architect wants to embody his ideas at least once in his own home.
Ours was “modern” in its square simplicity and unadorned surfaces of
stuccoed hollow tile, even being called a show house; people came from
afar to study it. It was designed to have a large nursery opening on a
veranda overlooking the Hudson, a studio, a bath with each bedroom,
fireplaces everywhere, and one especially capacious in the big library.
From this room the open stairway, forking at the lower landing with a
few steps leading down into the kitchen, reached up the wall to the
second story.
The house took long to complete, but it was fun. The moment Bill
finished his work in New York he was back at it. Theoretically he
supervised at night and the builder built by day. But when an arch did
not turn out to be a perfect arch, seizing an ax, he chopped out part of
it, usually pounding his fingers in the process. The neighbors, careful
of their pennies, held their ears at the clatter and clamor and
exclaimed, “There goes another partition.” When the contractor returned
in the morning he found his previous day’s work demolished. Some
portions were entirely done over two or three times.
The color on the woodwork we applied ourselves by artificial light,
plumped on our knees or stretching high overhead. If the effect were
wrong, we had to match it all up again. Evening after evening we labored
on the rose window which was to crown with radiance the head of the
staircase. Far into the night we leaded and welded together every
glowing petal. Our fingers were cut, our nerves were irritated, our eyes
fatigued. But tireless love went into the composition of this rose
window which symbolized the stability of our future. We were aiming at
permanence and security, and our efforts seemed to be fused into
indestructible unity. It was our keystone of beauty.
After the tedious worrying over details we suddenly became too impatient
to wait any more, and, in spite of the raw condition of the house, late
one February afternoon of half-sleet, half-rain, a moving van pulled up
to our front door. Through the semi-twilight boxes, crates, and barrels
were carted in.
The four-year-old Stuart was not well. We put him early to bed, and Bill
stirred up a roaring fire in the furnace against the increasing cold.
Then with hammer and claw we turned to our treasures, which we had not
seen for such a time. It was like opening packages on Christmas morning.
We had almost forgotten the tapestry Mary had sent from Persia, the rug
from Egypt, Bill’s paintings. “What’s in this box? Oh, look here! See
what I’ve found!” A flood of color inundated us. We tried out their
warmth against our immaculate walls and floors. I was carrying my second
baby and was tired hours before I wanted to stop. As I climbed up to bed
I gazed down happily on the litter below.
Some time later I heard dimly through my sleep a pounding, and woke to
realize it was the German maid at the door, crying, “Madam. Come! Fire
in the big stove!”
We jumped out of bed. Acrid smoke was in our nostrils, and we were swept
by the horror of fire by night. Bill shouted to me, “Get right out! I’ve
got to give the alarm.”
Away he rushed in his pajamas; there was no telephone within half a
mile. I seized Stuart from his crib, bedclothes and all. This took only
a few seconds, but the kitchen was already ablaze and flames were
leaping up the staircase. I pulled the blanket over his head and started
cautiously down, hugging the outer side. The blistering treads crunched
as they gave under my feet, but did not collapse until I had reached the
smoke-filled library.
The family across the street welcomed us in. When I had tucked Stuart
into an impromptu bed I went to watch. Not merely was the fire engine
trying to get up the icy hill, two steps forward and one back, but the
whole village was accompanying it to help organize a bucket brigade.
The clouds had cleared and the bright moon was shining on the strange
scene. The weather had turned much colder, and the rain had frozen into
crystals which glittered on the branches of trees and shrubbery. It was
unbelievably fantastic, and in that unreal setting the flames, as though
directed by devilish intent, spurted only through our prized rose
window. I stood silently regarding the result of months of work and love
slowly disintegrate. Petal by petal it succumbed to the licking tongues
of fire; one by one they fell into the gray-white snow. Fitting them
together had taken so long; now relentlessly they were being pulled
apart. A thing of beauty had perished in a few moments.
It was as though a chapter of my life had been brought to a close, and I
was neither disappointed nor regretful. On the contrary, I was conscious
of a certain relief, of a burden lifted. In that instant I learned the
lesson of the futility of material substances. Of what great importance
were they spiritually if they could go so quickly? Pains, thirsts,
heartaches could be put into the creation of something external which in
one sweep could be taken from you. With the destruction of the window,
my scale of suburban values was consumed. I could never again pin my
faith on concrete things; I must build on myself alone. I hoped I should
continue to have lovely objects around me, but I could also be happy
without them.
The next day was filled with neighbors coming to condole and offer help,
and with insurance adjusters peering about and questioning. They found
the too-heavy fire in the furnace had overheated the pipes around which
the asbestos had not yet been wrapped. We lost a good deal because,
although the house was covered, the insurance on the furniture had not
been shifted to its new location, and, moreover, many of our possessions
were irreplaceable, their worth having lain in the sentiment attached to
them.
A personal catastrophe may in the end prove to be a public benefit.
People in the community are brought together in sympathy, and learn by
the experience of others how to protect themselves. After our mischance
every householder in Columbia Colony began to look to his furnace and
insure his home.
Our walls were fireproof, and much of the house could be saved, but it
was really more disheartening than complete demolition would have been,
for in the latter case we could have started to rebuild from the
beginning. I admired Bill greatly for the resolute way he set about the
painful business again. He went over every inch, here saying, “This
board is all right,” and there tearing out black pieces of charred wood.
It was a dirty job, but he stuck to it. Nevertheless, paint and stain as
we would, we could not quite get rid of the unmistakable and
ineradicable odor which clings around a burned building, almost like the
smell of death.
Next summer we moved in once more. But the house was never the same.
Never could I recapture that first flush of joy.
Grant, my second son, was born almost immediately. I loved having a baby
to tend again, and wanted at least four more as quickly as my health
would permit. I could not wait another five years. I yearned especially
for a daughter, and twenty months later my wish came true. After Peggy’s
birth, the doctor went downstairs and saw Bill sitting in the library
with Grant in his arms and tears welling from his eyes.
“Why, what’s the matter? There’s a nice little girl upstairs.”
“I’m thinking of this poor little boy. Margaret has wanted a girl so
long—now she’ll have no room in her heart for him.”
Bill’s fears were groundless. Grant was not supplanted, but Peggy was so
satisfactory a baby that I was not particularly disappointed when my
illness cropped up again and the doctor said my family must end at this
point. I was quite content with things as they were.
Even as a little fellow, the sandy-haired, square-built Stuart was
practical, loved sports, and had a reasoning, logical mind, always
experimenting with life as well as with mechanical things. A thorough
Higgins, he had to find out for himself and prove it. He used to stamp
and scold when presented with a chore, such as mowing the lawn or
bringing in wood for the fireplaces, but his rebellions were brief, and,
when he realized the inevitable, he turned it into a game. “Come on
over,” he hailed his friends. “We’ve lots to do. Let’s get to it! We’re
going to have great fun.”
The other boys, taken in by his enthusiastic invitations, also believed
that mowing the lawn or bringing in wood were among the best games
invented.
Grant was more self-conscious than Stuart, and more inarticulate, but
more affectionate. He followed the baby Peggy slavishly. They were
usually hand in hand, and Grant’s darkness contrasted with her bright,
blond hair. From the time she could talk they referred to themselves as
“we.” Peggy was the most independent child I have ever seen. At three
she knew what she wanted and where she was going. She was vivacious,
mischievous, laughing—the embodiment of all my hopes in a daughter.
Stuart typified the scientist, Grant the artist, Peggy the doer. It was
maternally gratifying to wonder whether they would carry out these
propensities in their later lives.
I enjoyed my literary activities along with my children, and Bill
encouraged me. “You go ahead and finish your writing. I’ll get the
dinner and wash the dishes.” And what is more he did it, drawing the
shades, however, so that nobody could see him. He thought I should make
a career of it instead of limiting myself to small-town interests.
Both Bill and I were feeling what amounted to a world hunger, the pull
and haul towards wider horizons. For him Paris was still over the next
hill. I was not able to express my discontent with the futility of my
present course, but after my experience as a nurse with fundamentals
this quiet withdrawal into the tame domesticity of the pretty riverside
settlement seemed to be bordering on stagnation. I felt as though we had
drifted into a swamp, but we would not wait for the tide to set us free.
It was hopeless to emphasize the importance of practical necessities to
an artist, and consequently I decided to resume nursing in order to earn
my share. We had spent years building our home and used it only for a
brief while. I was glad to leave when, in one of our financial doldrums,
we plunged back into the rushing stream of New York life.
_Chapter Six_
FANATICS OF THEIR PURE IDEALS
We took an apartment way uptown. It was the old-fashioned railroad
type—big, high-ceilinged, with plenty of room, air, and light. The
children’s grandmother came to live with us and her presence gave me
ease of mind when I was called on a case; my children were utterly safe
in her care.
Headlong we dived into one of the most interesting phases of life the
United States has ever seen. Radicalism in manners, art, industry,
morals, politics was effervescing, and the lid was about to blow off in
the Great War. John Spargo, an authority on Karl Marx, had translated
_Das Kapital_ into English, thus giving impetus to Socialism. Lincoln
Steffens had published _The Shame of the Cities_, George Fitzpatrick had
produced _War, What For?_, a strange and wonderful arraignment of
capitalism, which sold thousands of copies.
The names of Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso first became familiar sounds
on this side of the Atlantic at the time of the notable Armory
Exhibition, when outstanding examples of impressionist and cubist
painting were imported from Europe. But there was so much of
eccentricity—a leg on top of a head, a hat on a foot, the _Nude
Descending a Staircase_, all in the name of art—that you had to close
one eye to look at it. The Armory vibrated; it shook New York.
Although Bill had studied according to the old school, he could see the
point of view of the radical in art, and in politics as well. His
attitude towards the underdog was much like father’s. He had always been
a Socialist, although not active, and held his friend Eugene V. Debs in
high esteem.
A religion without a name was spreading over the country. The converts
were liberals, Socialists, anarchists, revolutionists of all shades.
They were as fixed in their faith in the coming revolution as ever any
Primitive Christian in the immediate establishment of the Kingdom of
God. Some could even predict the exact date of its advent.
At one end of the scale of rebels and scoffers were the “pink”
parliamentarian socialists and theorists at whom anarchists hurled the
insult “bourgeois.” At the other were the Industrial Workers of the
World, the “Wobblies,” advocating unionization of the whole industry
rather than the craft or trade. This was to be brought about, if need
be, by direct action.
Almost without knowing it you became a “comrade.” You could either
belong to a group that believed civilization was to be saved by the vote
and by protective legislation, or go further to the left and believe
with the anarchists in the integrity of the individual, and that it was
possible to develop human character to the point where laws and police
were unnecessary.
The mental stirring was such as to make a near Renaissance. Everybody
was writing on the nebulous “new liberties.” Practically always people
could be found to support leaders or magazines, although many of the
latter lived for hardly more than a single issue.
Upton Sinclair was utilizing his gift for vivid expression and righteous
wrath in trying to correct social abuses by the indirect but highly
effective method of story-telling. _The Jungle_ was a powerful exposé of
the capitalist meat industry responsible for the “embalmed beef” which
had poisoned American soldiers in ’98. Courageous as he was, he was yet
mistrusted by the Socialist Old Guard as being a Silk Hat Radical who
retained his bourgeois philosophy. Furthermore, he had been divorced,
and divorce at that time was something of a scandal. Though anarchists
minded such details not a whit, Socialists were imbued with all the
respectabilities; to most of these home-loving Germans, only the form of
government needed change.
In the United States the party was trying to separate itself from this
German influence, and the standard bearer of the American concept was
the magnetic and beloved Debs. Not himself an intellectual, he did not
need to be; he was intelligent. Risen as he had from the ranks of the
railroad workers, he knew their hardships from experience. Though I am
not sure he actually was tall, he gave the illusion of height because of
his thinness and stooping shoulders. He was all flame, like a fire
spirit. That was probably why the members of his coterie followed him so
gladly.
Our living room became a gathering place where liberals, anarchists,
Socialists, and I.W.W.’s could meet. These vehement individualists had
to have an audience, preferably a small, intimate one. They really came
to see Bill; I made the cocoa. I used to listen in, not at all sure my
opinions would be accepted by this very superior group. When I did
meekly venture something, I was quite likely to find myself on the
opposite side—right in a left crowd and vice versa.
Any evening you might find visitors from the Middle West being aroused
by Jack Reed, bullied by Bill Haywood, led softly towards anarchist
thought by Alexander Berkman. When throats grew dry and the flood of
oratory waned, someone went out for hamburger sandwiches, hot dogs, and
beer, paid for by all. The luxuriousness of the midnight repast depended
upon the collection of coins tossed into the middle of the table, which
consisted of about what everybody had in his pocket. These considerate
friends never imposed a burden either of extra work or extra expense. In
the kitchen everyone sliced, buttered, opened cans. As soon as all were
replenished, the conversation was resumed practically where it had left
off.
Both right-wingers and left-wingers who ordinarily objected to those in
between loved Jack Reed, the master reporter just out of Harvard. He
refused to conform to the rule and rote of either, though his natural
inclination appeared to be more in harmony with direct action.
Behind this most highly intellectual young man loomed an uncouth,
stumbling, one-eyed giant with an enormous head which he tended to hold
on one side. Big Bill Haywood looked like a bull about to plunge into an
arena. He seemed always glancing warily this way and that with his one
eye, head slightly turned as though to get the view of you. His great
voice boomed; his speech was crude and so were his manners; his
philosophy was that of the mining camps, where he had spent his life.
But I soon found out that for gentleness and sympathy he had not his
equal. He was blunt because he was simple and direct. Though he was not
tailor-made, he was custom-made.
Because Big Bill’s well-wishers saw so much that was fine in him, they
wanted to smooth off the jagged edges. When they tried to polish his
speeches, Jack Reed objected, saying, “Give him a free hand. He
expresses what you and I think much more dramatically than we can. Don’t
try to stop him! We should encourage him.”
One of Big Bill’s best friends, Jessie Ashley, was, without meaning to
be, a taming influence. These two were the oddest combination in the
world—old Bill with his one eye, stubby, roughened fingernails,
uncreased trousers, and shoddy clothes for which he refused to pay more
than the minimum; Jessie with Boston accent and horn-rimmed glasses, a
compromise between spectacles and lorgnette, from which dangled a black
ribbon, the ultimate word in eccentric decoration.
Jessie was one of the most conspicuous of the many men and women of long
pedigree who were revolting against family tradition. She was the
daughter of the President of the New York School of Law, and sister of
its dean. When her brother had organized the first women’s law class,
she had been his pupil and later had become the first woman lawyer in
New York City. Her peculiarly honest mind was tolerant towards others,
but uncompromising towards herself. It was said of her truly that she
was always in the forefront when it took courage to be there; always in
the background when there was credit to be gained. A Socialist in
practice as well as theory, she spent large portions of her income in
getting radicals out of jail, and her own legal experience she gave
freely in their behalf. Nevertheless, her appearances at strike meetings
were slightly uncomfortable; class tension rose up in waves.
Many others were trying to pull themselves out of the rut of tradition.
Alexander Berkman, the gentle anarchist, understood them all. He had
just been freed after fourteen years’ imprisonment for his attempt to
assassinate Henry Clay Frick during the Homestead Steel strike of 1892.
His emergence had stirred anarchism up again, and particularly its credo
of pure individualism—to stand on your own and be yourself, never to
have one person dictate to another, even parent to child.
Berkman’s appearance belied his reputation—blond, blue-eyed, slightly
built, with thinnish hair, and sensitive, mobile face and hands. He was
a thoughtful ascetic, believing sincerely that the quickest way to focus
attention on social outrages was to commit some dramatic act, however
violent or antipathetic it might be to his nature—and then suffer the
consequences. He was not at all embittered by his sojourn in jail, and
had a great sense of humor, coupled with his most extraordinary
understanding of the strange congeries of people who were about to be
melted down into his glowing crucible of truth.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn had made the transition from Catholicism, Jack
Reed from being a “Harvard man,” Mabel Dodge from being a society
matron. They all had had to get over being class conscious, and acquire
instead the consciousness of the class struggle. Berkman made friends
with all, and when they were faced by problems apparently
insurmountable, he advised them on their spiritual journey, and
supported and backed them. For this reason he was beloved by all who
encountered his most gracious charm.
This was not the way of Emma Goldman, whose habit was to berate and lash
with the language of scorn. She was never satisfied until people had
arrived at her own doorstep and accepted the dogma she had woven for
herself. Short, stocky, even stout, a true Russian peasant type, her
figure indicated strength of body and strength of character, and this
impression was enhanced by her firm step and reliant walk. Though I
disliked both her ideas and her methods I admired her; she was really
like a spring house-cleaning to the sloppy thinking of the average
American. Our Government suffered in the estimation of the liberal world
when she and Berkman were expelled from the country.
Of all the strange places for these diverse personalities to meet, none
more strange could have been found than in Mabel Dodge’s salon, which
burst upon New York like a rocket. Mabel belonged to one of the old
families of Buffalo, but neither in thought nor action was she orthodox.
Only in the luxurious appointments of her home did she conform.
Among the sights and memories I shall never forget were her famous
soirées at Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue. A certain one typical of all
the others comes to mind; the whole gamut of liberalism had collected in
her spacious drawing-room before an open fire. Cross-legged on the
floor, in the best Bohemian tradition, were Wobblies with uncut hair,
unshaven faces, leaning against valuable draperies. Their clothes may
have been unkempt, but their eyes were ablaze with interest and
intelligence. Each knew his own side of the subject as well as any
scholar. You had to inform yourself to be in the liberal movement. Ideas
were respected, but you had to back them up with facts. Expressions of
mere emotion, unleashed from reason, could not be let loose to wander
about.
Listener more than talker, Mabel sat near the hearth, brown bangs
outlining a white face, simply gowned in velvet, beautifully arched foot
beating the air. For two hours I watched fascinatedly that silken ankle
never ceasing its violent agitation.
The topic of conversation turned out to be direct action. Big Bill was
the figure of the evening, but everybody was looking for an opportunity
to talk. Each believed he had a key to the gates of Heaven; each was
trying to convert the others. It could not exactly have been called a
debate, because a single person held the floor as long as he could.
Then, at one of his most effective periods, somebody else half rose and
interposed a “But—” The speaker hurried on; at his next telling sentence
came other “But—s,” until finally he was downed by the weight of
interruptions. In the end, conversions were nil; all were convinced
beforehand either for or against, and I never knew them to shift ground.
It is not hard to laugh about it now, but nobody could have been more
serious and determined than we were in those days.
Just before the argument reached the stage of fist fights, the big doors
were thrown open and the butler announced, “Madam, supper is served.”
Many of the boys had never heard those words, but one and all jumped up
with alacrity from the floor and discussion was, for the moment at
least, postponed. The wide, generous table in the dining room was
burdened with beef, cold turkey, hot ham—hearty meat for hungry souls.
On a side table were pitchers of lemonade, siphons, bottles of rye and
Scotch.
Mabel never stirred while the banquet raged, but continued to sit, her
foot still beating the air, and talked with the few who did not choose
to eat.
The class contrasts encountered in a gathering there were not unique.
They were to be found elsewhere, even in matrimony. When the wealthy J.
G. Phelps Stokes married Rose Pastor, the Russian-Jewish cigar maker,
both families felt equally outraged; he was practically sent to Coventry
by his former associates and the Jews regarded her as a renegade because
she wore a silver cross about her neck. William English Walling, the
last word in Newport, married Anna Strunsky, the last word in the Jewish
intelligentsia, and himself became a leading literary critic on the
radical side.
Harvard had been turning out liberals by the dozen, and all of them were
playing hob with accepted conventions in thought. One of these was
Walter Lippmann, others were Norman Hapgood and his brother, Hutchins.
“Hutch” was then working on the _Globe_, a paper which because of its
broad editorial policy was preferred by many radicals to the _Call_. He
stood by Bill Haywood and Emma Goldman, although he had much more to
lose economically and socially than the out-and-out reds.
The anarchists seldom initiated anything, because they did not have the
personnel or the equipment, but when something else was started which
appeared to have any good in it, they came right in. This they did with
the Ferrer School on Twelfth Street near Fourth Avenue, in the founding
of which Hutch, with the liberal journalist, Leonard Abbott, and the
author, Manuel Komroff, were moving spirits. The object was to provide a
form of education more progressive than that offered by the public
schools, and its name was intended to perpetuate the memory of the
recently martyred Spanish libertarian, Francisco Ferrer, who had
established modern free schools in Spain in which science and evolution
had been taught.
Lola Ridge, intense rebel from Australia, was the organizing secretary,
Robert Henri and George Bellows gave lessons in art, and a young man
named Will Durant was chosen to direct the younger children, combining
in his teaching Froebel, Montessori, and other new methods. Under him we
enrolled Stuart.
Will Durant was of French-Canadian ancestry. His mother had worked hard
to put him through a Jesuit seminary, but just before taking the vows he
had abandoned the priesthood. While he had been studying he had read
Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis and was prepared to acquaint New York
with the facts of sex psychology. Sitting nonchalantly to deliver his
lectures, which evidenced scholarly background and research, he advanced
to his small but serious audience practically the first public
expression of this intimate subject.
The young instructor created rather a problem for the directors by
unexpectedly marrying a pupil, Ida Kaufman, commonly called Puck. I
remember one Saturday when she was romping with Stuart, and my laundress
said to her, “Why, you’re so young to be married. Do you like it?”
Puck replied, “Oh, I don’t care, but I’d much rather play marbles.”
Intellectuals were then flocking to enlist under the flag of
humanitarianism, and as soon as anybody evinced human sympathies he was
deemed a Socialist. My own personal feelings drew me towards the
individualist, anarchist philosophy, and I read Kropotkin, Bakunin, and
Fourier, but it seemed to me necessary to approach the ideal by way of
Socialism; as long as the earning of food, clothing, and shelter was on
a competitive basis, man could never develop any true independence.
Therefore, I joined the Socialist Party, Local Number Five, itself
something of a rebel in the ranks, which, against the wishes of the
central authority, had been responsible for bringing Bill Haywood East
after his release from prison. The members—Italian, Jewish, Russian,
German, Spanish, a pretty good mixture—used the rooms over a
neighborhood shop as a meeting place and there they were to be found
every evening reading and discussing politics.
Somebody had donated a sum of money to be spent to interest women in
Socialism. As proof that we were not necessarily like the masculine,
aggressive, bulldog, window-smashing suffragettes in England, I, an
American and a mother of children, was selected to recruit new members
among the clubs of working women. The Scandinavians, who had a
housemaids’ union, were the most satisfactory; they already leaned
towards liberalism.
Grant, who was as yet too young to go to school, wholeheartedly
disapproved of my political activities. Once when I was about to depart
for the evening he climbed up on my lap and said, “Are you going to a
meeting?”
“Yes.”
“A soshist meeting?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, I hate soshism!”
Everybody else was amused when the Sangers went to a Socialist meeting.
If I had an idea, I leaned over and whispered it to Bill, who waved his
hand and called for attention. “Margaret has something to say on that.
Have you heard Margaret?” Many men might have labeled my opinions silly,
and, indeed, I was not at all sure of them myself, but Bill thought if I
had one, it was worth hearing.
John Block and his wife, Anita, were ardent workers for the cause. She
was a grand person, a Barnard graduate and editor of the woman’s page of
the _Call_. She telephoned me one evening, “Will you help me out? We
have a lecture scheduled for tonight and our speaker is unable to come.
Won’t you take her place?”
“But I can’t speak. I’ve never made a speech in my life.”
“You’ll simply have to do it. There isn’t anybody I can get, and I’m
depending on you.”
“How many will be there?” I asked.
“Only about ten. You’ve nothing to be frightened of.”
But I was frightened—thoroughly so. I could not eat my supper. Shaking
and quaking I faced the little handful of women who had come after their
long working hours for enlightenment. Since I did not consider myself
qualified to speak on labor, I switched the subject to health, with
which I was more familiar. This, it appeared, was something new. They
were pleased and said to Anita, “Let’s have more health talks.” The
second time we met the audience had swelled to seventy-five and
arrangements were made to continue the lectures, if such they could be
called, which I prepared while my patients slept.
The young mothers in the group asked so many questions about their
intimate family life that I mentioned it to Anita. “Just the thing,” she
said. “Write up your answers and we’ll try them out in the _Call_.” The
result was the first composition I had ever done for publication, a
series under the general title, _What Every Mother Should Know_. I
attempted, as I had with the Hastings children, to introduce the
impersonality of nature in order to break through the rigid
consciousness of sex on the part of parents, who were inclined to be too
intensely personal about it.
Then Anita requested a second series to be called _What Every Girl
Should Know_. The motif was, “If the mother can impress the child with
the beauty and wonder and sacredness of the sex function, she has taught
it the first lesson.”
These articles ran along for three or four weeks until one Sunday
morning I turned to the _Call_ to see my precious little effort, and,
instead, encountered a newspaper box two columns wide in which was
printed in black letters,
WHAT EVERY GIRL SHOULD KNOW
┌───┐
│ N │
│ O │
│ T │
│ H │
│ I │
│ N │
│ G │
│ ! │
└───┘
BY ORDER OF
THE POST-OFFICE DEPARTMENT
The words gonorrhea and syphilis had occurred in that article and
Anthony Comstock, head of the New York Society for the Suppression of
Vice, did not like them. By the so-called Comstock Law of 1873, which
had been adroitly pushed through a busy Congress on the eve of
adjournment, the Post Office had been given authority to decide what
might be called lewd, lascivious, indecent, or obscene, and this
extraordinary man had been granted the extraordinary power, alone of all
citizens of the United States, to open any letter or package or pamphlet
or book passing through the mails and, if he wished, lay his complaint
before the Post Office. So powerful had his society become that anything
to which he objected in its name was almost automatically barred; he had
turned out to be sole censor for ninety million people. During some
forty years Comstock had been damming the rising tide of new thought,
thereby causing much harm, and only now was his hopeless contest against
_September Morn_ making him absurd and an object of ridicule.
But at this same time also John D. Rockefeller, Jr. was organizing the
Bureau of Social Hygiene, in part to educate the working public
regarding what were politely termed “social evils.” A fine start was
being made although no surveys had been completed. Lacking data,
lecturers had to speak in generalities. Nevertheless, to me, who had sat
through hours of highly academic exposition expressed in cultivated
tones, their approach seemed timorous and their words disguised with
verbiage. I saw no reason why these facts could not be given in a few
minutes in language simple enough for anyone to understand.
When my series was finished it was printed in pamphlet form. I sent a
copy to Dr. Prince Morrow of the Bureau, asking for his opinion and any
corrections he might suggest for the next edition; to my delight he
replied he would like to see it spread by the million. The Bureau had
names and backing but was not proceeding very fast towards educating
working people regarding venereal disease; the articles in the _Call_,
on the other hand, were reaching this same class by the thousand—yet the
one which mentioned syphilis was suppressed.
I continued assiduously to write pieces for the _Call_. One of these
reported the laundry strike in New York City in the winter of 1912,
unauthorized by Samuel Gompers and his American Federation of Labor,
which claimed it alone had the right to declare strikes. To get the
details I went into the houses of the Irish Amazons, who with their
husbands had walked out without being called out, simply because they
could not stand it any longer. They were the hardest worked, the poorest
paid, had the most protracted and irregular hours of any union members.
One man described his typical day: he rose at five, had ten minutes for
lunch, less for supper, and dragged himself home at eleven at night. I
was glad they had the courage to rebel, and it took courage to be a
picket—getting up so early on bitterly cold mornings and waiting and
waiting to waylay the strikebreakers and argue with them. The police
were ready to pounce when the boss pointed out the ringleaders.
This was the only time I came in contact with men and women on strike
together. I could see the men had two things in their minds: one
economic—the two-dollar extra wage and the shorter hours they might win;
the other political—the coming of the social revolution. The women
really cared for neither of these. Dominating each was the relationship
between her husband, her children, and herself. She might complain of
being tired and not having enough money, but always she connected both
with too many offspring.
Some of the strikers thought I might help them out, but I was not at all
sure I believed either in direct action or legislation as a remedy for
their difficulties. This lack of conviction prevented me from having the
necessary force to aid them organize themselves, and in such an
emergency a forceful leader was called for. The night of their rally I
was amazed at the complete confusion. Anybody could speak—and was doing
so.
I felt helpless in the midst of this chaos, and distressed at their
helplessness. But I knew the person who could manage the situation
effectively, and so I sent for Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a direct
actionist identified with the I.W.W. Her father, Tom Flynn, a labor
organizer, was the same type of philosophical rebel as my father, long
on conversation but short on work. Elizabeth had been out in the logging
camps of the West, where she had won the complete adoration of the
lumberjacks. At her tongue’s end were the words and phrases they
understood, and she knew exactly the right note to stir them.
Elizabeth stood on the platform, dramatically beautiful with her black
hair and deep blue eyes, her cream-white complexion set off by the
flaming scarf she always wore about her throat. Nothing if not
outspoken, she started by saying it was folly for the strikers to give
up their bread and butter by walking out. They could achieve their ends
more quickly if they threw hypothetical _sabots_ into the machinery. “If
a shirt comes in from a man who wears size fifteen, send him back an
eighteen. Replace a dress shirt with a blue denim. That’s what the
laundry workers of France did, and brought the employers to their
knees.”
The audience was being held spellbound by this instruction in the fine
art of sabotage when some of Gompers’ strong-arm men appeared, and the
battle was on. They tramped up on the stage, moved furniture and chairs
about, made so much noise Elizabeth’s voice could not be heard, and
finally ejected some of her sympathizers.
It was probably better in the end that the American Federation of Labor
eventually took the laundry workers under its wing, because the I.W.W.
was not an organized body, but merely an agitational force which
scarcely had the necessary strength to lead a successful strike in New
York City. Its influence in Lawrence, Massachusetts, was far more
potent. Joe Ettor, once bootblack in California, with Arturo Giovanitti,
scholar, idealist, poet, and editor of _Il Proletario_, had been
stirring up the unorganized textile strikers with impassioned eloquence.
So compelling were the words of these two that workers of seven
nationalities, chiefly Italian, had walked out spontaneously.
The accidental shooting of a girl picket provided an excuse, farfetched
as it may seem, to jail the firebrands, Ettor and Giovanitti, who were
charged with being “accessories _before_ the fact,” which meant they
were accused of having known beforehand she was going to be shot by the
police and were, therefore, responsible. Now, the strikers had martyrs,
and the I.W.W. heroes of the West poured in to help. Bill Haywood,
William E. Trautman of the United Brewery Workers, Carlo Tresca, editor
and owner of an Italian paper in New York, contributed to put on the
biggest show the East had ever seen—parades, banners, songs, speeches.
The entire Italian population of America was aroused. These were then a
people unto themselves. For much longer than the two generations
customary among other immigrant races they retained their habits,
traditions, and language, ate their own type of food and read their own
newspapers.
Italians in New York who were in accord with the strikers decided on a
step, novel in this country although it had been tried in Italy and
Belgium. The primary reason for the failure of all labor rebellions was
the hunger cries of the babies; if they were only fed the strikers could
usually last out. It was determined to bring the children of the textile
workers to New York, where they could be taken care of until the issue
was settled. This resolution was made without knowing how many there
might be; provision would be forthcoming somehow.
Again because I was an American, a nurse, and reputed to be sympathetic
to their cause and the cause of children, the committee asked me with
John Di Gregorio and Carrie Giovanitti to fetch the youngsters. As soon
as I agreed, telephone calls were put through to Lawrence, and a
delegate took the midnight train to make the preliminary arrangements.
We found the boys and girls gathered in a Lawrence public hall and,
before we started, I insisted on physical examinations for contagious
diseases. One, though ill with diphtheria, had been working up to the
time of the strike. Almost all had adenoids and enlarged tonsils. Each,
without exception, was incredibly emaciated.
Our hundred and nineteen charges were of every age, from babies of two
or three to older ones of twelve to thirteen. Although the latter had
been employed in the textile mills, their garments were simply worn to
shreds. Not a child had on any woolen clothing whatsoever, and only four
wore overcoats. Never in all my nursing in the slums had I seen children
in so ragged and deplorable a condition. The February weather was
bitter, and we had to run them to the station. There the parents, with
tears in their eyes and gratitude in their hearts, relinquished their
shivering offspring.
The wind was even icier when we reached Boston, and money was scarce. I
had only enough for railroad fares and none for chartering buses or
hiring taxis. Consequently, again we had to scurry on foot from the
North to the South Station. But, once more on the train, great was the
enthusiasm of the boys and girls, who entertained themselves by singing
the _Marseillaise_ and the _Internationale_. All knew the words as well
as the tunes, though the former might be in Polish, Hungarian, French,
German, Italian, and even English. The children who sang those songs are
now grown up. I wonder how they regard the present state of the world.
As we neared New York I began to worry about our arrival. We were all
weary. Would preparations have been made to feed this hungry mob and
house it for the night? But I should have trusted the deep feeling and
the dramatic instinct of the Italians. Thousands of men and women were
waiting. As my assistants and I left the train, looking like three Pied
Pipers followed by our ragged cohorts, the crowd pushed through the
police lines, leaped the ropes, caught up the children as they came, and
hoisted them to their shoulders. I was seized by both arms and I, too,
had the illusion of being swept from the ground.
The committee had secured permission to parade to Webster Hall near
Union Square. Our tired feet fell into the rhythm of the band. As we
swung along singing, laughing, crying, big banners bellying and torches
flaring, sidewalk throngs shouted and whistled and applauded.
At Webster Hall supper was ready in plentiful quantity. Many of our
small guests were so unused to sitting at table that they did not know
how to behave. Like shy animals they tried to take cover, carrying their
plates to a chair, a box, anything handy. Almost all snatched at their
food with both fists and stuffed it down, they were so hungry.
Socialists had not initiated this fight but they were in it. Many had
come to offer shelter for the duration of the strike—perhaps six weeks,
perhaps six months, perhaps a year—with visions in their minds of
beautiful, starry-eyed, helpless little ones. Instead they were
presented with bedraggled urchins, many of whom had never seen a
toothbrush. But they rallied round magnificently; I cannot speak too
highly of them.
It was a responsibility to apportion the children properly, but I had
willing and intelligent help. The Poles had sent a Polish delegate, the
French had sent a French delegate, and so on, in order that all might be
placed in homes where they could be understood. Luckily several families
were willing to take more than one child so that we were usually able to
keep brother and sister together. Each, before it was handed over, was
given a medical examination. The temporary foster-parents had to promise
to write the real parents, and also to send a weekly report to the
committee of how their charges were getting on. The tabulation was
thorough, and not until four in the morning did the last of us go to
bed.
The next week, ninety-two more children were brought down, but I had no
part in this, because I was on a case. Hysteria had now risen to such a
height that some of the parents at the Lawrence Station were beaten and
arrested by the police. Victor Berger of Wisconsin, the only Socialist
member of Congress, asked for an investigation of circumstances leading
up to the walkout. Although I had not been identified with it, he
requested me to be present at the hearings.
When Gompers testified, he literally shook with rage, and it seemed to
me he was about to have apoplexy. The mill owners charged that the whole
affair had been staged solely for notoriety and that the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children should step in.
Unfortunately, the witnesses for the strikers were not well-documented.
When it was obvious that the Congressional Committee was not receiving
the correct impression, Berger asked me to take the stand and describe
the condition of the children as I had seen them. Writing up statistics
on hospital reports had given me the habit of classification. I was able
from my brief notes to answer every question as to their nationalities,
their ages, their weights, the number of those without underclothes and
without overcoats. Senator Warren Gamaliel Harding led the inquiry, and
I could see he was in sympathy with my vehement replies.
The publicity had been so well managed by the Italians and their leaders
that popular opinion turned in favor of the strikers, and they
eventually won. At the end of March the little refugees, who had
endeared themselves to their foster-parents, went back to the mill
district. It was hard to recognize the same children of six weeks
before, plumped up and dressed in new clothes. In November Ettor and
Giovanitti were acquitted.
The Paterson silk strike of the next year, in which the workers were
again predominantly Italian, may have been as important as the one at
Lawrence, but it was by no means so obviously dramatic. Paterson was a
gloomy city, and, as a river, the Passaic was sadder than the Merrimac.
Though the leadership was far more cohesive, caution was evidenced on
every hand. Its chief interest to me lay in Bill Haywood’s
participation. At Lawrence he had only been one of the committee,
whereas at Paterson he was in charge for the first time in the East.
Always before he had advised strikers to “take it on the chin” and not
be too gentle in hitting back. But here, before ten thousand crowding up
to the rostrum, I heard him warn, “Keep your hands in your pockets, men,
and nobody can say you are shooting.”
An American was apt to be at a disadvantage in handling foreigners,
particularly when they felt aggrieved. They objected to his manner of
going about things, so different from their own, and he, on the other
hand, could not fully understand their psychology, and had the added
obstacle of being compelled to work through an intermediary in language.
At Paterson the Italian groups were not behind Bill. As soon as he began
to temper his language and sound a more wary note of advice, his
once-faithful adherents repudiated him. His clarion call of “Hands in
the Pockets,” which was intended to create favorable popular opinion by
proving them “good boys,” had actually _tied_ their hands, and
detectives beat and bullied them just the same. The public was not
impressed and they were resentful. They claimed he did not have the old
fighting spirit he had shown when directing the miners of the West, he
was getting soft, he was a sick man. Although he had actually progressed
tactically and left them where they were, from that time on he lost his
power of leadership.
Following the method which had been so successful at Lawrence, Jack Reed
endeavored to dramatize direct action in an enormous pageant at Madison
Square Garden. He even had pallbearers carry an actual coffin into the
hall to pictorialize the funeral of a worker who had been shot at
Paterson. I could feel a tremor go through the audience, but, on the
whole, conviction was lacking.
The pageant was a fitting conclusion to one period of my life. I believe
that we all had our parts to play. Some had important ones; some were
there to lend support to a scene; some were merely voices off stage.
Each, whatever his role, was essential. I only walked on, but it had its
influence in my future.
No matter to what degree I might participate in strikes, I always came
back to the idea which was beginning to obsess me—that something more
was needed to assuage the condition of the very poor. It was both absurd
and futile to struggle over pennies when fast-coming babies required
dollars to feed them.
I was thoroughly despondent after the Paterson debacle, and had a
sickening feeling that there was to be no end; it seemed to me the whole
question of strikes for higher wages was based on man’s economic need of
supporting his family, and that this was a shallow principle upon which
to found a new civilization. Furthermore, I was enough of a Feminist to
resent the fact that woman and her requirements were not being taken
into account in reconstructing this new world about which all were
talking. They were failing to consider the quality of life itself.
_Chapter Seven_
THE TURBID EBB AND FLOW OF MISERY
“_Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night._”
WILLIAM BLAKE
During these years in New York trained nurses were in great demand. Few
people wanted to enter hospitals; they were afraid they might be
“practiced” upon, and consented to go only in desperate emergencies.
Sentiment was especially vehement in the matter of having babies. A
woman’s own bedroom, no matter how inconveniently arranged, was the
usual place for her lying-in. I was not sufficiently free from domestic
duties to be a general nurse, but I could ordinarily manage obstetrical
cases because I was notified far enough ahead to plan my schedule. And
after serving my two weeks I could get home again.
Sometimes I was summoned to small apartments occupied by young clerks,
insurance salesmen, or lawyers, just starting out, most of them under
thirty and whose wives were having their first or second baby. They were
always eager to know the best and latest method in infant care and
feeding. In particular, Jewish patients, whose lives centered around the
family, welcomed advice and followed it implicitly.
But more and more my calls began to come from the Lower East Side, as
though I were being magnetically drawn there by some force outside my
control. I hated the wretchedness and hopelessness of the poor, and
never experienced that satisfaction in working among them that so many
noble women have found. My concern for my patients was now quite
different from my earlier hospital attitude. I could see that much was
wrong with them which did not appear in the physiological or medical
diagnosis. A woman in childbirth was not merely a woman in childbirth.
My expanded outlook included a view of her background, her
potentialities as a human being, the kind of children she was bearing,
and what was going to happen to them.
The wives of small shopkeepers were my most frequent cases, but I had
carpenters, truck drivers, dishwashers, and pushcart vendors. I admired
intensely the consideration most of these people had for their own.
Money to pay doctor and nurse had been carefully saved months in
advance—parents-in-law, grandfathers, grandmothers, all contributing.
As soon as the neighbors learned that a nurse was in the building they
came in a friendly way to visit, often carrying fruit, jellies, or
gefüllter fish made after a cherished recipe. It was infinitely pathetic
to me that they, so poor themselves, should bring me food. Later they
drifted in again with the excuse of getting the plate, and sat down for
a nice talk; there was no hurry. Always back of the little gift was the
question, “I am pregnant (or my daughter, or my sister is). Tell me
something to keep from having another baby. We cannot afford another
yet.”
I tried to explain the only two methods I had ever heard of among the
middle classes, both of which were invariably brushed aside as
unacceptable. They were of no certain avail to the wife because they
placed the burden of responsibility solely upon the husband—a burden
which he seldom assumed. What she was seeking was self-protection she
could herself use, and there was none.
Below this stratum of society was one in truly desperate circumstances.
The men were sullen and unskilled, picking up odd jobs now and then, but
more often unemployed, lounging in and out of the house at all hours of
the day and night. The women seemed to slink on their way to market and
were without neighborliness.
These submerged, untouched classes were beyond the scope of organized
charity or religion. No labor union, no church, not even the Salvation
Army reached them. They were apprehensive of everyone and rejected help
of any kind, ordering all intruders to keep out; both birth and death
they considered their own business. Social agents, who were just
beginning to appear, were profoundly mistrusted because they pried into
homes and lives, asking questions about wages, how many were in the
family, had any of them ever been in jail. Often two or three had been
there or were now under suspicion of prostitution, shoplifting, purse
snatching, petty thievery, and, in consequence, passed furtively by the
big blue uniforms on the corner.
The utmost depression came over me as I approached this surreptitious
region. Below Fourteenth Street I seemed to be breathing a different
air, to be in another world and country where the people had habits and
customs alien to anything I had ever heard about.
There were then approximately ten thousand apartments in New York into
which no sun ray penetrated directly; such windows as they had opened
only on a narrow court from which rose fetid odors. It was seldom
cleaned, though garbage and refuse often went down into it. All these
dwellings were pervaded by the foul breath of poverty, that moldy,
indefinable, indescribable smell which cannot be fumigated out,
sickening to me but apparently unnoticed by those who lived there. When
I set to work with antiseptics, their pungent sting, at least
temporarily, obscured the stench.
I remember one confinement case to which I was called by the doctor of
an insurance company. I climbed up the five flights and entered the
airless rooms, but the baby had come with too great speed. A boy of ten
had been the only assistant. Five flights was a long way; he had wrapped
the placenta in a piece of newspaper and dropped it out the window into
the court.
Many families took in “boarders,” as they were termed, whose small
contributions paid the rent. These derelicts, wanderers, alternately
working and drinking, were crowded in with the children; a single room
sometimes held as many as six sleepers. Little girls were accustomed to
dressing and undressing in front of the men, and were often violated,
occasionally by their own fathers or brothers, before they reached the
age of puberty.
Pregnancy was a chronic condition among the women of this class.
Suggestions as to what to do for a girl who was “in trouble” or a
married woman who was “caught” passed from mouth to mouth—herb teas,
turpentine, steaming, rolling downstairs, inserting slippery elm,
knitting needles, shoe-hooks. When they had word of a new remedy they
hurried to the drugstore, and if the clerk were inclined to be friendly
he might say, “Oh, that won’t help you, but here’s something that may.”
The younger druggists usually refused to give advice because, if it were
to be known, they would come under the law; midwives were even more
fearful. The doomed women implored me to reveal the “secret” rich people
had, offering to pay me extra to tell them; many really believed I was
holding back information for money. They asked everybody and tried
anything, but nothing did them any good. On Saturday nights I have seen
groups of from fifty to one hundred with their shawls over their heads
waiting outside the office of a five-dollar abortionist.
Each time I returned to this district, which was becoming a recurrent
nightmare, I used to hear that Mrs. Cohen “had been carried to a
hospital, but had never come back,” or that Mrs. Kelly “had sent the
children to a neighbor and had put her head into the gas oven.” Day
after day such tales were poured into my ears—a baby born dead, great
relief—the death of an older child, sorrow but again relief of a
sort—the story told a thousand times of death from abortion and children
going into institutions. I shuddered with horror as I listened to the
details and studied the reasons back of them—destitution linked with
excessive childbearing. The waste of life seemed utterly senseless. One
by one worried, sad, pensive, and aging faces marshaled themselves
before me in my dreams, sometimes appealingly, sometimes accusingly.
These were not merely “unfortunate conditions among the poor” such as we
read about. I knew the women personally. They were living, breathing,
human beings, with hopes, fears, and aspirations like my own, yet their
weary, misshapen bodies, “always ailing, never failing,” were destined
to be thrown on the scrap heap before they were thirty-five. I could not
escape from the facts of their wretchedness; neither was I able to see
any way out. My own cozy and comfortable family existence was becoming a
reproach to me.
Then one stifling mid-July day of 1912 I was summoned to a Grand Street
tenement. My patient was a small, slight Russian Jewess, about
twenty-eight years old, of the special cast of feature to which
suffering lends a madonna-like expression. The cramped three-room
apartment was in a sorry state of turmoil. Jake Sachs, a truck driver
scarcely older than his wife, had come home to find the three children
crying and her unconscious from the effects of a self-induced abortion.
He had called the nearest doctor, who in turn had sent for me. Jake’s
earnings were trifling, and most of them had gone to keep the
none-too-strong children clean and properly fed. But his wife’s
ingenuity had helped them to save a little, and this he was glad to
spend on a nurse rather than have her go to a hospital.
The doctor and I settled ourselves to the task of fighting the
septicemia. Never had I worked so fast, never so concentratedly. The
sultry days and nights were melted into a torpid inferno. It did not
seem possible there could be such heat, and every bit of food, ice, and
drugs had to be carried up three flights of stairs.
Jake was more kind and thoughtful than many of the husbands I had
encountered. He loved his children, and had always helped his wife wash
and dress them. He had brought water up and carried garbage down before
he left in the morning, and did as much as he could for me while he
anxiously watched her progress.
After a fortnight Mrs. Sachs’ recovery was in sight. Neighbors,
ordinarily fatalistic as to the results of abortion, were genuinely
pleased that she had survived. She smiled wanly at all who came to see
her and thanked them gently, but she could not respond to their hearty
congratulations. She appeared to be more despondent and anxious than she
should have been, and spent too much time in meditation.
At the end of three weeks, as I was preparing to leave the fragile
patient to take up her difficult life once more, she finally voiced her
fears, “Another baby will finish me, I suppose?”
“It’s too early to talk about that,” I temporized.
But when the doctor came to make his last call, I drew him aside. “Mrs.
Sachs is terribly worried about having another baby.”
“She well may be,” replied the doctor, and then he stood before her and
said, “Any more such capers, young woman, and there’ll be no need to
send for me.”
“I know, doctor,” she replied timidly, “but,” and she hesitated as
though it took all her courage to say it, “what can I do to prevent it?”
The doctor was a kindly man, and he had worked hard to save her, but
such incidents had become so familiar to him that he had long since lost
whatever delicacy he might once have had. He laughed good-naturedly.
“You want to have your cake and eat it too, do you? Well, it can’t be
done.”
Then picking up his hat and bag to depart he said, “Tell Jake to sleep
on the roof.”
I glanced quickly at Mrs. Sachs. Even through my sudden tears I could
see stamped on her face an expression of absolute despair. We simply
looked at each other, saying no word until the door had closed behind
the doctor. Then she lifted her thin, blue-veined hands and clasped them
beseechingly. “He can’t understand. He’s only a man. But you do, don’t
you? Please tell me the secret, and I’ll never breathe it to a soul.
_Please!_”
What was I to do? I could not speak the conventionally comforting
phrases which would be of no comfort. Instead, I made her as physically
easy as I could and promised to come back in a few days to talk with her
again. A little later, when she slept, I tiptoed away.
Night after night the wistful image of Mrs. Sachs appeared before me. I
made all sorts of excuses to myself for not going back. I was busy on
other cases; I really did not know what to say to her or how to convince
her of my own ignorance; I was helpless to avert such monstrous
atrocities. Time rolled by and I did nothing.
The telephone rang one evening three months later, and Jake Sachs’
agitated voice begged me to come at once; his wife was sick again and
from the same cause. For a wild moment I thought of sending someone
else, but actually, of course, I hurried into my uniform, caught up my
bag, and started out. All the way I longed for a subway wreck, an
explosion, anything to keep me from having to enter that home again. But
nothing happened, even to delay me. I turned into the dingy doorway and
climbed the familiar stairs once more. The children were there, young
little things.
Mrs. Sachs was in a coma and died within ten minutes. I folded her still
hands across her breast, remembering how they had pleaded with me,
begging so humbly for the knowledge which was her right. I drew a sheet
over her pallid face. Jake was sobbing, running his hands through his
hair and pulling it out like an insane person. Over and over again he
wailed, “My God! My God! My God!”
I left him pacing desperately back and forth, and for hours I myself
walked and walked and walked through the hushed streets. When I finally
arrived home and let myself quietly in, all the household was sleeping.
I looked out my window and down upon the dimly lighted city. Its pains
and griefs crowded in upon me, a moving picture rolled before my eyes
with photographic clearness: women writhing in travail to bring forth
little babies; the babies themselves naked and hungry, wrapped in
newspapers to keep them from the cold; six-year-old children with
pinched, pale, wrinkled faces, old in concentrated wretchedness, pushed
into gray and fetid cellars, crouching on stone floors, their small
scrawny hands scuttling through rags, making lamp shades, artificial
flowers; white coffins, black coffins, coffins, coffins interminably
passing in never-ending succession. The scenes piled one upon another on
another. I could bear it no longer.
As I stood there the darkness faded. The sun came up and threw its
reflection over the house tops. It was the dawn of a new day in my life
also. The doubt and questioning, the experimenting and trying, were now
to be put behind me. I knew I could not go back merely to keeping people
alive.
I went to bed, knowing that no matter what it might cost, I was finished
with palliatives and superficial cures; I was resolved to seek out the
root of evil, to do something to change the destiny of mothers whose
miseries were vast as the sky.
_Chapter Eight_
I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP
How were mothers to be saved? I went through many revolving doors,
looked around, and, not finding what I was seeking, came out again. I
talked incessantly to everybody who seemed to have social welfare at
heart. Progressive women whom I consulted were thoroughly discouraging.
“Wait until we get the vote. Then we’ll take care of that,” they assured
me. I tried the Socialists. Here, there, and everywhere the reply came,
“Wait until women have more education. Wait until we secure equal
distribution of wealth.” Wait for this and wait for that. Wait! Wait!
Wait!
Having no idea how powerful were the laws which laid a blanket of
ignorance over the medical profession as well as the laity, I asked
various doctors of my acquaintance, “Why aren’t physicians doing
something?”
“The people you’re worrying about wouldn’t use contraception if they had
it; they breed like rabbits. And, besides, there’s a law against it.”
“Information does exist, doesn’t it?”
“Perhaps, but I doubt whether you can find it. Even if you do, you can’t
pass it on. Comstock’ll get you if you don’t watch out.”
In order to ascertain something about this subject which was so
mysterious and so unaccountably forbidden, I spent almost a year in the
libraries—the Astor, the Lenox, the Academy of Medicine, the Library of
Congress, and dozens of others. Hoping that psychological treatises
might inform me, I read Auguste Forel and Iwan Block. At one gulp I
swallowed Havelock Ellis’ _Psychology of Sex_, and had psychic
indigestion for months thereafter. I was not shocked, but this
mountainous array of abnormalities made me spiritually ill. So many
volumes were devoted to the exceptional, and so few to the
maladjustments of normal married people, which were infinitely more
numerous and urgent.
I read translations from the German in which women were advised to have
more children because it could be proved statistically that their
condition was improved by childbearing. The only article on the question
I could discover in American literature was in the _Atlantic Monthly_ by
Edward Alsworth Ross of the University of Wisconsin, who brought to the
attention of his readers the decline of the birth rate among the upper
and educated classes and the increase among the unfit, the consequences
of which were sure to be race suicide.
The Englishman, Thomas Robert Malthus, remained little more than a name
to me, something like Plato or Henry George. Father had talked about
him, but he meant mostly agriculture—wheat and food supplies in the
national sense. Possibly he had a philosophy but not, to me, a live one.
He had been put away on a shelf and, in my mind, had nothing to do with
the everyday human problem. I was not looking for theories. What I
desired was merely a simple method of contraception for the poor.
The pursuit of my quest took me away from home a good deal. The children
used to come in after school and at once hunt for me. “Where’s mother?”
was the usual question. If they found me at my mending basket they all
leaped about for joy, took hands and danced, shouting, “Mother’s home,
mother’s home, mother’s sewing.” Sewing seemed to imply a measure of
permanence.
I, too, wanted to drive away the foreboding barrier of separation by
closer contact with them. I wanted to have them solely to myself, to
feed, to bathe, to clothe them myself. I had heard of the clean,
wind-swept Cape Cod dunes, which appeared to be as far from the ugliness
of civilization as I could get. Socialism, anarchism, syndicalism,
progressivism—I was tired of them all. At the end of the spring,
thoroughly depressed and dissatisfied, I tucked the children under my
arms, boarded a Fall River boat, and sailed off, a pioneer to
Provincetown.
In 1913 the tip of the Cape was nothing but a fishing village with one
planked walk which, I was told, had been paid for by Congress. Up and
down its length the bellman, the last of the town criers, walked,
proclaiming the news.
At first we lived in the upper story of a fisherman’s house right on the
water. After he went out in the morning, his wife and her children, and
I and mine, were left alone. Then the old women recalled scenes from
their early days on the whaling vessels. Their mothers had brought them
forth unaided, and their own sons, in turn, had been born on the ships
and apprenticed to their husbands. They fitted into life simply, but the
younger Portuguese, who were taking over the fishing industry, were
asking what they should do about limiting their families.
The village was rather messy and smelled of fish. I was still too close
to humanity and wanted to be more alone, so we moved to the extreme end
of town. Our veranda faced the Bay, and when the tide was high the water
came up and lapped at the piles on which the cottage was built. Stuart,
Grant, and Peggy used to sit on the steps and dabble their toes. At low
tide they had two miles of beach on which to skip and run; it was a
wonderful place to play, and all summer we had sunrise breakfasts,
sunset picnics.
Ethel, who had married Jack Byrne, was now widowed and had also gone
into nursing. She had considerable free time and stayed with me.
Consequently, I was able to leave the children in her care when I made
my expeditions to Boston’s far-famed public library, taking the _Dorothy
Bradford_ at noon, and coming back the next day. Even there I found no
information more reliable than that exchanged by back-fence gossips in
any small town.
I spent the entire season at Provincetown, groping for knowledge,
classifying all my past activities in their proper categories, weighing
the pros and cons of what good there was in them and also what they
lacked. It was a period of gestation. Just as you give birth to a child,
so you can give birth to an idea.
Between interims of brooding and playing with the children I took part
in the diversions of the minute colony of congenial people. Charles
Hawthorne had a school of painting, and Mary Heaton Vorse with her
husband, Joseph O’Brien, were there; so also were Hutch Hapgood and
Neith Boyce. Jessie Ashley had lifted Big Bill Haywood out of the slough
of the Paterson strike and brought him down to rest and recuperate.
Big Bill was one of the few who saw what I was aiming at, although
fearful that my future might involve the happiness of my children. Even
he did not feel that the small-family question was significant enough to
be injected into the labor platform. Nevertheless, as we rambled up and
down the beach he came to my aid with that cheering encouragement of
which I was so sorely in need. He never wasted words in advising me to
“wait.” Instead, he suggested that I go to France and see for myself the
conditions resulting from generations of family limitation in that
country. This struck me as a splendid idea, because it would also give
Bill Sanger a chance to paint instead of continuing to build suburban
houses.
The trip to Europe seemed so urgent that no matter what sacrifices had
to be made, we decided to make them when we came to them. In the fall we
sold the house at Hastings, gave away some of our furniture and put the
rest in storage. Although we did not realize it at the time, our
gestures indicated a clean sweep of the past.
Anita Block proposed that we go via Scotland; she wanted me to write
three or four articles on what twenty-five years of municipal ownership
in Glasgow had done for women and children. Socialists were talking
about how everything there belonged to the people themselves and had
earned their own way—banks, schools, homes, parks, markets, art
galleries, museums, laundries, bath houses, hospitals, and tramways. The
city was about to pay off the last debt on the transportation system,
and this was being hailed as a great victory, a perfect example of what
Socialism could do. It sounded big and fine, and I, too, was impressed.
Certainly in Glasgow, I thought, I should find women walking hand in
hand with men, and children free and happy.
In October the Sangers sailed from Boston on a cabin boat, little and
crowded, and one black night two weeks later steamed up the Clyde. The
naval program of 1913 was causing every shipyard to run double shifts,
and the flare and glare against the somber dark was like
fairyland—giant, sparkling starlights reaching from the horizon into the
sky, a beautiful introduction to Utopia.
The very next day I started out upon my investigations. To mind the
children, aged nine, five, and three, I availed myself of a sort of
employment bureau run by the Municipal Corporation. I had been told that
anyone could call here for any imaginable type of service. In response
to my summons, there promptly arrived at my door, standing straight and
machine-like, a small boy in a buttons uniform, with chin strap holding
his cap on the side of his head. Willie MacGuire’s stipend was to be
twelve cents an hour, or fifty cents for the half day. His function was
to take the three out, entertain them, and return them faithfully at any
time designated. Though he was no bigger than Stuart, his efficient
manner reassured me, and I soon learned that he performed his duties
diligently.
Religiously I made the rounds of all the social institutions, and at
first everything appeared as I had been led to expect—except the
weather. It had always just rained, and, when the sun did show itself,
it was seldom for long enough to dry up the walks. Though the streets
were clean, they were invariably wet and damp, and nobody wore rubbers.
Everywhere could be seen little girls down on their knees, scrubbing the
door-steps in front of the houses, or, again, carrying huge bundles or
baskets of groceries to be delivered at the homes of the buyers. The
people themselves seemed cold and rigid, as dismal as their climate.
Only the policemen had a sense of humor.
As I proceeded, flaws in the vaunted civic enterprises began to display
themselves. Glasgow had its show beauty spots, but even the model
tenements were not so good as our simplest, lower-middle-class apartment
buildings. One had been constructed for the accommodation of “deserving
and respectable widows and widowers belonging to the working class”
having one or more children with no one to care for them while the
parents were away. But the building had been turned over to the
exclusive use of widowers. Widows and their children had to shift for
themselves.
All tenements were planned scientifically on the basis of so many cubic
feet of air and so much light per so many human beings, ranging from
quarters for two to those for five. No overcrowding was allowed.
“Well,” I asked, “what happens when there are five or six children?”
“Oh, they can’t live here,” replied the superintendent. “They must go
elsewhere.”
“But where?”
Conversation ceased.
With particular attention I traced the adventures of one family which
had expanded beyond the three-child limit. The parents had first moved
over to the fringes of the city, and thereafter as more children were
born had traveled from place to place, progressively more dingy, more
decrepit. They now had nine and were inhabiting a hovel in the
shipbuilding slums, unimaginably filthy and too far from the splendid
utilities ever to enjoy them.
The further I looked, the greater grew the inconsistency. The model
markets carried chiefly wholesale produce, and the really poor, who were
obliged to huddle on the far side of the city, contented themselves with
bread and tea and were thankful to have it. Another disappointment was
the washhouses, dating from 1878 when they had been deemed a public
necessity because men had protested they were being driven from their
homes by washing which, on account of the incessant rain, seemed to hang
there forever. A stall cost only twopence an hour, less expensive than
heating water at home, and there were always women waiting in line. But
the tram system, which was on the point of being liquidated in spite of
its low fares, forbade laundry baskets, and, consequently, those who
were not within walking distance—and they were the ones who needed it
most—were deprived of its use.
Throughout the slum section I saw drunken, sodden women whose remaining,
snag-like teeth stuck down like fangs and protruded from their sunken
mouths. When I asked one of the executive officers of the corporation
why they were so much more degraded than the men, he replied, “Oh, the
women of Glasgow are all dirty and low. They’re hopeless.”
“But why should this be?” I persisted.
His only answer was, “It’s their own fault.”
Bill and I walked about late at night, overwhelmed by the unspeakable
poverty. The streets were filled with fighting, shiftless beggars.
Hundreds of women were abroad, the big shawls over their heads serving
two purposes: one, to keep their shoulders warm; the other, to wrap
around the baby which each one carried. It was apparent that their
clothing consisted only of a shawl, a petticoat, a wrapper, and shoes.
Older children were begging, “A ha’penny for bread, Missus, a ha’penny
for bread.”
It was infinitely cold, dreary, and disappointing—so much talk about
more wages and better subsistence, and here the workers had it and what
were they getting?—a little more light, perhaps, a few more pennies a
day, the opportunity to buy food a little more cheaply, a few parks in
which they could wander, a bank where their money earned a fraction more
interest. But as soon as they passed beyond the border of another baby,
they were in exactly the same condition as the people beyond the realm
of municipal control.
Municipal ownership was one more thing to throw in the discard.
One dull, rainy day, glad to leave behind the shrill, crying voices of
the beggars of Glasgow, we boarded a horrid cattle boat bound for
Antwerp. The children were all seasick as we bounced and tossed over the
North Sea. It was something of a job to handle the three of them with no
nurse, especially when the storm threw them out of their beds on to the
cabin floor. Fortunately they suffered no fractures, although twenty-six
horses in the hold had to be shot because their legs had been broken.
We arrived at the Gare du Nord in Paris at the end of another dismal,
bewildering day—toot-toot! steam, luggage, brusque snatching by
blue-smocked, black-capped porters, all looking like villains, jam at
the ticket gate, rackety taxi to a hotel on the Left Bank.
Paris seemed another Glasgow, more like a provincial village than a
great metropolis. The atmosphere of petty penury destroyed my dreams of
Parisian gaiety and elegance; even the French children were dressed in
drab, gloomy, black aprons. Within a few days we had sub-let an
apartment on the Boulevard St. Michel across from the Luxembourg Gardens
where Grant and Peggy could play. It was four flights up, and the cold
penetrated to the marrow of our bones. We could put tons of briquets
into the little fireplaces and never get any heat. All the family went
into flannel underwear, the first since my early childhood.
I presented Stuart to the superintendent of the district _lycée_. He
demanded a birth certificate, and I had none.
“But without it how can I tell where he was born or how old he is?” The
official seemed to imply that Stuart did not exist.
“But,” I protested, “here he is. He’s alive.”
“No, no, Madame! The law says you must have a birth certificate.”
I had to send him to a private school, which was something of a drain on
the budget.
Bill found a studio on Montparnasse, just back of the Station. Again and
again he came home aglow with news of meeting the great Matisse and
other revolutionary painters barely emerging from obscurity. I trailed
around to studios and exhibits occasionally, but I was trying to become
articulate on my own subject, and paid scant attention to those who
loomed up later as giants in the artistic world. The companionship of
Jessie Ashley and Bill Haywood, who had just come to Paris, was more
familiar to me.
I was also eager to encounter French people and discover their points of
view. One of the first was Victor Dave, the last surviving leader of the
French Commune of 1871. Thanksgiving Day we had a little dinner party
and invited American friends to greet him. He was then over eighty, but
still keen and active. As the evening wore on we started him talking
about his past experiences and he held us enthralled until way into the
morning, when we all had breakfast in the apartment.
The old Communard spoke English far better than any of us spoke French.
He was now making three dollars a week by his linguistic abilities,
because he was the sole person the Government could call upon not only
for the language but the dialects of the Balkans. Just the day before he
had been translating a new series of treaties which France was making
with the Balkan States in a desperate attempt to tie them to the Triple
Entente. Though he was a philosophical person who could be gay over his
own hardships, his confidences to us were serious and sad. From the
agreements then being drawn up, particularly those with Rumania, he
could see nothing but war ahead, predicting definitely that within five
years all nations would be at each other’s throats. We newcomers to
Europe could not grasp the meaning of his words, and the residents
shrugged their shoulders and said, “He is getting old. He cannot see
that we are now beyond war, that people are too intelligent ever to
resort to it again.”
As I look back it is apparent that we heard in France the whole
rumblings of the World War. Unrest was in the air as it had been in the
United States, but with a difference. Theaters were showing anti-German
plays, _revanche_ placards decorated Napoleon’s tomb in the Invalides,
and the rusty black draperies around the shrouded statue of Strasbourg
in the Place de la Concorde pointed a macabre note. These were
remembered afterwards; at the time they were merely part of the Paris
scene.
I realized the disadvantage of not being better acquainted with the
French language, and started in to practice what I knew and learn more.
Good fortune brought me in touch with an Englishwoman, the wife of the
editor of _L’Humanité_, the organ of the Confédération Générale de
Travail, the famous C.G.T. To her I clung and at her home I met the
Socialist leader, Jean Jaurès. His English was bad and my French worse;
we had to have an interpreter. Doubtless we missed a lot, but even so we
found we understood each other. I believe that his assassination on the
eve of the war which he had done so much to prevent proved an
irreparable loss to the cause of peace.
In my language difficulties Jessie Ashley’s fluency was an ever-present
help. Together we used to eat in the restaurants frequented by laborers,
who came in groups, keeping their caps on, enjoying the cheap and good
food accompanied by wine. Often we were the only women in the place,
always excepting the inevitable cashier.
Though women were rarely seen at a C.G.T. meeting, Victor Dave took
Jessie and me to a particularly impressive one which Bill Haywood was to
address. His reputation as a firebrand had preceded him, and the police
were making certain that no riot should ensue; they were stopping each
person who crossed the bridge and demanding an account of his
destination. Our passport was the venerable appearance of our escort,
whose long white hair hung low about his head. His top hat, that
universal badge of respectability, let us through.
The vast auditorium was filled with some three thousand French
syndicalists, similar to the American I.W.W.’s, all standing, all
wearing the uniform of the proletariat—black-visored caps and loose
corduroys. They were being urged not to take up arms against the workers
of other nations. I began to wonder whether perhaps the various tokens
of disquiet which had impalpably surrounded me since coming to France
had some more desperate meaning than we in America had realized. The
_War, What For?_ discussions in New York had seemed only a part of the
evening conversations. Here again I was listening to protests against
government efforts to arouse national hatred by calling it patriotism. I
had heard the words so often, “Workers of the World, Unite,” yet at last
I was vaguely uneasy because of the difference in spirit.
As we emerged into the narrow, alley-like street we found the exits into
the boulevard guarded by hundreds of gendarmes, both mounted and afoot.
Had any outbreak occurred, the assembled syndicalists would literally
have been trapped.
My uneasiness was increased as a result of a visit to the Hindu
nationalist, Shyamaji Krishnavarma. In England he had been an agitator
for Indian Home Rule and, when the London residence of the Viceroy of
India had been bombed, with other Indians who might have been
implicated, he had fled to France, so long the sanctuary for anyone who,
because of political beliefs, got into trouble elsewhere. Krishnavarma
was now editing the _Indian Sociologist_, which was being secretly
spirited across the Channel.
Krishnavarma had asked whether he might be permitted to give a reception
in my honor. No Hindu had ever given a reception in my honor. Trying to
appear, however, as though this were a frequent occurrence, I set a time
and bravely entered his salon, supported, as usual, by Jessie.
About twenty-five men were there, Indian students all, and only one
other woman, Mrs. Krishnavarma, barely out of purdah and still in native
dress. As a great concession she had been allowed to come in, despite
the presence of men. It was evident she could listen but not speak,
because, when I asked her something about her children, Krishnavarma
answered for her quickly. A little later I was disputing a point with
him and, to bolster up his argument, he gave her a curt command in
Hindustani. She rose swiftly and soon returned with a well-thumbed and
pencil-marked copy of Spencer. I had come to consider Spencer’s
philosophy old-fogyish. His teachings were so mild that I wondered what
in the world he could ever have been hounded for. Though Krishnavarma
was working towards the freedom of India he had gone no further than
this pink tea which was not even pale China, let alone sturdy, black
Ceylon.
I had been home scarcely more than half an hour and was dressing for
dinner when Peggy ran in animatedly. “Mother, there are three soldiers
at the door!” The bright uniforms of the gendarmes had taken her fancy,
and she was pleased and excited. When I went out to meet them they
demanded to know where we had come from, the object of our visit to
France, how long we intended to stay, in what manner we had located the
apartment, from whom we had rented it, where I had been that afternoon,
the length of time I had known Krishnavarma, and the reason for my being
at his home. Finally, they explained their presence by saying the
concierge had not sent in the required information to the prefecture.
When I described the strange visitation to someone familiar with French
customs, I was told that concierges were all ex officio agents of the
police and were compelled to make regular reports of the activities, no
matter how petty, of their tenants. These were incorporated into the
dossiers of all foreigners. Actually, the police, working with the
British Secret Service, were checking up on Krishnavarma’s callers.
Thereafter gendarmes lingered in doorways outside our apartment, and
wherever I went I was conscious they were in the vicinity.
Because of the predilection of the French for quality rather than
quantity, they had not only adopted the sociological definition of
proletariat, “the prolific ones,” a term originally applied by the
Romans to the lowest class of society, but had interpreted it literally.
The syndicalists in particular had made what they called conscious
generation a part of their policy and principles, and had affiliated
themselves with the Neo-Malthusian movement, which had its headquarters
in London.
The parents of France, almost on the same wage scale as those I had seen
in Glasgow, had settled the matter to their own satisfaction. Their one
or two children were given all the care and advantages of French
culture. I was struck with the motherly attention bestowed by our _femme
de chambre_ upon her only child. She came promptly to work, but nothing
could persuade her to arrive before Jean had been taken to his school,
and nothing could prevent her leaving promptly at noon to fetch him for
his luncheon.
When Bill Haywood began taking me into the homes of the syndicalists, I
found perfect acceptance of family limitation and its relation to labor.
“Have you just discovered this?” I asked each woman I met.
“Oh, no, _Maman_ told me.”
“Well, who told her?”
“_Grandmère_, I suppose.”
The _Code Napoléon_ had provided that daughters should inherit equally
with sons and this, to the thrifty peasant mind, had indicated the
desirability of fewer offspring. Nobody would marry a girl unless she
had been instructed how to regulate the numbers of her household as well
as the home itself.
Some of the contraceptive formulas which had been handed down were
almost as good as those of today. Although they had to make simple
things, mothers prided themselves on their special recipes for
suppositories as much as on those for _pot au feu_ or wine.
All individual Frenchwomen considered this knowledge their individual
right, and, if it failed, abortion, which was still common. I talked
about the problems of my own people, but they could give me no help,
merely shrugging their shoulders, apparently glad they were living in
France and not in the United States. This independence of thought and
action seemed wholly admirable to me at the time, and I sang the praises
of the system.
Bill was happy in his studio, but I could find no peace. Each day I
stayed, each person I met, made it worse. A whole year had been given
over to this inactive, incoherent brooding. Family and friends had been
generous in patience. I had added to my personal experience statistics
from Glasgow and the little formulas I had gathered from the French
peasants. With this background I had practically reached the exploding
point. I could not contain my ideas, I wanted to get on with what I had
to do in the world.
The last day of the year, December 31, 1913, Bill and I said good-by,
unaware the parting was to be final. With the children I embarked at
Cherbourg for home.
_Chapter Nine_
THE WOMAN REBEL
“_Oh you daughters of the West!
O you young and elder daughters! O you maidens and you women!
Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united,
Pioneers! O pioneers!_”
WALT WHITMAN
The _New York_ was a nice ship and it was not too wintry to walk about
on deck. After the children were safely in bed I paced round and round
and absorbed into my being that quiet which comes to you at sea. That it
was New Year’s Eve added to the poignancy of my emotions but did not
obscure the faith within.
I knew something must be done to rescue those women who were voiceless;
someone had to express with white hot intensity the conviction that they
must be empowered to decide for themselves when they should fulfill the
supreme function of motherhood. They had to be made aware of how they
were being shackled, and roused to mutiny. To this end I conceived the
idea of a magazine to be called the _Woman Rebel_, dedicated to the
interests of working women.
Often I had thought of Vashti as the first woman rebel in history. Once
when her husband, King Ahasuerus, had been showing off to his people his
fine linens, his pillars of marble, his beds of gold and silver, and all
his riches, he had commanded that his beautiful Queen Vashti also be put
on view. But she had declined to be exhibited as a possession or
chattel. Because of her disobedience, which might set a very bad example
to other wives, she had been cast aside and Ahasuerus had chosen a new
bride, the meek and gentle Esther.
I wanted each woman to be a rebellious Vashti, not an Esther; was she to
be merely a washboard with only one song, one song? Surely, she should
be allowed to develop all her potentialities. Feminists were trying to
free her from the new economic ideology but were doing nothing to free
her from her biological subservience to man, which was the true cause of
her enslavement.
Before gathering friends around me for that help which I must have in
stirring women to sedition, before asking them to believe, I had to
chart my own course. Should I bring the cause to the attention of the
people by headlines and front pages? Should I follow my own compulsion
regardless of extreme consequences?
I fully recognized I must refrain from acts which I could not carry
through. So many movements had been issuing defiances without any
ultimate goal, shooting off a popgun here, a popgun there, and finally
shooting themselves to death. They had been too greatly resembling
froth—too noisy with the screech of tin horns and other cheap
instruments instead of the deeper sounds of an outraged, angry, serious
people.
With as crystal a view as that which had come to me after the death of
Mrs. Sachs when I had renounced nursing forever, I saw the path ahead in
its civic, national, and even international direction—a panorama of
things to be. Fired with this vision, I went into the lounge and wrote
and wrote page after page until the hours of daylight.
Having settled the principles, I left the details to work themselves
out. I realized that a price must be paid for honest thinking—a price
for everything. Though I did not know exactly how I was to prepare
myself, what turn events might take, or what I might be called upon to
do, the future in its larger aspects has actually developed as I saw it
that night.
The same thoughts kept repeating themselves over and over during the
remainder of the otherwise uneventful voyage. As soon as possible after
reaching New York, I rented an inexpensive little flat on Post Avenue
near Dyckman Street, so far out on the upper end of Manhattan that even
the Broadway subway trains managed to burrow their way into sunlight and
fresh air. My dining room was my office, the table my desk.
A new movement was starting, and the baby had to have a name. It did not
belong to Socialism nor was it in the labor field, and it had much more
to it than just the prevention of conception. As a few companions were
sitting with me one evening we debated in turn voluntary parenthood,
voluntary motherhood, the new motherhood, constructive generation, and
new generation. The terms already in use—Neo-Malthusianism, Family
Limitation, and Conscious Generation seemed stuffy and lacked popular
appeal.
The word control was good, but I did not like limitation—that was too
limiting. I was not advocating a one-child or two-child system as in
France, nor did I wholeheartedly agree with the English Neo-Malthusians
whose concern was almost entirely with limitation for economic reasons.
My idea of control was bigger and freer. I wanted family in it, yet
family control did not sound right. We tried population control, race
control, and birth rate control. Then someone suggested, “Drop the
rate.” Birth control was the answer; we knew we had it. Our work for
that day was done and everybody picked up his hat and went home. The
baby was named.
When I first announced that I was going to publish a magazine, “Where
are you going to get the money?” was volleyed at me from all sides. I
did not know, but I was certain of its coming somehow. Equally important
was moral support. Those same young friends and I founded a little
society, grandly titled the National Birth Control League, sought aid
from enthusiasts for other causes, turning first to the Feminists
because they seemed our natural allies. Armed with leaflets we went to
Cooper Union to tell them that in the _Woman Rebel_ they would have an
opportunity to express their sentiments.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the Feminist leader, was trying to inspire
women in this country to have a deeper meaning in their lives, which to
her signified more than getting the vote. Nevertheless, at that time I
struck no responsive chord from her or from such intelligent co-workers
as Crystal Eastman, Marie Howe, or Henrietta Rodman. It seemed
unbelievable they could be serious in occupying themselves with what I
regarded as trivialities when mothers within a stone’s throw of their
meetings were dying shocking deaths.
Who cared whether a woman kept her Christian name—Mary Smith instead of
Mrs. John Jones? Who cared whether she wore her wedding ring? Who cared
about her demand for the right to work? Hundreds of thousands of
laundresses, cloak-makers, scrub women, servants, telephone girls, shop
workers would gladly have changed places with the Feminists in return
for the right to have leisure, to be lazy a little now and then. When I
suggested that the basis of Feminism might be the right to be a mother
regardless of church or state, their inherited prejudices were instantly
aroused. They were still subject to the age-old, masculine atmosphere
compounded of protection and dominance.
Disappointed in that quarter I turned to the Socialists and trade
unionists, trusting they would appreciate the importance of family
limitation in the kind of civilization towards which they were
stumbling. Notices were sent to _The Masses_, _Mother Earth_, _The
Call_, _The Arm and Hammer_, _The Liberator_, all names echoing the
spirit which had quickened them.
Shortly I had several hundred subscriptions to the _Woman Rebel_, paid
up in advance at the rate of a dollar a year, the period for which I had
made my plans. Proceeds were to go into a separate revolving account,
scrupulously kept. Unlike so many ephemeral periodicals, mine was not to
flare up and spark out before it had functioned, leaving its subscribers
with only a few issues when they were entitled to more. Eventually we
had a mailing list of about two thousand, but five, ten, even fifty
copies often went in a bundle to be distributed without charge to some
labor organization.
I was solely responsible for the magazine financially, legally, and
morally; I was editor, manager, circulation department, bookkeeper, and
I paid the printer’s bill. But any cause that has not helpers is losing
out. So many men and women secretaries, stenographers, clerks, used to
come in of an evening that I could not find room for all. Some typed,
some addressed envelopes, some went to libraries and looked up things
for us to use, some wrote articles, though seldom signing their own
names. Not one penny ever had to go for salaries, because service was
given freely.
In March, 1914, appeared the first issue of the _Woman Rebel_, eight
pages on cheap paper, copied from the French style, mailed first class
in the city and expressed outside. My initial declaration of the right
of the individual was the slogan “No Gods, No Masters.” Gods, not God. I
wanted that word to go beyond religion and also stop turning idols,
heroes, leaders into gods.
I defined a woman’s duty, “To look the world in the face with a
go-to-hell look in the eyes; to have an idea; to speak and act in
defiance of convention.” It was a marvelous time to say what we wished.
All America was a Hyde Park corner as far as criticism and challenging
thought were concerned. We advocated direct action and took up the
burning questions of the day. With a fine sense of irony we put
anti-capitalist soapbox oratory in print. I do not know whether the
financiers we denounced would have been tolerant or resentful of our
onslaughts had they read them, or as full of passion for their cause as
we for ours. Perhaps they too will have forgotten that emotion now.
My daily routine always started with looking over the pile of mail, and
one morning my attention was caught by an unstamped official envelope
from the New York Post Office. I tore it open.
Dear Madam, You are hereby notified that the Solicitor of the Post
Office Department has decided that the _Woman Rebel_ for March,
1914, is unmailable under Section 489, Postal Laws and Regulations.
E. M. Morgan, Postmaster.
I reread the letter. It was so unexpected that at first the significance
did not sink in. I had given no contraceptive information; I had merely
announced that I intended to do so. Then I began to realize that no
mention was made of any special article or articles. I wrote Mr. Morgan
and asked him to state what specifically had offended, thereby assisting
me in my future course. His reply simply repeated that the March issue
was unmailable.
I had anticipated objections from religious bodies, but believed with
father, “Anything you want can be accomplished by putting a little piece
of paper into the ballot box.” Therefore, to have our insignificant
magazine stopped by the big, strong United States Government seemed so
ludicrous as almost to make us feel important.
To the newspaper world this was news, but not one of the dailies picked
it out as an infringement of a free press. The _Sun_ carried a headline,
“‘WOMAN REBEL’ BARRED FROM MAILS.” And underneath the comment, “Too bad.
The case should be reversed. They should be barred from her and spelled
differently.”
Many times I studied Section 211 of the Federal Statutes, under which
the Post Office was acting. This penal clause of the Comstock Law had
been left hanging in Washington like the dried shell of a tortoise. Its
grip had even been tightened on the moral side; in case the word obscene
should prove too vague, its definition had been enlarged to include the
prevention of conception and the causing of abortion under one and the
same heading. To me it was outrageous that information regarding
motherhood, which was so generally called sacred, should be classed with
pornography.
Nevertheless, I had not broken the law, because it did not prohibit
discussion of contraception—merely giving advice. I harbored a burning
desire to undermine that law. But if I continued publication I was
making myself liable to a Federal indictment and a possible prison term
of five years plus a fine of five thousand dollars. I had to choose
between abandoning the _Woman Rebel_, changing its tone, or continuing
as I had begun. Though I had no wish to become a martyr, with no
hesitation I followed the last-named course.
I gathered our little group together. At first we assumed Comstock had
stopped the entire issue before delivery, but apparently he had not,
because only the A to M’s which had been mailed in the local post office
had been confiscated. We took a fresh lot downtown, slipped three into
one chute, four in another, walked miles around the city so that no
single box contained more than a few copies.
The same procedure had to be pursued in succeeding months. Sometimes
daylight caught me, with one or more assistants, still tramping from the
printer’s and dropping the copies, piece by piece, into various boxes
and chutes. I felt the Government was absurd and tyrannical to make us
do this for no good purpose. I could not get used to its methods then. I
have not yet, and probably never shall.
The _Woman Rebel_ produced extraordinary results, striking vibrations
that brought contacts, messages, inquiries, pamphlets, books, even some
money. I corresponded with the leading Feminists of Europe—Ellen Key,
then at the height of her fame, Olive Schreiner, Mrs. Pankhurst, Rosa
Luxemburg, Adele Schreiber, Clara Zetkin, Roszika Schwimmer, Frau Maria
Stritt. But I also heard from sources and groups I had hardly known
existed—Theosophist, New Thought, Rosicrucian, Spiritualist, Mental
Scientist. It was not alone from New York, but from the highways and by
ways of north, south, east, and west that inspiration came.
After the second number the focus had been birth control. Within six
months we had received over ten thousand letters, arriving in
accelerating volume. Most of them read, “Will your magazine give
accurate and reliable information to prevent conception?” This I could
not print. Realizing by now it was going to be a fairly big fight, I was
careful not to break the law on such a trivial point. It would have been
ridiculous to have a single letter reach the wrong destination;
therefore, I sent no contraceptive facts through the mails.
However, I had no intention of giving up this primary purpose. I began
sorting and arranging the material I had brought back from France,
complete with formulas and drawings, to be issued in a pamphlet where I
could treat the subject with more delicacy than in a magazine, writing
it for women of extremely circumscribed vocabularies. A few hundred
dollars were needed to finance publication of _Family Limitation_, as I
named it, and I approached Theodore Schroeder, a lawyer of standing and
an ardent advocate of free speech. He had been left a fund by a certain
Dr. Foote who had produced a book on _Borning Better Babies_, and I
thought my pamphlet might qualify as a beneficiary.
Dr. Abraham Brill was just then bringing out a translation of Freud, in
whom Schroeder was much interested. He asked whether I had been
psychoanalyzed.
“What is psychoanalysis?”
He looked at me critically as from a great height. “You ought to be
analyzed as to your motives. If, after six weeks, you still wish to
publish this pamphlet, I’ll pay for ten thousand copies.”
“Well, do you think I won’t want to go on?”
“I don’t only think so. I’m quite sure of it.”
“Then I won’t be analyzed.”
I took the manuscript to a printer well known for his liberal tendencies
and courage. He read the contents page by page and said, “You’ll never
get this set up in any shop in New York. It’s a Sing Sing job.”
Every one of the twenty printers whom I tried to persuade was afraid to
touch it. It was impossible ever, it seemed, to get into print the
contents of that pamphlet.
Meanwhile, following the March issue the May and July numbers of the
_Woman Rebel_ had also been banned. In reply to each of the formal
notices I inquired which particular article or articles had incurred
disapproval, but could obtain no answer.
At that time I visualized the birth control movement as part of the
fight for freedom of speech. How much would the postal authorities
suppress? What were they really after? I was determined to prod and goad
until some definite knowledge was obtained as to what was “obscene,
lewd, and lascivious.”
Theodore Schroeder and I used to meet once in a while at the Liberal
Club, and he gave much sound advice—I could not go on with the _Woman
Rebel_ forever. Eventually the Post Office would wear me down by
stopping the issues as fast as I printed them. He warned, “They won’t do
so and so unless you do thus and thus. If you do such and such, then
you’ll have to take the consequences.” He was a good lawyer and an
authority on the Constitution.
When my family learned that I might be getting in deep water a council
was called just as when I had been a child. A verdict of nervous
breakdown was openly decreed, but back in the minds of all was the
unspoken dread that I must have become mentally unbalanced. They
insisted father come to New York, where he had not been for forty years,
to persuade me to go to a sanitarium.
For several days father and I talked over the contents of the _Woman
Rebel_. In his fine, flowing language he expressed his hatred of it. He
despised talk about revolution, and despaired of anyone who could
discuss sex, blaming this on my nursing training, which, he intimated,
had put me in possession of all the known secrets of the human body. He
was not quite sure what birth control was, and my reasoning, which
retraced the pattern of our old arguments, made no impression upon him.
Father would have nothing to do with the “queer people” who came to the
house—people of whom no one had ever heard—turning up with articles on
every possible subject and defying me to publish them in the name of
free speech. I printed everything. For the August issue I accepted a
philosophical essay on the theory of assassination, largely derived from
Richard Carlile. It was vague, inane, and innocuous, and had no bearing
on my policy except to taunt the Government to take action, because
assassination also was included under Section 211.
Only a few weeks earlier, the war which Victor Dave had predicted had
started its headlong progress. The very moment when most people were
busy with geographies and atlases, trying to find out just where
Sarajevo might be, the United States chose to sever diplomatic relations
with me.
One morning I was startled by the peremptory, imperious, and incessant
ringing of my bell. When I opened the door, I was confronted by two
gentlemen.
“Will you come in?”
They followed me into my living room, scrutinized with amazement the
velocipede and wagon, the woolly animals and toys stacked in the corner.
One of them asked, “Are you the editor and publisher of a magazine
entitled the _Woman Rebel_?”
When I confessed to it, he thrust a legal document into my hands. I
tried to read it, threading my way slowly through the jungle of legal
terminology. Perhaps the words became a bit blurred because of the
slight trembling of my hands, but I managed to disentangle the crucial
point of the message. I had been indicted—indicted on no less than nine
counts—for alleged violation of the Federal Statutes. If found guilty on
all, I might be liable to forty-five years in the penitentiary.
I looked at the two agents of the Department of Justice. They seemed
nice and sensible. I invited them to sit down and started in to explain
birth control. For three hours I presented to their imaginations some of
the tragic stories of conscript motherhood. I forget now what I said,
but at the end they agreed that such a law should not be on the statute
books. Yet it was, and there was nothing to do about it but bring my
case to court.
When the officers had gone, father came through the door of the
adjoining room where he had been reading the paper. He put both arms
around me and said, “Your mother would have been alive today if we had
known all this then.” He had applied my recital directly to his own
life. “You will win this case. Everything is with you—logic, common
sense, and progress. I never saw the truth until this instant.”
Old-fashioned phraseology, but father was at last convinced. He went
home quite proud, thinking I was not so crazy after all, and began
sending me clippings to help prove the case for birth control—women who
had drowned themselves or their children and the brutalities of parents,
because even mother love might turn cruel if too hard pressed.
My faith was still childlike. I trusted that, like father, a judge
representing our Government would be convinced. All I had to do was
explain to those in power what I was doing and everything would come
right.
August twenty-fifth I was arraigned in the old Post Office way downtown.
Judge Hazel, himself a father of eight or nine children, was kindly, and
I suspected the two Federal agents who had summoned me had spoken a good
word on my behalf. But Assistant District Attorney Harold A. Content
seemed a ferocious young fellow. When the Judge asked, “What sort of
things is Mrs. Sanger doing to violate the law?” he answered, “She’s
printing articles advocating bomb throwing and assassination.”
“Mrs. Sanger doesn’t look like a bomb thrower or an assassin.”
Mr. Content murmured something about not all being gold that glittered;
I was doing a great deal of harm. He intimated he knew of my attempts to
get _Family Limitation_ in print when he said, “She is not satisfied
merely to violate the law, but is planning to do it on a very large
scale.”
Judge Hazel, apparently believing the charges much exaggerated, put the
case over until the fall term, which gave me six weeks to prepare my
answer, and Mr. Content concurred, saying that if this were not enough
time, I could have more.
The press also was inclined to be friendly. Reporters came up to Post
Avenue, looked over the various articles. They agreed, “We think the
Government absolutely wrong. We don’t see how it has any case.”
Unfortunately, while we were talking, Peggy, who had never seen a derby
before, took possession of their hats and sticks, and in the hall a
little parade of children formed, marching up and down in front of the
door. One of the gentlemen was so furious that I hid Peggy in the
kitchen away from his wrath. As he went out he remarked, “You should
have birth controlled them before they were born. Why don’t you stay
home and spend some thought on disciplining your own family?”
I had many things to do which could not be postponed, the most important
among them being to provide for the children’s future. This occupied
much of my time for the next few weeks. Temporarily, I sent the younger
two to the Catskills and Stuart to a camp in Maine, arranging for school
in the fall on Long Island.
Defense funds were always being raised when radicals got into trouble to
pay pseudo-radical lawyers to fight the cases on technicalities. I was
not going to have any lawyer get me out of this. Since my indictment had
not stopped my publishing the _Woman Rebel_, through the columns of the
September issue I told my subscribers I did not want pennies or dollars,
but appealed to them to combine forces and protest on their own behalf
against government invasion of their rights. That issue and the October
one were both suppressed.
During what might be called my sleepwalking stage it was as though I
were heading towards a precipice and nothing could awaken me. I had no
ear for the objections of family or the criticism of friends. People
were around me, I knew, but I could not see them clearly; I was deaf to
their warnings and blind to their signs.
When I review the situation through the eyes of those who gave me
circumspect advice, I can understand their attitude. I was considered a
conservative, even a bourgeoise by the radicals. I was digging into an
illegal subject, was not a trained writer or speaker or experienced in
the arts of the propagandist, had no money with which to start a rousing
campaign, and possessed neither social position nor influence.
In the opinion of nearly all my acquaintances I would have to spend at
least a year in jail, and they began to condole with me. None offered to
do anything about it, just suggested how I could get through. One kind
woman whom I had never seen before called late one evening and
volunteered to give me dancing lessons. In a small six-by-four cabin she
had developed a system which she claimed was equally applicable to a
prison cell and would keep me in good health. She even wrote out careful
directions for combining proper exercises with the rhythm of the dance.
But I myself had no intention of going to jail; it was not in my
program.
One other thing I had to do before my trial. _Family Limitation_ simply
must be published. I had at last found the right person—Bill Shatoff,
Russian-born, big and burly, at that time a linotype operator on a
foreign paper. So that nobody would see him he did the job after hours
when his shop was supposed to be closed.
At first I had thought only of an edition of ten thousand. However, when
I learned that union leaders in the silk, woolen, and copper industries
were eager to have many more copies to distribute, I enlarged my plan. I
would have liked to print a million but, owing to lack of funds, could
not manage more than a hundred thousand.
Addressing the envelopes took a lot of work. Night after night the
faithful band labored in a storage room, wrapping, weighing, stamping.
Bundles went to the mills in the East, to the mines of the West—to
Chicago, San Francisco, and Pittsburgh, to Butte, Lawrence, and
Paterson. All who had requested copies were to receive them
simultaneously; I did not want any to be circulated until I was ready,
and refused to have one in my own house. I was a tyrant about this, as
firm as a general about leaving no rough edges.
In October my case came up. I had had no notice and, without a lawyer to
keep me posted, did not even know it had been called until the District
Attorney’s office telephoned. Since Mr. Content had promised me plenty
of time, I thought this was merely a formality and all I had to do was
put in an appearance.
The next morning I presented myself at court. As I sat in the crowded
room I felt crushed and oppressed by an intuitive sense of the
tremendous, impersonal power of my opponents. Popular interest was now
focused on Europe; my little defiance was no longer important. When I
was brought out of my reverie by the voice of the clerk trumpeting forth
in the harshly mechanical tones of a train announcer something about
_The People_ v. _Margaret Sanger_, there flashed into my mind a huge map
of the United States, coming to life as a massive, vari-colored animal,
against which I, so insignificant and small, must in some way defend
myself. It was a terrific feeling.
But courage did not entirely desert me. Elsie Clapp, whose ample Grecian
figure made her seem a tower of strength, marched up the aisle with me
as though she, too, were to be tried. I said to Judge Hazel that I was
not prepared, and asked for a month’s adjournment. Mr. Content
astonished me by objecting. “Mrs. Sanger’s had plenty of time and I see
no reason, Your Honor, why we should have a further postponement. Every
day’s delay means that her violations are increased. I ask that the case
continue this afternoon.”
A change in Judge Hazel’s attitude had taken place since August. Instead
of listening to my request, he advised me to get an attorney at once—my
trial would go on after the noon recess.
I was so amazed that I could only believe his refusal was due to my lack
of technical knowledge, and supposed that at this point I really had to
have a lawyer. I knew Simon H. Pollock, who had represented labor during
the Paterson strike, and I went to see him. He agreed with me that a
lawyer’s plea would not be rejected and that afternoon confidently asked
for a month’s stay. It was denied. He reduced it to two weeks. Again it
was denied. At ten the following morning the case was to be tried
without fail.
From the Post Office Department I received roundabout word that my
conviction had already been decided upon. When I told this to Mr.
Pollock he said, “There isn’t a thing I can do. You’d better plead
guilty and let us get you out as fast as we can. We might even be able
to make some deal with the D.A. so you’d only have to pay a fine.”
I indignantly refused to plead guilty under any circumstances. What was
the sense of bringing about my indictment in order to test the law, and
then admit that I had done wrong? I was trying to prove the law was
wrong, not I. Giving Mr. Pollock no directions how to act, I merely said
I would call him up.
It was now four o’clock and I sought refuge at home to think through my
mental turmoil and distress. But home was crowded with too many
associations and emotions pulling me this way and that. When my thoughts
would not come clear and straight I packed a suitcase, went back
downtown, and took a room in a hotel, the most impersonal place in the
world.
There was no doubt in my mind that if I faced the hostile court the next
morning, unprepared as I was, I would be convicted of publishing an
obscene paper. Such a verdict would be an injustice. If I were to
convince a court of the rightness of my cause, I must have my facts well
marshaled, and that could not be done in eighteen hours.
Then there was the question of the children’s welfare. Had I the right
to leave them the heritage of a mother who had been imprisoned for some
offensive literature of which no one knew the details?
What was I to do? Should I get another lawyer, one with personal
influence who could secure a postponement, and should we then go into
court together and fight it out? I had no money for such a luxury.
Should I follow the inevitable suggestion of the “I-told-you-so’s” and
take my medicine? Yes, but what medicine? I would not swallow a dosage
for the wrong disease.
I was not afraid of the penitentiary; I was not afraid of anything
except being misunderstood. Nevertheless, in the circumstances, my going
there could help nobody. I had seen so many people do foolish things
valiantly, such as wave a red flag, shout inflammatory words, lead a
parade, just for the excitement of doing what the crowd expected of
them. Then they went to jail for six months, a year perhaps, and what
happened? Something had been killed in them; they were never heard of
again. I had seen braver and hardier souls than I vanquished in spirit
and body by prison terms, and I was not going to be lost and broken for
an issue which was not the real one, such as the entirely unimportant
_Woman Rebel_ articles. Had I been able to print _Family Limitation_
earlier, and to swing the indictment around that, going to jail might
have had some significance.
Going away was much more difficult than remaining. But if I were to sail
for Europe I could prepare my case adequately and return then to win or
lose in the courts. There was a train for Canada within a few hours.
Could I take it? Should I take it? Could I ever make those who had
advised me against this work and these activities understand? Could I
ever make anyone understand? How could I separate myself from the
children without seeing them once more? Peggy’s leg was swollen from
vaccination. This kept worrying me, made me hesitate, anxious. It was so
hard to decide what to do.
Perfectly still, my watch on the table, I marked the minutes fly. There
could be no retreat once I boarded that train. The torture of
uncertainty, the agony of making a decision only to reverse it! The hour
grew later and later. This was like both birth and death—you had to meet
them alone.
About thirty minutes before train time I knew that I must go. I wrote
two letters, one to Judge Hazel, one to Mr. Content, to be received at
the desk the next day, informing them of my action. I had asked for a
month and it had been refused. This denial of right and freedom
compelled me to leave my home and my three children until I made ready
my case, which dealt with society rather than an individual. I would
notify them when I came back. Whether this were in a month or a year
depended on what I found it necessary to do. Finally, as though to say,
“Make the most of it,” I enclosed to each a copy of _Family Limitation_.
Parting from all that I held dear in life, I left New York at midnight,
without a passport, not knowing whether I could ever return.
_Chapter Ten_
WE SPEAK THE SAME GOOD TONGUE
At Montreal I found comfort and refuge. In fact, on any road I took men
and women who knew about the _Woman Rebel_ came to my aid. I shall never
forget the generosity of the Baineses who met me at the train and
welcomed me to their home. They had been friends of Walt Whitman and
still honored “his” memory. I sat at the table where “he” had sat, and
in “his” chair. Among their many kindnesses they gave me an introduction
to Edward Carpenter, also mentioned in awed tones, leader of the Whitman
group in England and author of _Love’s Coming of Age_, which was then on
every modern bookshelf.
Since I was charged with felony I could be extradited. I was obliged,
therefore, in buying my passage, to choose a new name. No sooner had I
selected the atrociously ugly “Bertha Watson,” which seemed to rob me of
femininity, than I wanted to be rid of it. But once having adopted it I
could not escape.
I boarded the _RMS Virginian_, laden with munitions, food, Englishmen
returning home for war duty, and Canadians going over. Even before the
printing of _Family Limitation_ had begun in August, I had arranged a
key message which would release all the pamphlets simultaneously
whenever it should be received by any of four trusted lieutenants. In
case one should be arrested, another ill, or a third die, still
everything would go forward as provided for. Three days out of Montreal
I sent a cable and shortly had one in reply that the program was being
executed as planned. My soul was sick and my heart empty for those I
loved; the one gleam in this dreadful night of despair was the faint
hope that my efforts might, perhaps, make Peggy’s future easier.
The government official examining credentials at Liverpool said sternly,
“England is at war, Madam. You can’t expect us to let you through. We’re
sending back people without passports every day, and I can’t make an
exception in your case.”
But I had Good Luck as an ally; she comes so often to help in
emergencies. A shipboard acquaintance telephoned and pulled wires, a
procedure not so common in England as in the United States. On his
guarantee that I would get a passport from the American Embassy
immediately on reaching London I was allowed to enter.
I wound through dirty streets in a cab to the Adelphi Palace. It rained
all day, the wind blew, its howling came through the windows and crept
down the chimney. Homesickness swept over me worse than ever before or
since. I knew it would not do to “set and think” as the Quakers say, so
I wandered about in the business district, trying to adjust my mind to
the prices marked in the store windows in order to have some idea of
what they were in dollars and cents. I viewed church architecture and
the Cathedral, which was not expected to be finished for fifty years. It
did not look so splendid, but since everything about it was closed I
really could not tell.
Liverpool was a quaint city. I liked its weathered brick houses, and the
evenness and settled feeling, as though the people in them planned to
remain where they were for time everlasting. The women of the poor were
unconcernedly wearing on the streets dresses originally made for
bustles, hats with feathers, caricatures which should have been stuffed
away in attics forty years before.
Bertha Watson had a letter to the local Fabian Society, and at six I
went to the Clarion Café, where it foregathered each Friday. I presented
her letter, was welcomed heartily, and invited to the discussion. I
found the English then and later polite in speech and action, tolerant
in listening. One of the members helped me to locate temporary rooms
while I waited for the arrival of letters and messages from the United
States. These lodgings were in the home of gentle, middle-class people
to whom I paid thirty shillings a week, including breakfast and dinner.
I shall always be glad I went to that meeting, because there I met
Lorenzo Portet, once companion of Francisco Ferrer and now heir to his
educational work, which both believed was the key to Spanish
emancipation.
After the attempted assassination of Alfonso XIII and Victoria of
England, the Government had arrested twenty-five hundred Spaniards
having republican ideas, among them Ferrer. His school had been closed
and he had been jailed. When he had been eventually released, he had
still been determined to educate for universal peace by means of
economic justice. Accordingly, as Portet stated it, he had reopened a
school for all Spain by publishing labor texts at Barcelona. This again
had earned him no reward from a grateful Government. In 1909 he had been
arrested in a purge of republicans, stood up against a wall and shot,
and his body thrown into a ditch.
Ferrer had left his money to Portet, who was now fulfilling his trust by
feeding the country with modern scientific translations from Italy,
France, and England. He was a man of middle height and weight whose
alert glance summed you up with an accuracy occasionally disturbing.
After our initial encounter he called on me with punctiliousness and
formality, and produced an article from a New York magazine which
carried the story of the indictment of Margaret Sanger. “This is you?”
he questioned with the jumping of all fact which is termed intuition.
Portet, a born teacher, was then instructing youth at the University of
Liverpool in Spanish. No human being I ever knew could explain with such
infinite pains the details of a subject. He placed your own opposition
before you, marshaled it in all its strength, and then annihilated every
point, one by one. His humorous cynicism was most baffling to those who
were merely emotional converts to better worlds. “Civilization?” he
might say, “Mainly a question of good roads.”
Sometimes in the midst of those long, drab, November weeks I escaped to
Wales, where there were endless lanes, winding and hard, with very few
carts, and all very quiet. Even here were Carnegie libraries, one of
them turned into a restaurant. I went into the houses of the smelting
workers at Green Brombo, Wexham, all lovely, minute, stone cottages of
two or three rooms, huddled closely together, charming with their walks
and walls and flower gardens. The folk were slow, deliberate, simple.
Liverpool was only a junction; London was my terminus. There I could
study at the British Museum, and meet the Neo-Malthusians. Towards the
end of the month I rolled up to London through miles of chimney-potted
suburbs; it continued rainy and foggy, but still there was a friendly
atmosphere in the air. I seemed to be coming to a second home.
My first quarters were on the top floor of a “bed and breakfast” on
Torrington Square, just back of the British Museum. I looked out on
little rows of trees, iron fences, steps going up to all the houses.
There was but one bathroom and to use it cost extra. Every morning about
seven came a knock, and when I opened the door I discovered a midget jug
of hot water outside. I was supposed to break the ice on my large
pitcher, mix the two, and pour all into my tin tub, the back of which
rose behind me like a throne. After this winter I realized how the
British had acquired their well-known moral courage.
I had no fireplace, but two floors below was an empty room with a grate.
Occasionally I indulged myself in the luxury of renting it for the
evening, and of buying wood to keep myself warm while I worked. I made
up for it by not having the slatternly Cockney maid bring up tea, and
also went each morning to the basement dining room for my breakfast,
thereby saving a shilling a week. It was not long before I was stricken
by the first digestive upset I had ever had, and was obliged to call in
an American doctor. He looked me over casually and then, without further
examination, asked, “Have you been drinking English coffee?”
“Why, yes.”
“Well, give it up. The English can’t make coffee; they only know how to
make tea. Take up English tea.”
I followed his advice and from that time on, instead of carrying my own
eating habits with me, have tried to adjust myself to the food of the
country where I happened to be. In this way I get along much better.
Sundays I attended concerts or visited art galleries, though since it
was war time disappointingly few pictures were being shown. Each week
day, however, found me at the British Museum, going in with the opening
of the gates in the morning. In order to secure permission to work, you
had to have a card, but once you obtained it, you could take a special
seat and books were reserved for you. My aim was to present my case from
all angles, to make the trial soundly historical so that birth control
would be seriously discussed in America. Therefore, I read avidly and
voluminously many weighty tomes, and turned carefully the yellowed,
brittle pages of pamphlets and broadsides, finding much that was dull,
much that was irrelevant, but also much that was amusing, if only for
the ponderous manner of its expression. In the end I had a picture of
what had gone before.
The father of family limitation was Thomas Robert Malthus, born in 1766
at the Rookery, near Dorking, Surrey. In 1798 this curate of Albury
published his _Principle of Population_ and in the initial chapter laid
down his famous postulates: “first, that food is necessary to the
existence of man; second, that the passion between the sexes is
necessary, and will remain nearly in its present state....” Consequently
the unrestrained fertility of the human race was certain to outstrip the
available fruits of the earth, and, although the natural checks of war,
disease, and privation had controlled population for centuries, they had
brought misery, disaster, and death in their train. His solution was
voluntary and intelligent control of the birth rate by means of late
marriage, which left few years for childbearing. However, human nature
is such that Malthus might preach forever without anyone’s heeding his
advice. Not until the profound economic depression which followed the
Napoleonic Wars were people worried into concern over surplus
population.
To John Stuart Mill the production of large families was to be regarded
in the same light as drunkenness or any other physical excess. In the
very first edition of his _Political Economy_ he spoke of “prudence, by
which either marriages are sparingly contracted, or care is taken that
children beyond a certain number shall not be the fruit,” and concluded
that “the grand practical problem is to find the means of limiting the
number of births.” But he left it merely as a grand, practical problem.
Francis Place, the master tailor of Charing Cross, was born in a private
debtors’ prison kept by his father in Vinegar Yard. He was the first to
suggest the idea of contraception as a remedy for poverty, but was more
practical in his preaching than in his performance, fathering as he did
fifteen children. In 1822 he published _Illustrations and Proofs of the
Principle of Population_:
If, above all, it were once clearly understood, that it was not
disreputable for married persons to avail themselves of such
precautionary means as would, without being injurious to health, or
destructive of female delicacy, prevent conception, a sufficient
check might at once be given to the increase of population beyond
the means of subsistence; vice and misery, to a prodigious extent,
might be removed from society, and the object of Mr. Malthus, Mr.
Godwin, and of every philanthropic person, be promoted.
Place had educated himself on Adam Smith, Locke, Hume, Thomas Paine, and
Burke. To his remarkable library came many notable thinkers and men of
letters. Among them was Robert Owen, the textile industrialist, who, in
his _Moral Physiology_, offered openly a method of contraception:
I sit down to write a little treatise, which will subject me to
abuse from the self-righteous, to misrepresentation from the
hypocritical, and to reproach even from the honestly prejudiced.
He spoke to young men and women who still believed in virtue and
happiness. “A human being is a puppet, a slave, if his ignorance is to
be the safeguard of his virtue.” In reply to the accusation that coitus
interruptus was unnatural, he pointed out that the thwarting of any
human wish or impulse might be so termed. “If this trifling restraint is
to be called unnatural, what shall be said of celibacy?”
Owen in his youth had been impressed by the sufferings of the working
classes, and, in a first effort to lighten the burden of his employees,
had instituted many reforms in the New Lanark Mills, himself prospering
materially in so doing; he was less successful when he emigrated to the
United States and at New Harmony, Indiana, established a short-lived
communal colony. However, his coming to America had at least one
important result. His book influenced Doctor Charles Knowlton of Boston
to write a tract entitled _Fruits of Philosophy_ in which he recommended
a chemical formula and other methods to prevent conception. I had not
found a trace of this in my previous research, even in Boston where it
had been published.
Knowlton’s reaffirmation of the desirability both from a political and
social point of view for mankind to be able to limit at will the number
of offspring without sacrificing the attendant gratification of the
reproductive instinct, would have been little noticed had it not been
for the repercussion in England forty years later.
During the early Victorian uprush of industrialism a man’s children had
been breadwinners, and family limitation had naturally lapsed. But when
humanitarian legislation had begun to rescue children from factories,
the population specter had shown itself once more.
In 1861 was formed the Malthusian League, designed to influence public
opinion and overcome the prevailing misconception of Malthusianism, and
in 1876 a Bristol bookseller brought out an English edition of _Fruits
of Philosophy_. He was promptly arrested on the charge of publishing an
obscene book, and sentence was suspended on his plea of guilty.
The brilliant rationalist and freethinker, Charles Bradlaugh, a
redoubtable personality, together with Annie Besant, later the renowned
Theosophist but then a young rebel, started a printing partnership and
sold the pamphlet. Although not approving it in all its details they
determined to contest the right to publish it and to prove that
prevention of conception was not obscene.
Extraordinary interest was aroused in their trial before Lord Chief
Justice Cockburn and a special jury. The Solicitor General himself
appeared as chief counsel for the prosecution. Taking a copy of _Fruits
of Philosophy_ in his hands he opened it solemnly and said, “It is
really extremely painful to me,” then hesitating, “very painful to me to
have to read this.” But he did so.
Bradlaugh and Besant conducted their own defense. The latter with
eloquence and astonishing poise held the admiring attention of the court
for two days. Nevertheless, both were convicted of defaming the morals
of the public, sentenced to six months in jail and a thousand-dollar
fine, and required to put up guarantees of twenty-five hundred dollars
for good behavior during the next two years. The case was immediately
appealed. Fortunately the upper court dismissed it on a technicality,
because specific evidence of obscenity was not included; if the words
were polluting they had to appear in the record.
This decision settled for all time in England that contraception was not
to be classed among the obscenities. As a result, new life was injected
into the Malthusian League and its name was changed to the
Neo-Malthusian Society. In the first issue of its monthly journal it set
forth a modest claim: “We have the ONLY REMEDY that the disease of
society can be cured by.” Instead of the impractical advice of Malthus
to marry late, the Neo-Malthusians advised early marriage, the use of
contraceptive methods, and children born according to the earning
capacity of the father; a man’s station in life should determine the
number of his children. Furthermore, they intended one by one to “prick
the flimsy bubbles of emigration, lessened production, and home
colonization, which are from time to time put forward.” The emphasis was
still placed on the social and economic aspects rather than the personal
tragedies of women.
That was in 1876; now in 1914 the Drysdales, Dr. C. V. and his wife,
Bessie, were the guiding spirits of the Society. They had a long
heritage of Malthusianism behind them; the uncle of the former, Dr.
George Drysdale, fresh from Edinburgh in 1854, had anonymously published
his _Elements of Social Science_, which had gone into fifteen languages.
He had even himself studied Chinese to ensure a reasonably accurate
translation in that tongue. In the darkest days of Victorianism, this
young physician had included the New Woman in his interpretation of
Malthus. Both he and his brother Charles, also a physician, had been in
love with Alice Vickery, who had chosen the latter and borne him a son,
the present C.V.
Alice Vickery was as great in her day as Mary Wollstonecraft in hers.
After a tremendous struggle, which included getting her degree in Dublin
and her training in Paris, she had proved her right to enter the medical
profession, and had become the first woman doctor in England.
My keenest desire was to get in touch with the Drysdales. They invited
me to tea at their offices—offices in the English sense, not ours. I
squelched through the inevitable rain to Queen Anne’s Chambers and was
astonished to find nothing on the door except Dr. C. V. Drysdale’s name.
The term Malthusian was not considered proper according to the
landlord’s ideas of propriety. In fact, throughout England the word
brought up antagonism. People crossed the street to avoid it.
I entered a sitting room, gay with chintz-covered chairs and a sofa,
pillows at the back, quite fitted to Queen Anne’s own day. A fire was
burning cheerily, yet even this was not so welcome as the open arms and
excitement with which I was greeted, not only by the Drysdales but also
by Dr. Binnie Dunlop, dark, Scotch, thin, and dapper, intellectually
enthusiastic although not emotionally so; by Olive Johnston, the
faithful secretary who had worked for many years with the Drysdales; and
by F. W. Stella Browne, an ardent Feminist whose faintly florid face,
hair never quite white, and indefatigable vivacity are the same a
quarter of a century later. Many women in causes are like that;
something in their spirit keeps them forever young.
Dr. Drysdale was then in his early forties, slender, fair, inclined to
be bald. In his ebullience he was not at all British, but his pleasing,
warm, and courteous personality was British at its best. Bessie
Drysdale, about her husband’s age, was the practical member, dispensing
charming hospitality. The others were like an army meeting me, but she
brought up the rear with tea and cakes and comforting things.
It seemed to me I had seen them and known them all before. I was
immediately certain I had come to the right place. In the United States
I had been alone, pulling against all whose broad, general principles
were the same as mine but who disapproved of my actions. But these new
friends saw eye to eye with me. Instead of heaping criticism and fears
upon me, they offered all the force of an international organization as
well as their encyclopedic minds to back me up.
The policy of the Neo-Malthusians had been to educate the educators.
They believed that once the practice of family limitation had been
established among the well-to-do and socially prominent, it would be
taken up by the lower strata. They were not discouraged, although after
almost forty years success seemed as far away as ever; the working
classes not only evinced no desire for the benefits of family
limitation, but did not even know such a thing existed.
Everybody in the room appreciated my rebellion and extended
congratulations on a name having been coined which was so simple and
easy to understand as birth control. When I told them how I had managed
the distribution of the _Family Limitation_ pamphlets Dr. Drysdale stood
up impetuously and said, “Oh, would to God we had a Comstock law!
There’s nothing can so stir the British people as a bad law. Then they
will do something to change it!”
That afternoon was one of the most encouraging and delightful of my
life. The warmth of my reception strengthened me to face the future. It
lessened my dreadful homesickness and curbed the ever-growing impulse to
escape from war-sick London and hurry back to the children. During my
stay I saw much of the Drysdales and their group, and between us all
grew up a close kinship which has lasted through the stormy years.
I like to think of London at this time chiefly because of all my new
friends and the laughter they brought me. Of late there had been little
of it in my life, but with every friend I had in England—more than with
any other people I have ever known—I laughed, and this laughter knit and
welded the bonds of comradeship.
One day in the British Museum I was standing by the catalogs, which were
in the form of books, waiting until a man near me finished the volume I
wanted to consult. I glanced at him idly, then more closely, thinking I
identified the profile from pictures I had seen. When he had put the
book down I ventured tentatively, “Aren’t you Edward Carpenter?”
Almost without looking at me he replied, “Yes, and aren’t you Margaret
Sanger?”
It was a shock for Bertha Watson to hear this name repeated out loud in
a public place. However, Mr. Carpenter’s recognition was readily
explainable. He had been more or less prepared to see me because he had
already received my letter and had that morning at my rooming house been
told I never returned from the British Museum until evening. Since we
could not talk in this hall of silence, we adjourned to the Egyptian
Room, and then to lunch. He was human, full of wit, fun, and humor—a
live person who exuded magnetism.
Edward Carpenter reassured me that what I was doing was not merely of
the present but belonged even more to the future. From this fine spirit
I drew confirmation of the purity of my endeavor, something essential
for me to take back to America if others there were to experience the
same sense of justification. We beyond the Atlantic were still uncertain
of our ethics, and even of our morals. We needed the sanction of British
public opinion and the approval of their great philosophers, so that we
could be strong in our beliefs.
During the first weeks in England I did not feel vehemently about the
War, especially as signs were displayed everywhere, “Business as usual.”
I supposed it would be a little flurry, soon over. War talk, of course,
was universal. The German espionage system was much discussed. I
wondered whether it were not the general characteristic of the German
always to observe and be accurate in detail which made his information
valuable. He did the same thing in the United States, where nobody
thought of calling him a spy. Everywhere women were knitting socks and
mitts, but I was more impressed by the fact they were smoking in hotel
lobbies—a new indication of emancipation to me—and even rolling their
own cigarettes. If a woman came in for tea, without a word being said, a
bell hop produced her own box of tobacco. When she left, it was returned
to its proper place.
As the months went on, however, to be an American became almost as
unlucky as to be a German. Whoever wished to remain safely in England
must agree with England, give over every vestige of independent thinking
or free expression. Wherever I went I heard mention of “Traitorous
America.” At one dining-car table a gray-haired Englishman, unaware of
my nationality, asserted, “Americans will do anything for money.”
“Yes,” agreed his companion. “They do not care whom their bullets kill.
They get paid for them.” He was a young Dutchman, apparently just
returned from the East Indies, and the conversation between the two
developed briskly. Americans were a “mixed breed without souls; they had
none of the qualities which make a nation great—no traditions, history,
art, music, absolutely nothing but their money; they had to come to
Europe for everything—to England for laws, customs, and morals, to
France for fashions and arts; they were human leeches fastened on Europe
without incentive, originality, or creative ability; they—”
I interrupted, “What do you want America to do? Why should she get into
this? Does she owe loyalty to England or France or Russia?”
“Oh, no, but for Belgium. America signed the Hague Treaty with the rest
of us, and she has not stood by it.”
To this I advanced the argument, “We Americans are not like Europeans.
We are a heterogeneous mixture of all the fighting forces and nations of
the world. We include the Irish who hate England, and Jews who hardly
can be said to love Russia. A large part of our population—industrious,
civil, reliable, and prosperous—are Germans, with whom our Scandinavians
are sympathetic. Who then have we to ally against Germany? And why?—a
very small far-back mention of gratitude to France for her help in our
Revolution against British rule—and the Statue of Liberty.”
On the whole I came more nearly being a nationalist when I left England
than when I went there. I had to do such battle to explain the United
States that, almost involuntarily, I felt myself becoming less of an
internationalist. It was a strange feeling, as though somebody you knew
and loved were being criticized, and you took up the cudgels in defense.
_Chapter Eleven_
HAVELOCK ELLIS
“_He who ascends to mountain-tops shall find
Their loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;
Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempests on his naked head._”
LORD BYRON
As Christmas approached, my loneliness for the children increased. This
was their particular time. I had messages from and about them, but these
could not give the small, intimate details; the Atlantic was a broad
span, seeming more vast to letter writers. I missed their voices, their
caresses, even their little quarrels. I almost wondered whether solitary
confinement in prison were not preferable to my present isolation.
In the midst of this stark yearning to be with them and share their tree
I received a cordial note from Havelock Ellis asking me to come to tea.
With kindly foresight he had given me explicit directions how to reach
Fourteen Dover Mansions in Brixton across the Thames. I boarded a
crowded bus at Oxford Circus. Though it was a miserable day near the
dark end of 1914, the spirit of Christmas was in the air and everyone
was laden with beribboned bundles and bright packages.
Looking askance at the police station which occupied the lower floor I
climbed up the stairs, and, with the shyness of an adolescent, full of
fears and uncertainties, lifted the huge brass knocker. The figure of
Ellis himself appeared in the door. He seemed a giant in stature, a
lovely, simple man in loose-fitting clothes, with powerful head and
wonderful smile. He was fifty-five then, but that head will never
change—the shock of white hair, the venerable beard, shaggy though
well-kept, the wide, expressive mouth and deep-set eyes, sad even in
spite of the humorous twinkle always latent.
I was conscious immediately that I was in the presence of a great man,
yet I was startled at first by his voice as he welcomed me in. It was
typically English, high and thin. I once talked to a prisoner at Sing
Sing who had been in the death house for three years and could speak
only in whispers thereafter. Ellis had been a hermit for twenty-five. He
had lived in the Bush in Australia, and later secluded himself in his
study. Nevertheless, the importance of what he had to say much more than
made up for the instrument which conveyed it.
He led me to the living room through which the cheerless twilight of a
winter afternoon in London barely penetrated, and seated me before a
little gas fire. Some rooms impress you as ghastly cold even when hot.
This one, though lacking central heating, had the warmth of many books.
He lit two candles on the mantel, which flickered softly over his
features, giving him the aspect of a seer.
We sat down and quiet fell. I tried a few aimless remarks but I
stuttered with embarrassment. Ellis was still. Small talk was not
possible with him; you had to utter only the deepest truths within you.
No other human being could be so silent and remain so poised and calm in
silence.
While Ellis was preparing tea in the kitchen he left me to look over his
library and the most recent news from America. He had laid out and
marked certain pertinent items which he thought might not have come to
my attention. This, I later found, was one of his most endearing
characteristics. He always entered into the life of the other person in
little details, never forgetting even the kind of bread or olives,
fruits or wines, you preferred. His detachment was not incompatible with
sympathy.
Soon appeared a large tray, laden with tea, cakes, and bread and butter,
and we sat down before the humming flame and talked and talked; and as
we talked we wove into our lives an intangible web of mutual interests.
I began to realize then that the men who are truly great are the easiest
to meet and understand. After those first few moments I was at peace,
and content as I had never been before. Entirely unaware of the
reverence he aroused, Ellis pasted no labels on himself, had no poses,
made no effort to impress. He was simply, quite un-self-consciously,
what he was.
When he asked me to describe the details of how I had locked horns with
the law, I spoke glowingly of the heartening approval which the
Drysdales had just given me. He did not show the same enthusiasm; in
fact he was rather concerned, and not so ready with praise for my lack
of respect for the established order, believing so strongly in my case
that he wanted me to avoid mistakes. I think his influence was always
more or less subduing and moderating; he tried to get me, too, to take
the middle road. Though he occasionally alluded to some of the more
amusing phases of the trial of his own work, he had pushed it into the
back of his mind.
This monumental study intended for doctors and psychologists had been
projected when Ellis was a medical student of nineteen. But his short
practice of medicine, his editing of the _Mermaid Series of Old British
Dramatists_, and the preparation of several sociological treatises, had
intervened before, in 1898, _Sexual Inversion_, the first volume, had
appeared. George Bedborough, printer, had been arrested for selling a
copy, and charged with “publishing an obscene libel with the intention
of corrupting the laws of Her Majesty’s subjects.” Ellis, the scholar,
preferred to ignore controversy; the martyr’s crown would not have
coincided favorably with calm and dispassionate research. Judging it
merely stupid of the British Government to have pushed the case to
trial, he suspended the sale of the volume immediately, so disappointed
that his own countrymen did not understand his motives that he stated
then and there he would not have his other volumes published in England,
and he never has.
He, beyond any other person, has been able to clarify the question of
sex, and free it from the smudginess connected with it from the
beginning of Christianity, raise it from the dark cellar, set it on a
higher plane. That has been his great contribution. Like an alchemist,
he transmuted the psychic disturbance which had followed my reading of
his books into a spiritual essence.
We had many things to discuss, but suddenly it dawned upon me that I
must have outstayed my time. Seven o’clock struck before I realized how
late it was. It had seemed so short to me.
I was not excited as I went back through the heavy fog to my own dull
little room. My emotion was too deep for that. I felt as though I had
been exalted into a hitherto undreamed-of world.
Some of my new friends, Guy Aldred, Henry Sara, and Rose Witcop, invited
me to tea with them Christmas Eve. Rose was deliberate in her movements,
tall and dark, with straight black hair falling low over her forehead
and caught at the nape of the neck. She and Guy were both ardent
pacifists. A few days earlier I had overheard them reproving their son,
aged six, for suggesting that Santa Claus bring him some lead soldiers.
He had seen uniforms in every street and toy replicas in every shop
window; all little boys were having them. I had not been able to send
many presents to my children, and before leaving the house slipped into
his room. He was sound asleep and his clothes were stretched out neatly
at the foot of his bed. Outraging my own principles I tucked a box of
soldiers under the blanket so that he might see this martial array the
first thing in the morning.
Rose and Guy were thoroughly disgusted with me.
Much that evening combined to stir me. Carol singers paraded Torrington
Square, group after group lifting plaintive voices in _Good King
Wenceslas_ and _We Three Kings of Orient Are_. I was headachy but I went
out and strolled about the streets to see Merrie England at Yuletide. I
had on so much clothing that I could scarcely walk, and still I was icy
cold. It was just about a year since I had left France with the
children, never to be reunited with Bill.
Since I am slow in my decisions and cannot separate myself from past
emotions quickly, all breaches must come gradually. A measure of
frustration is an inevitable accompaniment to endeavor. My marriage had
not been unhappy; I had not let it be. It had not failed because of lack
of love, romance, wealth, respect, or any of those qualities which were
supposed to cause marital rifts, but because the interests of each had
widened beyond those of the other. Development had proceeded so fast
that our lives had diverged, due to that very growth which we had sought
for each other. I could not live with a human being conscious that my
necessities were thwarting or dwarfing his progress.
It had been a crowded year, encompassing the heights and depths of
feeling. Christmas Eve was too much for me. I went back again and sat,
wondering whether the children were well and contented. The next morning
came a cable from them, flowers from Bill, and a nice note from Havelock
Ellis.
Thereafter Havelock aided me immensely in my studies by guiding my
reading. Tuesdays and Fridays were his days at the British Museum, and
he often left little messages at my seat, listing helpful articles or
offering suggestions as to books which might assist me in the particular
aspect I was then engaged upon.
If when traveling about with him on the tram, going to a concert,
shopping for coffee and cigarettes outside the Museum, a thought came to
him, he would pull out a bit of paper and jot down notes. That was how
he compiled his material for books, gathering it piecemeal and storing
it away in envelopes. Anything on the dance went into the dance
envelope, music into music, and so on. As soon as any one became full
enough to attract his attention, he took it out and started to make
something of it.
Sometimes we dined together at a Soho restaurant; occasionally I had tea
at his flat. In his combined kitchen and dining room, warmed by a coal
stove, he did his work, and there also he cooked meals for which he
marketed himself. He was proud of being able to lay a fire with fewer
sticks and less paper than an expert charwoman, and once said he would
rather win praise for the creation of a salad than of an essay.
One of the four rooms was set aside for the use of his wife, Edith. She
preferred the country and lived on her farm in Cornwall, whereas
Havelock loved to be in the city; though he was not a part of it, he
liked to hear it going on about him. Whenever she came to town she found
all her books and possessions inviolate; whenever he went to Cornwall he
found everything ready for him. Either of them could, on impulse, board
a train without baggage and in a few hours be at home.
Edith was short and stocky, high-colored, curly-haired, with mystical
blue eyes but accompanying them a strain of practicality. She could run
the farm, look after the livestock, and dispose of her products. Her
vitality was so great that it sought other outlets in writing fiction.
Bernard Shaw was once trying to find his way to the Ellis farm and
stopped at a cottage to inquire whether he was on the right road. The
goodwife could not tell him.
“But I know Mr. and Mrs. Ellis live near here.”
She kept protesting nobody of that name was in the neighborhood until
Shaw pointed to a house which appeared as though it might be the one.
“Who lives there?”
“Two strangers.”
“What do they do?”
“Oh, the man he writes out of other folks’ books, but she writes out of
her head.”
The person who saw most of Havelock was Olive Schreiner, a long-standing
friend of his and of Edith. I was delighted at the chance of meeting the
author of _Woman and Labor_ and of another favorite, _The Story of an
African Farm_. She had just come to England for the first time in
twenty-five years and been caught in the War.
Knowing Havelock to be a philosopher, I had expected him to be an
elderly man, but, despite his white hair, had found him young,
physically and mentally. Olive Schreiner’s writings were so alive that I
had visualized a young woman. Instead, although her hair was black, her
square and stout Dutch body was old and spread. She had, perhaps, been
partly aged by the frightful asthma from which she had suffered for so
many years. The effect was enhanced by the dark surroundings of the
shabby hotel in which I first saw her.
Certainly another contributing factor was her despondence over the War.
Although her mother was English, her father Dutch, and she a British
subject, her Germanic name was causing her the most harrowing
complications. Fellow hotel guests of her own sex, when they spied her
name on the register or heard her paged, insisted to the manager that
either she should be removed or they were going to seek quarters
elsewhere. She was literally being hounded from place to place.
Possibly Olive felt the tragedy of the War more than any other person I
met in London at this time. She had never believed that “the boys would
be out of the trenches by Christmas,” or that business as usual could
continue much longer. Already she had seen the horrors of armed conflict
in South Africa; it seemed to begin lightly, but it did not end that
way. She feared the whole world might be trapped in this one, that
internationalism and the peace movement were practically finished, and
that a whole new generation had to be born before we could recover what
we had lost. She appeared to me then unduly disheartened; it was only
later when her words came true that I comprehended how accurate were her
prophecies.
Better than any living being Olive understood Havelock. I realized this
during a conversation between herself and Edith. The latter had been in
the United States lecturing on three writers: her husband, James Hinton,
whom he admired tremendously, and Edward Carpenter. Her reception had
convinced her the name of Ellis had gone beyond the borders of England,
and she wanted him to return with her the following year to reap some of
the reward of the respect thousands of Americans had for him.
Havelock was terror-stricken, first at the idea of coming to a new
country, and second at the mere mention of speaking in public. He could
imagine no tortures worse than these. But in order to please Edith, whom
he loved dearly, and also because her persistency and determination were
so great that he found it hard to oppose her, he agreed to leave it to
the three of us.
Edith and I had called on Olive to talk it over. She, as usual, had just
recently moved. This time she was more cheerful, and after tea we took
up the momentous question of the destiny of another individual. Edith,
with her customary fire and fervor, started in to persuade Olive,
Havelock’s lifelong friend, and me, his new friend, that going to
America would be a crowning glory for him. She entreated our aid in
making him decide to do so.
Olive characteristically listened with rapt attention until Edith had
finished. Then she turned to me. “What do you think Havelock should do?”
I, knowing how much Americans expected of a speaker in the way of voice,
personality, and gift of oratory, and also how easily they could be
disappointed unless gestures and external appearance fulfilled their
anticipations, concluded he would not find this crown of glory or this
universal acclaim, and that he would probably return disillusioned after
the first fanfare of publicity. I said, without giving my reasons, “I
don’t think he should go.”
“Have either of you asked Havelock what he wants to do?” Olive
questioned.
“I have,” said Edith, “and he doesn’t want to.”
“Then that settles the matter entirely,” replied Olive. “Nobody has the
authority to make another do what he doesn’t want to, no matter how good
you or I or any of us think it might be for him. I myself will never
take a step that my instinct or intuition tells me not to. I am guided
wholly by that instinct, and if I should awaken tomorrow morning and my
inner voice told me to go to the top of the Himalayas, I would pack up
and go.”
This brief speech determined the question for Havelock, his right to
stay snugly in London, and to give up all the adventure Edith had
planned for him.
Olive, in her commonly dark mood, was encouraged more by the work being
done for women in birth control than by anything else. She herself, who
had had but one child, which had died, realized its significance. The
last time I saw her she put both arms around me and said, “We may never
meet again, but your endeavor is the bright star shining through the
black clouds of war.”
She was not able to go back to South Africa until the War was over. One
morning, not long afterwards, she was found dead in her bed. According
to her instructions, her little child and beloved dog were removed from
their old resting places and Kaffirs carried the three of them to the
peak of a mountain outside Queenstown, where they have since reposed on
their high eminence.
Ellis has been called the greatest living English gentleman. But England
alone cannot claim him; he belongs to all mankind. I define him as one
who radiates truth, energy, and beauty. I see him in a realm above and
beyond the shouting and the tumult. Captains and kings come and go.
Lilliputian warriors strut their hour, and boundary lines between
nations are made and unmade. Although he takes no active share in this
external trafficking, he does not dwell apart in an ivory tower of his
own construction.
This Olympian seems to be aloof from the pain of the world, yet he has
penetrated profoundly into the persistent problems of the race. Nothing
human is alien to his sympathy. His knowledge is broad and deep; his
wisdom even deeper. He makes no strident, blatant effort to cry aloud
his message, but gradually and in ever-increasing numbers, men and women
pause to listen to his serene voice.
Here is a phenomenon more amazing than the achievements of
radio-activity. Despite all the obstacles and obstructions that have
hindered his expression, his truth has filtered through to minds ready
to receive it. His philosophy, if it can be reduced to an essence, is
that of life more abundant—attained through a more complete
understanding of ourselves and an unruffled charity to all.
To Havelock Ellis we owe our concept of that Kingdom of God within us,
that inner world which hides all our inherent potentialities for joy as
well as suffering. Thanks to him we realize that happiness must be the
fruit of an attitude towards life, that it is in no way dependent upon
the rewards or the gifts of fortune. Like St. Francis of Assisi, he
teaches the beauty of nature, of his brother the sun and his sister the
moon, of birds and fish and animals, and all the pageantry of the
passing seasons.
I have never felt about any other person as I do about Havelock Ellis.
To know him has been a bounteous privilege; to claim him friend my
greatest honor.
_Chapter Twelve_
STORK OVER HOLLAND
Day after day the attendants at the British Museum piled books and
pamphlets on the table before my seat. As I pored over the vital
statistics of Europe it seemed to me that chiefly in the Netherlands was
there a force operating towards constructive race building. The Dutch
had long since adopted a common-sense attitude on the subject, looking
upon having a baby as an economic luxury—something like a piano or an
automobile that had to be taken care of afterwards.
The Drysdales often mentioned the great work done by Dr. Aletta Jacobs
of Amsterdam and Dr. Johannes Rutgers of the Hague. The story of Dr.
Jacobs’ conquest of nearly insuperable obstacles to a medical career was
particularly appealing. Born in 1854 in the Province of Groningen, she
was the eighth child of a physician who, on eight hundred dollars a
year, had to support his wife and eleven children. Even before
adolescence she had asked defiantly, “What’s the use of brains if you’re
born a girl?” She was determined to become a doctor like her father,
though no woman had ever been admitted to Groningen University. Her
spirit was so indomitable that when at seventeen she had passed the
examinations and demanded entrance, she had been permitted to listen for
a year, and then allowed to register as a permanent student.
In 1878 Dr. Jacobs had finished her studies in medicine at Amsterdam
University and gone to London, where she had attended the Besant and
Bradlaugh trial, met the Fabians, met the Malthusians, become an ardent
suffragist. This first woman physician in the Netherlands had returned
to Amsterdam and there had braved the disapproval of her father’s
friends by practicing her profession and by opening a free clinic for
poor women and children, where she gave contraceptive advice and
information, the first time this had ever been done in the world.
Within a few years and within a radius of five miles the proportion of
stillbirths and abortions as well as venereal disease had started to
decline, children were filling the schools, people were leaving their
canal boats to go into agriculture.
The Netherlands being such a small country, where one person’s business
was everybody’s business, such changes could not escape notice. Just
about this time Dr. Charles R. Drysdale, then President of the English
League, had been invited to address an International Medical Congress
held in Amsterdam. The results of Dr. Jacobs’ clinic were so apparent
that immediately thereafter the Dutch Neo-Malthusian League had been
formed and thirty-four physicians had joined it. When other centers were
established, purely for consultation, the word clinic was applied to
them also. In 1883 Dr. Mensinga, a gynecologist of Flensburg, Germany,
had published a description of a contraceptive device called a diaphragm
pessary, which he and Dr. Jacobs had perfected. Dr. and Madame Hoitsema
Rutgers had taken charge of the League in 1899 with such success that
the work had spread through that well-ordered kingdom. In recognition of
its extensive and valuable accomplishment, Queen Wilhelmina had
presented it with a medal of honor and a charter, and counted it one of
the great public utilities.
In my statistical investigations I paid special attention to the birth
and mortality rates of the Netherlands to see how they had been affected
over this period of thirty-five years. They showed the lowest maternal
mortality, whereas the United States was at the top of the list; three
times more mothers’ lives were being saved in the little dike country
than in my native land. Furthermore, the infant death rate of Rotterdam,
Amsterdam, and the Hague, the three cities in which the League was most
active, were the lowest of all those in the world.
During the same period the death rate had been cut in half, but,
surprisingly, I found that the birth rate had been reduced only a third.
In other words, the death rate had fallen faster than the birth rate,
which meant that the population of the Netherlands was increasing more
rapidly than that of any other country in Europe.
I had much difficulty in reconciling these figures with my preconceived
idea that birth control would automatically bring about a decrease in
population. Since it was increasing, then perhaps birth control was not,
after all, the answer to the economic international problem. If this
were true all my calculations were going to be upset.
Impatient to go to the Netherlands and dig out the real facts, not only
from Dutch records but from personal observation, I decided quietly—most
of my decisions in those days were quiet ones—to cross the Channel. This
implied possible unwelcome encounters with inquisitive officials,
floating bombs, submarines, and every type of inconvenience and delay,
but my eagerness made me discount the hindrances.
I applied, to the Dutch Consul for a visa to Bertha Watson’s passport.
“Eighty cents, please,” and no questions asked.
So that I should not have to return to London before going on to Paris I
presented myself at the French Consulate also. I waited two hours. “Two
dollars, please,” and still no queries.
I attached myself to the end of the long line waiting at Victoria
Station to have passports inspected, and was soon safely on the train
for Folkestone. We were late when we reached the Channel. Again we lined
up for inspection. Many Belgian women with four or five children were
going back to their people; the sleepy little ones and the tired women
settled on the platform to rest until some had gone through. Two
detectives glanced casually at my passport, and then allowed me to enter
the official chamber. Inspections had been growing steadily more strict;
this was the ultimate test. There sat in a row three officers in mufti,
well-fed and brusque with authority. I handed my passport to the first,
who looked me up and down as though I were a treacherous enemy, then
pushed it over to the next. This man too viewed me with suspicion and
mistrust, and pulled out a notebook, scanning the names to see whether
mine were on the proscribed list. The last of the three, who was to make
the final decision—crisp, trim, and hard as nails in voice and
manner—demanded, “What are you going to the Continent for, Madam?
Another joy ride? You Americans must think that’s all this War amounts
to. Can you produce any good reason for letting you through?”
Fortunately I was prepared for such a contingency. I took out of my
purse a letter from Bernarr MacFadden asking me to answer certain
questions in the form of articles for _Physical Culture_ such as the
relation between the unfit and population growth. I offered this
document while those in line behind me waited restively. He read it
meticulously, taking longer than necessary as it seemed to me in my
nervousness. At last he folded it neatly and said, “A good work, this.
Too bad someone hasn’t done it before.”
Then he put his last official stamp on my various papers and I passed
through for the gangplank.
No complications presented themselves at the Hague, and early on a
January morning in 1915 I registered at an inexpensive hotel. It was
comforting to hear a radiator sizzling once more. I joined the other
guests who were cheerfully breakfasting together _en famille_ at a
single table, and, since I spoke neither Dutch nor German, silently
munched my black bread and cheese, downed the excellent coffee, and
watched interestedly. Though stolid in appearance like all the Dutch,
they were friendly.
I did not try to telephone Dr. Rutgers. Instead, though it was not yet
nine o’clock, I hailed a taxi and held out to the driver a slip of paper
on which I had written the street and number. In response to my ring at
the door to which I was delivered, a tiny square window in the upper
part opened mysteriously and a face—wizened, aged, and inquisitive—was
framed in the aperture. It remained while I explained my mission.
Apparently trust was inspired because, my story finished, the door swung
wide and the face, materialized into Dr. Rutgers, ushered me into the
library, where I waited until he came back in his street clothing. Then
we went out to a second breakfast in a near-by café.
The doctor turned out to be a kindly little man, whose wife was now an
invalid. It was hard for him to talk English. Most of the Dutch had four
languages, but only those who had lived in England spoke English well.
The difficulties, however, lessened as we nibbled brioches and sipped
coffee after coffee until noon. Warming to my narrative of the battle in
the United States, he shook his head when he thought of what I might
have to face in the future, and expressed more concern over my
predicament and more heartfelt sympathy with my having had to leave the
children behind than anybody I had yet met. He was the first person to
whom I had been able to overflow about my personal sadness.
On his part Dr. Rutgers described his hardships in keeping the clinics
open and, through the League, preventing adverse legislation.
Neo-Malthusianism had never been popular anywhere, no matter what the
proof in the lessening of human misery and suffering. Dr. Rutgers had
borne alone the brunt of all the criticism directed at his society.
The Rutgers method for establishing new clinics had resulted in a sound
system for dealing with the birth rate. The men and women who acted as
his councilors understood that a rising birth rate, no matter where in
the country, would soon be followed by a high infant mortality rate.
Accordingly, they reported this quickly to the society, which sent a
midwife or practical nurse, trained in the technique standardized by Dr.
Rutgers, into the congested sector to set up a demonstration clinic. She
usually took an apartment with two extra rooms, one for waiting, the
other a modestly equipped office like that of any country midwife.
Her duty was to go into the home where a child had died, inquire into
the cause, and give friendly advice regarding the mother’s own health.
She also encouraged her not to have another baby until the condition of
ignorance, poverty, or disease, whichever it might be, had either been
bettered or eliminated. Whenever four had been born into such a family
this advice was made more emphatic.
As soon as Dr. Rutgers had explained his policy to me I had that most
important answer to the puzzling and bothersome problem of the
increasing population in the Netherlands brought about by birth control.
It was proper spacing. The numbers in a family or the numbers in a
nation might be increased just as long as the arrival of children was
not too rapid to permit those already born to be assured of livelihood
and to become assimilated in the community.
Dr. Rutgers suggested I come to his clinic the next day and learn his
technique. He was at the moment training two midwives preparatory to
starting a new center in the outskirts of the Hague. Under his tutelage
I began to realize the necessity for individual instruction to patients
if the method of contraception prescribed was to fulfill its function. I
wondered at the ease with which this could be done. Very soon even I
myself, unable to talk to these women in their own tongue, instructed
seventy-five.
I used to bombard the little man with questions concerning each case. I
took issue with him over his autocratic system of dictating without
explanation. Merely saying, “This is what you do. Do this always,” had
to my mind no educational value.
“Don’t you think it would be a good idea to tell your patients what
you’re aiming at and why?” I asked.
“No, can’t take time. They must do what they’re told.”
His was the doctor’s point of view with which I was familiar, but with
which I could not agree.
It also seemed to me a mistake to regard the women merely as units in a
sociological scheme for bettering the human race. On the file cards were
inscribed only names and addresses; no case histories. I wanted to know
so much more about them. How many children had they already had? How
many had they lost? What were their husbands’ wages? What was the
spacing in each family, and what were the effects? How successful had
been the method of contraception?
If this information had then been recorded, the birth control movement
could later have cited chapter and verse in its own support.
After my morning’s work with Dr. Rutgers I usually repaired to the
Central Bureau of Statistics with my three-in-one translator,
interpreter, and guide. My findings were that in all cities and
districts where clinics had been established the figures showed
improvement—labor conditions were better and children were going to
schools, which had raised their educational standards. Professional
prostitutes were few, and even these were German, French, Belgian, or
English, because Dutch women were encouraged to marry early. It made a
difference. From the eugenic standpoint there had been a rapid increase
in the stature of the Dutch conscript as shown by army records. The data
proved conclusively that a controlled birth rate was as beneficial as I
had imagined it might be, growing out of the first clinic initiated by
the enterprise of Dr. Aletta Jacobs.
I was, of course, looking forward to meeting Dr. Jacobs, and sent her a
note asking for the privilege of an interview. A reply came, curt and
blunt; she would not see me. She was not concerned with my studies or
with me, because it was a doctor’s subject and one in which laymen
should not interfere. Already I had come to the same conclusion in
principle, but was dismayed at this first rebuff I had encountered. I
was also hurt as much as I could be hurt during that period when I
seemed to be one mass of aches, physically and mentally. Not until much
later did I learn that to be a nurse was no recommendation in Europe,
where she was more like an upper servant, a household drudge who took
care of the sick instead of the kitchen.
For two months I wandered about the Netherlands, visiting clinics and
independent nurses in the Hague, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam. In spite of
the League propaganda against commercialization I found many shops in
which a woman, if she so desired, could purchase contraceptive supplies
as casually as you might buy a toothbrush. Unfortunately in some of them
she could be examined and fitted by saleswomen who had but little
training in technique and scant knowledge of anatomy. Although the Dutch
League had several thousand members—each one active, writing to papers,
talking to friends, attending meetings—and although fifty-four clinics
were in operation, many well-informed people did not know anything about
them. More surprising still, the medical profession as a whole appeared
to be utterly ignorant of the directed birth control work that was going
on. It did not, therefore, seem extraordinary that no inkling of all
this—either clinics or contraceptive methods—had ever reached the United
States, and practically no attempt to copy it been made in England.
Even in this neutral country signs of war were everywhere. Along the way
were soldiers in uniform, armed and keeping guard, and at the stations
Red Cross wagons were in readiness. Feeling among the Dutch was greatly
mixed: Queen Wilhelmina’s husband was a German; the army and the
aristocracy were for the Triple Alliance; the poorer classes were more
influenced by the sufferings of the thousands and thousands of Belgians
who had flocked to Dutch firesides for food and shelter.
Nowhere else was I so impressed with the tragedies of war. Often about
four o’clock I had _kaffee klatch_ at the home of some Dutch lady who
sat, very proper, while the maid served coffee, the best in Europe, from
the big, white, porcelain pot. I suspected most of the morning had been
spent in supervising preparations for the delicious food.
At one of these afternoons I was introduced to five German delegates who
had come to attend the Women’s Peace Conference. They found it difficult
to forgive the stories of German atrocities which England had allowed to
circulate. I ventured to inquire how they could disprove them,
especially in view of the report of the Bryce Commission. “Was not war
cruel and savage, and might not these things have happened?”
“Yes, yes,” one said, “but hundreds of our German boys are brought back
to us, dead and alive, whose noses and ears have been cut off, put in
packages, and taken to headquarters for reward. However, we would not
dream of accusing the French or the English soldiers of such barbarisms.
We know that because their code forbids them to do these things
themselves they have called in the Moors and the Gurkhas and the savages
from Africa.”
Unable to comprehend how those towards whom they felt such friendliness
could return this sentiment with hatred, the women said to me in
bewilderment, “Tell us really why people who do not know us hate us as
they do.” The dignity of their sorrow, the heavy burden of grief under
which they labored, the very calmness and fairness with which they bore
it, had a quieting effect.
The Netherlands was the place to regain a certain sense of balance,
especially if you had passed through England, where feeling was so
embittered. I overheard in Amsterdam a most illuminating conversation
between two Englishmen and a German. After going over the pros and cons,
they shook hands all around, agreeing that six months after the War was
settled German and English trade would be hand in glove, trials and
grievances forgotten.
To go directly to France from the Netherlands was next to impossible;
nor did I find it easy to travel roundabout by way of England, owing to
the recently instituted German submarine blockade. Then at last I heard
that a freighter was to be sent to London to test it. Day after day I
went to the docks for news, and employed the interval with pleasant
social contacts.
Rather than have a cocktail before lunch or dinner the Dutch assembled
at their favorite restaurants for apéritifs. The glass, with winged rim
spreading out about half an inch from the top, was filled to overflowing
with Bols. You were not supposed to touch it at first; instead you
leaned over and sort of scooped a little with your mouth before picking
it up and enjoying it. The French apéritifs were pleasant and mild, but
Holland gin was so strong and raw that I marveled at the way they could
take it with a smile. I was definitely unequal to the art.
One evening I was invited to play billiards with a Dutchman, an
Englishman, and a German. I accepted as naturally as for a game of
whist. Afterwards the Dutchman said that, though no respectable Dutch
wife could have played billiards in that room without later being
approached or insulted, an American woman could do anything and still
not lose caste. She minded her own affairs, paid her own bills, and even
if she were seen on the streets late at night without an escort everyone
knew she must be on legitimate business.
Then the Englishman spoke to the same effect. He said you found the
American woman in all sorts of out-of-the-way and often questionable
places, but you needed only to look into her candid face to find an
answer to what she was doing there. European women owed her a great deal
for her pioneering on the Continent. In England it was a common sight to
see the most estimable women smoking cigarettes in all fashionable
restaurants and hotels just as in America.
“Just as in America!” I gasped, remembering my astonishment at having
seen women smoke publicly in London. “I’m sure there must be some
mistake. Ladies are not supposed to smoke in America. As an example to
Europe they’re a failure, because they haven’t even won that liberty for
themselves.”
This was a surprise to them all. But the Dutchman rallied to the
defense, shifting the subject. “Nevertheless, she is the best-dressed
woman in the world.”
“What about the Parisian?” I exclaimed.
“I except none. I have been over half the globe. I have paid particular
attention to foreigners, their customs, their education, their tastes,
and I have been convinced that today the Parisian woman has had to yield
to the American in respect to clothes and fashion. Paris designs are
intended for the United States, not for France or England. The
Frenchwoman may be trim and neat and jaunty, but it takes a woman of
wealth in France to be in the fashion, while in New York, every shopgirl
wears cheap editions of the latest styles.”
The German was deep in thought during these speeches, resting his chin
in his hand. Aroused by the striking of the clock he suddenly
interpolated, “Why, you can always tell an American couple in Europe.
The woman is too bossy, she leads the way, she does all the talking and
ordering, while the man trails on behind her and silently pays the
bills.”
“Well, you must have seen him when he was on his good behavior,” I
suggested, “for at home he is not so silent about paying the bills.”
Unabashed, the German continued, “My brother who has long lived in
America says the woman there is the head of the house, that she manages
all; her word is law. Is this true?”
He seemed greatly disturbed, and I was about to reply, but the Briton
rose to speak. “Of course she is, because she’s far superior. Why,
American men have nothing in common with the women. They are coarse,
blunt, crude, while the women are finely sensitive, exquisite, and
courteous. The man has nothing to give his wife but money; he comes home
at night and talks business, introduces into his home only friends who
will help him out financially, and when his wife discusses music, art,
or literature, he falls asleep and snores. That’s why she brings her
fortune into Europe for a husband. She finds her equal in the Frenchman,
the Italian, the Spaniard, but particularly in the Englishman. For every
Englishman is a gentleman, and every American woman is a lady!”
The German added a final convulsive note to the settlement of the woman
problem by adding, “Is it true the American husband not only washes the
dishes but pushes the perambulator?”
“Why, yes, he often does that.”
“That is terr-r-r-rrible,” he answered, the r’s rolling out, and his
hands clasped tight to his temples.
And at that we all departed for our rest. But a few days later one or
another of the quartet was demonstrated right. News came that my boat
was about to leave at once, and I sought out the Captain. At the first
intimation of my errand, he waved his hands and said, “No! No! No
women!”
I kept on talking until I made him admit he was interested in America,
in diet, and in population. When I found he was a reader of _Physical
Culture_ I produced my open sesame letter and again it was more potent
than a passport. I stood reasoning with him on the pier, until finally
he said, “There’s a rule to take no women. But you Americans are not
like others. I think I can put you in.” I was allowed to embark.
During the voyage we were most careful, anchoring at dusk, and when it
was light keeping sharp watch for floating mines which might have broken
loose from their moorings. It took us two nights and a day to make a
crossing that ordinarily occupied only nine or ten hours.
I had plenty of time to sort out my impressions and conclusions
regarding the birth control movement. They had been revolutionized. I
could no longer look upon it as a struggle for free speech, because I
now realized that it involved much more than talks, books, or pamphlets.
These were not enough.
Personal instruction had been proved to be the best method, and I
concluded clinics were the proper places from which to disseminate
information but also, admirable as they were in the Netherlands, they
ought not to be placed in the hands of unskilled midwives, social
workers, or even nurses. These could, of course, instruct after a
fashion, but only doctors had the requisite knowledge of anatomy and
physiology and training in gynecology to examine properly and prescribe
accurately.
I had a new goal, but how difficult and how distant its attainment was
to be I never dreamed.
_Chapter Thirteen_
THE PEASANTS ARE KINGS
I stayed but a few days in London and then went on to Paris, a gloomy,
gloomy city because so many people were garbed in black. Jaurès had been
shot. The capital had already been moved to Bordeaux and suspicion and
hysteria were in the air. When I went within easy driving distance of
Paris for lunch or dinner, I could see the barbed-wire entanglements and
gaps where the trees had been taken down for better visibility.
I renewed what contacts I could. But everybody was too busy now with the
War to think of such a subject as family limitation, which to the French
had never been anything to get excited about because they were too used
to it. Furthermore, the other side of the question was now presenting
itself. They were beginning to ask, “If we had a larger population,
could we not have held the Germans back?”
Again I saw Victor Dave. He was literally starving to death, supported
only by friendly gifts of a few francs here or there which he always
accepted with laughter; what difference did it make to him whether he
lived a few days longer? I never saw greater gallantry than was
manifested by his smile and the shrug of his shoulders as he sauntered
to work with two pieces of dry bread in his pocket.
The libraries were shut. Paris was no place for me, but I could see
something of Spain, and Portet was waiting for me there. After the
customary passport argument and some surprise at the cost of the
sleeping-car arrangements I left for the South. It was four o’clock in
the morning as the express pulled into Cerbère, the station on the
border, where the French viewed all passengers with caution and
mistrust.
“Cerbère!” shouted the guard, and, “Passports!” shouted an inspector
following on his heels. Mine was not quite right. The train moved out
leaving me and my baggage desolate on the platform. In the course of
several interviews with various officials I made out that my passport
lacked a particular signature, and Perpignan was the nearest town where
it could be secured.
I paced up and down the tiny station watching for the train back. As
usual, peasants were asleep in the waiting room, some on the floor,
others sitting on bags and parcels. We were so close under the shadow of
the Pyrenees that they almost seemed to be toppling over us.
From the train window I looked out on the beauty of dawn and the rising
sun, a scene of such magnificence that it repaid me in pleasure for all
the trouble. To one side was the far stretch of the Mediterranean, as
magic a blue as I had ever imagined it. To the other were the majestic,
rugged mountains with snow-capped peaks and bases covered with pink,
flowering apricots. Little villages of white houses and red-tile roofs
nestled in the valleys and serpentine roads coiled up the hillsides,
where thousands of acres of grape vines, trim and well cared-for,
bespoke the wine country.
From Perpignan I telegraphed Portet, “Live or die, sink or swim, survive
or perish, I’ll be in Barcelona tomorrow,” and boarded the train once
more with a light heart and my papers, three of them.
Already in the minute second-class compartment were a large, middle-aged
woman whose sweet face was framed in a black mantilla, a small
gray-haired man, evidently her husband, and a younger one of about
twenty-five. It would have been crowded enough as it was, but they had
brought with them packages and bundles that filled the space to the
roof. However, they squeezed out enough room for me to curl myself up
and go to sleep.
I awakened with a start, hearing again the fateful word, “Passports!”
and found the agent examining those of my fellow passengers. I opened
the bag where I had always carried my credentials, but they were not
there. The officer stood waiting. “I have my papers all signed,” I said,
“but I cannot find them. Go on to the others and when you come back I’ll
have them.”
Since he could not understand English my speech had little effect; he
continued to wait. I began turning things out—letters, books, pamphlets
of all kinds and descriptions, groping through every bag, in and out of
every package. My traveling companions gazed on the commotion
sympathetically and drew their legs aside so I could look under the
seat.
At this point another uniform approached and the two consulted together.
Then one of them blew a whistle and at its loud and shrill summons five
men came running. The biggest of them threw wide the compartment door,
to indicate I must get off. They were jabbering at me in French and
Spanish; I was talking English. All of us were going as fast as we
could. First I jumped up and expostulated, then sat down and waved my
hands saying, “Go away.”
Finally there appeared a young Spanish student who could speak English.
He conveyed to me that the train was already late on my account; I must
get off so the other passengers could catch the Barcelona Express.
I would not be bothered any more. “So do I want to catch it,” I
exclaimed. “Why don’t they move on? I have a passport and I’ll find it
in a few minutes. I’ve paid for my ticket to Port Bou and I’m not going
back. You can stop the train here for a week if you want to—I shan’t
budge!”
The gendarmes were standing expectantly on the platform below. The
interpreter shrugged his shoulders, “She’ll do as she says. She’s an
American woman and she’ll never come down. You might as well move on.”
Nevertheless, the big fellow with the long black cape resolutely seized
one bag after another and handed them out. Underneath the last one were
disclosed the missing papers. Straightway everybody was wreathed in
smiles. The bags were restored and the agents apologized, thanked me
profusely, and departed.
The passengers shook hands with me all around.
Just before we reached Port Bou one of them peered out the window,
rippled off some words to the others in Catalan. The whole compartment
was as though electrified. In a few seconds parcels were being torn
apart and boxes ripped open. The Señora removed her mantilla and placed
a smart new hat on her head, then crowned that with another, and
another, and another, until finally she was wearing four. Yards of
beautiful and exquisite lace went inside her bodice. She took off her
outer skirt and swathed her hips in lengths of cloth. The men stuffed
their pockets and the lining of their coats. At last there were only a
few rolls of braid left. The younger one lifted his trousers, wound them
round and round his legs and tucked the ends in his garters. Then
through the window went crumpled paper, boxes, string. Finally, as the
train was slowing up they put on light-buff, linen dusters. My eyes
popped out of my head to see these simple people suddenly transformed
into stylish stouts returning from Paris.
The two men nonchalantly smoked cigars as though nothing out of the way
were going on while the customs officials went through their bags.
Everybody concerned knew they were merchants smuggling goods, but even
the authorities regarded it as legitimate for them to bring in as much
as they could carry on their persons. As they left the shed where my
belongings were still being scrambled over, they glanced commiseratingly
at me and glowered indignation at the officials that a lady should be so
served.
I had expected to find in Barcelona street-corner Carmens with hibiscus
blossoms in their hair, wandering guitarists and singers. But the only
music that passed my window oozed out mechanically from two-wheeled,
highly-ornamented hurdy-gurdies. Nevertheless, the city was full of
color. Strange little wagons with canvas covers, looking as though they
were part of a caravan, rattled over the cobbles. There was something
gorgeously elegant about the members of the _Guardia Civil_, grandly
mounted on Arabian horses, their mustachios fiercely bristling, their
uniforms ablaze with scarlet and yellow topped off with black patent
leather hats. The red Phrygian caps of the porters seemed almost too
realistic a reminder of revolution. The workers still wore their
crimson-fringed sashes, their blue French blouses, and white rope-soled
shoes. The men, as a rule, were of slight frame, but conveyed an
impression of strength like steel rods; the women, invariably black-clad
except for the very young, were fat and waddling.
Numberless bells were constantly ringing in numberless churches.
Everywhere, like crows, were priests in long swinging robes, shovel
hats, and dirty bare toes sticking through their sandals. On the corners
of the central streets I saw them occupying the booths of the
professional correspondents who for ten cents read and answered letters
for the illiterate.
Although Barcelona, capital of the separatist province of Catalonia, was
the progressive, industrial center of Spain, it was not darkened by a
mêlée of belching chimneys. The hundreds of factories were kept out of
sight, each one isolated in the fields, leaving the city free from
traffic, smoke, and the whir of machinery. The palms in the squares and
parks were lovely, but set side by side with the new was the startling
antiquity of the old town, congested and melancholy.
Overlooking the sea at the end of the Rambla, decorated along its length
with flower stalls and trees, loud with birds, stood a tall column
bearing the statue of Columbus. Around the base were scenes portraying
various incidents of the voyage to America, each represented by small
images cast in bronze, all beautiful to the last detail. But the effect
was greatly spoiled because nearly every one remaining had a leg, arm,
foot, or even head gone. After looking at this for some time and
pondering over the wherefore, I concluded that figures so strongly made
and set had not easily been removed, and decided it must have something
to do with the Spanish-American War. When I asked my Spanish friends
whether I had guessed correctly, their only explanation was that
ruffians had doubtless done it for sport.
However, after I had left the country I received verification of my
supposition. The monument had been stoned in ’98, but no Spaniard would
ever have admitted this fact to any American; it might hurt the feelings
of the visitor even to mention the unpleasantness.
I began to study Spanish with a teacher, but I was not nearly far enough
advanced to be able to get anywhere in my investigations. Unfortunately
also, although men thronged the cafés in droves, they kept their wives
in semi-Oriental seclusion and even mentally imposed their deep-rooted
ideas of the isolation of women on foreigners. I could not violate this
custom by going about alone, because I was a guest. As a result Portet,
who was a busy man himself, provided me with a succession of male
escorts.
Towards the end of a certain afternoon, tired and footsore, I was
sitting with one of these accommodating gentlemen at a sidewalk table
sipping an apéritif—a delicious French vermouth supplemented by olives
stuffed with anchovies. Bootblacks were making their customary rounds of
the patrons, and the men were having their shoes cleaned. Since I had
been walking about a great deal, mine were appearing rather scuffed, and
I stretched my feet out.
My companion looked at me appealingly. “I beg of you, Señora, not here.”
“Why not?”
But the boy had already brought his little shoe rest, begun spitting on
my oxford and rubbing with energy and enthusiasm. Embarrassed, my escort
rose and moved away, but, interested in the boy’s novel methods, I kept
my eyes on my shoes and was unaware of anything out of the ordinary.
As soon as he had finished I glanced up. There must have been
twenty-five men gathered in front of the café, all looking fixedly and
intently at this unusual spectacle. When I opened my purse to pay the
boy, he doffed his cap with the most gracious gesture. “Señora, this is
my pleasure.”
The crowd outside applauded loudly and I felt my face growing hot. Not
until they had drifted off did my protector return, wan and pale and
extremely agitated. “You see what you’ve done, you see? It will be the
joke of Spain! You are the friend of Professor Portet! It is a
reflection on him and on his family! You cannot do these things!”
I realized then that I had to be more circumspect.
Portet, who after all was Ferrer’s successor, was watched wherever he
went by the secret service, and soon pointed out that I too had a
shadow—the man who sat constantly at the little, round, marble-topped
table across from my hotel. He said I should always have this individual
or one of his mates with me. They were on eight-hour duty, and if I were
to go in for any night life I would have three separate ones over the
twenty-four hours.
These government agents were to give a regular report of whom I was with
and where I went, and, in a sense, they also looked after me, although
Portet was never without a revolver in his pocket. In Spain a breath of
dampness, and pop—open went the umbrellas all over the place. Once on
the way to a benefit for the Belgians Portet and I were waiting for the
tram when a spatter of rain came up. His spy rushed to hold an umbrella
over him while mine ran after my hat which the wind had saucily blown
off my head. Or, if I were taking a train alone, my daytime attendant,
having already been in conference with the hotel proprietor, would
appear at the ticket office and explain to the clerk where I wanted to
go. Had he spoken English I would have doubtless enjoyed his
conversation, but Portet warned me it was beneath my dignity even to nod
good morning to such a creature.
The frequent friendly attentions of our spies could not draw a word of
approval from Portet, though on one occasion they performed a real
service. Stopping en route at the American Express Company to get some
money, we set out to see a part of the old city new to me. Only a few
blocks from the banks and modern shops were center pumps from which
women were carrying the water to their homes in tall earthen jugs, in
just the same primitive manner as centuries ago. The houses in the
red-light district were approached by outside stairways along which were
niches enclosing receptacles for holy water, and into these the patrons
dipped their fingers religiously, crossed themselves, and entered.
While we were walking through one of the narrow streets, high-walled on
either side, suddenly and without reason I felt alarmed, and at the same
moment Portet put his hand in his pocket. I glanced behind to find our
two familiar guarding shadows gone; I sensed danger ahead, but I, too,
tried to act as though everything were all right, as though there were
nothing to worry about. We strolled in the same leisurely way to the
corner. There in a flash down another street we caught a quick glimpse
of struggling figures in the distance. In a moment they disappeared.
We proceeded to our destination—a little café fronting the
Mediterranean. As we sat admiring it, I was startled by the sight of our
two spies approaching, one of them holding a long, jagged-edged knife. I
could not understand his excited words, but his pantomime was so
graphically descriptive of a life-and-death struggle that my flesh began
to creep and shivers ran up and down my backbone. He paused, bowed, and
held out the knife, obviously offering it to me.
Portet, looking very incensed, pulled out his revolver, showed it to the
man, and ordered him off. When both had retired, abashed, Portet
translated briefly, “He says he has saved your life—that robbers saw you
get money at the American Express this morning, and that he knew they
were going to attack you. He followed and grabbed the knife away from
them. I told him this was unnecessary. The thieves would have got as
good as they gave! I can take care of you.”
I thought I ought at least to have given the man a reward, but not
Portet, the revolutionary, who was furious at the presumption. He was
always angry at them. When he came to lunch with me Palm Sunday, the
hotel proprietor leaned over the table confidentially and said, “The
government agent wishes to speak to you.”
Portet shouted, “If he comes near, I’ll shoot him! The hound, the worm,
the dog! How dare he?”
“Can’t we find out what he wants?” I suggested.
The proprietor returned, “Nothing, Señor, except to ask whether you and
the Señora are attending the bullfight this afternoon. His time is up at
four o’clock, but if you are going to the _plaza de toros_, he will be
glad to stay on duty another eight hours.”
We went; he came right along and saw the spectacle at government
expense.
The cement-like benches of the large amphitheater were crowded to full
capacity. The people were gesticulating, chattering volubly as though
awaiting something unusual or something good eagerly anticipated.
Overhead the monotonous, gray sky seemed like a huge tent, it was so
regular and colorless, but every little while a patch of blue appeared.
The disposition of the onlookers changed with the same unexpectedness
from gladness and joy almost instantaneously into impatience or wrath;
at one moment they clapped and praised the matador, at the next they
insulted and vilified him.
Most of my Spanish friends hoped I would like a bullfight, although
Portet, who thought it barbaric, told me it would probably shock me;
every foreigner who saw one simply shut his eyes in horror when some
poor old skeleton horse was so gored that its intestines fell out and
then were pushed back for its re-entry into the arena. If I were going
to be conspicuous by showing my feelings, the populace might turn upon
me, and, jokingly, he suggested following the example of Alfonso XIII,
who had given his English bride a pair of opera glasses with perfectly
black lenses because she was so open and frank at displaying her
emotions. She had stood and stared blankly at them all the time, and
thus got through her first bullfight.
I promised to be careful, and watched with the naked eye.
The bull came out snorting with passion and vigor, glaring around the
arena with a great noble sweep of his head. Suddenly he saw a color he
did not like, something inimical. He lunged towards it, and then a
medieval-looking figure danced before him with a cape to confuse him. He
forgot his original enemy and rushed at the red thing. Another gyrating
figure distracted his attention and angered him to wheel towards the new
adversary, make another plunge, and again be met by a flash of color.
Over and over and over again this happened. The poor bull’s vitality was
finally worn down, not from direct combat, but because of the many
bewildering forces that were there to destroy him—the fluttering capes,
the kaleidoscopic shapes, the swift-thrown banderillas, and the gleaming
lances of the picadors. Then, when he was bleeding and utterly spent,
the hero stepped out with a sword to kill him. He was dragged out,
sombreros whirled into the arena, shrieks and shouts arose, the band
played, a great victory had been achieved.
Within no time, even before another bull appeared, vendors came along
with baskets of hot sandwiches made from the barbecued meat of the one
just killed.
Not a single word would Portet let me say until we were entirely out of
hearing; you could talk freely in Spain against the Church or the
priests, but this sacred institution must not be criticized. Passing
through my mind was the thought that a bullfight was symbolic of the
struggle of the working classes. Strikes, picketing, jails exhausted
their energy until they too charged blindly this way and that, always
missing the main issue.
Many of my holidays were spent more happily than this. I never tired of
the wooded mountains which sheltered Barcelona, most of them having some
religious significance. Portet and I went up the funicular to the top of
Tibidabo, the exceeding high place where the devil tempted Jesus,
showing him in a moment of time the world spread out before him.
Another glorious spring day we twisted up the thirty miles of road to
Montserrat, the mountain riven in two at the Crucifixion. It was the
quaintest sight to one coming from a land of subways and elevators to
watch the donkeys laden with packs on their backs of vegetables, eggs,
and butter, and to see their owners straggling beside up and down the
hills, masters of at least themselves if not of their donkeys. The
breeze blew more chill as we ascended the final slope to the huge
monastery at the top. Afterwards night fell, and the moon shone over the
huge boulders of towering rocks, and the whispering wind swung from mass
to mass and echoed back again whence it came. It was an evening of
enchantment.
On making other sorties into the country I perceived an innate
intelligence in the most ignorant peasant. The average one could not
tell the names of the simplest plants or flowers, but one look from the
eye, one tone of the voice, was comprehended in a flash. Even the gypsy
children in the outskirts of Barcelona, with their little dirty feet and
tattered clothing, who danced weird dances and flattered strangers for
pennies, had a natural brightness beyond belief.
But this intelligence was not being directed, and one reason was
inherent in the rebellious nature of the Catalan; he would have
preferred no system of government at all if that had been possible, for
he was restless and tumultuous under restraint.
When I saw children leading the blind about the streets day after day, I
asked, “Don’t they have to be in school? Isn’t education made compulsory
by the Government?”
I was laughed at. “If the Government sent our children to school, we
would know it was the wrong sort of school.”
Parents who could afford it, however, were willing enough to have them
go to Ferrer’s schools. Two thirds of the Spanish people had not been
able to read or write before his time. The teacher, who worked
constantly all the year round, averaged about sixteen dollars a month.
“He is hungrier than a schoolmaster” was a household axiom.
Since Ferrer’s first school had opened fourteen years previously, some
forty-six had begun to operate, and, in addition, most towns of any size
had at least one rationalist school which was maintained by the workers
and also used Ferrer’s texts. The groundwork was then being laid for the
children of yesterday to become the leaders in today’s fight. The pupils
I saw at near-by Sabadella, at Granada, and at Seville, were being
taught the processes of life from the cell up, and their instructors
were really trying to give them a scientific instead of a theological
attitude.
Because of the long mental and physical isolation imposed upon them by
the Church, which controlled all education, five thousand towns and
villages could be reached only by trails and tracks. The Church had
objected to having roads built because, once transportation were made
more accessible, women could more easily leave their homes in the
country and go to the city where evil awaited them—their morals were
being safeguarded by cow-paths.
Most of Spain was a gaunt, denuded, tragic country with vast, desolate
steppes and red, impoverished soil which gave the feeling it had been
soaked in human blood for centuries. Certainly the spilling of blood had
been a matter of indifference in Spanish history. In a sense the whole
people were lawless, hostile to rulers. Every child knew the evils of El
Caciquismo. Some Spaniard has said, “Democracy, Republicanism, or
Socialism have in reality little to do in our country, for we do not
willingly accept either king, president, priest, or prophet.”
The worker in Catalonia had small faith in government, no matter what
the brand, and kept straight to the one issue—revolution through
economic action, chiefly the general strike. He did not look upon the
Government as a vague, mysterious something for the deeds or blunders of
which no one could be blamed; he demanded that those in authority should
give accounting for the results of their authority. He never forgot a
wrong, and usually those responsible paid the bill. I sometimes thought
his “attempts” were carried out more from a spirit of revenge and
individual hatred than as a social protest.
At the head of the Rambla was a great square, the Plaza de la
Constitucion, and there each day from five to six the populace took its
airing. Thousands of feet had so worn the pavement that it needed
replacement. One noon the square was torn up. Nobody could walk there
for twenty-four hours, the workmen were busy, ropes were placed across
both ends of the promenade, and a huge sign was erected, “No trespassing
allowed. By Order of the Government.”
Loiterers gathered to look at the proclamation. They began talking,
their gestures growing more and more vehement, until finally they pulled
down the ropes and deliberately trod on the fresh concrete. They were
not going to be forbidden by the Government! The entire job had to be
done over again, and I noticed the next night six mounted police were
guarding all four sides. But nobody seemed to give either incident the
slightest attention.
Catalans were a race of individualists, each a law unto himself. Their
most marked characteristics were independence and personal dignity. Even
Pepet, the waiter at my hotel, knew how to use his freedom. Sometimes he
calmly left the dining room and went down the street for a shave while
we were having our soup. He eventually returned for the following
course, happy and clean, his absence unreproved.
Whenever the conversation of the guests interested him, Pepet entered in
quite as naturally as though he were sitting and being served instead of
serving. In any other country this would have been resented as
insolence, but here every courtesy and respect was shown to him just as
he showed it to others. If you said you were going to go by a certain
tram to a certain place to be there at three in the afternoon, he
interrupted, “Pardon me, Señora, you do not need to be there until
four-thirty, and it is much better to go by this other route.”
Like the rest I said, “Right, Pepet, we shall take your advice.”
With the expulsion of the Jews from Spain vanished the driving force for
commercial initiative, a quality, fortunately or unfortunately, greatly
lacking in the country. Pérez Galdós said:
The capital defect of the Spaniards of your time is that you live
exclusively the life of words, and the language is so beautiful that
the delight in the sweet sound of it woos you to sleep. You speak
too much. You lavish without stint a wealth of phrases to conceal
the poverty of your actions.
I did not believe this entirely true, but without doubt the Spanish had
a maddening habit of procrastination. It was “Sí, Sí, Señora, assuredly,
certainly,” all gracious promising—and then nothing happening. To an
American this was especially aggravating, because he was always in a
constant hurry; he expected to see and know the whole of Spain in a
month. But the Spaniard was not to be rushed. When asked what time it
was, he might reply, “Perhaps four hours more of the sun.”
This defiance of clocks and the absence of strain and bustle pleased me
personally. A story was told of a Spaniard going to seek his fortune in
South America. After finding a position to his satisfaction he worked
three hours and then suddenly asked for his pay. When his employer
requested the cause of his abrupt leave-taking, he exclaimed angrily,
“Do you think I’m going to spend all my life working for you?”
Don Quixote truly represented the Spanish temperament. The strong
enthusiasm which was shown for a project and the still stronger
imagination which not only saw the matter begun but also finished, was
Spanish to the last degree. The knight of La Mancha thought nothing of
invading cities and fighting giants, but it ended in thinking about it.
“I consider all that already done.”
Spanish character, so paradoxical, so attractive, and often so difficult
to understand, fascinated me. I could exhaust myself in
adjectives—fickle, impetuous, rich-souled, ascetic, passionate,
realistic, individualistic. Courtesy and ceremony were second nature to
the Catalans of Barcelona, supposed to be the most dangerous and lawless
city in Europe, where thousands of anarchists gathered and plotted and
where bombs were thrown wrapped up in flowers.
I remember how on the suburban trams going high into the mountains,
sellers of hot and cold omelets ran up and down the station platforms.
Anybody who bought one, before eating it himself, offered it to all the
passengers in the car, even though they might be carrying their own
lunches.
To accept, however, was a shocking breach of good form. The offerer
protested that you must take it, and you had to think fast for a
plausible excuse. “My friends are waiting for me to dine with them,” or
“I’ve just had something at the last station.” You must never, never,
never accept.
Havelock used to tell of a grave error he had once made when traveling
in Spain. When he had admired a piece of jewelry, the lady to whom it
belonged had removed it promptly and thrust it upon him, saying, “I am
honored to give it to you.” She had been so insistent that, though
thoroughly uncomfortable, he had taken it—the very worst thing he could
have done. Soon it disappeared from his effects, but what was his
surprise on his next encounter with the lady to find her wearing it
again with no sign of discomposure. Her servants had been so indignant
that one of them had immediately stolen it back.
Spanish men were not only courteous to women but also to each other,
having no hesitancy at showing their regard and affection. Even the
beggars addressed each other in the most high-flown phrases, “Your
Highness,” or “Your Grace.” One might ask, “Where is Your Excellency to
sleep tonight?”
“Under the bridge, My Lord.”
They lacked that poverty-in-the-soul look that existed in the same class
in other countries. Assuming the condition of one tattered and ragged
specimen to be temporary, I questioned him, “What do you do ordinarily?”
“I saunter, I idle, I loaf.”
“But what work do you do?”
He drew himself up with the utmost hauteur, and said proudly, “I do not
work. I am a beggar.”
Doing business with the Spaniards required a knowledge of finesse quite
foreign to the average American. I, for example, saw a basket in a shop
window which I felt I really must have. My escort and I went into the
store. Since the proprietor did not speak English, all I could do was
gaze longingly, take it in my hand, and ask my companion, “How much do
you suppose this is?” He made no answer, but pointed to something else
on the wall, and we left without learning the price. I thought he was a
terribly stupid person.
The next day I passed the same place with Portet, and I begged, “Oh, do
come in and ask how much that basket is. I want to buy it.”
He smiled at me indulgently. “You know in our country we cannot just go
into places and find out prices. This man is a craftsman. We will talk
to him.”
The proprietor and his wife shook hands with us and brought the best
wine from the cellar. Then the former said, “The Señora was here
yesterday. Tell us about her.”
“She comes from North America,” answered Portet.
“Tell us about North America.”
After forty minutes of this, during which I kept one eye on the wicker
container but was unable to divert the conversation to it, we said,
“_Hasta la vista_,” and bowed our way out.
A week later Portet and I, following the lodestone of my particular
basket, sought the shop once more. Relations had now been established,
and we were entitled to ask about it. But we still could not demand
outright, “How much does it cost?” We must say, “This basket must be
worth so and so,” making the figure higher than it should be.
“Oh, no, no, no, no!” the proprietor protested. “It is not worth that.
My humble hands fashioned it. It is hardly worth anything.”
He endeavored to make me accept it for nothing. I had to refuse and once
more try to make him take more than its value. Never was there such a
juggling before we finally arrived at the exact amount of pesetas.
On my departure from the country I had to break through a similar
punctilio. I spent about seven weeks in Barcelona and was never
presented with a hotel bill—none for lodging, for laundry, for meals, or
for extras such as coffee. The day was coming when I must go back to
France, and I did not want too much Spanish money with me—just enough to
take me to the border. From there I had already purchased my tickets for
England.
Each time I mentioned _cuenta_ to the proprietor, bowing and turning up
his palms he answered, “Sí, Sí, Señora,” until finally, on my last
morning, I marched resolutely up to the desk and said, “I shall miss my
train if I have to go to the American Express to get more money. You
really must tell me how much I owe.”
He went upstairs. I waited. Finally he descended, his hair standing on
end. He threw the reckoning down on the table with a most vindictive
look. I glanced at it. The total was very low; it could barely have
covered the cost of the food.
“I have been humiliated!” he exclaimed dramatically.
“Whatever is the matter?” I questioned.
“We are living in the most hellish country on earth!”
“Why, what’s happened?”
“A lady comes all the way from North America. She visits us, she stays
here, we like her, and I must present her with this sordid bill!”
Some day when the fighting is over I shall return again to Spain.
_Chapter Fourteen_
O, TO BE IN ENGLAND
When I reached London it was spring, and beautiful as only spring in
England can be. I longed to get out into the country and, through the
kindness of Dr. Alice Vickery, was soon lodged in a private home in
Hampstead Gardens next door to her quaint, ivy-covered, red-brick house.
In the large garden in back we often had tea under the blossoming apple
trees. There, dressed in gray or purple, with white collar and a wisp of
lace not quite a bonnet on her head, she entertained the young and
modern women of England who were working for reforms of no matter what
kind. Still, at the age of eighty, she was alert upon all questions of
the day, busily engaged in writing leaflets or articles pointing out the
weak spots in social programs.
Dr. Vickery was so full of the living side of Neo-Malthusianism that I
could ill afford to forego one possible hour with her. Often when we
found ourselves alone in her drawing room I sat at her feet and heard
the story of the pioneer Malthusians, what they had had to undergo, and
what they had accomplished. For my benefit she brought out of her attic
a veritable treasure of the early days—old circulars, pamphlets, and
letters now, I am afraid, destroyed.
Almost every afternoon, taking her walking stick and with Dr. Binnie
Dunlop for a companion, Dr. Vickery boarded the tram to attend some
gathering. She had been one of the first to welcome the militant
suffragettes, and she never missed a suffrage meeting, nor, for that
matter, any other significant one on infant or maternal welfare,
eugenics, or public health. She always went with the definite purpose of
getting the audience down to fundamentals. In time she became a familiar
figure. As soon as she entered a hall you could feel those present
aligning themselves against her. They knew she was going to bring up a
controversial subject that no one wanted discussed, such as birth
control. It was like casting a boulder into a nice quiet lake, but, with
an unruffled exterior and grim determination, she invariably rose just
the same, asked the chairman to recognize her, and said her say on the
Feminist side of the question. From the lips of this Victorian old lady
it sounded strange to hear frank remarks about the importance of
limiting offspring. Dr. Dunlop, with Scotch determination, was also bent
on setting people straight; he followed her and expounded the medical
aspects of population.
In June Dr. Vickery asked me to tell my story to a group of her friends.
Among them was Edith How-Martyn, who had recently graduated from the
London School of Economics. But already the zealous ardor of this small
and slight person had landed her in jail for suffrage. She had now split
from Mrs. Pankhurst, unable to subscribe to the militant policy.
The American woman is apt to say, “Anything I can do for you, let me
know,” and then go away, her conscience relieved. The Englishwoman
states definitely that she can get up a meeting, bring you in touch with
so and so, give you money, or get money for you. Edith How-Martyn in her
quiet manner said to me, “I think what you have told us today should
have a larger audience. Will you give a lecture if we arrange it for
you? We’ll do the donkey work; all you have to do is speak.”
In a few days the time and place were set. I was to appear in Fabian
Hall the following month under my own name.
The chairs in the auditorium were wooden and the interior was
unheated—not like an American hall. The audience was quite different
from the little Socialist gatherings of working women I had addressed at
home. The atrocious and hideous English hats gave it an intellectual and
highly respectable air. These representatives of nearly every social and
civic organization in London, had the rationalist attitude and preferred
to listen to principles and theories. I told them what I had been trying
to do through the _Woman Rebel_ and explained my private and personal
conception of what Feminism should mean; that is, women should first
free themselves from biological slavery, which could best be
accomplished through birth control. This was, generally speaking, the
introduction of the term into England.
Many came up and talked to me afterwards, among them Marie Stopes, a
paleontologist who had made a reputation with work on coal. Would I come
to her home and discuss the book she was writing?
Over the teacups I found her to have an open, frank manner that quite
won me. She took me into her confidence at once, stating her marriage
had been unconsummated, and for that reason she was securing an
annulment. Her book, _Married Love_, was based largely on her own
experiences and the unhappiness that came to people from ignorance and
lack of understanding in wedlock, and she hoped it would help others.
She was extremely interested in the correlation of marital success to
birth control knowledge, although she admitted she knew nothing about
the latter. Could I tell her exactly what methods were used and how? In
spite of my belief that the Netherlands clinics could be improved upon,
I was fired with fervor for the idea as such, and described them as I
had seen them.
Later when I came back to the United States, I brought with me the
manuscript of _Married Love_, and tried every established publisher in
New York, receiving a rejection from each. Finally I induced Dr. William
J. Robinson to publish it under the auspices of his _Critic and Guide_,
a monthly magazine which took up many subjects the _Journal_ of the
American Medical Association would not touch. Unfortunately even here it
had to be expurgated. When I cabled Dr. Stopes I had a publisher in New
York, her new husband, H. V. Roe, financed an unabridged English edition
which appeared simultaneously.
No one can underestimate the work Marie Stopes has done. Though her
other books, _Radiant Motherhood_ and _Wise Parenthood_, were limited in
value because they were based on limited personal experience, she has
handled sex knowledge with delicacy and wisdom, placing it in a modern,
practical category. She started the first birth control clinic in
England, but she was not a pioneer in the movement. Annie Besant, Dr.
Vickery, the Drysdales, and many others had plowed the ground and sown
the seed. It needed only a new voice, articulate and clear as hers, to
push her into the front ranks of the movement, where she must have been
much surprised to find herself.
Many people went out of their way to be kind to me in those days. I was
often asked to the home of E. P. C. Haynes, solicitor, writer on freedom
of the press, and a fine adviser. Around his table, one of the grandest
set anywhere in England, could usually be found a large group of
distinguished people. Among them was the American Civil War veteran,
Major G. P. Putnam, a dapper, lively, alert little publisher with a
white mustache and cold blue eyes. He was conservative and formal, but
at the same time a firebrand in his fashion and an enthusiast for
certain issues. Haynes had invited him to hear my views, and himself
introduced the subject of birth control. Thus I was enabled to pave the
way for having G. P. Putnam’s Sons eventually take over the publication
of _Married Love_ in this country, although not until 1931, through the
Major’s efforts, was the ban lifted which prohibited the importation of
the complete edition into the United States.
Harold Cox, brilliant Member of Parliament and editor of the _Edinburgh
Review_, was another delightful host at Old Kennards in Buckinghamshire.
In the _Review_ he was constantly helping to form an enlightened public
opinion on birth control, having every argument at his finger tips and
never missing a chance to answer questions in the London _Times_.
Hugh and Janet de Selincourt’s place at Torrington, Sussex, where
Shelley was born, always was a haven of refuge. After five days’ work in
town I could come, tired and pent-up, for a week-end. I loved the joy
and simplicity of the music there, the lighthearted conversation, and
tea on the lawn. From there you saw English ivy climbing up to the
thatched roof, and a pond, a small one, which had been converted into a
swimming pool. The general impression was of shrubbery and old walls
with fruit trees trellised against them. Beyond the velvet green grass
were red tree roses, beautiful borders of pink lupins, and delphiniums,
the tallest and bluest I have ever seep, From the dining-room window the
effect was that of a tapestry. I wanted some day to embody the rambling
spirit of this home in one of my own.
Here again laughter bound me to these people. We laughed and we laughed
and we laughed. Whole days were spent in gaiety over the most absurd
things. Hugh could never quite accept me as a crusader; he went into
roars of merriment whenever I mentioned the subject of population—it was
too much for a woman in a yellow dress to bother about.
But many of my week-ends were spent in “bothering” about it. At Sunday
afternoon labor meetings in London someone was always holding forth.
“Here’s a chance for you to talk birth control,” Rose Witcop once urged.
It was an opportunity to reach working people and I agreed, but lunch of
that day found me trembling. Henry Sara, a young man but old in the ways
of the speaker, noticed I was not eating or drinking and could hardly
utter a word. “I say, what’s the idea of all this worry? What you must
think about is that everybody there comes merely to hear somebody or
anybody. They’ve no notion what you’re going to say. Anything is all
right with them. Get that in your mind and stop worrying.”
His friendly encouragement gave me a little more fortitude, but on the
way to the hall Rose Witcop took me severely to task for the trembling,
which I seemed unable to stop. “These are just plain people you’re going
to speak to. It’s utter nonsense to be nervous about it.”
When Rose stood up to introduce me, she began, “Comrades—” There was a
long pause. For the second time she tried in a less assured tone,
“Comrades—” Another interval and a third time, in a voice so weak she
herself could hardly hear it, she attempted, “Comrades—” Then, barely
whispering, “Excuse me,” she sat down. By comparison my speech was not
bad.
Writing at this time was a means of expression much easier than
speaking. I had not forgotten my subscribers to the _Woman Rebel_. I had
to fulfill my obligations and supply something to take the place of the
three issues which I had been unable to furnish them. Therefore, I wrote
three pamphlets on methods of contraception in England, the Netherlands,
and France respectively. Printing them cost me a considerable amount of
money. My friends in Canada, knowing I was not affluent, now and then
when they had a little windfall or unexpected dividend sent me small
checks of from five to ten pounds, saying, “To use for your work.” These
had come in quite often.
On one occasion I had squeezed my pocketbook dry paying for the last
pamphlet; I had not another penny to buy stamps. Ten days had gone by,
and I kept wishing something might come in to help me out. That morning
a letter arrived. I tore it apart and a money order dropped out.
Hurrying as fast as I could to the post office I received the cash,
spent it all on stamps, and hastened back in the hope of getting the
whole edition off on the _Arabic_; in wartime sailings had to be
considered. One batch of envelopes had already gone into the pillar box,
and I was just finishing addressing and stamping the second lot when I
heard the knocker on the door below clatter through the house. It had
the ring of authority and sounded so ominous that I felt it must have
something to do with me.
Sure enough, in a few moments a bobby and a man in plain clothes
appeared at my threshold. They asked whether I were the person who had
been sending quantities of mail to a foreign address.
“Yes,” I admitted in a small voice, wondering what on earth was going to
happen now.
The bobby came closer, showed me an unopened envelope, and demanded
sternly, “Did you post this?”
“I think so.”
“Madam, in England we never put His Majesty on upside down. We do not
represent our King standing on his head. Will you please, in affixing
your stamps, pay attention to the customs of our country?”
The care with which I stuck on the remainder right side up delayed me so
that I barely made the _Arabic_. Only then did I have time to read the
letter. I took it out of my bag, thinking how wonderful it was of my
friends to send me the money and how much good I had been able to do
with it. To my consternation and amazement it was not for my use, but to
buy gifts—certain books to be sent back as soon as possible.
The money was gone and the presents could not be purchased.
After all this rush and pother the _Arabic_ was torpedoed and went down
with the entire two thousand pamphlets. I made another effort, this time
successfully completed, and shaped an article on Emerson, Thoreau, and
Humphrey Noyes and the Oneida Community, about whom the English were
talking.
Meanwhile I had written to Canada apologizing and saying I expected
shortly to be able to fulfill the commissions. I now had an opening
ahead of me for a career abroad. Portet’s publishing house in Barcelona
was closely allied with others in Paris. Through him I was offered the
job of choosing appropriate books in English, which could be published
in both French and Spanish, especially works that would be of help to
women and labor. The salary was satisfactory, the job itself
interesting, and it gave promise of permanency as soon as the War should
be over. I had almost decided to take it, even selecting a little house
in Versailles with sunny rooms and a garden for the children.
There was only one drawback—the subtle, persistent dread that something
was wrong with Peggy. Night after night her voice startled me from deep
sleep and left me in a state of agitation until I received the next
letter containing news that all was going well. I tried to dismiss this
fear and would have it partially submerged, but always the same troubled
voice rang in my ears, “Mother, Mother, are you coming back?”
One definite though inexplicable experience kept puzzling me. As I
unclosed my eyes in the morning, or even before I was completely awake,
I became conscious of the number 6, as though that numeral were
repeating itself again and again in my drowsy mind. I often tried to fit
it into some event of the day—six o’clock, sixpence, the price of tea,
or anything else amusing, and as casual or silly as I could make up.
This I did to protect myself against the premonition which seemed at
first to come upon me with the recurrence of this number. Later, like a
leaf on a wall calendar, NOV. 6 stood out.
When the publisher asked me to commit myself by signing a three-year
contract to stay in Paris, I said, “Yes, I will if you’ll guarantee to
lock me up or send me to Africa or the North Pole until after November
6th.”
“Why November 6th?”
“I don’t know, but I’m certain that something important is to occur on
that day, something different, and something which will affect my entire
future.”
He drew up our plans as of January 1st of the following year.
Edith Ellis was lecturing in America, and by letter we arranged for her
to bring back Peggy and Grant, because it appeared I might be staying
for some time. Then, since only Peggy seemed lonely and in need of her
mother and Grant was happy in school, it was determined he should be
left there. Edith was to sail with Peggy on the _Lusitania_.
When word was flashed that the liner had been torpedoed, I stood in the
middle of the night in front of the Cunard office, scanning with horror
the mounting ranks of missing and dead. Not until two in the morning was
the list complete and could I breathe once more; neither Peggy’s nor
Edith’s name was on it. Edith had received one of those slips warning
prospective passengers that the ship might be blown up, and was one of
the few who had heeded the admonition and transferred to another boat.
Even so, the thought of being responsible for Peggy had been too
alarming and she had decided not to bring her.
The War had sent many Americans back from Europe and Bill had returned
to New York. I had had a detailed letter from him describing the
stirring events of the previous December. A man introducing himself as
A. Heller had called upon him at his studio and requested a copy of
_Family Limitation_, pleading that he was poor, had too large a family,
and was a friend of mine. Bill said he was sorry but we had agreed that
I was to carry on my work independently of him, and he did not even
think he had any of the pamphlets. However, the man’s story was so
pathetic that he rummaged around and by chance found one in the library
drawer.
A few days later Bill opened the door to a gray-haired, side-whiskered
six-footer who lost no time in announcing, “I am Mr. Comstock. I have a
warrant for your arrest on the grounds of circulating obscene
literature.” Accompanying him was the so-called Heller, who turned out
to be Charles J. Bamberger, an agent of the New York Society for the
Suppression of Vice. The three departed but Bill soon found himself in a
restaurant instead of the police station. When he protested that he
wished to consult a lawyer without delay, Comstock, between mouthfuls of
lunch, offered advice. “Young man, I want to act as a brother to you.
Lawyers are expensive and will only aggravate your case.” Here he patted
Bill on the shoulder. “Plead guilty to this charge, and I’ll ask for a
suspended sentence.”
Bill’s answer was that, though he had been in Europe when the pamphlet
had been written, he believed in the principles embodied in it, and
that, therefore, his own principles were at stake. He would not plead
guilty. “You know as well as I do, Mr. Comstock, there’s nothing obscene
in that pamphlet.”
“Young man, I have been in this work for twenty years, and that leaflet
is the worst thing I have ever seen.”
This sort of conversation went on all afternoon; Comstock even tried to
bribe Bill to turn states’ evidence by disclosing my whereabouts. It was
his custom to arrive at the police station so late that his prisoner
could not communicate with a lawyer or bonding office and had to spend
the night in jail. He could then make a statement to the papers that his
captive had been unable to secure bail.
When Comstock and Bill at last reached the Yorkville Police Court and
the clerk had asked the latter how he wished to plead, Comstock spoke
for him, “He pleads guilty.”
“I do not,” expostulated Bill. “I plead not guilty.”
He was arraigned and bail fixed at five hundred dollars, but he was
obliged to spend thirty-six hours in jail before it could be procured.
In September I had word that, after several postponements, his trial had
finally come up before Justices McInerney, Herbert, and Salmon. He
started to read his typewritten statement. “I admit that I broke the
law, and yet I claim that in every real sense it is the law and not I
that is on trial here today.”
Justice McInerney interrupted him. “You admit you are guilty, and all
this statement of yours is just opinions. I’m not going to have a lot of
rigmarole on the record. We’ve no time to bother. This book is not only
indecent but immoral. Its circulation is a menace to society. Too many
women are going around advocating woman suffrage. If they would go
around advocating bearing children we should be better off.
“The statute gives you the privilege of being fined for this offense,
but I do not believe this should be so. A man, guilty as you are, ought
to have no alternative from a prison sentence. One hundred and fifty
dollars or thirty days in jail.”
“Then I want to say to the court,” shouted Bill, leaning forward and
raising his hand for greater emphasis, “that I would rather be in jail
with my self-respect than in your place without it!”
Although he was convinced of the justice of my cause, this was the first
and only copy of the pamphlet he had ever given out. It was one of
life’s sharpest ironies that, despite our separation, he should have
been drawn into my battle, and go to prison for it.
When I received Bill’s letter bearing this news, I tore across the lawn
to Dr. Vickery’s. Dr. Drysdale happened to be there, and in his
indignation his face became red and his hands were clenched. He tramped
up and down the floor in a frenzy of rage that such a thing could be
done to any human being. I am still touched when I think of this mild,
gentle person being moved to depths of anger over an injustice which did
not affect him personally.
The question before me was, “Should I go back?” As had gone Bill’s trial
so would probably go my own. I did not want to sacrifice myself in a
lost cause. I was young, and knew I should be used for something.
Temporarily postponing my final answer to the publishing house, I
decided to return to the United States, but only long enough to survey
the situation, to gather up my children. I intended, if possible, to
come back to that little house in Versailles.
_Chapter Fifteen_
HIGH HANGS THE GAUNTLET
“_Let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
Their deeds I judge and much condemn
Yet when did I make laws for them?_”
A. E. HOUSMAN
The end of September, 1915, I set sail from Bordeaux, I remember how
interminable that voyage was across the dangerous, foggy Atlantic. The
shadow of the _Lusitania_ hung over us. The ship was absolutely dark,
and tension crackled in the very air. My own thoughts were black as the
night and the old nervousness, the nervousness that came with a queer
gripping at the pit of the stomach, was upon me; a dread presentiment
and a foreboding were with me almost incessantly.
When I succeeded in snatching a few hours’ sleep I was startled out of
unpleasant dreams. One of them was of attempting to struggle through a
crowded street against traffic; I was pushed to the curb and had to make
my way cautiously. The mechanical, automaton-like crowds were walking,
walking, walking, always in the opposite direction. Then suddenly in my
dream the people turned into mice—thousands and thousands of them; they
even smelled like mice. I awakened and had to open the porthole to rid
the room of that musty smell of mice.
At last the lights of Staten Island, winking like specters in the dim
dawn, signaled our safe arrival at quarantine. As the ship sidled along
the wharf at West Fourteenth Street on that gray October morning, a new
exhilaration, a new hope arose in my heart.
To see American faces again after the unutterable despair of Europe, to
sense the rough democracy of the porters and of the good-hearted,
hard-boiled taxi-drivers; to breathe in the crisp, electric autumn air
of home—all these brought with them an irresistible gladness. Because I
wanted the feeling to linger, I refused a taxi, picked up my small bag,
and walked away from the pier, looking about.
At the first news stand I passed I caught sight of the words, “What
Shall We Do About Birth Control?” on the cover of the _Pictorial
Review_. It seemed strange to be greeted, not by friends or relatives,
but by a phrase of your own carried on a magazine. I purchased it and,
singing to myself, went on to a hotel where the children were brought to
me. I cannot describe the joy of being reunited with them.
That evening I sat down at my desk and wrote several letters. I notified
Judge Hazel and Assistant District Attorney Content that I was now back
and ready for trial, and inquired whether the indictments of the
previous year were still pending; I was politely informed that they
were.
A note more difficult to compose went to the National Birth Control
League, which had been re-organized in my absence under the leadership
of Mary Ware Dennett, Clara Stillman, and Anita Block. To it had been
turned over all my files, including the list of subscribers to the
_Woman Rebel_. I asked them what moral support I could expect from the
League, saying this would help to determine the length of my stay.
Mrs. Stillman, the secretary, invited me to call a few days later at her
home, where an executive meeting was to convene. I went with keen
anticipation, totally unprepared for the actual answer. The committee
had met. Mrs. Dennett, Mrs. Stillman, and Anita were all there. Mrs.
Dennett spoke for the group; the National Birth Control League disagreed
with my methods, my tactics, with everything I had done. Such an
organization as theirs, the function of which was primarily to change
the laws in an orderly and proper manner, could not logically sanction
anyone who had broken those laws.
After delivering this ultimatum, Mrs. Dennett walked to the door with
me. Would I mind giving her the names and addresses of those socially
prominent and distinguished persons I had found on my European trip to
be interested? Heartsick as I was over my reception, I was also amused
at her shrewdness.
Mrs. Dennett was a good promoter and experienced campaigner, a capable
office executive, an indefatigable worker for suffrage and peace, with a
background that might have been invaluable. I often regretted that we
could not have combined our efforts. Had we been able to do so the
movement might have been pushed many years ahead.
My fourth communication was to Dr. William J. Robinson, an émigré from
the land of orthodox medicine, who was possessed of a sensitivity to
current moods. When he had realized that Will Durant’s lectures had
aroused interest in sex psychology, he had stepped in to speak to larger
audiences, using a more popular approach, although, as far as I know, he
had never publicly discussed the prevention of conception.
Dr. Abraham Jacoby, beloved dean of the profession, in accepting the
presidency of the Academy of Medicine, had backed birth control, and
through Dr. Robinson’s endeavors a small committee had later been formed
to look into it. From the reports that had come to me I could not
discover whether any harmonious agreement that the subject lay within
the province of medicine had been made. To my inquiry Dr. Robinson
replied that the committee had met only once and he considered I could
expect no support from them. He enclosed a check for ten dollars towards
the expenses of my trial.
Here were two disappointments to face. Both these organizations had
seemed so well suited to continue progress: one to change the laws, the
other to take proper medical charge. Neither had fulfilled my hopes and
therefore I felt I had to enter the fray again. My burning concern for
the thousands of women who went unregarded could apparently find no
official endorsement; birth control was back again where it had started.
I was convinced I had to depend solely upon the compassionate insight of
intelligent women, which I was certain was latent and could be aroused.
But these problems were suddenly swept aside by a crisis of a more
intimate nature, a tragedy about which I find myself still unable to
write, though so many years have passed.
A few days after my arrival Peggy was taken ill with pneumonia. When Mr.
Content telephoned to say I had better come down and talk it over, I
could not go. He was extremely kind, assuring me there was no hurry and
he would postpone the trial until I was free. This allowed me to devote
my whole attention and time to her.
Peggy died the morning of November 6, 1915.
The joy in the fullness of life went out of it then and has never quite
returned. Deep in the hidden realm of my consciousness my little girl
has continued to live, and in that strange, mysterious place where
reality and imagination meet, she has grown up to womanhood. There she
leads an ideal existence untouched by harsh actuality and disillusion.
Men and women from all classes, from nearly every city in America,
poured upon me their sympathy. Money for my trial came beyond my
understanding—not large amounts, but large for the senders—from miners
of West Virginia and lumbermen of the North Woods. Some had walked five
miles to read _Family Limitation_; others had had it copied for them.
Women wrote of children dead a quarter of a century for whom they were
still secretly mourning, and sent me pictures and locks of hair of their
own dead babies. I had never fully realized until then that the loss of
a child remains unforgotten to every mother during her lifetime.
Public opinion had been focused on Comstock’s activities by Bill’s
sentence, and the liberals had been aroused. Committees of two and three
came to request me to take up the purely legislative task of changing
the Federal law. Aid would be forthcoming—special trains to Congress,
investigations, commissions, and victory in sight before the year was
over! It was tempting. It seemed so feasible on the surface, so much
easier than agonizing delays through the courts. Many others advised me
just as before that in pleading guilty I was choosing the best field in
which to make my fight.
One of those to urge me towards a middle course was Max Eastman, who
possessed an unusual evenness of temper and tolerance towards all who
opposed him as well as a keen mind and keen imagination which followed
hypotheses to logical conclusions. This soft-voiced, lethargic poet,
mentally and emotionally controlled, had too great a sense of humor and
ability in visualizing events in their proper perspective to advocate
direct action.
Max made an appointment for me to see Samuel Untermyer, authority on
constitutional law and a person to whom liberals turned because of the
fight he had put up against the trusts; he might straighten out the
legal aspects. I found him enthroned in his luxurious office amid the
most magnificent American Beauty roses—dozens and dozens and dozens.
With his piercing eyes and head too large for his frame, he appeared a
disembodied brain. Though the appointment had been made with
difficulty—writing and telephoning back and forth through secretaries to
be verified—time now was nothing to him. He was so smooth, so courteous,
so sympathetic, so unhurried; he seemed to understand and to be ready to
lift the load of legal worry from my mind.
Picking up the telephone, he said, “Get me Mr. Content.” Then, “Harold,
come on over to my office and bring your record on Mrs. Sanger.”
When the District Attorney had arrived, Mr. Untermyer’s whole voice
changed. He spoke sternly to the young man. “Why, Harold, what are you
trying to do—persecuting this little woman, so frail and so delicate,
the mother of a family? You don’t want to put her behind bars, do you?
She’s doing a noble work in the world and here you are behaving like
this! Are you representing the Government or are you merely prejudiced
in your own behalf?”
Mr. Content replied respectfully, “Well, Mr. Untermyer, we don’t want to
prosecute Mrs. Sanger, but we want her to promise to obey the law.”
“Has she broken the law?”
“We have positive proof that she has violated it on a very large scale.”
Mr. Untermyer immediately assured him, “Why, of course, she’ll promise
not to break any more laws. Is that all it is? You just quash that
indictment and forget about it.”
Mr. Content left. Mr. Untermyer turned to me genially and said, “Well,
you see? We’ve fixed that up.”
“What’s going to happen? The law will be the same, won’t it?”
“Why, yes.”
“What was that you said about a promise?”
“Oh, yes, write me a letter saying you won’t break the law again.”
“I couldn’t promise that, Mr. Untermyer.”
“What?”
“No, I couldn’t do that. The law is there. Something must happen to it.”
“The law may not be what it should be, but you’ll never get anywhere by
violating it. It must be changed by legal methods; gather all your
friends and go to Congress.”
Again I stated my position. The law specified obscenity, and I had done
nothing obscene. I even had the best of the Government as regarded the
precise charge. I had not given contraceptive information in the _Woman
Rebel_, and therefore had not violated the law either in spirit or
principle. But I had done so in circulating _Family Limitation_, and
that would inevitably be brought up. I really wanted this, so that birth
control would be defined once and for all as either obscene or not
obscene.
Mr. Untermyer took down one of his ponderous books and read over the
section in question. Again he said, “The evidence is that you have
violated the law. We don’t separate the spirit from the letter. It is
all there. It seems to me that pleading guilty would let you out of your
troubles without loss of dignity. You should consider yourself fortunate
at the suggested outcome. You can gain nothing by trial. You cannot even
get publicity in these days when the papers are crowded with war news
and the big events of history are happening.”
I still could not admit his interpretation. You had to differentiate
between the things mentioned in that law and actual obscenity; the
courts would some day have to decide on this.
“You have no case,” Mr. Untermyer persisted. “If you have broken the
law, there is nothing anyone can do or say to argue that fact away. We
must prevent your going to jail, however. I’ll see what I can do.”
“I’m not concerned with going to jail. Going in or staying out has
nothing to do with it. The question at stake is whether I have or have
not done something obscene. If I have done nothing obscene I cannot
plead guilty.”
Mr. Untermyer was upset. Instead of his former warmth I was aware of a
curt and cold politeness. I went from his office feeling I had had an
opportunity to make a powerful friend and had lost it by refusing to
accept the legal point of view.
Max also was decidedly angry. His attitude was, “We tried to help you,
and you declined help.” He wrote formally:
You could accompany your plea of guilty with a statement, both
before the Court and for the press, which would make it a far more
signal attack upon the law to whose violation you would be pleading
guilty than a plea of not guilty. It would do a thousand times more
good. At the same time it would satisfy your pride, or your feeling
that you ought to be brave enough to stand up for what you think, or
whatever it is that is making you refuse the advice of counsel.
I would not plead guilty on any count. They could not make me. I felt
deep within me that I was right and they were wrong. I still had that
naïve trust that when the facts were known, the Government would not
wilfully condemn millions of women to death, misery, or abortion which
left them physically damaged and spiritually crippled.
Clarence Darrow and other liberal lawyers from various cities generously
offered to come to New York to present the case free of charge, but
after my Untermyer interview I was convinced that the quibbles of
lawyers inevitably beclouded the fundamental issues; I had to move
people and persuade them emotionally. I had no practice in public
speaking; mine was the valor of faith. However, I was certain that
speaking from the fullness of my heart I would be guided by the
greatness and profundity of my conviction. In spite of the old adage
that “he who has himself for a lawyer has a fool for a client,” I was
confident that any jury of honest men would acquit me.
I asked Mr. Content to put my case on the calendar as soon as possible.
It was called for the end of November, then set for January 18th, then
January 24th. I used to go almost weekly to demand that it take place,
always stressing the fact that I wanted a trial by jury. One of the
judges that I came before in these various courts had previously asked
me in a personal letter to send him _Family Limitation_, and I had
mailed it to him with my compliments. The twinkle in his eyes was
reflected in mine; we both knew that he as well as I had been
technically breaking the law.
As the New York _Sun_ commented, “The Sanger case presents the anomaly
of a prosecutor loath to prosecute and a defendant anxious to be tried.”
The newspapers were taking ever-increasing notice. A photograph of
myself and my two young sons circulated widely and seemed to alter the
attitude of a heretofore cynical public. At that time I thought the
papers were against me, but looking over these old clippings today I
realize this was merely the impersonality of the news columns. Their
editorial hesitancy made them appear, like all other conservative and
reactionary forces, my opponents. But the rank and file of American
newspaperdom, though they must always have their little jokes, have
always been sympathetic.
They printed the letter to Woodrow Wilson, initiated by Marie Stopes. It
“begged to call the attention” of the President to the fact that I was
in danger of criminal prosecution for circulating a pamphlet on birth
control, which was allowed in every civilized country except the United
States; that England had passed through the phase of prohibiting this
subject a generation before; and that to suppress serious and
disinterested opinion on anything so important was detrimental to human
progress. It respectfully urged the President to exert his powerful
influence in behalf of free speech and the betterment of the race. This
letter was invaluable by reason of its signatories—Lena Ashwell, William
Archer, Percy Ames, Aylmer Maude, M. C. Stopes, Arnold Bennett, Edward
Carpenter, Gilbert Murray, and H. G. Wells, whose name was news. If a
group of such eminence in England could afford to stand by me, then the
same kind of people here might be less timorous.
As public sentiment grew, telegrams and letters showered upon Judge
Clayton demanding the dismissal of the charges against me. He piled them
in wastebaskets and remarked in a bored tone to Mr. Content, “Take these
Sanger letters away.” That I was preparing to go to court undefended by
counsel was making the matter harder for them.
My radical allies were, according to their habit, collecting money for
my defense, but this had no effect on my private financial status. My
sister, Ethel, who was living with me, thought I ought to be considering
the matter. One day she said, “I’ve a good case for you. Wouldn’t you
like to take it?”
“What kind?”
“Maternity. She expects to be delivered in a day or two—probably a
Caesarian. She asked for me, but I’d rather you had it.”
“I’m not interested, thank you. I’ve given up nursing.”
“Well, Mrs. Sanger,” she remarked ironically, “would you mind telling me
what you’re going to do to earn your living?”
“I’m not interested in earning my living. I’ve cast myself upon the
universe and it will take care of me.”
She looked at me sadly and with worried apprehension.
Three days later Ethel received the anticipated summons. On her way out
she picked up the mail at the door. In it was a letter from a California
acquaintance of hers who did not know where I was but had her address.
“Will you please give the enclosed forty-five dollars to Margaret Sanger
from her sympathizers?”
Ethel handed it to me with the resigned comment, “Well, here’s your
check from God.”
The editor of the _Woman Rebel_ had struck her single match of defiance,
but she could be of slight significance in the forward march towards
“women’s rights.” In Feminist circles I was little known. With my
personal sorrow, my manifold domestic duties, my social shyness, I
avoided meeting new people. My attitude thus created some reluctance
among those who might otherwise have hastened to my aid. Indeed, I
wanted a certain type of support, but I could not take the initiative in
asking for it.
This was suddenly done for me. One afternoon I was invited to a tea
arranged by Henrietta Rodman, Feminist of Feminists, in her Greenwich
Village apartment. Wells was particularly sanctified among her group and
I must be all right if he approved. As a result of that meeting the
suffrage worker, Alice Carpenter, set the wheels in motion for a dinner
at the Brevoort Hotel to be held January 23rd, the evening preceding my
trial. I was to be given a chance to say my say, speak my piece before a
gathering of influential people. Although I did not see her until some
years after, I thanked her in my heart many times for what she had done.
In the ballroom were collected several hundred people. Mary Heaton
Vorse, Dr. Mary Halton, Jack Reed, Dr. Robinson, Frances Brooks
Ackerman, Walter Lippmann, then of the _New Republic_, and Mrs. Thomas
Hepburn, the Kathy Houghton of my Corning childhood, all were there.
As we were about to go in to dinner, Rose Pastor Stokes, the Chairman,
took me aside and said, “Something very disturbing has happened. We’ve
just been talking to Dr. Jacoby. He has a speech ready in which he
intends to blast you to the skies for interfering in what should be a
strictly medical matter. Remember he’s greatly admired and he’s speaking
here tonight for the doctors. We meant to have you come at the end of
the program but now we’re going to put you first so that you can spike
his guns.”
My trepidation was increased. Nevertheless, I plunged into my carefully
prepared maiden speech in behalf of birth control. Fortunately I had
already planned to upbraid the doctors who daily saw the conditions
which had so moved me and yet made it necessary for a person like
myself, not equipped as they were, to stir up public opinion. It was
like carrying coals to Newcastle; they should have been teaching me.
I said I recognized that many of those before me of diverse outlooks and
temperaments would support birth control propaganda if carried out in
what they regarded as a safe and sane manner, although they did not
countenance the methods I had been following in my attempt to arouse
working women to the fact that having a child was a supreme
responsibility. There was nothing new or radical in birth control, which
Aristotle and Plato as well as many modern thinkers had demonstrated.
But the ideas of wise men and scientists were sterile and did not affect
the tremendous facts of life among the disinherited. All the while their
discussions had been proceeding, the people themselves had been and
still were blindly, desperately, practicing birth control by the most
barbaric methods—infanticide, abortion, and other crude ways. I might
have taken up a policy of safety, sanity, and conservatism—but would I
have secured a hearing? Admittedly physicians and scientists had far
more technical knowledge than I, but I had found myself in the position
of one who had discovered a house was on fire and it was up to me to
shout out the warning. Afterwards others, more experienced in executive
organization, could gather together and direct all the sympathy and
interest which had been aroused. Only in this way could I be vindicated.
Since my charge had forestalled his, the venerable Dr. Jacoby either had
to answer me or shift his ground. He chose the latter course and talked
on the question of quality in population, which might perhaps have been
construed as in my favor.
Many of the women present were comfortable examples of the manner in
which birth control could enable them to lead dignified lives. Elsie
Clews Parsons made the suggestion that twenty-five who had practiced it
should rise in court with me and plead guilty before the law. But only
one volunteered. What surprised me most was the voice of Mary Ware
Dennett announcing that she represented the National Birth Control
League and that that body was going to stand behind Margaret Sanger in
her ordeal—subscriptions were urgently needed for the League.
The next morning when I arrived at nine o’clock at the Federal Court
building more than two hundred partisans were already in the corridors.
A great corps of reporters and photographers was on hand. The stage had
been set for an exciting drama.
Judge Henry D. Clayton and Assistant District Attorneys Knox and Content
arrived at ten-thirty, apparently feeling the effects of the publicity
of the night before.
The moment Knox moved to adjourn for a week I was on my feet asking
immediate trial, but Judge Clayton postponed the case. Everybody went
home disappointed.
February 18th the Government finally entered a nolle prosequi. Content
explained there had been many assertions that the defendant was the
victim of persecution, and that had never been the intent of the Federal
authorities. “The case had been laid before the grand jurors as
impartially as possible and since they had voted an indictment there was
nothing that the District Attorney could do but prosecute. Now, however,
as it was realized that the indictment was two years old, and that Mrs.
Sanger was not a disorderly person and did not make a practice of
publishing such articles, the Government had considered there was reason
for considerable doubt.”
Well, when an army marches up the hill and then marches down again some
good excuse must always be given.
All my friends regarded the quashing of the Federal indictment a great
achievement. There was much rejoicing and congratulation, but they acted
as though they were saying, “Now settle down in your domestic corner,
take your husband back, care for your children, behave yourself, and no
more of this nonsense. Your duty is to do the thing you are able to do
which is mind your home and not attempt something others can do better
than you.”
But I was not content to have a Liberty Dinner and jubilate. I could not
consider anything more than a moral victory had been attained. The law
had not been tested. I agreed with the loyal _Globe_, which staunchly
maintained, “If the matter Mrs. Sanger sent through the mails was
obscene two years ago, it is still obscene.” I knew and felt
instinctively the danger of having a privilege under a law rather than a
right. I could not yet afford to breathe a sigh of relief.
The Federal law concerned only printed literature. My own pamphlet had
given the impression that the printed word was the best way to inform
women, but the practical course of contraceptive technique I had taken
in the Netherlands had shown me that one woman was so different from
another in structure that each needed particular information applied to
herself as an individual. Books and leaflets, therefore, should be of
secondary importance. The public health way was through personal
instruction in clinics.
A light had been kindled; so many invitations to address meetings in
various cities and towns were sent me that I was not able to accept them
all but agreed to as many as I could. It was no longer to be only a free
speech movement, and I wanted also if possible to present this new idea
of clinics to the country. If I could start them, other organizations
and even hospitals might do the same. I had a vision of a
“chain”—thousands of them in every center of America, staffed with
specialists putting the subject on a modern scientific basis through
research.
Many states in the West had already granted woman suffrage. Having
achieved this type of freedom, I was sure they would receive clinics
more readily, especially California which had no law against birth
control. The same thing would follow in the East. As I told the
_Tribune_, “I have the word of four prominent physicians that they will
support me in the work.... There will be nurses in attendance at the
clinic, and doctors who will instruct women in the things they need to
know. All married women or women about to be married will be assisted
free and without question.”
A splendid promise—but difficult to fulfill, as events were to prove.
_Chapter Sixteen_
HEAR ME FOR MY CAUSE
“_Speak clearly if you speak at all.
Carve every word before you let it fall._”
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Once Amos Pinchot asked me how long it had taken me to prepare that
first lecture I delivered on my three months’ trip across the country in
1916.
“About fourteen years,” I answered.
I was thinking of all the time that had passed during which experiences,
tragic and stirring, had come to me and were embodied therein.
So much depended on this speech; the women of leisure must be made to
listen, the women of wealth to give, the women of influence to protest.
Before starting April 1st, I tried to put myself in their places and to
see how their interests and imaginations could most effectively be
excited, how the pictures which had so unceasingly beset me could best
be brought to their minds. I felt certain that if I could do this, they
would do the rest.
But the anxiety that went into the composition of the speech was as
nothing to the agonies with which I contemplated its utterance. My
mother used to say a decent woman only had her name in the papers three
times during her life—when she was born, when she married, and when she
died. Although by nature I shrank from publicity, the kind of work I had
undertaken did not allow me to shirk it—but I was frightened to death.
Hoping that practice would give me greater confidence, I used to climb
to the roof of the Lexington Avenue hotel where I was staying and
recite, my voice going out over the house tops and echoing timidly among
the chimney pots.
I repeated the lecture over and over to myself before I tried it on a
small audience in New Rochelle. I did not dare cut myself adrift from my
notes; I had to read it, and when I had finished, did not feel it had
been very successful. By the time I reached Pittsburgh, my first large
city, I had memorized every period and comma, but I was still scared
that if I lost one word I would not know what the next was. I closed my
eyes and spoke in fear and trembling. The laborers and social workers
who crowded the big theater responded so enthusiastically that I was at
least sure their attention had been held by its content.
It was interesting to watch the pencils come out at the announcement
that there were specifically seven circumstances under which birth
control should be practiced.
First, when either husband or wife had a transmissible disease, such as
epilepsy, insanity, or syphilis.
Second, when the wife suffered from a temporary affection of the lungs,
heart, or kidneys, the cure of which might be retarded through
pregnancy.
Third, when parents, though normal, had subnormal children.
Fourth, when husband or wife were adolescent. Early marriage, yes, but
parenthood should be postponed until after the twenty-third year of the
boy and the twenty-second of the girl.
Fifth, when the earning capacity of the father was inadequate; no man
had the right to have ten children if he could not provide for more than
two. The standards of living desirable had to be considered; it was one
thing if the parents were planning college educations for their
offspring, and another if they wanted them simply for industrial
exploitation.
Sixth, births should be spaced between two and three years, according to
the mother’s health.
All the foregoing were self-evident from the physiological and economic
points of view. But I wished to introduce a final reason which seemed
equally important to me, though it had not been taken into account
statistically.
Seventh, every young couple should practice birth control for at least
one year after marriage and two as a rule, because this period should be
one of physical, mental, financial, and spiritual adjustment in which
they could grow together, cement the bonds of attraction, and plan for
their children.
Like other professions, motherhood should serve its apprenticeship. It
was not good sense to expect fruit from buds—yet if womanhood flowered
from girlhood too soon it did not have a chance to be a thing in itself.
I offered a hypothetical case. Suppose two young people started out in
marriage, ignorant of its implications and possibilities. The bride,
utterly unprepared, returned pregnant from the honeymoon—headaches,
nausea, backache, general fatigue, and depression. The romantic lover
never knew that girl as a woman; she forever after appeared to him only
as a mother. Under such circumstances marriage seldom had an opportunity
to become as fine an instrument for development as it might have been.
I wanted the world made safe for babies. From a government survey
significant conclusions had emerged as to how many babies lived to
celebrate their first birthday. These were based largely on three
factors: the father’s wage—as it went down, more died, and as it rose,
more survived; the spacing of births—when children were born one year
apart, more died than if the mother were allowed a two- or three-year
interval between pregnancies; the relative position in the family—of the
number of second-born, thirty-two out of every hundred died annually,
and so on progressively until among those who were born twelfth, the
rate was sixty out of a hundred.
I claimed that sympathy and charity extended towards babies were not
enough, that milk stations were not enough, that maternity centers were
not enough, and that protective legislation in the form of child labor
laws was not enough. With all the force I could muster I insisted that
the first right of a child was to be wanted, to be desired, to be
planned for with an intensity of love that gave it its title to being.
It should be wanted by both parents, but especially by the mother who
was to carry it, nourish it, and perhaps influence its life by her
thoughts, her passions, her rebellions, her yearnings.
So that all babies born could be assured sound bodies and sound minds, I
suggested in lighter vein that the Government issue passports for them,
calling the attention of the audience to the fact that adults in this
country would never think of going abroad without a government guarantee
to ensure them safe passage and preservation against harm or
ill-treatment. If this were necessary for grown persons journeying into
a foreign land, how much more important it was to protect children who
were to enter into this strange and insecure new world.
I reminded them also that no one would consider embarking in the medical
or legal profession without due preparation. Even cooks or laundresses
scarcely applied for positions without experience proving they were
qualified to undertake their tasks. But anyone, no matter how ignorant,
how diseased mentally or physically, how lacking in all knowledge of
children, seemed to consider he or she had the right to become a parent.
In the same tone I proposed a bureau of application for the unborn. I
pictured a married couple coming here for a baby as though for a
chambermaid, chauffeur, or gardener. The unborn child took a look at his
prospective parents and propounded a few questions such as any employee
has the right to ask of his employer.
To his father the unborn child said, “Do you happen to have a health
certificate?”
And to the mother, “How are your nerves? What do you know about babies?
What kind of a table do you set?”
And to both of them, “What are your plans for bringing me up? Am I to
spend my childhood days in factories or mills, or am I to have the
opportunities offered by an intelligent, healthy, family life? I am
unusually gifted,” the baby might add. “Do you know how to develop my
talents? What sort of society have you made for the fullest expression
of my genius?”
All babies came back to the practical question, “How many children have
you already?”
“Eight.”
“How much are you earning?”
“Ten dollars a week.”
“And living in two rooms, you say? No, thank you. Next, please.”
I was trying to make people think in order that they might act. My part
was to give them the facts and then, when they asked what they should do
about them, suggest concrete programs for leagues and clinics. Many
women had far more executive and administrative experience than I, and I
still expected them to carry on where I left off so that I might be free
to return to Europe.
My hopes seemed well-founded when many of the Pittsburgh audience waited
afterward to request help in organizing themselves. Thus the first state
birth control league was formed. This and all subsequent ones I referred
to Mrs. Dennett’s National Birth Control League to be under its future
direction.
That meeting had been held under the sponsorship of Mrs. Enoch Raugh, a
philanthropist of great courage. In the early days almost everywhere I
went the subject of birth control was one likely to make conspicuous
those who identified themselves with it. Average well-to-do persons
hesitated except for the Jewish leaders in civic affairs, who, as soon
as they were personally convinced, showed no reluctance in aligning
themselves publicly.
Not so did Chicago respond. Some members of the powerful Women’s City
Club had privately asked me to speak, but when the matter was brought up
before their board, the unofficial invitation was officially canceled.
Here again were conservatives enjoying the benefits of birth control for
themselves but unwilling to endorse it for the less fortunate of their
sex. When they did not listen, I tried to reach the women of the
stockyards directly.
So many hundreds of letters had come to me—not only in English, but also
in Hungarian, Bohemian, Polish, and Yiddish—clamoring for information,
that I had every reason to suppose what I had to say was going to be
welcome on Halsted Street. I was incredulous when I met an unforeseen
resistance.
Hull House and similar settlements had been established to help the poor
to help themselves. But I found that although social agencies had
originally striven to win confidence by opening milk stations and day
nurseries, this aim had been somewhat obscured in the interests of sheer
efficiency. Many welfare workers had come to treat individuals merely as
cases to be cataloged, arrogantly proclaiming they knew “what was best
for the poor”; a type had developed, and those who belonged to it were
lacking in human sympathy. Instead they expanded their own egos through
domination. Their desire to build up prestige and secure a position of
importance in the community had formed a civic barrier, a wall, in fact,
around the stockyards district, preventing any new concepts, people, or
organizations from coming in without official permission. The stockyards
women were literally imprisoned in their homes from advanced ideas
unless they went out into other sections of the city.
Because this ridiculous situation had arisen in Chicago, no hall could
be had in the immediate neighborhood. I could have held no meeting there
had it not been for Fania Mindell, one of the many idealists of that
time who threw themselves into the fight for the oppressed as an
aftermath of their own sufferings and repressions in Russia. She had a
devoted and self-sacrificing nature which made her work, slave, toil for
the love of doing it. She made all the arrangements, producing an
audience of fifteen hundred from the labor and stockyards environs.
These first lectures in Chicago and elsewhere attracted women in swarms,
paying their twenty-five cents to fill the auditoriums; I remember that
one offered her wedding ring as the price of admission, to be redeemed
on pay day. They brought their children, and more than once I had to
lift my voice above the persistent cooing and gurgling of a front-row
baby. There was a natural understanding between infants. If one were
given a bottle, another began to cry. A third in the back joined the
chorus, or a small boy on the side aisle whispered shrilly, “I wantta go
home!” I just ached to see those many babies, because I knew what their
mothers had come for—definite help to stop having more—and it could not
be given them.
Often at these meetings I saw some woman sitting down near the platform
holding a bunch of wild flowers, daisies, Queen Anne’s lace, or
butter-and-eggs, waiting to present me with the little bouquet, to tell
me that since she had received my pamphlet, she had “kept out of
trouble.” No matter how phrased, the gratitude was genuine.
Over and over again someone popped up in front of me, and extended a
hand, “I used to subscribe to the _Woman Rebel_. I got all your
pamphlets from England.”
When I asked, “What’s your name?” with the answer, like a flash, came
the number of children and the locality, and the story sent me years
earlier. And, “Didn’t you live in Des Moines?” I continued. Seldom was
it the wrong place. In this way I came across dozens of “friends” who
had been among the original two thousand.
I was advised by Dr. Mabel Ullrich of Minneapolis not to go there
because the Twin Cities were the most conservative in America. “You
won’t get six people,” she prophesied.
“Do you think I’ll get six?”
“Perhaps.”
“Then I’ll go.”
I was prepared to speak wherever it was possible, regardless of
attendance. Six people, properly convinced, usually made sixty people
think before very long. In spite of Dr. Ullrich’s warning, hundreds of
chairs had to be brought in to the Minneapolis Public Library to take
care of the overflow.
People were frequently surprised at the size of my audiences. I should
have been surprised had it been the other way about, although I did not
like too many present because the subject was too intimate for great
numbers in large halls. All came because birth control touched their
lives deeply and vitally; they listened so earnestly, so intently that
the very atmosphere was hushed and unnaturally quiet.
Here in Minneapolis arrived a telegram from Frederick A. Blossom, Ph.D.,
manager of the Associated Charities of Cleveland, whom I had met there.
Would I speak at the National Social Workers’ Conference then being held
in Indianapolis? He could not get me placed on the program, but the two
subjects that were currently arousing considerable interest were the
prison reforms instituted by Thomas Mott Osborne at Sing Sing, and birth
control. He believed it was worth my while to come.
Since I had nearly a week before my scheduled meeting in St. Louis, the
time fitted in very nicely and I seized the occasion. I did not expect
definite action, but I did yearn to arouse dissatisfaction over
smoothing off the top, to say to these social workers plodding along in
their organizations that I thought their accomplishments were temporary,
and that charity was only a feather duster flicking from the surface
particles which merely settled somewhere else. They could never attain
their ideal of eliminating the problems of the masses until the breeding
of the unending stream of unwanted babies was stopped.
Blossom, polished, educated, and clever, had a charming and disarming
personality, and an ability far above the average. Part of his work had
been to cultivate the rich, and in this he had been eminently successful
because he was so suave, never waving a red flag in front of anybody’s
nose as I did; my flaming Feminism speeches had scared some of my
supporters out of their wits.
This master manager knew exactly what to do and how to go about it.
Notices were posted throughout the hotel and left in every delegate’s
mail box, announcing the meeting for four in the afternoon, the only
hour when we could have the big amphitheater. Although round-table
discussions were going on at the same time, it was jammed to the doors;
people were sitting on the platform and on window sills and radiators.
I was almost startled that so many of those from whom I hoped for
co-operation should turn out in such numbers. Walter Lippmann said,
“This will kick the football of birth control straight across to the
Pacific.” And, indeed, the social agents, like the plumed darts of a
seeded dandelion puffed into the air, scattered to every quarter of the
country; thereafter, to the West and back again, I heard echoes of the
meeting.
During the previous weeks in various cities it had been hard to be alone
a minute. Women with the inevitable babies kept calling on me in hotels
and so did men setting out to their jobs early in the morning, carrying
their lunch boxes. I was so mentally weary with strain that it seemed I
must get away from humanity for a little while if I were to retain my
sanity. Worst of all was the ever-present loneliness and grief—the
apparition of Peggy who wanted me to recognize she had gone and was no
longer here.
I slipped into St. Louis two days ahead so that I could be by myself,
registering at the Hotel Jefferson and asking not to be disturbed. But
the telephone rang before I even had my suitcase unpacked; a reporter
had seen my name at the desk and requested an interview. I replied I
could not give it; I was not in St. Louis so far as he was concerned.
Saying to myself, “Good, I’ve escaped that,” I went to bed. But next
morning a ribbon on the front page of his paper announced I was “hiding”
in the city. In my ignorance I had violated the etiquette observed by
welcoming committees, and mine was highly indignant. I had little rest.
Among the group of backers was Robert Minor, an old friend, formerly an
outstanding cartoonist on the New York _World_, who had been dropped
because he had refused to draw the kind of pictures about Germany his
employers wanted. It had been arranged that I was to have the Victoria
Theater Sunday night, which had already been paid for in advance so that
the meeting could be free. However, at a quarter to eight when we
arrived, the building was in total darkness and the doors were locked.
The proprietor’s office was closed; he was not at home; there was no
means of finding out anything. Actually, he had temporarily effaced
himself because he did not wish to admit that he had been threatened
with a Catholic boycott of his theater, and had been promised protection
against a possible suit for breach of contract.
At least two thousand people had gathered and were filling the air with
catcalls, hisses, hurrahs, cries of “the Catholics run the town! Break
in the door!” Minor urged me to stand up in the car and give my speech,
but without its proper setting I was lost; here was a type of battle
needing an experienced campaigner. Although I did not feel adequate, I
began, but my voice could not surmount the uproar.
I was barely under way when a police sergeant reached up and seized my
arm. “Here now, you’ll have to come down. You can’t talk here.”
“Speech! Speech!” yelled the crowd. “Go on.”
But the owner of the car, to my great relief, started his engine. I sat
back in the seat with a thump and off we went.
The incident had repercussions. The Men’s City Club, regarding the event
as a blot on the fair name of the town, asked me to speak at their
luncheon the next day, and I promised to wait over. Although forty
Catholics then resigned in a body, St. Louis would not be coerced, and
more than a hundred new members joined immediately.
William Marion Reedy, owner and publisher of the famous _Reedy’s
Mirror_, had been at the closed theater. He printed a cartoon showing
the Capitol of the United States with a papal crown on it, stated
editorially that the Pope was now dictating to America what it should
hear and think, and emphasized the consequent dangers to the country if
any religious group were allowed such domination. “No idea let loose in
the world has ever been suppressed. Ideas cannot be jailed in
_oubliettes_,” was his peroration.
After I had left the Middle West and reached the Rocky Mountains the
atmosphere changed. I was struck even by the attitude of the bellboys
and waiters at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver. In New York you were
served by trained foreign men and boys—Italian and French. Here they
were American-born, blue-eyed, fair-complexioned, strong-jawed. Without
bowing or obsequiousness they brought your food and carried your bags as
if doing you a favor. You hesitated to give them a tip, though, as a
matter of fact, they never refused it.
I loved Denver itself. It seemed to me the women there were the most
beautiful I had seen—fresh, charming, alive. They had long had the vote
and used it effectively. Because they believed in Judge Ben Lindsey’s
juvenile court, they had kept him in office in spite of the concerted
antagonism of picturesque but corrupt politicians.
Although Judge Lindsey had bitter enemies in exalted places, he had
loyal friends also. When Theodore Roosevelt had stopped there in 1912 on
his Western Swing, the Judge was facing opposition. The city fathers did
not want to include him as a substantial citizen on their platform
committee of welcome. Roosevelt peered vainly about among all these
bankers and business men. “Where’s Ben Lindsey?” he asked.
“We don’t talk about him around here.”
“Don’t we? Well, he’s a friend of mine. I shan’t say a word until Ben
Lindsey comes and sits on this platform beside me.”
Nor would he speak until Lindsey arrived; everybody had to wait.
It was a high point for me at this time, so soon after my own court
appearance, to have Judge Lindsey preside at my meeting. Formerly my
listeners, with the exception of Indianapolis, had been chiefly of the
working class. Here they were wives of doctors, lawyers, petty
officials, members of clubs.
I was more than delighted to have an audience which had the power to
change public opinion. The “submerged tenth” had no need of theories nor
the proof of the advantages of family limitation; they were the
proof—the living example of the need. It was vitally important to have
reflective hearers who not only themselves used contraceptives, but who
advanced thought through literature, discussions, and papers. To them I
was telling the story of those millions who could not come, and trying
to relate it as I knew it to be true. Stimulating them offered the best
possibility of getting something done.
Judge Lindsey invited me to sit on the bench with him the next morning,
and I watched enthralled the way he handled his cases. The familiar
court method was punishment, and the more punishment the better. But he
operated on the new psychology. For instance, he attempted to inculcate
a sense of responsibility in one boy who had disobeyed his mother and
run away from school, by showing him his indebtedness to her, how he
should be helping rather than causing her grief.
The same tactics were employed in the case of Joseph, charged with
assault on his wife, Nelly, who stood silently in the background, shawl
over her head. Lindsey read the evidence, then said, “Joseph, come over
here.”
Joseph stepped nearer, appearing somewhat guilty, as men of his status
usually did when they came into court.
“What’s this I hear about you? Why did you strike Nelly?”
“She made me mad,” Joseph mumbled.
“Joseph, turn your head and look at your wife. Look at her! Look!—thin,
pale, weak, and you a big strong man striking that delicate little
woman. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself to beat Nelly? You who promised to
love, honor, and protect her?”
The reprimanding lasted fully two minutes. Finally tears began to spring
from Nelly’s eyes and to run down her face. She moved forward, took
Joseph by the hand, and said, “Oh, he’s not so bad, Judge.” Joseph then
embraced her. Instead of punishing him, which would in effect have also
been punishing Nelly, Judge Lindsey put him on parole to report back in
two months’ time, and husband and wife went out arm in arm.
One of the hardest things for a judge in a lower court to combat is the
prejudice of the police against those who already have records. Judge
Lindsey, when a case came up before him, never took the word of the ward
heelers, but had his own secretary, employed and paid by him, go to the
home and investigate, and he held the case until this had been done. But
I thought then that either Judge Lindsey was heading straight for
trouble, or Denver had a kingdom of its own where freedom reigned.
A similar attitude of liberality prevailed on the far side of the
Rockies. In many places where I had previously spoken, policemen had
been stationed at the doors. Occasionally they had even come to the
hotel to read my speech, as at St. Louis and Indianapolis. But in Los
Angeles officials of all the city, even the representatives of the
women’s police division, met me at the station or called on me in a
friendly way.
I was still as terrified of speaking as in the beginning; I used to wake
up early in the morning, sometimes before it was light, and feel a
ghastly depression coming over me. I realized it was the impending
lecture which was so affecting me, and I waited in trepidation for the
hour. My physical illness did not grow better until I was on my feet and
well into my subject.
Though this was my first visit to the West, I had no time for scenery.
Whenever possible I traveled by night and arrived during the day, and by
this stage of my trip I was seemingly always tired. The dead grind went
on and on, an endless succession of getting off trains, introductions,
talking to committees, pouring yourself out—and nothing happening.
Physically and psychically it was one of the lowest periods of my life.
Someone in San Francisco did a lovely thing for me. I never knew who she
was, but at the end of one meeting she picked me up in her car and swept
me away into a forest of huge, tall trees where the sun broke through.
There she left me for fifteen minutes in the midst of a cathedral of
great evergreens with the sky overhead and myself alone. I have never
forgotten the peace and quiet.
I found the West Coast a lively place. Ideas were being constantly
thrashed out. Every discourse had a challenging reception. Emma Goldman
had been there year after year and had stirred people to dare express
themselves. All sorts of individuals catechized you, and if you were not
well grounded in your subject you were quickly made aware of your
ignorance. The Wobblies spent hours in libraries, not only keeping warm,
but trying to find points on which to attack the next lecturer who
should come to town. Often those most eager were considered cranks—on
diet, free trade, single tax, and free silver—so familiar that their
rising was hailed with groans. I never minded having questions asked,
though everything I knew was questioned. It was as well for me that, in
addition to my Malthus, I knew my Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, my Henry
George, Marx, and Kropotkin. It seems to me that today the tone of
audiences has deteriorated; queries rarely have the same intellectual
grasp behind them.
My welcome at Portland was delightful. The sixty-year-old poet, C. E. S.
Wood, dapper and gracious, made a practice of greeting personally women
speakers, dedicating poems to them on their arrival, and sending bowers
of flowers to their hotel rooms. The City of Roses did much to entertain
its visitors.
Here I was invited by a church to address its congregation following the
evening service. I had not been very well in the afternoon, but I
promised over the telephone to be there if I could. I was late and the
meeting had already begun. As I slipped in at the rear I heard the
chairman refer to me as a Joan of Arc. Entirely too many Joans of Arc
were floating about in those days. Not wishing to be a disappointment I
turned right around and walked back to the hotel. Since no one had ever
seen me, both my entrance and exit went unremarked.
I admired robust, vital women; they appeared so efficient, and I
regretted the fact that I did not give the same impression. I felt that
way, but could not help resembling, as someone phrased it, “a hungry
flower drooping in the rain.” If I were in a room with ten people and
somebody came in who expected me to be present, she invariably
approached the biggest woman and addressed her, “How do you do, Mrs.
Sanger?” For a brief while I tried to make myself seem more
competent-looking by wearing severe suits, but this phase did not last;
for one thing, effective simplicity cost money and I did not have enough
to be really well-tailored. However, the anonymity due to my appearance
was, on the whole, fortunate. I was always able to go along any street,
into any restaurant or shop, and seldom be identified, and this made it
possible for me to maintain a relatively private life.
A dinner was given at Portland; the chairman, who had seen Susan B.
Anthony and many other women with causes come and go, made a short
speech of introduction. I rarely remember what people say on such
occasions, but one of her statements has remained in my mind. “I would
like to see Margaret Sanger again after ten years. Most movements either
break you or develop the ‘public figure’ type of face which has become
hard and set through long and furious battling. But her cause is
different from any other I have ever known. I should like to see how she
comes out of it.”
I have thought of this many times—how, if the cause is not great enough
to lift you outside yourself, you can be driven to the point of
bitterness by public apathy and, within your own circle, by the petty
prides and jealousies of little egos which clamor for attention and
approbation.
One of the first persons I met in the city was Dr. Marie Equi, of
Italian ancestry and Latin fire. Definitely, she was an individualist
and a rugged one. Her strong, large body could stand miles and miles on
horseback night or day. She had been brought up in the pioneer era when
medical work was genuine service. If cowboys or Indians were in fights,
difficulties, jail, Dr. Equi was always on hand to speak a good word for
them.
It was in Portland that I realized _Family Limitation_, which had been
crudely and hurriedly written in 1914, needed revising. The working
women to whom it was addressed needed the facts. It had served its
purpose in its unpolished state, but the time had now come to reach the
middle classes, for whom it required a slightly more professional tone.
Dr. Equi gave me genuine assistance in this matter.
The wider the distribution of the pamphlet, the happier I was. Since it
had not been copyrighted, anybody who wanted to could reprint as many as
he wished, and I.W.W. lumberjacks, for example, transients without
families who moved to California for the crop harvesting in the summer,
often thus provided themselves with a little extra money as they
journeyed from place to place. When they unrolled the blankets draped
over their shoulders out dropped a half-dozen or so pamphlets.
An automobile mechanic of Portland had made one of these reprints and
asked me whether he could sell it at my next meeting. I myself had never
distributed _Family Limitation_ publicly, but if any local people wanted
to do so, I had no objection. Accordingly the mechanic and two of his
friends sold copies and were arrested. Their trial was postponed so that
I could deliver my proposed lectures in Seattle and Spokane.
When these were over I came back to serve as a witness, and at another
meeting held the night preceding the trial four more of us were
arrested, Dr. Equi, two Englishwomen, and myself. I was tremendously
gratified by seeing women for the first time come out openly with
courage; over a hundred followed us through the streets to the jail
asking to be “let in too. We also have broken the law.”
The city jail was nice and clean and warm. The girls, who were not
locked in cells, scampered around talking over their troubles and
complaints with Dr. Equi, and receiving condolence and wholesome advice
in return.
The seven of us were tried together the next day. Two lawyers took upon
themselves the responsibility of defending us, and they were splendid.
We were all found guilty. The men were fined ten dollars, which the
Judge said they need not pay; the women were not fined at all.
The papers made a great to-do about the affair but it was not a type of
publicity of my choosing and did little to bring the goal nearer. The
year 1916 was filled with such turmoil, some of it useful, some not. The
ferment was working violently. Everybody began starting things here and
there. Many radicals, some of whom I did not even know, were
distributing leaflets, getting themselves arrested and jailed. Meetings
were being held in New York on street corners, at Union Square, Madison
Square.
You had to keep a steady head, to be about your business, to make
careful decisions, to waste the least possible time on trivialities; it
was always a problem to prevent emotional scatter-brains from disturbing
the clear flow of the stream. The public, quite naturally, could not be
expected to distinguish between purposeful activities and any others
carried on in the name of the movement.
Emma Goldman and her campaign manager, Ben Reitman, belatedly advocated
birth control, not to further it but strategically to utilize in their
own program of anarchism the publicity value it had achieved. Earlier
she had made me feel she considered it unimportant in the class
struggle. Suddenly, when in 1916 it had demonstrated the fact that it
was important, she delivered a lecture on the subject, was arrested, and
sentenced to ten days.
Ben Reitman, who used to go up and down the aisles at meetings shouting
out Emma Goldman’s _Mother Earth_ in a voice that never needed a
megaphone, was also arrested when the police found on the table of her
lecture hall in Rochester several books on birth control. One of these
was by Dr. Robinson, who had hastily published a volume purporting to
give contraceptive information. The unwary purchaser discovered when he
came to the section supposed to give him the facts for which he had paid
his money that the pages were blank and empty.
Of far greater interest to me was the decision of Jessie Ashley, Ida
Rauh, who was Max Eastman’s wife, and Bolton Hall, a leader in the
single tax movement, to make test cases on the grounds that the denial
of contraceptive information to women whose health might be endangered
by pregnancy was unconstitutional since the Constitution guaranteed each
individual the right to liberty. These three had themselves arrested on
birth control charges. They were all three convicted and given a choice
of fines or terms in prison. They paid the former, announcing that they
would appeal, but, most unfortunately, as it turned out later, they did
not carry through their intentions.
A sympathetic thing if not a wise one was being done by a young man in
Boston named Van Kleek Allison, who started handing out leaflets to
workers as they emerged from factories. Early in the summer he gave one
to a police decoy, was arrested and sentenced to three years. Dear old
Boston, the home of the Puritan, rose in all its strength and held a
huge meeting of protest on his behalf.
This was the occasion of my first heckling. A Jewish convert to
Catholicism, named Goldstein, began belligerently to fling questions at
me. It was not in the sense of trying to find out the answers, but as
though he had them wrapped up in his own pocket and were merely trying
to trap me, and he, in turn, had his answers ready for mine. But after
my Western experiences I was not unprepared and was aided, furthermore,
by other members of the audience who spoke in my defense when he became
almost insulting.
I never made light of questioners and never judged any question too
trivial or unworthy of an honest response. I believed that for each
person who had the courage to ask there must be at least twenty-five who
would like to know, and I have never assumed anyone was seeking to trick
me into giving illegal information, even though his inquiry might appear
as intended to confuse me or be vindictively thrust at me. I usually
replied, “That’s an interesting point. I’m glad you raised it,” and then
proceeded to discuss it as best I could.
Another heckling in Albany resulted in a joyous reunion. Somebody in the
audience insisted my work was unnecessary. I would ordinarily have paid
no attention, not considering the statement at all personal. But there
arose a lady, wearing a high lace collar propped up with whalebones, and
a hat that sat flat on her head, a ghost out of my school-girl days. “I
am acquainted with Margaret Sanger,” she stated. “I have slept with her,
I have lived with her, I have worked with her, I have delivered her, and
I have named my baby for her.” Here was dear old Amelia come to champion
me. Her type of dress had remained the same as fifteen years before, but
so had her loyalty and wit. The lecture over, we went back together to
her home in Schenectady; she hauled out from the attic scrapbooks and
photographs and snapshots taken at Claverack, and we sat on the floor
and rocked with laughter until three in the morning.
When I returned to New York after my long trip I took a studio apartment
in what seemed like a bit of old Chelsea on Fourteenth Street way over
between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Gertrude Boyle, the sculptress, had
the one below me, and my sister Ethel moved in above. Occasionally
father came down from Cape Cod to spend some time with us.
Although it was never quite warm enough, because it lacked central
heating, it hardened me physically, and the open fireplaces, stoked
incessantly by expansive and voluble Vito Silecchia, the Italian coal
vendor, kept the air fresh and clean. The lovely high ceilings, the tall
windows, and the broad doors flung wide between the rooms, gave an
atmosphere of space, and the marvelous carved woodwork was a joy. The
windows in the rear were draped with light yellow curtains, reflecting
an illusory glow of sunshine. Above one of these grew a Japanese
wistaria vine; whenever I looked up I saw this little bit of spring.
_Chapter Seventeen_
FAITH I HAVE BEEN A TRUANT IN THE LAW
“_If a woman grows weary and at last dies from
childbearing, it matters not. Let her only die from
bearing; she is there to do it._”
MARTIN LUTHER
In the fall of 1916 whoever walked along the corridor of the top floor
of 104 Fifth Avenue could have seen the words “Birth Control” printed on
the door leading to an office equipped in business-like, efficient
manner with files and card catalogs. Presiding over it was Fred Blossom,
the perfect representative. He had told me at Cleveland he was tired of
ameliorative charity and, wanting to do something more significant, had
offered six months for this work. Now indefatigably he wrote, spoke,
made friends, and, most important, raised money. His meals were limited
to an apple for luncheon and a sandwich for dinner; he seldom left the
office until midnight.
Like a vacuum cleaner Blossom sucked in volunteers from near and far to
help with the boxes and trunks of letters which had come to me from all
over the country—one thousand from St. Louis alone. As long as I had had
no stenographic aid I had been able only to open and read them and put
them sadly away. At last with fifteen or twenty assistants the task
began of sorting these out and answering them. The contents almost
invariably fell into certain definite categories, and I instituted a
system so that such and such a paragraph could be sent in response to
such and such an appeal.
We had only one paid stenographer—little Anna Lifshiz, who soon became
far more a co-worker than a secretary. If we had no money in the bank
she waited for her salary until we did. When I met Anna’s mother, who
graced her hospitable home with an old world dignity, I realized that
her daughter’s fine character had been directly inherited. Every
Christmas I used to receive a present of wine and cakes of Mrs. Lifshiz’
own make, and Anna always said when she brought them, “My mother prays
for your health, your happiness, and that you will keep well.”
I had been encouraged by the interest aroused during my Western trip,
but was by no means satisfied. The practical idea of giving
contraceptive information in clinics set up for that purpose had seemed
to meet general approval everywhere. Boston at this time appeared a
possible place to begin. Though Allison had to serve sixty days in the
House of Correction at Deer Island, the sum total of his sensational
trial had been good. Before his arrest there had been no league in
Massachusetts, and with his arrest had come publicity, friends, workers,
meetings, letters, interviews, all of widespread educational value.
More important than the enthusiasm which had been stirred up, the best
legal authorities in Boston had decided that contraceptive information
could be given verbally by doctors as long as it was not advertised. The
interpretation to be put on advertising held up the actual opening of a
clinic. The old spirit was there to wage battle but it was a question of
getting leadership, and this did not come about; no women doctors were
willing to take the risk. If the citizens of Massachusetts had then
seized the opportunity to broaden their laws, writers and speakers might
now have more freedom in expressing themselves.
Blossom soon organized the New York State Birth Control League to change
the state law. Beyond introducing a bill it made little headway and soon
expired. It was just one of those many groups that met and talked and
talked and did nothing effective.
The legislative approach seemed to me a slow and tortuous method of
making clinics legal; we stood a better and quicker chance by securing a
favorable judicial interpretation through challenging the law directly.
I decided to open a clinic in New York City, a far more difficult
proceeding than in Boston. Section 1142 of the New York statutes was
definite: _No one_ could give contraceptive information to _anyone_ for
_any_ reason. On the other hand, Section 1145 distinctly stated that
physicians could give prescriptions to prevent conception for the cure
or prevention of disease. Two attorneys and several doctors assured me
this exception referred only to venereal disease. In that case, the
intent was to protect the man, which could incidentally promote
immorality and permit promiscuity. I was dealing with marriage. I wanted
the interpretation to be broadened into the intent to protect women from
ill health as the result of excessive childbearing and, equally
important, to have the right to control their own destinies.
To change this interpretation it was necessary to have a test case.
This, in turn, required my keeping strictly to the letter of the law;
that is, having physicians who would give only verbal information for
the prevention of disease. But the women doctors who had previously
promised to do this now refused. I wrote, telephoned, asked friends to
ask other friends to help find someone. None was willing to enter the
cause, fearful of jeopardizing her private practice and of running the
risk of being censured by her profession; she might even lose her
license.
They had before them the example of Dr. Mary Halton who of all the women
I have known has perhaps the best understanding of the hidden secrets of
the heart. She has never reached her deserts, and doubtless never will
have the honors due her, though she has an unknown audience who love her
not only because she has done something directly for them but because
they have heard of what she has done for others. She has what to my mind
is the attitude of the real physician; that it is not enough merely to
cure ailments—surroundings, heartaches, privations must also be given
attention. Her office is a human welfare clinic to which women of all
classes, ages, nationalities go for advice, occasionally without even
return carfare. The unmarried ones, who in asking help from doctors or
clinics seldom admit they are unmarried, trust so deeply in Dr. Mary
that they unburden themselves freely.
Dr. Mary had previously been on the staff of the Grosvenor Hospital and
had held her evening clinic there. To one of her patients who had been
operated on for glandular tuberculosis she had prescribed a cervical
pessary. When a few evenings later the woman had come back to be
refitted, Dr. Mary had been out and her substitute, horrified and
shocked, had presented the matter to the board. Dr. Mary had been called
before them. She had told them in no uncertain terms that the giving of
contraceptive information to patients in need of it was part of her work
and that she had a right under the law to do so.
The board had disagreed with her and asked for her resignation.
I did not wish to complicate the question of testing the law by having a
nurse give information, because a nurse did not come under the Section
1145 exception. But since I could find no doctor I had to do without.
Ethel, a registered nurse, had a readiness to share in helping the
movement, though she did not belong to it in the same sense as I. Then,
as long as I had to violate the law anyhow, I concluded I might as well
violate it on a grand scale by including poverty as a reason for giving
contraceptive information. I did not see why the hardships and worries
of a working man’s wife might not be just as detrimental as any disease.
I wanted a legal opinion on this if possible.
My next problems were where the money was to come from and where the
clinic was to be. Ever since I had announced that I was going to open
one within a few months I had been buried under an avalanche of queries
as to the place, which for a time I could not answer. The selection of a
suitable locality was of the greatest importance. I tramped through the
streets of the Bronx, Brooklyn, the lower sides of Manhattan, East and
West. I scrutinized the Board of Health vital statistics of all the
boroughs—births and infant and maternal mortality in relation to low
wages, and also the number of philanthropic institutions in the
vicinity.
The two questions—where and how—were settled on one and the same day.
That afternoon five women from the Brownsville Section of Brooklyn
crowded into my room seeking the “secret” of birth control. Each had
four children or more, who had been left with neighbors. One had just
recovered from an abortion which had nearly killed her. “Another will
take me off. Then what will become of my family?”
They rocked back and forth as they related their afflictions, told so
simply, each scarcely able to let her friend finish before she took up
the narration of her own sufferings—the high cost of food, her husband’s
meager income when he worked at all, her helplessness in the struggle to
make ends meet, whining, sickly children, the constant worry of another
baby—and always hanging over her night and day, year after year, was
fear.
All cried what a blessing and godsend a clinic would be in their
neighborhood.
They talked an hour and when they had finished, it seemed as though I
myself had been through their tragedies. I was reminded of the story of
a Spaniard who had become so desperate over the injustice meted out to
innocent prisoners that he had taken a revolver into the street and
fired it at the first person he met; killing was his only way of
expressing indignation. I felt like doing the same thing.
I decided then and there that the clinic should open at Brownsville, and
I would look for a site the next day. How to finance it I did not know,
but that did not matter.
Then suddenly the telephone rang and I heard a feminine voice saying she
had just come from the West Coast bringing from Kate Crane Gartz, whom I
had met in Los Angeles, a check for fifty dollars to do with as I
wished. I knew what I should do with it; pay the first month’s rent. I
visualized two rooms on the ground floor, one for waiting and one for
consultation, and a place outside to leave the baby carriages.
Fania Mindell had left Chicago to assist me in New York. It was a
terribly rainy day in early October that we plodded through the dreary
streets of Brownsville to find the most suitable spot at the cheapest
possible terms. We stopped in one of the milk stations to inquire about
vacant stores. “Don’t come over here,” was the reply. Many social
organizations were being established to meet the demands of poverty and
sickness, and we asked of them all, only to receive the same
response—“We don’t want any trouble. Keep out of this district.” The
mildest comment was, “It’s a good idea, but we can’t help you.” Although
they agreed the mothers of the community should limit their families,
they seemed terrified at the prospect of a birth control clinic. It
sounded also as if they were afraid we would do away with social
problems and they would lose their jobs.
Brownsville was not unique; Brooklyn was and still is dotted with such
dismal villages, and even Queens with its pretensions to a higher
standard has its share. But Brownsville was particularly dingy and
squalid. Block after block, street after street, as far as we could see
in every direction stretched the same endless lines of cramped,
unpainted houses that crouched together as though for warmth, bursting
with excess of wretched humanity.
The inhabitants were mostly Jews and Italians, some who had come to this
country as children, some of the second generation. I preferred a Jewish
landlord, and Mr. Rabinowitz was the answer. He was willing to let us
have Number 46 Amboy Street at fifty dollars a month, a reduction from
the regular rent because he realized what we were trying to do. Here in
this Jewish community I need have no misgivings over breaking of windows
or hurling of epithets, but I was scarcely prepared for the friendliness
offered from that day on.
I sent a letter to the District Attorney of Brooklyn, saying I expected
to dispense contraceptive information from this address. Without waiting
for the reply, which never came, we began the fun of fixing up our
little clinic. We had to keep furnishing expenses inside the budget, but
Fania knew Yiddish and also how to bargain. We bought chairs, desks,
floor coverings, curtains, a stove. If I were to leave no loophole in
testing the law, we could only give the principles of contraception,
show a cervical pessary to the women, explain that if they had had two
children they should have one size and if more a larger one. This was
not at all ideal, but I had no other recourse at the time. However, we
might be able to get a doctor any day and, consequently, we added an
examination table to our equipment.
Mr. Rabinowitz spent hours adding touches here and there to make the two
shiny and spotless rooms even more snow-white. “More hospital looking,”
he said.
Meanwhile we had printed about five thousand notices in English,
Italian, and Yiddish:
MOTHERS!
Can you afford to have a large family?
Do you want any more children?
If not, why do you have them?
DO NOT KILL, DO NOT TAKE LIFE, BUT PREVENT
Safe, Harmless Information can be obtained of trained Nurses at
46 AMBOY STREET
NEAR PITKIN AVE.—BROOKLYN.
Tell Your Friends and Neighbors. All Mothers Welcome
A registration fee of 10 cents entitles any mother to this information.
These we poked into letter boxes, house after house, day after day,
upstairs, downstairs, all over the place, viewing sadly the unkempt
children who swarmed in the alleyways and over the fire escapes of the
condemned tenements and played on the rubbish heaps in the vacant lots.
Seldom did we see a woman who was not carrying or wheeling a baby. We
stopped to talk to each and gave her a supply of leaflets to hand on to
her neighbors. When we passed by a drugstore we arranged with the
proprietor to prepare himself for supplying the pessaries we were going
to recommend.
The morning of October 16, 1916—crisp but sunny and bright after days of
rain—Ethel, Fania, and I opened the doors of the first birth control
clinic in America, the first anywhere in the world except the
Netherlands. I still believe this was an event of social significance.
Would the women come? Did they come? Nothing, not even the ghost of
Anthony Comstock, could have kept them away. We had arrived early, but
before we could get the place dusted and ourselves ready for the
official reception, Fania called, “Do come outside and look.” Halfway to
the corner they were standing in line, at least one hundred and fifty,
some shawled, some hatless, their red hands clasping the cold, chapped,
smaller ones of their children.
Fania began taking names, addresses, object in coming to the clinic,
histories—married or single, any miscarriages or abortions, how many
children, where born, what ages. Remembering how the Netherlands clinics
in recording nothing had made it almost hopeless to measure what they
had accomplished from the human point of view, I had resolved that our
files should be as complete as it was possible to make them. Fania had a
copy of _What Every Girl Should Know_ on her desk, and, if she had a
free moment, read from it. When asked, she told where it could be
bought, and later kept a few copies for the convenience of those who
wanted them.
Children were left with her and mothers ushered in to Ethel or me in the
rear room, from seven to ten at once. To each group we explained simply
what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way—no matter how
early it was performed it was taking life; that contraception was the
better way, the safer way—it took a little time, a little trouble, but
was well worth while in the long run, because life had not yet begun.
Some women were alone, some were in pairs, some with their neighbors,
some with their married daughters. Some did not dare talk this over with
their husbands, and some had been urged on by them. At seven in the
evening they were still coming, and men also, occasionally bringing
their timid, embarrassed wives, or once in a while by themselves to say
they would stay home to take care of the children if their wives could
come. A hundred women and forty men passed through the doors, but we
could not begin to finish the line; the rest were told to return
“tomorrow.”
In the course of the next few days women appeared clutching minute
scraps of paper, seldom more than an inch wide, which had crept into
print. The Yiddish and Italian papers had picked up the story from the
handbills which bore the clinic address, and the husbands had read them
on their way from work and clipped them out for their wives. Women who
had seen the brief, inconspicuous newspaper accounts came even from
Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and the far end of Long Island.
Newly married couples with little but love, faith, and hope to save them
from charity, told of the tiny flats they had chosen, and of their
determination to make a go of it together if only the children were not
born too soon. A gaunt skeleton suddenly stood up one morning and made
an impassioned speech. “They offer us charity when we have more babies
than we can feed, and when we get sick with more babies for trying not
to have them they just give us more charity talks!”
Women who were themselves already past childbearing age came just to
urge us to preserve others from the sorrows of ruined health, overworked
husbands, and broods of defective and wayward children growing up in the
streets, filling dispensaries and hospitals, filing through the juvenile
courts.
We made records of every applicant and, though the details might vary,
the stories were basically identical. All were confused, groping among
the ignorant sex-teachings of the poor, fumbling without guidance after
truth, misled and bewildered in a tangled jungle of popular
superstitions and old wives’ remedies. Unconsciously they dramatized the
terrible need of intelligent and scientific instruction in these matters
of life—and death.
As was inevitable many were kept away by the report that the police were
to raid us for performing abortions. “Clinic” was a word which to the
uneducated usually signified such a place. We would not have minded
particularly being raided on this charge, because we could easily
disprove it. But these rumors also brought the most pitiful of all, the
reluctantly expectant mothers who hoped to find some means of getting
out of their dilemmas. Their desperate threats of suicide haunted you at
night.
One Jewish wife, after bringing eight children to birth, had had two
abortions and heaven knows how many miscarriages. Worn out, beaten down,
not only by toiling in her own kitchen, but by taking in extra work from
a sweatshop making hats, she was now at the end of her strength, nervous
beyond words, and in a state of morbid excitement. “If you don’t help
me, I’m going to chop up a glass and swallow it tonight.”
A woman wrought to the pitch of killing herself was sick—a community
responsibility. She, most of all, required concentrated attention and
devotion, and I could not let any such go out of the clinic until her
mood had been altered. Building up hope for the future seemed the best
deterrent. “Your husband and your children need you. One more won’t make
so much difference.” I had to make each promise to go ahead and have
this baby and myself promise in return, “You won’t ever have to again.
We’re going to take care of you.”
Day after day the waiting room was crowded with members of every race
and creed; Jews and Christians, Protestants and Roman Catholics alike
made their confessions to us, whatever they may have professed at home
or in church. I asked one bright little Catholic what excuse she could
make to the priest when he learned she had been to the clinic. She
answered indignantly, “It’s none of his business. My husband has a weak
heart and works only four days a week. He gets twelve dollars, and we
can barely live on it now. We have enough children.”
Her friend, sitting by, nodded approval. “When I was married,” she broke
in, “the priest told us to have lots of children and we listened to him.
I had fifteen. Six are living. I’m thirty-seven years old now. Look at
me! I might be fifty!”
That evening I made a mental calculation of fifteen baptismal fees, nine
baby funerals, masses and candles for the repose of nine baby souls, the
physical agonies of the mother and the emotional torment of both
parents, and I asked myself, “Is this the price of Christianity?”
But it was not altogether sad; we were often cheered by gayer visitors.
The grocer’s wife on the corner and the widow with six children who kept
the lunch room up the street dropped in to wish us luck, and the fat old
German baker whose wife gave out handbills to everybody passing the door
sent regular donations of doughnuts. Whenever the pressure became so
overwhelming that we could not go out for a meal we were sure to hear
Mrs. Rabinowitz call downstairs, “If I bring some hot tea now, will you
stop the people coming?” Two jovial policemen paused at the doorway each
morning to discuss the weather. Reporters looked in speculating on how
long we were going to last. The postman delivering his customary fifty
to a hundred letters had his little pleasantry, “Farewell, ladies; hope
I find you here tomorrow.”
Although the line outside was enough to arouse police attention, nine
days went by without interference. Then one afternoon when I, still
undiscouraged, was out interviewing a doctor, a woman, large of build
and hard of countenance, entered and said to Fania she was the mother of
two children and that she had no money to support more. She did not
appear overburdened or anxious and, because she was so well fed as to
body and prosperous as to clothes, did not seem to belong to the
community. She bought a copy of _What Every Girl Should Know_ and
insisted on paying two dollars instead of the usual ten-cent fee.
Fania, who had an intuition about such matters, called Ethel aside and
said warningly she was certain this must be a policewoman. But Ethel,
who was not of the cautious type, replied, “We have nothing to hide.
Bring her in anyhow.” She talked with the woman in private, gave her our
literature and, when asked about our future plans, related them frankly.
The sceptical Fania pinned the two-dollar bill on the wall and wrote
underneath, “Received from Mrs. —— of the Police Department, as her
contribution.” Hourly after that we expected trouble. We had known it
must occur sooner or later, but would have preferred it to come about in
a different way.
The next day Ethel and Fania were both absent from the clinic. The
waiting room was filled almost to suffocation when the door opened and
the woman who had been described to me came in.
“Are you Mrs. Sanger?”
“Yes.”
“I’m a police officer. You’re under arrest.”
The doors were locked and this Mrs. Margaret Whitehurst and other
plain-clothes members of the vice squad—used to raiding gambling dens
and houses of assignation—began to demand names and addresses of the
women, seeing them with babies, broken, old, worried, harrowed, yet
treating them as though they were inmates of a brothel. Always fearful
in the presence of the police, some began to cry aloud and the children
on their laps screamed too. For a few moments it was like a panic, until
I was able to assure them that only I was under arrest; nothing was
going to happen to them, and they could return home if they were quiet.
After half an hour I finally persuaded the policemen to let these
frightened women go.
All of our four hundred and sixty-four case histories were confiscated,
and the table and demonstration supplies were carried off through the
patient line outside. The more timid had left, but many had stayed. This
was a region where a crowd could be collected by no more urgent gesture
than a tilt of the head skyward. Newspaper men with their cameras had
joined the throng and the street was packed. Masses of people spilled
out over the sidewalk on to the pavement, milling excitedly.
The patrol wagon came rattling up to our door. I had a certain respect
for uniformed policemen—you knew what they were about—but none
whatsoever for the vice squad. I was white hot with indignation over
their unspeakable attitude towards the clinic mothers and stated I
preferred to walk the mile to the court rather than sit with them. Their
feelings were quite hurt. “Why, we didn’t do anything to you, Mrs.
Sanger,” they protested. Nevertheless I marched ahead, they following
behind.
A reporter from the _Brooklyn Eagle_ fell into step beside me and before
we had gone far suggested, “Now I’ll fix it up with the police that you
make a getaway, and when we reach that corner you run. I’ll stop and
talk to them while you skip around the block and get to the station
first.” It was fantastic for anyone so to misconstrue what I was doing
as to imagine I would run around the block for a publicity stunt.
I stayed overnight at the Raymond Street Jail, and I shall never forget
it. The mattresses were spotted and smelly, the blankets stiff with dirt
and grime. The stench nauseated me. It was not a comforting thought to
go without bedclothing when it was so cold, but, having in mind the
diseased occupants who might have preceded me, I could not bring myself
to creep under the covers. Instead I lay down on top and wrapped my coat
around me. The only clean object was my towel, and this I draped over my
face and head. For endless hours I struggled with roaches and
horrible-looking bugs that came crawling out of the walls and across the
floor. When a rat jumped up on the bed I cried out involuntarily and
sent it scuttling out.
My cell was at the end of a center row, all opening front and back upon
two corridors. The prisoners gathered in one of the aisles the next
morning and I joined them. Most had been accused of minor offenses such
as shoplifting and petty thievery. Many had weatherbeaten faces, were a
class by themselves, laughing and unconcerned. But I heard no coarse
language. Underneath the chatter I sensed a deep and bitter resentment;
some of them had been there for three or four months without having been
brought to trial. The more fortunate had a little money to engage
lawyers; others had to wait for the court to assign them legal
defenders.
While I was talking to the girls, the matron bustled up with, “The
ladies are coming!” and shooed us into our cells. The Ladies, a
committee from a society for prison reform, peered at us as though we
were animals in cages. A gentle voice cooed at me, “Did you come in
during the night?”
“Yes,” I returned, overlooking the assumption that I was a street
walker.
“Can we do anything for you?”
The other inmates were sitting in their corners looking as innocent and
sweet as they could, but I startled her by saying, “Yes, you can. Come
in and clean up this place. It’s filthy and verminous.”
The Committee departed hurriedly down the corridor. One more alert
member, however, came back to ask, “Is it really very dirty?”
Although I told her in some detail about the blankets, the odors, the
roaches, she obviously could not picture the situation. “I’m terribly
sorry, but we can’t change it.”
I was still exasperated over this reply when I was called to the
reception room to give an interview to reporters. In addition to
answering questions about the raid I said I had a message to the
tax-payers of Brooklyn; they were paying money to keep their prisons run
in an orderly fashion as in any civilized community and should know it
was being wasted, because the conditions at Raymond Street were
intolerable.
My bail was arranged by afternoon and when I emerged I saw waiting in
front the woman who was going to swallow the glass; she had been there
all that time.
I went straight back to the clinic, reopened it, and more mothers came
in. I had hoped a court decision might allow us to continue, but now Mr.
Rabinowitz came downstairs apologetically. He said he was sorry, and he
really was, but the police had made him sign ejection papers, on the
ground that I was “maintaining a public nuisance.”
In the Netherlands a clinic had been cited as a public benefaction; in
the United States it was classed as a public nuisance.
Two uniformed policemen came for me, and with them I was willing to ride
in the patrol wagon to the station. As we started I heard a scream from
a woman who had just come around the corner on her way to the clinic.
She abandoned her baby carriage, rushed through the crowd, and cried,
“Come back! Come back and save me!” For a dozen yards she ran after the
van before someone caught her and led her to the sidewalk. But the last
thing I heard was this poor distracted mother, shrieking and calling,
“Come back! Come back!”
_Chapter Eighteen_
LEAN HUNGER AND GREEN THIRST
“_All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long._”
OSCAR WILDE
Looking back upon this period fraught with emotional distress, I have no
regrets. But, looking ahead, I am grateful that there looms no necessity
for repeating those passionate, dangerous, and menacing days.
Out of the raid four separate cases resulted: Ethel was charged with
violating Section 1142 of the Penal Code, designed to prevent
dissemination of contraceptive information; Fania with having sold an
allegedly indecent book entitled _What Every Girl Should Know_; I,
first, with having conducted a clinic in violation of the same Section
1142, second, with violating Section 1530 by maintaining a public
nuisance.
I claimed that Section 1142 which forbade contraceptive information to,
for, and by anyone was unconstitutional, because no state was permitted
to interfere with a citizen’s right to life or liberty, and such denial
was certainly interference. Experience had shown it did the case no good
merely to defend such a stand in a lower court; it must be carried to a
higher tribunal, and only a lawyer versed in whereases and whatsoevers
and inasmuch-ases could accomplish this. But I was still hopeful of
finding one who was able to see that the importance of birth control
could not be properly emphasized if we bowed too deeply before the slow
and ponderous majesty of the law.
The attorney who offered himself, J. J. Goldstein, had a background
which made him more sympathetic than other lawyers, even the most
liberal. He was one of those young Jewish men of promise who had been
guided through adolescence by Mary Simkhovitch, founder of Greenwich
House, and Lillian Wald, founder of the Henry Street Settlement. The
seeds of social service had been planted in him; his legal training only
temporarily slowed down their growth.
J.J. had placed himself in a difficult position for a youthful Tammany
Democrat, some day to be a magistrate; he might have been forgiven more
easily had he received a larger fee. Though he had to be convinced that
we declined to have anything to do with political wire-pulling, he
fought for us valiantly.
November 20th we pleaded not guilty and trial was set for November 27th.
J.J. endeavored to have the three of us tried simultaneously, but the
Court of Special Sessions would have none of it. Then he asked for a
jury trial, which could be granted at the discretion of the Supreme
Court; application was denied. An appeal to the Appellate Division was
dismissed; writs of habeas corpus were dismissed; another appeal to the
Appellate Division was dismissed; adjournments pending appeal were urged
but not granted. Indeed I was being swiftly educated in the
technicalities of criminal law.
I felt like a victim who passed into the courtroom, was made to bow
before the judge, and did not know what it was all about. Every gesture
had its special significance, which must not be left out if appeals were
to be possible. We had to make many more appearances than would
otherwise have been necessary; everything had to be correctly on the
record.
Evening after evening J.J. rehearsed the arguments he was going to
present and directed me to respond to questioning. I did not understand
the technicalities and begged to be allowed to tell the story in my own
way, fearful lest the heartaches of the mothers be lost in the
labyrinthine maze of judicial verbiage. But he maintained if the case
were to be appealed to a higher court, it had to be conducted according
to certain formalities.
“Why should it have to be in legal language?” I demanded. “I’m a simple
citizen, born in a democratic country. A court should also listen to my
plea expressed in plain language for the common people. I’m sure I can
make them understand and arouse their compassion.”
He reiterated that I could not address a court as though I were trying
to instil my views in an individual. “You can’t talk to them that way.
You’ll have to let me talk.”
“But that’s the way I talk and I’m the accused.”
I fully expected that if I were permitted to set forth my human version
of the Brownsville tragedies, no appeal would be required. But J.J. knew
the courts and had no such hopes. He was still doubtful of any success
before the lower tribunal, and was still unable to see my point,
counting chiefly on technicalities to win the case.
J.J. had formally objected to having our trial set during the November
session because Justice McInerney was due to preside that month, and at
previous trials he had expressed biased opinions. This objection was
overruled.
The strictly legal method having failed, I resorted to my own and wrote
Justice McInerney an open letter:
As an American pledged to the principles and spirit in which this
Republic was founded, as a judge obligated by oath to fair and
impartial judgment, do you in your deepest conscience consider
yourself qualified to try my case?
In those birth control cases at which you have presided, you have
shown to all thinking men and women an unfailing prejudice and
exposed a mind steeped in the bigotry and intolerance of the
Inquisition.
To come before you implies conviction.
Judge McInerney “made application to the District Attorney to be taken
off this case.”
Trial was marked for January 4, 1917, but the first case, that of Ethel,
was reached so late in the afternoon it had to be postponed. Four days
afterwards, in spite of our attempts to be tried together, she appeared
alone. She freely admitted she had described birth control methods but
denied the District Attorney’s accusation that our ten-cent registration
fee made it a “money making” affair. This and other sensational charges,
such as “the clinic was intended to do away with the Jews” were often
inserted in the records for reporters to pick up, make good stories of
them, and in consequence influence newspaper readers against us. They
were great stumbling blocks.
Our most important witness, Dr. Morris H. Kahn, physician in
Bloomingdale’s Department Store who also maintained a private clinic
where he gave out birth control information, was ready to testify, but
his evidence was ruled out as “irrelevant, incompetent, and immaterial.”
To be sure the charge against Ethel was as a lay person; nevertheless,
it was extraordinary that we could get no hearing for a doctor. J.J. was
allowed only fifteen minutes to present his argument on the
unconstitutionality of Section 1142, and the presiding Judge decided
that the court was bound to hold it constitutional on precedent,
regardless of argument.
Ethel was found guilty.
In the two weeks before sentence was to be pronounced we debated what
she and I should do. Perhaps it could be stayed, which would settle
everything, but we each had to be prepared for either a short term of
imprisonment or a long one. In case of the former, submission was the
wiser course, because the public would not consider it of sufficient
moment to bestir itself; in the latter event, a hunger strike seemed
indicated, but, again, only if sufficient attention could be called to
it.
The New York _World_ had the most liberal policy of all the leading
morning dailies, and therefore appeared to offer the best likelihood of
being favorably disposed. I approached one of its editors and asked
whether he would print our entire story if I were to give him a scoop
and guarantee accuracy. He agreed, and assigned us a special reporter.
Ethel was sentenced January 22nd to thirty days in the Workhouse on
Blackwell’s Island in the East River. In spite of our discussion over
this possibility, she was utterly shocked, and exclaimed, “I’m going to
go on that hunger strike.”
After spending the night in the Tombs, she was returned the next morning
to the Federal District Court of Brooklyn on a writ of habeas corpus as
a means of suspending sentence pending appeal. Daylight had brought no
change in her determination to continue with the hunger strike. “I
haven’t had anything to eat yet,” she declared, and, remembering the
tale that one hunger striker had received nourishment in her cups of
water, she added, “and, if they send me back, I shan’t drink anything
either.”
Neither J.J. nor I considered such a short sentence worth breaking your
life for. Furthermore, the cause did not mean to Ethel what it did to
me. “Think this over very carefully,” I reminded her. “A hunger strike
is not necessary, and if you once start you’ll have to keep it up.” She
insisted that she was ready to die if need be; she had made her will and
arranged for the disposition of her two children—the hunger strike was
to go on. The writ was refused and she was remanded to the Workhouse. On
her way there she told the women with whom she shared the patrol wagon
the salient facts of birth control.
When Commissioner of Correction Burdette G. Lewis was asked to comment
on Ethel’s decision he scoffed. “Others have threatened hunger strikes.
It means nothing.” At first no food at all was brought her, but after
the publicity began the authorities were in despair to make her eat.
This was a case they did not know how to handle; they were mentally
unprepared for prisoners who were guilty of performing a legal wrong in
order to win a legal right.
Ethel had gone one hundred and three hours without eating when
Commissioner Lewis established a precedent in American prison annals by
ordering her forcibly fed, the first woman to be so treated in this
country. He stated optimistically to the press how simple the process
was, consisting of merely rolling her in a blanket so she could not
struggle, and then having milk, eggs, and a stimulant forced into her
stomach through a rubber tube. He stressed how healthy she continued to
be, how little opposition she offered, how foolish the whole thing
appeared to him anyhow; he was going to charge her for the expense
incurred in calling in an expert to feed her.
As soon as I heard my sister was “passive under the feeding” I became
desperately anxious about her; nothing but complete loss of strength
could have lessened her resistance.
After one interview Commissioner Lewis had barred all reporters and
given out a statement of his own. “I have not much patience with Mrs.
Byrne’s efforts to get advertising for her cause, and I won’t help such
a campaign along by issuing bulletins.”
But bulletins were being issued, nevertheless—and printed.
From prearranged sources I was receiving messages and notes each
evening, and reports on Ethel’s pulse and temperature. Thus I learned
her vision was becoming affected and her heart was beginning to miss
beats, due to lack of liquids. “Going without water was pretty bad,” she
said herself. “At night the woman whose duty it was to go up and down
the corridors to give the prisoners a drink if they wanted it stopped
right by my cell and cried, ‘Water! Water!’ till it seemed as if I could
not stand it. And on the other side of me was the sound of the river
through the window.”
Nobody was allowed to visit Ethel but J.J., who, as her lawyer, could
not well be refused. But reporters have their own mysterious ways of
getting what they want. The _World_ man succeeded in reaching her. It
was not on the whole a successful interview, because she did not know
who he was, but it did have one important result—it confirmed at first
hand our statements as to the seriousness of her condition.
In the midst of my anxiety over Ethel, my own trial opened January 29th
in the same bare, smoky, upstairs Brooklyn court in which she had
appeared. Justices John J. Freschi, Italian, Moses Herrmann, Jewish, and
George J. O’Keefe, Irish, sat on the bench. Judge Freschi, a rather
young man, presided, and on him we pinned our hopes. We did not expect
anything of old Judge Herrmann except that, because he was Jewish, he
might be broad-minded. As to Judge O’Keefe we had no illusions.
No less than thirty of the mothers of Brownsville had been subpoenaed by
the prosecution, but about fifty arrived—some equipped with fruit,
bread, pacifiers, and extra diapers, others distressed at having had to
spend carfare, timid at the thought of being in court, hungry because no
kosher food could be obtained near by. Nevertheless, all smiled and
nodded at me reassuringly.
Formerly, a few women of wealth but of liberal tendencies had been
actively concerned in the movement, but now some who were prominent
socially were coming to believe on principle that birth control should
not be denied to the masses. The subject was in the process of ceasing
to be tagged as radical and revolutionary, and becoming admittedly
humanitarian.
In this room, side by side with the ones to be helped, sat new helpers.
Among them was Mrs. Amos Pinchot, Chairman of the Women’s Committee of
One Hundred, formed to lend support to the defense. Her reddish hair
betrayed a temper quick and easily aroused in the cause of justice.
Aristocratic of bearing, autocratic by position, she was one to command
and be obeyed, and was easily a leading personality in the philanthropic
smart set of New York. Among her valuable services was the bringing into
the fold of the mothers and aunts of the present active Junior Leaguers.
Mrs. Lewis L. Delafield’s limousine stood in front of the doors at
almost every trial and it meant a great deal to the defendants to have
the wife of one of the most eminent members of the New York bar in the
courtroom. By her very demeanor and looks—white-haired, a fragile
countenance—you knew she could touch nothing that was not fine, and that
she had the spiritual courage to stand by her ideas and ideals in both
her public and private life. Always she opened her home and her heart
and her arms to those she loved.
Fania was called first. She was a girl with a pale and delicate face,
and was too worried to bear the strain. She should not be punished for
co-operating, and I told J.J. to notify the court that she was not well,
though I strictly forbade him to say anything about my health. Her trial
was brief, narrowing itself down to whether _What Every Girl Should
Know_ was to be classed as indecent. A few days later she was found
guilty and sentenced to fifty dollars’ fine, a decision which was
eventually reversed on appeal.
It surprised me that in my trial the prosecution should be carried on so
vehemently, because the prosecutor had little to prove. To me there
seemed to be no argument at all; the last thing in my mind was to deny
having given birth control advice. Certainly I had violated the letter
of the law, but that was what I was opposing.
I grew more and more puzzled by the stilted language, the
circumlocutions, the respect for precedent. These legal battles, fought
in a curiously unreal world, intensified my defiance to the breaking
point. I longed for a discussion in the open on merit and in simple,
honest terms.
I thought I might have my wish when Judge Freschi, holding up a cervical
cap which the prosecuting attorney had put in evidence, said, “Who can
prove this is a violation; the law states that contraception is
permitted for the prevention of disease. May it not be used for medical
reasons?”
This question raised my hopes high. At last the law might be interpreted
according to the definition I so desired; ill health resulting from
pregnancy caused by lack of its use might be construed as disease.
Then one by one the Brownsville mothers were called to the stand to
answer the District Attorney. “Have you ever seen Mrs. Sanger before?”
“Yess. Yess, I know Mrs. Sanger.”
“Where did you see her?”
“At the cleenic.”
“Why did you go there?”
“To have her stop the babies.”
The witness bowed sweet acknowledgment to me until she was peremptorily
commanded to address the court.
“Did you get this information?”
“Yess. Yess, dank you, I got it. It wass gut, too.”
“Enough,” the District Attorney barked, and called another.
Time after time they gave answers that were like nails to seal my doom,
yet each thought she was assisting me.
J.J. saw how their testimony could be turned to our advantage.
He asked, “How many miscarriages have you had? How much sickness in your
family? How much does your husband earn?” The answers were seven, eight,
nine dollars a week.
At last one woman more miserable and more poverty-stricken than the rest
was summoned. “How many children have you?”
“Eight and three that didn’t live.”
“What does your husband earn?”
“Ten dollars a veek—ven he vorks.”
Judge Freschi finally exclaimed, “I can’t stand this any longer,” and
the court adjourned over the week-end.
J.J. was jubilant, because he said there was nothing for him to do; the
court was arguing his case for him.
I myself was feeling a little conscience-smitten. A mass meeting of
sympathizers had been organized by the Committee of One Hundred for that
evening in Carnegie Hall, and I went straight there from the courtroom.
I had a speech ready in which I said we were being persecuted, not
prosecuted; that the judges were no better than witch-burners. It was
unfortunate, but copies had already been released to the press and the
wording could not be changed.
Helen Todd, the Chairman, a grand person who had been trained under Jane
Addams, had given the mothers of Brownsville places of honor on the
platform to let everybody see what kind of women we were fighting for.
She asked for twenty volunteers to follow the example of the English
suffragettes who had gone on hunger strikes en masse, but no women whose
names registered socially in the public mind were willing thus to join
in protesting against the law; only working girls came forward.
Three days later Jessie Ashley and I took the train for Albany with Mrs.
Pinchot, who was a close friend of Governor Charles S. Whitman, to ask
him to appoint a commission to investigate birth control and make a
report to the State Legislature. The Governor, who was fair and
intelligent, quite distinctly representing a class of liberal
politicians, received us cordially.
Ethel and her hunger strike had been front-page news for ten days; in
the subway, on street corners, everywhere people gathered, she was being
discussed. In Washington and Albany congressmen and legislators were
sending out for the latest details. Governor Whitman naturally asked
about her, and we seized the opportunity to try to impress on him the
outrageousness of making her suffer for so just a cause. He said
directly her incarceration was a disgrace to the State. He was entirely
out of sympathy with the courts and judges, and offered a pardon
conditional upon her ceasing to disseminate birth control information.
But I had not come to ask that favor.
“My sister wouldn’t take a pardon,” I replied, much to the distress of
Mrs. Pinchot. However, I accepted gratefully his letter to the warden at
Blackwell’s Island authorizing me to see her.
The next morning I appeared again before the court. During the three-day
interim the effect of the mothers’ testimony had evidently been effaced
from the judges’ minds, and they were infuriated by my Carnegie Hall
denunciation. But far more detrimental to my hope of a new
interpretation was the prosecution’s introduction of a Federal agent who
had once confiscated a copy of _Family Limitation_ in which was the
picture of this same cervical cap; he read aloud my advice to women to
use it as a means of preventing conception. Not even the most friendly
judge could get away from the fact that I had intended a far broader
definition than any permitted by the existing law.
The prosecution argued further that the constitutionality of Section
1142 could not be challenged, because the exception for physicians in
Section 1145 already guaranteed “liberty” to citizens. And, since I was
not a physician and consequently did not come under the exception, the
court must, in any event, find me guilty. This they did.
The day had been so full that I was not able to avail myself of Governor
Whitman’s permit to visit Ethel until evening, when Mr. and Mrs. Pinchot
took me in their car to the Workhouse. I remember how cold it was; the
trip on the ferry seemed to go on forever. But when we finally arrived,
at the name of Pinchot, the friend of the Governor, doors swung open;
officialdom turned polite and courteous and salaamed us on our way.
The Pinchots remained below while I was sent up to Ethel’s cell, where
she was lying on her iron cot, dressed in readiness for her release. Her
appearance shocked and horrified me. She had grown thin and emaciated,
her eyes were sunken and her tongue swollen, high red spots stood out on
her cheeks. She could not see me even across the narrow cell, knowing me
only by my voice. Hers was muffled as she whispered me to come nearer,
her mind confused. “Liberty,” she kept repeating, “I want my liberty.”
Her life was all that mattered to me now. I had to eat humble pie, and
said to the matron I was going to telegraph Governor Whitman that she
was too ill to accept the conditions of the pardon for herself, but I
would promise on her behalf. I was told that he had already signed the
pardon, was on his way to New York, and to wait downstairs, please.
After about half an hour we were informed Mrs. Byrne was coming down. I
went along the hallway to meet her. She was being held up by two
attendants, the matron following with wraps. Her head was rolling from
side to side, and I could see from the pallor of her face, especially
from the pinched look of her nose and mouth, that she was losing
consciousness. I protested to the matron, but orders had been given and
were being obeyed; Commissioner Lewis wanted the newspaper pictures to
show her coming out on her feet.
Running back to the room where the Pinchots were sitting, I exclaimed,
“She’s fainting!” Then Mrs. Pinchot clapped her hands imperiously and
directed the attendants to lay Ethel down immediately and bring a
stretcher. A command from her worked like magic. She wrapped her own fur
coat around the pathetic figure and, as soon as Ethel felt the softness
and warmth, she knew she was safe. We carried her over to my apartment
to begin the protracted period of recuperation. Only after a year’s
convalescence was she able to take up a normal life again.
Being the real instigator, I had every reason to expect a longer term
than Ethel. Logically, her hunger strike had served its purpose; that
form of strategy was closed. But personally I decided that, if I should
receive a year, I should do the same. On the other hand, if I were given
three months or less, I could study and make use of my time. J.J. had
heard on reliable authority that if I were to change my plea to guilty,
I could have a suspended sentence. To his mind freedom alone meant
victory, and he urged me to accept it if it were offered.
This, it developed, was the intention of the court when on Monday I was
called back for sentence. Having Ethel off the front page had brought a
sigh of relief of almost national scope. But all the publicity had had
its effect on public opinion, and doubtless influenced the judges also
to a certain extent. Since they could not agree to change the
interpretation of the law, they had been obliged to find me guilty, but
they did not really want to inflict punishment.
They were, however, extremely suspicious of our assertion that we were
going to carry the case higher. Jessie Ashley, Ida Rauh, and Bolton Hall
had all been let off with fines on the understanding they proposed to
appeal, and then they had not done so. Courts were beginning to assume
this was just a trick of birth control advocates, not meant in good
faith.
I sat listening to what seemed an interminable discussion between J.J.
and Judge Freschi over whether the appeal were going to be prosecuted in
a quick and orderly fashion, until I was nearly lulled to sleep.
Suddenly my attention was caught by hearing J.J. declare that I would
“promise not to violate the law.”
My mind clicked. It was not in my program to bargain for freedom. J.J.,
knowing full well I would make no such promise, had planted himself in
front of me so the court could not see my belligerent face. He was
trying to act as a buffer and, at the same time, for fear of what I
might say, to avoid having me summoned to the stand. I tried to peer
around him, but he shifted from side to side, obscuring my view. I
tugged on his coat like a badly brought up child, but he took no notice.
Finally one of the judges interposed, “Your client wishes to speak to
you, counselor.” I could be ignored no longer, and was called. “Margaret
Sanger, stand up.”
History is written in retrospect, but contemporary documents must be
consulted; therefore I have gone to the official records for the facts.
After all, one courtroom is much like another, and the attitude of one
justice not so dissimilar from that of another. I was combating a mass
ideology, and the judges who were its spokesmen merged into a single
voice, all saying, “Be good and we’ll let you off.” This is what I
heard:
You have been in court during the time that your counsel made the
statement that pending the prosecution of appeal neither you nor
those affiliated with you in this so called movement will violate
the law; that is the promise your counsel makes for you. Now, the
Court is considering extreme clemency in your case. Possibly you
know what extreme clemency means. Now, do you personally make that
promise?
THE DEFENDANT: Pending the appeal.
THE COURT: If Mrs. Sanger will state publicly and openly that she
will be a law-abiding citizen without any qualifications whatsoever,
this Court is prepared to exercise the highest degree of leniency.
THE DEFENDANT: I’d like to have it understood by the gentlemen of
the Court that the offer of leniency is very kind and I appreciate
it very much. It is with me not a question of personal imprisonment
or personal disadvantage. I am today and always have been more
concerned with changing the law regardless of what I have to undergo
to have it done.
THE COURT: Then I take it that you are indifferent about this matter
entirely.
THE DEFENDANT: No, I am not indifferent. I am indifferent as to the
personal consequences to myself, but I am not indifferent to the
cause and the influence which can be attained for the cause.
THE COURT: Since you are of that mind, am I to infer that you intend
to go on in this matter, violating the law, irrespective of the
consequences?
THE DEFENDANT: I haven’t said that. I said I am perfectly willing
not to violate Section 1142—pending the appeal.
JUSTICE HERRMANN: The appeal has nothing to do with it. Either you
do or you don’t.
THE COURT: (to Mr. Goldstein) What is the use of beating around the
bush? You have communicated to me in my chambers the physical
condition of your client, and you told me that this woman would
respect the law. This law was not made by us. We are simply here to
judge the case. We harbor no feeling against Mrs. Sanger. We have
nothing to do with her beliefs, except in so far as she carries
those beliefs into practice and violates the law. But in view of
your statement that you intend to prosecute this appeal and make a
test case out of this and in view of the fact that we are to regard
her as a first offender, surely we want to temper justice with mercy
and that’s all we are trying to do. And we ask her, openly and above
board, “Will you publicly declare that you will respect the law and
not violate it?” and then we get an answer with a qualification.
Now, what can the prisoner at the bar for sentence expect? I don’t
know that a prisoner under such circumstances is entitled to very
much consideration after all.
THE COURT: (to the Defendant) We don’t want you to do impossible
things, Mrs. Sanger, only the reasonable thing and that is to comply
with this law as long as it remains the law. It is the law for you,
it is the law for me, it is the law for all of us until it is
changed; and you know what means and avenues are open to you to have
it changed, and they are lawful ways. You may prosecute these
methods, and no one can find fault with you. If you succeed in
changing the law, well and good. If you fail, then you have to bow
in submission to the majority rule.
THE DEFENDANT: It is just the chance, the opportunity to test it.
THE COURT: Very good. You have had your day in court; you advocated
a cause, you were brought to the bar, you wanted to be tried here,
you were judged, you didn’t go on the stand and commit perjury in
any sense, you took the facts and accepted them as true, and you are
ready for judgment, even the worst. Now, we are prepared, however,
under all the circumstances of this case, to be extremely lenient
with you if you will tell us that you will respect this law and not
violate it again.
THE DEFENDANT: I have given you my answer.
THE COURT: We don’t want any qualifications. We are not concerned
with the appeal.
MR. GOLDSTEIN: Just one other statement, your Honor, one final
statement on my part. Your Honor did well say that you didn’t want
anything unreasonable. With all due deference to your Honor, to ask
a person what her frame of mind will be with so many exigencies in
future, that is, if the commission did nothing or the Legislature
did nothing—
THE COURT: All we are concerned about is this statute, and as long
as it remains the law will this woman promise here and now
unqualifiedly to respect it and obey it? Now, it is yes or no. What
is your answer, Mrs. Sanger? Is it yes or no?
THE DEFENDANT: I can’t respect the law as it stands today.
THE COURT: Margaret Sanger, there is evidence that you established
and maintained a birth control clinic where you kept for sale and
exhibition to various women articles which purported to be for the
prevention of conception, and that there you made a determined
effort to disseminate birth control information and advice. You have
challenged the constitutionality of the law under consideration and
the jurisdiction of this Court. When this is done in an orderly way
no one can find fault. It is your right as a citizen.... Refusal to
obey the law becomes an open defiance of the rule of the majority.
While the law is in its present form, defiance provokes anything but
reasonable consideration. The judgment of the Court is that you be
confined to the Workhouse for the period of thirty days.
A single cry, “Shame!” was followed by a sharp rap of the gavel, and
silence fell.
_Chapter Nineteen_
THIS PRISON WHERE I LIVE
I sat in the front row while the court routine continued. The room
buzzed with conversation. J.J. was busy with formalities; reporters were
leaning over to ask me questions. Through the near-by doorway I saw
several young men awaiting their sentences like actors in the wings
listening for their cues. One was propped against the wall smoking a
cigarette. At the sound of his name he raised his head, signifying he
had heard, and yet kept on smoking. When it was called a second time an
attendant shoved him forward roughly. I could almost feel the hardening
of his soul under this brutal attitude and the physical handling. He
gave still another puff; then deliberately dropped the stub, stepped on
it, and sauntered leisurely forward to receive his sentence.
I was led into an anteroom where other prisoners were being put through
the regular fingerprinting procedure. I refused; there was a definite
connection in my mind between admission of guilt and fingerprinting;
both in their different ways placed me in the category of criminals. My
refractoriness was reported to the court. But the judges, poor dears,
had worn themselves out trying to avoid sending me to jail and were
exasperated and cross; one more rebellion was too much for them. “Don’t
bother us with that. It’s not our job. Take her away.”
We were then herded through the rear of the building into an open yard
where the van was standing. The careless youth who had answered the
court’s call with such unconcern was waving farewell to friends who
loitered outside.
“How long, Alf?” asked one.
“Five years,” and he laughed as he said it.
Two more boys, their arms fraternally flung across one another’s
shoulders, shouted, “Three!” and, “Four!” consecutively. Were they
normal? Could liberty be of so little account? The muscles in my throat
contracted as I pictured the maternal love once spent on their infancy,
and now the reckless disregard for freedom culminating in this ride.
Thirty days seemed to me the end of the world, but they made light of
marking time in life for years, calling this their “sleeping time.” They
paid no attention to me; I was entirely out of their realm.
The women huddled beside me were more serious. An hysterical and tearful
“one-monther” had been obliged to leave her small four-year-old son
sitting on the veranda watching for her return. She had not even been
allowed to go back to see him and arrange for his care during her
absence.
Some experiences, though unexpected, are nevertheless partially
anticipated in the subconscious. I had believed fully and firmly that
some miracle would occur to keep me from going to jail. There had been
no miracle. The doors banged shut, two blue uniforms stared stolidly at
each other, the automobile jerked forward.
The trip to Raymond Street was short. We were ushered into a waiting
room. A thin-lipped attendant of huge size callously pushed one weeping
girl through the door.
“Get ready there, you!” she tossed over her shoulder at me.
“For what?”
“For the doctor.” I sat still. She repeated, “Do you hear me? Go in and
get your examination!”
I resented this attitude with every fiber of my being and replied, “I’m
not being examined.”
“Ho, you’re not? You’re one of the fighting kind, are you? Well, we’ll
soon fix you, young lady!”
She swung her heavy, massive frame out the door, leaving me wondering,
but quivering with excited determination. I was not sure what would
happen to me. Within five minutes, however, she came back with an
entirely different manner and tone. “Oh, you’re Mrs. Sanger. It’s all
right. Come this way, please.”
The next morning I was given a cup of bitter, turbid, lukewarm coffee,
and then placed inside the van, which set off for the Workhouse. There
all my possessions were taken from me. A long wait. The men were sent
somewhere and the women somewhere else, I did not know where. I just
sat. After what seemed hours my belongings were returned and a woman in
coat and hat told me to follow her. I did. A man added himself to our
party, and the three of us climbed into another van. We were driven some
distance down the Island, then put into a boat and ferried over to New
York. I had no idea where we were going. I asked but could elicit no
answer.
We took a street car and after various transfers I caught sight of a
Loose-Wiles biscuit sign. But it did not help me because I had not seen
it before; the section was unfamiliar to me. In early afternoon we
reached the Queens County Penitentiary, Long Island City. Evidently the
Workhouse authorities had had enough of the Higgins family and wanted no
more responsibility of this nature.
Warden Joseph McCann, who met me, was a jovial young Irishman who had
risen from the police ranks. “Have you had any lunch?” he asked. The
cause of his solicitude emerged when he inquired anxiously whether I
intended to go on a hunger strike. Remembering my morning cup of coffee,
I replied, “Not unless your food is too bad.” He introduced Mrs.
Sullivan, the motherly matron.
I answered the usual interrogatory about where I was born, how old I
was, etc., etc. When the clerk came to “What religion?” I replied,
“Humanity.” He had never heard of this form of belief, and rephrased the
question. “Well, what church do you go to?”
“None.”
He looked at me in sharp surprise. All inmates of the penitentiary went
to church; ninety-eight percent in my corridor had been reared as
Catholics.
The prison clothing which I was handed was much like a nurse’s uniform
and did not disturb me. But when I was recalled to the warden’s office
to be fingerprinted, I said flatly I would not submit. He sent me back
to my cell.
The floor was arranged rather on the order of a hospital ward, with
little alcoves of ten or fifteen cells running off the gallery. Mine,
Number 210, was small but clean. I had a bed, toilet, and washstand.
There was no chair; I sat on my bunk.
All the prisoners were at work except Josephine, a German Catholic who
had lost her husband and three children within a short period. She was
eager to tell me her story. A few days after they had died, she had gone
to their graves and covered those of the children with blankets to keep
them warm. Someone saw her, decided she was insane, and had her
committed to jail. It was a spring day when she was let out on parole.
She was pleased and happy. A hurdy-gurdy was playing her favorite tune,
_Just As the Sun Went Down_. She paid the man a nickel to play it over,
then another, and another, and another. The policeman at the corner,
hearing it, looked her over and arrested her again. During her next ten
days in prison she nursed a grievance against this injustice and, as
soon as she came out, had several drinks, went after the policeman,
scratched his face, and tore his buttons off.
Thereafter, Josephine drank whenever she could, and each time she drank
she fought, and, since she had developed a complex against policemen,
she landed back in jail in short order; she had been in some seventy
times.
I found Josephine a kind, big-hearted person, and, though erratic,
fairly intelligent. She had a terrible tongue and a terrible temper, and
undoubtedly had periods when she was of unsound mind. Most people were
frightened of her.
She was supposed to put curses on her enemies, and they came true. Once
a person who had treated her badly and been cursed in consequence had
promptly contracted pneumonia and died. At another time the matron of a
certain jail had kept her three weeks in a dark cell on bread and water.
After the fifth day, when bread was handed into the hole, she said it
tasted like cake it was so sweet. From the two or three cups of water
daily, she had to assuage her thirst, wash her face, and clean her
teeth. When she came out of this Stygian place she could scarcely see,
but she managed to distinguish the matron sufficiently to put the curse
of God upon her. The next night someone forgot to close the door of the
elevator shaft, and the matron walked through the open gate, fell to the
bottom, and was instantly killed. Now, Josephine was let alone.
In spite of my depression I was intensely interested in Josephine; she
begged me to help her, and I said I would try. The rest of that
afternoon was consumed in this tale of woe until at five o’clock I began
my initiation into the prison routine of hours and meals. The dining
room was filled with long tables and wooden benches. No one had a knife
or fork—only a tablespoon, edge blunted so as to be unserviceable as a
weapon. Supper consisted of tea and molasses, stewed dried peaches, and
two slices of bread which tasted queer; it was said to have saltpeter in
it. We were locked in an hour later; lights were out at nine. Bells
began ringing at six the next morning, and the cells were opened at
seven. For breakfast we had oatmeal with salt and milk, again two slices
of the same bread, and coffee without sugar. Dinner was more bread, a
boiled potato with the skin half on, and a sorry hunk of meat.
Because of my active tuberculosis the prison doctor soon put me on what
was called a diet. This meant I could have crackers and milk and tea in
my cell instead of going to the supper table. Due probably to the
influence of the Osborne innovations at Sing Sing the men at the Queens
Penitentiary were better treated than the women. Their food was of
higher quality and they could buy tobacco and even newspapers. The sole
reading matter available to women were two Catholic weeklies and the
_Christian Science Monitor_. Our only other news came from the two
visitors a month allowed. So fine a mesh screen was placed in the
reception room that inmates could with difficulty distinguish, as
through a veil, the features of those to whom they were talking. This
was a hardship not even imposed at Sing Sing.
After morning cell-cleaning we took a fifteen-minute walk in the yard
with our hooded capes over our heads. During this cold tramp the women
scanned the ground avidly for butts of cigarettes tossed away by the
men. It was tragic to see human beings forced to such a low level as to
dig with their fingers in the frozen earth to retrieve these mangled
stubs. Each used to grab her little bit and hide it.
When the matron went to her lunch we were locked in our corridors but
not in our cells. Ordinarily she took a nap afterwards, and the girls
could usually count on her not being back until three or perhaps four
o’clock. This gave them an opportunity to dry their shreds of tobacco
under the radiator, then wrap them in toilet paper ready for smoking. At
night when we were all locked in they struck the steel ribs from their
corsets against the stone floor, and thus ignited pieces of cotton to
give them lights. I could see tiny glowing points in the darkness as
they puffed away greedily.
Somehow, with the ingenuity born of necessity, these women also managed
to have smuggled in to them occasional small news items. The first day
one of the girls approached me and in a stage whisper demanded, “Cross
your heart and hope to die you won’t tell.”
I crossed my heart and hoped to die.
She slipped into my hand a short clipping about my trial. Apparently
others had been keeping up with events, because a few minutes later
Lisa, a little colored girl, called out, “You’se eats, don’t yer?”
A third asked me to explain to them what “sex hygiene” was all about.
Accordingly I sought permission of Mrs. Sullivan to be allowed in their
corridor during her dinner hour.
“What for?”
“The girls want me to tell them about sex hygiene.”
“Ah, gwan wid ye,” she laughed. “They know bad enough already.”
Some of the most lovely-looking girls were drug addicts. It seemed
monstrous that the State could take such liberties with human lives as
to convict them as criminals and sentence them to as much as three years
for something which should have been considered disease.
Other women were pickpockets, embezzlers, prostitutes, keepers of
brothels, “Tiffany,” or high-class thieves, accomplices of safe blowers,
and a few “transatlantic flyers,” who assisted in big hauls from Paris
or London.
The class snobbishness among the offenders interested me beyond words.
No one cared how or where another had been reared, what kind of family
background or education she had; the nature of her offense was the key
to her social position. The one who picked pockets was scorned by the
girl who helped herself to pearl or diamond necklaces; the shoplifter
did not “sell her body.”
The prisoners sometimes slid their arms in mine as we paced along in the
yard. One took me to task. “I saw you walking with Gracie. You mustn’t
associate with her.”
“Why not?”
“Do you know what she’s in here for? She’s a petty thief. Whenever she
gets out she rides in street cars and steals money from the pocketbooks
of poor people going to pay their rent, or women coming home with their
husbands’ wages.”
“And what are you here for?”
“Oh, I steal from the rich; I take only from people who have jewelry and
bank accounts.”
I never did the regular work of cleaning, not even my own cell. Nor was
I sent into the workshop to sew or to operate the machines with the
others. When I asked Mrs. Sullivan why, she replied jollily, “Oh, you
look better over there with a pen in your hand.”
She had fixed up a table to serve as a desk, and there I sat the entire
day with my papers and books, planning ahead and reading countless
letters; the tenor of all was much like this from Sarah Goldstein:
The women here in Brownsville need help very bad. Mrs. Sanger has
got put away in the penitentiary for being friends with us, but she
said we was to use her place while she was gone. If we can have a
meeting over here in the clinic, I will put a fire in the stove and
ask the women to come Saturday.
We women here want to find out what the President, the Mayor, and
the Judges and everybody is trying to do. First they put Mrs. Sanger
in jail for telling us women how not to have any more children, and
then they get busy for the starve of the ones we’ve got. First they
take the meat and the egg, then the potato, the onion, and the milk,
and now the lentils and the butter, and the children are living on
bread and tea off the tea leaves that is kept cooking on the back of
the stove.
Honest to God, we ought to call a meeting and do something about it.
Part of my time also was devoted to helping some of the girls to read or
to write the two letters a month permitted them. I had not believed that
any American-born of sixteen to eighteen years of age could be
illiterate, but there were at least ten.
I had been in the penitentiary for several days before I noticed a tall,
erect woman with white hair and a face which obviously did not belong
there; I had never seen her in the yard or at table. Although she had
been over nine months sharing the other prisoners’ food and working
beside them she had not become one of them. Because of her aloofness I
found it hard to make her acquaintance, but ultimately “the Duchess,” as
she was called, told me her story.
After having been a teacher for fifteen years, she had married a
minister who lived on a pension. They stayed in hotels, always spending
more than their income, while he steadily drew on his insurance money.
His sudden death left her practically penniless. Due to her age and the
fact she had not taught for so long her application for a teacher’s job
was refused. She continued in the hotel until she had used up everything
and was forced to move. Thereafter, she went from hotel to hotel,
fleeing each time angry looks and bills; finally she was arrested and
given an indeterminate sentence of from one to three years.
Her constant brooding over her past was not preparing her for any
future. I suggested she might keep her hand in by instructing the
illiterate girls, and asked J.J., my only visitor, to have his friend
William Spinney send some primers and lower grade text-books from Henry
Holt and Company where he worked; this was done free of charge. The
Duchess was contentedly happy from the day she began teaching again.
In the desire to learn whether the girls’ background might not be
related to the causes of their imprisonment, I asked Warden McCann
whether I could see the records, especially as to the size of the
families from which they came. He said it was against the rules, but he
was willing to give me such facts separately, assuring me I was going to
be surprised and disappointed. I was.
When I inquired, “How many brothers and sisters does Rosie have?” the
answer was, “None.”
“And Marie?”
“She had a brother, but he’s dead.”
It appeared from the entries that all these women had been single
children or, if a brother or sister had been born, he or she no longer
survived. This was difficult to believe, but I had to accept it at
first.
However, when I became better acquainted with the old-timers they told
me quite a different history. The registers were merely evidence of the
unwritten rule among them to keep their families out of it.
The madam of a house of assignation was putting her daughter of
seventeen through a fashionable boarding school. To prevent the child
from knowing anything about her occupation she wrote letters, sent them
West, where she was supposed to be traveling, and had them redirected to
the school. Many other prisoners were mothers also, and the scheming and
planning to hide the painful knowledge of their whereabouts was worthy
of the deepest admiration.
One after another admitted she had given false statements to save her
relatives from disgrace or constant annoyance by the police. The result
of a poll of the thirty-one in our corridor showed an average of seven
children to each girl’s family.
I was always interested to know why the pretty ones were there. Frances,
one of the loveliest, had a radiant color, rosebud mouth, and the most
innocent eyes; she even managed to wear her apron with a Gallic chic. It
did not seem possible she could have committed a crime, but she turned
out to be one of the rogues who made a practice of frequenting
gatherings where careless people offered opportunities to pickpockets.
She told me how she, with two other girls, had once gone to an up-State
fair. After making a grand haul of watches and purses and anything they
could lay their hands upon, her two companions said, “We’ve got enough.
We’re clearing out.”
But Frances had spotted an easy-looking wallet. It was not quite easy
enough. Unfortunately for her the owner shouted, “Somebody’s stolen my
money!”
A bystander pointed, “She did it. I’ve been in three places today where
things have been lost, and she’s been there every time.”
Other people gathered round. Frances began to cry. Because the friends
of the man who had been robbed and he himself insisted she must be
arrested the police were called.
Frances continued to weep until several lusty young farmers were ready
to defy her accusers. How could they say such things about such a sweet
girl! It looked as though a fight were imminent, and she hoped to slip
away during the excitement. But the police arrived too soon and took her
to the station. They found nothing on her; somehow she had rid herself
of the wallet.
Frances’ new-found allies were ready to go her bail, but it so happened
that a police chief from a neighboring town who had come to the fair for
the express purpose of identifying possible petty criminals recognized
her from his sheaf of photographs of habitual offenders. He said to her
supporters, “Boys, you’re crazy. This girl’s as crooked as a snake.
Here’s her picture!”
“Why, you’re crazy yourself! Your girl’s a blonde, and this one’s dark.”
The chief snatched at Frances’ hair, and off came her wig. As she told
me this great joke on herself she shook with merriment.
But this was not the end of the story. The station captain had been
influenced by her attractiveness and, since the wallet had not actually
been discovered on her, wanted to let her off. He made a compromise.
“I’m going to give you a ticket to Montreal. You either go to jail or
take it and get out.”
She accepted the ticket, but left the train at a near-by point and
rejoined her friends at another fair. There, wearing a different
costume, she continued her trade. Although to look at her ingenuous face
I could hardly believe it, pitting her wits against the police was to
her a type of game.
Gertrude had been equally clever. She was of German origin, very
stylish, moving in good circles when not in prison. She had learned that
the officers of the submarine, _Deutschland_, which had just crossed the
ocean, were to be entertained at a party. Having secured an invitation,
she devoted herself to a lieutenant who, she had discovered, was
carrying seven hundred dollars in his pocket. When the gathering broke
up she took him back to his hotel in her car, suggesting they stop at a
night club en route. There she put a drug in his glass. It took a bit of
time to work, but after they had started on again he fell asleep. She
gave five dollars to the doorman to take him to his room, saying he had
drunk a bit too much, and then went home.
At seven the following morning, while Gertrude and her little girl were
still in bed, the police raided her apartment. They could unearth
nothing except what she could honestly account for. Her effects were
turned upside down, and still no money was to be found.
“Then how could they send you to jail?” I queried. “You didn’t take it,
did you?”
“Of course I did,” she asserted, looking at me as if I were dull-witted.
“They couldn’t pin it on me, that’s all.”
Even though Gertrude had been brighter than the police, she, like many
of the others, had been convicted on her past record and the present
suspicious circumstances.
Josephine was another case in point. After I myself had been released I
had her paroled under her own recognizance and secured a place for her
as chambermaid in a hotel. Fate so arranged that in the very first room
she entered on her first morning’s work she was confronted with the
corpse of a man who had died in his bed during the night. She rushed out
immediately, got drunk, and went directly back to jail again.
The resentment thus engendered in these caged women was like a strong,
glowing flame, of a depth that I scarcely had believed possible. The
shivers ran up and down my back when I heard the details of their
unguided and loveless childhoods, which explained in large part the
curious manner in which their minds worked. They thought only in terms
of getting away with their crimes, of beating the system—although their
presence here was proof that it could not be beaten. Three of the
younger girls, too old for Bedford Reformatory but almost too young for
the penitentiary, definitely shocked me with their plans for wrong-doing
without being apprehended. They asked me about my case. “Was it true the
judge gave you a chance not to go to jail if you’d promise not to break
the law?”
“Yes.”
“Well, why didn’t you do it?”
“I couldn’t promise that.”
“But you didn’t have to keep your promise!”
The ever-present bitterness arose, not from being caught in the act, but
from being convicted without having been, according to their own belief,
proved guilty. It was the woeful mental attitude rather than the actual
physical condition of their imprisonment which so appalled me. Not one
of them intended to go straight. They hated the police who were drawing
good salaries from the State and getting credit for putting them in
jail; yet all the time they had been smarter. This sounds inconsistent,
but it was their peculiar psychological twist.
I talked it over later with several judges to whom it was rather a new
point of view. Among other cases I cited that of a brothel keeper who
conducted her house as a club and did it so carefully that no evidence
could be obtained against her. Therefore, a detective had put opium in
the plumbing and she had been sentenced on a narcotic charge, although
it was well known this was not her offense.
“The prisoners were guilty, weren’t they?” said one of the judges. “You
know that, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I rejoined, “but to my mind that doesn’t end the State’s
responsibility. It seems to me your detectives should be more
intelligent than the criminals they are set to catch.”
The girls at Queens Penitentiary were unaware they were entitled to
bring a far more serious charge against society than clumsy and inept
police methods. I have never since visited an institution for juvenile
offenders without thinking how stupid people are not to recognize that
most adolescents are subjected to temptation on some occasion or other;
that anyone, in an emotional fragment of time, when young and when the
consequences are not clear, may do some forbidden thing. More often than
not it is merely incidental, and in no way warrants a life of penance.
The only brutal treatment I received was during the last two hours.
Since my fingerprints had not been taken on arrival, Warden McCann first
tried to talk me into compliance. His argument that all prisoners’
prints must be on file, that not having them was unheard of, got us
nowhere. I refused to submit, even though it postponed my release. He
then turned me over to two keepers. One held me, the other struggled
with my arms, trying to force my fingers down on the inkpad. I do not
know from what source I drew my physical strength, but I managed to
prevent my hands from touching it. My arms were bruised and I was weak
and exhausted when an officer at headquarters, where J.J. was protesting
against the delay, telephoned an order to discharge me without the usual
ceremony.
March 6, 1917, dawned a bitter, stinging morning. Through the metal
doors I stepped, and the tingling air beat against my face. No other
experience in my life has been like that. Gathered in front were my old
friends who had frozen through the two hours waiting to celebrate
“Margaret’s coming out party.” They lifted their voices in the
_Marseillaise_. Behind them at the upper windows were my new friends,
the women with whom I had spent the month, and they too were singing.
Something choked me. Something still chokes me whenever I hear that
triumphant music and ringing words, “Ye sons of freedom wake to glory!”
I plunged down the stairs and into the car which stood ready for me, and
we swept out of the yard towards my apartment. At the entrance were
Vito, the coal man, and his wife, beaming and proudly pointing to the
blazing fire they had made on the hearth to welcome me home.
_Chapter Twenty_
A STOUT HEART TO A STEEP HILL
“_When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it
ceases to be a subject of interest._”
WILLIAM HAZLITT
The noisy clamor of the world could not reach me through thick stone
walls; prison had been a quiet interim for reflection, for assembling
past experiences and preparing for the future. The tempestuous season of
agitation—courts and jails and shrieking and thumbing-the-nose—should
now end. Heretofore there had been much notoriety and but little
understanding. The next three steps were to be: first, education; then,
organization; and, finally, legislation. All were clearly
differentiated, though they necessarily overlapped to a certain extent.
I based my program on the existence in the country of a forceful
sentiment which, if co-ordinated, could become powerful enough to change
laws. Horses wildly careering around a pasture have as much strength as
when harnessed to a plow, but only in the latter case can the strength
be measured and turned to some useful purpose. The public had to be
educated before it could be organized and before the laws could be
changed as a result of that organization. I set myself to the task. It
was to be a long one, because the press did not want articles stating
the facts of birth control; they wanted news, and to them news still
consisted of fights, police, arrests, controversy.
One of the early essays in education was a moving picture dramatizing
the grim and woeful life of the East Side. Both Blossom and I believed
it would have value, and I continue to be of the same mind. He had not
approved of the clinic and had declined to have anything to do with it,
but was eager to join me in capitalizing on the ensuing publicity.
Together we wrote a scenario of sorts, concluding with the trial.
Although I had long since lost faith in my abilities as an actress, I
played the part of the nurse, and an associate of Blossom’s financed its
production. But before it could appear Commissioner of Licenses George
H. Bell ordered it suppressed.
To prove the film mirrored conditions which called for birth control, we
gave a private showing at a theater, inviting some two hundred people
concerned with social welfare. All agreed the public should see it, and
signed a letter to that effect. Justice Nathan Bijur issued an
injunction against interfering with its presentation. The moving picture
theaters, however, fearful lest the breath of censure wither their
profits, were too timid to take advantage of this.
Of infinitely greater and more lasting significance than this venture
was the _Birth Control Review_, which, from 1917 to 1921, was the
spearhead in the educational stage. It could introduce a quieter and
more scientific tone, and also enable me to keep in touch with people
everywhere whose interest had already been evoked. Emotion was not
enough; ideas were not enough; facts were what we needed so that leaders
of opinion who were articulate and willing to speak out might have
authoritative data to back them up.
The first issue of the _Review_, prepared beforehand, had come out in
February, 1917, while I was in the penitentiary. It was not a very good
magazine then; it had few contributors and no editorial policy.
Anyone—sculptor, spiritualist, cartoonist, poet, free lance—could
express himself here; the pages were open to all. In some ways it was
reminiscent of the old days of the _Woman Rebel_, when everybody used to
lend a hand—always with this vital difference, that we held strictly to
education instead of agitation. I had learned a little editorial
knowledge from my previous magazine efforts and now obtained a more
professional touch from the newspaper men and women who gradually came
in, among them William E. Williams, formerly of the Kansas City _Star_,
Walter A. Roberts, who later published the few issues of the _American
Parade_, and Rob Parker, editor and make-up man. Among the associates
were Jessie Ashley, Mary Knoblauch, and Agnes Smedley.
That extraordinarily shy and mysterious woman, Agnes Smedley, had been
born in a covered wagon of squatter parents, and, though she had become
a teacher in the California public schools, her early habits of thought
remained with her; she was consistently for the under dog. The British
Government had suspected her of connection with the seditious activities
of a group of Hindu students and persuaded the Federal authorities to
investigate. All they had been able to find on which to charge her were
a few copies of _Family Limitation_. This brought her within our
province, and when she was arraigned in New York John Haynes Holmes
procured her ten-thousand-dollar bail. After her acquittal she worked
with us at various times until she left for post-War Germany.
On this and other occasions John Haynes Holmes, a speaker second to
none, brought the convincing force of his arguments and mind to our aid.
By the shape of his head and the honesty of his eyes you could recognize
the practical idealist in this Unitarian minister. He never straddled
issues. During the War he said if one flag were to be hung out his
church windows, then those of all nations should be flown; no peoples
were enemies of his.
Two numbers of the _Review_ had appeared when the United States entered
the War and Blossom and I fell out. He was an ardent Francophile and,
like most masculine members of the intelligentsia, threw in his lot with
the Allies. I wrote a pacifist editorial; he refused to run it and
resigned.
To Blossom, as to so many others, pacifism was automatically labeled
pro-Germanism, on the old theory that “he who is not for me is against
me.” I had already seen in Europe what propaganda could do to build up a
war spirit, and prayed every morning when I awoke that I could keep my
head clear and cool. I had heard the plaintive pleas of French mothers,
but had talked also with German mothers. In the hearts of none had there
been hatred or desire for their sons to kill other sons.
I knew what I thought about the War; it was so outrageous I would not be
mixed up in it. I still believe it was not only a dreadful thing in
itself—a slaughter and waste of human life—but, even more disastrous, it
exterminated those who ought now to be ruling our national destinies
according to the pre-War liberality of thought in which they had been
reared. We started at that time to walk backwards instead of forwards,
and have retreated steadily ever since. A fear of expressing opinions
which then began to seep in has gradually helped to impose censorship
and further intolerance.
I was neither pro-Ally nor pro-German but, using common sense, was
distressed at seeing German achievements torn into shreds. Intelligence
in Germany had been focused on all fronts; she had the lowest illiteracy
of any country and had invested heavily in mass education from which the
rest of the world was benefiting at little cost. She had offered the
best training for graduate students in medicine; foreign travel had been
accelerated by German linguists; commerce had been able to carry on
international contacts through German interpreters; any foreign industry
which had needed technical advice had usually employed a German
scientist, engineer, or chemist who knew how to do his job and do it
well. Germany could not continue this policy without wanting to receive
some tangible return.
I was convinced the primary cause of this war lay in the terrific
pressure of population in Germany. To be sure, her birth rate had
recently begun to decline, but her death rate, particularly infant
mortality, had, through applied medical science, likewise been brought
far down. The German Government had to do something about the increase
of her people. Underneath her rampant militarism, underneath her demand
for colonies was this driving economic force. She could hold no more,
and had to burst her bounds.
Blossom’s defection was one of the heart-breaking things that can creep
into any endeavor, even the most idealistic. I have seen so many young
crusaders come galloping to show me the way, joining the procession and
blowing horns for “The Cause,” panting with enthusiasm to reform the
world, willing to teach me how to put the movement on a “social” or
“sound practical and economic” basis. They were going to get vast
contributions so that money would roll unceasingly into our coffers. But
if they lacked the necessary patience and forbearance, or were there for
personal aggrandizement, they became discouraged at the first show of
thorny, disagreeable obstacles, retreating or deserting rather than
fighting through.
In the birth control movement supporters have come and gone. When they
remained they found work, work, work, and little recognition, reward, or
gratitude. Those who desired honor or recompense, or who measured their
interest by this yardstick, are no longer here. It is no place for
anything except the boundless love of giving. Blossom was the first
illustration to me that the ones to whom authority is handed over are
likely to expand and explode unless they have selflessly dedicated
themselves.
Now, I believe the three chief tests to character are sudden power,
sudden wealth, and sudden publicity. Few can stand the latter; nothing
goes to the head with more violence. Seeing this all around me, I did
not subscribe to a clipping bureau until it seemed necessary for
historical purposes. I did not even read the papers when unsought
advertisement was great, remembering that this could be but a nine days’
wonder. Furthermore, news items were often distracting because the facts
were constantly embroidered just to make a good story, to paint a
situation according to the policy of the paper, or because they
reflected the inhibitions of the reporters. Hours could have been
entirely given over to denials and contradictions.
In the midst of any emergency such as a police raid or the stopping of a
meeting my own emotions generally kept an even tenor; they did not go
hopping up and down like a temperature. A nurse cannot afford to lose
her head, and the control I had won in that training helped me, as did
also my father’s philosophy, “Since all things change, this too will
pass.”
Consequently, during this feverish period, neither public praise nor
public blame affected me very much, although the type of criticism that
came from friends was different. Just because they were friends and I
wanted them to understand, I was unhappy if they did not. But, since
persons one likes can have great influence and friendships take time, I
refrained from making many new ones. Nevertheless, those I had then are
as good today; when we meet we pick up the threads where we dropped
them.
The War halted the progress of the birth control movement temporarily.
The groups that had before been active now found new interests. The
radicals were convulsed and their own ranks torn in two by the
opposition to conscription. Influenza swept over the world and in its
passage took off many of our old companions. Governor Whitman’s promised
commission blew up. One bright bugle sounded when I learned that the
section on venereal disease in _What Every Girl Should Know_, which had
once been banned in the New York _Call_ and for which Fania had been
fined, was now, officially but without credit, reprinted and distributed
among the soldiers going into cantonments and abroad. At home all felt
there was little to do but wait until people came back to their senses;
the _Review_ was the only forward step I could take at the time.
Late in 1917 a new recruit was enlisted. Nobody ever knew Kitty Marion’s
true name. She had been born in Westphalia, Germany, and when she was
fifteen her father had whipped her once too often and she had run away
to England, where eventually she had headed a turn at a music hall.
The London slums had aroused Kitty’s social conscience, and she had
abandoned her own career to enroll with Mrs. Pankhurst in the suffrage
crusade, becoming one of the most determined of her followers. When put
in jail she set fire to her cell, chewed a hole in her mattress, broke
the window, and upon being released threw bricks at Newcastle Post
Office. Seven times she went to prison, enduring four hunger strikes and
two hundred and thirty-two compulsory feedings, biting the hand that
forcibly fed her. Since it was distasteful to the Government to have any
suffragette die in prison, Kitty, under the so-called Cat-and-Mouse Act,
was once released to a nursing home until she should have strength
enough to return to confinement. Friends visited her there, exchanged
clothes with her, and she escaped. On another occasion the Bishop of
London personally begged her to give up her struggle. At the outbreak of
war, the Pankhurst forces hustled her over to America rather than have
her run the almost certain risk of deportation or internment.
Selling _The Suffragette_ on the streets of London had been part of the
initiation which duchesses and countesses and other noble auxiliaries to
the Pankhurst cause had had to undergo. Kitty had stood side by side
with them. Since we had so experienced a veteran ready for service we
began to offer the _Review_ on the sidewalks of New York. Our more sober
supporters objected because they considered it undignified. But men and
women from here, there, and everywhere passed through the commercial
centers of New York, and this was a real means of reaching them.
All of us took a hand, but Kitty was the only one who stood the test of
years. Strong, stoutish, tow-headed, her blue eyes bright and keen in
spite of being well on in her fifties, she became a familiar sight.
Morning, afternoon, and until midnight—workdays, Sundays, and
holidays—through storms of winter and summer, she tried every street
corner from Macy’s to the Grand Central Terminal. But her favorite stand
was Seventh Avenue and Forty-second Street, right at Times Square. In
her own words she was enjoying “the most fascinating, the most comic,
the most tragic, living, breathing movie in the world.”
Many people still think I must be Kitty Marion. Everywhere they say to
me, “I saw you twenty years ago outside the Metropolitan Opera House.
You’ve changed so I wouldn’t know you.”
Street selling was torture for me, but I sometimes did it for
self-discipline and because only in this way could I have complete
knowledge of what I was asking others to do. In addition, I learned to
realize what possible irritations Kitty had to encounter.
Notwithstanding the insults of the ignorant, the censure of the bigots,
she remained good-humored. They said to her, “You ought to be ashamed of
yourself, you ought to be arrested, to be shot, to be in jail, to be
hanged!” or, “It’s disgraceful, disgusting, scandalous, villainous,
criminal, and unladylike!” When someone asked, “Have you never heard
God’s word to ‘be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth’?” Kitty
replied, “They’ve done that already,” and, knowing her Apocrypha as well
as her Bible, retorted in kind, “Does it not say in Ecclesiasticus:
16; 1, ‘Desire not a multitude of unprofitable children’?”
During the War it was astonishing how many men, in and out of uniform,
mistook Birth Control for British Control. “We don’t want no British
Control here!” they exclaimed. Kitty would correct them, “Birth
Control,” and someone would call, “Oh, that’s worse!”
Who bought the _Review_? This question was invariably asked, and the
answer was—radicals, the curious, girls about to be married, mothers,
fathers, social workers, ministers, physicians, reformers,
revolutionaries, foreigners. A psychological analysis of reactions of
passers-by when they saw the words “birth control” would have been
interesting. I never could credit the power those simple words had of
upsetting so many people. Their own complexes as to what sex meant to
them appeared to govern them. Many were disappointed at its staidness;
some were highly indignant, others highly amused, regarding it as a
joke; some bought with the set faces of soldiers going over the top;
some looked and looked and then strolled on. Others walked by only to
return with the money ready, hastily stuff the magazine in their
pockets, and move away, trying to seem unconcerned. The majority bought
with the utmost seriousness in the hope that it might solve their
personal problems.
“Jail” was the instant reaction of every new policeman on the beat.
Kitty, who knew she needed no license, would contest the point with him
while a crowd gathered. But few of her arresters were familiar with the
law in the name of which they hauled her off to the station. Time and
again my night’s slumbers were broken to go and bail her out. J.J. was
always able to have the case dismissed, but only after it had been
argued and proved in our favor.
Once Charles Bamberger, the _agent provocateur_ of the Society for the
Suppression of Vice who had brought about Bill Sanger’s arrest, worked
much the same ruse on Kitty. His society was supposedly designed to
promote purity, which was to its members synonymous with good. But in
order to do this they induced people to break the law by appealing to
their deepest human sympathies, a form of trickery not to be condoned by
any moral code.
Bamberger, on repeated visits to Kitty at our office, poignantly
described the condition of his unfortunate wife whose health depended
absolutely on her getting contraceptive information. Anna’s sense, like
Fania Mindell’s, was unfailing in recognizing such decoys; I never went
against it. But in vain did she warn Kitty, who gave him the
information. He had her arrested, and she was not allowed to tell in
court the means by which he had obtained his evidence; she had to serve
a term. Kitty’s sentence did not have adequate publicity, but so violent
was the war temper, that, in view of her German birth, even
well-disposed newspapers practically ignored it.
In addition to selling the _Review_ we tried another experiment in
street propaganda. During the warm evenings of one summer Kitty, Helen
Todd, and I, often accompanied by George Swazey, a friendly Englishman,
proceeded to the neighborhood of St. Nicholas Avenue above 125th Street,
where many white collar families lived. We used to buy a soapbox at the
nearest delicatessen and Helen, who had a lank, swarthy picturesqueness
which attracted attention, mounted it; Swazey, standing behind, held
aloft an American flag. Though not a soul might be in sight except our
little group with its bundles of literature and Kitty with her
_Reviews_, Helen began in her beautiful voice, “Ladies and Gentlemen,”
bowing to the trees, “we welcome you here tonight.” When nobody appeared
she began again. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” and this time one or two
strollers usually lingered. Immediately we raised our pasteboard banners
with “birth control” printed in black letters. She was off in full
swing, and in a few minutes we had our audience.
In the course of our various trials people had sent checks and made
donations to the special Defense Fund account, and we sent anybody who
gave money, no matter how much or how little, a mimeographed report of
all contributors. We had also accepted almost two thousand
paid-in-advance subscriptions, and had therefore incurred an obligation
to continue the _Review_ for twelve months.
One May morning when I put my key in the office door and swung it open,
Anna Lifshiz and I stood and gazed at each other. Only the telephone
perched forlornly on top of a packing box relieved the bare and empty
room—files, furniture, vouchers, checks, and business records were gone.
We still had to supply the subscribers with nine issues more, yet we had
no equipment and not one cent in the bank account of the _Review_.
It was a challenge. We hurried over to Third Avenue and for twenty
dollars refurnished the office. The loss of the contributors’ cards,
however, was irreparable. I could never, in spite of my best efforts,
recover either them or the missing funds.
The strain to finance the _Review_ was so great that after June no more
issues came out until December—the printer trusted us as far as he was
able from month to month. Often the bank account was down to the last
hundred dollars, just enough to hold it open. Yet it might be necessary
to mail letters; the call might be urgent. I was hesitant to spend that
last amount, but I believed faith could bring anything to realization.
Invariably when I operated on that principle and did what I was impelled
to do, money poured in perhaps ten times over. Always we cleaned the
slate at the end of the year.
This was one of the periods of getting roots in and waiting for the
organism to grow, of quiescence before the new beginning and quickening.
I kept going, conscious that with every act I was progressing in accord
with a universal law of evolution—moral evolution but evolution just the
same.
This belief seemed at times to force locked doors. It enabled me to
dictate hundreds of letters, to interview dozens of people, to debate,
or to lecture, all in twenty-four hours. Day after day I attended parlor
meetings, night after night open forums, returning home too tired to
eat, too excited to sleep. Frequently at seven in the morning the
telephone started ringing; somebody wanted to catch me before I left the
house.
For the purpose of having a more solid and substantial basis on which to
operate the _Review_, the New York Women’s Publishing Company was
incorporated in May, 1918; shares were sold at ten dollars each. The
women who gave both monetary and moral support were the wives of
business men who advised them how to conduct this organization in the
proper fashion. Each month Mary Knoblauch opened her charming apartment
for the regular meetings any corporation was required to hold.
The movement can never be disassociated in my mind from Frances
Ackermann, who, at the suggestion of Mabel Spinney of Greenwich House,
came to us as Treasurer. She was exceptionally able and was soon one of
our bulwarks, remaining with us eleven years. Her family was wrapped up
in orthodoxy—church and Wall Street and the status quo in politics—but
Frances’ interests were much broader, and she was not content to lead
the usual type of life ordained by her social and financial standing.
Tall, very thin, wearing her clothes with an air, Frances was one of the
finest persons I have ever known. To her, fair play amounted to a
religion; she was so highly sensitive that she lay awake at night after
merely reading of an injustice done to anybody. To hundreds of
conscientious objectors who were incarcerated during the War because of
pacifist or strike activities she sent cigarette money, magazines,
stationery—always anonymously—assisting their families and suggesting
plans for their own futures. Her death was not only a blow to us but a
blow to any endeavor that was seeking understanding. Many lifers who
depended on her for brightening luxuries must now wonder what has become
of her.
In 1920 Anne Kennedy came to help boost the circulation of the _Review_
and gain further financial aid for it. She was a Californian with wide
club experience, and had two children. Fair, in her thirties, cheerful,
and a good mixer, she was most maternal-looking with her soft gray hair
and sweet face; you felt you could lay your head on her bosom and tell
her the story of your life.
The incorporation had heralded a new trend wherein we could have a
recognized policy. When the _Review_ had first been started I had had to
beg authors to write. Free speech was their favorite theme, and their
pieces were inferior, but they were the only things I could fall back
upon. I used to ask possible contributors, “Don’t you agree that these
poor mothers should have no more babies?”
“Of course, but where’s there any article in that?”
Then I had to suggest ideas, show them how to link these up with larger
sociological aspects, until they began to cast into the arena legal,
medical, eugenic compositions. The material on free speech continued to
come in, but we did not need to print it any longer.
Incidentally, we now secured second-class mailing privileges. Soon
afterwards I happened to be talking to a cousin who worked in the Post
Office, a very young boy in his early twenties, who kept assailing me
with questions about the _Review_. I could not understand his
unprecedented interest, and asked, “Why are you so curious?”
“Well, I’m the official reader. It’ll save my having to wade through
every issue if you’ll tell me ahead of time just what your policy’s
going to be.”
“Do you make the decisions?”
“That’s my job. If any seem objectionable I send them on to Washington.”
I was horrified to find this adolescent in a position which permitted
him to pass judgment on such serious matters, but I was able to reassure
him; the course we had adopted would in no way interfere with retaining
our second-class mailing privileges.
Many of the buyers of the _Review_ had been disappointed because it
contained no practical information. “I have your magazine. All in there
is true but what I want to know is how not to have another baby next
year.” Thousands of letters were sent out explaining that the _Review_
could not print birth control information. Nevertheless, some of the
appeals, particularly from women who lived on lonely, remote farms, were
so heart-rending that I simply had to furnish them copies of _Family
Limitation_, though urging them to go to their physicians.
Every once in a while I had a telephone message to come down to the Post
Office at an appointed hour. I did so, wondering and uncertain. Was the
interview to be about the _Review_, _Family Limitation_, or what?
The official in the legal department whom I always saw, fatherly though
not old, used to say, “Now, Mrs. Sanger, you’re still violating the law
by sending your pamphlet through the mails. If you keep this up they’ll
put you in jail again.”
I objected, “The Government and I had this out years ago. The Federal
case was dismissed.”
“It never can be settled while we get these protests.”
To prove the Post Office was not having such an easy time of it, he
pulled open a drawer and inside was a little pile of pamphlets and
letters from religious fanatics, self-constituted moralists of one kind
or another, women as well as men, who had received their copies and then
complained. He showed me envelopes addressed to the Governor of New
York, to the President of the United States. I studied the handwriting
to see whether I could recognize it as identical with any that had come
to me. Perhaps the postmark was Wichita, Kansas; there could not be many
from a town of that size, and presently I remembered the request. It was
a shattering thing to see that drawer. I had been earnestly trying to
aid despairing mothers, and had been betrayed.
“Here’s this proof against you, Mrs. Sanger. What are you going to do
about it?”
“Nothing. As long as these women ask me to help them, I’m going to do
so.”
I intended to continue to the limit of my resources whether or not I had
help from those whom I had originally counted upon. In order to make
women’s clubs feel the need as I did I had often gone miles at my own
expense to present a topic that had taken me years to prepare and then
had had to express it to the accompaniment of the clatter of dishes or
the stirring of spoons in after-dinner coffees. The members had seemed
to have their minds on hot rolls or had been fidgeting to get on to the
bridge tables. Sometimes a few, who had come to dabble in
sentimentality, had experienced a pleasant emotional response, “Oh, the
poor things,” but that had been as far as it had gone.
The continued apathy of such organizations disappointed me intensely;
the desire to build up a structure appeared to dominate them all. I had
lost faith in their sincerity, respect for their courage, and at this
time had no reason to anticipate assistance from them. To upbraid,
accuse, or censure them for not doing what I had hoped was useless, but
I resolved that I was never again going to talk to them, and, when it
seemed necessary that they be addressed, I sent others to do it.
My nervousness ahead of lectures continued to be akin to illness. All
through the years it has been like a nightmare even to think of a
pending speech. I promised enthusiastically to go here or there, and
then tried to forget it. The morning it was to be delivered I awakened
with a panicky feeling which grew into a sort of terror if I allowed
myself to dwell on it. It was fatal to eat before a meeting.
Some people can keep an audience rocking with laughter and yet get over
a message. But I cannot. Seldom do my hearers have anything merry from
me. Advisers often say, “Lighten up your subject.” I have always
resented this; I am the protagonist of women who have nothing to laugh
at.
Heywood Broun once remarked that I had no sense of humor. I was
surprised at him, but I could understand his statement in a way; he had
been at only a few meetings as chairman and I had been serious to the
point of deadliness, purposely bringing forth laborious facts and
dramatic statistics. I was grasping at an opportunity to reach his
audience because, whenever he was moved by anything deeply, he wrote a
story in his column which by reason of its effective irony and smooth
prose swayed others to the same extent.
I have had much fun, although it may have penetrated only to the
intimate circle of friends. Once after giving what I thought was a very
up-to-date, spirited talk at the Waldorf-Astoria, a dear old lady, at
least in her middle eighties, tottered towards me with the aid of a cane
and in trembling voice quavered, “I have traveled across the country to
hear you speak, Miss Sangster. My mother used to read your poems to me
when I was a little girl, and I feel this is a great day for me to be
able to clasp your hand.” She had confused me with the poetess, Margaret
E. Sangster, who in the mid-Nineteenth Century had been a regular
contributor to religious magazines.
Inevitably I have been constantly torn between my compulsion to do this
work and a haunting feeling that I was robbing my children of time to
which they were entitled. Back in 1913 I had had some vague notion of
being able to spend all my summers with them at Provincetown. That
visionary hope had been immediately dissipated because too many painters
began to discover it and the place became littered with easels and
smocks. Gene O’Neill’s plays were being produced on the wharf opposite
Mary Heaton Vorse’s house, and these brought many more people. I wanted
to get away even further, and so did Jack Reed, who had also sought
sanctuary there. A real estate agent took him to near-by Truro where the
feet of New Yorkers had not yet trod, and I was invited to come along.
We saw a little house on a little hill, one of the most ancient in the
village. Below it the Pamet River wound like a silver ribbon to the
ocean. An old sea captain had squared and smoothed and fitted the
timbers, brought them up from the Carolinas in a sailing vessel, and
fastened them tightly together with wooden pegs. The kitchen was bright
and warm, and seemed as though many cookies and pies had been baked in
it.
Jack bought the cottage, but he was never able to live there. As a staff
correspondent of the _Metropolitan Magazine_ he was dashing from the
Colorado Fuel and Iron strike to the European War and back again to New
York. In 1917, knowing I, too, had looked at it with longing eyes, he
asked whether I would like to buy it; he was starting for Russia the
next day and had to have ready money. By a lucky chance I had just
received a check for a thousand dollars in payment for some Chicago
lectures. We exchanged check and deed. He left the next day for the land
of promise whither Bill Haywood, his friend, had already gone and whence
neither was to return.
Big Bill, who had steadily advocated resistance to conscription, had
been arrested and freed on bail furnished by Jessie Ashley. She had
forfeited it gladly to have him safely out of the country. I had had a
long talk with him before he had made up his mind definitely to leave.
The conversation brought back to me the picture of the times he and I
had walked up and down the Cape Cod sands and he had given me such good
counsel about not jeopardizing the happiness of the children.
Those who had opposed Bill for his “hands in the pocket” advice at the
Paterson strike were the same who were opposing his jumping his bail.
Since the day we had together visited the C.G.T. meetings in Paris, Bill
had come to see the virtues of expediency; that, rather than languish in
jail where he could accomplish no useful purpose, a revolutionary
should, if he could, exile himself. “He who fights and runs away, will
live to fight another day.” This, according to the American idea, was
cowardice—you should stay and be a martyr. But to Bill it was now merely
shortsighted. He had concluded that the average worker when he went in
for rioting and hand-to-hand combat was beaten before he had begun. He
realized the workers had been split by the War; they had not united and
stood up against conscription with any backbone. They could not as yet
be depended upon as a force, but some day he hoped to return and
reorganize them.
Truro provided the children with three carefree months every summer in
what still seems to me one of the most beautiful spots in the world. For
several years I hung on to this dream of being with them constantly, but
it was only a dream. I used to go down to open the house and perhaps
snatch a week or so there before being obliged to hurry back, but father
and my sister Nan were good foster-parents. This house was eventually to
burn as had the one in Hastings; fate seemed to decree I should not be
tempted to slip back into peaceful domesticity.
Nor did I have all those hoped for years of watching the boys grow from
one stage to another. I had had to analyze the situation—either to keep
them at home under the supervision of servants who might perhaps be
incompetent, and to have no more than the pleasure of seeing them safely
to bed, or else to sacrifice my maternal feelings and put them in
country schools directed by capable masters where they could lead a
healthy, regular life. Having come to this latter decision I sent them
off fairly young, and thereafter could only visit them over week-ends or
on the rare occasions when I was speaking in the vicinity. If the desire
to see them grew beyond control, I took the first train and received the
shock of finding them thoroughly contented in the companionship they had
made for themselves; after the initial excitement of greeting had passed
away they ran off again to their games.
At times the homesickness for them seemed too much to bear; especially
was this true in the Fourteenth Street studio. When I came in late at
night the fire was dead in the grate, the book open on the table, the
glove dropped on the floor, the pillow rumpled on the sofa—all the
same—just as I had left them a day, a week, or a month before. That
first chill of loneliness was always appalling. I wanted, as a child
does, to be like other people; I wanted to be able to sink gratefully
into the warmth and glow of a loving family welcome.
The winter of 1917–18 was particularly hard; the snow drifted high and
lasted long, and it took forced cheer to keep your spirits up. Dr. Mary
Halton assured me that with ceaseless financial worry, inadequate rest,
incessant traveling, improper nourishment, I could not survive long.
When, therefore, a publisher asked me for a book on labor problems, I
snatched ten-year-old Grant out of school and set off for California,
taking a small place at Coronado where I sat myself down for three
months to write and to get acquainted with my son.
I loved the sunshine. It was a pleasure to be out-of-doors, to have
peace and quiet and the leisure to arrange my thoughts and put them on
paper. I had no inclination towards a labor book, but thoroughly enjoyed
letting loose my pent-up feelings on _Woman and the New Race_. It was
good to classify reasons and set them in order. My opinions did emerge,
and it was a great release.
I was vividly reminded of prison one day when Grant came home from the
school he was attending, both his eyes pretty dirty-looking. I asked him
why he had been fighting.
“I don’t want to tell you.”
“I’d like to know.”
“Well, this boy told all the fellows my mother’d been in jail.”
“What did you do?”
“I hit him, and he hit me back. He said, ‘Your mother’s a jailbird,’ and
I said, ‘She’s not.’ Then another fellow said, ‘My mother says your
mother went to jail too.’”
Grant had replied, “That wasn’t my mother, that was another Margaret
Sanger.”
“How could you say that, Grant? You know it wasn’t true.”
“Mother,” he replied profoundly, “you could never make those fellows
understand.”
_Chapter Twenty-one_
THUS TO REVISIT
The event of my visit to London in 1920 was the beginning of my
friendship with H. G. Wells. There was no aloofness or coldness in
approaching him, no barriers to break down as with most Englishmen; his
twinkling eyes were like those of a mischievous boy. I was pleased to
find he had no beard and no white hair, because it seemed to me I had
heard of him since I had begun to think at all.
Wells had ranged every field of knowledge, had dared to invade the
sacrosanct precincts of the historian, the economist, and the scientist
and, though a layman in these fields, had used his extraordinary gifts
to interpret the past and present and even prophesy the future; in novel
after novel he had shocked England by championing women’s right to a
freer life.
We in the United States were just beginning to be affected by
sociological concepts; only Henry George and Edward Bellamy had
previously opened up this new world of the imagination. Now here was
Wells giving a fresh picture of what could be if man had an ideal system
of society that was workable. At Columbia Colony he had been quoted
repeatedly. On my lecture tour in 1916 his name had been on everybody’s
lips, and he had signed the letter to President Wilson protesting
against the Federal indictment. I believed he had influenced the
American intelligentsia more than any other one man.
For good reason countless faithful friends had attached themselves to
Wells, and he included in his varied, intricate, and unpredictable
personality a capacity for loyally loving both individuals and humanity.
People who had never met Wells always thought they knew him best,
especially Londoners. I was stopping with three maiden sisters in
Hampstead Gardens, and a great furor arose as soon as it was known in
the household that Mrs. Wells had sent me an invitation for what was to
be my first week-end at Easton Glebe in Essex. What was I to wear? Was I
going to take the blue net or the flowered chiffon? They were greatly
disappointed when I carried only a small bag in which there was no room
for fluffy evening gowns.
Wells himself was waiting on the platform at Dunmow Station, and we
drove in his little car, called the Pumpkin, to Easton Glebe, a part of
the Warwick Estate on which he held a life lease. The former rectory was
built of old stone, ivy-covered; lovely lawns were spread around it.
Early morning tea was served in your room, shoes put out at night were
properly polished, hot water was plentiful for your bath, and extra
pitchers were brought with towels wrapped around carefully to keep in
the steam.
During the course of the next two days I realized more than ever before
how sensitive H.G. was to the slightest intonation. To be with him meant
you had to be on the alert every second lest you miss something of him.
He could be amusing, witty, sarcastic, brilliant, flirtatious, and yet
profound at once, all in his thin, small voice, speaking high up into
the roof of his mouth, as do many English, instead of back in the throat
as we do.
I returned Monday evening about midnight to my room at Hampstead, having
spent the day in town seeing people. But no sooner had I closed the door
than steps pattered in the hallway and a soft hand tapped. In came the
three ladies, hair in braids, warmly and most modestly swathed in
voluminous, white cotton nighties, long-sleeved and tight around the
neck. They had stayed wide-awake to hear all about my week-end. I told
them as much as I could remember of the place and the stimulating fellow
guests, one in particular with whom I had been having an interesting
discussion. When I had finished the eldest leaned forward and
hesitatingly but loudly whispered, “Did he try to kiss you?”
“What? Who?” I asked, having in mind the man I had just been praising.
“Why—why—don’t you know?”
“Know what?”
She looked a little abashed at this, and another voice explained
apologetically, “Sister means that Wells has a magnetic influence over
women!”
“Was he fascinating?” the youngest eagerly took up the catechism.
For two solid hours I was bombarded with questions; H.G. was the Don
Juan of spinsterhood in England. That there was a Mrs. Wells for whom
Mr. Wells cared deeply did not matter in the least to them.
I wish I could do justice to Jane, as Catherine Wells was affectionately
called. This devoted mother, perfect companion, was the complete
helpmate, managing H.G.’s finances, reading the proofs of his books,
seeing that all editions were up-to-date, letting no publisher be
delinquent in his royalties. She did not pretend to be a Feminist; she
was there to protect him, performing the duties of an English wife
towards her husband and appearing with him so that they might make a
united front to the world. The relationship between them was on a fine
plane.
Although H.G. had told me once “the sun would set if anything ever
happened to Jane” I felt that he had never put her adequately into his
books as the great woman she really was; he was too close to her. After
she died, his touching introduction to _The Book of Catherine Wells_
proved that he realized what she had been in his life.
Jane was always mothering people and looking after their comfort. At a
later time when I happened to be at Easton Glebe, she was distressed and
anxious that I was taking it for granted I had to have an ice-pack on my
neck every night because my tubercular glands were bothering me. She
insisted and insisted something must be done, until finally my tonsils
were removed, the true source of my trouble. I owed this tremendous
relief to Jane’s interest, which would not let me go on being sick.
The gay wit and gift for mimicry were not confined to H.G. alone. On one
of my visits I was shown a new bathroom, and we viewed solemnly the
tiny, almost microscopic, tub. Jane was slight and small, and I was
quite sure it was meant for her and not for H.G.’s rotund frame. She
maintained, however, it had been installed for his convenience, and made
funny suction noises as though a large and deep well were being pumped
dry. I was hilarious, but he, pretending to be irritated, yet laughing
too, growled at her, “What are you trying to do? Make my bathing an
international joke?”
The little things H.G. said, many of them jibes at himself, were always
amusing. Even more so were the drawings with which he decorated his
letters. If he did not want to go somewhere he might perhaps illustrate
his reluctance by picturing himself being dragged off, or, if he desired
the absence rather than the presence of a person at a meeting, he would
portray him being pushed out unceremoniously. These ingenious
caricatures allowed many subtleties which even he would not like to put
into words over his own signature.
Jane was unsurpassed when it came to charades, and never minded having
the house turned upside down in the search for properties. But the Wells
family did not have to depend upon orthodox pastimes; they often made up
their own. H.G. had invented a ball game which was played Sunday
mornings in a barn made over into a sort of indoor court. Unlike tennis,
many could take part at once and the sport was so exhausting that when
they finished they were usually dripping with perspiration. I did not
play; other novices seemed to be doing badly enough without me. If you
did not feel up to anything so strenuous, you could take a short walk
through the charming garden which Jane had so lovingly arranged, or a
long one through the woods, by the lakes, or bordering the streams of
the Warwick Estate, of which H.G. had free use. Every season had its
different aspects of beauty.
Sunday afternoons and evenings were especially merry. The atmosphere at
Easton Glebe was like nothing else, something that does not exist here,
where the elders have their bridge and their conversation and the young
go dancing or to the movies. There, all ages mixed together in fun, in
laughter. The two sons, Frank and “Gyp,” who were then at Cambridge,
might bring from ten to fifteen friends home for tea, a great function
over which Jane so graciously presided. The maids went out after setting
the table for supper and preparing cold meats on the buffet, and the
party then took care of itself, everybody serving everybody else. The
boys were full of devilment and it was most uproarious.
I often wondered how the unexpected arrivals were provided for, but Jane
was a remarkable hostess; I have known her to have a houseful at Easton
Glebe for lunch and give a brilliant dinner in London that same evening.
Every guest was planned for, no one was ever huddled with another,
appropriate games were produced or friends invited who might be
interesting or helpful. When they were ready to leave, all were put on
the most convenient trains and returned to town with as little trouble
to themselves as possible.
From 1920 on I never went to England without spending part of the time
with H.G., and many of the most attractive people I met were at Easton
Glebe. I always came away enriched by these contacts and the talks we
had together. Conversation was a combination of current topics, science,
philosophy, history. The English might not have had the same light
flippancy or such a scattered fund of information as the average
American, who usually qualified his statements with, “I read that—” or
“I know someone who—,” but they did speak out of their own experience.
Furthermore, they could toss the ball of repartee back and forth
objectively and not become irritated or let creep into their voices that
personal note which implied they had now settled the whole thing.
Each one at Easton Glebe had his turn in the spotlight; it was never a
monologue, which a man in H.G.’s position might have made it. No subject
could be mentioned that he did not have its complete history and a
definite opinion on it as well, including Neo-Malthusianism in all its
implications.
These week-ends were inspiration and recreation. The serious duty which
called me to England was lecturing. The Neo-Malthusian League had few
speakers at that time to address women audiences, and wished me to test
out the response to their propaganda.
English public sentiment on birth control had vastly changed since I had
been there in 1915, largely because Marie Stopes’ book had had such wide
circulation during the after-War period; her voice had made articulate
the feelings of the millions of unemployed. That people now knew what
birth control meant was due in part also to Harold Cox, one of the
finest orators of his generation, who had been the first to point out
that its condemnation by medical men and Anglican clergy should carry
little weight, because the birth rates among them were lower than those
of almost any other classes. Notable exceptions who had come out
favorably were Sir James Barr, ex-President of the British Medical
Association, Dr. C. Killick Millard, Health Officer of Leicester in the
North, Dean Inge of St. Paul’s, and the Bishop of Birmingham, who was
Chairman of the English National Birth Rate Commission; England was
accustomed to clarifying new and controversial subjects by such bodies,
summoning experts to testify.
Dr. Alice Vickery arranged for me to give a series of talks, many before
lower middle-class workers’ wives who belonged to the Women’s
Co-operative Guild. In different districts of London they came together,
paying their little bit, perhaps sixpence a month, to listen to
speakers, afterwards serving tea and conversing in a friendly way among
themselves. Though their economic uncertainty made them resigned to
having ten or twelve children, the fact that the Guild had just brought
out a book describing some of the tragic cases of its own members and
the deaths from over-childbearing helped to pave the way.
Of all the slums I visited in trams, on buses, via the Underground, the
one of worst repute at the time was the dockyards section of
Rotherhithe. I held a small demonstration clinic there—in a sense the
first of its kind in England. The eager women who came, amazingly
ignorant of any possible beauty in marriage, were envious of a few in
the community who, though the fathers were receiving no higher wages
than their own husbands, had had only two or three children and
consequently could afford to send them to the trade school. They
themselves were, if not sliding backward, at least no more than holding
their own, but those few families were definitely on the way up in the
social scale. And it had all come to pass because Dr. Vickery and Anne
Martin, a friend of hers who had labored there for two decades as a
social worker, had given some contraceptive information about ten years
earlier.
Although Dr. Vickery had on numerous occasions raised the question of
birth control before gatherings bent on other matters, it fell to my lot
to discuss it first as a public health issue. I was told I might have
three minutes to address a national health Conference on Maternal and
Infant Welfare to be held at Brighton. Considering the four hours
required in transit this might seem a short time, but I was happy to
have even as much as that. So I went.
With the prospect of reaching university students I traveled to
Cambridge. In the midst of the weathered spires, the ivied halls, and
the storied dignity of Trinity and Kings, Noel Porter and his wife,
Bevan, had converted an old public house, The Half Moon, into a home,
yet had managed to keep its original atmosphere of convivial
hospitality. The tap-room had once opened directly on Little St. Mary’s
Lane; now the bar had been removed, but the ancient sign still swung
back and forth and the smoky ceilings and mildewed paneling were the
same as when former generations had congregated there over mugs of ale.
Opposite was a tiny, old-fashioned graveyard, no longer used, and I went
out there and let the sun beat against my aching back. It was amusing to
have to resort to a cemetery for privacy, but the house was constantly
filled with hatless students coming and going through the enormous
downstairs room which served as rendezvous for all. In the afternoons
these youths on the threshold of manhood came to talk over the questions
which were perplexing them; in the evenings they had little meetings, at
one of which I spoke.
Guy Aldred, who was in Scotland, had planned my schedule there, and I
had three weeks of a Scottish summer—bluebells so thick in spots that
the ground was azure, long twilights when the lavender heather faded the
hills into purple.
When I had been in Glasgow before, I had encountered only officials, but
on this occasion I met the people in their homes and found them quite
opposite to the stingy, tight-fisted, middle-class stereotype. They were
hospitable, generous, mentally alert, just as witty as the Irish and in
much the same way, which rather surprised me.
Fourth of July, Sunday, we had a noon meeting on the Glasgow Green.
Nearly two thousand shipyard workers in caps and baggy corduroys stood
close together listening in utter, dead stillness without cough or
whisper. That evening I spoke in a hall under Socialist auspices, Guy
Aldred acting as chairman. One old-timer said he had been a party member
for eleven years, attending Sunday night lectures regularly, but never
before had he been able to induce his wife to come; tonight he could not
keep her home. “Look!” he cried in amazement. “The women have crowded
the men out of this hall. I never saw so many wives of comrades before.”
The men were there, partly through curiosity to hear the American and
partly through interest in the subject, ready to fight the ancient
battle of Marx against Malthus. Efforts of the English Neo-Malthusians
to introduce birth control to the masses had been hampered not only by
the opposition of the upper classes, but more especially by the
persistent hostility of the orthodox Socialists.
Marx, dealing with problems after they had arisen, had taught that any
reform likely to dull the edge of poverty was bad for Socialism because
it made labor less dissatisfied. It followed that if a man had to fight
for the hungers and necessities of ten or twelve children, he made a
better revolutionary. “Let ’em have as many as they can,” was the cry.
On the other hand, if birth control were practiced by the working
classes, the wage earner who could support two children and knew how not
to have more was going to be content and would not struggle against
conditions of economic insecurity. Hence he was likely to forget “the
Revolution.”
Knowing that the Scotch took mental notes of items on which to debate, I
had tried to prepare myself well, and I produced the unanswerable
argument to this theory. “Why do you demand higher wages then,” I asked,
“when what you really want is privation? If misery is your weapon you
should not insist on an eight-hour day but on a twelve- or fourteen-hour
one. You should pile up your grievances, and pile them up higher.
However, in spite of your best efforts I believe your hunger-revolution
will, as it has always done, capitulate to whatever force or government
will fill your stomachs.”
Socialists, like anarchists and syndicalists, were used to contesting
Malthusianism on economic grounds, but, unlike the others, they had as a
part of their platform the freedom of woman. I pointed out that she
could have the sort of freedom they desired for her right here and now
through birth control.
When I ended, Guy Aldred asked, “Now are there any questions?” After a
few somewhat irrelevant ones, silence fell; confronted by their own
philosophy they could see it. One man finally rose, “We’d like to hear
what the Chairman thinks of all this. Does he believe birth control will
do what the lady speaker claims for it?” Apparently they were waiting
for their cue. But Guy Aldred was not to be drawn. After giving him an
opportunity to express himself they plunged in and said their say. Even
some women who had never been on their feet before got up to tell
dramatic, vivid, personal stories.
The next day I was on my way to a town not far from Dunfermline, Andrew
Carnegie’s birthplace. I arrived about four o’clock in a driving storm,
lacking both umbrella and raincoat. No taxi had ever graced the railroad
station, and we trudged through the rain to the cottage of one of the
“most advanced friends of labor.” I was soaking wet up to the knees. A
hurry-call was sent to neighbors for dry clothing, but among that
population of five thousand not a single woman had an extra skirt to
lend, and only after long search was a new pair of Sunday shoes
forthcoming.
Because there was not an inn within miles, I slept that night with my
hostess in the one bed the house contained; the husband stretched
himself out on two chairs in the kitchen. Since Sylvia Pankhurst had
been similarly accommodated just a few months before, I knew I was
having the best the village afforded.
The inhabitants had been dispatched from Lancashire factory towns during
the War for special munitions work, and here they had stayed and made
their homes. Practically all had been apprenticed to the mills at the
age of eight or nine. Girls, because they were destined for marriage and
therefore needed no education, had worked ten or twelve hours a day
throughout their adolescence, and even after their weddings up to the
time pregnancy was well advanced. As a result, the young mothers, who
had never, from childhood to maturity, had a chance to become rested and
get the fatigue out of their systems, had apparently transmitted their
weariness to their children; the firstborn were sleepy, inert, and
always tired. A doctor told me it was common for boys and girls of five,
six, and seven to fall asleep at their school desks and have to be
awakened.
When I had arrived in England I had gone to see Havelock in the quaint
old Cornwall village where he was living alone since Edith’s death.
Winding pathways, well-trodden and embraced on either side by rambling
shrubbery and verbena, led from his house to the sea hundreds of feet
below. The waves dashed continuously against the crags and rocks, and
thousands of gulls shrieked or sailed majestically almost in front of my
eyes.
We had then talked about going to Ireland where I could make a foray
into my own genealogy. Mother’s ancestors at some stage had been the
same as Edward Fitzgerald’s and I thought I might find some of the
places from which they had sprung. I had no exact information—just
tradition from childhood days. Now, after my strenuous lecturing, I
needed a brief holiday, and Havelock also wanted a vacation; so we
joined forces.
My primary purpose was frustrated because after half a century nobody in
any of the little villages seemed to know anything definite. At
Glengariff they said, “Sure, and I thought it was Killarney your
grandfather was born in.” But at Killarney I was told, “Oh, it was Cork
your family came from. My grandmother knew them very well.”
More difficult to surmount than the vague discursiveness of these good
people was the Sinn Fein Rebellion, in the thick of which we found
ourselves. The night before we reached Cork there had been a raid and
the leaders were in hiding. Everywhere we went we could sense a subtle,
surreptitious undercurrent—in the hotels, in the restaurants, among
small, whispering groups which dispersed when any stranger approached.
Ireland had great natural beauty, and I was sorry to see the beginnings
of ugly, modern industrialism cropping up, especially in Cork with the
Ford factory. The mustard-colored kilts of the men astonished me; I had
never known the Irish wore them, but they were trying to bring back
their ancestral dress along with the Gaelic language. Always their
kindness and interest and the sadness in their voices moved me deeply.
They were never too sad, however, to give a quick turn to a phrase. One
morning the tram in which we were riding suddenly stopped. Nobody knew
why; everybody was complaining. Then from a side street came a handful
of Black and Tans with bayonets fixed. I asked the Irishman sitting
beside me, “What does that mean?”
“You should know,” he replied. “Those are Wilson’s Fourteen Pints.”
Havelock was a delightful companion, not loquacious, but keenly
interested in everything, and forever jotting down his copious notes. We
hired a two-wheeled jaunting car in which we sat back to back, and in
this way bumped from Glengariff to Killarney. Occasionally the sun broke
through for half an hour, but it was wet that year—potatoes and hay were
rotting on the ground because the sun did not shine long enough to dry
them.
We arrived at the inn, drenched and sopping. Havelock, with his
typically English dread of a cold, went to bed, but I stayed up talking
with a young woman and three equally young traveling priests—Sinn
Feiners all. We chatted desultorily until I happened to mention I had a
letter to the widow of the hero, Skeffington, who had been killed in the
disturbances.
The company, assuming me to be one with their cause, immediately became
most friendly. The girl began discussing higher education for her sex. I
asked her how she could keep on when she married and had the inevitable
succession of offspring. The priests, somewhat to my surprise, fell in
with my ideas by deploring too large families; some of the older sons
and daughters had to emigrate, and even those who were left could not
care adequately for their parents. It would be better for the Catholic
Church as well as for the world if they could help people to have only a
few children and bring them up decently. I felt hopeful because they
were speaking of birth control as solving some of their own problems;
they were saying exactly what I most wanted them to say.
Several happy days we spent at Killarney, exploring on foot, on
horseback, and in boats. The men who drove the cart or rowed us through
the lakes always knew the old myths of the mountains and poured into our
ears tales of leprechauns and other “little people.” You heard the word
“divil” more than any other. Here the divil, so they told us, had left
his step, there he had run away. The shape of every mountain, the twist
of every stream had their stories.
Wherever we went women, lean and elderly, wearing tiny shoulder shawls
and calico print dresses, fairly started out of the hillsides,
bareheaded, barefooted, complexions like roses, and eyes as blue as the
sky. Yet their faces were hungry and worn. Getting on in years as they
were, they could and did run faster than our ponies. When we spurred
forward they came right along, flattering, cajoling, uttering prayers
and “God bless you’s,” calling on all the saints to preserve you if you
would buy a drop of “Mountain Dew,” which was so good for your health.
If you bought this Irish whiskey from one, another took her place, and,
quite undiscouraged, began again the flow of sales talk.
One of our last days, when the wraiths of the lake dimmed the emerald
hills, we walked to red-bricked Killarney House, to which, as Havelock
said, nature was adding her own wild beauty to the beauty that man had
made.
All of Ireland had seemed draped in mist and sadness and, lovely as it
had been, I never wanted to go back.
_Chapter Twenty-two_
DO YE HEAR THE CHILDREN WEEPING?
After the Irish interlude I was ready to go on to Germany to carry out
the most important objective of my journey abroad. It had become obvious
that progress depended on finding a means of contraception, cheap,
harmless, easily applied. Way back in 1914 Havelock had seen in some of
the last medical journals to come out of Germany an advertisement of a
chemical contraceptive. He had mentioned it to me, and ever since I had
been eager to track it down. In pre-War Germany every advertised product
had been required to live up to the claims made for it; the public must
not be misled. Thus I was convinced that if the notice had stated it was
to prevent conception, the assertion was true. No news of it had come
since the War, and I wished to ascertain whether it was still being
manufactured. Perhaps this formula would be the solution to our problem.
I had a secondary reason also for going to Germany—to investigate the
decline in the birth rate. It was said half the married women had become
barren during the blockade for lack of proper food. I was always looking
for evidence to support and strengthen our arguments, and, consequently,
wanted to discover what had been learned of the relation between
vitamins and fertility.
Berlin was cold and dark when Rose Witcop and I, about eleven at night,
arrived at Neuköln, a special proletarian section of the city. The train
was late, an unusual state of things in efficient Germany, but this was
the period of her greatest disorganization. The telegram which had been
sent to Rose’s sister and brother-in-law, Milly and Rudolph Rocker, had
apparently not been delivered; nobody met us. There were no taxis, no
carriages, no lamps, no lights in the windows to relieve the pitch
blackness. A sleepy, disgruntled porter led us across the street to an
insignificant hotel. He knocked at the door; a head popped out of a
window above. “Two ladies want to stay overnight.” The proprietress said
she could give us nothing to eat, but that we could have a room. We
accepted gladly, climbed up a ladder into the same bed, piled high with
feathered mattresses above and below us, and settled ourselves to
comforting sleep after the long and tiresome journey.
In the morning, refreshed, we took a tram to the Rockers’ small
apartment. Rudolph was a syndicalist, a friend of Portet, and had been
interned in a concentration camp near London during the War. Both Milly
and Rudolph had suffered great privations after their return. But,
although food was very scarce, they were more than prodigal and kind in
sharing with us.
Germany was still no place for casual visitors in 1920. She seemed dead,
crushed, broken. Street traffic, even in a metropolis the size of
Berlin, was slight. I noted particularly the grim silence everywhere;
people had forgotten how to smile. They were thankful for the
Revolution, but it had not brought much relief, and the winter to come
was dreaded. Instead of displaying food or clothing, the windows of shop
after shop on street after street were decorated only with streamers of
colored paper.
Everybody was ravenous for fresh vegetables; money meant nothing, food
everything. I saw old peasant women coming in from the country with bags
of potatoes on their backs. Fifteen minutes after emptying them on to
pushcarts they were sold out. The only fruit to be had were plums, and
that is how I remember it was late summer in Berlin; it is curious how
such memories crop up.
Ordinarily I could go without eating if I had plenty of water, but in
Berlin I found myself haunting grocery stores like a hungry animal,
examining each new article avariciously. I cannot as a rule bear tinned
milk and will not give it to babies, yet here when I saw a can of
American evaporated milk, I found myself viewing it with glowing eyes. I
was disgusted with myself. Nothing satisfied my appetite except eggs,
and these, along with milk, could be purchased only on prescription from
a doctor. Meat was reduced to half a pound a week for each person, but I
had no ration card. A neighbor of the Rockers obtained some bread for me
and gave me her potatoes although she and her three lovely daughters had
only rice as a substitute. I was in tears over her generosity.
For months many families had existed on nothing but turnips. They ate
turnip soup, turnips raw, turnips mashed, turnip salad, turnip coffee,
until their whole systems revolted physically against the sight of
turnips. The contact with other persons in trams, halls, churches, even
streets, was nauseating; in a few minutes the fumes of turnip from their
bodies was so offensive that they became almost unendurable to
themselves.
I went into a two-room home, clean but overflowing with ten children,
five born since the War, starvation horribly stamped on their faces. The
oldest was twelve—still too young to work. The father, a locksmith, had
no job. All were living on a hundred marks received every week from
Government Unemployment Insurance. It was now Saturday, and not one
crumb or morsel remained to tide them over until the next payment on
Monday. They had eaten no breakfast, no dinner, and the father had gone
to the woods to search for mushrooms to keep them alive.
Even men who had employment were working only three days a week,
averaging a hundred and fifty marks for a family, and marks were fifty
to the American dollar. The best food had to be given to them because
they were the earners. Women were the real sufferers; they had to go
without or subsist on what they could scrape together. They nursed their
babies beyond two years to supply milk, and all their time was occupied
in a constant hunt to find nourishment for the older ones.
I heard countless stories from mothers who had been tortured by watching
their children slowly starve to death—pinched faces growing paler, eyes
more listless, heads drooping lower day by day until finally they did
not even ask for food. You saw a tiny thing playing on the street
suddenly run to a tree or fence and lean against it while he coughed and
had a hemorrhage. Others like him were dying of tuberculosis from lack
of eggs, butter, and milk—so many cows had been sent to France. Yet they
came up to me and offered to sell their prescriptions thinking that I,
as a foreigner, had money to buy them; they themselves had none for
these luxuries.
The old-fashioned warrior who entered with the sword and killed his
victims outright had my respect after witnessing the “peace conditions”
of Germany.
The Quaker food stations admitted only children who were ill and only
mothers who were more than seven months pregnant or who were nursing
babies less than four months old. The spectacle of one of these women
bringing two or three of her brood, not sick enough to be regularly fed,
to share her own soup was too sad and overwhelming to bear. Those in
charge of the distribution wanted each mother herself to eat for the
benefit of her unborn child or nursing infant, and were already crowded
to capacity, feeding three and four hundred at a time on cocoa and rolls
made from white flour. But they could not bring themselves to exclude
the little scarecrows with large, starry eyes, pipestem legs, and hands
from which the flesh had fallen until they were like claws. On one of my
visits the “sister” had them stand up and then asked, “Where have you
been?”
“To America,” they chorused.
“What have you to say?”
“We love America. We thank America.”
I did not instantly comprehend, but it was explained to me that they
called the station _Amerika_ in token of their gratitude.
To account for the sorry state in which they found themselves the
Germans were groping to fix the blame either within their country or on
some foreign power. All seemed of the opinion that had the United States
not entered the War, none would have been victor and none vanquished;
this, they said, would have meant a lasting peace. Yet they felt little
animosity towards us. What there was had been largely wiped out by the
aid of the Hoover Commission. Furthermore, they still hoped we might be
an influence in loosening the Treaty chains which kept them helpless and
bound. When I asked them why they had accepted the humiliating terms at
Versailles of which they complained so bitterly, they replied they had
been told that, had they not done so, vast territories which supposedly
had been mined would have been blown up and huge populations would have
been annihilated.
The military party accused the Socialists of having stabbed them in the
back and brought about defeat through the leadership of such pacifists
as Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who had paid with their lives;
the Socialists and workers regretted they had not united with Russia
and, combining their own scientific and technical knowledge with her raw
materials, conquered the world and thus molded all civilization to their
ideals.
Both classes sincerely believed that France wanted to destroy them
utterly. I saw something of the reason for their feeling one day when a
tram stopped to let off passengers, and a French automobile filled with
French officers, instead of halting the prescribed number of feet away,
plowed right through, knocking down two people and never even pausing to
see what havoc it had created. The spectators gazed at the bodies lying
there waiting for the ambulance. They did not dare shake their fists,
but anyone could tell from the pitch of their voices, their expressions
of passion and anger, how bitter was their resentment.
The women broke down all the reserves of my emotion. They had been at
one time the most advanced in Europe, politically, economically, and
socially, and, although they had had to work harder at the gymnasiums
than the men because higher marks had been required of them, they had
been really on a par. But now a frightful retrogression had occurred.
Working women had been forced down to a state beside the lower animals;
they had become drudges in the fields in place of draft horses. I saw
one who could not have been past twenty-five carrying a huge basket of
vegetables strapped to her back, the weight of which threw her forward
so that I expected any minute to see her go on all fours.
An impressive and tragic poster by Käthe Kollwitz was displayed on
various corners. It showed a woman with head thrown back, eyes closed,
arms crossed over breast, and was captioned simply, “Waiting.” The human
figures you saw on the streets looked out of eyes dried by suffering and
deepened by hunger. They had no faith, no hope, no philosophy; they were
resigned to love or hatred, peace or war, a living death or a sudden
end.
Throughout Europe, governments were clamoring for bigger populations;
France was offering bonuses for large families. “Our babies are dying;
give us more babies.” Among European labor groups only the syndicalists
of France had recognized excessive population as detrimental to the
working classes.
The deficiency in Germany of two million lives sacrificed in the War had
been made up by the thousands returned from Alsace-Lorraine, from the
former province of Posen, and the deportees from England, France, and
Italy. There were not nearly enough positions to go round. Yet the
nationalists, who had tried to cover the bitter pill of imperialistic
ambitions with a sugar-coating of patriotism, still estimated the world
in terms of numerical greatness and women as mere machines in the cradle
competition of human production. Even the German Socialists, following
in the footsteps of Marx, opposed Malthusianism vigorously in and out of
season.
A Neo-Malthusian congress had been held in Dresden in 1912, but the
movement then organized by Maria Stritt had practically gone out of
existence and its place taken by a more popular demand for the right to
abortion. For a single year the statistics of Berlin indicated that out
of forty-four thousand known pregnancies twenty-three thousand were
terminated by this means, though it was technically illegal. Women were
now campaigning for a bill before the Reichstag to permit operations to
be performed lawfully in hospitals, where fatalities could be reduced by
proper sanitary care. Not one of those with whom I talked believed in
abortion as a practice; it was the principle for which they were
standing. They were resolved to have no more babies for cannon fodder,
nor until they could rear them properly.
Most of the doctors whom I interviewed said that what Germany needed was
children and lots of them. I asked one if the medical profession, as a
whole, were doing anything to prevent entrance into the world of those
children whose backs were so weak that they could never sit up straight,
whose bones were too soft to hold the weight of their bodies. He
answered abruptly, “By aborting the mothers we are doing our best to
cope with conditions as we find them. It is not our work to change
them.”
I was hounding everybody to learn the whereabouts of the contraceptive
formula for which I was searching, and was finally given the name of a
gynecologist who should know, if anybody did, where it could be found. I
made an appointment, and he greeted me in the most cordial way. When I
questioned him about the reported sterility of German women, he agreed
with the argument that, the situation being what it was in the country,
the population should be checked for the next five years. “Here is a
friend indeed,” I said to myself.
I then gently brought up the subject of abortion. “Doesn’t this seem a
ridiculous substitute for contraceptives?”
The doctor rose, his chest sticking out; he buttoned his coat, bowed
formally, and inquired, “Where did you say you came from?”
“New York City.”
“Are you sure you are not from France or Belgium?”
“Certainly not.”
“Nobody who has the welfare of Germany at heart could talk to me as you
have this morning. Only enemies could come here to give such information
to our women.”
I wished he would sit down; he made me nervous. But I went on. “Why is
it such an act of enmity to advocate contraceptives rather than
abortions? Abortions, as you know yourself, may be quite dangerous,
whereas reliable contraceptives are harmless. Why do you oppose them?”
To my horror he replied, “We will never give over the control of our
numbers to the women themselves. What, let them control the future of
the human race? With abortions it is in our hands; we make the
decisions, and they must come to us.”
That was not the tone of this doctor alone but also that of most of his
confrères.
Thinking that Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld might know about the formula,
Havelock had given me a letter to him, and I presented it at the
Institute of Sex Psychology, where abnormalities were being studied and
treated. This most extraordinary mansion, bestowed by a prince of
Bavaria who had himself been cured of inversion by Dr. Hirschfeld, was
furnished sumptuously. On the walls of the stairway were pictures of
homosexuals—men decked out as women in huge hats, earrings, and feminine
make-up; also women in men’s clothing and toppers. Further up the steps
were photographs of the same individuals after they had been brought
back to normality, some of them through adaptation of the Voronoff
experiments in the transplantation of sex glands. It was not a place I
particularly liked, although I was interested to see how a problem which
had cropped up everywhere in the post-War confusion was being attacked.
Dr. Hirschfeld was kind and gave me the address of a firm in Dresden
which he believed might be manufacturing the formula, so off I went to
that city. It was memorable for my meeting with Maria Stritt, a darling
little old lady, as quaint in her way as Dr. Vickery in hers. This tiny
aristocrat, like one of the dolls for which her city was famous, had a
fine vigorous mind, and spoke English with care and a better choice of
words than most Americans. Again I made the rounds of the doctors and
again found none concerned over birth control; I went to the address
where the formula was supposed to be, only to be directed on to Munich.
Munich, to me the most lovely city in Germany, seemed the most
prosperous of any I had visited. I noticed a difference immediately; the
streets were cleaner, the people less hungry-looking. There was more
food, more clothing in the shops, and much greater activity. It had
always been synonymous in my mind with music and _Liebfraumilch_, and I
was delighted to be asked to dine at a hotel which I was told was the
smartest and gayest in town. “Oh, we envy you. You’ll have dancing,
you’ll have wine, you’ll have everything.” But it turned out to be a
night club in the most blatant New York style, one table elbowing
another, the people—Germans, not tourists—dancing to last year’s jazz,
the whole place shrieking nouveaux riches. This, too, was part of
post-War life.
Bavarian _Gemütlichkeit_ could not be altogether downed. On Saturdays
the trams were literally jammed with men and women, young and old, who
had put on their climbing clothes, donned their packs, and here hieing
themselves away to near-by resorts or to the hills. With them went their
guitars or accordions, and when the singing began everybody knew all the
words—no tum-de-tum-de-tum. If they did not have their own instruments
there was sure to be a wandering musician to play, and the floors of
every hostelry or open-air _Biergarten_ were literally filled with
whirling, waltzing figures. Everyone seemed able to enter into the folk
dances, although to me they appeared complicated—many steps, much
precision, and a great deal of dignity.
Hunger and poverty existed in plenty, however, in the city. Hospitals
were lacking in the simplest and most ordinary articles—no soap, no
cod-liver oil, no rubber sheets, insufficient clean linen. Even the
babies had to lie all day in wet diapers, and consequently the poor
little waifs were a sad, miserable lot. Another tragic thing which gave
me nightmare for weeks was to see children’s mouths covered with running
sores, because the sole available meat and milk came from cattle
suffering with hoof-and-mouth disease.
Here at Munich the “birth strike” was most violent. The former medical
chief of the Communists told me the women of Bavaria were determined to
stop having babies; he himself had given information to thousands and
had intended to establish clinics all over the state had the Communist
Republic remained in power.
Only the preceding spring the Communist red flag had for three weeks
flown from the house tops of Munich. I met representatives from both
sides of the political arena. The middle- and upper-class conservatives
claimed the revolutionists had not been capable of managing affairs,
being good agitators but not good organizers—able to start things but
not knowing how to finish them. They had not given up their guns; money
had been put aside and peasant costumes and boots were ready for escape,
because the existing bitterness made it likely the struggle was not yet
settled. Communist leaders, on the other hand, claimed they had allowed
their enemies to flee and then had been tricked and fooled, and knew at
last they could expect no quarter. Their ideals, their faith in
humanity, their consideration, had cost them their lives and liberty,
and they would not forget this valuable lesson.
At a meeting of the Communist Party I was introduced to Mrs. Erich
Mühsam who, with her husband and their friend Landau, had gone to the
front and distributed leaflets to call the boys back home. Landau, a
gentle soul who so believed in the goodness of man that he had pleaded
with the soldiers to be brothers and not to take life, had been kicked
and clubbed to death by the White Guard, which had afterwards marched to
the Mühsam apartment and, when they could not find anybody there, had
wrecked it with machine guns. Fortunately for the Mühsams they were
already in jail.
Though the Revolution was supposed to be over, Erich Mühsam was still
imprisoned. In every country during such upheavals thousands are cast
into jail and, unless some other upheaval occurs to get them out, they
remain there; many pacifists in the United States were not freed until
long after the Armistice.
In 1928 I saw Erich Mühsam—every inch a poet, an artistic and delicate
organism, almost helpless-looking. In 1935, under Nazi rule, he was
returned to a concentration camp—a hangover on the black list.
The account of his fellow prisoners ran something like this: One
afternoon he had been told to “report at headquarters and bring a rope.”
“Where can I find a rope?”
“I don’t know. Get it!”
“They’re going to kill you,” he was warned as he started out, still
lacking a rope.
“Oh, it’s just one of their jokes—a form of torture.”
“You may be right; you’ve scarcely lifted a voice.”
But that evening his comrades discovered him dangling by the neck from a
beam. They said he could never have climbed up himself and that,
furthermore, he had been beaten to death before he had been hung there.
Nevertheless, officially he had committed suicide.
I met in Germany probably a hundred thorough-going conservatives and
only one Mühsam, and yet he it was who stood out spectacularly.
My own interests were keeping me busy enough. I finally found that the
formula I was seeking was made in Friedrichshaven, on Lake Constance. I
initiated a correspondence with the chemist, asking him to come to
Munich, and enclosing stamps to make sure of his reply. He could not
make the journey but, instead, invited me to Friedrichshaven.
All the passengers on dismounting at the station seemed to have someone
to meet them except myself. I noticed a smallish man with what appeared
to be bangs under his hat, front and back, standing on the platform and
holding a tight bunch of wild flowers wrapped up in a newspaper, a
matching one in the buttonhole of his coat, but as far as I could see he
was serving no special purpose there. I went to a hotel, and in a very
short while the little man himself arrived, having identified me as the
American lady he had come to greet. His quaint bouquet was my welcome to
Friedrichshaven.
The chemist, with his father and brothers, ran an unpretentious factory
which, in addition to other products, was making the contraceptive in
the form of a jelly. It had been put out before the War, then dropped,
and was now just starting up again and beginning to find a market in
Germany. He feared to let me go near his establishment, suspicious that
America might steal his formula. But he showed me a picture of it, and
gave me a few sample tubes, saying I could obtain others from his
sister, who was going to act as his agent in New York. Thus was
inaugurated a new phase in the movement—the use of a chemical
contraceptive.
I had letters of introduction to several people in Russia, and had hoped
to be able to go there, but I had commenced handing out my extra
dresses, underwear, stockings, shoes in Berlin; my friends had so little
and were so generous that I could not endure it, and now, in the face of
an approaching winter of hardship, without wardrobe and no prospect of
securing one or even sufficient food, I had to abandon the Russian plan.
I had talked clinic, clinic, clinic while I was in England. Having
myself been convinced, I wanted the Neo-Malthusians also to believe that
it was a better way than advice through literature. A few of them were
assembling to meet me in the Netherlands, and thither I turned my steps.
As soon as the train north was over the border, cream was brought and
delicious fruit; the contrast between one side and the other was too
obviously brutal and awful. It almost made me ill to see so many
delicacies in the Dutch shop windows when children in Germany were
starving.
With the Drysdales, to Amsterdam came Dr. Norman Haire, Australian born,
a gynecologist who had settled in London, sensed the public interest in
birth control, informed himself thoroughly on the subject, written a
great deal about it, and become prominent in the movement, advocating
contraception from his Harley Street office.
As Dr. Haire and I went around visiting clinics we found that the
countless stores where contraceptives were sold had fitting rooms in
back with midwives in charge. They did not maintain the old Rutgers
standards. I was disappointed to see the deterioration which had taken
place since 1915. During the reorganization period of Europe the
tendency, under Russian influence, was for young laborites to be in
charge of things, and they aimed to turn out Dr. Rutgers and the Dutch
Neo-Malthusians and put clinics, which were dedicated to the workers, on
a strictly utilitarian basis. Here as elsewhere they could agitate and
tear apart but lacked executive ability. The new board, composed mainly
of laymen, did not realize that such technical knowledge and experience
was required as only a physician like Dr. Rutgers possessed. He was a
sad and unhappy man, profoundly discouraged over the odds against which
he had to struggle.
Nonetheless, my English friends were converted to the idea of clinics,
and Bessie Drysdale and Dr. Haire planned to open one soon in London.
_Chapter Twenty-three_
IN TIME WE ONLY CAN BEGIN
“_Enough, ’tis the word of a Grand Bashaw;
You needn’t to bother about the law.
He told me they wasn’t to speak at all,
You don’t need a warrant to clear a hall.
He told me to tell them to stir their stumps;
When ‘Clubs!’ is the order, then clubs is trumps.
What else would it be when I’m just a cop
And he is a Reverend Archbishop?_”
ARTHUR GUITERMAN
In confirming my conviction in 1918, Judge Frederick E. Crane of the
Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York had for the first
time interpreted the section of the state law which permitted a licensed
physician to give contraceptive advice for the “cure or prevention of
disease”; and, further, he had taken from _Webster’s Dictionary_ the
broad definition of disease as any alteration in the state of body which
caused or threatened pain and sickness, thus extending the meaning of
the word far beyond the original scope of syphilis and gonorrhea. But,
never satisfied, I wanted women to have birth control for economic and
social reasons.
Therefore, in January, 1921, Anne Kennedy and I went to Albany to find a
sponsor for a bill which was to change the New York law. It was not only
a question of amending it, but also a means of educating the public, of
explaining our cause through the medium of legislation. Months of
preparation were required, hours of tramping the floors of State
buildings at Albany, interviewing one person after another, securing
promises of help, breaking down hostility.
When people said that women who would not have children were selfish and
preferred lap dogs, I replied, “All right. Then it is better for the
children not to be born.” That type of woman should die out
biologically, just as did the different species that were caught in the
mire and slime and could not reproduce themselves. It is a principle
that applies to human beings also, that they must work through their
environment in order to survive.
As soon as you could get out of people’s minds what birth control was
not, they almost invariably said, “Why, yes, certainly, that sounds
reasonable.” Many of the lawmakers themselves believed that the measure
might be of great benefit, but the party whip cut too deeply.
Birth control was once described by Heywood Broun as dynamite from the
point of view of the politician. If he supported it, he might lose
votes; if he opposed it, he might lose votes. “There is nothing a
politician hates more than losing votes. He would much rather the
subject never came up.”
One assemblyman from Brooklyn at first agreed to introduce our bill and
then wrote, “I very much regret, but after consulting with some of the
leaders of the Assembly, I have been strongly advised not to offer your
bill. I am told it would do me an injury that I could not overcome for
some time.” Another refused on the ground of “levity from his
associates.” But a few years later we found a young, courageous
legislator who introduced a bill and secured hearings. Although it was
defeated, the atmosphere was clarified.
Mrs. Hepburn, who had been in the suffrage movement early and had been
one of the sponsors of Mrs. Pankhurst’s tour of the United States, now
lived in Hartford, Connecticut. Although the mother of six, including
the actress, Katherine, she retained her youthful face and figure, being
almost like a sister to her children, playmate and companion for them at
tennis, golf, and swimming. Young men asked her to dinner with the same
pleasure that they asked her daughters.
Closely associated with her was Mrs. George H. Day, Sr., a grandmother
in 1921. She always came from Hartford for every Board meeting of the
League and, in turn, her house was a place of refuge for poor, worn-down
friends of causes. They could go there and be ministered to by a staff
of servants and come back, rested and rejuvenated.
With two such seasoned campaigners to back us, we carried our
legislative activities into Connecticut, the only state where “to use a
contraceptive” was a crime—as though it were possible to have a
policeman in every home! A mere six years had elapsed since the movement
had begun; consequently, that we were now able to get a hearing was in
itself a triumph. Nevertheless, no easy task faced us; so much red tape
had to be broken through. But here at Hartford we did succeed in finding
an introducer who could hold his own under ridicule. Then we had to
educate him, feed him with facts—medical, social, historical—so that he
could defend his bill.
A young priest stood forth as our chief opponent, basing his objections
on the laws of nature, which he claimed were contravened by birth
control. Fortunately the committee had a sense of humor. In my
ten-minute rebuttal I was able to answer the “against nature” argument
as Francis Place had done a hundred years earlier. I turned the priest’s
own words on himself by asking why he should counteract nature’s decree
of impaired vision by wearing eyeglasses, and why, above all, was he
celibate, thus outraging nature’s primary demand on the human species—to
propagate its kind. The laughter practically ended the “unnatural”
thesis for some time.
In New Jersey another attempt was made. The law there allowed doctors to
give information for “a just cause,” but they were fearful of including
minor ailments under this interpretation. The bill introduced at Trenton
had a hearing, but it also failed to pass.
The whole thing was nerve-wracking but was part of the experience we
gained. And, furthermore, whenever we had hearings, the local work
progressed much more rapidly as a result. Nothing was lost, however
expensive the plowing and sowing. Apparent defeats were victories in the
long run.
It then seemed to me from glancing over current clippings and
publications that people all over the world were discussing birth
control. The English Baron Dawson of Penn had been Court Physician to
Edward VII and had continued in this same post during the reign of
George V. But he had broader interests, too. One of the great events in
the history of the movement was his speech at the Church Congress at
Birmingham in answer to the doctrine promulgated by the Bishops at
Lambeth that sexual union should take place for the purpose of
procreation only:
Imagine a young married couple in love with each other being
expected to occupy the same room and to abstain for two years. The
thing is preposterous. You might as well put water by the side of a
man suffering from thirst, and tell him not to drink it. Romance and
deliberate self-restraint do not to my mind rhyme very well
together. A touch of madness to begin with does no harm. Heaven
knows life sobers it soon enough.
His speech caused an immense sensation throughout England. Headlines and
streamers announced, “King’s Physician asks Church to sanction birth
control.” The deduction was that His Majesty was endorsing it, and
stolid Britishers were all agog at the idea that Buckingham Palace was
now talking about the subject; it was hinted Queen Mary was not
over-pleased.
On this side of the Atlantic Major General John J. O’Ryan, who had
commanded the Twenty-Seventh National Guard Division, lectured on
overpopulation as a cause for war. Frank Vanderlip, once Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury and later President of the National City Bank,
had just returned from Japan, proclaiming that population must be
controlled because some countries could no longer feed themselves. Here
was an army man on the one hand, and a financier on the other, unprimed,
uncoerced, even uninvited, speaking out of their independent
experiences. They were voices in the wilderness, oases in the desert,
and certainly encouraging historical landmarks.
Among uneasy experts the sentiment was growing that population pressure
in Japan would soon create an inevitable explosion. Indeed, one of the
familiar arguments in the United States brought forward against birth
control was the “menace of the Yellow Peril,” by which was meant
specifically, Japan. What folly to reduce our birth rate when Orientals
were multiplying so appallingly fast that the downfall of Western
civilization might soon be looked for! India and China were teeming
indiscriminately, but their peoples were feeble, inert, and diseased;
whereas the Japanese were being reared under German health traditions,
were ninety-seven percent literate, and were technically equipped for
battle.
Naturally I was eager to learn as much about this situation as possible,
and welcomed the opportunity to meet the Nipponese friends of Gertrude
Boyle, who had married a gentleman of Japan. They always appeared in
pairs or groups of three, four, five at a time, talking busily in asides
with each other while I exchanged opinions with one. They were helpful
in furnishing me with unpublished facts; the older, conservative,
nationalist, militarist party advocated greater numbers, but the young,
liberal intellectuals, many of whom had attended Occidental
universities, could see the clouds already lowering on the horizon and
hoped the storm could be averted by controlled population growth. Atro,
a reporter on a New York Japanese paper, had been supplying the
last-named group, which in Tokyo called itself Kaizo, meaning
reconstruction, with clippings about birth control, and several of my
articles had been printed in their publication.
The women’s point of view was graphically described to me by the
Baroness Shidzué Ishimoto, daughter of the head of the great Hirota clan
and wife of Baron Keikichi Ishimoto, a young nobleman who had put in
practice his ideals of service. This charming, youthful and gracious
matron, tall for her race and equally beautiful by our standards, very
smart in her American street costume, had in 1919 come from her own land
where suffrage for women was still mentioned in awed tones. She had
studied our language at a Y.W.C.A. business school, and in three months
had performed the extraordinary accomplishment of mastering it
sufficiently to speak, write, and even take dictation in English.
We quickly became friends and she at once foresaw the possibilities of
birth control in bringing Japanese women out of their long suppression
in the family system. She said she intended to form a league immediately
upon her arrival in Tokyo, and did so in 1921.
During that year also clinics were started in England. That of Marie
Stopes proved popular, although instruction, given by a midwife, was
limited to mothers who had already had at least one child. Shortly
afterwards Dr. Haire and Bessie Drysdale, with Harold Cox as chairman of
a lay group to finance the work, established Walworth Center, which had
a fine gynecological thoroughness and set an example which later clinics
in England followed.
It was high time clinics were started in the United States as well.
After the Crane decision I had anticipated that hospitals were going to
give contraceptive advice. But in 1919, under Dr. Mary Halton’s
direction, two women, the first with tuberculosis, the other with
syphilis, had been taken from one to another institution on Manhattan
Island. All had refused such information, although most had agreed that
the patients, if pregnant, could be aborted. The officers in charge had
said they were obliged to protect their charters, and the staff
physicians their licenses and reputations.
Anything depending on the organized medicine is hard to put over; though
individual doctors may break away, in the long run most medical progress
proceeds by group action.
Since the hospitals were laggard in this matter, I decided to open a
second clinic of my own. It was to be in effect a laboratory dealing in
human beings instead of mice, with every consideration for environment,
personality, and background. I was going to suggest to women that in the
Twentieth Century they give themselves to science as they had in the
past given their lives to religion.
In addition to the usual rooms I planned to have a day nursery where
children could be kept amused and happy while the mothers were being
instructed. A properly chosen staff could enable us to have weekly
sessions on prenatal care and marital adjustment. Gynecologists were to
refer patients to hospitals if pregnancy jeopardized life; a specialist
was to advise women in overcoming sterility; a consultant was to deal
with eugenics; and, finally, since anxiety and fear of pregnancy were
often the psychological causes of ill health, a psychiatrist was to be
added. I intended, furthermore, that it should be a nucleus for research
on scientific methods of contraception; domestically manufactured
supplies of tested efficacy could not, at that time, be procured.
Because organized medical support was lacking, I tried to see what could
be done with individuals, writing to various doctors to inquire whether
they were willing to sponsor such an undertaking. Several asked me what
methods I was recommending, but Dr. Emmett Holt, then the outstanding
pediatrician of New York, whose book, _The Care and Feeding of
Children_, was the bible of thousands of mothers, invited me to come to
his office; before making any endorsement he wanted to know more about
it.
I packed up all my European supplies and showed them and explained them
to Dr. Holt, who had called in also an obstetrician and a neurologist,
Dr. Frederick Peterson, for the discussion. The usual attitude of the
child specialist was, “Our living depends upon babies. Why should we
advocate limiting the supply? The more the merrier. If you cut down,
you’re taking our maintenance from us.” But Dr. Holt said, “A thoroughly
reliable contraceptive would be a godsend to us. If the family cannot
afford a nurse we must rely on the health and strength of the mother to
keep her baby alive. If pregnancy can be postponed for a few years, not
only the baby who has been born, but the baby who comes after is much
more likely to survive.”
Dr. Holt lent us his name, one of the first important physicians to do
so, thus setting an example which eventually others followed. Five or
six men and women doctors agreed to stand behind the clinic.
But I had to have more than verbal approval. Unless the clinic were to
be conducted by a doctor with a New York practicing license, it would
not be there to stay. In early autumn I brought together an interested
group to discuss the possibility of a location on the East Side near
Stuyvesant Square, and Dr. Lydia Allen de Vilbiss, whom I had met at the
Indianapolis social workers’ conference, was going to form her own
medical committee behind her and build it up. On the basis of her
promise, I signed a year’s lease for a small suite of rooms at 317 East
Tenth Street, from which a dentist had just moved out, appropriately
situated on the ground floor in a densely populated section.
The legislative activities and planning for a clinic had taken much of
my attention during the year, but the central theme was the
determination to hold the First National Birth Control Conference,
November 11–13, 1921, at the Plaza Hotel in New York. I timed it
purposely to coincide with a meeting of the American Public Health
Association, hoping that if we could only convince these officials of
the need for birth control, they would use it in their own work.
In addition to the health aspect, we planned to treat of population and
also have a doctors’ meeting on methods and technique. But “flaming
youth” was having its fling, and the great clamor of the moment was
directed towards the moral issue. Opponents were constantly hurling the
statement that immorality among young people was to be the inevitable
fruit of our efforts. This I did not believe. I knew that neither
morality nor immorality was an external factor in human behavior;
essentially these qualities grew and emerged from within. If the youth
of the post-War era were slipping away from sanctioned codes, it was not
the fault of birth control knowledge any more than it was the fault of
the automobile, which made transportation to the bright lights of the
city quick and easy. Immorality as a result should not be placed at the
door of Messrs. Ford or Chrysler.
In order to have a free and fair hearing we proposed a large open
meeting to wind up the Conference, and invited ministry and clergy of
all denominations, including Archbishop Patrick J. Hayes, who was the
spokesman of the Catholic Church in New York.
The movement was older in England and had already established its
dignity there. Consequently, the presence at the Conference of such an
outstanding Englishman as Harold Cox was certain to carry weight. To
persuade him to take the sea voyage I sailed for Europe. When I arrived
in London I found him unwell, and his doctors at first refused him
permission to travel. Under the circumstances it was very fine of him to
promise to come. J. O. P. Bland also said he would look in on the
Conference if only to give it his blessing. He was a dark-haired, witty,
amusing North-of-Irishman who had lived much in the Orient and become an
authority on Far Eastern matters, an internationalist in all his
thinking. He was one of those who always helped to hold up your right
hand.
My object in England having been attained, I went on to Switzerland with
a definite aim; I had formed a habit in my nursing days, when I was
waiting in the night to give medicine or treatment to a patient, of
occupying the time putting down experiences and thoughts that came to
me. The same habit continued. After lectures, while I was still sizzling
with excitement, I often relieved the tenseness by writing down answers
to questions I feared I had not covered adequately. Before I knew it I
had material gathered for a book, and even some chapters in rough draft.
They needed pulling together and polishing off and I went to bed in
Montreux for a month to do this. I had regarded _Woman and the New Race_
as my heart book; this, _The Pivot of Civilization_, was to be my head
book. I brought it back with me to the United States and Wells, who was
reporting the Washington Disarmament Conference for the New York
_World_, wrote an introduction.
To make our Conference a success it had to be under the auspices of an
organization. I had always had a dread of them. I knew their weaknesses
and the stifling effect they could have. They seemed heavy and
ponderous, rigid, lifeless, and soulless, often caught in their own
mechanism to become dead wood, thus defeating the very purposes for
which they had initially been established. Even the women who were able
and clever at systematizing such bodies terrified me with their
rule-and-rote minds, their weight-and-measure tactics; they appeared so
sure, so positive that I felt as if I were in the way of a giant tractor
which destroyed mercilessly as it went.
In spite of this dread I had reasoned out the necessity for an
organization to tie up the loose ends. Although it might be limiting and
inhibiting to the individual, it had other advantages of strength and
solidity which would enable it to function when the individual was gone.
Therefore I sent a questionnaire to leaders in social and professional
circles, asking them whether the time had not come for such a national
association; the replies almost unanimously confirmed this decision.
The evening before the Conference was to open, a few friends gathered
together to launch the American Birth Control League. Its aims were to
build up public opinion so that women should demand instruction from
doctors, to assemble the findings of scientists, to remove hampering
Federal statutes, to send out field workers into those states where laws
did not prevent clinics, to co-operate with similar bodies in studying
population problems, food supplies, world peace. After the dinner, given
at Mrs. George F. Rublee’s home, we talked over specific plans for the
year and set in motion the machinery for having the League incorporated.
Juliet Barrett Rublee had been one of the pioneers, a member of the
original Committee of One Hundred, and all the way through the years she
has never wavered from my side. No more inspired idealist was ever
initiated into a movement. The imagination of this picturesque, romantic
wife of a conservative lawyer had been so fired that she dedicated to it
her entire devotion, loyalty, partisanship. Others had rallied their own
personal friends around the idea, but Juliet’s influence brought in her
husband’s associates—the Cravaths, Morrows, Lamonts, Dodges, and
Blisses.
Juliet’s parties were always gay and interesting, with an atmosphere
nobody else could create. Her small, engaging dining room was as
colorful as she herself—the only woman I ever knew who dared to wear
bright greens, reds, yellows, all together. For lunches, teas, and
dinners in behalf of the cause she practically turned over her home in
Turtle Bay Gardens.
A goodly number attended the opening of our Conference, which,
appropriately, coincided with that of the great disarmament conference
at Washington. The medical meeting, where contraceptive technique was
discussed, was so crowded that latecomers could not squeeze in. The
doctors who did find places, each apparently surprised to see his
confrères there, expected us to have a hundred percent sound methods;
they seemed disappointed because we had no magic up our sleeves and told
them quite frankly we had not. The best we could do was show what
devices were being employed, including those from the Netherlands and
the preparation I had found at Friedrichshaven, with the warning that
they had not been tested for efficacy.
After two full days nothing remained but the Sunday evening mass meeting
on “Birth Control, Is It Moral?” For this we had selected the Town Hall
on West Forty-third Street, a new club designed as a forum for adult
education; the auditorium was often used for discussion of questions of
civic interest. Harold Cox was to deliver the first speech and I was to
follow.
Always, when I am to speak, I attempt to visualize the hall and the
audience in order to feel my way into the subject. When I cannot do so,
I have invariably been met by blocked doors. Throughout Sunday, try as I
would to “tune in” to the approaching event, I could not do it. I kept
remembering a dream I had had the night before in which I was carrying a
small baby in my arms up a very steep hill and came rather abruptly to a
slope which became a mountain side of rock and slippery shale; I had
nothing to grasp to prevent me from sliding. The baby cried continually
and I wanted to comfort it, but I dared not use my right hand because it
was held up like a balancing rod which saved us both from falling. That
miserable dream made me drowsy all day. My brain seemed numb. I simply
could not think of what I was going to say.
Anne Kennedy had gone ahead to the Town Hall at about seven o’clock.
Harold Cox and I had dined at Juliet’s but I could not eat; I was
interested neither in the food nor the conversation. I still had an
absolute blank in front of me. Juliet was congratulating me that soon,
with the Conference over, I could have a rest. Ordinarily when I am
approaching the end of a particular job I begin to feel released, but
this time I could not reassure her; I was nervous, anxious, and
apprehensive.
Our taxi swung into West Forty-third Street and crept cautiously along
through a swarming aggregation. “Heavens!” I said. “This _is_ an
overflow with a vengeance.”
We dismounted and pushed our way to the Town Hall doors. They were
closed and two policemen barred our path when Mr. Cox and I attempted to
enter. “This gentleman is one of the speakers and I am another,” I said.
“Why can’t we go in?”
“There ain’t gonna be no meeting. That’s all I can say.”
I had not the faintest idea of what was happening. A newspaper man
standing near by suggested, “Why not call up Police Commissioner Enright
and see what the trouble is?”
Juliet and I rushed across the street to a booth and she telephoned
police headquarters. No one could say where the Commissioner was. As far
as they knew no orders to forbid the meeting had been issued.
Then I put through a call for Mayor Hylan. While I was waiting for the
connection I kept my eyes on the Town Hall entrance and saw that
policemen were cautiously opening the doors to let out driblets of
people. If they could get out I could get in, so I abandoned the
telephone and wove my way through the throng until I reached the doors,
slipping in under the policemen’s arms before they could stop me.
Dignified health officers from all over the country, lawyers and judges
with their families and guests were standing about, grumbling, vague,
reluctant to depart, wondering what to do.
I fairly flew up the aisle but halted in front of the footlights; they
were as high as my head and another blue uniform was obstructing the
steps leading to the stage. Suddenly Lothrop Stoddard, the author, tall
and strong, seized me and literally tossed me up to the platform. A
messenger boy was aimlessly grasping flowers which were to be presented
after my speech. Stoddard grabbed them briskly, handed them to me, and
shouted, “Here’s Mrs. Sanger!”
“Don’t leave!” I called to the audience. “We’re going to hold the
meeting.”
A great scramble began to get back into the seats. The hall was in a
turmoil; the front doors had been stampeded and those in the street were
pressing in, only to find their places gone. The boxes and galleries
were soon filled, the stage was jammed, hundreds were crowded in the
rear. I cried, “Get in out of the aisles!” I knew the meeting could be
legally closed if they were blocked, and I did not want fire regulations
to be used as a pretext.
I still had no idea of what had gone on earlier when I commenced my
lecture, but had uttered no more than ten or twelve words when two
policemen loomed up beside me and said, “You can’t talk here.” A
thundering applause broke out as though it were the only relief for
angry, indignant, rebellious spirits.
“Why can’t I?”
I started again but my voice could not be heard. I then suggested to
Harold Cox, “Perhaps they’ll let you speak. Try it.” This white-haired
and pink-cheeked gentleman walked to the edge of the platform with a
dignity of bearing about as distantly removed from immorality as could
be imagined. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “I have come from across
the Atlantic—” but that was as far as he got before he was led back to
his seat by a policeman.
Then Mary Winsor, an ardent suffragette, sprang up, but they stopped her
also. As soon as one was downed, another jumped to his or her feet. I
did not know the names of some of the volunteers, who were not even
allowed to finish their “Ladies and gentlemen.”
Meanwhile, Anne Kennedy was telling me as best she could what had
happened prior to my arrival. When the house had been half filled, a man
had come to the platform and asked, “Who’s in charge?”
“I am,” Anne had answered.
“This meeting must be closed.”
“Why?”
“An indecent, immoral subject is to be discussed. It cannot be held.”
“On what authority? Are you from the police?”
“No, I’m Monsignor Dineen, the Secretary of Archbishop Hayes.”
“What right has he to interfere?”
“He has the right.” Here he turned to a policeman. “Captain, speak up.”
“Who are you?” Anne had demanded.
“I’m Captain Donohue of this district. The meeting must be stopped.”
Capable and cool-headed Anne had replied, “Very well, we’ll write this
down and I’ll read it to the audience. ‘I, Captain Thomas Donohue, of
the Twenty-sixth Precinct, at the order of Monsignor Joseph P. Dineen,
Secretary to Archbishop Patrick J. Hayes, have ordered this meeting
closed.’”
The listeners had sat petrified while she had read them this strange
admission. No hissing or booing then. They had just sat. It was one
thing to have the hall shut by a mistaken or misguided police captain; a
very different thing to have it done by a high dignitary of the Roman
Catholic hierarchy.
Monsignor Dineen was now stationed in the back of the hall, and Anne
pointed him out to me, of medium size, in plain attire, calmly directing
the police by a casual nod of the head or a whisper to a man who acted
as runner between him and the Captain on the platform.
Confusion and tumult continued for at least an hour. Newspaper men were
scribbling stories; those who could not get in were creating commotion
outside; the reserves had been summoned. It was bedlam. Miss Winsor
tried to speak two or three times; I, at least ten. But I knew that I
had to keep on until I was arrested in order that free speech might be
made the issue. To allow yourself to be sent home at the order of the
police was accepting the police point of view as to what was moral.
Moreover you were bound for the principle of the thing to carry it into
the court for a legal decision; if the pulpit and press were denied you,
you must take it to the dock.
Captain Donohue kept repeating to me, “Please get off this stage before
you cause disorder.” Police now began to hustle the audience towards
half a dozen exits, and finally Miss Winsor and I were put under arrest;
Robert McC. Marsh, Mrs. Delafield’s son-in-law, offered to act as our
counsel.
Juliet said to an officer, “Why don’t you arrest me too?”
“Well, you can come along if you like,” he agreed. So we walked together
up Broadway to the station at West Forty-seventh Street, policemen
flanking us. The crowd, still jeering the reserves, who had been trying
vainly to clear the way, fell in line and marched behind us. A patrol
wagon then took us to night court where we were arraigned before
Magistrate McQuade. Someone had telephoned J.J. and he came up later,
but Mr. Marsh had already taken care of the necessary formalities. We
were released on our own recognizances, to appear at court the following
morning.
It was now some time after midnight, but we all went back to Juliet’s
apartment. Harold Cox was shocked, not only by the roughness of the
police, but also by the supineness of the audience, which had done
nothing but make a noise. “Had this been in London, they would never
have been able to stop the meeting! We would have defended our rights,
used every chair and door and window to barricade the place, even though
we might have been beaten in the end.”
Anne Kennedy had brought the reporters, and they were waiting for us.
They wanted to make out a story of police stupidity and let it go at
that, unable to believe her when she told them it was the Archbishop who
was responsible. A _Times_ reporter called up the “Power House,” as St.
Patrick’s Cathedral was colloquially termed, reached Dineen himself, and
asked for verification. “Yes,” said the Monsignor, “we closed the
meeting.”
Then and there we decided to hold a second one as soon as possible at
the same place.
It was well on towards five o’clock when at last I fell in my bed. I
sank to slumber, but it was only to find myself still carrying that same
baby up the steep and sliding mountain, balancing myself with upraised
hand. The sky was dark, the way unmarked. Wearily I stumbled on.
_Chapter Twenty-four_
LAWS WERE LIKE COBWEBS
“_And heard great argument,
About it and about; but evermore
Came out by the same door wherein I went._”
EDWARD FITZGERALD
Promptly at nine the morning after the wretched Town Hall affair Miss
Winsor and I appeared before Magistrate Joseph E. Corrigan and the case
was dismissed in five minutes. Neither Monsignor Dineen nor Captain
Donohue was in court. Here was a ridiculous thing—the Catholic Church
held such power in its hands that it could issue orders to the police,
dissolve an important gathering of adult and intelligent men and women,
and send them home as though they were naughty children—and then not
feel called upon to give any accounting.
The papers expressed the greatest indignation. Even the most
conservative were placed in the trying situation of defending birth
control advocates or endorsing a violation of the principle of free
speech, which “must always find defenders if democracy is to survive.”
It was to be expected that the _World_ would be up in arms, but the
_Times_ carried a headline that Archbishop Hayes had closed the meeting,
and the _Tribune_ was spurred on by the indignation of Mrs. Ogden Reid,
who had been present at the Town Hall.
Apparently the Church had not expected to render any explanation
whatsoever. Then, faced with a battery of reporters, Monsignor Dineen
made a statement:
The Archbishop had received an invitation from Mrs. Margaret Sanger
to attend the meeting, and I went as his representative. The
Archbishop is delighted and pleased at the action of the police, as
am I, because ... I think any one will admit that a meeting of that
character is no place for growing children.... The presence of these
four children at least was a reason for police action.
He had not improved his position. The scoffing was redoubled when it was
learned that the four “children” were students of Professor Raymond
Moley’s class in sociology at Columbia University; Monsignor Dineen had
not seen beyond their bobbed hair.
Only a small section of the public had been aware of our modest little
conference; even fewer had known of the proposed Town Hall meeting. Now
the publicity was tremendous. Many Catholics themselves condemned Church
tactics, and Archbishop Hayes had to defend himself:
As a citizen and a churchman, deeply concerned with the moral
well-being of our city, I feel it a public duty to protest ... in
the interest of thousands of ... distressed mothers, who are alarmed
at the daring of the advocates of birth control in bringing out into
an open, unrestricted, free meeting a discussion of a subject that
simple prudence and decency, if not the spirit of the law, should
keep within the walls of a clinic.... The law was enacted under the
police power of the Legislature for the benefit of the morals and
health of the community.... The law of God and man, science, public
policy, human experience, are all condemnatory of birth control as
preached by a few irresponsible individuals.
The seventh child has been regarded traditionally with some peoples
as the most favored by nature. Benjamin Franklin was the fifteenth
child, John Wesley the eighteenth, Ignatius Loyola was the eighth,
Catherine of Siena, one of the greatest intellectual women who ever
lived, was the twenty-fourth. It has been suggested that one of the
reasons for the lack of genius in our day is that we are not getting
the ends of the families.
This statement appeared synchronously with our second meeting. The Town
Hall had been booked ahead for several weeks; consequently, we had
engaged the big Park Theater in Columbus Circle. It was packed fifteen
minutes after a single door was opened. Dr. Karl Reiland of St. George’s
Church was a new recruit on the platform; otherwise our program was the
same as before, and a balanced and poised discussion proceeded without
acrimony or excitement. Outside, however, two thousand people were
clamoring to get in, even climbing up the fire escapes. Orators were
haranguing from soapboxes, men were pounding each other with their
fists, Paulist fathers were selling pamphlets against birth control.
In my open letter of reply to Archbishop Hayes I said:
I agree with the Archbishop that a clinic is the proper place to
give information on birth control.... I wish, however, to point out
the fact that there are two sides to the subject under
consideration—the practical information as distinct from the
theoretical discussion. The latter rightly may be discussed on the
public platform and in the press as the Archbishop himself has taken
the opportunity to do.
And then, citing Scripture:
If the Archbishop will recall his Bible history, he will find that
some of the more remarkable characters were the first children, and
often the only child as well. For instance, Isaac was an only child,
born after long years of preparation. Isaac’s only children were
twins—Jacob, the father of all Israel, and Esau. Samuel, who judged
Israel for forty years, was an only child. John the Baptist was an
only child, and his parents were well along in years when he was
born.
Archbishop Hayes delivered his final pronunciamento in his Christmas
Pastoral:
Children troop down from Heaven because God wills it. He alone has
the right to stay their coming, while He blesses at will some homes
with many, others with but few or with none at all.... Even though
some little angels in the flesh through moral, mental, or physical
deformity of parents may appear to human eyes hideous, misshapen, a
blot on civilized society, we must not lose sight of this Christian
thought that under and within such visible malformation there lives
an immortal soul to be saved and glorified for all eternity among
the blessed in Heaven.
Heinous is the sin committed against the creative act of God, who
through the marriage contract invites man and woman to co-operate
with him in the propagation of the human family. To take life after
its inception is a horrible crime; but to prevent human life that
the Creator is about to bring into being is satanic. In the first
instance, the body is killed, while the soul lives on; in the
latter, not only a body, but an immortal soul is denied existence in
time and in eternity. It has been reserved to our day to see
advocated shamelessly the legalizing of such a diabolical thing.
A monstrous doctrine and one abhorrent to every civilized instinct, that
children, misshapen, deformed, hideous to the eye, either mentally or
constitutionally unequipped for life, should continue to be born in the
hope that Heaven might be filled!
General opinion was that controversy gave us free publicity, and it did,
column after column, but to my mind it was of the negative kind. The
truths falsified and motives aspersed had to be debated, corrected, and
argued away, and this took time from constructive work. The press wanted
to keep up the excitement and manufacture news, but I did not. As a
matter of fact the hullabaloo was usually done for me; the blundering of
the opposition often saved my voice.
The correspondence through the press was dropped, but meanwhile the
American Civil Liberties Union, spurred on by Albert de Silver, from
whom we had previously sought advice and who had helped us raise funds,
had urged me to institute action for false arrest. This I knew would be
a fruitless task, but I did consent to the demand for an investigation.
Commissioner Enright was said to be out of the city, but Chief Inspector
Lahey, acting in his place, was to determine whether charges should be
preferred against Captain Donohue for having stopped the meeting.
On December 2nd, in a small room closed to the press, Mr. Lahey sat at
the head of a long table. On his right was a chair to which I was
called. On his left, opposite me, was a heavy man with a big bulldog
head, wearing a black alpaca coat. He fixed his eyes straight on mine as
though he intended to hypnotize me and influence by sheer terror what I
was to say. His features were so set, his expression so immobile, that I
sensed animus. I refused to return his gaze but faced the Inspector
instead.
The interrogation, prompted by this sinister individual, who bent over
occasionally to murmur into Mr. Lahey’s ear, held bitter malice.
Nevertheless, I answered every query as completely and as honestly as I
was able. I had nothing to hide, and still believed that my interlocutor
could arrive at no decision unless he heard the truth in its entirety. I
was all for telling it.
But never throughout any of the hearings could either the examiners or
police be kept to the point. They were not genuinely trying to find out
who had given the orders and why, but attempting to justify the illegal
proceedings; and always they went off into vague irrelevancies
extraneous to the issue, such as trying to embarrass dignified, elderly
witnesses by asking, “What are you doing with birth control?”
Chiefly the investigation focused around the Brownsville clinic raid. I
denied emphatically that certain contraceptives for use by men only had
ever been there; they were of a type which I did not recommend, and had
been brought in by the police themselves.
“Do you mean to say, Mrs. Sanger,” went on Mr. Lahey, “that this
statement of the police officer as written into the records was untrue?”
“I do.”
Mr. Lahey lifted an official finger to an attendant. The door of the
anteroom opened and Mrs. Whitehurst, who had been the leader of the
raid, was dramatically framed before us.
“Do you say that if she,” he waved to her, “made the statement referred
to in the police records, she lied?”
“She did,” I affirmed. This was the first time in all my life that I had
ever called a person a liar. I felt as though I had stepped down into
the lower brackets of common decency, but the police are accustomed to
such words, and I had to meet the circumstances.
Mrs. Whitehurst was instantly dismissed. I, too, was dismissed, and
Juliet took my place. She had learned from her husband and other lawyers
how witnesses could protect themselves, and tossed off her answers
readily, now and then returning, “I don’t know,” and, frequently, “I
don’t remember.” The black-coated gentleman who had hoped to trip her up
but was getting nowhere, became exasperated and said roughly to Mr.
Lahey, “Oh, stop this! Ask her if she’s read the law.”
Juliet admitted she had read Section 1142, but, to further questioning,
replied she did not recall when, she had not read it in my presence, she
might or might not have talked it over with me.
Mr. Lahey rose and left the room. Then the Unknown shouted to a young
Irishman who had been busily taking notes, “Arrest that woman!”
We could not have been more astonished if a thunderbolt had struck the
place. For a few seconds, which seemed longer, everyone was paralyzed.
At last Mr. Marsh asked, “On what grounds is Mrs. Rublee arrested?”
“She has violated Section 1142.”
“She said she had read the law—is that a crime?”
No answer.
Mr. Marsh then inquired, “On whose authority is Mrs. Rublee arrested?”
Dead silence. No reply while the Unknown and the stenographer muttered
together. Finally, when Mr. Marsh repeated the question, the latter
replied, “I do. I arrest her on my own authority. Patrolman Thomas J.
Murphy.”
Mr. Marsh said to the Unknown, “It’s customary for brothers of the law
to give each other their names. Mine is Robert Marsh, practicing
attorney. May I not know with whom I am speaking?”
“I’m just a bystander.”
“Well, Mr. Bystander, won’t you instruct the police officer to be more
explicit in his statement of facts?”
“Look here, Marsh, I’m telling you the officer is arresting this witness
on his own initiative.”
He, too, left the room.
Juliet, Mr. Marsh, and I entered her car and young
Stenographer-Patrolman Murphy, obviously ill at ease, sat beside the
chauffeur. At the Elizabeth Street Court, Magistrate Peter A. Hatting
smiled cheerfully at us from behind his desk, “Well, where’s the
prisoner?”
Murphy made a feeble gesture in Juliet’s direction and said in a whisper
which we could overhear, “It’s a birth control case.”
“Oh, I see. Well, what was she selling—where are the articles?”
Murphy could produce none.
“Well, well, where is the evidence?”
Murphy looked even more embarrassed, mumbled that he didn’t have any.
“Well, the court is adjourned anyway, and we’ll have to wait until this
afternoon.”
I was turning my back on Murphy, very cross at him, but Juliet asked him
to lunch with us. “He didn’t want to arrest me, did you, Mr. Murphy?”
And Mr. Murphy shook his head most decidedly.
While we ate, he explained that our Unknown was Assistant Corporation
Counsel Martin W. Dolphin, with offices in the Police Department, that
he himself was Mr. Dolphin’s private secretary, that he had been brought
to the inquiry merely to take dictation, that he had been only ten
months on the force, that he had never arrested anybody before, and that
when Mr. Dolphin had said to arrest Mrs. Rublee he had protested, “Why,
I can’t arrest her. I haven’t seen her do anything to be arrested for!”
“I’m awfully sorry,” he went on, addressing Juliet, “but I had to obey
orders. If I didn’t, I’d be in an awful mess. Gee, why didn’t they get
some of the old fellows down there to do it?”
When we returned to court, Assistant District Attorney Wilson said to
Magistrate Hatting, “Your Honor, I have no evidence in this case. The
police have furnished nothing to the District Attorney’s office. If I
have not sufficient evidence by three-thirty I’ll dismiss the whole
thing.”
Then we waited. Eventually the expected “minutes and statement” arrived.
Murphy swore that they were true—to Juliet’s wholehearted disgust. Her
faith in human nature had been betrayed; she did not see why he
preferred to keep his job rather than his self-respect. Magistrate
Hatting seemed anxious to make everybody comfortable—Juliet, the
Catholics, the police, and the public—and to convey the impression
nobody was really to blame.
Since the wife of a prominent lawyer had become involved, people in high
places in New York had an obligation to protect their own. Publicity had
been great before; now it was multiplied tenfold. A letter was addressed
to Mayor Hylan:
The action of the Police Department ... constitutes such a wilful
violation of the right of free speech as to cause grave alarm to the
citizens of New York, who have a right to know why such outrages
have taken place, what motives and influences are behind them, and
whether any conspiracy exists in the Police Department to deny the
right of free speech and the equal protection of the law to citizens
of New York. This obviously is a matter of the gravest concern.
We, therefore, ask an immediate and full investigation to be
followed, if the evidence warrants, by such disciplinary measures
against the officials found to be guilty as will discourage similar
offenses hereafter.
This demand was signed by Henry Morgenthau, Sr., Herbert L. Satterlee,
Paul D. Cravath, Lewis L. Delafield, Charles C. Burlingham, Samuel H.
Ordway, Pierre Jay, Paul M. Warburg, Charles Strauss, Montgomery Hare.
As a result, Mayor Hylan delegated David F. Hirshfield, Commissioner of
Accounts, to supervise an investigation into the previous investigation.
The first session was diverted into a discussion of the merits of birth
control. The Commissioner was facetious, and, when Mr. Marsh kept after
him for interrupting witnesses and getting off the subject, finally said
he had been insulted and refused to continue as long as Mr. Marsh
represented us.
At the three subsequent hearings Emory R. Buckner took charge of our
interests. Dolphin, although summoned, did not appear at any of them.
Captain Donohue testified that Desk Lieutenant Joseph Courtney had
received the information over the telephone, and had passed it on to
him. So far as he knew it was the telephone operator who had given the
orders to close the meeting. But he would, he said, have done so anyhow.
“What law did Mrs. Sanger violate?” asked Mr. Buckner.
“She was disorderly. I requested her several times to leave the platform
and she defied me and said she would not do it. She caused quite a
commotion and people were all hollering and yelling, a general
commotion.”
“You think it was a crime for her to commence to speak after a Captain
of Police had told her not to?”
“Yes.”
“Was Miss Winsor also arrested because she attempted to speak after
being told to keep quiet?”
“She said she knew a woman who had nine children and the audience
commenced to holler and try to pull the policemen off the stage.”
Even the Commissioner was becoming annoyed at Donohue’s inanities. He
said to Mr. Buckner, “You do not have to put any witnesses on to show
the intelligence and the lack of sight or foresight of the Captain. You
and I, I think, will agree on that point.” And then he turned to
Donohue. “Now, Captain, will you tell me the reason for acting in the
Hall as you did to prevent that meeting? You see, I do not know whether
you understand me or not. You policemen, you do not usually understand
ordinary language. I want to know what was in your mind; why did you act
as you did, that is all.”
“Because I had orders to do so.” But he would not admit they came from
any further back than the Desk Lieutenant.
Officer Murphy was put on the stand next, and the Commissioner gave him
a chance to explain what had prompted him to make the arrest. “I figured
this way. If it would be a crime to run such a meeting or hold such a
meeting in the City of New York according to the Penal Law, if Mrs.
Rublee was an assistant with Mrs. Sanger or anybody else in running such
a meeting, and there were distributed circulars regarding prevention of
conception, Mrs. Rublee was just as much responsible for the
distribution of these circulars as anybody else.”
“The circulars stated there would be a public mass meeting at Town Hall
on birth control,” said Mr. Buckner promptly. “Is that a crime?”
The Commissioner interrupted. “Mr. Buckner, you do not expect this young
man to be interested in that. He is too young to know about birth
control. The old, bald-headed ones are the only ones that are interested
in it.”
And late in the afternoon he said, “I am too busy and have too much work
to do, so we won’t have any summing up.”
At the concluding session Desk Lieutenant Courtney disclaimed all
liability, saying the only order given to Captain Donohue was to take a
number of policemen to the meeting and see that the law was not
violated; thereafter the Captain had acted on his own responsibility.
As far as I was concerned the final scene in the farce took place before
the elderly and firm Judge John W. Goff, one of the official referees of
the Supreme Court who was to hear the charges before the New York Bar
Association as to whether Dolphin should be disbarred. He was summoned
again in vain until Judge Goff said angrily, “Unless he comes within the
hour, I’ll subpoena him,” and at last, still in his alpaca coat, he put
in an appearance. I was on the stand almost an entire afternoon during
which the attorney representing Dolphin was attacking me personally
instead of inquiring into Juliet’s arrest.
“Do you know Carlo Tresca?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know Alexander Berkman?”
“Yes.”
I could now see what was coming; radicals were always made the whipping
boys and, in lieu of specific charges, any acquaintance with them was
made to seem incriminating.
“Do you know Emma Goldman?” Here the attorney’s voice rose in outrage,
and he looked at Judge Goff as though to say, “There you have it.”
“Yes,” I reiterated, “but I also know Mrs. Andrew Carnegie and Mr. John
D. Rockefeller, Jr. My social relations are with people of varying ideas
and opinions.”
The next attempt was a subtle sort of third degree, aiming to confuse me
and imply I was an inaccurate witness. “What was the precise time you
entered the room where Mrs. Rublee was arrested? How large was it? How
long, how wide, how high, how many windows were there? Who was called
first? Where were you sitting? How far was Inspector Lahey from your
chair? Were you second, third, or fourth on the right side or left side?
How wide was the table, how long? Where was the door located relative to
the table?”
Usually I could not have remembered one such immaterial and unnecessary
detail. But that afternoon I was given second sight. I could visualize
the room; my mind seemed to be projected into it so that every
particular stood out with the utmost clarity. It was an excellent lesson
to me; thereafter I observed much more carefully.
After hours of this cross-examination I was physically exhausted, as
though I had been flung back and forth, beaten and pounded from the
bottom of my feet to the top of my head. I almost looked at my arms to
see whether they were black and blue, they ached so.
It was all useless. The police went unreprimanded, Donohue was promoted
when things had quieted down, and Dolphin, though Judge Goff recommended
prosecution and the Court of Appeals stated that his conduct was
“arbitrary and unlawful,” was not disbarred because he had not been
acting in an official capacity when he had ordered the arrest. In spite
of the inconvenience, the humiliation of halls closed, covenants
broken—exactly nothing happened.
_Chapter Twenty-five_
ALIEN STARS ARISE
In the summer of 1921 I had signed a contract with the Kaizo group,
which had arranged a series of lectures in Japan by four speakers:
Albert Einstein was to explain relativity, Bertrand Russell the
consequences of the Peace of Versailles, H. G. Wells his version of
international accord, and I was to discuss population control,
delivering in March and April eight to ten lectures of five hours each.
The five-hour clause I innocently believed to be merely a mistake on the
part of the translator, but I had faith in the common sense of human
nature and expected the error to be taken care of when I arrived.
January and February were months of feverish activity. I spoke in city
after city—Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and elsewhere—rushing back
to New York to Town Hall hearings and farewell luncheons and dinners.
The prolongation of the Town Hall episode had been entirely unforeseen.
If bookings had not already been made requiring my departure in
February, I should have postponed the trip. But I had promised, and
lecture dates were binding obligations.
Stuart was at Peddie Institute where my brother Bob had gone, captain of
his football team, preparing for college, having a full and rich time.
Grant was there also but he was barely thirteen; I could not bear to put
the broad Pacific between us. The headmaster warned me that he was only
beginning to adjust himself to the school and his studies, and would be
set back at least a year if I took him with me. I agreed to reconsider,
but I am afraid I had made up my mind beforehand. With scant ceremony
and scarcely enough clean shirts, I bundled him up and away, leaving the
turbulence of New York behind.
Since Grant was to travel on my passport, I had to have it renewed, and
had telegraphed Washington for it to be sent to the West Coast where the
detail of a visa could also be attended to. At San Francisco it was
waiting. With the little book and Grant in tow I presented myself to the
Japanese Consul. Instead of stamping it as the usual mere formality, he
examined it carefully and then, apologizing profusely, regretted very
much that the Japanese Imperial Government could not give me a visa.
Here was a state of things. I asked him whether he could find out the
precise reasons. Was it that I as a person could not go there, or was my
subject taboo? The next day, after a cable to Tokyo and much polite
bowing, he notified me it was both. In varying degrees of amusement and
indignation the papers published the fact that the Japanese were turning
the tables on the United States; by our Exclusion Act we had implied
they were undesirable citizens, and now it was an American who was
undesirable to them.
The steamship company would not sell me tickets on the _Taiyo Maru_
without the visa. Two days previous to her sailing a Japanese who had
been in the United States for the Washington Conference proffered a
letter of introduction. He deplored the action of his Government and was
desirous of being helpful. “The _Taiyo Maru_ is going on to Shanghai.
Why don’t you get a Chinese visa?”
I always chose to go forward, and there was always a chance that a way
might open. A hundred and fifty Japanese who had been at the
conference—delegates, professors, doctors, members of the diplomatic
corps, secretaries—were returning by this same vessel. Once on board I
could meet them simply and informally, and I was sure I could convince
them I was not dangerous. The Chinese Consul granted a visa without
question, our tickets were delivered, we sailed on the _Taiyo Maru_.
I had never before been on a Japanese liner. The segregation between
whites and Orientals horrified me. Here were the aristocrats of a people
by nature intelligent, well-bred, well-clothed, inclined to be friendly,
taking Grant under their wing, and teaching us both, amid much laughter,
to eat with chopsticks. They had made valiant efforts to adapt
themselves to Occidentalism; they had altered their dress and fashion of
eating—substituting coats, collars, shoes for loose kimonos and soft
felt slippers, forks and knives for chopsticks; they sat on chairs
instead of kneeling comfortably on the floor. Yet my compatriots kept
themselves aloof. Never did I see the two groups together in
conversation; they joined only in sports.
At night members of the crew wrestled in the moonlight, and I gazed down
at their deck, marveling at the grips, the holds, the stoutness of legs,
the strength of backs and arms, the quickness of action, the primitive,
guttural calls of the umpires. Others of the crew stamped their feet
and, for good luck, threw pinches of salt towards their respective
champions.
Two days out the Japanese asked me to address them. I willingly
complied, and the dining room was closed off for the purpose. Admiral
Baron Kato, who was later to be Prime Minister, and headed the
delegation, talked to me afterwards. He had the culture, courtesy,
restraint, and suavity of a true gentleman, rather than the mien of the
war lord his title seemed to imply.
Equally genial was Masanao Hanihara, then Vice Minister of Foreign
Affairs and destined to be Ambassador to the United States. He knew
American ways and manners, or mannerisms, if you wish to name them so;
he was understanding, and perhaps one of the most fluent of the Japanese
I met in the ease of his English. He told me his people were not likely
to accept the idea of birth control as a social philosophy, though they
were bound to accept the economic aspects, and all the young would be
interested as individuals.
Not until later did I learn how happily my contact with these two
gentlemen had resulted. They had separately cabled their Government
asking that I be allowed to lecture in Japan.
At Honolulu I had one short afternoon into which to crowd so much. With
leis hung about my neck I was whisked off for lunch to a magical house
at Waikiki, then to a big meeting. What surprised and pleased me most
was the complete absence of race prejudice. I looked out over faces,
mostly American but with a liberal sprinkling of Chinese and Japanese in
their native costumes and Hawaiians in bright Mother Hubbards. Honolulu
was the only place I had found where, class for class, internationalism
did exist.
Two Japanese correspondents followed my zigzag trail, notebooks in hand,
pencils working furiously. They even inserted questions as I was swept
towards the boat where, breathless and almost in a daze, we were
garlanded once more. They had a scoop and were going to cable their
favorable impressions to their papers in Japan.
Their efforts had definitely produced a favorable reaction on board
ship. Individuals and delegations of Japanese came into my stateroom at
any time—morning, afternoon, or evening—“to be informed.” Although they
did not knock, this was not considered an invasion of privacy, provided
they bowed profoundly on their way in; on entering and on leaving they
bowed and bowed, again and again. They seemed to know more about my
affairs and my children than I did myself, mentioning things I had
completely forgotten, even reminding me of my unspoken thoughts of long
ago.
Past experience had taught me that when a despotic and arbitrary screen
was interposed between birth control and the people, the desire for
knowledge was immeasurably enhanced. This was particularly true in
Japan, where the recent renaissance had quickened the public mind. At
the announcement I could not land, officialdom was subjected to frank
criticism.
A little, round-faced boy called me each morning, murmuring something in
a voice so soft and melodious it almost lulled me back to sleep. With
the coffee, which tended to wake me, he announced, “Madam Sanger go in
maybe. Yes, Japanese Government let her go in.” In ten minutes he would
return with the reversal of this news. He was aware of the contents of
the radiograms which kept the aerials crackling even before they had
been delivered to me. One read, “Thousands disciples welcome you.”
Another, “Possible land Yokohama; impossible discourse.” From the ship’s
daily I learned first that I might lecture, but not publicly; and then,
a day later, after continuous derision on the part of the press—all
right, I might talk publicly if I wished, but under no condition on
birth control. The last word I received was that I could land but speak
only in private. From the Ishimotos came the message, “Anticipate your
staying with us.”
March 10th was so dripping and foggy that when we reached Tokyo Bay I
could not see Japan. The arrival of the _Taiyo Maru_ bearing such an
array of distinguished passengers as the conference delegates was bound
to call forth unusual activity. A veritable flotilla met the ship—police
and health officers’ launches, mail tenders and press dispatch carriers.
Two officials came on board to interrogate me, and the three of us
retired to my cabin, where our bags had been hopefully packed. I showed
my passport, told the purpose of my visit, explained how I happened to
know the Ishimotos and Mr. Yamanoto of the Kaizo group. Inspector and
interpreter alike smiled amiably as they plied their questions, ending
with the polite query, “Who is paying your expenses?” The implication
was that I might be a secret agent sent by the United States Government
to deplete the population of Japan and to prepare the way for an
American invasion. This was particularly amusing, since I was one of the
persons thoroughly disapproved of by my Government.
At the end of the lengthy catechism it was agreed that the ban would be
removed if I, for my part, agreed not to lecture publicly on birth
control, and provided the American Consul General Skidmore formally
requested permission for me to land. I had sent him a wireless message
from the _Taiyo Maru_ saying I would like to visit the country, if not
as a lecturer at least as a private citizen, and asking him to use his
influence. Though I had had no reply I sent off a telegram to him
immediately, and Grant and I sat down on the luggage to await
developments.
The two officials had no sooner taken their departure than the little
cabin was filled to bursting with the gentlemen of the press. We started
and blinked with each rapid-fire, flashlight explosion. The room was
literally smoking with the acrid powder, and not an inch of standing
room remained. Seventy were all trying to get in at once; whatever I
said had to be relayed and translated to the unsuccessful ones who
brimmed over into the corridor.
Meanwhile, we had docked at Yokohama and, when the reporters were
finally disposed of, my friends, who had been patiently enduring the
rain, greeted me—Mr. Yamanoto, Mr. Wilson of the British Embassy,
Baroness Ishimoto, and “the missionary who lived next door.” After
welcoming me they left, the last named carrying with him my briefcase
laden with my most private papers and pamphlets, which I did not wish
seized at the Customs.
Now came the tapping of clogs along the passage, and in the doorway were
framed slight, doll-like figures, pale white faces, crimson lips, black
glossy hair beautifully coiffured, butterfly-looking obis. The trials of
the day vanished before their bobbing little bows. Here was a Japanese
fairy tale come true.
In precise English the leader introduced the others; this one
represented the silk manufacturers, that one the weavers; each of the
twenty-five was appearing for some laboring organization. She explained
they had been there all day, but it was nothing—they were so proud to be
the first to welcome the herald of freedom for women. The Industrial
Revolution which had put them to work was still so young that they were
in virtual slavery. Yet, she said, they were so accustomed to
subservience that it would be a long time until they learned to rebel
against their wrongs. Suffrage was slow—Japanese women found it
difficult to see its advantages. They could not be stirred by offers of
economic independence; it was a higher ideal to have husbands take care
of their wives than have them battle for themselves. She was certain no
inspiration was to be found in that quarter.
Then, with eyes sparkling, she added, “But when the message of birth
control came to us from Honolulu, like the lightning we understood its
meaning, and now we are all awakened.”
We were served with tea, and I continued to await a reply from Mr.
Skidmore, but none ever came. Finally, at seven-thirty, due to the
British Mr. Wilson’s intercession, the Imperial Government at last
opened its gates to me without the sponsorship of my own Government.
I still had to go through Customs. Papers and books, including forty
copies of _Family Limitation_, were confiscated. Thereafter I usually
left spaces in my diaries instead of writing out names, because I never
knew who was going to see them.
The Customs men further minutely examined my clothes, accessories, even
necklaces and ornaments, holding them up, laughing at them, calling each
other to come and look, in order to inform themselves as much on the
composition and design as to determine whether they were dutiable. The
data they gleaned thus from incoming travelers they stored away like
squirrels—and cheaply-manufactured replicas shortly appeared on
Woolworth counters, stamped in purple ink, “Made in Japan.”
When I emerged, tired and damp, more crowds pressed around seeking
autographs. Everywhere in Japan people wanted your signature. One man,
who spoke some English, said he represented the Ricksha-men’s Union and
apologized for the trouble to which I had been put. “Sometime Japanese
Government he little autocratic.” For that matter everybody apologized
for the Government.
After the torrents of rain, logs blazing in fireplaces warmed us in the
Ishimotos’ charming house at Tokyo. Grant and I were both in a large
room, almost bare of furnishings, exquisite in its simplicity. The
fragile walls of painted silk gave an impression of airiness.
Next to us was the huge bathroom, the floor and lower walls of
burnished, shining copper. In the center, raised on legs, stood a great
wooden tub with a top that closed down, and a hole for your neck. Five
or six basins were ranged around the room and, beside each, brush and
soap. You were supposed to scrub and scrub and then rinse by throwing
pans of water over you. Finally you entered the steaming tub to relax.
It was not etiquette to leave any trace of soap in the bath or any
evidence of its use, because everybody in the family soaked in that
water before the night was over—guests, hosts, and servants in order.
I sank gratefully on one of the mattresses borrowed for our comfort and
laid on the floor; the rest of the household slept on mats with wooden
blocks in place of pillows, a custom which allowed the ladies to keep
their coiffures intact for a week at a time. Through the frail
partitions we could hear the servants laughing and chatting until late
into the night, men and women together, carrying on their bathing as
though it were a function of eating.
Our days were tremendously busy, beginning early with the ringing of the
antiquated telephone on the wall. People came silently in rickshas and
departed after conversing with the Baron and Baroness.
Old Japan had extended esthetics into the realm of ordinary existence,
and undoubtedly had produced a thing of beauty. The gestures of ceremony
might have meant little, but they made delightful the arranging of any
affair whatever. The Japanese always greeted each other with a bow from
the waistline, hands gliding down to the knees. The difference between
one and another was so subtle that a foreigner could hardly distinguish
it, but it was there all the same. A particular mark of respect was the
triple bow, graduated according to the social rank—an inclination, a
slight pause, a deeper inclination, again a pause, and then down further
until the back was nearly horizontal.
Grant, who was very affectionate, had been accustomed to kiss me when we
met, whether it were in a restaurant, hotel, on the street, or anywhere
else for that matter. But he had to forego this salute in Japan when we
observed that kissing was a shock to Japanese sensibilities, and,
indeed, was considered immoral. Instead, he took over Japanese manners
and became marvelously courteous. Practically every time he spoke to me
he made the three bows, and unconsciously I soon found myself returning
them with equal formality.
Politeness in behavior, impersonal and ritualistic, was most noticeable
in those relationships where we naturally expected habitual and
conventional reserve to be thrown aside. When the Baroness Ishimoto’s
mother and sister were coming for lunch, she donned a special kimono,
set out special vases and screens, greeted them with the prescribed
bows, wordings, and gestures. Even I noticed the civilities accorded the
two were not the same. The effect was that the mother occupied the place
of honor as though she were receiving.
Men came also to the Ishimotos’ to plan for the various meetings and
entertainments. A member of the House of Lords telephoned to say he was
a “disciple.” The press sought interviews. Early in my career I had
realized the importance of giving clear, concise, and true concepts of
birth control to those who wished to quote me. This simple policy served
my purpose particularly well in the Orient, where technical phrases in
English were hopelessly confusing. Under any circumstances our language
was peculiarly difficult for the Japanese, and their phraseology was
sometimes convulsively funny. One letter from a dismissed government
employee to the head of his department was making the rounds of
Occidentals in the East:
Kind Sir, on opening this epistle you will behold the work of a
dejobbed person, and a very be-wifed and much childrenized
gentleman, who was violently dejobbed in a twinkling by your
goodself. For Heaven’s sake, sir, consider this catastrophe as
falling on your own head, and remind yourself on walking home at the
moon’s end to savage wife and sixteen voracious children with your
pocket filled with non-existent pennies and pity my horrible state.
When being dejobbed and proceeding with a heart and intestines
filled with misery in this den of doom, myself did greedily
contemplate culpable homicide, but Him who protected Daniel (poet)
safe through the Lion’s den will protect his servant in this home of
evil. As to reason given by yourself esquire for my dejobment the
incrimination was laziness.
NO SIR. It were impossible that myself who has pitched sixteen
infant children into this vale of tears can have a lazy atom in his
mortal frame, and a sudden departure of eleven pounds has left me on
the verge of the abyss of destitution and despair.
I hope this vision of horror will enrich your dreams this night and
good Angel will meet and pulverize your heart of nether millstone so
that you will awaken and with such alacrity as may be compatible
with your personal safety, and will hasten to rejobulate your
servant.
So mote it be, Amen,
Yours despairfully,
Akono Subusu
And on the bottom of the letter the district officer had noted:
Gentle Reader, do not sob—
Akono Subusu has been rejobbed.
I myself had a letter from a gentleman who wrote, “How I am unavoidably
in need to execute your ‘Ism’ and hope to know your effective method.”
Had it been allowed, I should have given forth practical information.
Since it was not, I believed if I could make plain to the authorities
that I was not going to break this rule in my lectures, they could find
no fault with them.
Accordingly, the morning of our second day in Tokyo an appointment was
made with the Police Governor. In spite of the early hour the hard
little official, his close-cropped hair revealing all the bumps and
developments, served us tea. The Japanese always handed you tea as we
pass cigarettes—in embarrassment, for relaxation, or just to tie up
loose moments. Disregarding the vital subject completely we discussed
current topics through an interpreter. Though all the people were
intensely serious, they were remarkably fond of plays on words. Merrily
I was told my name had created much confusion owing to its similarity to
_sangai san_, which meant “destructive to production.”
Birth control was thus delicately introduced. For the first time I heard
about the Dangerous Thought Law, which had been sponsored in Parliament
by a group called the “Thought Controllers,” who aimed to exclude from
the country all ideas not conforming to ancient Japanese tradition. The
Police Governor assumed he knew exactly what I had planned to talk
about, and I could not move him from the conviction that I wanted to
present a Dangerous Thought.
I was not, however, going to let the matter drop. I went higher up to
the Home Affairs Office. A courteous gentleman informed me the Minister
sent his regards and hoped to have the pleasure of seeing me some other
time. There was no tea. I was politely bowed out.
My next stop was at the Kaizo office, where the entire staff was called
into consultation. They were bristly and burly enough to be taken for
Russians; only their kimonos identified them as Japanese. One and all
decided we should go in person to the Imperial Diet. There, on
presentation of our cards, couriers started running around to find the
Chief. In a few moments the door of the room into which we had been
ushered was opened, and in came the very same man with whom I had
conversed at the Home Office that morning. Profoundly embarrassed I
explained this was the way of impatient Americans, who were bent on
hurrying things along. He was very kind, and said he had been on the
point of giving me permission to speak publicly provided I did not
mention birth control. When I sketched an outline of a possible
population lecture we laughed and agreed the Empire of Japan was not, as
a result, going to fall.
Almost from the time of landing I had been deeply conscious that I was
in one of the most thickly populated countries of the world. The
Ishimotos’ automobile honked, honked, at every turn of the wheels to
squeeze through rickshas, pedestrians, and children in the narrow,
unpaved streets.
In any traffic danger the first concern was always for the baby. I never
saw one slapped, struck, scolded, or punished. I never heard one cry;
they all seemed happy and smiling, though I must admit a few of them
needed to have their little noses wiped. I could not believe any country
could contain so many babies. Fathers carried them in their arms;
mothers carried them in a sort of shawl; children carried babies; even
babies carried smaller babies. I saw a land of one-story houses but of
two-story children. Boys with babies on their backs were playing
baseball, running to bases, the heads of the babies wobbling so that you
thought their necks were surely going to be broken.
The momentum that had come from the high birth rate was felt in every
walk of life. Peers, business and professional men were all having large
families. One told me he wanted twenty children. When I asked him how
many he had already he replied, “Two,” and he was offended when I
suggested that perhaps his wife, instead of himself, had had those.
The density of population in tillable areas of Japan averaged two
thousand human beings to the square mile, and it was increasing at the
rate of almost a million a year. Although they built terraced rice
paddies on their hillsides with tremendous labor they could not feed
themselves. Furthermore, lacking ore, petroleum, and an adequate supply
of coal, they could not develop their industries to a point where they
could exchange their products for enough food.
The Government should itself have been disseminating contraceptive
information, but the army faction was not friendly to it and claimed
Japan could never be respected in the eyes of the world until she
possessed a force sufficiently powerful to make might right. It was even
then too late for birth control to offset the inevitability of her
overflowing her borders; the population pressure was bound to cause an
explosion in spite of the safety valve of Korea. How long this could be
delayed was a matter of pure conjecture.
_Chapter Twenty-six_
THE EAST IS BLOSSOMING
After I found out where I stood with the Government, the silent friends
who had come and gone so frequently from the Ishimoto home produced
plans for various meetings. In each one the address was to a particular
class which did not mingle with others—commercial, educational, medical,
parliamentary.
The Kaizo group were intensely disappointed that I could not deliver the
lectures I had prepared and for which they had invited me to Japan. As a
compromise we agreed that I should have to focus my War and Population
talk around Germany and the Allies. It was going to be difficult,
because I was not satisfied with the European facts and figures I had.
My first meeting was at the Tokyo Y.M.C.A. Shortly before one o’clock I
was escorted with great ceremony into a room behind the auditorium,
pungent with smoke from a charcoal stove. Then I was presented to a
gathering of about five hundred—prosperous-looking men, well-dressed
women, students, a number of foreigners, a Buddhist priest or two, and a
liberal sprinkling of the Metropolitan Police to make certain my
audience thought no dangerous thoughts as a result of my speech.
Most of the auditors apparently understood some English, because while I
was speaking they leaned forward attentively, laughing in the proper
places, but when I paused for the translation they relaxed, rustled
papers, and whispered to each other.
I had discovered that the five-hour clause in my contract was no mistake
and no joke. Standing from one until six was a frightful strain. The
lecture with interpretations took three hours, although I could have
delivered it in one, and questions took two more. Many of these were on
subjects entirely alien to my own. “What do you think of missionaries?
What do you think of Christianity? Are you yourself a Christian?” This
last was naïvely posed, and, thoroughly aware of the significance of
what it meant truly to be a Christian, I replied, “I’m afraid I’m not a
very good one.”
My questioner put out his chest and said confidently, “I am.”
I seemed to recall my adolescence when I had exacted the last ounce of
righteousness from every breathing hour. Many of the Japanese converts
had this spirit. They were trying to change their ancestral ideas of
morality and, instead, adopt wholesale the Christian code without having
had time to assimilate it.
The most painful experience I had in Japan was in addressing the Tokyo
medical association. The volunteer interpreter was a young doctor who
had been on a three weeks’ tour of America, and his command of English
was correspondingly slight. From the attitude of the audience I could
tell whenever he was not conveying my meaning as I had intended it,
though I did not always know what specifically was wrong. The Baroness,
unable to bear his mis-translation of “prevention of conception” as
abortion, which she knew would distress me intensely, finally rose and
attempted to correct the erroneous impression he was giving. But the
meeting was over before she could make it clear.
Nothing had been said about remuneration. I expected none. But the next
day an army of ten rickshas appeared. The officers of the society, laden
with packages and bundles, presented themselves. One by one they offered
boxes in which I found an elaborate kimono, an embroidered table cover,
a purse, a fan, a cloisonné jar, and, in conclusion, the President
offered me the smallest package of all, wrapped in tissue and tied with
a paper tape on which were the characters wishing me health, happiness,
and longevity. Opening it I found crisp new bills in payment. This
delicate gesture was typically Japanese.
At other meetings we usually sat on clean, fresh mats; the room might be
chilly, but a little charcoal burner was beside you and occasionally you
warmed your hands over it. I liked the service and the food which the
maids silently brought all at once on a tray, covered over and steaming
hot. After _saké_ in diminutive porcelain cups the group was ready to
converse, and it was cozy and interesting. Often we did not get away
until midnight because, although the discussion was carried on in
English, each remark was translated for the benefit of those who did not
understand. The Baroness always went with me, and it was a revelation to
them to have one of their own countrywomen present.
I had heard much talk of the Elder Statesmen, but nobody at the Peers’
Club, where I gave an afternoon address, seemed to be even elderly. They
were curious to know why women were divorced, whether they wanted more
than one husband, whether they really could ever care for more than one
man, the nature of their love for children, how long it could continue.
They were like Europeans in the frankness with which they regarded the
relationship of the sexes. Yet they were not satisfied with the accepted
Japanese tradition—on the one hand geisha girls who played and coquetted
and amused them, and on the other wives whose place as yet was
definitely in the home. They asked, “Is it not true that the American
woman can be all things to her husband—his companion, mother of his
children, mistress, business manager, and friend?”
I agreed with them that this was the ideal, but had to confess that by
no means every American wife fitted into this picture.
Many of the Japanese had themselves forgotten that in the heroic and
epic days women had enjoyed freedom and equality with men. Only with the
rise of the powerful military lords in the Eighth Century had this most
rigid, most persistent, and most immovable discrimination arisen.
The _Ona Daigaku_, the feudal moral code, counseled:
A woman shall get up early in the morning and go to bed late in the
evening. She must never take a nap in the daytime. She shall be
industrious at sewing, weaving, spinning, and embroidery. She shall
not take much tea or wine. She shall not visit places of amusement,
such as theaters or musicals. She must never get angry—she must bear
everything and always be careful and timid.
The resultant upper-class Japanese lady, exquisite and decorative, was a
living work of art particularly created by the imagination of numberless
generations of men. My original conception of all Japanese women had
been fashioned out of romantic fallacies—partly by the three little
maids from school who simpered through the _Mikado_, and to no small
extent by the gaudy theatricalism of _Madama Butterfly_. The
unrestrained exoticism of Pierre Loti and Lafcadio Hearn had
strengthened my illusions, as had also the color prints that had aroused
so much enthusiasm towards the end of the century.
But I soon found the cherry blossom fairyland was being destroyed by the
advent of machinery. In Yokohama and Kobe you heard factory whistles and
saw tall smokestacks, new shipyards, and great steel cranes. The
Industrial Revolution, accomplished in our Western countries gradually,
had invaded the Island Empire with an impact and a shock the
repercussions of which were still evident. It had not brought freedom to
the women whose low status was admirably suited to the purpose of
manufacturing with its ever-increasing demand for cheap and unskilled
labor.
Practically half the female population, some thirteen millions, were
engaged in gainful occupation though few were economically independent.
In the mill districts mothers scolded their small daughters by
threatening, “I’ll sell you to the weavers.” These _kaiko_, or “bought
ones,” served as apprentices generally from three to five years. Modern
Japanese industrialism had been able to take advantage of an ancient
Oriental habit of thought which placed slight value on the girl child.
I spent half a day as the guest of the Kanegafuchi plant, the largest
cotton mill in the Empire and the ideal industrial institution which was
to be a model for others, comparing favorably with one of our best. But
Kanegafuchi was the exception. On the average, employees in other mills
worked a twelve-hour shift, day and night, amid the deafening roar of
relentless power engines. Dust and fine particles of fabric fell like
minute snowflakes upon them. Their growth was stunted, their resistance
to infection and malignant disease broken down. In a silk-spinning mill
at Nagoya conditions were only slightly better. I found over seven
hundred girls, some no more than ten years of age, swiftly twirling off
the slender threads from the cocoons and catching them on the spindles.
They were pathetic, gentle, homeless little things, imprisoned in rooms
with all windows closed to keep them moist and hot. A quarter of their
seven dollars a month wages had to go for board.
Only by the graciousness and charity, in a sense, of the upper classes
were the household servants saved from institutions. When the Baroness,
for example, had married, some of them—cooks, maids, and nurses—had
stayed with her parents, some had gone to another sister, some had come
to her and been set to training the new ones. With her they had a home
for life. This system accounted in part, at least, for the fact there
were no beggars or mendicants in Japan.
Essentially conservative, essentially the product of a strange and
scarcely understood past, the Japanese woman in my opinion did not
possess in her typical psychology any strong leanings towards rebellion.
This was true even among the many women writers on papers and magazines.
Those who interviewed me were intelligent, but I was constantly amazed
at their ancient and domesticated outlook.
I did not believe the woman of Japan would discard her beautiful costume
or sacrifice her esthetic sense upon the altar of Occidental progress
and materialism. The kimono was her chrysalis. Outwardly it was often of
some thick serviceable goods, dull brown or black, shot through with
threads of purple or blue. Yet underneath were silks of the brightest
and most flaming hues, formalized for each particular occasion. Only a
fleeting glimpse was caught of these as she walked. They were symbolic
of her present position in society.
From the lowest serving maid to the finest aristocrat, certain indelible
traits immediately impressed themselves. First of all was the low, soft,
fluttering voice, like art and music combined. They were too modestly
shy to talk out loud; you could scarcely hear them in a small room.
Perhaps one reason men did not take their opinions seriously was because
they did not speak up. I heard on every side of the New Woman—but I
never saw her. Only those who had turned Christian showed any signs of
thinking independently. To be a Christian seemed to imply being a rebel
or radical of some kind. They told me it with great secret pride.
This was the single place where I had found men rather than women
responding to the potentialities of birth control. The former wanted to
learn and thereby make of themselves something better. They were more
and more in touch with the ideas of the Western world, and were
broadening themselves through travel. I was confident a shifting
environment was going to extend the masculine point of view and, if
birth control could be proved of benefit to them, they would practice
it. At that time I did not agree that East and West could never meet.
Japan was undoubtedly a man’s country. Wherever we went, Grant was
Exhibit A. He was a tall, dark, rather gawky youth, with adolescent
manners but always cheerful. In private houses butlers and maids paid
him much attention, and, in hotels, as soon as we entered the dining
room everybody, because he was a man child, rushed to anticipate his
wishes, to see that he was made comfortable. I straggled on behind. At
our first appearance in one of these, the little girls who were being
trained as waitresses and whose duty it was to bow the guests in and out
were obviously confused. When we were seated at the table the proprietor
apologized, “You must excuse them because they are so young, and they
have their minds too much on this young gentleman.”
The Yoshiwara, to which some missionaries escorted me, was certainly an
integral part of this man’s world. First we visited the unlicensed
quarter, winding in our rickshas among alley-like streets lined with
small houses. The dark eyes of the girls peered out through slits in the
screen walls. Working men were standing in the muddy roadways,
chattering, scrutinizing the prices which were posted in front like
restaurant menus—so much per hour, so much per night. A door opened to
admit a visitor. The light in the lower story vanished and soon another
twinkled upstairs; or a light went out above and reappeared below, the
door opened again and a figure emerged. Hundreds of lights behind paper
windows seemed to flicker on and off constantly, low to high, high to
low. The sordidness, the innumerable, shining eyes made me shiver
involuntarily.
After we crossed a bridge to the licensed quarter the scene changed
immediately. The wide thoroughfare, with a row of trees down the center
festooned with electric globes like a midway, was clean and inviting.
The amply-built houses had an air of spaciousness and luxury, their
lanterns sent out a soft, alluring gleam, and carefully cultivated
gardens produced a profusion of flowers in the courtyards. This part of
the Yoshiwara appeared a delightful place. Its attraction for the girls
was obvious; they would rather seek a livelihood in this fashion than in
the dismal factories. Nor was it odd that they should find more romance
here with many men than drudging for one all their days as the
“incompetents” they became after marriage under the domination of their
mothers-in-law.
Through portals as broad as driveways the patrons, much better dressed
than those in the unlicensed quarter, strolled up to view the
photographs of the inmates, posted like those in the lobby of a Broadway
theater. In some frames was only the announcement, “—— just arrived,
straight from ——. No time for picture.” The clients did a great deal of
“window shopping.” Newcomers from the country might have eight or nine
visitors an evening, an older one but two or three. Many of the girls
came from good families, frequently to lift their fathers or brothers
out of debt. They sent their earnings back and, as soon as they had
accumulated a sufficiency, often went home, married, and became
reputable members of society.
But in spite of the Yoshiwara’s artificial glamour, the crowd of men
swarming like insects, automatically reacting to the stimulus of
instinct, was unutterably depressing.
We walked home at midnight through the sleeping city, mysterious and
quiet, not like a city at all—no jumping signs or illumination, but more
like a nice, low-ceilinged room trimmed with old, brown-stained oak, and
only here and there a glow.
Nothing else in my travels could compare with that month in Tokyo. The
language was strange and unfamiliar. The bells in the shafts of the
rickshas, ringing for pedestrians to get out of the way, added a bizarre
note. The queer, clicking sound of the wooden geta was different
although somewhat reminiscent of the clop, clop, of the Lancashire
wooden shoes, which also were taken off at the door and exchanged for
slippers. All the smells and the sights were quite new, even the signs
on the shops were unreadable. In Europe, you could usually guess from
some root word what kind of merchandise was for sale within. But not so
in Japan. One day I stopped, totally puzzled, to inquire the whereabouts
of a store the address of which had been written down for me. I showed
my slip of paper but nobody there could help me. I went on. Fully three
minutes later the pattering of hurried steps behind me caused me to
turn. Here was one of the clerks. He had gone to the trouble of looking
up the address I had asked for and had come to act as guide to make sure
I arrived.
Throughout Japan the custom of greeting you and seeing you off was
touching, and gave you a charming remembrance of a world where
friendships were worth time and consideration. When a Tokyo doctor heard
I was leaving Yokohama eighteen miles away at eight o’clock in the
morning, he presented himself at seven to bring me a box of choice silk
handkerchiefs. He must have risen at five to do so.
From the window of the train for Kyoto the faces of the old men trudging
along the road looked curiously like the drawings of them. Everywhere
were small village houses and, since I could see through from front to
rear, I wondered where the peasants and their numerous offspring ate and
slept.
The former capital was fascinating. The shopkeepers appeared to esteem
their visitors more highly than the goods they had to sell, though Kyoto
blue and, more especially, Kyoto red were like no other colors anywhere.
If ever you see the latter, buy it if you can, cherish it among your
treasures, save it for your children, because it is the most beautiful
of all reds.
It was now April, the festival of spring and of the geishas, the
jealously guarded and chaperoned entertainers, singers, players.
Everybody was anticipating the flowering of the cherry trees, and with
the rest of Kyoto I went to see the enormous, spreading, willow cherry,
then in dazzling white blossom. It was several hundred years old, its
limbs which grew out and drooped towards the ground were propped up with
care, and around it was a superbly groomed landscape garden. The
proprietors of hotels near such trees erected unpretentious tea houses,
temporary in character, where hundreds of people kept vigil. You could
not help having respect for a people whose love of a tree brought them
from miles away and who waited day and night throughout the duration of
its brief blooming. They paid deference to it as they did to a great
artist who they knew could live just so long.
The Japanese designed their gardens with the mood of the individual in
mind. Some were filled with music, water, birds, activity, and there you
could go to be cheered when gloomy and despondent. As soon as I entered
the Golden Temple grounds its influence fell upon me. Everything was
planned for thought and concentration. No color, no noise, no rushing of
water, no singing birds distracted the attention. Only at certain hours
could you even walk about, because movement was disturbing to
meditation.
Japanese hospitality reached its finest flower in Kyoto, and the supreme
day of entertainment was offered by a generous and considerate doctor.
On inviting me to luncheon he said he would call with his car at ten in
the morning. This seemed a bit early, but it appeared he wanted me first
to visit the Museum of Art. Here was no wandering through miles of rooms
so that the eye was wearied and no lasting impression was gathered.
Instead, I was shown only the one most prized specimen of paintings,
porcelains, and rare screens. Afterwards, I was ushered into the library
to see a collection of precious manuscripts, then back through the city
for a few especially renowned views, and finally at noon to the doctor’s
home. His wife and two daughters greeted me and I was introduced to the
guests. Little short-legged trays were put before our floor cushions,
and we all picked up our chopsticks. I envied Grant his dexterity.
After the trays had been removed, we conversed until the business men
had to return to their offices. But a fresh group of guests took their
places, and with them appeared a painter. An easel was set up and each
of us in turn made a single brush line on the rice paper—some straight,
some curved, some vertical, some horizontal, crisscrossing each other in
every direction. Then the artist took his brush and, amid exclamations
of wonder and appreciation, with a few expert strokes converted the
mélange into a flower pattern, a lake, or a mountain.
An hour or so of this pleasure and the easel was swished away, the
painter vanished with his colors, and a sculptor was substituted. We
were now supplied with dabs of clay which we began to mold, the sculptor
going from one to another to give assistance. If you were clever, as
several of the Japanese were, works of art resulted. I created a plain
jug with handle and lip, was taught how to draw a design upon it and how
to paint it. Next day it was delivered to me, baked and glazed.
Later we were escorted to the garden where we congregated beneath an
open tea house perched high on a rock. There the younger daughter tended
a tiny fire and brewed a ceremonial tea—no simple brew, but leaves of a
special sort, beaten until the beverage was bright green. When we had
enjoyed this delight we strolled about, admiring the brooklets, the
dwarf pines, the shrubs, the iris in bloom.
We returned to the house to find, as though in a play, that the scenery
had all been changed. Different screens were up, fresh flowers in the
vases, the women of the household in more elaborate costumes, and new
visitors waiting. Grant and I alone seemed to remain static.
Now on the immaculate matted floor appeared little charcoal stoves. The
evening meal was served by the mother and daughters as a marked honor to
their guests. This time I was brought a spoon and fork; apparently I had
not been very deft at lunch in handling my chopsticks. After dinner came
yet more people and yet more conversation. I had been talking steadily
since early morning, the topic being selected according to the type of
gathering. In the evening it was population, and more serious. Sometimes
I forgot myself and spun out involved English phrases, then, realizing
they had missed fire, had to go back and choose key words more easily
comprehended.
This continued until midnight or later. At last we had to excuse
ourselves and ask to be taken home, because we were leaving for Kobe the
next morning.
The doctor and his wife, accompanied by some of their friends, were at
our hotel betimes, all with boxes and bon voyages. This reversal of the
Occidental custom of bestowing presents on one’s host or hostess was an
enchanting way of conducting the amenities of life. They wanted no
return for their hospitality. I had arrived in Japan with one small
trunk and departed with five, laden with gifts.
_Chapter Twenty-seven_
ANCIENTS OF THE EARTH
New and different places, strange countries, peoples, and faces have
always appealed to me. I did not have to be in London for the Fifth
International Conference until July. When I had secured my Chinese visa
it had occurred to me that it might be much better to go on around the
world than retrace my steps.
On a misty day, the sun not bright enough to clear the sky completely,
we sailed from Kobe through the glorious Inland Sea, threaded its
innumerable islets, like the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence, only
more delicate. The boat was small and out-of-date. A few of the English
had chairs but Grant and I wandered between crates of ducks, chickens,
and livestock, and hundreds of Japanese squatting stolidly on the deck.
When we emerged into the Yellow Sea it became very foggy and Grant was
sick to his toes. I put on a brave face and ate, though with long teeth,
as the old phrase goes.
We landed at Fusan one evening. Koreans stood about in their white robes
which fell to their ankles, pale figures outlined against the night in
the subdued light of their mysterious paper lanterns. The next morning
as I glanced out over the countryside on the way to Seoul it appeared an
Oriental desert, odd but seemingly familiar. I felt at home within its
gates. White-robed coolies smoking long thin pipes with minute bowls
drove oxen, worked in the fields. They had North American Indian faces,
uncut, ragged hair, reddish skins, and curious, wooden structures
strapped to their backs to carry burdens of any kind—soil, coal, rocks.
The streets of Seoul were broad, dimly lit. The tall Korean men were
unique, a combination of priest, patriarch, and grandee, so formal and
elegant with their pointed beards a trifle larger than Van Dykes. They
were utterly indifferent to other people, managing to preserve a proud
and aloof air in spite of their idiotic, silly-looking hats,
dinky-crowned and wide-brimmed, from which hung strings of amber beads,
valuable family heirlooms.
I wondered again at the universal white costumes. Everywhere on the
banks of rivers women were eternally pounding laundry; you could almost
feel the threads parting company with the terrific beating—washing with
stones and ironing with sticks.
The Korean was held in contempt by the Japanese, who declared his
Government had built schools, roads, railroads, brought cleanliness. It
was true that the houses of the Koreans were not so well-kept, their
habits not so sanitary, but they were a separate race, and they accepted
scouring and scrubbing and sweeping only under pressure. Hatred and
rebellion had been the result of denying them their language and
customs. They claimed they were taxed out of existence to pay for such
luxuries, and nourished antagonism and stubborn resistance against
anything Japanese. They maintained further that they had no personal
liberty, even being required to have passports to move about in their
own country.
Koreans also resented the speeding up of production in the silk
factories through the exploitation of little girls. I saw them there,
shoulders bent, crouched up over their work, hair braided down their
backs; they were almost like babies. Their job was to put their tender,
delicate fingers into boiling water to pull out the silk cocoons—the
hands of older people were not sensitive enough. But the Japanese said
they did not feel the pain.
Even though I had a large luncheon meeting attended by foreign
missionaries and officials, Korea was but a stepping stone to China. The
Celestial Kingdom had an indefinable odor of its own, peculiar and
inimitable, which waxed and waned, varying with each city and with each
district of a city. It might be a compound of sauces, onions, garlic,
incense, opium, and charcoal, but who has ever succeeded in putting an
odor into words? It marched upon you, at first faintly and indistinctly
like a distant army, and then closed in relentlessly, associating itself
with memories, making you gasp in protest or pleasure.
At Peking I wanted to change into fresh clothes all the time. I was
haunted by dust—dust in my body, in my ears, up my nose, down my throat,
between my teeth. Some of the streets were paved, but the dust was
suffocating. After every sight-seeing sortie I bathed and bathed and
bathed in a desperate effort to rid myself of the diabolical dust.
We were seven days viewing palaces, native quarters, night life,
sing-song girls, hospitals, factories, silk mills. We heard the
mechanical chanting and beating of drums by Buddhist priests, mostly
young boys dressed in soiled yellow robes; gazed with amazement at the
funeral processions—great floats, fantastic gods, food, flowers,
possessions; visited old Chinese gardens and museums. I shopped for jade
and lapis lazuli and was well cheated.
Beggars, many of them crippled and on crutches, were hobbling along in
the gutters or sitting on corners, gaunt and filthy. Children were
turning handsprings, doing anything to attract your attention; they
edged beside you, and you had the feeling they had been born with palms
upward.
You could not set foot out of doors without being besieged by ricksha
boys clothed only in scant, cotton trousers and jackets, always short at
ankles and wrists. The moment you stepped in they picked up the shafts
of their little vehicles and began the dogtrot journey. I could not
become accustomed to the eager running of these half-naked creatures, so
weak, so underfed, so much less able than the rest of us. It had been
bad enough in Japan, but there you felt the runners were sturdy; in
China they usually were suffering from varicose veins, heart disease,
and, forever, hunger. Often, as the wind blew some of the rags and
tatters aside, I saw pock marks and wondered how close we were to the
manifold diseases of the Orient.
I was going about a good deal and it worried me to be pulled around by a
human being so emaciated. One morning our regular boy was missing.
Another replaced him, cheery and smiling. Three days later the first
returned. He had been sick, he said; he had had smallpox. The scabs had
not yet peeled off.
I spoke to the doorman at the hotel, who managed the rickshas. “This boy
is not well enough to work.”
“Oh, yes, he’s used to it. He feels a little bad, but he’s all right.”
Nevertheless, I sent him home to rest up. Nothing save famine and
pestilence and plague seemed to give the Chinese any breathing spell. It
was said the average ricksha coolie lasted but four or five years—the
remainder of his life he merely subsisted. I was submerged in a strange
despondency and questioned “the oldest civilization in the world” which
still, after so many thousand years, permitted this barbarism.
Grant rode a donkey when we went to the Ming tombs, and the guide did
also. I was carried in a chair for miles and miles through an arid,
dusty plain. Two coolies held the lengthy bamboo poles on their
shoulders and a third jogged alongside waiting to take his turn. I felt
so sorry for them I wanted to get out and walk. I wished I could carry
myself. All the way these poor, starved creatures made animal noises,
“Aah-huh, aah-huh,” nasal, interminable, varying the tone but slightly;
even their words sounded like grunts to me.
China was not yet past the story-telling age, as you saw in the theater,
where someone recited the news from the stage; for a copper anybody
could hear what was going on in the world. The ancient classical forms
of the Chinese language were intelligible to scholars alone, and Dr.
Hu-Shih had been instrumental in devising a literary vernacular which
the people could use. This philosopher who at three years old had been
familiar with eight hundred characters, now in 1922, while only in his
late twenties, was already reputed to be the initiator of the Chinese
Renaissance. He asked whether I would speak to the students of the
Peking National University and, though he was to act as chairman,
volunteered also to interpret, which I esteemed an almost unheard-of
honor. His outlook, coinciding with mine, recognized what birth control
might mean for civilization.
Dr. Tsai Yuen-Pei, the Chancellor of the University and a leader of the
anti-Christian movement, had gathered into his fold the most brilliant
students of Young China, all of them bubbling over with interest at
Western ideas, which were sweeping the globe. A great turmoil was going
on in their lives and a revolt against rigid Chinese tradition.
Due to the translation difficulties I had encountered in Japan, I had
decided I could not afford to speak in China unless I went over the
subject first with my interpreter and knew he understood the spirit as
well as the words. Therefore I showed Dr. Hu-Shih my lecture material in
advance. He suggested, “These students will want to know everything
about contraception as it is practiced.”
“But I’ve never given that except at medical meetings.”
“China is different from the West. Here you may discuss contraception as
an educational fact as well as a social measure. You will be listened to
respectfully, laughed at if you do not, and will surely be asked for
definite information. I think you should prepare yourself for this.”
It was not simple to digress from principles and theories and go into
methods that needed diagrams and technical knowledge to secure
understanding, and I felt diffident about following his advice. But
these young people, responsive and alert, received my first practical
lecture with earnest attention. Dr. Hu-Shih translated accurately and
quickly, interjecting amusing stories and improving, I imagine, upon my
own words.
Afterwards he and I were escorted across the campus to the home of Dr.
Tsai. I have always been interested in foreign foods. I like to try them
out, and have brought home dozens of Hawaiian, Chinese, Indian, Japanese
recipes which can be made at home. This dinner was an Arabian Nights
experience. It began at seven and lasted until one in the
morning—bird’s-nest and quail egg soup, fried garoupa, ducks’ tongues
and snow fungus, roast pheasant, rice and congee, lotus nuts and pastry,
sharks’ fins, and various kinds of wine.
There must have been well over thirty guests invited for the evening,
among them an American woman, Mrs. Grover Clark, whose husband was on
the faculty of the University. Some of the students had been to her
between the lecture and dinner time and given her the transcribed notes
which they had taken down in shorthand. Would she correct them? They
wanted to get the information published. When they came to the
Chancellor’s home to call for them so that they could deliver them to
the press, I could see at a glance that this was not at all what I
desired to leave behind me; my spoken words never sound adequate or
complete in print. Therefore, I sent a boy to the hotel for a copy of
the old stand-by, _Family Limitation_. The students set to work at once
to translate it. Mrs. Clark offered to pay the expenses, and the next
afternoon five thousand copies were ready for circulation.
This little incident was significant of Young China; an idea to them was
useless if only in the head. Their motto was to put it into concrete
reality.
Symptomatic also of new China was the abandonment of bound feet,
although women of advanced years still were to be seen leaning on each
other for support as they tottered by. Amahs were carrying nurselings
about when they themselves seemed scarcely able to stand up. However, I
was glad to see only a few of the small children had these lily feet.
Fathers realized their daughters could not earn a living if thus
deformed. At the Peking Union Medical College, combining the modern
equipment of the Occident with the artistry and traditions of the
Orient, no girl was accepted for training unless her feet were normal.
One day Dr. Hu-Shih asked me to lunch in an old Manchu restaurant where
his friends were accustomed to gather and ponder. Many were business or
professional men, but all, with their little beards and intellectual
faces, had the appearance of professors. It was an unusual combination
of Wall Street and university. In our private dining room were seven
English-speaking Chinese with families of from four to nine children.
Each said the later ones had not been wanted; nevertheless they had
come.
The conversation took a scientific turn. Since man had through breeding
brought about such changes in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, why
could he not produce a class of human beings unable to procreate? Was
there any reason why the particular biological factors that made the
mule sterile could not be applied further? They discussed the
interesting possibility of creating a neuter gender such as the workers
in a beehive or ant hill.
The implications of this colloquy formed a fascinating climax to our
sojourn in Peking. Our train was the last one south for several days.
Soldiers cluttered the landscape—not alert or even military-looking, but
men or boys put into uniform and told how to act. The Tuchuns were all
trying to “unite” China, each in his own way. We read in the papers
about the war clouds hanging over the country, but nobody seemed to be
excited. We were not worried; being foreigners, we were assured, meant
protection.
The valley of the Yangtze Kiang was green and luxuriant; every inch of
ground was being utilized. Even space which should have been employed
for roads was given over to food production, and thousands of people
were born, lived, and died in boats on the river. Some water buffalo
waded in the mud of the rice fields, some horses worked the water
treadmills, but human labor predominated. Overpopulation and destitution
went hand in hand. In this land which Marco Polo once described as “a
pleasant haven of silks, spices, and fine manners,” all the hypothetical
Malthusian bogeys had come true.
Foreigners at the International and French Settlements of Shanghai
enjoyed much the same life as at home. Their hotels were the same, they
met the same sort of people, dressed in the same clothes, ate the same
meals; in fact, it was difficult to get Chinese food unless you knew
exactly where to go. They came in droves, herded together, most of them
bored to death. You could see they had appropriated the best of
everything—the houses with gardens and walls, the clean rickshas, the
well-fed boys, the prosperity. The Chinese, in their own country, lived
on what was left, which was practically nothing. They huddled wistfully
on the fringes—horrible, abject, dirty.
It amazed me to see that Americans, French, and English could be so near
and yet close their eyes to the wretched, degrading conditions of
devastating squalor in the native quarters. Once while a missionary was
guiding me through the Chinese City, we noted a crowd, children
included, gathered in curiosity around a leper woman. She was on the
ground, sighing and breathing heavily. Nobody offered to help her.
“Maybe she’s dying,” said my companion. Just then the woman gave a
fearful groan and took a baby from under her rags. She knew what to do,
manipulated her thighs and abdomen, got the afterbirth, bit the cord
with her teeth, put the baby aside, turned over, and rested. No trace of
emotion showed on the faces of the watchers.
In their respective countries Europeans would have made an effort to
improve such conditions. But here they seemed to have lost many of their
former standards and qualities of character and conscience. It was said
that China, psychologically speaking, swallowed up the morals of all
those who came to reside there.
One young American secretary related to me the joys of living in this
section of the Orient. She said her salary was far smaller than any she
would have received in the United States, but her comfort, on the other
hand, far exceeded what she could have had in Boston at double her
present wages. Among them she mentioned her ricksha boy, who cost her
only five dollars a month, out of which he had to support himself and
his enormous family. During the three years he had been working for her
she had never raised his pay, nor did she ever expect to. He dared make
no request, because in China it was almost impossible to get a job by
one’s self. When a servant was dismissed he faced practical starvation.
I really formed a bad impression of people who wanted to live in China
because of the cheapness of its luxuries.
The Grand Hotel was elegantly appointed, but the boys who served in the
rooms did not seem friendly in their hearts towards any foreigners.
Hostility was percolating throughout the country. Deep in the Chinese
mind lay the memory of many invasions, of the Boxer Rebellion, and the
intrusion of business men and, particularly, missionaries.
In Shanghai the American missionaries dominated Chinese education, such
as it was. I was surprised to find families of eight or ten children the
rule rather than the exception among them. Their salaries were raised
with each new infant, and that may have been the reason. Nevertheless,
there were many who wanted birth control information. When they learned
of my presence they called on the telephone, sent cards, came to see me.
But, apparently apprehensive of criticism, they took me if possible into
a secluded room or, if we had to meet in a public place, backed me into
a corner and stood in front to conceal the fact they were talking with
me; they acted as though they were turning up their coat collars so that
they should not be recognized.
The only method of family limitation known to the poor Chinese was
infanticide of girl babies by suffocation or drowning. The missionaries
were co-operating with the Government, which had enacted a law
forbidding the practice. They went from home to home to see whether any
woman were pregnant. If one were obviously so, her name was jotted down
in a notebook for a call soon after birth was due. At the same time both
father and mother were informed of the severe penalty they would incur
unless the baby itself or a doctor’s certificate of death from natural
causes were produced. After two years’ work ninety-five percent of
pregnant mothers showed either their babies or good reasons for not
doing so.
But the Chinese had so low a margin of subsistence that, if the law
forbade them to dispose of one child, another was starved out. Sometimes
two little girls had to be sold to keep one boy alive; in dire necessity
even he might have to be parted with to some sonless man who wanted to
ensure ancestor worship. Because the elder girls could begin to help in
the fields or become servants in some rich landowner’s household,
usually it was the three- and four-year-olds who were turned over to
brothels. There they stayed until mature enough to be set to working out
their indenture. If they ever tried unsuccessfully to find freedom, the
proprietors might beat them unmercifully, sometimes even breaking their
legs so that they could not walk, much less ever run away again.
When infanticide was stopped, the corresponding increase in sing-song
girls making their living by prostitution was almost immediately
evident. It was estimated Shanghai had a hundred thousand. Many were
Eurasians, the results of unions with white men who were in Shanghai on
small salaries as representatives of foreign business firms. I glimpsed
some of the Chinese women who had been bought as housekeepers and
mistresses as well saying good-by at the train to their American or
English masters summoned home.
Desiring to see the worst of the city I went to the prostitute quarter
in company with Mr. Blackstone, a missionary from the Door of Hope, a
house of refuge for escaping girls. In Shanghai, as in Tokyo, we found
in the Japanese section soft, low lights and an undercurrent of music in
the air. The inmates were fully grown, gay and hearty, the interiors
were immaculate and restrained in their decoration, the streets were
swarming with sailors who apparently preferred this district to the
depressingly dark and gloomy Chinese one near by.
Here and there the Chinese prostitutes could be seen through the open
doorways, heavily rouged, gowned in vivid colors, limned like posters
against the meanness of the background, their frail, slight bodies at
the service of anyone who came. Each took her turn upon a stool outside,
using her few words of English to attract the sailor trade. I thought I
would never recover from the shock of seeing American men spending their
evenings at such places with what were obviously children.
In one house we found half a dozen girls looking much younger than their
theoretical fifteen seated on hard benches around a room not more than
six feet by nine. A little one holding high a lamp so that we should not
trip and fall, escorted us to her cubicle, which had only a bed for
furniture. A chair was brought in for me.
Mr. Blackstone began to talk to her in her own dialect. Why had she
come?
“Too much baby home—no chow.” She said she was sixteen and had been
there since she was twelve.
“Why she can’t be a day over ten,” I expostulated.
The child was visibly frightened, aghast at her own loquacity. We might
be from the Government. When we had at last gained her confidence,
however, she responded eagerly to this unusual sympathetic contact,
talking freely about herself—the long time it took to pay herself out,
the precariousness and physical fatigue of her calling; some days she
had no visitors, but when a ship was in maybe as many as ten or twelve a
night. She seemed as old as the ages in her knowledgeableness; “No want
baby,” she told us. Yet her poor little frame had the immaturity of
fruit picked green and left to shrivel.
We gave her money and left in spite of her urgent and kind invitation to
stay.
All sing-song girls were not necessarily prostitutes; most hotels hired
them to entertain guests. Only their lips were made up, their faces
remaining pale. They wore flowers in their hair and although not so
soft-voiced as the geisha had greater independence. Certainly their
weird, shrill songs accompanied by the tinkle of a lute were not
attractive to Western ears.
Echoes of my visit to Japan had permeated throughout the colony of
Japanese, who aimed to give me an extra-cordial welcome, trying their
best to make up for what they thought had been an unpleasant experience
in their country. I had not realized the power of ancient feudalism over
the Japanese woman until I met her away from home, where she blossomed
into an intelligent, outspoken human being. I noticed she expressed
herself much more frankly in the presence of men, but underneath the
conversation I often sensed a propaganda which had resulted in deep
prejudice; from the horrible stories you heard of the savagery of the
Chinese you received the impression all were cannibals.
Since my plans to include China in my itinerary had been made so late, I
had few letters of introduction there. Consequently, to my regret I did
not see many Chinese women. I had not expected to do much speaking and
had had very little press in Peking. Dr. Hu-Shih, however, had arranged
for me to meet about fifteen newspaper men and women in Shanghai. We
sipped our tea, nibbled our cakes, and then they began to ask questions,
taking down the answers with the utmost care. They wanted to set forth
the pros and cons of birth control in their own vernacular, but
unfortunately could not reach the illiterate masses. They asked me to
speak at the Family Reformation Association, an organization which was
under missionary auspices. The rules were no smoking, no drinking, no
gambling. Its membership, therefore, remained small.
The young woman who interpreted paragraph by paragraph had just returned
from America, but did not prove the expert her traveling had indicated.
The chairman said I was to give both theory and practice, but when I
came to the latter my translator’s courage took flight entirely. She
whispered, “I’ll get a doctor to say that.” I gave up and switched to
something simpler. My audience, however, knew without her assistance
what I had been trying to convey, and was much diverted by her
predicament.
Of all lands China needed knowledge of how to control her numbers; the
incessant fertility of her millions spread like a plague. Well-wishing
foreigners who had gone there with their own moral codes to save her
babies from infanticide, her people from pestilence, had actually
increased her problem. To contribute to famine funds and the support of
missions was like trying to sweep back the sea with a broom.
China represented the final act in an international tragedy of
overpopulation, seeming to prove that the eminence of a country could
not be measured by numbers any more than by industrial expansion, large
standing armies, or invincible navies. If its sons and daughters left
for the generations to come a record of immortal poetry, art, and
philosophy, then it was a great nation and had attained the only
immortality worth striving for. But China, once the fountainhead of
wisdom, had been brought to the dust by superabundant breeding.
This was my conclusion when at last we were back again in the modern age
on the American ship _Silver State_ bound for Hong Kong; we had comfort,
hot water, baths, heard the softness of the little chimes as the steward
went through the corridors announcing meals. It was almost with a sense
of awe that I asked for any service. After being some time in the Orient
you were a bit embarrassed by having an American wait on you. Soon,
however, the plumbers, the carpenters, the painters who kept the vessel
trim, the sailors who swabbed down the decks at night, gave me a feeling
that in the Western countries we had gone far towards dignifying manual
labor.
_Chapter Twenty-eight_
THE WORLD IS MUCH THE SAME EVERYWHERE
A favorite sales promotion method of astrologers is to send partial
readings to people whose names appear in the papers, in the hope of
piquing their curiosity to the point of demanding fuller details
regarding their future lives and conduct. From time to time I used to
receive these and paid no attention. But just before I had sailed from
California a friend of birth control had sent me one based upon arrests
and prison. This forecast told me I would have a great deal of
difficulty in starting, and that on a certain day in May the same signs
would prevail over my House as at the Town Hall Meeting—that I should,
therefore, be prepared for police interference.
While packing in Shanghai I was looking through my briefcase and
happened to note that the date was one on which the _Silver State_ would
still be at sea; she was not due at Hong Kong until the next day. I
laughed to myself and said, “Here’s where I prove it wrong.” As it
turned out, however, the ship was ahead of her schedule and arrived in
Hong Kong twelve hours early.
We were steaming up the long reach towards the Kowloon piers when, to my
utter surprise, the immigration officer who had come on board handed me
a notice instructing me to visit the Chief of Police.
“Is this a special invitation for me, or is everybody included?”
“Only for you, Madam,” was the smiling response.
The harbor was crowded with junks and fishing boats. Children in sampans
were holding out nets for whatever might come overside, fishing up each
bit of refuse from the water. Adjoining ships were being coaled by women
coolies, hundreds of them, their faces strained and bodies stringy as
though made up entirely of tendons. They carried their two baskets on
bamboo poles across their shoulders, and clambered like ants in their
bare feet over the barges—not singing as the men coolies of the North,
but making much _wallah-wallah_—jabbering and shouting.
After settling Grant in a hotel I took a chair from around the corner,
because police headquarters was part way up the Peak, and rickshas could
not negotiate the steep ascent. The Chief was not there. I inquired
whether anything were wrong with my passport. Since my British visa was
perfectly correct, they said there must be some mistake; they had no
information about any summons. I left my card.
The next day the Chief called at my hotel but we missed each other
because I was out with Grant ordering his first pair of long trousers.
When I returned I found a calling card and another request to come to
headquarters that afternoon. Again I obeyed, and again I found no Chief
and no message for me. I left another card and the officials whom I had
seen before laughingly reiterated they still knew of no complaints.
“Well, I’m going tomorrow morning. If the Chief wants anything he’ll
have to come to the hotel.” He never did.
Once more we were off, this time on a British liner. The sea was smooth,
the air cool. It was the ideal ocean voyage I had always longed for. I
was relaxed and enervated but it was good to be so. I had nothing to do
all day but sit in the glorious breezes on deck and watch the romping
children, about fifty of whom were on board. Many had been born in the
Orient and were accompanying “pater” who was going home on leave. One
little boy might come tearing by pursued by another, both followed by
anxious Chinese amahs, thin, dark, slick-haired, wearing glossy, black
trousers and coats buttoned down the side. They seemed in constant
distress over the antics of their energetic charges.
When we dropped anchor at Singapore, agitation and excitement were again
manifest among the inspectors at the sight of my passport. I was
politely asked to stand by while they consulted, and then was ushered
off the ship to an upstairs office where I was questioned by a pleasant
young Englishman as to my intentions in going to India.
“But I’m not planning to stop in India.”
“Lectures by you are announced in Bombay and Calcutta.”
“This is the first I’ve heard of it,” I assured him. “But if I were to
go, would there be any objection?”
“That would depend on the subject of your lectures.”
“I’m interested in only one subject.”
He pressed a button. Miraculously, almost like a scene from a mystery
play, and as though everything had been rehearsed in advance, an
attendant entered and placed on the desk a large, closely typewritten
paper.
“Am I on the blacklist?”
“Not exactly, but you said you were interested in only one subject. Then
what about this?” He actually read me from that document details of a
small reception I had given five years before in my own apartment in New
York for Agnes Smedley after her release on bail.
For a moment I was speechless with amazement. Then I ejaculated, “Why
shouldn’t I be interested when she was arrested for a cause that is my
own? Besides, you must remember the charge was later dismissed.”
“Then what about serving on the Committee for the Debs Defence and for
the Political Prisoners Defence?” He mentioned other gatherings I had
attended during that parlor meeting era, such as when Mary Knoblauch had
had Jim Larkin talk on Irish Home Rule or Lajpat Rai, the Indian
sociologist, express anti-British tendencies. Wherever my name had
appeared on the stationery of any committee he had it on his record. My
public life was there spread out, showing how careful was British
espionage.
I brought forth from my arsenal some of my most trusty arguments, and
the official ultimately agreed that if the vast millions of India wanted
birth control he was all for my going there and would visa my passport.
However, since I did not propose to include it in my trip the discussion
was purely academic.
Although Singapore when we reached it seemed to combine so many
nationalities that it was like Europe, America, and the Orient all mixed
together, Malays, whose land it once had been, appeared to be in the
minority and their dialect little used. I could not escape that fatal
horoscope, because when their language was described to me as easy and
simple, the example given was _mata_. By itself it meant eye. But, _mata
mata_, in addition to being the plural, also meant policemen, who were
the eyes of the government, and _mata mata glap_ meant secret eyes,
hence detectives.
How Europeans made themselves understood in Singapore was a wonder to
me. The Chinese ricksha boys apparently comprehended no tongue, nor knew
where any place was. You stepped into a ricksha and pointed to where you
thought your hotel was, praying your finger was extended in the right
direction. If you did not point he ran in any direction of the compass.
Even so, at the first corner he was inclined to turn into a more shady
street. After a while, since he seemed to be arriving nowhere, you spoke
to him sharply and he pulled up to a traffic officer, who told him where
to go. Still pointing and saying “hotel” loudly, you eventually were
delivered in front of the door by a much pleased coolie, grinning from
ear to ear at his own cleverness. The poor fellows were so cheerful and
willing that you could not help smiling, too.
The weather continued balmy to Penang, to Ceylon, to Aden. I had been
dreading the heat of the Red Sea, but the passage was surprisingly cool;
the facing wind was really enjoyable.
At Cairo, where we made a longer pause, Grant came down with dysentery
and his temperature shot to a hundred and four degrees. A
Czechoslovakian doctor spent three nights with him but could not reduce
the fever. Each morning when I rose early to act as nurse, I stumbled
over about six natives, our own guide Ali among them, kneeling on prayer
rugs in front of his door. All the fortune tellers had said a death was
pending in Shepheard’s Hotel and were assuming he would be the victim.
The fourth day, after the doctor had gone to his office, I ordered a
dish pan full of ice and sponged Grant off with the frosty water. Two
hours later his temperature was normal and he began to show signs of
recovering. I never divulged that cold bath to the doctor.
Ali was a handsome, dark-faced Arab with large luminous eyes and
fine-cut features which made American ones seem crude and weak in
comparison. Wearing his long black robe to the ground and topped by a
red fez, he used to come to his duties bearing great armfuls of flowers
from his mother. We held lengthy conversations. “Have you been married?”
I asked.
“Yes, five times.”
“Weren’t any of them happy?”
He began enumerating. The first one had been young and inexperienced;
she had not been properly brought up and did not know her position as
his wife. Although she had cost him a hundred dollars, he had dispatched
her to her parents because she was too independent. Number two had not
been clean and had been too old for his mother to train; he had made
amicable arrangements with her father for her return, and had lost no
money on this transaction. Number three had been sickly, and a great
expense; she also had gone back. Number four had not loved him; it had
been shortly evident her heart was with another man and the agreement
had been broken by mutual consent. Number five, the latest, he had sent
home because she would not wait on his mother.
“Why should she?”
“Madam, my mother carried me in her belly for nine months. Should I have
a wife who would not work for her after that?”
He was now casting about for his sixth.
Ali haunted our footsteps and, in order to collect his five percent
commission on all our purchases, noted every place we went. Merchants
made a social affair of their customers’ calls. You went to a perfume
shop in the Bazaar. The proprietor said, “Yes,” sat down, and handed you
a gold-tipped, aromatic cigarette. He lighted it for you, took out a
pile of letters from a bag, and opened them for your inspection. They
were testimonials that a certain gentleman had sent similar cigarettes
to Hartford, Connecticut, or Pelham, New York. Of course, you bought
some. Then a cup of Persian tea was brought you, and you wanted some of
that. At last you recalled that you had come for attar of roses. By this
time he had sensed your “aura” and knew what you could pay. He was
willing humbly to mention the price.
Our tour had been a wonderful experience for Grant. He had studied the
Baedekers, planned our trips when we were coming to a new city or
country, looked into their histories and, although he was only thirteen,
shown a highly awake and intelligent attitude towards everything we had
seen.
He had had all sorts of wares hurled at him—ostrich feathers, fans,
baskets, sapphires, scarabs. He was satiated with strange sights and
lore—Buddha’s Temple of the Tooth at Kandy, caravans of bullocks, the
English club at tiny Port Swettenham in Malaya, the enormous porters of
Egypt who picked up trunks as though they were handbags, women veiled
and women unveiled, mosques, the Coptic church where Joseph and Mary
were supposed to have hidden Jesus from Herod, the date trees along the
road to Memphis, the underground Temple of the Bull, the remains of an
old proud world at Alexandria where Cleopatra had once held court, the
primitive ferry-raft on which we had crossed the Nile to see the place
where Moses had been found in the bullrushes, the wonderful ride, weird
and lovely, across the Sahara to view the Pyramids and Sphinx. On his
way to Switzerland he had traveled by gondola along the canals of
Venice, had been trailed through the art galleries of Milan.
After a few weeks at Montreux Grant was fully recovered, but he was now
homesick for the first time since we had left New York eight months
before. All he wanted was to see Tilden play in the tennis matches at
Wimbledon, and then go home. Because I did not think he should miss the
reception which H.G. was giving, I had him fly across the Channel to
London, and afterwards, appreciating his longing to be among his own age
and kind, I shipped him off on the maiden voyage of the _Majestic_ to a
camp in the Poconos. By the time he was back at Peddie he was up with
his class, his mind vastly enriched, and able to approach his studies in
a more mature manner. I have never regretted taking him with me.
I myself remained in London for the Fifth International Neo-Malthusian
and Birth Control Conference to be held July 11–14. The inclusion of the
words birth control was a definite concession on the part of the
Neo-Malthusians to the new trend of thought. It was a delight to be amid
conditions where tolerance reigned and the atmosphere was unblighted by
legal restrictions. The scientific candor of the discussion was reported
in the newspapers with sincerity and sobriety.
John Maynard Keynes, who had become famous almost overnight as the
result of his book, _The Consequences of the Peace_, presided at one of
the afternoon meetings. Later, I had lunch with him. He was tall and
well-built, with clear, cold, blue eyes, a fine shapely head, brow, and
face, a brilliant bearing and brilliant intellect. I was impressed by
the fact he did not smile. Because he gave each question of yours so
much consideration, he seemed constantly perplexed, but when he once
started to talk you knew he had already put aside the thing as having
been solved, and gone on in advance. You were probably more puzzled at
his next question than he at yours.
In the two years that elapsed before I saw Keynes again he had married
Lydia Lopokouva of the Russian Ballet. He had become an entirely
different person—his serious mien and countenance had been changed to a
buoyant, joyous happiness. His knowledge of the problems of money,
population, and economics were of a nature far above the grasp of an
ordinary intelligence, yet in his conversation with his wife he always
implied she knew the subject as thoroughly as he, and answered her
queries as though their minds were together. He was the only Englishman,
perhaps the only man, I ever knew to do this.
Unlike Lydia Lopokouva, most women had a strenuous battle trying to
prove themselves equal to men; this marriage conflict was inseparable
from modern life. I could sense it frequently when coming in contact
with a married couple—on her part the years of rebellion, and on his of
trying to put her down as a weakling.
Sentiment has extolled the young love which promises to last through
eternity. But love is a growth mingled with a succession of experiences;
it is as foolish to promise to love forever as to promise to live
forever.
To every woman there comes the apprehension that marriage may not
fulfill her highest expectations and dreams. If in the heart of a girl
entering this covenant for the first time there are doubts, even in the
slightest degree, they are doubled and trebled in their intensity when
she meditates a second marriage.
J. Noah H. Slee, whom I had known for some time, was what the papers
called “a staid pillar of finance.” He was South African born but had
made his fortune in the United States. In customs and exteriors we were
as far apart as the poles; he was a conservative in politics and a
churchman, whereas I voted for Norman Thomas and, instead of attending
orthodox services, preferred to go to the opera.
An old-fashioned type of man, J.N. yearned to protect any type of woman
who would cling. Complications, therefore, confronted us. I had been
free for nearly ten years, and, for as long, had been waging a campaign
to free other women. I was startled by the thought of joining my life to
that of one who objected to his wife’s coming home alone in a taxi at
night, or assumed she could not buy her own railroad tickets or check
her baggage. Nevertheless, despite his foibles, he was generous in
wanting me to continue my unfinished work, and was undeterred by my
warning that he would always have to be kissing me good-by in depots or
waving farewell as the gangplank went up.
I had to consider also that I had two boys to be educated, and that
children were much more to a woman than to a man. Yet I knew he would be
kind and understanding with them. Furthermore, he had faith both in
individuals and in humanity; his naïve appearance of hardness was
actually not borne out in fact. He kept his promises and hated debts; we
attached the same importance to the spirit of integrity.
Hundreds of people who scarcely knew me were delighted when the news of
our marriage eventually became public. Within one week letters began to
arrive from all over the United States and Canada. One man wrote he had
helped me get up a meeting at San Francisco and now needed a printing
press—would I mail him the trifling sum of three thousand dollars?
Another brought to mind I had had dinner at his home when lecturing in
his city, and now that he had painted enough pictures to hold an
exhibit, would I finance it? Dozens of ministers, old men, old ladies,
writers, sculptors wanted me to set them up in business, musical concert
work, bookshops, recalling the time they had taken me in cars to
meetings, or that I had slept in their beds. Parents requested me to
send their children to schools, to Europe, to sanatoriums—heaven knows
what. I never knew people could need so much. I longed with all the
desire in me to make out a check for every lack and wave a magic wand
and say, “So be it.”
But all I could do was write back that I had no more wealth than
before—my husband’s was his own. And I still required as many
contributions to birth control as ever.
I had not wanted the worry or trouble of handling money, nor do I want
it today. The things I valued then I value now, not for what they cost,
but for what they are. To me dollars and cents are only messengers to do
my bidding, and nothing more. To use them properly and get results is my
responsibility.
When I asked J.N., “Why do you lock things up?” he replied, “I always
do, don’t you?”
“Never. I haven’t anything worth locking up.”
That is the way I still feel.
It seemed so final when again I started a home, but there had been a
gathering loneliness in my life—not seeing the children except on
holidays, never having time to spend with old friends or to make new
ones, and with such rich opportunities constantly offering themselves. I
knew very well, however, what sort of a house I wanted—a simple one,
something like Shelley’s in Sussex.
In 1923, with stones gathered from the fields we built a house near
Fishkill, New York, cradled in the Dutchess County hills, beside a
little lake. On it we tried out swans, but they did not work; although
they looked picturesque, they were too messy. So we changed to ducks and
stocked the water with bass. I planned a blue garden which grew up and
down and threw itself about the house and altered with the seasons.
Pepper, a cocker spaniel puppy of two months, came the first year and
bounced and leaped around us as we walked through the woods or rode
horseback over the hills.
Willow Lake was only sixty miles from New York. I could make out the
menus for a week ahead, leave directions for the gardening, be in my
office fairly early and back again for dinner at night. Later, for
working purposes, we built a studio among the treetops on the edge of a
cliff from which I could look far off across the majestic valley of the
Hudson.
Domesticity, which I had once so scorned, had its charms after all.
_Chapter Twenty-nine_
WHILE THE DOCTORS CONSULT
After coming back from around the world I found nothing had been done
about the Tenth Street clinic, which I had expected to be in operation.
No members of the Academy of Medicine had come forth to back Dr. de
Vilbiss, and I had paid the rent for the last twelve months while vainly
waiting.
Now I gave it up and decided to start afresh. The more I had studied,
the more clearly I had recognized that it was not possible to advise a
standard contraceptive for all women any more than it was possible to
prescribe one set of eyeglasses for all conditions of sight. Only upon
examination and careful check-up could you determine the most suitable
method. No detailed statistics had ever been kept except at Brownsville,
and those case histories had never been returned to me by the police. I
wanted to collect at least a thousand such records for a scientific
survey before any opposition could interfere with the plan.
Many women were still coming to me personally for information at 104
Fifth Avenue. The best thing to do was have a woman doctor right there
to take care of them—a quiet way to begin. It was hard to locate one
foot-loose and free; I could have no shying or running off at the first
indication of trouble. In making inquiries I heard of Dr. Dorothy
Bocker, who held a New York City license though she was at present in
the Public Health Service of Georgia. This single, cordial, and
enthusiastic young woman knew practically nothing about birth control
technique, but was willing to learn. The difficulty was that she wanted
five thousand dollars a year.
At first this appeared an almost unsurmountable obstacle. Here was just
the person I had been looking for, but it seemed beyond my power to
raise so large a sum. I was loaded with the financial weight of the
_Review_ and the League. That organization had been admitted as a
membership corporation and hence could not secure a license to conduct a
clinic, which in New York was synonymous with a dispensary. No clinic,
therefore, could be included in its budget; it would remain a department
of the League by courtesy only, being actually my private undertaking.
Where could I find someone to donate such an enormous amount?
Then I remembered Clinton Chance, a young manufacturer of Birmingham,
who had prospered exceedingly both before and during the War. He and his
wife, Janet, had become good friends of mine during my 1920 visit to
England. Having felt the need of a more sound and fundamental outlet for
his riches than that provided by charity, he had come to see that birth
control information was far better for his employees than a dole at the
birth of every new baby. He was not in any sense a professional
philanthropist, but only wanted to help them be self-sufficient.
Clinton had once offered me money to set the birth control movement
going in England, but I had refused then because England had enough
co-workers, who were handling the situation well, and, furthermore, my
place was in the United States. He had then said to me, “I won’t give
you a contribution for regular current expenses, but if ever you see the
necessity for some new project which will advance the general good, call
on me.”
Now I cabled Clinton at length, explaining my need. He promptly
answered, “Yes, go ahead,” and soon arrived an anonymous thousand pounds
to cover Dr. Bocker’s salary for the first year. I made out a contract
for two. She was to come in January, 1923, and we were to shoulder the
risks and responsibilities together.
Even to choose a name for the venture was not easy. I had been steadily
advertising the term “clinic” to America for so long that it had become
familiar and, moreover, to poor people it meant that little or no
payment was required. But the use of the word itself was legally
impossible, and I was not certain that the same might not be true of
“center” or “bureau.” I wanted it at least to imply the things that
clinic meant as I had publicized it, and also to include the idea of
research.
Finally, one of the doors of the two rooms adjoining the League offices,
readily accessible to me and to the women who came for advice, was
lettered, Clinical Research.
It was still a clinic in my mind, though frankly an experiment because I
was not even sure women would accept the methods we had to offer them.
We started immediately keeping the records. Dr. Bocker wrote down the
history of the case on a large card, numbering it to correspond with a
smaller one containing the patient’s name and address. Each applicant
she suspected of a bad heart, tuberculosis, kidney trouble, or any
ailment which made pregnancy dangerous, she informed regarding
contraception and advised medical care at once.
In our first annual report, which attracted much attention, all our
cases were analyzed. We said, “Here is the proof—nine hundred women with
definite statistics concerning their ages, physical and mental
conditions, and economic status.”
As time went on I became less and less pleased with Dr. Bocker’s system.
She had no follow-up on patients, and I wished the clinic to be like a
business in the thoroughness of its routine. I refused to approve
methods as a hundred percent reliable until there had been not merely
one but three checks on each woman who had been to the clinic. To begin
with, she was to return two or three days after her initial visit; she
usually did that. But if she did not come back inside three months, then
a social worker in our own employ should be sent to call on her.
Finally, she was to be examined once a year. Dr. Bocker did not see eye
to eye with me that this was the only way to put the work on a sound
scientific basis of facts, and we agreed to part company in December of
the second year.
Dr. Hannah M. Stone, a fine young woman from the Lying-In Hospital,
volunteered to take Dr. Bocker’s place without salary. Her gaze was
clear and straight, her hair was black, her mouth gentle and sweet. She
had a sympathetic response to mothers in distress, and a broad attitude
towards life’s many problems. When the Lying-In Hospital later found she
had connected herself with our clinic, it gave her a choice between
remaining with us and resigning from the staff. She resigned. Her
courageous stand indicated staunch friendship and the disinterested
selflessness essential for the successful operation of the clinic. These
qualities have kept her with us all this time, one of the most beloved
and loyal workers that one could ever hope for.
The clinic could serve New York, but its practical value outside was
restricted, and I was always seeking some way of remedying this. We took
the preliminary step in Illinois, where no laws existed against clinics.
I had arranged a conference in Chicago at the Drake Hotel, October,
1923, the first of a regional series. Mrs. Benjamin Carpenter and Dr.
Rachelle Yarros, who had been with Jane Addams at Hull House, had to
obtain a court decision before Dr. Herman Bundesen, Commissioner of
Health, would issue a license for the second clinic in the United
States.
Meanwhile, between 1921 and 1926, I received over a million letters from
mothers requesting information. From 1923 on a staff of three to seven
was constantly busy just opening and answering them. Despite the
limitations of the writers and their lack of education, they revealed
themselves strangely conscious of the responsibilities of the maternal
function.
Childbearing is hazardous, even when carried out with the advantages of
modern hygiene and parental care. The upper middle classes are likely to
assume all confinements are surrounded by the same attention given the
births of their own babies. They do not comprehend it is still possible
in these United States for a woman to milk six cows at five o’clock in
the morning and bring a baby into the world at nine. The terrific
hardships of the farm mother are not in the least degree lessened by
maternity. If she and her infant survive, it is only to face these
hardships anew, and with additional complications.
In the midst of an era of science and fabulous wealth reaching out for
enlightenment to advance our civilization, with millionaires tossing
their fortunes into libraries and hospitals and laboratories to discover
the secrets and causes of life, here at the doorstep of everyone was
this tragic, scarcely recognized condition.
It was an easy and even a pleasant task to reduce human problems to
numerical figures in black and white on charts and graphs, but
infinitely more difficult to suggest concrete solutions. The reasoning
of learned theologians and indefatigable statisticians seemed academic
and anemically intellectual if brought face to face with the actuality
of suffering. When they confronted me with arguments, this dim, far-off
chorus of pain began to resound anew in my ears.
Sensitive women of our clerical staff were constantly breaking down in
health under the nervous depression caused by the fact we had so little
knowledge to give. One who went to Chicago to help rehabilitate soldiers
wrote me, “I’m feeling much better. These men who have lost a leg or arm
come in, apparently disqualified forever, but something is being done
about them, and it is happy work, not forlorn like yours.”
To prove that the story could be told by the mothers themselves, ten
thousand letters, with the assistance of Mary Boyd, were selected and
these again cut to five hundred. Eventually this historical record
appeared in book form as _Motherhood in Bondage_.
Whenever I am discouraged I go to those letters as to a wellspring which
sends me on re-heartened. They make me realize with increasing intensity
that whoever kindles a spark of hope in the breast of another cannot
shirk the duty of keeping it alive.
_Woman and the New Race_, which sold at first for two dollars, had a
distribution of two hundred and fifty thousand copies, and it made my
heart ache to know that poor women who could ill afford it were buying
the book and not finding there what they sought. To the best of my
ability I tried to supply general information, but the only way of
extending genuine aid was to persuade doctors to give it professionally.
By a happy chance I met Dr. James F. Cooper, tall, blond, distinguished,
a fine combination of missionary and physician, who left no stone
unturned when a patient came to him, but devoted his whole attention to
her—everything in her life was important to him. He was recently back
from Fuchow, China, and was establishing himself in Boston as a
gynecologist. Since he was thoroughly convinced of the vital necessity
for birth control and could talk technically to his profession and
interpret to the layman as well, my husband pledged his salary and
expenses for two years, and I induced him to associate himself with us
as medical director to go forth and try to convince the doctors
throughout the country that contraceptive advice would save a large
proportion of their women patients.
In January, 1925, Dr. Cooper started on a tour which covered nearly all
the states in the Union. In the course of the two years he delivered
more than seven hundred lectures. Occasionally he was suspected of
ulterior motives, of attempting to advertise the products he
recommended, but this did not sway him from his persistence. Where he
found laxity on the part of medical organizations he spoke to lay
associations, which applied pressure on their own physicians, demanding
information. As a result of this trip, doctors really began to awake to
the problem of contraception, and when it was ended we had the names of
some twenty thousand from Maine to California who had consented to
instruct patients referred to them.
At this point began the huge and difficult process of decentralization,
so that the New York office need no longer be a clearing house. Each
request which lay outside the pale of the Cooper influence required
voluminous correspondence. One letter, enclosing a stamped,
return-addressed envelope, was mailed to the woman, asking her to
furnish us the name of her doctor. We then wrote him to inquire whether
he would give her information, and offered to send supplies if she could
not afford them. If he said yes, we notified her to that effect; if he
said no, we gave some other doctor in her vicinity an opportunity to
co-operate.
We were immediately confronted with the situation that even willing
doctors had little to recommend. Literally thousands of women reported
that such ineffective methods had been tendered them they had refused to
pay. We ourselves did not have a great deal, and this put us in a weak
position; the acceptance of the theory was ahead of the means of
practicing it.
The jelly I had found in Friedrichshaven had turned out to be too
expensive, because it was made with a chinosol and Irish moss base, and
the price of the former was prohibitive in preparing it for poor women.
Dr. Stone and Dr. Cooper, therefore, devised a formula for a jelly with
a lactic acid and glycerine base, which was within our means. Most of
their cases, however, were sufficiently grave for them not to feel
justified in using it alone experimentally. Consequently, they took the
precaution of having a double safeguard by combining the chemical
contraceptive with the mechanical—jelly with pessary—which proved
ninety-eight percent efficacious.
At this time we could not import diaphragms directly. Although I had
given various friends going to Germany and England the mission of
bringing them in, this could not be done in sufficient quantity.
Furthermore, since bootlegging supplies could not continue indefinitely
I had to find out how they could legally be made here.
Two young men came to help in whatever way was most necessary. Herbert
Simonds, who had been in advertising, began to investigate the
possibility that some recognized rubber company should make our
supplies. When one and all were fearful, he and Guy Moyston, who did
some publicity for us, concluded they would form the Holland-Rantos
Company, selling only to physicians or on prescription. They spent their
own time and thousands of dollars personally on research, in the end
perfecting a quality of rubber that could stand the variations of
climate in the United States—hot houses and cold winters, Florida
dampness and Western dryness.
Meanwhile, Julius Schmid, an old established manufacturer, had been
importing from his own concern in Germany a few diaphragms, but only on
a modest scale because he did not want to run afoul of the Comstock law.
As soon as he saw a potential market in the medical profession he
fetched from the Fatherland several families who had been making molds
there, gave them places to live in, and set up a little center,
expanding gradually until eventually he sold more contraceptive supplies
than any firm in the world.
But this was all in the future.
Soon after we had developed an organization in which economists,
biologists, and other scientists could be articulate, they came into the
movement. Dr. S. Adolphus Knopf, a tuberculosis specialist, who had been
one of the first to greet me when I came out of jail, never missed an
opportunity to contribute articles to medical journals and to write
letters. Professor Edward Alsworth Ross’s books continued to popularize
the sociological and economic aspects. Professor E. M. East of the Bussy
Institute of Harvard University published a study of population titled
_Mankind at the Crossroads_, which obtained wide circulation. His
one-time pupil, Dr. Raymond Pearl of Johns Hopkins, was carrying on the
same work showing exactly how much food a certain number of acres could
produce at what cost. Universities generally began to show an interest;
students wrote asking for scientific and historical data upon which to
base their theses.
Young people in colleges, partly because their ideas were not yet
biased, offered a fallow field for my personal campaign of education
through lecturing. I particularly enjoyed their quickness and alertness
and their interludes of comic relief. Nowhere has this combination been
more apparent than in a recent visit to Colgate University. Four boys
met me at the station and somehow or other we all squeezed into an
automobile which shortly deposited me at the home of one of the
professors for tea and to meet the faculty. “This is house-party night,”
he told me. “The girls are here, and most of the boys won’t get to bed
until daylight. We’ll have to rout them out to hear you at chapel
tomorrow.” He added that during his twelve years in the University no
woman had spoken on that platform.
“Have they prejudices against women speakers?”
“Oh, no, no. There’s just no subject a woman can deal with better than a
man.”
Well! I thought, if the boys will all have been out to parties and I’m
the first woman speaker, here is a challenge! No sociology or dull
population figures for them from me.
The next morning, determined to make them take notice, I ransacked my
bag for my smartest dress, adjusted my lipstick, and carefully set my
hat at an angle. Nevertheless, I was a bit ill at ease. My anxiety was
not allayed when Norman Himes, professor of sociology, said, “Now, Mrs.
Sanger, we probably shan’t be able to hear you in this hall. The
acoustics are very bad. They can hardly hear me and I have a big voice.”
This was even less encouraging. I felt I was likely to be the last as
well as the first woman at Colgate. However, I replied bravely, “I can
speak up and we can have some wave if they can’t hear me. Anyhow, there
probably won’t be many; why can’t they be moved up front?”
“Yes, that’s what we’d better do.”
We went in to find the chapel jammed. Some of the students were standing
in the door, others against the walls.
Professor Himes introduced me at the top of his lungs. “Louder! Louder!”
The boys waved their hands. The more he tried to make himself heard, the
more restless they became. When I stood, however, they had to listen if
they were to hear me. There was no waving, no calling. They roared with
laughter and clapped at everything I said. This seemed fine, but I
suspected that I could not have really made so profound an impression as
to deserve so much applause.
Someone afterwards commented to Professor Himes, “We’ve never seen the
boys so appreciative.”
“Oh,” he remarked, “they thought if they could keep Mrs. Sanger talking
long enough they wouldn’t have to go to their examinations.”
From the time I started lecturing in 1916 I have appeared in many
places—halls, churches, women’s clubs, homes, theaters. I have had many
types of audiences—cotton workers, churchmen, liberals, Socialists,
scientists, clubmen, and fashionable, philanthropically minded women.
Once in Detroit Mrs. William McGraw, Sr. had organized a public meeting
and luncheon at the Statler Hotel. When I arrived I encountered a
situation which might well have embarrassed a less doughty hostess. She
had invited a dozen of the most prominent women in the city to sit at
the speaker’s table. Mrs. A. had asked, “Will Mrs. B. sit there also?”
Mrs. B. had inquired, “Will Mrs. C. be next to me?” Each wanted social
support. Mrs. McGraw had blandly refused to tell them; consequently not
one had accepted. Although five hundred came, only two places were set
at the great banquet table on the platform. Mrs. McGraw and I ate in
solitary splendor with nothing but the floral decorations for company.
All the world over, in Penang and Skagway, in El Paso and Helsingfors, I
have found women’s psychology in the matter of childbearing essentially
the same, no matter what the class, religion, or economic status. Always
to me any aroused group was a good group, and therefore I accepted an
invitation to talk to the women’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan at Silver
Lake, New Jersey, one of the weirdest experiences I had in lecturing.
My letter of instruction told me what train to take, to walk from the
station two blocks straight ahead, then two to the left. I would see a
sedan parked in front of a restaurant. If I wished I could have ten
minutes for a cup of coffee or bite to eat, because no supper would be
served later.
I obeyed orders implicitly, walked the blocks, saw the car, found the
restaurant, went in and ordered some cocoa, stayed my allotted ten
minutes, then approached the car hesitatingly and spoke to the driver. I
received no reply. She might have been totally deaf as far as I was
concerned. Mustering up my courage, I climbed in and settled back.
Without a turn of the head, a smile, or a word to let me know I was
right, she stepped on the self-starter. For fifteen minutes we wound
around the streets. It must have been towards six in the afternoon. We
took this lonely lane and that through the woods, and an hour later
pulled up in a vacant space near a body of water beside a large,
unpainted, barnish building.
My driver got out, talked with several other women, then said to me
severely, “Wait here. We will come for you.” She disappeared. More cars
buzzed up the dusty road into the parking place. Occasionally men
dropped wives who walked hurriedly and silently within. This went on
mystically until night closed down and I was alone in the dark. A few
gleams came through chinks in the window curtains. Even though it was
May, I grew chillier and chillier.
After three hours I was summoned at last and entered a bright corridor
filled with wraps. As someone came out of the hall I saw through the
door dim figures parading with banners and illuminated crosses. I waited
another twenty minutes. It was warmer and I did not mind so much.
Eventually the lights were switched on, the audience seated itself, and
I was escorted to the platform, was introduced, and began to speak.
Never before had I looked into a sea of faces like these. I was sure
that if I uttered one word, such as abortion, outside the usual
vocabulary of these women they would go off into hysteria. And so my
address that night had to be in the most elementary terms, as though I
were trying to make children understand.
In the end, through simple illustrations I believed I had accomplished
my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were
proffered. The conversation went on and on, and when we were finally
through it was too late to return to New York. Under a curfew law
everything in Silver Lake shut at nine o’clock. I could not even send a
telegram to let my family know whether I had been thrown in the river or
was being held incommunicado. It was nearly one before I reached
Trenton, and I spent the night in a hotel.
In Brattleboro, Vermont, my audience was made up of another slice of
America—honest, strong, capable housewives who made their pies and
doughnuts and preserves before they came. When I had finished there was
not a murmur of commendation from the three hundred. The minister of the
church where the meeting was held had asked me to stand beside him to
say how-do-you-do when they came out. They just went by, eyes straight
ahead.
On the telephone afterwards, however, each was asking what the other
thought. The cases I had cited were typical of their own community. “Was
she referring to this one or that one?” they queried.
I returned two days later to lunch with a doctor and four or five social
workers, and was surprised to hear, “The women want to start a clinic.”
“But there wasn’t any enthusiasm when I suggested it the other morning.”
“The people around here don’t express much openly. They were moved to
quietness. But just the same they’re starting a clinic in Brattleboro.”
_Chapter Thirty_
NOW IS THE TIME FOR CONVERSE
Side by side with the clinic and education another project had been
stirring for some time in my mind. Internationalism was in the air, and
I wanted that outlook brought into the movement in the United States. To
this end I made plans for the Sixth International Malthusian and Birth
Control Conference, to be held in New York in March, 1925.
In the summer of 1924 I called a Conference Committee meeting of the
League. That is, in addition to the regular Board members, other
supporters were invited to attend. As soon as the matter was brought up
they expostulated, “You still have to ask for money to run the _Review_.
How can you pay the fares of the delegates and furnish them with
hospitality? Do you know how much it will cost?”
Since I wished to have the Conference important enough to make its mark
I replied promptly, “Not less than twenty-five thousand dollars.”
“Have you thought of how you are going to finance it?”
“Certainly I have.” I was certain that the interest of many of our
contributors extended beyond the magazine, and that they would see we
now had a broader field of activity. They had given before and would
give again. I knew money would come in.
Any five of the outside women present could have underwritten the
Conference, but they objected that funds were needed for other work. One
by one they left in a hurry; the inevitable appointments were waiting
for them. Their advice to the Board was, no Conference—and the wealthy
members of the Board concurred.
Nevertheless, I went ahead with the details of securing backers. Even
the letterhead on our stationery was significant. You could tell such a
lot about an organization—quality, standards, tone—from the names, often
more informative than the body of the letter. My intention was to make
people stand in public for what they believed in private, and at least
our list of sponsors was impressive enough—a brilliant and distinguished
array.
The success of any conference was determined in great measure by the
caliber of the men who took part in it. Results depended first upon the
concept animating it, and second, as had been proved before, on the
presence of an eminent figure to ornament the assemblage. I decided to
see whether I could induce Lord Dawson to be our main speaker, and,
hoping that personal persuasion might be more efficacious than written,
sailed for England in September.
Havelock came up from Margate to greet me, as usual far removed from the
hurly-burly of the world, aloof from the conflict of ideas which meant
so much to me. Yet to talk with him again was to return to the mêlée
with renewed inspiration. I managed to crowd in a motor trip to Oxford,
lunch at the Mitre, a walk through Brazenose and King’s, and a drive
back through Buckinghamshire, where the beeches were changing to bronze
and russet. I felt a regretful pang that so little of my life could be
lived in England.
Unfortunately for my purposes Lord Dawson was away shooting in the
North. With some temerity I dwelt upon the possibility of Lord
Buckmaster, the former Stanley Owen, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the
Asquith Coalition of 1915, who had become one of the most finished
orators in the House of Lords. He had just returned from Scotland and
telephoned me to suggest we exchange views. He was about to present a
resolution that, under the auspices of the Ministry of Health,
restrictions on birth control instruction be removed for married women
who attended welfare centers. He was gathering practical information
from people who had had practical experience, and wanted to know how
methods in the United States differed from those in England and,
particularly, verification of their harmlessness.
When he came to my hotel one afternoon, I did not take time to mention
the Conference, because H.G., knowing the value of proper introductions,
had arranged one of his most brilliant dinners for that very evening, or
rather he had proposed it and Jane had arranged it. For H.G. to
entertain in behalf of a cause set the seal of approval on it. Jane had
invited literary luminaries and their wives: George Bernard Shaw, Arnold
Bennett, Sir Arbuthnot Lane, Professor E. W. MacBride of the Eugenics
Education Society, Walter Salter of the League of Nations, and Lord
Buckmaster.
It had been my experience that personages gave little of themselves on
formal occasions. So many people expected these lions to roar bravely,
forgetting that they preferred to save their sparkling sallies for the
pages of their books. Moreover, when the English came together for an
evening they liked to have it light and amusing. I had received much
from the books of Shaw, who had advanced civilization by breaking down
barriers of all sorts, now almost nothing from him personally, although
he was very diverting, with funny quips upon life and America and birth
control.
I had by design been seated next to Lord Buckmaster, and after the meal
had been in progress for perhaps half an hour, H.G. leaned over and
whispered to me, “Have you got him?”
“I haven’t started yet.”
“You’re no true American. You ought to work faster. You’re missing out.”
Whereupon he focused his own attention on Lord Buckmaster, who, in
answer to his direct query, regretted that the date conflicted with the
opening of Parliament.
Before I could realize it the time came when I was due to sail from
Southampton. Lord Dawson had just returned and could see me at three
that afternoon. Promptly on the hour his secretary ushered me into his
library at Wimpole Street. A fire was burning cheerfully in the grate, a
gentleman, traditionally tall and handsome, was sitting leisurely on the
sofa as though my boat train did not leave Waterloo Station at
four-thirty, and endless days remained in which to talk about the
interesting subject of birth control. He was a grand seigneur such as
you rarely encountered in your travels, having a mind that could
understand and meet any discussion with knowledge, facts, and
comprehension. The approach, the surroundings, his courtesy, charm of
manner, and poise, proved him a great English aristocrat. He asked me
about the attitude of the medical profession in the United States,
desirous of knowing who had identified themselves with it. I recited my
past efforts to enlist the support of the leading physicians. The
minutes sped relentlessly away; I had to leave, and barely caught my
train. Having admired him so long from afar, I was glad to have had this
brief contact, even though he was unable to attend the Conference.
I was back in New York by the end of October, and soon came a letter
from Shaw cheering me with his point of view:
Birth control should be advocated for its own sake, on the general
ground that the difference between voluntary, irrational,
uncontrolled activity is the difference between an amoeba and a man;
and if we really believe that the more highly evolved creature is
the better we may as well act accordingly. As the amoeba does not
understand birth control, it cannot abuse it, and therefore its
state may be the more gracious; but it is also true that as the
amoeba cannot write, it cannot commit forgery: yet we teach
everybody to write unhesitatingly, knowing that if we refuse to
teach anything that could be abused we should never teach anything
at all.
Interminable correspondence began immediately with adherents and, in
many distant lands, possible delegates. I sent out telegrams to the
former and as fast as money arrived dispatched it to the latter for
their passage over, though I did not yet have enough to get them home
again. Languages and interpreters then had to be arranged for; in Europe
that was difficult enough, but here it was more than perplexing. Worst
of all was the eternal barrier of our laws. Topics that could be freely
discussed in London were forbidden in the United States, and we could
not afford to have the dignity of the occasion marred by another Town
Hall episode. I had to tell delegates what their papers were to be
about, and, when it was necessary to cut out a reference to
contraceptives, had to apologize and explain why.
I quickly found that visitors from seventeen countries could produce
more problems than statistics and theories proved. The committee sent to
meet Dr. G. O. Lapouge, a French eugenist, after vainly searching
through the cabins on the boat, went back to the pier whence all had
fled save one inconspicuous, desolate man sitting on top of his luggage,
reading, waiting patiently for someone to come for him—so
unimportant-looking that no one would have suspected him of being a
renowned scientist. The next morning the Hotel McAlpin, where the
convention was to be held, called me up to report that Dr. Lapouge had
been severely burned, and an interpreter was needed. Dr. Drysdale
hurried off to find the poor little man of seventy in excruciating pain
but carrying on a dissertation, highly amusing, about the hazards of
America’s much-advertised plumbing. Without understanding how to
regulate the shower he had stood under it and turned on the hot water.
The skin fairly peeled off his chest. Nevertheless, bandaged and oiled,
he undauntedly attended all the sessions.
The opening night we had a “pioneers’ dinner” over which Heywood Broun
presided. The Danish Fru Thit Jensen, blond, vivacious, was to relate
the troubles she had had in arousing interest in her own country. She
made her address in English courageously enough, but it was evident at
once that someone slightly familiar with American slang had helped her
out. She was describing a doctors’ meeting in Denmark and the first
words we heard were, “When I gave my greetings to those boneheads as I
am to you—” We all burst into laughter because they seemed to apply to
the guests present. Her face remained sphinx-like in its determined
immobility; she halted for us to subside, then continued. Almost
immediately the dignified gathering went off again into a fresh peal.
You no sooner recovered from one shrieking convulsion than she made
another remark equally ludicrous. After each outbreak she paused
resignedly before going on with her carefully prepared speech. The
hilarity finally got out of hand, so whether the end was funny or not
nobody knew or cared.
At every meeting Dr. Ferdinand Goldstein of Berlin, who was hard of
hearing, sat in the front row. The mention of any phase of population,
on which he was an expert, brought him promptly to his feet. Standing
directly in front of the speaker, he cupped his ear in order not to miss
a single word. The one discordant note occurred on the last day when the
committee declined to embody in its program any endorsement of abortion.
He not only left the Conference but went back to Germany without saying
good-by to anyone.
The Austrian delegates were Johann Ferch and his wife, Betty. This
Viennese printer had become interested in birth control through setting
up material on his linotype. He had informed himself of methods and in a
short time had several clinics started in Vienna. One morning when I
found them at breakfast in the dining room, great tears were rolling
down Mrs. Ferch’s face. I asked her what the trouble was and she said
she was weeping because the pot of coffee on the table, a simple bit of
food, cost thirty-five cents, and she realized what this amount of money
would buy at home; for the price of one meal in New York their starving
relatives could live for a whole day in luxury. Neither of them felt
entitled to indulge in such extravagance.
Dr. Aletta Jacobs walked along with me after one of the sessions. She
said the fact she had refused to see me in 1915 had been on her mind
ever since, and she desired to clear up the matter now; she had always
been against lay people taking part in the movement, and for that reason
had opposed the Rutgers method of training practical nurses and allowing
them to go out in the field after only two months’ instruction. She had
put me in the same category as those in her own country who had wanted
to establish clinics as a commercial venture. That afternoon she visited
our clinic and went over methods with Dr. Cooper and Dr. Stone. Here,
she said, with kindling eyes, was the system she had envisioned in the
Netherlands but had never been able to make come true.
The eugenists were given their opportunity to speak at the Conference.
Eugenics, which had started long before my time, had once been defined
as including free love and prevention of conception. Moses Harman of
Chicago, one of its chief early adherents, had run a magazine and gone
to jail for it under the Comstock regime. Recently it had cropped up
again in the form of selective breeding, and biologists and geneticists
such as Clarence C. Little, President of the University of Maine, and C.
B. Davenport, Director of the Cold Spring Harbor Station for
Experimental Evolution, had popularized their findings under this
heading. Protoplasm was the substance then supposed to carry on
hereditary traits—genes and chromosomes were a later discovery.
Professor Davenport used to lift his eyes reverently and, with his hands
upraised as though in supplication, quiver emotionally as he breathed,
“Protoplasm. We want more protoplasm.”
I accepted one branch of this philosophy, but eugenics without birth
control seemed to me a house built upon sands. It could not stand
against the furious winds of economic pressure which had buffeted into
partial or total helplessness a tremendous proportion of the human race.
The eugenists wanted to shift the birth control emphasis from less
children for the poor to more children for the rich. We went back of
that and sought first to stop the multiplication of the unfit. This
appeared the most important and greatest step towards race betterment.
A special round table for the eugenists was held at which we took the
opportunity to challenge their theories. I said, “Dr. Little, let’s
begin with you. How many children have you?”
“Three.”
“How many more are you going to have?”
“None. I can’t afford them.”
“Professor East, how many have you, and how many more are you going to
have?”
And so the question circled. Not one planned to have another child,
though Dr. Little has had two since by a second wife. “There you are,” I
said, “a super-intelligent group, the very type for whom you advocate
more children, yet you yourselves won’t practice what you preach. If I
were to put this same question to a group of poor women who already have
families, every one of them would also answer, ‘No, I don’t want any
more.’ No arguments can make people want children if they think they
have enough.”
When the Conference was over, a final meeting was held at my apartment
to form a permanent international association of which Dr. Little was
made president.
Handling everything had been something of an undertaking, but after all
the delegates had been sent off we still had money in the bank. My faith
had been justified that, if you started something worth while, means for
its realization would be forthcoming.
_Chapter Thirty-one_
GREAT HEIGHTS ARE HAZARDOUS
“_Professor East, though you may try,
You fail to rouse my fears,
For I don’t dream that even I
Will live a hundred years;
But do not think I view with mirth
Five billion folk (assorted)
Five billion tightly packed on earth
Who cannot be supported._”
(South African Review)
At the conclusion of the New York Conference I thought that I was never
going to have anything to do with organizing another. But hardly more
than a few months had gone by before my mind was dwelling on one to be
centered around overpopulation as a cause of war. From the statements of
Keynes and the specialists of the League of Nations, and from the status
of the countries of Europe, it was inferred that international peace
could in no way be made secure until measures had been put into effect
to deal with explosive populations.
Between 1800 and 1900 the inhabitants of the world doubled in spite of
bloody wars, thus proving they were only temporary checks. For every
hundred thousand babies who died between dawn and dawn, Professor East
estimated that one hundred and fifty thousand were born. These fifty
thousand survivors contributed to the globe in twenty years a horde
almost equal to India’s three hundred and seventy-five million.
In the United States, numerically speaking, overpopulation was not of
apparent importance; we still had unoccupied lands. But evidence that we
were beginning to consider the quality of our citizens as well as the
quantity was shown in our immigration laws. In 1907 we had barred aliens
with mental, physical, communicable, or loathsome diseases, and also
illiterate paupers, prostitutes, criminals, and the feeble-minded. Had
these precautions been taken earlier our institutions would not now be
crowded with moronic mothers, daughters, and grand-daughters—three
generations at a time, all of whom have to be supported by tax-payers
who shut their eyes to this condition, admittedly detrimental to the
blood stream of the race.
Then our sudden closing of the doors in 1924 by placing the world on a
quota, threw Europe’s surplus population back on herself. Italy had to
face this problem as Germany had had to do in 1914. At the Institute of
Politics in Williamstown, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1925, Count
Antonio Cippico, Fascist Senator, virtually demanded that, to make room
for her “explosive expansion,” Italy be allowed to export her
half-million annual increase to foreign lands. Professor East answered
him, asking Italy first to put her house in order, and setting forth
with clarity the inexorable results of “spawning children on the world
with haphazard recklessness.” But she had no intention of doing so.
Shortly afterwards Mussolini outlined his plan: “If Italy is to amount
to anything it must enter into the second half of this century with at
least sixty million.”
Japan and Germany as well as Italy were already called danger spots in
1925. Japan’s goal was a hundred million. Göring was soon to say, “The
territory in which the Germans live is too small for our sixty-six
million inhabitants and will be too small for the ninety million which
we want to become.” The three military countries were pleading with
their women to bear more children, offering as inducements medals,
money, lands. They claimed the right of expansion because they were too
crowded at home, and were at the same time increasing their peoples in
order to promote successful wars.
Populations can fall into a semi-starved state of inertia, such as that
of India or China, unless they are aggressive. They have a choice of
three courses: to lower the standards of living to the bare subsistence
level, to control the birth rate, or to reach out for colonies as Great
Britain has done.
While we had been holding our conference in London in 1922 I had met at
one of Major Putnam’s luncheons the Very Reverend “gloomy” Dean Inge,
except that he was not gloomy at all; he was full of mischief. In his
late fifties, tall, thin as an exclamation point, quite deaf, he
reminded me of a Dickens character. He had commented in his usual
pungent style on the real meaning of the right to expand:
It is a pleasant prospect if every nation with a high birth rate has
a “right” to exterminate its neighbors. The supposed duty of
multiplication, and the alleged right to expand, are among the chief
causes of modern war; and I repeat that if they justify war, it must
be a war of extermination, since mere conquest does nothing to solve
the problem.
I was still of the opinion in 1925 that the League of Nations should
include birth control in its program and proclaim that increase in
numbers was not to be regarded as a justifiable reason for national
expansion, but that each nation should limit its inhabitants to its
resources as a fundamental principle of international peace.
On the other hand, it was all very well to say, “Cut down your numbers,”
but how could this be done if scientific and medical development lagged
so far behind that few knew how to do it? Building up huge populations
by following the way of nature was fairly simple, but it was by no means
simple to reduce them again voluntarily. No long-range program was
possible until economists, sociologists, and biologists alike should
garner and contribute facts to the solution. Therefore the occasion was
now ripe for the attention of the scientific world to be focused on the
population question. I planned to bring them together at Geneva, the
logical meeting place.
Dr. Little, who had accepted the presidency for the next international
birth control conference, had gone to the University of Michigan as its
President. He had no time for organizing, raising money, getting
speakers; if this lengthy job of organizing the World Population
Conference were to be done I should have to do it.
So great was the competition between the League of Nations and other
groups desiring to hold conventions at Geneva during its sessions that
you had to book an auditorium and rooms for delegates practically twelve
months ahead. Consequently, towards the end of 1926 I went to Geneva to
make arrangements for an expected three hundred guests. I had previously
become acquainted with several Genevese. William Rappard, then a
professor at the university there, consented to go on our committee and
advise me on social details with which only a native would be familiar.
More vital to me was the Labor Office of the League, where it was not a
matter of politics but of industrial problems thrashed out by people
chosen for their special knowledge. Here I met Albert Thomas, a
strange-looking person, short, stocky, with black beard sprouting over
his face, very talkative, amazing in his energy, traveling over Europe
by night, arriving in Geneva in the morning, conducting his business
affairs, making speeches. But with all this activity he managed to spare
hours enough to help me immeasurably when I consulted him on subjects,
persons, locations, and dates.
The Salle Centrale was engaged for three days, August 30th to September
2nd of the next year, 1927. Back I went to London to enlist an English
committee. Clinton Chance became my husband’s assistant in supervising
finances, and also provided London headquarters in his offices,
supplying stenographers and secretaries. Edith How-Martyn joined us and
I secured the invaluable aid of Julian Huxley, brother of Aldous, a
brilliant, young, enthusiastic scientist, alive and having a mind that
not only took things in, but gave them out. The Conference owed much to
his fair and just opinions and the fine supporters he rounded up.
Together we went over names and names and names, trying to choose a
chairman of sufficient distinction around whom European scientists would
rally. Professor A. M. Carr-Saunders at first accepted, but a month and
a half later informed me his other obligations were so heavy he would
have to limit his participation to membership on the Council.
After weeks of uncertainty, interviews, and rejections, we selected Sir
Bernard Mallet, K.C.B., once of the Foreign Office, Treasury, Board of
Inland Revenue, later Registrar General of Births, Deaths, and
Marriages, and President of the Royal Statistical Society. Although very
English, he was not too conservative. He knew well Sir Eric Drummond,
then head of the League of Nations, and also had many friends on the
Continent, particularly in Italy. He was typical of an individual who
had climbed far, who knew where he was going and the road by which he
should travel. Bored at being now in retirement, he accepted our offer
willingly because, although no salary was attached, it would give him a
position and an interest, and keep him socially in touch with noteworthy
figures. Lady Mallet’s previous experience as lady-in-waiting to Queen
Victoria made her an expert hostess, and this too we needed.
Once I had to make an expedition all the way to Edinburgh to seek out
Dr. F. A. E. Crew, a shining light among the younger biologists, who was
making hens crow and roosters lay eggs. He readily agreed to come to the
Conference and during the two days I visited him helped me build up my
program.
I also wanted a paper read by André Siegfried, author of _America Comes
of Age_, written after journeying some six weeks through the United
States. When he invited me to tea at his home in Paris, I found him in
appearance more like a mixture of American and English than French. But
you could feel from his attitude and deduce from his conversation that
he really envied, despised, hated Americans; by invading France with our
“wealth and vulgarity,” we had utterly spoiled it for his compatriots.
Appreciating good food, which we never had at home, we squandered
enormously, four or five times what they did. The same was true of wine;
we were drinking their best, paying high for it without being able to
tell the difference when we were given cheap vintages. Consequently, the
Parisians were being shut out of Paris because they could not afford the
prices.
“I don’t see how you can blame the Americans for coming over and paying
what you French ask,” I replied. “You might have a complaint perhaps if
we tried to undersell you or refused to buy. But it seems to me you are
profiting considerably by this ‘outrageous intrusion of the American
dollar.’”
Although we did not get on very well and although he would not read a
paper, he consented to attend.
Some of the preliminaries having been set, my husband took a villa at
Cap d’Ail between Nice and Monte Carlo and near enough to Geneva, Paris,
and London for trips whenever necessary. From my room the sunrise was
incredibly vivid—reds and yellows mixed with the glorious blue of the
Mediterranean. But it was not warm. H.G., who had a villa at Grasse,
said the Riviera reputation for summer heat in wintertide was a fraud.
We used to drive up to see him; the flowers for the perfume
manufactories grew thick on the hillsides, so thick that the air for
miles around was fragrant. Occasionally we picnicked in the tiny village
on top of the mountain of Ez, a favorite haunt of artists. Once the old
castle had belonged to robber barons, who could see for miles the
approach of a ship; now the elder Mrs. O. P. Belmont had a palatial
residence there.
The Riviera was always a Mecca for English people wanting to escape
their own cold and fog and damp, and our eight guest rooms were full
most of the time. It was quite novel for me to manage a household in
French. We had the traditional bad luck of Americans; the maids stole
from the guests and the hot water boiler only held ten gallons—not a
person could have a good bath until a modern one was installed. My first
cook was an expert in her field, but I soon found she was running over
in her bills, even allowing for the customary perquisite of a sou for
each franc she spent with the butcher and the greengrocer. Eggs and
butter were on the list every day, but never how many eggs nor how much
butter. I laid the responsibility on my own bad French, before I
discovered it was her understanding of Americans. Then and there I told
her she had to leave the following day immediately after breakfast. She
received this ultimatum with tears and wailing. Somewhat uneasy I rose
early at seven only to find she had gone late the preceding night,
taking with her every scrap of food in the pantry and storeroom except
the salt.
On one of my frequent flittings to London I went to a hairdressers’
shop, unfamiliar to me but carrying the insignia of reliability, “By
Appointment to Her Majesty.” I was to return to Cap d’Ail in a few days
and wished to appear with a wave in my hair, which I wore Mid-Victorian,
very sweet and simple. After washing it, the coiffeur put an iron on a
little gas arrangement in the window near by and left the room while it
was drying, floating out in the wind.
Meanwhile I meditated on the subject of hair. The story of Samson seemed
to have been more than an allegorical tale. I could tell from the way
mine acted on being brushed in the morning how I myself was going to be.
If it were strong and electric, then I was full of vitality. When
slumped over my forehead so that it had to be tied down, then I dragged
about spiritlessly.
It was also interesting to analyze why a woman should wear her hair in a
certain style. I knew some who, at the age of sixty, curled theirs in
baby ringlets; doubtless something within them wanted never to grow up.
Women who had gone into the underground movement in Russia took the
shears to theirs so that nothing should divert the attention to feminine
appeal. I was not enough of a Feminist to sacrifice mine, but I had once
come to the conclusion that the triumph of life would be to push it
straight back from my forehead and tie it in a knot behind, because that
was how people thought I looked. But I could not do it. No matter what
was said about your feet or your figure, you could at least show your
hair—in front of hats, down your back, everywhere, and so I had clung
tenaciously to my long locks.
At this point in my musings I smelled something burning and turned
around to find half my hair singed off to my ear. I gave one shriek, and
the whole staff rushed in. But it was too late; it all had to be cut
short and I actually wept.
As soon as I reached Paris I had what was left done up like a switch so
that I could put it on if I felt too badly. I kept it in a box, all
ready in case my husband did not want me without my hair. Eventually I
had to face his disapproval. I appeared for dinner. Nothing was said.
Although internally amused the guests maintained grave faces, waiting
for him to notice it; not until next morning did he do so. My own
attitude had changed overnight; never did I want to return to long hair.
During early spring, just when it was beginning to be most beautiful, I
could spend little time at Cap d’Ail. Permanent headquarters were
established in April at Geneva—four airy, spacious rooms up two flights.
I had expected Edith How-Martyn to be with me, but she came down with
scarlet fever in London. It was a complication to do without her until
Mrs. Marjorie Martin, who had organized a pool of stenographers,
secretaries, and typists at the Labor Bureau, furnished us with a most
competent and experienced office staff of seventeen.
At four-thirty our large reception room was transformed into a living
room where all the employees and volunteers gathered. Each in turn
provided cakes, brewed the tea, and washed up afterwards. One evening at
a quarter to seven some good American stopped in and, seeing everybody
smiling and cheerful though still at work, asked, “Will you tell me what
magic you women use to create this atmosphere? You’ve been at it since
seven this morning.”
The answer was—tea at four-thirty.
I liked being in Geneva, neat and clean and filled with watch shops. I
did not even mind the great numbers of people in solemn, black clothes.
If anyone died in this Calvinist city, the family wore full mourning for
one year, and half for the following—in large families the process
became almost perpetual.
I was not stimulated by the League sittings. There was much reading of
papers and a lot of noise, but no breathless excitement during the
debates. Instead, the members talked in small groups, looking very
bored. The big things, just as in Washington, were done behind the
scenes, at dinner tables, and in private conferences. The general
meetings were merely sounding boards for public opinion. One of the most
interesting features was the way a delegate could make a speech in his
own language and others at their desks could plug in earphones and hear
it simultaneously in theirs, coming from booths off stage.
Delegates to our Conference were all asking whether their papers were to
be given in their respective tongues. I came to one swift decision—to
adopt the bilingual League precedent of French and English. It was
simple enough to secure interpreters who were familiar with political
terminology, because they swarmed at Geneva, but to find those who
understood scientific terms in German, Italian, Hungarian, Scandinavian,
Portuguese, Greek, Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese was quite another
affair. We tried to catch as many as we could passing through Geneva and
hold them over during the time we needed their services.
In order to facilitate matters my husband generously financed the
morning journal to be delivered on the breakfast tray of every person
registered at the Conference, and also to members of the League of
Nations. It was printed in English and French in parallel columns,
containing the papers, the discussions, and any news items that might
concern the delegates.
Entertainment was an important feature. A series of luncheons was to be
held at the Restaurant Besson, with a host at each table, and daily the
seating was to be rearranged so that each guest might be placed between
those who spoke his own language or languages. M. Rappard was to give a
reception. M. Fatio invited us on board the _Montreux_ to visit Mme. de
Staël’s former home at Coppet. The chief social event was the reception
and dinner at Mrs. Stanley McCormick’s Fifteenth Century Château de
Prangins at Nyon. She herself could not be there, but sent a
representative from America to open it, equip it with servants, and make
everything ready.
Adequate handling of publicity was essential, and Albin Johnson,
correspondent of the New York _World_, did this for me. He knew who was
who, whom to avoid, and what persons would put the proper emphasis on
what. He volunteered his services, but some of his assistants had to be
paid.
We offered expenses to all speakers and certain visitors who might later
be influential in their own communities. The outpouring of money was
constant and I was not getting enough by soliciting from wealthy
individuals. Consequently, giving up the villa in May, I came back to
the United States to secure some from a foundation.
By now I knew I should be gone for at least another year, and someone
had to take charge during my absence. The woman on our Board of
Directors who seemed to be the most selflessly devoted, giving time and
effort without stint, able to speak and to direct, was Mrs. F.
Robertson-Jones. She went to meetings in blizzard or rainstorm, by
subway or on foot if necessary. No dressmaker, no friend dropping in to
lunch kept her from her job. But she differed from me in one respect.
She could not run things unless she felt secure; she wanted a definite
signing on the dotted line for so much annually instead of voluntary
contributions of what people felt they could afford when they could
afford it. This was quite against the spirit on which the movement had
always proceeded, but I was willing to compromise. I did not then
realize how serious it was going to prove in the future to have ceded
this fundamental precept. She accepted the temporary presidency and I
sailed back, reaching Geneva in July.
I was surprised at the rising tide of international solidarity which, in
this non-industrial city, evidenced itself in astonishing fashion the
night Sacco and Vanzetti were to be electrocuted. I had been working
late at the office and when I came out towards midnight the crowds in
the streets were so dense I could hardly move. As soon as word came in
the early morning that the execution had not been stayed, they shouted
reproaches before the houses of Americans, smashed the windows of the
United States Consulate, and some in the League building. Even in front
of the Hôtel des Bergues, where we were stopping, they clamored their
protests.
The great Dr. William Welch of Johns Hopkins was in Geneva at this time,
a cheerful person, roly-poly, abounding in fun and sly, acute remarks.
To listen to his unimpressive conversation you would never suspect that
here was one whose name was known around the world. We had lunch
together one noon. He knew how much I was depending on the Conference,
how much I was hoping that the population aspect of birth control should
be started in the right direction and under the right auspices. He
walked a little way with me and then, putting his arm across my
shoulders, said, “Perhaps you think your battles are over, but they
aren’t.”
I felt he was trying to prepare me for something having gone wrong,
though I could not imagine what it was. From then on I was aware of an
unpleasant subterranean mystery insidiously disturbing the previous
harmony. But nobody talked openly.
During my absence in the United States, Sir Bernard had been collecting
his European friends. Not only was Italy intent on increasing her
population, but the reactionary element of France also had formed a
society to combat birth control. We had invited the Italians, Guglielmo
Ferrero and Gaetano Salvemini, but Sir Bernard had been induced to
accept as a substitute Corrado Gini, who, dark, swarthy, highly
egotistical, speaking English painfully, was the perfect mirror of
Mussolini’s sentiments, and turned out to be a most tiresome speaker and
a general nuisance.
The delegates, Gini among the first, began to gather late in August. The
storm broke the Friday before our scheduled opening Tuesday, August
31st. Proofs of the official program had just come to me for my
approval. Sir Bernard came into my office and looked at them. “Well,
we’ll just cross these off,” he said, drawing his pencil through my name
and those of my assistants.
“Why are you doing that?”
“The names of the workers should not be included on scientific
programs.”
“These people are different,” I objected. “In their particular lines
they are as much experts as the scientists.”
“It doesn’t matter. They can’t go on. Out of the question. It’s not
done.”
A long cry of dismay went up from the staff. They considered the action
reprehensible and petty. The young woman who was to deliver the program
to the printers would not do so. Saturday morning, secretaries and
typists—twenty-one altogether—struck in a body, and without them the
Conference could not proceed successfully.
While Dr. Little was trying his powers of persuasion on them, I reported
the situation to Sir Bernard, saying that in justice to the women who
had given so generously of their time and effort, who had raised the
money, issued the invitations, paid the delegates’ expenses, they should
be given proper credit. All the latter had had to do was walk in at the
last moment, present their papers, and take part in the social life
planned for them.
Having registered my sentiments, I spent most of Sunday convincing the
members of the staff that the Conference was bigger than their own hurt
feelings and making them promise to return; Edith How-Martyn, however,
who had joined me some time before, refused to continue because the hard
labor of the workers was not to be acknowledged.
Though suspecting that the elimination of my name was the crux of the
matter, I was still at a loss to know the exact reason back of this
tempest until one of the delegates told me the story. Sir Eric Drummond
had warned Sir Bernard that these distinguished scientists would be the
laughing stock of all Europe if it were known that a woman had brought
them together. Hence, in order to influence Italian and French delegates
to attend, Sir Bernard had secretly pledged that I was not to be a party
to the Conference and no discussion of birth control or Malthusianism
would be allowed. He had hoped that the whole thing might be muddled
through, and, when the delegates had come drifting in, had gone from one
to another to urge, “I ask you to stand by me; do not let me down.”
Only our young English friends had held out for the recognition of the
women. I was not surprised at the Europeans; but it was difficult to
comprehend the American attitude on this point. Perhaps Professor Pearl
and Dr. Little, in agreeing to support Sir Bernard, had not realised the
unfairness of the action. Clarence Little was as honest a human being as
you could find, but sometimes I thought his personal allegiances
obstructed his vision; he used his intelligence to make up arguments on
the side of loyalty rather than on the side of principles.
At the hour designated the first meeting opened in the Salle Centrale.
Each delegate had a number of extra tickets, and with the German,
Belgian, and French contingents came several gentlemen with large silver
crosses hanging down outside their coats. In the lobby a Genevese book
concern had been permitted to set up a table for the sale of volumes by
delegates. These guests immediately demanded of Sir Bernard that a
certain one, of which they disapproved, be banished. Sir Bernard trotted
to me and said he wished no trouble; there seemed to be some
controversy. Would I have the offending books taken away?
I approached the strangers and asked who they were. They vociferated in
various languages, shaking the book under my nose, getting red in the
face, looking as though apoplexy might smite them. I sent for an
interpreter and instructed him to say, “The hall will be for rent next
Monday. Meantime, I have paid for it and will suffer no dictation from
anybody as to what shall be done here.”
The disturbers did not depart, and the excitement around the bookstand
was so considerable that the volumes were sold out and more had to be
ordered.
During the course of the Conference the Americans, British, and
Scandinavians admitted the need for limiting population; the Germans and
Czechs concurred, although with less assurance; the Italian and Slav
voices were definitely opposed; the French, who practiced it at home,
preached against it publicly. The papers of Professors East and
Fairchild came perilously near mentioning the forbidden word
Malthusianism, but as for birth control, it was edged about like a bomb
which might explode any moment.
At the close of the three days a permanent population union was formed
which is still meeting—the only international group dealing with the
problem.
All the brilliant committee now took trains and steamed off for home,
leaving me with the bills, the clearing up, and, most important of all,
the editing of the proceedings. After a rest at a sanitorium at Glion in
Switzerland I set to work, and by the end of November they had gone to
press. I wanted to visit India but had to think of this trip in terms of
physical fitness and, consequently, was obliged to forego it. Instead, I
accepted an invitation sent me by Agnes Smedley on behalf of the
Association of German Medical Women to lecture in Germany in December.
The Berlin of 1927 was far different from that of 1920. Food was
plentiful, if expensive, the Adlon and other restaurants were crowded, a
stirring of life and nationalism was everywhere to be sensed. At the
appearance of a Zeppelin in the skies, men in the streets took off their
hats as though it had been a god.
When I spoke in the Town Hall of Charlottenburg-Berlin I was reminded of
the birth strike German women had been carrying on when I had last been
there. German men seemed to have remembered little of this, still
thinking they could keep their wives to childbearing, “their race
function,” as it was called. But the women had now definitely directed
their thoughts from race preservation to self-preservation. As I said to
my audience, “Birth control has always been practiced, beginning with
infanticide, which is abhorred, and then by abortion, nearly as bad.
Contraception, on the other hand, is harmless.”
Almost before I had finished Dr. Alfred Grotjahn, Professor of Social
Hygiene at the University of Berlin, who was seeking to present the
picture of Germany’s future greatness in terms of numbers, shouted out
that every woman ought to have three children before she should be
allowed contraceptive information. No sooner had he resumed his seat
than several women were demanding recognition. I was told one of them
was Dr. Marthe Ruben-Wolf. “She’s a Communist. What she’s saying is all
on your side, but it won’t do any good, because nobody has ever been
able to cope with Grotjahn.” Nevertheless, she answered him figure for
figure, fact for fact, each based on her experience, adding that his
patriotism was only skin deep. He might as well bury himself now; he
would soon be buried by the rising generation and forgotten.
Then a huge shape arose, garbed in uniform and bonnet. I thought she
must be a deaconess, but she turned out to be President of the Midwives
Association. She bellowed in tones even louder than those of Grotjahn,
putting herself on record against birth control. She could not be
stopped; she would not sit down even when the bell was rung. Others
answered her—the debate developed into a regular bear garden before the
contestants were separated and removed.
As a result of the meeting some twenty women physicians gathered at my
hotel two evenings later. Clinics were to be established at Neuköln
under Dr. Kurt Bendix, the health administrator of the section; for the
first time in history a government agency was actually sanctioning birth
control. I promised fifty dollars a month for three years towards
supplies; the doctors agreed to furnish rooms and medical services. They
had a more Feminist point of view than ours in the United States; Ellen
Key’s liberal influence had seeped through from Scandinavia.
Nevertheless, I was astonished that in the very country where we were
purchasing our contraceptives, these outstanding members of their
profession knew practically nothing about them. The original clinic was
opened the following May and for five years contraceptive information
was given in a dozen places under medical supervision. Then the Nazis
came into power, they were closed, and Dr. Bendix committed suicide.
Towards the middle of the month I went to Frankfurt-am-Main where Dr.
Herthe Riese was managing one of the largest of the marriage advice
bureaus, of which there were about fifteen hundred in Germany. Anyone
could apply to these for legal information and, for example, receive
enlightenment as to who should have custody of a child if illegitimate,
the amount of alimony to be paid by the husband in case of divorce, the
nationality of a child if the father were a foreigner, the effect of
sterilization, the results of the marriage of cousins, or any problem,
including homosexuality and inversion, feeblemindedness and abortion.
In this period of great unemployment, bearing particularly heavily upon
families with many children, Dr. Riese had gone to the officers of one
of the big health insurance companies and persuaded them that it would
be economical for them to underwrite sterilization of women carrying
health insurance if this were advised by a doctor. I saw her order
seventy-five of these major operations one evening between six o’clock
and eight-thirty in her own clinic. Professor Grotjahn had created
almost a slogan by his demand that in order to bolster up the falling
birth rate every wife have three children. But the women had a counter
slogan; they came in saying, “I’ve had my three. I want an operation.” I
saw also some who had returned from the hospital to report. They
appeared happy and proud and pleased with themselves. Their ten days or
two weeks in bed had meant food and much-needed rest.
After Germany I went vacationing to St. Moritz, to play, to skate, to
ski, in that glorious high altitude. It was transcendently beautiful. I
used to get up in the morning and listen to the sleighs coming up the
hill with their tinkling bells, and look out at the scintillating snow;
every twig of every tree was encased in ice on which the sun glistened
without melting it. The scene was a white etching.
St. Moritz was much frequented by nobility and royalty on holiday.
Whenever one of them arrived, like a flock of birds the hangers-on
winged their way thither, settled down in all the hotels so that
ordinary folk could scarcely find room.
Almost the first person I met was Lady Astor, more British than the
British themselves, the Southern accent entirely gone. Her blond hair
was turned sand-colored, her blue eyes were always gay, her tanned and
rugged features sharp, mouth and jaw firm set, neck clean cut. She was
quick-tempered and frank, and ready to take fire easily. Lord Astor, who
was devoted to his wife, was much more politically astute, and usually
went campaigning with her. He sat directly behind her, and, when the
heckling began or a question was posed which might involve her in
difficulties, he called out in a stage whisper, “Don’t be drawn, Nancy,
don’t be drawn!”
During one House of Commons debate, Lady Astor had attempted to drive
home a point by stating she was the mother of five children and
therefore ought to know.
Her opponent, taking issue with her, had jumped up, saying his word
should carry more weight on the subject because he was the father of
seven.
Lady Astor then retorted, “But I haven’t finished yet.”
The British professed to be horrified at this—so vulgar and American!
Once after Lady Astor had been off skiing all day, I joined her in her
room shortly before dinner. She was sitting up in bed, the windows wide
open, cold cream smeared over her sunburned face, her glasses on her
nose, reading _Science and Health_ with the Bible near by. She had not
quite ended her day’s lesson.
Almost wherever I am, the subject of birth control comes up sooner or
later, and it did on this occasion. Lady Astor seemed to think her
religion forbade her believing in it. “If they want babies, let them
have babies. If they don’t want them, let them practice continence.”
“Even accepting that continence is the ultimate ideal,” I replied,
“wouldn’t you agree that contraception as an immediate necessity to help
millions of women is of equal importance with wearing glasses to read
the Bible? As a good Christian Scientist you should not use them. Until
you get enough faith to go without, don’t you think it better to read
Mary Baker Eddy through some such means as glasses than not at all?”
In one second she beamed. “You’re perfectly right. That’s only
reasonable.”
If you present common-sense people with the premise that birth control
is common sense, they will always react in a common-sense way. Lady
Astor was a practical person, and from that time on she has been a
friend of the movement.
_Chapter Thirty-two_
CHANGE IS HOPEFULLY BEGUN
As a cause becomes more and more successful, the ideas of the people
engaged in it are bound to change. While still at St. Moritz I had been
getting messages and letters about the disturbing situation in the
American Birth Control League. I cabled Frances Ackermann to take it in
hand, but she replied she was unable to bring about a friendly solution.
I found on my return after eighteen months that the tone of the movement
had altered. The machinery I had built up to be ready for any emergency
was marking time. An incident which occurred almost immediately was
highly indicative. During my absence the League had been invited to
participate in the Parents’ Exhibition in the Grand Central Palace, and
had signed a contract for a certain space. The day before the opening
came a letter from Robert E. Simon, who was in charge, stating that
William O’Shea, Superintendent of Public Schools, threatened to remove
the Board of Education exhibit if ours were there, and he therefore
requested our withdrawal.
With time so short I asked an attorney to secure a court injunction to
prevent our exclusion. But one member of the Board said no step should
be taken without the approval of all; a meeting should be called to
discuss what course was to be adopted. I tried to reach various
Directors by telephone, but before I could gather a quorum it was too
late; the check which paid for our space had been sent back and the
Exhibition had opened. We were left out.
Obviously, the old aggressive spirit had been superseded by a
doctrinaire program of social activity; the League had settled down. I
had always believed that offerings should be voluntarily measured by the
individual’s desire. In this way you could appeal whenever a special
occasion warranted and receive anywhere from one dollar to two or three
hundred. Contributors were giving to something that concerned them
vitally, and they did it, not because they had signed a pledge for a
limited sum, but because they wanted to help forward the movement. I
could not share the League’s enthusiasm over the fact that our bank
account had grown to sizeable proportions—thousands of dollars drawing
interest, though I admit it must have been a great relief to a Board
whose previous experience had been to hear wails from the President and
Treasurer as to our needs for some new project.
I knew the apathy which came from a fat bank balance. I knew also the
tacit disapproval which would meet every suggestion to touch that
precious fund. But my policy had been to spend, not to save, when work
ought to be done. I discovered that subscribers to the _Review_ had not
been informed it was time for them to renew their subscriptions, and
that, consequently, they had diminished from thirteen thousand to
twenty-five hundred. Accordingly I told the bookkeeper to give fifteen
or twenty dollars to the clerk to pay for circularizing. She said she
could not do it; a bylaw had been made that nobody could direct the
outlay of more than five dollars without a resolution passed by the
Board.
There is doubtless a place for organizations that restrict their scope
to the status quo. Most charities are like that—they live on securities,
install as officers those who keep pace with but are never in advance of
general opinion. Two members of the Board, with League-of-Women-Voters
training, saw the movement in the light of routine, annual membership
dues and a budget, going through the same ritual year after year and
remaining that way, performing a quiet service in the community. I
looked upon it as something temporary, something to sweep through, to be
done with and finished; it was merely an instrument for accomplishment.
I wanted us to avail ourselves of every psychological event, to push
ahead until hospitals and public health agencies took over birth control
as part of their regular program, which would end our function.
Regretfully I found the League was to side-step the greatest and most
far-reaching opportunity yet offered it. It was logically equipped to
enter the legislative field. But it wanted to progress state by state. I
was convinced action in the Federal sphere would be quicker and much
broader educationally, and that, furthermore, success there would
provide a precedent for the states.
When you build an organization, you try to combine harmonious elements,
but you cannot tell what they will turn out to be until a certain
interval has elapsed. Some of these women were in the movement for
reasons they themselves did not always understand. A few liked the
sensation of being important and having personal attention; they were at
their best in following an individual, yet I never felt they were doing
it for me. The liberals who had started with me had never demanded a
reward. What they gave was for the cause; they refused to work _for_
people; they worked _with_ them or not at all.
Most movements go through the phase of being brought into the drawing
room. Those who disagreed with me believed the emphasis should be on
social register membership, and argued that my associations had been
radical. The answer was “Yes,” because the radicals alone had had the
vision and the courage to support me in the early days. The women who
were raising objections now had only joined up after it had been safe to
do so. Moreover, they were, for the most part, New Yorkers, not all of
whom had even gone into neighboring states. Their attitude tended to be,
“Never you mind the West; let the Empire State make the decisions.”
The conflict of views which reigned in various matters was based on
lives and environments which had been vastly separated. The time of some
of the members of the Board had to depend on what was left from other
duties—husbands, children, servants, charities, church entertainments,
shopping. To me the cause was not a hobby, not a mere filler in a whirl
of many engagements, not something that could wait on this or that mood,
but a living inspiration. It came first in my waking consciousness and
was my last thought as I fell asleep at night.
I was always willing to present my facts to experts and abide by their
superior knowledge, and I gave every consideration to the suggestions of
the Board. But I was no paper president. Experience had given me a
judgment which entitled me to a certain amount of freedom of action, and
I could not well observe the dictates of people who did not know my
subject as well as I did.
June 12, 1928, I resigned the presidency of the League. Because the
majority of the Directors were against this, and because I wanted to
make it easier for Mrs. Robertson-Jones to take over, I stayed on the
Board and continued to edit the _Review_.
But the divergence of opinions rapidly crystallized in the next few
months. This had to be pondered upon and wisely dealt with. The
situation was going to mean constant friction, and the League might
easily disintegrate into a dying, static thing. In any event, internal
discord was abhorrent. I began to ask myself whether I could pass over
the Review, which for eleven years had been a vital part of my own
being.
Then came a meeting at which the question of the editorship arose. For
the first time friend opposed friend. Three voted against me; the other
nine were for me. But my mind was now made up. I could fight outside
enemies but not those who had been my fellow-workers; I would give
complete freedom to others in order to obtain a new freedom for myself.
Therefore, I surrendered the _Review_ to the League as its private
property. I have been sorry that this step was necessary, because the
magazine changed from being a national and international medium for the
expression of ideas and became merely a house organ. However, I trust
that some day it will be possible to broaden its scope of usefulness
once more.
The clinic, which had recently been treated rather like an orphan, still
remained intact. No one in the League had ever paid any attention to it,
and the doctors on the committee had been too busy with their own
practices. I felt it was my responsibility, and belonged to me
personally. It was an interesting angle on my own psychology. I did not
regret the theoretical part of the movement going into other hands, but
I would have been traitor to all that had been entrusted to me had I
yielded the clinic to women who had shown themselves incapable of the
understanding and sympathy required in its operation.
One of the most distressing aspects of the impasse was that members of
the organization had to forswear one to choose another, and this I
hated. Juliet Rublee, Frances Ackermann, and Mrs. Walter Timme came with
me unhesitatingly. So, too, did Kate Hepburn, Mrs. Day, and Dr. William
H. Garth, the only minister on the Board, a forthright man who always
spoke his mind.
Dr. Cooper was ready either to go with the clinic or keep on with the
League in the field if I thought he could be of most use there. It
seemed to me few in the country could fill his place in speaking to the
profession and, consequently, I advised him to continue with the latter.
Anne Kennedy had been loyal, done her job well, served a valuable
purpose. She asked whether I would approve her affiliating herself with
the Holland-Rantos Company. Someone was badly needed in the
manufacturing realm who was at one with our policies, who could help to
instill pride in quality into the contraceptive business. Although I
knew she did not like the commercial atmosphere and it would be a
definite sacrifice for her, it was an excellent choice, and I was sure
that any firm she was with would hold fast to ethical standards.
Mrs. Delafield called me up and I went to see her. “They’ve telephoned
me three or four times this very day. I’ve refused to answer until I
talked with you. What do you want me to do?”
I asked her a counter-question. “What do you want? You must go as your
heart tells you.”
“Well,” she replied, “I realize you will now require only
professionals—doctors, nurses, social workers, people who know
politics—perhaps I could be of more use in the work with which I am
familiar.”
Thus the matter was settled.
There are many ways by which the same goal may be reached, and as a rule
diverse ones must be tried out in order to find the best. I still
believed we were all aiming towards this, although not seeing eye to eye
on procedure.
I felt very decidedly that the future of the movement was like that of a
growing child. You might guide its first faltering steps, but unless you
let it run and fall it never could develop its own strength. The younger
generation might need a little pushing and prodding now and then, but I
was confident that eventually they were going to build toward a sound
civilization.
As things recede in time they become of less and less importance. One of
my absolute theories is that any movement which has been based on
freedom, as this had been, is like a live cell; there is a biology of
ideas as there is a biology of cells, and each goes through a process of
evolution. The parent cell splits and the new entities in their turn
divide and divide again. Instead of indicating breakdown, it is a sign
of health; endless energy is spent trying to keep together forces which
should be distinct. Each cell is fulfilling its mission in this
separation, which in point of fact is no separation at all. Cohesion is
maintained until in the end the whole is a vast mosaic cleaving together
in union and strength.
_Chapter Thirty-three_
OLD FATHER ANTIC, THE LAW
Between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, practically in the shadow of the gray
mass of St. Francis Xavier’s College, was a shabby, brownstone building,
Number 46 West Fifteenth Street. After the two years of gathering
statistical histories at 104 Fifth Avenue we decided in 1925 the time
had come to expand, and moved to this second home of the Clinical
Research Bureau. It was next to an express agency, three steps down from
the street, which was generally lined with trucks since the section was
thick with lofts, factories, and warehouses—not particularly attractive,
but inexpensive, and we had a happy Irish landlord who helped convert
the English basement into offices and reception rooms.
The clinic was a neighborly place where mothers could congregate. We
tried to keep it home-like, so that they would not feel an atmosphere of
sickness or disease. The patients were accorded just as much
consideration as a business house gave its clients, and not, as in many
doctors’ anterooms, made to wait indefinitely; they were usually nervous
enough anyhow without having to endure added suspense. Moreover, they
had husbands and children to feed and care for, and every hour was
precious to them. As they increased, staff increased; two physicians
were always on hand. We shortly included the first floor, and finally
occupied the three.
About a year before we had changed our location Lord Buckmaster had
introduced in the august House of Lords the memorable resolution which
we had discussed when I had been last in England.
Rarely had such an eloquent voice been lifted for our cause:
I would appeal on behalf ... of the women upon whose bare backs
falls the untempered lash of the primeval curse declaring that “in
sorrow thou shalt bring forth children,” the women with the pride
and glory of their life broken and discrowned, and the flower of
motherhood turned into nothing but decaying weeds; and on behalf of
the children who are thrust into this world unwanted, unwelcomed,
uncherished, unsustained, the children who do not bring trailing
behind them clouds of glory but the taint of inherited disease, and
over whose heads there may hover for ever the haunting horror of
inherited madness; on behalf of them all I would appeal and as men
who believe in the great future of our race, I beg of you, I
earnestly entreat you, to support the motion that I seek to move.
It is said that these women whom we seek to benefit are so indolent,
so ignorant, so foolish that they will not come for the information.
It is not merely that they do come, but the people who make that
statement do that which men so often do—they overlook the women’s
side of the question. What to a man may be a mere triviality, an act
between a sleep and a sleep and forgotten in a moment, may bring to
the woman the terror of consequences that we cannot measure, of
months of sickness, misery, and ill health, ending with hours of
agony that are not veiled under the cloak of chloroform’s most
merciful sleep. These are the people that we want to help.
We, too, were dedicated to help such women, and each day brought more to
the doors of our clinic than we could provide instruction for, from all
over the country and of all classes. Some weeks so many Italian women
crowded in that we had to employ an interpreter. Then droves of Spanish
or of Jewish arrived.
Merely judging by the letters that had come to me I was prepared to find
many psychological problems presented. I often thought of the high cost
of small families for women who had more or less restricted their
procreative powers through other means than contraception. Although the
size was limited, it was frequently accompanied by marital unhappiness
and hidden psychic disturbances. But the kindness of Dr. Stone aided
immeasurably in our informal “court of domestic relations.”
One hot July day when I was coming out of the clinic I saw a woman,
obviously pregnant, carrying a year-and-a-half-old baby, dragging
another one, only a trifle bigger, crying behind her. The little girl’s
shoes were too short and were pinching her toes. I squirmed myself,
remembering my own squeezed feet as a child. I caught up with her.
“Can’t I carry one of the babies? This one seems tired. Which way are
you going?”
“Can you tell me where the jail is?”
“The nearest one is on Spring Street, I think.”
“No, there’s a jail somewheres around here.”
“Didn’t you get the address?”
“Yes, but I left it on the table.”
“What do you want a jail for?”
“My man’s there.”
“What for?”
“Leaving me. He always does when I get like this.”
“How many children have you?”
“Nine.”
“How often has he left you?”
“This is the fourth time now.”
“Do you want any more children?”
“No!” emphatically.
“Did you ever know there was a way to stop having so many?”
She almost dropped the infant, took hold of me, and said, “They won’t
give it to me. I’m asking everybody. They’ll only give it to the rich.
He wants it. He’ll even have an operation. But nobody’ll tell us.”
I wrote down our street and number and said, “You go back to that place
where I met you, and the doctor there will tell you about it.”
The next day I was called up unofficially by a social worker, one of
those who used to send us cases on their own initiative. She wished to
explain to me: the husband would be let off if he promised to live with
his family and support them; otherwise he had to serve a sentence. His
wife had seen him and shown him my note; he had said he would rather go
to the Island for three years than come out, unless we could not only
guarantee his getting the information, but, furthermore, that it would
work. He was fed up with having a new baby every year.
We suggested he talk it over with us and bring his wife. She was silent,
glum, did not appear to know what it was all about. He was discouraged
and doubtful. We gave him the information and he departed. “I’m the one
to do this. She won’t,” glaring at his wife, who tagged on behind him.
We hoped for the best.
About half a year later both returned for the check-up, she with her
hand on his arm. This vague, dumb, immobile woman was now in spruce
jacket and skirt, head up, stepping lightly. You would never have known
her for the same person. The two were off to the movies together.
Few social workers were understanding enough to smooth the lives of
people in such difficulties. One agency was told by a doctor that a
certain family on its rolls must not increase; the mother had already
borne four babies and had a bad heart. A visiting nurse relayed this to
the husband one Sunday morning when he was home from work. “If your wife
becomes pregnant again, you’ll be a murderer.”
He was frightened. “I don’t want to kill her. What shall I do?”
“Sleep alone.”
The husband’s disposition began to change; he became gloomy, would not
talk to his wife, was ugly in sudden tempers, slapped, shouted at, and
even kicked the children, rushed into the house to eat his meals and
then out again, not retreating to his own bed until after she was in
hers, which had been made up in the kitchen where it was warm. She was
so unhappy over the metamorphosis that she made tentative approaches,
whereupon he beat her and ran into the street. The next day she marched
to the nurses’ settlement to tell them what she thought of them. “If all
you can do is keep my husband from me, stay away. I’d rather be dead
than live like this!”
The case was taken to a physician, who sensibly warned, “You can’t
separate people by such barriers. That’s not the answer.”
Then she was sent to us. After she had been instructed the tension
lessened and the domestic situation was remedied.
In another family of six children, the husband, part Italian and part
some other nationality, was affectionate and irresponsible. Every time
he walked in the door, wreathed in smiles, his wife greeted him with
frowns and scowls. She threw dishes and pots at him. He thought she was
crazy and asked to have her committed. A psychiatrist talked to her and
found she was in deadly fear of being pregnant again. When we saw her
she really appeared to be demented.
One forenoon, six months later, as I passed through the waiting room,
the nurse at the desk tendered her usual, “Good morning, Mrs. Sanger.”
Immediately a neat, trim woman came over to me.
“Look at me,” she beamed. “You don’t know me. I was the one who sat
there and they said I was crazy. I don’t look crazy now, do I? I wasn’t
crazy then—just worried to death.”
For four years we went along in the clinic, working steadily,
straightening mental tangles and relieving physical distress when we
could. Then, early in the morning of April 15, 1929, the telephone in my
apartment rang, startling me. I was pretty nervous, having been up all
night with Stuart, who had mastoiditis. His temperature was running
high, and he was suffering with terrible, indescribable pain.
I took off the receiver. “Hello. This is Anna. The police are here at
the clinic.” Briefly she related how they had descended without warning,
stamped into the basement, and were at that moment tearing things to
pieces.
With this meager information pounding through my brain I hastened to the
street, hailed a taxi, and urged the driver to go as fast as he could to
West Fifteenth Street.
The shade to the glass door was pulled down; the door itself was locked.
I knocked and a plain-clothes man of the Vice Squad opened it. “Well,
who are you?”
“I’m Mrs. Sanger and I want to come in.”
My request was passed on to a superior and I heard someone answer, “Let
her in.”
Inside, in a room more than ordinarily small because partitions had
sliced it up to make minute consultation booths, the patients were
sitting quietly, some of them weeping. Detectives were hurrying
aimlessly here and there like chickens fluttering about a raided roost,
calling to each other and, amid the confusion, demanding names and
addresses. The three nurses were standing around; Dr. Elizabeth Pissoort
was practically in hysterics.
Dr. Stone was aloof, utterly unmoved by the tumult and the noise. I have
always admired her attitude. This was the first time in her life she had
been arrested, yet she treated it so lightly. “Isn’t this fantastic?”
she remarked. “Only a few moments ago a visiting physician from the
Middle West asked one of the nurses whether we ever had any police
interference. ‘Oh, no,’ the nurse cheerfully replied. ‘Those days are
over.’”
Stocky Mrs. Mary Sullivan, head of the City Policewomen’s Bureau, was
superintending the raid in person. Her round, thick-set face might have
been genial when smiling, but was very terrifying when flushed with
anger. She was giving orders to her minions in such rapid succession
that it seemed impossible to keep pace with them. I tried to talk to
her, asking why she had come and what it was all about.
“You’ll see,” said Mrs. Sullivan, and went on directing the patrolmen
who were removing books from shelves, pictures and diagrams from walls,
and sweeping out the contents of medical cabinets. In their zeal I
noticed they were seizing articles from the sterilizers, such as gloves
and medicine droppers, having no sinister significance whatsoever. They
were also gathering up the various strange, weird devices patients had
brought us to inquire as to their efficacy, and which we exhibited as
curios.
Patrolwoman Anna McNamara, far less assured than her chief, was
consulting a list in her hand and turning over the case histories in the
files as swiftly as her fingers could move. Many of these contained the
personal confessions of women, some of whom had entrusted us with the
knowledge that their husbands had venereal disease or insanity. It ran
through my mind that dire misfortune could follow in the way of being
blackmailed by anyone obtaining the records.
I requested Mrs. Sullivan to show me her search warrant, and saw it had
been signed by Chief Magistrate McAdoo. Nevertheless, I cautioned her,
“You have no right to touch those files. Not even the nurses ever see
them. They are the private property of the doctors, and if you take them
you will get into trouble.”
“Trouble,” she snapped back. “I get into trouble? What about the trouble
you’re in?”
“I wouldn’t change mine for yours.”
“Well, this is _my_ party. You keep out.”
One of the policemen scooped up all the name cards and stuffed them into
a waste basket to be carried off as “evidence.” This was a prime
violation of medical ethics; nothing was more sacred to a doctor than
the confidences of his patients. Immediately Anna telephoned Dr. Robert
L. Dickinson at the Academy of Medicine that the police were
confiscating the case histories of patients and asked him to recommend a
lawyer. He suggested Morris L. Ernst, whom Anna then called.
Doctors, nurses, and evidence were being hustled into the street. The
patrol wagon had arrived, but I summoned taxicabs in which we rode to
the West Twentieth Street station. On the way I heard part of the story,
which accounted for my non-arrest. About three weeks earlier a woman who
had registered under the name of Mrs. Tierney had come for contraceptive
advice and, on examination, was found by both doctors to have rectocele,
cystocele, prolapsus of the uterus, erosions, and retroversion. Although
not informed of her exact condition, she was instructed, because another
pregnancy would be dangerous, and told to return for a check-up. She had
now done so under her rightful name of McNamara, including in her
entourage Mrs. Sullivan and a police squad.
Dr. Stone, Dr. Pissoort, and the three nurses were booked for violation
of Section 1142, though I attempted to explain the clinic had been
active for six years quite legally under the exception, Section 1145. At
Jefferson Market Court, to which we next traveled, Magistrate Rosenbluth
looked over the warrant and ordered a three-hundred-dollar bond for
each.
The succeeding morning I sent Stuart to a hospital for treatment; I had
to attend a meeting in Boston, and the day after that go to Chicago for
a series of lectures. Again I was obliged to leave him, and this time
with even more misgivings. At Buffalo came a telegram saying a mastoid
operation had been performed. At Chicago I telephoned the doctor and was
reassured. The moment my duties were over I hurried back to be with him,
and, incidentally, to attend the hearings.
I still had no idea of the fate of the case histories and had been very
worried. Now I learned that the evening after the raid Magistrate McAdoo
had been dining with Dr. Karl Reiland, my husband’s pastor. Dr. Reiland,
much upset, had remarked upon its outrageousness. Justice McAdoo, aghast
and horrified to find that, without reading it, he had signed this
warrant, just one of many laid on his desk, had called up the police
station without delay, saying that all the twenty-four histories must be
put in his safe and kept there until he arrived in the morning. He had
perceived instantly that those doctors’ records were going to be a
serious embarrassment.
One hundred and fifty cards, our sole memoranda of names and addresses,
were never restored. Catholic patients, whose records had thus been
purloined, received mysterious and anonymous telephone calls warning
them if they continued to go to the clinic their private lives would be
exposed. They came to us asking fearfully, “Will I get in the papers?”
Immediately after the raid various doctors volunteered to go on the
stand and testify as to the medical principles involved. The New York
County Medical Society was aroused and passed a resolution protesting
against the seizure. Through Dr. Dickinson’s foresightedness and
energetic interest the Academy of Medicine held a special meeting which
resolved:
We view with grave concern any action on the part of the authorities
which contravenes the inviolability of the confidential relations
which always have and should obtain between physicians and their
patients.
Police Commissioner Grover A. Whalen, then embroiled in a mortifying,
futile investigation of the murder of Arnold Rothstein, the gambler, had
termed the raid a “routine matter,” but when Dr. Linsley Williams,
Director of the Academy, wrote a letter of protest, he decided it might
not have been so routine as it had appeared, and apologized.
What had caused the raid in the first place? I employed the Burns
Detective Agency to sift the affair. Approximately fifty percent of our
cases were being sent by social workers on the lower East and West
Sides, a conglomerate of all peoples and classes, including Irish,
Italians, and other Catholics. So many had benefited and told their
neighbors that others also were asking of their agencies how to get to
our clinic. Catholic social workers, at a monthly meeting with officials
of the Church, had sought guidance in replying to parishioners, and the
ecclesiastics had been shocked to find that a clinic existed. Catholic
policewomen had been summoned, Mary Sullivan had been chosen to wipe out
the Clinical Research Bureau, and Mrs. McNamara selected for the decoy.
Morris Ernst, who had accepted our case, had already won a reputation
for his espousal of liberal causes. It was most encouraging to discover
a lawyer who was as convinced as we that the principle of the law was
the important issue. Although he seemed very young, the moment I talked
with him I recognized here was the person for us. He was a good
psychologist as well as a good lawyer. He tried to bring everything out,
but wanted the evidence correct and the minds of the witnesses straight
as to what had happened.
On April 21st, when Magistrate Rosenbluth called the case, the attitude
in the courtroom was far different from anything exhibited at previous
birth control hearings. Only one witness was heard that day, Mrs.
McNamara. In spite of the hostility of Assistant District Attorney
Hogan, which was to be expected, and in spite of the Magistrate’s
prompting that she was a policewoman and not required to tell all, Mrs.
McNamara was made to confess she had set out deliberately to deceive the
clinic doctors. As she testified under Mr. Ernst’s cross-examination
what she had done, her stolid face turned from pink to purple. On her
first visit she had learned the routine and on her second, being left
alone, had copied down the number of every name card lying on Dr.
Stone’s desk.
Murmurs rose among the spectators, a melodious sound to ears still
echoing with the harsh and suspicious accents of a mere twelve years
before.
After forty minutes Magistrate Rosenbluth adjourned the hearing over our
protests; if the object had been to secure a quieter and less
sympathetic audience the ensuing day it failed. Now physicians took the
stand: Dr. Dickinson, Dr. Frederick C. Holden, Dr. Foster Kennedy, the
neurologist. The climax came when Mr. Hogan asked Dr. Louis T. Harris,
former Commissioner of Health of New York City, whether he had ever
given any information to a patient regardless of a marriage certificate.
Dr. Harris answered, “The birth control clinic is a public health work.
Every woman desiring treatment is asked whether she is married.”
“Don’t they have to bring their marriage certificates with them?”
“No.”
The Magistrate leaned forward ponderously and heavily. “Does not the
clinic send out social workers to discover the truth of patients’
statements?”
Mr. Ernst interpolated, “Did you ever know of a situation where a doctor
dispatched a detective to find out whether his patient were married?”
Loud laughter came from the listeners. Judge Rosenbluth pounded his
gavel. “Unless there is absolute silence I shall clear the court room.”
Then, seeming to grow more angry, he added, “On second thought I shall
clear it anyhow. Out you go.”
The joke was on him. It was the doctors who had laughed the loudest and
their presence as witnesses could not be dispensed with. Following a
fifteen-minute recess the audience was once again in the room, more
partisan than ever.
Young Mr. Hogan tried to be dramatic, but he failed before our
attorney’s cold uncompromising logic. He took up one of the pessaries
that had been appropriated in the raid and addressed Dr. Harris. “You
know that the laws of New York State are that contraception may be given
only for the cure or prevention of disease. Do you dare to claim this
article will cure tuberculosis? Will it cure cancer, high blood
pressure, heart disease, kidney disease?”
Again came mirth. No one assumed a pessary or any other form of
contraceptive could effect a cure. “But,” replied Dr. Harris, “in
preventing conception it may be said to cure because pregnancy can often
be the cause of furthering the progress of a disease.”
A month later the defendants were discharged, Magistrate Rosenbluth
writing an admirably lucid, fair, and definite decision:
Good faith in these circumstances is the belief of the physician
that the prevention of conception is necessary for a patient’s
health and physical welfare.
Mrs. Sullivan was temporarily demoted. She continued, however, to be
paid the same salary as before, and was eventually restored to rank.
It was an ill wind that did not blow somebody good. After this our
calendars were filled three weeks in advance, and we had to add two
evenings a week to the daily routine. To our amazement among the many
patients there appeared one afternoon Mrs. McNamara, who had first heard
in court of her five ailments, every one of which legally entitled her
to contraceptive information. She had come back to ask Dr. Stone whether
she really had so many things the matter with her, and was assured the
diagnosis was correct.
The raid had been one of the worst errors committed by the opposition,
because it had touched the doctors in a most sensitive spot, the
sanctity of records, and they were obliged to stand by us, whether they
wanted to or not. Even so we were not yet certain that the question had
been settled for all time. At any moment our Irish landlord might
receive orders from his bishop to eject us. To avoid any such
contingency and to take care of the increasing numbers, in 1930 we
bought a house of our own at Seventeen West Sixteenth Street.
Our new building gave us not only more room for patients but better
opportunities for research. It was a sad commentary that though medicine
had evolved into the preventive state where it was causing a revolution
in sanitation and health education, contraceptive technique had been
little advanced since the days of Mensinga.
However, research was going on in various lands under the most diverse
conditions. A modern clinic had started up again in the Netherlands, a
memorial to Aletta Jacobs and bearing her name. It was based on the old
Rutgers standards which had lapsed for so long. America and England, as
the consequence of guiding the movement along professional lines and
putting emphasis on the keeping of records, had made the greatest
strides. But all accomplishments needed to be correlated, co-ordinated,
unified in a scientific conference. Zurich was a central location for
many countries, and, in addition, offered beautiful scenery in
abundance; it was a pleasant place to be.
September 1, 1930, some one hundred and thirty physicians and directors
of clinics from different parts of the world began comparing notes and
reporting progress. Only the present generation was behind the times. A
representative from the Netherlands one day stood up, a rather youthful
person, and said, “I am glad to announce that at last we in the
Netherlands have also a birth control clinic.” This was extraordinary in
view of the fact that the Netherlands had been the pioneer country and
had inspired us all.
Even more recently I encountered a young matron, a member of the
American Birth Control League and head of the state organization in New
Jersey, who had again utterly disassociated herself from history. She
urged, “Mrs. Sanger, can’t we convert you to the establishment of
clinics? You know, they’re going, they’re being established all over the
country.”
“When were you born?” was all I could gasp.
These two women epitomized a day which had not studied what had gone
before; if new to their minds, then it was new.
In contrast to Geneva and its problems in tact, Zurich was a dovecote.
One slight incident alone disturbed the calm. I had gone to Berlin to
secure delegates and there in a public theater had seen a film which had
traversed the length and breadth of Germany as propaganda for abortion
under safe conditions. The scene opened with feet endlessly passing on
the streets; you saw a kerchief drop, a masculine hand reach down to
pick it up, the boy and girl at lunch, she looking up at him wide-eyed.
Soon she was obliged to go to a _femme savante_ in a filthy narrow old
alley; you watched her ascend the rickety stairs, an ancient crone
peeling potatoes, shoving wood in the stove with dirty hands, the agony
in the girl’s face. It was a succession of pictures such as this,
straight out of life itself.
I had borrowed the film and rented a theater in Geneva. To my great
surprise and no little amusement when the Caesarian section appeared on
the screen several men and women in the audience began to faint, among
them our own workers, even Edith How-Martyn. One, a young scientist, had
to be led out and given a drink to brace him up. Cars and taxis were
commandeered to cart the squeamish back to their hotels.
This Conference must remain a milestone because there all propaganda,
all moral and ethical aspects of the subject were forgotten. The whole
problem was lifted out of the troubled atmosphere of theory, where
previously it had been battered by the winds of doctrine and the brutal
gusts of prejudice, into the current of serene, impersonal, scientific
abstraction. It was too early to tell what practical results might
ensue, but at least we soon received the assurance that certain doctors
would welcome efficient contraceptives.
Individual physicians in New York had since 1923 taken serious thought
of the need for contraception. Mrs. Amos Pinchot had organized certain
outstanding members of the Academy of Medicine into the Committee on
Maternal Health. They had been fortunate enough to secure the well-known
retired gynecologist, Dr. Dickinson, as secretary. He had trained many
of the younger men and was able to bring into the movement doctors who
would have paid slight attention to anyone less admired and honored.
With the aid of various foundations, the Committee on Maternal Health
had been doing a fine piece of work in publishing the findings of
scientists in brochures and pamphlets.
The Academy, after the Zurich Conference, formally declared that “the
public is entitled to expect counsel and information by the medical
profession on the important and intimate matter of contraceptive
advice.”
We had been attaining small victories, and little by little and bit by
bit the Protestant churches had begun to regard us favorably. In
September, 1925, the House of Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal
Church, meeting at Portland, Oregon, had gone on record against birth
control. Later some of the wives of these same bishops had come to me in
New York and asked my help in educating their husbands. A group of three
had taken it upon themselves to see that every bishop was thoroughly
enlightened. The consequence of the campaign was that at a subsequent
meeting in 1934 they reversed their original stand.
Even the Jews had on occasion been in opposition. Rabbi Mischkind of
Tremont Temple had been rebuked by his Board of Trustees for having
invited me to speak one Sunday morning. Rather than surrender he had
resigned and found another synagogue in which I could appear.
Now the Central Conference of American Rabbis urged the recognition of
birth control. The hundred and seventieth conference of the Methodist
Church sanctioned it and the American Unitarian Association did the
same. A special commission appointed by the Presbyterian General
Assembly to study the problems of divorce and remarriage admitted the
desirability of restricting births under medical advice. And in March,
1931, the Committee on Marriage and the Home of the Federal Council of
the Churches of Christ in America approved it.
Due in large measure to Lord Dawson’s eloquence, the Bishops at Lambeth
gave us one of our greatest triumphs by voting 193 to 67 in favor of
birth control. Bernard Shaw believed the Church of England was making a
“belated attempt to see whether it could catch up with the Twentieth
Century.”
Ever since the outburst of religious intolerance at Town Hall, it had
been apparent that in the United States the Catholic hierarchy and
officialdom were going to be the principal enemies of birth control.
From city to city you could feel this. At Albany we could not have a
hall because the police commissioner was a Catholic. In Cincinnati the
Knights of Columbus almost succeeded in barring us from the hotel. At
Syracuse the mayor had to veto the ordinance of the Catholic Council
before we could hold a conference there. When I was to give a lecture in
Milwaukee the Catholic Women’s League came to protest the meeting to
Socialist Mayor Hoane. He had told them, however, “If I prevent Mrs.
Sanger from speaking because you protest, I shall also have to prevent
you from speaking when others object to Catholic doctrine. Free speech
must prevail in Milwaukee.”
Tactics aiming to bring about a reconciliation between the Anglicans and
Rome had been rendered futile by the endorsement of the Bishops. I
suspected the demand for a clear statement from the Vatican on the
question originated in the United States where Catholic women were
showing a gradual yet persistent spirit of independence. In spite of
Church canons they were using contraceptives, and the Church, in its
wisdom, was obliged to change the law to keep its parishioners from
breaking it. In December came the answer in the form of a Papal
Encyclical. The world moved but the Pope sat still. He declared that he
was “looking with paternal eye—as from a watch-tower.” But what was he
looking at?
The Pope said over and over again that sexual intercourse, unless
definitely designed to produce children, was against nature and a sin;
he roundly condemned any contraceptive and he affirmed that in the
matter of limiting families continence alone was permissible. Yet in the
selfsame document he nullified his previous insistence that procreation
was the sole justification of marital relations by countenancing them at
times when pregnancy could not result. These times he made indefinite;
they might refer to sterility, post-menopause, or the so-called “safe
period” during the menstrual cycle; in fine, he was saying first, that
you might not have intercourse unless you expected to have a child, and,
in the same breath, that you might have intercourse when you could not
possibly have a child. This Jesuitical inconsistency allowed a loophole
for the issuance of the Latz Foundation booklet entitled _The Rhythm of
Sterility and Fertility in Women_, published with “ecclesiastical
approval” and recommended by Catholic societies.
It had become part of my routine to answer every challenge to the cause,
just as I tried to answer every question at a meeting. Here again was
the hoary “nature” argument which should have been in its grave long
since. The contention that it was sin to interrupt nature in her
processes was simple nonsense. The Pope frustrated her by shaving or
having his hair cut. Whenever we caught a fish or shot a wolf or
slaughtered a lamb, whenever we pulled a weed or pruned a fruit tree, we
too frustrated nature. Disease germs were perfectly natural little
fellows which had to be frustrated before we could get well. As for the
alleged “safe period” which _Rhythm_ now set forth, what could be more
unnatural than to restrict intercourse to the very time when nature had
least intended it?
But, taking one consideration with another, it seemed to me then that
the birth control idea was rolling merrily along. I could sympathize
with an indignant old radical who left a birth control congress
sniffing, “This thing has got too darned safe for me.”
_Chapter Thirty-four_
SENATORS, BE NOT AFFRIGHTED
“Should the Federal Laws Be Changed?” was the subject of my debate with
Chief Justice Richard B. Russell of Georgia, who had had eighteen
children by two wives. I always welcomed a debate, although after the
first few years it had been almost impossible to find anyone to defend
the other side, and therefore I was pleased to be called to Atlanta, in
May, 1931, for this one.
The old judge, white-haired and with white eyebrows and mustache, his
figure still erect, fixed me with a glance, sometimes satiric and
sometimes flaming with the rage of an Old Testament prophet. He talked
of the sacredness of motherhood, the home, and the State of Georgia. “We
don’t need birth control in Georgia. We’ve had to give up two
Congressmen now because we don’t have enough people. If New York wants
to wipe out her population, she can. We need ours.... I can take care of
all the children God sent me. I believe God sent them to me because they
have souls. Poodle dogs and jackasses don’t have souls. I have obeyed
the command of God to ‘increase and multiply.’”
His children and their wives and their relatives occupying several rows
of seats down front applauded vigorously.
On the train coming back I bought a paper and noted with surprise that I
had been awarded the American Women’s Association medal for
accomplishments on behalf of women, and was supposed to be receiving it
that night in New York. I sent a telegram of thanks to Anne Morgan
saying that I had just learned about it and there was no way of my
attending.
It was nice to be handed a medal instead of a warrant; at the postponed
dinner, organized by John A. Kingsbury, a director of the Milbank Fund,
I sat there listening to the beautiful tributes and asked myself, “Is it
really true? Am I awake? Or is it a dream?” I never thought of the medal
as being given to me as a person, but to the cause, the women I
represented, and, representing them, went through the act of accepting
it.
As I was trying to express this, a little woman who used to appear
frequently on all sorts of occasions came up through the well-groomed
audience, climbed to the platform, offered me a bouquet of flowers from
the Brownsville mothers. “You are our Abraham Lincoln,” she said,
unconscious of the smiles, amused yet sympathetic, of the audience. She
left a kiss upon my brow and hurriedly went back to her place. To me she
embodied the spirit of Mrs. Sachs, who had died so long ago—all I was
still working for, though through channels which had broadened
immeasurably since then.
In the beginning of the birth control movement the main purpose had been
the mitigation of women’s suffering, Comstock law or no Comstock law.
Its very genesis had been the conscious, deliberate, and public
violation of this statute. Later, to change it became imperative, so
that the millions who depended upon dispensaries and hospitals could be
instructed by capable hands.
In 1918 Mary Ware Dennett had dissolved the old National Birth Control
League into the Voluntary Parenthood League, which had for its aim the
repeal of the Federal law. This seemed fine on the surface but repeal
would permit anyone to give and send contraceptive devices as well as
information to anyone through the mails regardless of standards or
quality. Mrs. Dennett still looked upon the movement as a free-speech
and free-press issue, just as I had done before going to the
Netherlands. Now I considered no one had sufficient knowledge of the
possible consequences of some contraceptives to permit them to be
manufactured or distributed without guidance or direction. They might
kill the birth control movement as well as some of the women who used
them. No sponsor could be found until in 1923 Senator Cummins had
introduced her repeal, or so-called open bill, in which the lack of
safeguards was severely criticized. Therefore she had had it
reintroduced in 1924 with a clause added that all literature containing
contraceptive information must be certified by five physicians as “not
injurious to life or health.” This bill, practically impossible of
application, died in committee.
Since we believed information should be disseminated only by doctors we
had kept very quiet and out of it during those years. But we had our own
ideas of what sort of legislation we preferred. When Mrs. Dennett
retired and her organization ceased its work Mrs. Day, Anne Kennedy, and
I, in January, 1926, went down to Washington on a scouting expedition to
take a survey of the mental attitude of Congressmen and discover whether
their reaction was more favorable towards a repeal bill or our proposal
of an “amended doctors’ bill.” We set up headquarters and began
interviewing senators until we had satisfied ourselves that personal
sentiment was more in favor of our policy.
We thought it advisable also to sound out the Catholic stand. Getting
together was the trend of the times. Eugenists, the Voluntary Parenthood
League, the American Birth Control League, all were trying to meet each
other. People of tolerant opinions had always felt the Catholic Church
was too clever to oppose a movement that inevitably it would some day
have to sanction, and the tumult and interference was simply the result
of local ignorance and bigotry; if we could reach the scholarly heads
themselves, if we could all “sit at a table and talk things over,” we
would find their ideals of humanitarianism were much like our own.
Consequently, Anne had an interview with members of the Catholic Welfare
Conference, including Monsignor John Ryan, John M. Cooper, Ph.D., Father
Burke, and other prelates. We thought we would agree on the doctors’
bill—that they surely wanted the public safeguarded from the misuse of
contraceptives. But they unequivocally set forth their objections; not
even a physician’s indisputable right to save lives swayed them. They
declared it was their office to see that no “social or moral”
legislation passed Congress that did not conform to the tenets of
Catholic doctrine; they would attempt to prevent any such bill from
becoming a law. Anne wrote out a report of the interview, including this
shocking statement, and showed it to them so they might have an
opportunity to correct it if they so desired. They left it essentially
as written.
Considering this a fundamental issue of liberty and life not affecting
birth control alone, I took the presumptuous document to H. L. Mencken,
supposedly the outstanding libertarian in America. He had the power to
evoke a response from thinking minds, even though they were rock-bound
in patriotic dogmas; he had knocked down a great many gods, chiefly
along political and religious lines.
Trusting that Mencken would make an effective protest in the _American
Mercury_, I talked to him, explained the situation, predicting that if
we let this go unnoticed we should all have to endure the future
consequences. He admitted the Catholic action was brazen, but mentioned
the fact that he had too many friends of that faith in Baltimore for him
to attack their church. I gained the impression he was out to slash and
hit where the cause was obviously popular, but had no intention of
leading a forlorn hope or playing the role of a pioneer for freedom. He
never fulfilled the expectations I once had of him; he was not a tree
bearing fruit but a spoon stirring around, very much of a “Yes, but-er.”
He said, “Oh, yes, that is grand, but, on the other hand, there is this
to be said for the other side.”
In our campaign of educating the public in the necessity for changing
the Federal statute I began having regional conferences in the East,
South, Middle West, West, and linking them all into an organization to
support the bill. One of these was at Los Angeles. At first most of the
Westerners wanted an open bill such as Mrs. Dennett’s, and I stood
rather alone on the doctors’ amendment, which was only approved on the
last night of the Conference by a very narrow margin.
As the people filed out I saw at the end of the room a thin, almost
emaciated woman with gray hair, somewhat shabby, but not unusually so.
She held out a bony hand to clasp mine, saying practically nothing, just
a word or two, and her name, Kaufman, came to me. I remembered it
because Viola Kaufman had been one of the small subscribers to birth
control in the past, and I was familiar with most of these names. I
thought nothing further of it at the time.
Wanting all the endorsement I could get for the doctors’ bill, and
particularly that of the American Medical Association, I made a special
trip to Chicago to see Dr. Morris Fishbein, who was a power in that
organization. I asked for advice or help, and offered to draw up a bill
in any way which would suit them. Dr. Fishbein appeared sympathetic and
turned me over to Dr. William C. Woodward, the legislative director; we
had a pleasant conversation and that was all. Though he made no comment
as to its merits or demerits, I put the bill on record in their office.
Tried and true friends, whose abilities and loyalties had been tested
and proved, rallied around the National Committee on Federal Legislation
for Birth Control, which established its headquarters in Washington in
1931. Frances Ackermann assisted my husband as Treasurer. For Vice
President we had Mrs. Walter Timme who had left the League of Women
Voters, a fine speaker, a clear-thinking crusader, a devoted ally of
long standing. Tall, large-framed, broad-shouldered, she could harangue
audiences in the strong, convincing, and forceful fashion of the early,
suffrage, soapbox days—nothing delicate or fragile. When she had an
idea, it was an idea, and she stated it as an idea. More than once our
bank account would have faded to a mere wraith had it not been for Ida
Timme’s money-raising talents.
Mrs. Alexander C. Dick was Secretary. She had the old-fashioned head of
a daguerreotype, but was thoroughly modern in her verve and gay
personality and her quick agility of mind. Since 1916, when I had first
known her, she had been really interested in the research end of birth
control, and definitely had agreed with the then new war cry that it
should be under medical supervision. It was mainly due to her and her
late husband, Charles Brush of Cleveland, that Ohio had had from the
beginning one of the best organized and conducted state leagues.
Kate Hepburn was Chairman. In her long public career she had learned
great efficiency and was so careful of minutiae that she never let our
witnesses run over their time. Just as we were swinging along briskly
she invariably tugged at a coat and passed over a little slip—“time up
in one minute.”
Best of all our lobbyists was Mrs. Hazel Moore, our Legislative
Secretary, who had left the Red Cross in the South to support us.
Nothing could withstand her indefatigable enthusiasm, and it took a
stout Senator to harden his heart against her feminine ruses and winning
manners.
We now began to be initiated into the A B C of Federal legislative
procedure. After your bill had been drawn up, you had to find a
Congressman to introduce it. Sometimes he believed in it a hundred
percent; sometimes he believed in the individual a hundred percent;
sometimes he sponsored it only to be accommodating and agreeable, in
which case it was called “by request,” a very weak way since you knew he
was not going to fight for it. When introduced, the bill was read in the
House or Senate and at once referred to a committee, those having to do
with changing a law to the Judiciary. Ours was difficult to manage at
first, because we were trying to alter several statutes simultaneously,
not merely Section 211 and everything pertaining to mails and common
carriers, but also laws relating to imports. We had a general principle
back of us, but we had to keep whacking off clauses so that it would not
be thrown into the wrong committee.
If you were fortunate enough to secure a Senate hearing for your bill
the chairman of your committee appointed a sub-committee of about three;
in the House, the entire committee might attend the hearing. A day was
set and you began preparing your ammunition; the opposition was allowed
an equal amount of time to the second. After the hearing a vote was
taken. If they were against it, they killed it then and there; if they
recommended it, it came up before the full committee and, if then
approved, went to the Senate or House for debate on the floor.
To the frantic, worried, harassed, driven Congressmen of 1931 the
announcement of a birth control bill was like a message from Mars, only
less interesting and more remote. The mind of each Senator resembled a
telephone switchboard with his wary secretary as the operator. All the
wires were tied up with foreign debts, unemployment relief, reparations,
moratoriums, sales taxes, prohibition, budgets and bonuses, war in
Manchuria, peace conferences, disarmament, and the tariff—issues of
vital concern to themselves for which they needed every vote; and their
principal endeavor was not to cause conflict or get themselves disliked.
What chance had we to plug in?
When the vigilant secretary found we were not direct constituents, we
were told the Senator was busy—in conference, in committee, meeting an
arriving delegation. Would we come back later, tomorrow, next week?
Always we came back promptly and on the dot. For months it was almost
impossible to see any of them. Often as many as forty calls were made,
and if we succeeded in getting two interviews, we considered that a good
day’s work. When finally we did reach them, few of the younger, still
fewer of the older, Senators knew what we were talking about. When we
were able to make this clear, young and old alike, just as in the state
legislatures, were full of fears—fear of prejudices, fear of cloakroom
joshings, mainly fear of Catholic opposition.
Though Senator Norris had approved the repeal bill, he believed that
ours had a better chance of passing because antagonism to the former was
even greater than in 1926. He himself had Muscle Shoals and the Lame
Duck Amendment on his hands and several more pet projects to boot, and
suggested we get somebody to introduce the bill who would not be up for
re-election. Our choice fell on Senator Frederick Huntington Gillett of
Massachusetts, for years Speaker of the House, and now about to retire.
He was a gentleman born, gray-haired, typically New England, without
children or any particular philosophy regarding birth control. Our
Southern helpers, notably Mrs. J. B. Vandeveer, were persistent and
determined. They would not be put off with polite, routine dismissals,
but asked point-blank, “Will you introduce this bill for us?” Senator
Gillett, recognizing their earnestness, agreed. But we heard no more of
it.
When I returned at the next session of the same Congress someone
remarked, “Aren’t you lucky to have had your bill introduced?”
“What?” I stared with wide-open eyes.
“Yes, Senator Gillett remembered it a few days before the session
closed.”
I called on him at once. “Where’s our bill gone?”
It had gone nowhere. “We’ll just send it around to the Judiciary
Committee,” said the Senator. “Norris is Chairman and he’s friendly.
He’ll pick out a good sub-committee for you.”
We gathered our witnesses together the night before the hearing, which
was to be February 13th, and asked, “What do you want to say? How long
do you want in which to say it?” We had eight people to testify in the
space of two hours; moments had to be carefully parceled out to each. We
were permitted to deduct ten from our allotment the first day to be used
the following one for a rebuttal.
William E. Borah of Idaho and Sam G. Bratton of New Mexico had been
assigned to us with Senator Gillett, but Borah did not appear. The
audience, mostly women, crowded the committee room, imposing with marble
pillars, glossy mahogany, gleaming windows.
Dr. John Whitridge Williams, obstetrician in chief of Johns Hopkins,
summed up the medical evidence for birth control. “A doctor who has this
information (prevention of conception) and does not give it cannot help
feeling he is taking a responsibility for the lives and welfare of large
numbers of people.” The Reverend Charles Francis Potter, founder of the
Humanist Society of New York, discussed the moral phase. “The bird of
war is not the eagle but the stork.” Professor Roswell H. Johnson, then
at the University of Pittsburgh, stressed eugenics. “Most intelligent,
well-informed people ... are so determined in this (spacing children)
that no laws yet devised succeed in forcing a natural family, which is
about eighteen children, upon them.” Rabbi Sidney Goldstein dealt with
religious aspects. “The population is not made up of those who are born
but is made up of those who survive.” Professor of Sociology Henry Pratt
Fairchild spoke from the economic point of view. “We human individuals
cannot break laws of nature. We can, however, choose which of her laws
we see fit to obey.” Mrs. Douglas Moffatt announced that the
twenty-seven hundred members of the New York City Junior League were
overwhelmingly in favor of the bill.
The next morning the opposition began by trying to prove that we who
advocated birth control, a Russian innovation, were seeking to pull down
motherhood and the family as had been done in Russia. The Honorable Mary
T. Norton, Representative from New Jersey, made the astounding assertion
that the happiest family was the big one, and that a large percentage of
the great men and women of this country were born poor; this was a
blessing since it fired them with ambition. And she mentioned Abraham
Lincoln, whose birthday had been but two days before. I was particularly
outraged by hearing statements from other witnesses that the American
Federation of Labor was against us, that the American Medical
Association was antagonistic, and that the Methodist and other churches
were going to help defeat our bill. Speaker after speaker representing
Catholic organizations repeatedly hurled such dramatic tirades as, “I
ask you, gentlemen, in the name of the twenty million Catholic citizens
of the country, to whose deep religious convictions these vices are
abhorrent, and of all those to whom the virtue of a mother or a daughter
is sacred, to report unfavorably on this diabolical and damnable bill!”
It was difficult to gauge the impression that was being made; you could
only sense that the response was one of feeling. These dogmatists,
harking back to the Dark Ages, summoned to their aid the same arguments
that had been used to hinder every advance in our civilization—that it
was against nature, against God, against the Bible, against the
country’s best interests, and against morality. Even though you proved
your case by statistics and reason and every known device of the human
mind, the opponents parroted the line of attack over and over again; in
the end you realized that the appeal to intelligence was futile.
On occasions like this the inward fury that possessed me warmed from
coldness to white heat; it did not produce oratory, but it enabled me to
move others. The way to meet the opposition was to keep emotions in hand
and, at the same time, without stumbling or fumbling, to let them go.
Every word I said was calculated and thought through, not in advance,
but as it came along. I did not react this way often, but I did that
day.
When my ten minutes for rebuttal came, I knew that emotional speed was
required. Nevertheless, I first knocked down their false assertions:
that the birth control movement had originated in this country during
1914, long before anyone had ever heard of Bolshevism; that the
objections of the American Federation of Labor had referred to the
repeal bill of 1925, quite different from the doctors’ bill now under
discussion; that the American Medical Association had taken no stand,
but two of its most important branches, the Neurological and Woman’s
Medical, had gone on record in our favor; that Dr. C. I. Wilson of the
Methodist Board had denied his church was opposed, and, in fact, its
ministers had worked unofficially for us. “When someone says that the
happiest families are the largest ones, and that the world’s great
leaders have been of large families, I would like to call to your
attention that the great leader of Christianity, Jesus Christ himself,
was said to be an only child.” Here the Catholics crossed themselves and
muttered, ‘Blasphemy!’
“These opponents have had the laws with them, the wealth, the press, and
yet they have come today to say they are afraid of the morals of their
people if they have knowledge, if they do not continue to be kept in
fear and ignorance. Then I say their moral teachings are not very deep.
Mr. Chairman, we say that we want children conceived in love, born of
parents’ conscious desire, and born into the world with sound bodies and
sound minds.”
The two Senators sat there in silence. The bill was killed, due to the
adverse vote of Senator Borah—who had not attended the hearings.
The next year, 1932, Senator Gillett was gone and a substitute had to be
found. Believing the first woman Senator would be on the side of her
sex, we asked Mrs. Hattie Caraway to introduce the bill. She said she
herself was interested in the subject, but her secretary would not let
her touch it.
Ordinarily Congressmen paid little attention to abstract arguments,
logic, or the humanitarian needs of outsiders. But they could be reached
through their constituents. One way of doing this was to get women “back
home” to help themselves directly by writing letters. This required
money. We sought it from a foundation which donated ten thousand dollars
earmarked for this special purpose. To the still continuing stream of
letters from mothers, requesting as always contraceptive advice, my
reply went, “I would gladly give you the information you ask for if the
law permitted. Your Congressman now has the opportunity to vote on this
bill. Send him a letter telling how many children you have living, how
many babies dead, how many abortions, what wages your husband receives,
everything you have told me,” and I enclosed an envelope, stamped and
addressed to their respective Congressmen.
While walking one day through the tunnel which connected the House with
the Senate, I stopped to ask a man my direction. He said, “I’m going
your way. Come along and I’ll show you.”
We fell into conversation. He informed me he was a Senator, and asked
what I was doing.
“I’m working on the birth control bill.”
“That’s funny. I’ve just had a letter from a woman five miles from where
I’ve lived most of my life. Listen to this.”
And he took it out of his pocket and read the history of the woman’s
abortions and operations. “I’ve never heard anything quite so awful, and
at the bottom she says, ‘You can help me by getting this law changed,
and Mrs. Sanger, who has the information, will send it to me if you get
the law changed.’”
These letters brought fine results. Through them Senator Henry D.
Hatfield of West Virginia was persuaded to introduce the bill. At the
hearing he described how as physician and surgeon and governor of his
state he had seen the free mating of the unfit, and had forced through a
sterilization law. We produced our usual array of experts, and the
opposition produced Dr. Howard Atwood Kelly, a famous gynecologist in
his day at Johns Hopkins, but now Professor Emeritus and very old, who
rambled discursively on morals; his was a state of mind if not of
reason. Dr. John A. Ryan, a member of the National Catholic Welfare
Conference, chose economics for his discussion. Neither spoke on his own
subject, but selected something on which he was not an authority.
The bill was killed in committee, and the one introduced by
Representative Frank Hancock of North Carolina in the House got into the
wrong committee so nothing happened.
Before you had seen it, the Congress of the United States loomed
impressively in your consciousness; you had a feeling, “This is the
greatest country in the world, this is its Government, I helped to send
these men here.” Then you watched Congress at work, listened to it, and
were disillusioned. A few years of sitting in the gallery and looking
down gave you less respect for the quality of our representatives, less
faith in legislative action, and you wondered whether those who had
already abandoned hope of obtaining relief in this way and resorted to
direct action had not, perhaps, the right idea.
The same arguments went on from year to year. A certain amount of
publicity was secured, a certain number were educated. Some of our
followers, in face of the evidence to the contrary, still were confident
that if the Catholics understood our bill they would not obstruct it.
They said Representative Arthur D. Healey of Massachusetts, a member of
the Judiciary Committee, although a Catholic was so liberal that if he
could once be made to see the reasons back of it he would cease being
openly hostile, and it might even get out of committee. Accordingly, I
went to his office; we talked at length, and again got nowhere. As I was
leaving this father of four said, in order to explain himself, “You see,
Mrs. Sanger, I’m just one of those unusual men who are very fond of
children.” I was inwardly convulsed at the thought that he considered
himself unusual and that we were all a lot of Herods trying to do away
with babies.
At first it seemed that I was to have greater success as the result of
my interview with Dr. Joseph J. Mundell, Professor of Obstetrics at
Georgetown University, who advised the Catholic Welfare Conference on
all their medical legislation. In a private session I conceded some
things in the bill; Dr. Mundell gave up certain others. The compromise
apparently suited everybody.
In 1934 identical bills were introduced in Senate and House, the latter
by Representative Walter M. Pierce, Democrat, who as Governor of Oregon
had burned his political bridges by vetoing a bill which permitted
parochial schools. Since he had nothing to lose, he did not have to play
politics.
Hatton W. Summers of Texas was chairman of the hearing. Our side led
off, again specialists in each line covering the vital points. Rabbi
Edward L. Israel of Baltimore made an impassioned plea. “And I say,
gentlemen, if this thing we are now advocating is not morally right, let
us stop being hypocrites and, in its place, put a law on our statute
books that will drive contraceptive devices out of your homes and mine.”
Here John C. Lehr of Michigan, sitting back in his chair with thumbs
hitched in his suspenders, declared pompously, “As a member of this
Committee I want to go on record there have never been any
contraceptives used in my home. I have six children, too.”
Malcolm C. Tarver of Georgia interrupted, “You don’t mean any member of
Congress has used anything of that kind, do you?” His surprise was
obviously genuine.
The proponents of our bill, even elderly women, had stood while
delivering their testimony. But when Father Charles E. Coughlin entered,
cheeks very pink over his black collar, a chair was placed for him,
because as a representative of the Church he would not stand before a
representative body of the State. He began talking at random, “I have
not heard one word of the testimony these ladies and gentlemen have
produced, and my remarks are not addressed to them now, because I can
easily handle them over the radio Sunday after Sunday.... You,
gentlemen, you are married men, all of you, and you know more about it
than I will ever know.” Here he arched his eyebrows into a leer. “The
Chairman, I understand, is a bachelor like myself.... We know how these
contraceptives are bootlegged in the corner drug stores surrounding our
high schools. Why are they around the high schools? To teach them how to
fornicate and not get caught. All this bill means is ‘How to commit
adultery and not get caught.’”
Some of our sympathizers walked out of the room. Two Congressmen left
the table. But we were a polite, well-behaved group that shrank from
scenes, and, though furious and indignant, we allowed him to conclude
his half-hour of grossness.
I could hardly believe my ears when Dr. Mundell, who shortly before had
helped us formulate a bill which he said was satisfactory to him, rose
and deliberately betrayed us by stating there was no need for
legislation whatsoever, because a recent scientific work—by which he
meant _Rhythm_—had shown that fertility in women could be reckoned with
almost mathematical precision.
In the rebuttal Dr. Prentiss Willson testified that the theory of the
cycle of sterility had no medical standing. Then came my turn. I had in
my pocket a copy of _Rhythm_, and quoted from it. Under the heading of
procreation it asked whether married people were obliged to bring into
the world all the children they could, and then made answer:
Far from being an obligation, such a course may be utterly
indefensible. Broadly speaking, married couples have not the right
to bring into the world children whom they are unable to support,
for they would thereby inflict a grievous damage upon society.
I told the committee that apparently the only distinction in the pros
and cons of the birth control question was that the method we advocated
was a scientific one under the supervision of doctors; that of the
Catholics had not been proved scientifically and was open to any boy or
girl who could read the English language.
Nevertheless, the bill again died in committee.
The Senate hearings on the bill, introduced by our old friend Daniel O.
Hastings of Delaware, did not come until March. We presented our
advocates, among them a miner’s wife from West Virginia, the native
state of two members of the committee, Hatfield and Nealy. She was a
perfect illustration of the type which most needed birth control. When
she had finished a Catholic woman asked her, “Which of your nine
children would you rather see dead?”
“Oh, I don’t want to see any of them dead. I love them all; but I don’t
love those I haven’t had.”
Her reply was just right; it could not have been better.
Vito Silecchia, my former coal and ice vendor from Fourteenth Street,
also made his way to Washington and told his simple story. His wife had
come to me when pregnant with her fourth child, and I had said I could
do nothing for her until she had had her baby. Now, many years
afterwards, she had no more than the four. Vito reasoned his case as a
man, “I am a Catholic myself. The Catholics say we should have much
children. I say different. I say it is not good to have too many
children. You can’t take care of them.” He ended by describing the
mother of six who lived next door to him. “I told her, ‘I will take you
to a place. It is a wonderful place.’ She does not know the English
language. Therefore, she has never come up to see Mrs. Sanger, but she
will—but she will!”
For the first time the Senate sub-committee reported out the bill and it
was put on the unanimous consent calendar. The last day of the session
came, June 13th. Over two hundred were ahead of it, but there was always
hope. One after another they were hurried through and then, miracle of
miracles, ours passed with no voice raised against it. The next one came
up, was also converted into law, another up for discussion, tabled.
Twenty minutes went by. Suddenly Senator Pat McCarran from Reno, Nevada,
famous divorce lawyer though an outstanding Catholic, came rushing in
from the cloak room and asked for unanimous consent to recall our bill.
As a matter of senatorial courtesy Senator Hastings granted his request;
had he not done so Senator McCarran would have objected to every bill he
introduced thereafter. It was summarily referred back to the committee
and there died.
In 1935 we took the fatal step of having it voted on early in the
session and it was promptly killed. The whole year’s labor was lost. The
following winter, when I was in India, Percy Gassaway of Oklahoma
introduced a bill in the House, Royal S. Copeland of New York, in the
Senate, by request; neither one reached a hearing.
Another line of attack on the Comstock law was to try for a liberal
interpretation through the courts. Among the products shown at the
Zurich Conference in 1930 had been a Japanese pessary. Pursuing the
clinic policy of testing every new contraceptive that appeared, I
ordered some of these from a Tokyo physician. When notified by the
Customs that they had been barred entrance and destroyed, we sent for
another shipment addressed to Dr. Stone in the hope that it would then
be delivered to a physician. But this also was refused, and accordingly
we brought suit in her name.
After pending two years the case finally came up for trial before Judge
Grover Moscowitz of the Federal District Court of Southern New York.
Morris Ernst conducted our claim brilliantly, and January 6, 1936, Judge
Moscowitz decided in our favor—the wording of the statute seemed to
forbid the importation of any article for preventing conception, but he
believed that the statute should be construed more reasonably. The
Government at once appealed and the case was argued in the Circuit Court
of Appeals before Judges Augustus N. Hand, Learned Hand, and Thomas
Swan, whose unanimous decisions were rarely reversed in the Supreme
Court.
In the fall of 1936, while I was in Washington getting the Federal bill
started again in advance of Congress’ meeting, news came that the three
judges had upheld the Moscowitz decision and had added that a doctor was
entitled not only to bring articles into this country but, more
important, to send them through the mails, and, finally, to use them for
the patient’s general well-being—which, for twenty years, had been the
object of my earnest endeavor.
The Government still had the right to appeal inside of ninety days.
Therefore, I was not unduly jubilant. We had had so many seeming
victories that melted away afterwards.
But long before the period of grace had expired, Attorney General
Cummings announced to the press that the Government would accept the
decision as law, and, with commendable consistency, the Secretary of the
Treasury sent word to the Customs at once that our shipments should be
admitted. It is really a relief to be able to say something good about
the Government.
In the face of the court decision there was little point at this time in
continuing the Federal campaign. The money for closing it up came
through a most unexpected and affecting channel. About a year after I
had seen Viola Kaufman at the California Conference in 1931, I received
a letter from her asking me please to write out the form in which I
would like any money left so that she could designate it in her will. I
took her clear, concise note to my attorney who suggested that, since
organizations were many and might go out of existence at any moment, it
would be wiser to have the bequest in my name to be dispensed for any
purpose within the movement I saw fit. I answered her to this effect and
she replied, “I am now passing over to you in my will whatever I
possess.”
I considered that the only courteous thing to do was to have Anna
Lifshiz, who was living in Los Angeles, go to see Miss Kaufman. The
address was in the Mexican district, in the poorest, most dilapidated,
run-down section. In patched clothes she came to the door of her house,
in which there was hardly any furniture. She was formal and rather cold.
Anna merely explained the reason for her call was that she knew Miss
Kaufman as one of our subscribers. She wrote me, “That poor creature
hasn’t money enough to keep body and soul together.”
Two years went by. I was in Washington, preparing to start for Boston
for a meeting when a messenger boy delivered a telegram from the
director of the General Hospital at Memphis, Tennessee, requesting me to
come at once; Viola Kaufman was dangerously ill with pneumonia and
asking for me. I looked up trains; it would take forty-eight hours, and
so I put in a long-distance call to the director, who told me she had
died during the night.
“What was she doing in Memphis?”
“We don’t know. The Salvation Army brought her in to us. She has only a
little cash tied up in a handkerchief. We can’t do anything without you
because you’re the beneficiary.”
The undertaker also wanted an order from me, and, since her executor, an
officer of a bank in Los Angeles, had gone on a fishing trip, I arranged
the details for her cremation. She had ordered that her remains be sent
to me and when they arrived the clinic staff came up to Willow Lake and
we held a little memorial service of gratitude and respect, spreading
the ashes over the rock garden.
To everybody’s astonishment Viola Kaufman had about thirty thousand
dollars in Los Angeles realty. But it took a year and a half to settle
the estate and by this time everything was at the lowest ebb of the
depression. We received approximately twelve thousand dollars. I have
never looked at the obituaries for the last twenty years without hoping
to read that someone has willed a million dollars for birth control, but
the only legacy ever bequeathed us was that saved from the meager
earnings of this schoolteacher, Viola Kaufman, who herself lived in
poverty.
With this money we wrote finis to the Federal legislation. Of the old
organization all that was left in Washington was a secretary to read the
_Congressional Record_ daily—a watchdog to report any bills proposed
which would make it necessary for us to jump into action to combat them.
Six years of this work had cost one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
It had also meant strain and worry beyond anything I had ever
attempted—never being able to detach myself from it whether Congress was
in session or not, always on the alert to discover any new person
elected who might be favorably disposed. Now and again it had been
discouraging; you could exert yourself to the utmost with pleasure if it
were a matter of convincing a person and watching his mind being pried
open, but here, over and over again, you saw this same conviction, yet
he reverted to the same fears and refrained from doing anything.
However, the process of enlightening legislators had also unclosed the
eyes of an enormous number of organizations. First to approve publicly
had been the National Council of Jewish Women. Eventually more than a
thousand clubs—civic, political, religious, and social, including the
General Federation of Women’s Clubs, the Y.W.C.A., local Junior
Leagues—in all representing between twelve and thirteen million
members—had given their endorsement. And, more important than anything
else, the public had been educated persistently, consistently away from
casual and precarious contraceptive advice into the qualified hands of
the medical profession.
Dr. Dickinson had been appearing regularly at American Medical
Association meetings, keeping the question constantly alive. But not
until Dr. Prentiss Willson had formed a national body of doctors in 1935
to carry on legislative work had there been any action. One had stirred
up; the other organized.
I was at Willow Lake one June morning of 1937 when I saw spread across
the newspaper in double column the glad tidings: the Committee on
Contraception of the American Medical Association had informed the
convention that physicians had the legal right to give contraceptives,
and it recommended that standards be investigated and technique be
taught in medical schools.
In my excitement I actually fell downstairs. To me this was really a
greater victory than the Moscowitz decision. Here was the culmination of
unremitting labor ever since my return from Europe in 1915, the
gratification of seeing a dream come true.
These specific achievements are significant because they open the way to
a broader field of attainment and to research which can immeasurably
improve methods now known, making possible the spread of birth control
into the forlorn, overpopulated places of the earth, and permitting
science eventually to determine the potentialities of a posterity
conceived and born of conscious love.
_Chapter Thirty-five_
A PAST WHICH IS GONE FOREVER
Parenthood remains unquestionably the most serious of all human
relationships, the most far-reaching in its power for good or for evil,
and withal the most delicately complex. I always tried to secure my
sons’ confidence by being honest with them, treating them as though they
had intelligence, and expecting them to use it. For the sake of
companionship it was essential to be honest, no matter what the cost.
Fortunately, the younger generation is not crumpled up when sharply
confronted with the truth. They have cut through the regard to their
feelings until they can say extraordinarily blunt things to each other
and yet not be hurt. And with this they have invented a new language;
they can “take it.”
Many times I could have forced my opinion on the boys and saved Fern
perhaps some bitter disappointments—“Let me do it. I’ll manage all this.
Let me know when you need anything.” But, instead, I merely stated my
attitude and said, “Here are the two alternatives. You want this; I
think the other is better. Neither of us can tell which is right. If you
choose your own way I’ll help you as long as you do it well, providing
you stop as soon as you know it is wrong and go back and pick up the
other. If experience teaches you a greater wisdom, you can call it
square.”
At Peddie Institute, Stuart was paying more attention to sports than
studies. It was easy for him to be an athlete. But he also had a logical
mind and a quick ability for co-ordinating hand and brain. When he was
ready for college he entered Sheffield Scientific School of Yale
University. His imagination was soon captured by archaeology and
medicine, but his course was already set.
Meanwhile Grant, who had been inclined to hero-worship his older
brother, had also gone to Peddie. His athletics left little opportunity
for bringing out his artistic talents, and he agreed to take his last
two years at Westminster School in Simsbury, Connecticut, where he was
encouraged to develop along his own lines. In his sophomore year at
Princeton, he still had no idea of what he wanted to do with his life.
Although he had a leaning towards diplomacy, which would include
training in law, I explained to him that, since the family had no
political influence, it might lead to being a small politician.
And so I made out a list of as many occupations known to man as I could
think of, and sent them to him, telling him to mark off with a blue
pencil those which he was perfectly sure did not appeal to him, and
check with red those for which he felt some predilection. Out
immediately went piano-mover, waiter, floorwalker, bank manager,
bookkeeper, and some fifty others.
Six months later, I returned him the red-checked list for further
perusal. Now his preferences were much more definite. Research,
journalism, editorial work, diplomacy were again red, but almost
everything else marked headed him for a scientific career.
The decision made, Grant began his pre-medical course.
After Stuart graduated from Yale he moved downtown to Wall Street and
continued in a broker’s office all during the depression. But, in this
money making atmosphere, his attitude was changing. He had concluded
that serving humanity was a higher fulfillment than profiting at
humanity’s expense, and medicine seemed the career which he also liked
best. Having found out, he had the courage to start back at the
beginning to accomplish it. We made a compact for him to go as far as he
could and test whether his interest kept up. First he had to acquire
sufficient chemistry and biology, going to Columbia University in the
daytime for the former, to New York University in the evening for the
latter, preparing his lessons until three in the morning.
The next year he passed his entrance examinations.
Following the legislative near-victory in the winter of 1934, I resolved
to go to Russia to see for myself what was happening in the greatest
social experiment of our age. With keen anticipation I looked forward to
discovering whether the Marxian philosophy, dramatized and realized and
based on an economic ideology, did not have to accept some of the
philosophy of Malthus.
Grant, then about to enter his final year at Cornell Medical School, was
eager to investigate the progress of medicine in the Soviet Union, and
made up his mind to come along. I was taking also my secretary, Florence
Rose, efficient, competent in any capacity, whether field organizing or
in the office. Though but recently enlisted in the movement, she had
come more with the attitude of the early days, not for what she could
get out of it, but for what she could give to its furtherance. Her
talents and enthusiasm, when added to her cheerfulness, made her a rare
combination; always gleeful and bubbling with fun, she carried out
nearly everything in that spirit.
Mrs. Ethel Clyde, an officer of the Federal legislative organization,
was to be the fourth of our little group within a large group. When zeal
for the “new civilization” in Russia had been at its height she had
relinquished her expensive Park Avenue apartment for a smaller one on a
side street, and contributed the difference in rent to sundry leftist
causes and birth control.
At the last moment it seemed we might not be able to go. For some years
Stuart had had a bad sinus condition, and hardly had he matriculated at
Cornell in the fall of 1933 when he had been struck by a squash racket,
fracturing the bone over his eye. That winter he had been operated on
nine times. A week before I was due to sail this doctor advised that he
have an exploratory operation. I rushed up from Washington, where the
legislative work for that session was just being wound up, and would
have abandoned the Russian expedition had not the operation apparently
been entirely successful. Stuart insisted that I go. Since he was in no
danger I continued with my plans.
It was not feasible to travel in Russia except in a party under official
guidance. Three people I knew who had gone by themselves described how
train after train had passed them, boat after boat had steamed down the
Volga with no accommodations available. Therefore, we chose the
non-partisan Second Russian Seminar.
Shortly prior to leaving I spent an evening with Maurice Hindus, Will
Durant, John Kingsbury, and Drs. Hannah and Abraham Stone, all of whom
had been to Russia the previous year. Maurice Hindus had returned
impersonal and still unprejudiced, Will Durant utterly antagonistic,
John Kingsbury full of fervor, and both Stones warmly disposed. They had
all been in Moscow, practically at the same time, for approximately the
same number of days, and all had received utterly dissimilar
impressions. Even pictures that Will Durant had taken were not the same
as those of John Kingsbury or Dr. Stone, snapped from almost identical
places, thus showing me how wide might be the variety of responses,
depending on the individual bias.
I expected to keep my eyes open, to think independently, to ask
questions, and compare. I was going to use as much sanity and fairness
as I possessed, and not be swept emotionally into any current of
opinion.
Billy Barber was the manager of the Seminar, and I did not envy him his
job. There were many complaints and stupid remarks and much
faultfinding. Most of the party were going merely to be able to say
those things were true which they had previously said were true. I asked
one woman who went on every sight-seeing expedition but never got out of
the bus, “Why did you come?”
“Oh, just to wipe Russia off my list.”
Edward Alsworth Ross was among the leaders. He was the only person who
had been there under the former regime some twenty years earlier, and
had an authoritative basis of contrast between the old and the new; we
all rather sat at his feet. He was a typical professor, wore enormously
high, stiff collars, played checkers with anybody who would indulge him,
and was upset when he failed to win. His personality was impressive,
literally so because wherever you looked you spied him. One of the
funniest sights was to see this Nordic giant, six feet four, walking
with short dark Florence Rose, five feet two, each jollying the other.
We scooted through England across to Copenhagen, about which I recall
very little. I was always trying to learn what advance the women’s
movement had made, but somebody was always trying to tell me how
marvelous the city was. Remembering Ellen Key, I reached Scandinavia
with great hopes for Feminism. But the women who were considered the
most intelligent were complacently resting on their laurels. The older
ones still reigned supreme and believed that, because they had won their
battles of twenty-five years ago, there was nothing left to fight for.
The younger group found it hard to rise above the inertia of this
overwhelming prestige. Since population was not a problem in
Scandinavia, they were interested chiefly in eugenics, and had almost
forgotten the aspect of individual suffering.
At Oslo a number of us went on pilgrimage to the grave of Ibsen. As I
stood there in silent tribute I had the feeling he had understood women
and the ties they had been loosening. To my mind Nora never went back to
the “doll’s house”; her evolution was too complete. Or, if she did
return, she entered by another door.
Mr. Barber had arranged to feed his hundred and six charges at the last
Finnish railroad station. There was a particular exhilaration about the
prospect of that meal, because it was to be our final one before
crossing into “famine-stricken” Russia. We arrived at ten in the
morning, all of us hungry. As we filed into the station our eyes met the
most gorgeous panorama—long tables beautifully laid out with delicious
meats, fish, breads, compotes.
While we paused, debating which of these delicacies to taste first,
there came a stampede of fifty other Americans, a tourist group led by
Sherwood Eddy. Never had I seen such an exhibition. The men, unshaven,
hatless, coatless, pushed and shoved around, in front of, and almost on
top of the tables. The best we could do was find comfortable seats from
which we could have a good view of the riot. The meal prepared by the
railroad with such courtesy for our party was demolished by another.
Barber and Eddy eventually discovered it was all a mistake. The train
carrying the Eddy-ites had failed to stop at the town where their repast
had been awaiting them, and naturally they supposed this breakfast was
theirs.
At Leningrad we were met by buses and driven through streets that
swarmed with imperturbable, peasant-like people. The upper parts of
their Mongolian-shaped heads all looked exactly the same. I noticed how
immaculate they were. Faces, necks, hands, were white as white and
displayed a cleanliness simply marvelous when you took into
consideration the difficulty of securing soap and water. Very few were
old; many were children apparently between the ages of two to twelve.
But in the expressions of all I glimpsed a sadness.
The former capital was depressing and down at heels, shabby and in need
of painting. Yet it was beyond comparison in its spacious dignity; the
architectural design of the houses could not be hidden. My
high-ceilinged room at the Astoria was luxurious with alcove bed, bath
room, and large marble tub, which, although cracked and spotted with
rust, nevertheless evidenced the days of splendor when the hotel had
been frequented by the aristocracy of the Old Regime.
From my window I could see the cobbled square. It was eight o’clock and
the city was awakening. I watched the passing show: heavy wagons were
drawn by a single and often most decrepit horse with what seemed a dark
brown rainbow, arched and graceful, over his neck; queues formed in
front of little stands that served rations of beer or bottled soda
water; some women, the varying colors in their shawls making bright
splotches, swept the car tracks with birch switches or pushed empty
carts on their way to market, others carried hods of cement up the
ladders to the masons on the new buildings being erected everywhere.
Usually the men were doing the skilled work, and women, hardy and
robust, with strong legs, bare feet, sunburned faces, were kept at the
laborious, monotonous, physical labor until such time as they could
qualify as expert artisans.
The Communists’ apartments were much better, lighter, airier, cleaner,
more modern than those for non-party members. When we asked why, in an
equalitarian state, one section should be thus privileged, we were
answered, “It was they who made all this possible. Why should they not
have the best? What you bourgeois give to your capitalists, we give to
our Communists.”
We asked Tanya, our guide, if she were a Communist, and she replied,
“Oh, no. That’s too hard.” Ordinary citizens might be excused for a
mistake or even a crime, but party members could have no human
frailties. They were exiled or perhaps shot for cheating, stealing,
deceiving, exploiting, taking money under false pretenses, or many
things which average people could do and be punished with fines alone.
Although the cost of the trip itself was relatively low, whatever we
bought in Russia was excessively high owing to the peculiar situation of
the ruble. In the first place, there was no ruble; it existed only in
theory. Second, every foreigner was supposed to deal exclusively with
the Torgsin stores through which the Government had cleverly contrived
to come by a hoard of foreign currency by charging seventy-eight cents
in our money for each ruble instead of its actual value of five cents.
For example, the price of a stamp on a letter to the United States,
which was two and a half rubles, amounted to two dollars.
Mrs. Clyde, who leaned sympathetically towards Communism, said to one of
our young men, “Let me get you a little present.”
“Not here,” he said. “It’ll be too expensive.”
“Oh, yes,” she insisted. “What would you like?”
“Well—a bar of almond chocolate, then.”
She had to pay ten American dollars for that ten-cent bar of chocolate.
Her Communism melted slightly.
Ultimately, we solved the ruble problem. One morning a boy who had been
loitering around the Astoria asked Grant, “Would you like me to take you
through the city?”
Grant prudently inquired, “How much?” It appeared that the boy merely
desired an opportunity to perfect his English; he had plenty of rubles,
which he was glad to dispose of at the rate of fifty for a dollar.
Russians could obtain none but the cheapest commodities on their
tickets; if they wanted luxuries such as good shirts, leather or rubber
boots, and other articles sold only at Torgsin, they were obliged to
surrender some treasured gold piece or use foreign money.
With an ample supply of rubles I sent long, elaborate cables to Stuart
to cheer him up. He must have thought an excessive maternal solicitude
was getting the better of my economic judgment. But, as a matter of
fact, one of twenty words was costing me less than twenty-five cents.
Dr. Nadina Kavanoky, who had been interested in birth control in the
United States, had given me a letter to her father, Dr. Reinstein, once
a dentist in Rochester, New York, now in Stalin’s close confidence. He
came to see me about eleven-thirty one night, the Russian calling hour,
and we talked until three in the morning. When he wanted to know my
“impressions of Russia,” I said promptly, “It seems to me your policy of
overcharging us is a mistake; for the sake of a few dollars you are
creating ill will, just as the French have done. In our own Seminar we
have twenty librarians and perhaps double that number of schoolteachers
and students, many of whom have gone without other vacations to come
here. They have a unique opportunity to influence people; everybody will
ask them when they get back, ‘Did you like Russia?’ You are trying to
build up a favorable public opinion abroad, and these people are the
best mediums for that purpose. If they are pleased they will fight for
you and break down prejudice.”
But he was not convinced, and, evoking the specter of the Tsarist debt
to America, he replied, “We’ll bleed you, we’ll milk you, we’ll get
every dollar out of you we can. America demands her pound of flesh and
this is how we’ll pay you.”
The occasions for receiving “pleasant impressions” were offered by
vigorous tours to points of interest. We were given a choice of hard
buses or harder ones, all, in my experience, springless and clattering
noisily over the cobble-paved streets. After a few bumps we usually hit
the roof and came down with headaches. Our poor little guides had to
screech with full lung power to be heard over the incessant rattling.
One morning when driving back from sight-seeing, the motor gasped and
collapsed on a slight hill. Passengers volunteered helpful
suggestions—“Put it in low. Put it in neutral. Push this. Pull that.”
The driver moved gears forward and backward and then looked around at us
in perplexity, “I did, but it won’t work.” We waited and waited and
waited and waited. Somebody ran a mile to telephone that we were
stranded and needed another bus. Meanwhile, everything we wanted to see
was closing, and we had already learned that whatever you missed in
Russia was always the most worth while. In fact, it seemed they had
visiting hours timed to end five minutes before you got there. Several
other buses came along and stopped. Their drivers got out, poked their
heads under the hood, began taking things apart, strewing bolts this way
and nuts that. Then they, too, became discouraged, and, leaving
increased confusion, climbed on their chariots again and went on.
Finally some bright young man discovered we were out of gas.
As we crossed the huge square in front of the hotel, I saw directly
ahead of us an enormous pile of bricks with wide spaces on both sides.
Closer and closer we came. “When will the driver turn?” I asked myself.
But he never did; we went right over the top and the bricks slipped out
from under. That was the Russian system. You could not go round an
obstacle; you must go over it.
Enlarged portraits of Lenin and Stalin were in all public buildings.
Their statues were everywhere, in every square, on every corner. A major
industry of Russia seemed to be to find new poses for Stalin—standing
up, lying down, writing, reading. Often just his head, definitely
recognizable in spite of the predominance of red, was designed in flower
beds. One of the most delicate attentions was to give him a different
colored necktie on different days; the plants were kept in pots to make
this charming gesture possible.
After the Revolution when peace had come, connoisseurs from various
countries had been invited to examine the recovered statues, rugs,
tapestries, and _objets d’art_ stolen from the palaces and churches. One
by one the priceless paintings were displayed, specialists rendered
their opinions, commercial dealers furnished appraisals, stenographers
took down every word. The same was done with the lapis lazuli tables,
the snuff boxes, the court jewels.
The interesting part of the new arrangement was that the interpretation
was entirely Marxian. Pictures, instead of being hung according to the
orthodox history of art, were fitted into the Industrial Revolution. A
certain Madonna was not admired for its qualities of color or form, or
as a thing of beauty in itself; the guide explained to you that it was
created at such and such a time when the Church was trying to get a hold
over the people, when artists were starving and had to look for their
means of livelihood to the patronage of the Church.
Later, in the Kremlin at Moscow we saw fantastic and incredible riches,
jeweled saddles, a whole set of harness studded with turquoise, a huge
casket cloth embroidered with thousands of pearls. In order to place the
period of the latter I asked Tanya where it had come from. She replied
in her precise English, “You see, it is for to cover the dead. You see,
in Russia there was such a custom. When they died they put them in the
ground. It was such a custom, you see, to cover them with cloths.”
She spoke of the Tsarist Regime as though it had been centuries ago.
One of the pictures was a Christ removed from the cross and lying on the
ground. Tanya said, “People used to come here, and they even kissed it!”
This she uttered in the tone of scorn of a very youthful generation
shocked and horrified at the ancient traditions.
“Our hope is in the young people,” she said frequently.
“But how old are you?”
“Oh, I’m thirty-two,” as though she were doddering.
Grant and I were once walking by a group of children when a small boy
pointed at us and remarked, “Ah, there go some of the dying race.” To
them all _Amerikanski_ were capitalists.
The Marxian ideology had been applied to every phase of life. H.G.,
accompanied by Gyp, his biologist son, had flown over from London. Since
he wanted an opportunity to go around alone, he rather resented being so
closely guarded and courteously guided. After talking with Stalin he had
come to the conclusion that the Dictator had no understanding of
economics. He was somewhat annoyed at the constant interpretation of
everything in terms of politics, and of having Marx stuffed down his
throat at every turn.
At the schools you might ask what kind of mathematics they taught.
“Marx.”
“And what system of engineering?”
“Marx.”
No matter what the question, the answer was Marx.
The Anti-Religious Museum, once a cathedral, was directly across from
the Astoria. Each half-hour little girls, who seemed hardly more than
ten or twelve, their sleeves hanging down over their finger tips, with
great dignity conducted excursions of peasants through. Their lecture
started with the fundamental principle that the earth was round. A
bas-relief of the world was underneath the huge pendulum which hung from
the dome. If you stood there long enough you saw it swing from one point
to a further one. They were trying to show that it was within man’s
power to make his own heaven.
Here were kept the relics of the churches, the icons laden with silver
and gold wrung from the poor peasants in the past. Actual concrete
things were reduced to their simplest terms on large poster-type murals
which depicted stories, a necessary practice since the muzhiks were so
generally illiterate. In one a kulak was coming to the priest with a
sick child in his arms, asking for prayers to cure its illness. The
priest, fat and clad in rich robes, shook his head, saying, “You must
bring money for the saint. The saint will not cure your child unless her
arms are covered with silver.” But the kulak had only his farm.
“Mortgage it and get the money,” the priest ordered. Soon the kulak
returned with silver, and the mural showed how now the saint’s arm was
almost hidden. But still the child remained sick. “The saint’s halo is
bare,” said the priest. At last the whole figure was silvered, but the
baby died just the same.
Opposite this mural was pictured the Soviet way. The father carried the
baby to the hospital, where nurses with gauze across their mouths took
it preciously, bathed it carefully, laid it in bed. The entire
sterilizing process was illustrated—the doctor in white gown and cap,
scrubbing and washing each hand five minutes as marked by a clock.
Finally you saw the child, healthy and well, jumping into its mother’s
arms.
The people stood there looking, their imaginations fired. They said,
“This is what is happening to us.”
Most particularly I wanted to investigate what had been done for women
and children in Russia, to learn whether they had been given the rights
and liberties due them in any humanitarian civilization. Grant, Rose, as
she was known to me, and I went one day to the Institute for the
Protection of Motherhood and Childhood, a vast establishment stretching
over several miles, with model clinics, nurseries, milk centers, and
educational laboratories. I was overwhelmed in contemplating the
undertaking. There was no doubt that the Government was exerting itself
strenuously to teach the rudiments of hygiene to an enormous population
that had previously known nothing of it. Russia was also aiming to free
women from the two bonds that enslaved them most—the nursery and the
kitchen. All over the country were crèches connected with the places
they worked.
Children were the priceless possessions of Russia. Their time was
planned for them from birth to the age of sixteen, when they were paid
to go to college, if they so desired. No longer were they a drain or
burden to their families. Not only were teachers or parents forbidden to
inflict corporal punishment, but children might even report their
parents for being vindictive, ill-humored, disorderly, and in many cases
they did so.
In one divorce dispute as to custody of the offspring, the father argued
that the mother was bad. The Judge asked, “Of what does her badness
consist?”
“She is nervous and loses her temper.”
The Judge agreed she was not fit for motherhood.
Furthermore, Russia was investing in future generations by building a
healthy race. If there were any scarcity of milk the children were
supplied first, the hospitals second, members of the Communist party
third, industrial groups fourth, professional classes fifth, and old
people over fifty had to scrape along on what they could get, unless
they were parents of Communists or closely associated with them.
I was eager also to find out what had been done about the study carried
on by Professor Tushnov, of the Institute for Experimental Medicine, on
so-called spermatoxin, a substance which, it had been rumored, produced
temporary sterility in women. I made an appointment with him, but a
shock awaited me. He had tried out his spermatoxin on thirty women,
twenty-two of whom had been made immune for from four to five months,
but now all laboratory workers had been taken from pure research and set
at utilitarian tasks such as the practical effects of various vocations
on women’s health. Nothing concerning immunization to conception could
be published in Soviet Russia, no information could be given out under
penalty of arrest, and, moreover, nothing could appear in a foreign
paper which had not already been printed in Russia.
Intourist, the Government tourist bureau, and Voks, the All-Union
Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, had asked me when
I had first arrived whom I wished to see and where I wished to go, and
had offered to call up people on my list and arrange for visits, a
service which had saved me much trouble and expense. In spite of this
co-operative attitude, I was suspicious that much was being hidden from
us. Before I had left America I had heard I could see only what Russia
presented for window-dressing, and with this in mind I was on the alert.
Both Grant and I wondered how the hospitals built under the Tsars
compared with recent ones. When I asked to be taken to a certain one, I
was assured it was too far away, and anyhow it was being renovated;
there was nobody there. I said to myself, “Aha! here is one of the
forbidden sights. Whoever heard of a hospital equipped to handle
thousands of patients being utterly empty? They are not going to let us
see this because it might speak in favor of the old in contrast to the
new.”
Politely but firmly I insisted. Again I was told there were so many
other interesting things it would be a pity to waste my time going to
see it. I found it difficult to say anything further without giving
offense. Then Grant encountered a young American nurse from the
Presbyterian Hospital in New York who spoke Russian; she also wanted to
visit hospitals. We engaged a car of our own and drove a good fifteen
miles out of the city over horrible roads, winding and dusty and badly
paved, and even pushing on as rapidly as we could we did not get there
until late in the afternoon. To our dismay we discovered not a patient,
doctor, or nurse in the place, only plasterers, painters, carpenters,
and cleaners, pulling down and refurbishing. We had lost half a day and
were a little ashamed of our lack of faith.
The night came to take the train for Moscow. Nobody called “All aboard!”
in Russia. Trains went right off underneath you when you had one foot on
the platform and one on the step. They just moved and moved fast. But we
clambered on and soon the leather seats were made into our beds; they
were so slippery that we kept falling out.
Once at Moscow, we who were coming second-class, according to Marxian
procedure, received the worst rooms at the hotel; those who traveled
third had the best. I could not applaud the one selected for me. It was
directly over the laundry, and the smells of cooking and suds floated
through the window. I refused to stay and was accommodated on the top
floor where the servants had once lived.
Moscow was as different from Leningrad as New York City from a sleepy
Pennsylvania town. The people walked more quickly and seemed to be going
somewhere, not simply wandering listlessly. Bedlam existed at the
hotels, but by now we were beginning to learn that the Russians were so
concerned with their own efficiency that they had no time to do
anything. To be in a hurry merely complicated matters. I could wait, but
for energetic Rose it was torture. To all specific requests they
replied, “It cannot be. It cannot be.” She had her own methods of coping
with this, saying she did not wish to hear the word, “impossible”; she
had no intention of asking the impossible. Then when they procrastinated
with, “a little later,” she countered, “In America we say, ‘now!’”
Her triumph over dilatoriness came on Health Day. Since health was
almost a god in Russia, all activities ceased on that occasion and the
populace of Moscow came together on Red Square. The spectacle was to
start at two in the afternoon, but before it was light you could hear
the songs of men, women, and children moving towards their appointed
stations.
Out of our party only thirty were privileged to receive tickets, and
their names were posted. Mrs. Clyde and I were on the list, but not
Grant or Rose. The previous day the numbers were cut to twenty; that
morning there were but sixteen, and feeling ran high. “Why haven’t I a
ticket?”
Fortunately for me I had been invited to lunch by Ambassador William C.
Bullitt, who entertained lavishly and was helpful to traveling
Americans. When I had met him back in New England, I had never thought
of him as an ambassador, nor as a man skilled in dealing with the great
problems that required strategy, diplomacy, political sagacity, and a
prime knowledge of economics and history. I considered him rather as
amusing, an excellent dinner host, and one to whom you could go when in
difficulty, sure that he would get you out. Perhaps this was what Russia
wanted at that time more than anything else. No doubt he was then
somewhat disappointed at the turn relations between Russia and the
United States had taken. Russians on the whole admired him; they had not
forgotten that, although he was not counted a proletarian or in the
category of Jack Reed, he had lifted the cudgels for them in the early
days when friends were needed.
The Ambassador’s little daughter Ann, aged ten, officiated at the head
of the table, apparently enjoying herself. The house in which they were
living while the new Embassy was being built had an architecture quite
befitting what I imagined the style of Russia should be—a bit of the
Kremlin, a bit of a mosque, and a bit of an Indian palace.
On the way to the Square after luncheon a wave of people surged between
the rest of the diplomatic party and myself, but I kept saying
“diplomatique,” and was bowed through to the grandstand.
Meanwhile Rose had been devoting her whole attention to tickets—and
there were no tickets. The lucky holders lined up and filed off under a
leader. Rose, the ever resourceful, donned a red bandanna and said to
the “forgotten men” in the party, “We’ll make our own battalion.” She
handed out slips of paper about the size of the tickets and then
started, Grant and the Harvard professors following her through the
blare of music and the tramping troops and the pageantry of blue trunks
and white shirts, orange trunks and cerise shirts.
Whenever anyone stopped Rose she pointed ahead and repeated my open
sesame, “diplomatique,” and they let her by until she reached the last
barrier. There the guard was suspicious of her password and challenged
her. Then she spied another group coming up, dashed over to the leader,
and exclaimed, “Quick, please explain that our interpreter has gone on
with our tickets!”
The woman looked unbelieving, but still others arrived at that moment,
and the Russian system collapsed under pressure. In they all piled, and
Rose turned to her unknown benefactress, “You don’t know how grateful I
am to you for getting us in.”
The reply was, “You don’t know how grateful I am to you for getting us
in! I’m a tourist too, and we have no tickets either.”
Nobody seeing Moscow that day could have thought it a somber place. It
was alive with song, happy faces, bright attire. The parade of a hundred
thousand or more was one of the most marvelous spectacles for color,
form, cadence, geometrical precision that I had ever seen human beings
accomplish. Men and women were representing all sorts of games and
sports—swimming, shooting, tennis, flying. There was nothing tawdry.
Each company held aloft beautifully designed placards as it passed
Stalin, who stood on top of Lenin’s tomb. The Dictator looked much like
his pictures, with his heavy black mustache resembling the wings of a
bird of prey.
All day long and everywhere you heard the _Internationale_, over and
over and over again. Each band struck up as it approached the Tomb and
kept playing as it swung on. Always the stirring song from those coming
up, those far away—overtones, undertones, thrilling, insistent, now loud
in your ears, now dimly echoing in the distance, a rhythmic motif
symbolizing the onward march of Young Russia.
_Chapter Thirty-six_
FAITH IS A FINE INVENTION
“_There is a great difference between traveling to see
countries and to see people._”
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
“Tovarish —— wishes to see you,” came a call from the hotel desk. For a
moment I could not place the name, and the face had changed so
completely that I could but faintly trace a resemblance to the boy I had
seen before. He reminded me I had known him in Seattle as one who had
assisted in getting up birth control meetings. When the Wobblies were
being arrested in the United States he had hired out as a stoker on a
boat, and gradually made his way to Russia, where he thought he could
help to usher in the new society.
Here was one person who had not had the best of the bargain. He was
shabbily dressed and looked dilapidated, evidently having seen hard
times, and had a beaten expression in his eyes. Yet, disillusioned as he
was, he had not come to complain. Since it was four in the afternoon,
the lunch hour in Russia, I asked him to join me in the dining room,
conducted like a large commons. The waiters seemed disgruntled, unhappy,
inept and knew very little about service; they glanced scornfully at the
man who sat down beside me. The one lively note was the orchestra, which
threw itself into marches and wild and spirited Caucasian or Slavic folk
dances while we ate.
My guest said this was the best meal he had had since leaving America.
“Why don’t you come back?” I asked.
“I couldn’t get in.”
“Would you if you could?”
“Just give me a chance!”
I suppose it was inevitable that in such a social upheaval many
suffered. I called upon Dr. Peter Tutyshkin, who had tried to attend our
1925 Conference in New York, but had arrived too late. As was the case
with most professional men of his years, he had been of the old
aristocracy. He and his wife and two daughters, both physicians, had
owned a beautiful home. Now the thousands of volumes of what had
formerly comprised his fine medical and scientific library had been
taken away, and he and his wife slept and ate in the room which had
contained them. He was margined and rationed to the last degree, and I
could feel his humiliation at having so little food that he could not
offer us a cup of tea.
While we were in Moscow, the Eddy party and the select six whom Louis
Fischer was piloting, crossed our path. Fischer, a Russian living in
Moscow and writing for the _Nation_, published in the United States,
invited Grant and me to go along with them to meet the Secretary of the
Commissariat of Public Health, Dr. Kaminsky. We went up a wide open
stairway like that of a courthouse and into a spacious room with high
windows running from floor to ceiling in French fashion and a huge
banquet table laden with the invariable afternoon tea.
Dr. Kaminsky addressed us. “Our worst heritage from the Old Regime was
in the field of medicine. The main task before us is to unite science
and practice. Our medicine is a form of social insurance, our medical
policy based on prevention. We are not interested in profit, only
service.”
The Russians had been kind and had grasped very quickly any improvement
suggested to them, even accepting criticism with great tolerance. Aware
of this, when Dr. Kaminsky paused for questions, Grant inquired about
doctors entering private practice.
“As Russia builds up public health work,” was the answer, “more doctors
will be able to find room for private practice if they so desire.”
Sherwood Eddy slipped me a note. “Here’s your opportunity to bring up
birth control.”
I took my cue. “Has Russia a population policy? Has she formulated any
program for the rate of increase of her people?”
The audience stirred as though I had hurled a grenade. The interpreter
leaped to his feet and shrieked, “Malthusianism! We will not have
Malthusianism here! We do not need it. Do you think or imply that Soviet
Russia has to advance Malthusian ideas? We can have all the children we
want and Russia can do with twice the population she now has.” He went
on and on.
After waiting a few moments for the air to clear, I continued, “I have
asked Dr. Kaminsky a simple question which I will repeat. I said nothing
about Malthusianism. But I should like to know whether Russia has a
population policy. She has had five- and even ten-year plans for
agriculture and manufacture and everything she is making. But what has
she done about the most important issue today—population, its growth and
distribution?”
Fischer was whispering to Dr. Kaminsky, evidently telling him what I
wanted to know. The doctor replied, “If I understood correctly, you are
asking if there is any policy from the biological or economic point of
view.”
“I am asking whether Russia, in planning her industries, has any plan
also as to the eventual control of families. I know you have much
freedom for women and a fine technique for abortions. To us that is
extremely significant, because after a woman has been aborted she
returns to the same conditions and becomes pregnant again. Four hundred
thousand abortions a year indicate women do not want to have so many
children; in my opinion it is a cruel method of dealing with the problem
because abortion, no matter how well done, is a terrific nervous strain
and an exhausting physical hardship.”
Dr. Kaminsky’s answer was not encouraging. “There is no question as to
the increase of population. There is no policy as to the question of
biological restrictions; on the contrary there is a policy of increasing
the population. For six years we have had a great shortage, not only of
skilled workers, but of labor in general.”
Obviously, I was not a particularly welcome visitor.
By chance I was fortunate enough to encounter again Dr. Marthe
Ruben-Wolf, who with her husband and children had escaped from Nazi
Germany and was then at the head of a Moscow abortorium. Because of her
wide experience in Germany, where clinics had been under municipal
guidance, she was one of the few Communists who was sane on the subject
of population. She very kindly helped me with some of my interviews.
Any woman in Russia who requested it was entitled to abortion on
application to a doctor. She was told of the dangers, warned it might
result in sterility, charged about two dollars and a half. We talked to
about fifty patients who had already been there three days. None had
temperatures. They were very jolly and going home that afternoon to rest
for another week or two. Then they would go back to work with no
deduction in wages. Though some of these women had had five abortions in
two years and one had had eight, they could not sing too highly the
praises of their country for allowing the operations. When I asked
whether they would not prefer to have some information as to how to
avoid further ones by protecting themselves from pregnancy, each and all
replied, “We have no such thing. We hear of it, but we have nothing.
Russia is too poor. We hope she will soon get it.”
In only one place did I see a clinic in the sense that we use the word
here, and that was in Moscow where Dr. Kabanova had sixty women the
afternoon we viewed it. Great credit is also due Madame Lebedova who
organized the original establishment of the Institutes for the
Protection of Motherhood and Childhood, laid down the principles to be
followed, and persisted until they had been embodied in a definite
program.
Dr. Abram B. Genss, assistant director, was in charge of contraceptive
supplies and the administration of birth control, such as it was. He was
antagonistic, disagreeable, unpleasant, shouting “Malthusianism” into my
ears more times in one hour than I had heard it before in twenty years.
The methods in the Moscow clinic were antiquated, and I suggested
sending a physician to instruct them, but my proposal was not
acceptable.
I considered Russia’s situation very serious. Her population was a
matter of mathematics; it had increased some fifty million since the
downfall of the Empire. Unless she looked ahead and educated her people
in the problems which arose out of population, within two generations
she would find herself with the same differential birth rate then
existing in England and the United States. It would, however, have much
more tragic consequences since it would lower the augmentation of the
capable, skilled, shock troops of industry, the idealists and active,
selfless workers, and would multiply from the bottom unskilled,
ignorant, dull-witted workers, the superstitious element which even the
greatest efforts of a Soviet dictatorship running at top speed could not
pull up and out of their evolutional environment.
I really began to see Russia under another guise after we stepped on the
train from Moscow to Gorky, the former Nizhni Novgorod. Around the big,
city hotels vendors had been trying to dispose of soft, warm sables and
gold-embroidered altar pieces evidently reft from churches, asking good
prices for them. But now the peasant women offered tea cozies, wooden
boxes, carved and painted, dolls, leather, brass, knickknacks for the
tourist, quite unlike anything obtainable elsewhere in Europe, and
always, of course, Russian blouses.
The side-wheel steamer _Kommunistka_, small but comfortable, was waiting
to carry us down the Volga to Stalingrad. Our party occupied practically
all available cabins, but hundreds of Russians were jammed on the decks.
At some points the river was a mile wide as it slid between flat
landscapes, limitless as far as the eye could reach. Often we overtook
rafts of logs, some at least a quarter of a mile long, each bearing a
diminutive house where the captain and his family lived. You could see
the children scampering back and forth and the crew pushing it leisurely
into the current.
We were four days in transit, passing many villages and a few
towns—Kazan, Samara, and Saratov. I do not remember the cities clearly.
Some places are indelible in your mind; others amount to very little. If
you are searching for something and do not find it, the scene vanishes.
At every stop men and women accompanied by children and baskets of
belongings were collected in hundreds. They had come a week or more
early to make sure of catching the boat, spending the nights on the
ground, subsisting on a loaf of bread, a tomato, or a cucumber. Their
children were taken care of in the station crèche, bathed, dressed in
fresh clothing, taught, directed in play, delivered to the parents just
before the _Kommunistka_ landed.
Then came the mad scramble. It was like the old days on Ellis Island
when the peasants from Europe arrived, thousands of them, carrying huge
bundles on their heads, shoving and rushing and jabbering in strange
tongues, attempting to squeeze in. You wondered how so many people could
ever get on board. They had no comforts, no room to sleep such as we.
They appeared stark and hungry, while we had marvelous food, in fact too
much of it. Any American planning to lose weight in Russia was badly
disappointed.
Stalingrad, near the mouth of the Volga, was Russia’s greatest
industrial city. Here I saw a hotel which was going up in front and
falling down behind with about equal rapidity; the building material was
lying in the streets. In the one in which we lodged we had to dodge
spigots. Plumbing had been laid on all over the country, but the stream
from any tap never by any chance landed where it was intended to. You
approached cautiously, not knowing whether it would get you in the eye,
in the nose, or shoot over your shoulder and hit your suitcase. The
bathroom had no lock, and the attendant insisted it was his job to help
patrons take a bath. I pushed on one side of the door; he on the other.
I won.
At Stalingrad, as everywhere I had been before, I was looking for
Russian contraceptive methods, but having been discouraged both by Dr.
Kaminsky and Dr. Genss, I went at it rather carefully. When I visited
the impressive new hospital I asked the superintendent, who was a
gynecologist and spoke good English, whether he gave contraceptive
advice.
“I do not, but we have a department of consultation.”
“May I see it?” I had already surveyed about fifteen such, where I had
found nothing save exhibits on the wall.
“It’s just across the road.”
“Will you go with me?” I asked. “Elsewhere it’s been hard to get
information.”
He agreed readily. As we entered, an attendant was displaying lengthy
diagrams to some tourists being shepherded through, and telling them
birth control was taught in hospitals throughout Russia. Someone I knew
came up to me. “This is wonderful, Mrs. Sanger, the people are being
taught birth control by the Government.”
The posters were there to prove this, but the consultation room itself
was locked. “Who is in charge here?” demanded the superintendent. “I’ve
been sending patients over. Who takes care of them?”
“I do sometimes,” a woman assistant volunteered. She let us into the
room. There were the same cases I had seen everywhere, probably
untouched since 1925, the articles within moldy and cracked.
“What do you use?” I asked.
“We have nothing. We’ve asked and asked Moscow, but we get nothing.”
The superintendent was much embarrassed; he inquired how long it had
been since supplies had come.
“Two years.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know.”
“Well, what about the patients I send over here?”
“We just tell them to go home and wait. We have nothing for them.”
From Stalingrad we took the train to Ordzonikidze, the beginning of the
Georgian Military Highway through the Caucasus to Tiflis. After the
usual breakfast of Russian tea, black bread, and fresh caviar, which I
found delicious, we climbed into four open-topped char-à-bancs, filling
them to capacity. Enormous trucks came behind with our luggage. For
about two hours we rolled along by the side of the river Terek, which
was running dark and going so fast that the only thing I could think of
was the streams from Swiss glaciers, but instead of being ice-green,
this was muddy, splashing up on the road. The guides told us there had
been a two-day, torrential rain, the worst the Caucasus had ever known.
About ten we stopped to stretch our legs at a village. Groups of lusty
mountaineers stared at us, grinning good-humoredly as though we were as
odd as any freaks in a circus. They gave us cheese and bread; some of us
bought wine and tea, not knowing when we might leave. After three hours
we were still at the village when finally men with great high hats and
military-looking, astrakhan capes rode up on horseback and spoke to our
guides who, not being Georgian, had difficulty divining they were trying
to say our cars could not pass.
We thought it was just like the Russians to fuss about a few little
obstacles, and said there must be some way to get through. Off we went,
and our drivers were magnificent. With the stubbornness of tractors we
plunged across streams and over rocks; when trees blocked the road, they
lifted the trunks, branches and all. We drove on and on, slowly, and at
last, towards five o’clock, came to a spot where there was nothing
before us—nothing but the mountain side sheer to the swirling water.
Out clambered the eighty tourists, youthful and aged, tall and short,
thin and fat. We could see the road begin about a quarter of a mile
beyond, a sultry sun smiling on the peaks of the mountains. The river
was still rising. One of our guides waded in to test whether we could
ford it, and was soon practically up to his middle in the turbid flood.
Grant began ferrying old ladies over the deep places and a couple of
boys carried the two-hundred-and-ten-pound Professor Ross. The current
was terrific, and people kept falling.
After nearly three hours everybody was across. Our leader found a horse,
galloped off to secure new buses, which arrived and took us to the town
where we were supposed to have lunch. But it was now dark and lunch
became supper. More conversations, more consultations, more delay, more
mystery. Why did we not start? The answer was that three strange men
were sitting in one of our cars—Russians who wanted to get to Tiflis.
They were going to have their rights. When pleading, arguing, reasoning
could not move them, the G.P.U. had to be invoked; still no results. Not
until they had been promised that a bus would leave immediately did they
descend and make room for the three of our group whose seats they had
usurped.
We rattled off again, only to be turned back. Another long halt and more
conversation. Ultimately, since buses had been dispatched from Tiflis to
meet us and were waiting about six miles away, it was decided to push
on.
Then began the real drive through Godaur Pass, up and over rocks and
embankments, roots of trees, sand and water, precarious detours in a
night as jet as any I have ever seen. The militia had been ordered by
Moscow to keep the route open—green skyrockets for us to come ahead, red
ones to stop, and swinging lanterns in front of the worst danger
spots—great drops down into ravines. At last we reached the end and
mounted a new set of buses, but only three of them. Grant was among
those who stayed behind. We arrived at Tiflis at two in the morning.
Dinner was ready as well as clean beds, and we slept until the humid sun
stirred us out for breakfast, just as the rest came straggling in.
It was Sunday morning. Lining the steps of the old Georgian cathedral
were beggar women—lame, blind, filthy—never had I seen any others in
Russia. Children were curiously looking on at the Mass, but we were told
parents were forbidden to make them go to church. The few elderly women
attending were carrying flowers and had twined them also around the
frames of the saints’ pictures. We tourists presented an incongruous
contrast to the priests with their long beards and splendid robes.
Tiflis had slipped the yoke of Moscow. Here among the mosques and the
camels and the bazaars, which gave it a definitely Oriental tinge, we
finally saw signs of private enterprise. Back in the mountains were
tribes the Soviet was trying to civilize—warlike, uncultured, barbaric.
Stalin, sentimental for the country of his origin perhaps, was choosing
as many Georgians as he could for high places and sending in teachers
and moving pictures to educate the others, but the task was herculean.
It was hot, torrid noon when we arrived at Batum on the Black Sea. The
sun was pouring down; we wanted to go swimming to cool off, and were
directed to a stony beach. The water was darkened by the heavy, rich
deposit which coated the bottom, and the sand, of the same color, was
strewn with masses of people just like Coney Island, thousands of them
on the seaweed-covered rocks. It did not look pleasant and we walked
further. A partition of slats through which there was perfect visibility
was supposed to divide the women from the men, but despite having heard
so much about the nude bathing there, we discovered everyone had on
suits—astounding, old-fashioned garments.
Mrs. Clyde declined to go in, but sat watching in her hat and glasses.
Tanya kept on pink panties and a brassiere. The rest of us determined to
throw off our inhibitions. Once you did this you were freed from them
for the time being; it was the doing that was so hard. Most surprising
were the New England schoolteachers, who had certainly never before
removed their clothes in public. They dashed their long, lean bodies
boldly into the water as though to say, “Russia, here we come!”
The steamer on which we left Batum was dirty, loaded with passengers who
had to be stepped over as they slept on deck. If you left your stateroom
even a few moments somebody grabbed it and took your bed.
But the scenery of the Russian Riviera was very lovely. The spurs of the
Caucasus along the coast glittered with marble palaces. I shall always
remember the mighty, sable cypress trees, slender columns silhouetted
against the creamy white walls; they were not funereal to me, but more
like sentinels.
Only the chosen of the chosen, the executives and the intelligentsia,
could stay at Yalta for holidays. Many individuals, Agnes Smedley, for
one, had reason to be grateful to the Soviet for their rest periods.
Although not a Communist she had written sympathetic articles, and the
Russian Health Department, hearing she was ill in China, had sent her an
invitation to come and recuperate, and here she had stayed a year
without cost, recovering from a strained heart.
I spent a day in the majestic Byzantine summer palace of Nicholas II at
near-by Livadia. It was perfectly landscaped with statues, fountains,
terraces. As we drove up multitudinous shaved heads popped out open
windows. In the marvelous ballroom were a hundred and fifty enamel cots,
side by side, the sleeping quarters of the men on vacation. We saw the
room belonging to the former Tsarina, with fragile, brocaded walls and
delicate panels. In the center of the parquet floor, bare of any
covering, stood a deal table with checked gingham cloth.
Now and then you caught a glimpse of people in the palace, but mostly
they were reclining in the gardens. As we wandered round and round we
came upon a cluster of twenty-five asleep, pale, and not too well-fed.
They did not twitch an eyelid as we approached. I asked Tanya, “Who are
these?”
Touching one of them on the shoulder, she said, “Tovarish, these
tovarishes want to know who you are.”
At that not only he but all of them jumped to their feet, as though at
military drill. One after the other gave his name, each with a “vich” or
a “ski” on the end of it, stating also his occupation. As he finished he
turned his head to the next, who took up the recital. The little woman
with bobbed black hair and a curious bodice of blue proudly said she
wore the Cross of Lenin on her dress because with him she had fought for
Russia. This was the highest honor any woman in Russia could be paid;
only a hundred had it.
Then the first man bowed politely to Tanya and with dignity said
something to her. She interpreted to us, “They want to know who _you_
are.”
“Tell them we’re Americans.”
“North Americans?” with great enthusiasm.
“Yes.”
Then question after question spattered like a machine gun. “Are you from
Seattle? Portland? How did you get here? What way did you come? How long
did it take you? How much did it cost? What has happened to Dillinger?
What’s the latest news of the seamen’s strike on the Pacific Coast? How
soon comes the Revolution?”
We were rather dazed at the degree of current information they had
gleaned—chiefly from posters in the parks. Their bombardment continued.
“Do women in America have as much freedom as men?” We all disagreed on
that. “Can married women work for the Government? Can they teach
school?” Some of us answered “No,” others, “Yes.” On every inquiry of
theirs we were divided, but on whatever we asked them they were united.
“Who is your favorite American author?”
I answered, “I like Sinclair Lewis.”
The woman looked at me accusingly, “Not Theodore Dreiser?”
“Oh, yes,” I agreed, “he’s good.”
A man suggested, “Not Upton Sinclair?”
They were apparently sadly disappointed in us.
At last one of them, making a sweeping gesture, said to me, “Your
American Government has never built anything like this for its workers,
has it?”
“No,” I replied, “we never had a Tsar,” which was very tactless of me.
He answered something to the effect, “You people have opinions but no
convictions. We have been to prison for ours.”
Tanya volunteered, pointing to me, “This lady has been to prison eight
times for hers.”
Astonishment was registered, and one man spoke hurriedly to Tanya who
translated, “He wants to know who you are. Shall I tell him?” She then
explained I was advocating birth control.
“Well, we have that. Haven’t you visited any of our hospitals? Thousands
of women have it.”
“No, that’s abortion. We don’t want that. Birth control is different.”
The conversation had shifted to something concrete and real; we had
struck up an _entente_ that was very _cordiale_. The group gathered
closer. “Come on. Come on. This is important.” They had never heard of
contraception. How could anyone have put me in jail for that? What a
crazy government! Worse than they had thought!
The woman said, “We need you over here. Come and work with us. Don’t
waste your life in America.”
From the impatient bus came horns, whistles, bells, summoning us away.
The whole twenty-five followed us to the char-à-bancs, waving farewell.
Tanya was a most discerning little person, ordinarily impassive but
springing up animatedly the moment music started. One of our party
invited her, “Come on to America. You’ll have pretty clothes, and for
anyone who can dance like you, fame is waiting.”
“Pretty clothes? I have two dresses, which answer their purpose. And as
for fame—this is my people. I enjoy dancing, and they enjoy me. Why
should I go to America?”
Before I left I wanted to do something for her, give her some sort of
gift in return for her many services. She was going to be married and,
because her mother was old-fashioned, have a registered ceremony, call
in all her friends, and even don special raiment. I had some new
stockings with me and presented them to her. She looked at them, handled
them as though treasuring some lovely thing she longed for but could not
possess.
“I wouldn’t dare wear them. I would be ashamed because my friends could
not have the same.”
Tanya was willing to go without until silk stockings were to be had by
all. It was necessary to grasp this attitude to understand Sovietism. It
gave you slight personal freedom, and you had to ask yourself honestly
whether exploitation by government or by individual was basically
different. But what you did have was security for your old age and the
hope that when the rewards came you would have your share.
The Russians were a mass of contradictions. One moment I was irritated
enough to tear them limb from limb, the next prostrate before their
sincerity and zeal. The more than one hundred and fifty races and
forty-five languages made for problems that challenged man’s
intelligence. Perhaps no other nation had had a lower order of serfdom
to arouse from lethargy and put to work on a new civilization. Nothing
but admiration could be accorded their attempts and achievements.
But most of the time they were entranced by their own drug of idealism.
They had swallowed so much of it that they were self-hypnotized, and
bumped into reality without understanding it. Like the Spanish, it was
enough for them to say, “It will be,” without taking sufficient thought
as to how to bring it about.
At Odessa we boarded what then seemed to us by contrast the most
beautiful ship in the world, the Italian liner _Campidoglio_, entering
into another domain. A neat, white cloth was spread for you, yourself;
no longer did you have a soiled napkin folded for indefinite use;
spotless coats adorned the waiters; our chairs were pulled out;
everybody had a proper bed and cabin. It was only a simple ship, but it
signified Western refinement, and I must say I welcomed it. No matter
how much proletarian sympathy you might have, you appreciated clean
tables, dishes, sheets, towels, and a bathroom that worked.
In order to hurry back to school Grant separated from me in Rumania and
my husband joined me in Naples to go to Marienbad. I had barely reached
there when Grant cabled that Stuart was ill again; I left for home the
same day. On arrival I found the doctors contemplating a radical
operation, but I refused to let him have another. As an alternative
Tucson, Arizona, was suggested for its dry, warm climate. His wound was
still unhealed when we started.
Being stowed away in Stuart’s small Ford coupé for days on end gave us
the best possible opportunity to catch up in our talks and experiences
and place trivial and unimportant events in the pockets of memory where
they belonged. The joy of thus familiarizing myself with my grown-up son
made me envy mothers who had leisure to grow along with their children
or, at least, to watch them develop. But it is possible we are all the
better friends in adult life; at least we adhere to the rights of
individuality for ourselves and for each other.
It was nearing the close of October when one bright morning we left El
Paso and came across miles and miles of brown and yellow desert, up to
the hills and mountains. Through the heat waves we saw mirages; we were
positive they were lakes. Arizona was so unlike any place I had been
before; you either had to be enthralled by it or hate and dread it. Not
being quick to come to conclusions I was not at first sure. But I knew
there was a delight in the cool nights and the translucent, sunny days
with a lovely tang in the air. In the beginning it was the people who
won me, particularly Mrs. Robert P. Bass, daughter of Mrs. Charles
Sumner Bird, one of our early pioneers. We stayed with her for a short
time, and then took a pink adobe house out where the desert met the
foothills. Stuart grew better. In the spring we packed our bags once
more in the little car and drove away, looking back regretfully at the
indescribable Catalinas, on which light and clouds played in
never-ending change of pattern.
_Chapter Thirty-seven_
WHO CAN TAKE A DREAM FOR TRUTH?
“_Divinity sleeps in stones, breathes in plants, dreams
in animals, and awakes in human beings._”
INDIAN PROVERB
Several times I had approached the idea of going to India, and always
something had prevented me. In 1922 when I was near by, it was the hot
season and everybody had gone to the hill stations. In 1928, when I had
also made tentative plans, I was not well. I think I had, in addition,
been reluctant because Katherine Mayo’s book had left me with such an
aching pain I felt powerless to help lift the inertia she described.
Finally, in 1936, I had word from Margaret Cousins, pioneer in the
Indian women’s movement, wife of a poet and university professor, who
asked whether I would accept an invitation to attend the coming
All-India Women’s Conference. The previous conference had passed a
resolution favoring birth control in theory, but now they wanted me to
assist them to “put teeth in it,” to draw up one which would outline a
practical plan applicable to all castes, to present it, and to argue for
it.
Since such a resolution would mean that the movement had now gone beyond
the point where we had to break in to be heard, and would start things
in the right direction, I arranged to spend three months in India, from
November to January, under the auspices of the International Information
Center, which had been set up in London after the Geneva Conference so
that various peoples and countries interested in the subject might have
some means of contact.
Mrs. John Phillips, who had fought many battles in Pittsburgh for birth
control, suggested that her daughter, a graduate of Vassar and a
newspaper woman, might come along as my secretary. All the way a fine
young crowd rallied around the lively Anna Jane, who had as great a
capacity for laughter as any human being I ever knew. Nothing was too
hard for her, nothing too big or too small for her to do; altogether she
was a perfect companion, beginning with our voyage to England, and
ending in Honolulu.
Temporarily in London was Gandhi’s appointed successor, Pundit
Jawaharlal Nehru, of a family noted for scholarship. He was the youthful
leader of the more radical elements in India, much more inclined towards
Communism than Gandhi. After having been in jail for four years he had
now been released to see his wife who was ill and dying in Germany. I
was unable to be present at a reception for him, so Anna Jane telephoned
to say I was sorry. “Why should Mrs. Sanger be sorry?” he said, with the
simplicity of the truly great. “She can come any time.” I did so the
next afternoon.
Nehru was quiet and poised, with a thoughtful manner which impressed you
immediately as one of controlled intelligence. His intention was to
establish in the mind of Young India that Gandhi’s spiritual doctrines
would only be effective if knit with economic and sociological
principles.
More recondite than the Indian was the Englishman, Paul Brunton, small
and dark, with a solemn, intense, almost mystic expression in his eyes.
He was attempting to find what virtue lay in fakirs and holy men,
combing India for them, and had embodied the result in his book, _The
Search in Secret India_. He told me, “Not many holy men remain; most of
them have gone back into the mountains, inaccessible to Westerners. The
one for whom I have the greatest regard is the sage of Arunachala, the
Maharshi of Tiruvannamalai. My wife and I have a little hut southwest of
Madras, and if you will visit us when you reach that section of India, I
will see that you come into his presence.”
Naturally I accepted his offer eagerly and put it on my “must” list.
Shortly before my departure from London, a farewell banquet was given at
the Barber-Surgeons’ Hall, a relic of old London known to few, and to
which you could be admitted only by invitation. It was on Monkwell
Street in the City near the London Wall and Aldersgate. Well aware of
the difficulties of threading that maze, even by daylight, I inquired of
the carriage attendant at the Savoy whether the taxi-driver were
familiar with it.
“Certainly, Madam.”
Off I went with Mrs. Kerr-Lawson, the painter’s wife, somewhat pressed
for time. As usual in November, it was raining. After we had serpentined
in and out for twenty minutes we began to surmise that the driver was
lost, and I called to him, “Don’t you know the way?”
“Well, I thought it was down ’ere, but it don’t seem to be.”
“Why don’t you ask somebody?”
“W’ere’s Barbers’ ’All?” He addressed a mail carrier, who paused to
think, and then said, “Well, it’s along there,” pointing back from where
we had come.
We turned about but had no better luck. The driver stopped at least ten
people, each in uniform or livery of some kind or other, “W’ere’s
Barbers’ ’All?” and all we heard was the echo, “Barbers’ ’All?” He drew
up beside a bobby; even he did not know.
Finally, we saw smart-looking cars going in a certain direction. We said
that must be it, and, sure enough, there on the corner was the sign. For
our own peace of mind we were not last. H.G. was close behind us,
frothing with fury because he too had been driving around Robin Hood’s
barn.
Much of the building was locked up, but what we saw was beautifully
preserved. Evidently the Guild of the Barbers had prospered in the days
when their members did bleeding and leeching, and attended to other
annoyances of humanity, such as pulling teeth.
The dining room, once the operating theater, was now the fairest setting
for a dinner that one could have—the service presented by Queen Anne,
crystal goblets, a silver rose-carved finger bowl, the vast Royal Grace
Cup given by Henry VIII, like a chalice with a six-inch stem, everything
used only on rare occasions. The table was like an E with the middle
left out, and in the center sat Harry Guy in his high-backed chair above
the rest of us. I was on his right and next me was a man whose name had
performed almost a miracle for birth control in England—Baron Thomas
Horder, then physician to the Prince of Wales.
Sidney Walton, the member without whom this banquet could not have taken
place, opened the affair as ancient custom prescribed by declaiming,
“Pray, silence for the King!” After the toast to His Majesty, one was
drunk to the President of the United States, and then my health was
proposed; the loving cup, containing about a quart of red wine, began to
make the rounds. During the toast, three people had to be standing—the
one holding the cup, the one who just had it on the left, and the one on
the right who was to receive it. The waiter came to wipe the lip
hygienically when each had swallowed his sip; this was the sole modern
touch.
London offered me many courtesies. The Italian invasion of Ethiopia was
now in full swing. Rumors were abroad that British ships were avoiding
the Suez Canal; therefore, I booked on a Dutch line. When I mentioned
this to Sir John Megaw, former director of the Indian Medical Service,
he practically stopped breathing and bristled in every hair of his head.
“What! a P. and O. boat not go through the Canal for fear of Italy?”
“So I’ve heard.”
“My dear Mrs. Sanger, you can go through the Suez Canal on a British
boat if the British Navy has to escort you through!”
Sir John’s report calling upon the British Government to make some plan
for population growth, increase, and distribution for India was one of
the most intelligent issued by any health officer in this age. Although
entirely in sympathy with my project, yet he doubted whether it would be
possible for me to do anything. That I was an American, however, he
thought might obviate the antagonism which would inevitably follow the
mention of birth control by anybody from the British Isles.
Almost as soon as the _Viceroy of India_ sailed, we seemed much nearer
the East. Indian deck hands moved about, distinguishable by their slim
bodies, brown faces, and turbans, but the English were in command of all
departments. It must have been a source of resentment to the Indian
passengers to be ignored or treated as inferiors by the English Civil
Service going to rule them in their own land.
The ship was second-rate, rocky in a heavy sea, and raucous. The blast
of bugles for rising and meals had long since been outmoded on most
passenger liners but was retained here. I was awakened at eight or
earlier every morning by the most awful thud, thud, thud overhead. After
I had had a headache for two days I went up to the sports deck and found
the English were getting exercise by throwing quoits around directly
above my stateroom.
The Suez Canal was bright with yellow sand and blue sky. We slowly
steamed past two Italian transports with bandaged soldiers on the decks,
invalided home from Ethiopia. As far as conversation on our own vessel
went, no one would have suspected there was a war. Not an Englishman
brought up the subject, and, if drawn into a discussion, he eluded it by
saying his country could jolly well look after itself.
Once we were in the Red Sea, passengers and officers emerged in white;
the decks were roofed with canvas so that the games might go on. Most of
these British had traveled so much they had a seafaring routine. They
indulged in sports in the morning, dressed appropriately. From two to
four in the afternoon a pall of silence descended. All the chairs on the
deck were occupied by dozing, browsing loungers. But as soon as the tea
things appeared, life began to be interesting. Music burst forth from
the orchestra, babies were brought up from the nursery, everybody
hurried to and fro from chair to table, picking and choosing cakes or
buns, sandwiches or plain bread and jam. After dinner again the full,
blazing lights gave ample illumination for the interminable deck tennis
and quoits.
Bombay from the distance was a city of tall buildings. Not until very
close could you see the sizzling heat on the water; the hot sun and
heavy air made it unpleasant to stand on deck. The wharf was filled, the
British easily recognizable by their sola topees, the ugliest headgear
in the world. All were waving with great excitement, and many carried
flower garlands for visitors or those coming home. Amid scrambling and
confusion coolies swarmed aboard for luggage. A delegation of about
fifty welcomed us, including Edith How-Martyn, who had been sounding out
popular and religious sentiment, and Dr. A. P. Pillay, editor of the
magazine, _Marriage Hygiene_, the man most active in eugenics and birth
control in India.
I had written to Gandhi and a reply from him greeted me at the boat, “Do
by all means come whenever you can, and you shall stay with me, if you
would not mind what must appear to you to be our extreme simplicity; we
have no masters and no servants here.”
The evening was hot and oppressive indoors but mild and balmy outside,
and I sauntered under a lovely, deep sky. The women, small of body,
ankles, and wrists, with well-formed features, and softly spoken as the
Japanese, whether poor or not, wore bracelets, anklets, rings in the
ears, and some a button jewel in the side of the nose. Seldom were any
in Western costume; almost always they wore saris, graceful folds draped
over their heads. Men and boys were stretched out on the walks, their
only belongings the mats on which they lay. It was revolting to see
something stir in the dust, and watch rags change into a human being
sleeping there.
The next afternoon I had my first meeting in Cowasji Jehangir Hall, the
largest in Bombay, and clamorously noisy. It was open to the street, and
trams went wobbling by, pedestrians talked loudly, and dozens and dozens
of electric fans purred round and round and round. You had to speak at
the very top of your throat in order to be heard; Indians were
accustomed to the British enunciation and the British pitch and found
American English difficult to understand. Looking down on the audience
was like gazing at a choppy sea; it was a broken mass of Gandhi white
caps, shaped rather like those worn by our soldiers overseas. They were
not removed in the house, in shops, or even at table. Everywhere in
India you saw them, showing how large was his following.
I had been told that unmarried women did not exist in India and none of
the cultured class worked for wages. However, the very day I landed I
met three girls who were still single, gave their time to help the
outcasts, and had small apartments of their own. Two of them were trying
to be independent; another received an allowance from her father who,
though disapproving, supplied her livelihood.
It had been predicted also that only Eurasians and the lower classes
would listen to me on birth control, but the question turned out to be
not, “Shall it be given?” but “What to give?” and it came from all
strata. The Mayor of Bombay invited me to address a gathering of city
officials. Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, the famous poetess, outstanding for her
loyalty to India and next to Gandhi the most beloved person in the
country, talked with me about holding a meeting in Hyderabad, where her
husband was head of the medical profession. Lady Braybourne during
luncheon at Government House told me that she and the Governor were
anxious to prevent the fifteen hundred people on their own compound from
doubling their numbers within a few years. What would I suggest?
The answer was complicated by many factors. First and foremost was the
unspeakable poverty which prevailed. A contraceptive so cheap that it
could be available to everyone had been invented in the form of a foam
powder which could be made from rice starch; enough for a year should
not cost more than ten cents. But as yet we had not tested it
sufficiently to guarantee its harmlessness and efficacy.
The poorer women of Bombay, sober-faced and dull-looking, who
particularly needed this method, lived in the grubby and deadly
_chawls_—huts of corrugated iron—no windows, no lights, no lamps, just
three walls and sometimes old pieces of rag or paper hung up in front in
a pitiful attempt at privacy.
I soon learned that when traveling through the country we had to have a
servant, or bearer, to secure railroad compartments, make up the beds,
see we had food at various stations, and keep the vendors off.
Mattresses, blankets, sheets, pillows, towels, and soap had to accompany
us on trains. From Cook’s we acquired Joseph, an extraordinary
character, dressed always in a black alpaca coat and colorful turban. We
paid him about a dollar a day, considered a very good salary. However,
since he spoke not only Hindustani, but also Bengali, Tamil, and
English, we thought him an excellent find. He waited on us, brought us
tea in the morning, went with us on calls.
Joseph’s respect for us was enormously increased when he heard we were
going to visit Gandhi. He became our devoted adviser, sleeping outside
the door at night. Because of his position it was beneath his dignity to
carry anything. Consequently we were obliged to hire a coolie for his
luggage as well as several for our own. India was undoubtedly the place
for the white man to lose his inferiority complex, should he have one;
the serving class was obsequious, and the educated, aloof and superior.
We were met at the station at Wardha by a covered, two-wheeled cart, a
tonga, very clean with little steps leading up and drawn by a
cream-colored bullock. Since there were no seats, we sat flat on the
bottom and were pulled leisurely and slowly along dusty roads to the
_ashram_.
Gandhi was cross-legged on the floor of a room in a large squarish
structure, a white cloth like a sheet around him. He rose to greet me as
I entered with an armful of books and flowers and magazines and gloves
that I had not realized were there until we tried to take each other by
both hands. He beamed and I laughed.
Perhaps even more exaggerated than his pictures was Gandhi’s appearance:
his ears stuck out more prominently; his shaved head was more shaved;
his toothless mouth grinned more broadly, leaving a great void between
his lips. But around him and a part of him was a luminous aura. And once
you had seen this, the ugliness faded and you glimpsed the something in
the essence of his being which people have followed and which has made
them call him the Mahatma.
This was Monday, Gandhi’s day of silence, of meditation and prayer. He
was so besieged by problems and difficulties on which he had to decide
that this one twenty-four hours he reserved for himself without
interruption. Therefore, he merely smiled and nodded his head and then
Anna Jane and I were escorted along a gravel path to the guest house,
perhaps a hundred yards away, a building of four rooms, rough-hewn,
white-plastered walls, the upper section open for ventilation. On the
uneven stone floor stood two mattress-less cots on which our bedding was
spread. A roof pole in the center had a circular shelf which served as
table or chairs according to need.
Bowls of porridge and milk were brought, sweetened with either honey or
burned sugar—I could not tell which, but it was very pleasant. I asked
no questions about its being boiled, or whether it was goats’ or cows’
milk; although I happened not to be hungry, down it went just the same.
From tiffin on we inspected the cotton-growing, the paper-making, the
oil press, and the irrigation by means of old-fashioned turn wheels. I
was not enthusiastic. It seemed so pitiable an effort, like going
backward instead of forward, and trying to keep millions laboring on
petty hand processes merely in order to give them work to do by which
they might exist.
In the evening Gandhi wrote on his slate that next morning I could join
him in his walk. This was his regular exercise, occupying about an hour.
He took quite good care of himself physically, observing rules of health
and diet rigidly and strictly. He had to in order to perform the
tremendous quantity of labor always facing him.
After we had ascended to the roof for evening prayers, our cots were
moved out on the terrace under the moon and stars and the glorious,
limitless sky overhead. Lights shimmered along the path to the main
house but, for the rest, all was darkness. I never was more conscious of
nature’s stillness or of more constant stirrings from human beings—the
echoing chant from the village near by, singing, calling, laughing, dogs
barking, the sounds wafted clearly through the cool and crisp air while
not a leaf on the trees trembled. At four the bells rang out for morning
prayers and at six Joseph came to tell me the hour and I arose and
dressed.
Gandhi and I walked with his other two women guests; they deemed sacred
every moment they spent with him. Men, women, and children waited for
him as he passed, several prostrating themselves as to a holy person.
Stepping over the debris we traversed narrow byways through the open
fields where families huddled in their tiny huts together with dogs and
goats. People were bathing and washing and cleaning their teeth. Little
spirals of smoke were drifting from the fires for the morning meal.
At eleven we all went to our breakfast across the court, leaving our
shoes outside. Everybody was ready, and great shining trays of
silver-looking metal were placed before us on the floor. Gandhi was
trying to persuade the Indians to utilize native-grown vegetables in
different ways and thus increase their vitamin consumption. Mrs. Gandhi
supervised the culinary department, and herself served the meal, of
which there was a goodly and varied supply—no meat, but plenty of fruits
and vegetables in curious combinations, such as tomatoes and oranges in
a salad. All picked up their food with their fingers, mixing it and
scooping it in very cleverly without dropping a morsel.
So numerous were Gandhi’s adherents, so deep his influence, that I was
sure his endorsement of birth control would be of tremendous value if I
could convince him how necessary it was for Indian women. After
breakfast I set myself to the task.
He spoke fluent English in a low voice with accurate intonations, never
lacking for a word, and could apparently discuss any subject near or
far. Nevertheless, I felt his registering of impressions was blunted;
while you were answering a question of his, he held to an idea or a
train of thought of his own, and, as soon as you stopped, continued it
as though he had not heard you. Time and again I believed he was going
along with me, and then came the stone wall of religion or emotion or
experience, and I could not dynamite him over this obstacle. In fact,
despite his claim to open-mindedness, he was proud of not altering his
opinions.
Gandhi maintained that he knew women and was in sympathetic accord with
them. Personally, after listening to him for a while, I did not believe
he had the faintest glimmering of the inner workings of a woman’s heart
or mind. He accused himself of being a brute by having desired his wife
when he was younger, and classed all sex relations as debasing acts,
although sometimes necessary for procreation. He agreed that no more
than three or four children should be born to a family, but insisted
that intercourse, therefore, should be restricted for the entire married
life of the couple to three or four occasions.
I suggested that such a regimen was bound to cause psychological
disturbances in both husband and wife. Furthermore, when respect and
consideration and reverence were a part of the relationship I called it
love, not lust, even if it found expression in sex union, with or
without children.
Gandhi referred me to nature, the great director, who would solve our
problems if we depended on her, but said what we were doing was to
inject man’s ideas into nature.
To this I replied, “How can you differentiate? Here is cotton growing on
your land and lemons also. That’s nature. Would you object to dipping
cotton into lemon juice and using that as a contraceptive?”
He said positively that he would. For every argument I presented he
countered with “I would devise other methods,” but proposed none that
was not based on continence. He reiterated that women in order to
control the size of their families must “resist” their husbands, in
extreme cases leave them.
Those who listened to the interview declared that the Mahatma made
concessions he had never made before. He himself said to me, “This has
not been wasted effort. We have certainly come nearer together.”
Nevertheless, I knew it was futile to count on Gandhi to help the
movement in India; his state of mind would not change. After reading his
autobiography, I thought I saw the cause of his inhibitions. He himself
had had the feeling which he termed lust, and he now hated it. It formed
an emotional pivot in his brain around which centered everything having
to do with sex. But there remained his kindness, his hospitality, his
arrangements for your comfort, which he duplicated again and again for
visitors who gave nothing, but instead received inspiration from him.
And, furthermore, since humanity as a rule does little for itself and
the inert mass has to be upheaved to a point where it can gain
initiative, anyone who can arouse a nation of all classes and ages out
of the incredible lethargy into which it has long been sunk and can stir
up a people to hope is a great, even noble, person.
Nevertheless, in contrast to Gandhi’s attitude towards birth control,
Rabindranath Tagore’s was a comfort. With Anna Jane and Joseph I set out
on the long trip to Calcutta—two-thirds of the breadth of India. Now you
really saw the country—the palms and banana trees, the natives getting
on trains, living in their tiny huts. These were of bamboo plastered
with mud and whitewashed; the floors were soaked with cow dung to harden
the dirt, and the roofs were thatched with straw. As we passed through
village after village, I observed cows, goats, dogs, bullocks, all with
their young, rambling in the streets, freely mixing with the people and
scrambling out of the way when a whistle or bell sounded. Peddlers,
balancing on their heads trays heaped with oranges, walked up and down
the station platforms, calling their wares in a fascinating, sing-song
meter.
We arrived at Bolpur beyond Calcutta at seven-thirty of an early
December evening. Tagore’s son had been on the train and we went with
him to Santineketan, House of Peace, where Tagore lived and taught. The
grouping of buildings in the thousand-acre estate resembled that of an
ancient monastery, not so cozy or individual as Gandhi’s, but rather
cold and bare. Before sunrise again I heard the chanting prayers of the
students. Boys and girls together then went at six o’clock to study in
the mango grove or under the banyan trees, all in the open air.
His former luxurious home Tagore had turned over to his son, and himself
occupied a small clay house designed like a temple in modern style. The
room into which I was shown in the afternoon was full of books and
papers, like the office of a busy executive. Tagore, in a long, rough,
handmade robe of homespun, was seated behind his desk. I had been told I
would find him greatly aged, but, although he was slightly thinner than
when I had seen him in New York in 1931, he did not seem much older.
True his beard and hair were scantier, but his face, almost unlined, had
the same repose, and his finely modulated voice expressed the same
understanding when he spoke of the importance of birth control to his
country, and sincerely hoped I would be able to reach the villagers,
which he said must be done were it to bring any benefit to India.
Tagore knew I had been to see Gandhi, but did not mention it. He had
tact combined with his grace and intellect; he drew, painted, directed
dancing, even sculptured and acted. Appealing to more moneyed classes
than Gandhi, he guided his school towards furthering culture and the
arts as well as improving agricultural necessities.
The medical building in Calcutta had been selected for my first lecture
there, but Mr. O’Connor, who was in charge, refused permission. Since
the edifice belonged to the British Government, birth control became at
once popular with the Indians, and the meeting was transferred to Albert
Hall. I was warned we needed as chairman a good strong man with a
domineering personality, because it was a rowdy place and trouble-makers
always haunted it. However, the association which had asked me to speak
had already chosen a woman, Mrs. Soudamini Mehta, who was managing the
clinic in Calcutta. I talked against the noise for forty minutes and
then Mrs. Mehta, whose voice scarcely carried over the footlights,
opened the forum for questions.
Two bearded patriarchs looking like Messiahs were sitting in the front
row. One of them hopped up and, without asking a question, began
haranguing in unctuous tones. Mrs. Mehta tried to stop him, but could
not. The audience tried to yell him down; a few were with him but most
were not. Then a fist fight broke out and the second sexagenarian rose
and demanded recognition. Someone caught his hands from behind, and
another row began.
Finally I said to Mrs. Mehta, “Perhaps they can hear me. Let’s ask them
whether they want to listen to these men.”
At once a mighty roar of “No!” went up. Then both the old men erupted
again, shrieking. Mrs. Mehta, anger lending strength to her vocal
chords, at last called out indignantly, “You’re naughty, and the meeting
is now dismissed!” And so, amid shouts of merriment, we broke up.
I had no more lectures scheduled for a time, and accepted with pleasure
the invitation of Mrs. Norman Odling to visit her at Kalimpong, in the
shadow of Mt. Everest, three hundred and fifty miles north of Calcutta.
In preparing for this excursion I had to decide whether to take Joseph.
He was a silent man. Whenever I had requested him to perform any
service, from getting the laundry together to looking after the luggage,
he had never answered yes or no but had only shaken his head—not a
regular shake, but a nodding from side to side as though he were saying,
“Well, well, well!” I had usually sighed, “Never mind.” I had grown
rather exasperated with what seemed his deplorable lack of enthusiasm,
although Anna Jane appeared to like him; being busy in other directions,
especially with beaux, she had left many things for him to attend to.
Finally I informed Cook’s that we were departing for the North and would
like somebody else. When their representative came around to
investigate, he said to Joseph, “Do you wish to go with Mrs. Sanger?”
Joseph shook his head.
“There you are!” I exclaimed. “He doesn’t want to go.”
At that Joseph put up pleading hands and spoke in Hindustani.
“Yes, he does,” said the Cook’s man. “When he shakes his head ‘no’ he
means ‘yes.’”
Before we started Joseph mentioned to me how wintry it was in the
Himalayas; he must have an overcoat. I asked whether he had ever been
there.
“Yes.”
“Did you have a coat then?”
“Yes.”
“Did someone buy it for you?”
“Yes, always buy it for bearers.”
“Well, where’s that coat?”
“Worn out.”
I questioned Cook’s about that also and was told, “He’s trying to do
you. Probably he already has two or three, and if you give him another
he’ll just sell it.”
We hardened our hearts, and Joseph had to get along without his coat.
As we progressed north the nights grew cold, the mornings cold, four in
the afternoon was cold. Joseph had changed to a hideous black hat which
he said was warmer than his turban, but he had no overcoat and began to
cough.
We arrived at Siliguri at six of a brisk morning, just in time to watch
the rose-colored dawn break over the snow-covered mountains. After a cup
of hot but vile coffee we wrapped ourselves in rugs and off we went on
the full hour’s drive to Kalimpong, up and around hairpin curves, mostly
following the river, often through bits of jungle whence you knew a
tiger might spring out on the road any minute. The scenery was the most
superb I had ever seen, grander than the Rockies or Pyrenees or Alps, a
blend of green tangle and white peaks touching the clear sky, with
wreaths of clouds far below.
As we neared Kalimpong there was a distinct difference in the type of
native; Thibetans and Nepalese were frequent. The swarms of women looked
like squaws, although, instead of papooses, they carried on their backs
huge baskets of charcoal or from six to eight massive blocks of stone,
all for six cents a day. No horses, no mules, no wagons, only women as
beasts of burden hauling these rocks from the quarry to the site,
jingling with rings on their ankles and rings on their toes. What struck
me as most peculiar was that many of them wore ugly shawls, assuredly
products of Scottish mills; the entire hillside was dotted with plaids.
As soon as I reached Mrs. Odling’s home and heard the accent of her
medical missionary father, I knew the answer. “We never think of going
home to Scotland without bringing some back,” she said. “They much
prefer plaids to their own designs.”
Mrs. Odling was a darling, born there in the hills, and was intensely
interested in cultivating the industries of the Thibetans, whom she
encouraged to come across the border with their handsome silver boxes
and brass bowls studded with turquoise. They were not a
pleasant-appearing people. It was almost ludicrous to see this delicate
woman slapping some of the worst-looking characters heartily on the
shoulder and talking to them in their primitive language; it was evident
they adored her and would do anything for her.
Kalimpong itself was lovely and sunny, perched on an outer spur of the
eastern Himalayas; in the background soared up the mighty, snowy barrier
of Kinchenjunga, which screened it from Thibet, and past it ran the
high, chill, rocky road to Lhasa.
To reach Darjeeling, which was on the far side of a mountain range, it
was necessary to retrace our steps to Siliguri and then go along a
magnificent but treacherous road up another valley. Darjeeling itself
disappointed me, a hodgepodge of everybody and everything—tourists,
riffraff, exorbitant prices on worthless articles, scarcely a few good
ones in gift shops. But I had the opportunity of buying for Grant the
skin of a tiger shot in a recent hunt, and this beauty was packed in
moth balls and sent directly to the ship. Also a case of Darjeeling tea
from one of the choicest gardens was delivered to me in Calcutta,
whither I now returned.
There a certain Dr. Ankelsaria, an Indian lecturer who had spoken in
America on psychology and psychic phenomena, established himself as my
interpreter and guide and dragged me willy-nilly to see such sights as
the Jain Temple and Crystal Palace. He overheard me telephoning for an
appointment with Sir Jagardis Chandra Bose, famous for his ingenious
theory that plants breathed. He promptly said, “I know Sir Jagardis very
well; I’ll take you there.”
I intimated that Anna Jane and I were the only ones invited, but he
said, “Oh, that’s nothing. We all go there to tea quite often.” But when
he did not arrive at the designated hour we set off in a taxi, somewhat
relieved.
Sir Jagardis was a person of great dignity—elderly, polished, the
scientist pure and simple. He seemed to me like a person trying to keep
his life clear, without having externals crowd in upon him too closely.
We had hardly finished our tea when to my surprise Dr. Ankelsaria
appeared in the doorway and Sir Jagardis inquired, “Do you wish to have
this gentleman?” We explained he had offered to bring us in his car.
Soon we walked out to see the garden, where plants of every description
were carefully tended, each treated like an only child—this one put to
bed early, that one awakened by the sun, this shrank from noise, that
loved running water, this craved a moist atmosphere, that needed a
desert in which to thrive; he understood the characteristics of each. He
himself was disturbed because his flowers did not like the presence of
Dr. Ankelsaria and would be affected by it.
From there we stepped into the laboratory, where Sir Jagardis
demonstrated the working of his machine. When he placed either nitrogen
or carbon on the plant the instrument, which had been almost quiescent,
made tiny marks, much as a person’s heartbeat was shown on a
cardiograph.
Dr. Ankelsaria pushed in and got out a pencil and notebook. Sir Jagardis
at once froze, ceased talking, and asked, “Are you a newspaper
reporter?”
“No, I’m a doctor.”
“What are you taking down? I’ll not have it!” Then, turning to me as
though I had been guilty of treachery, “My conversation with you was
personal and confidential.”
I was profoundly embarrassed and, as severely as I knew how, requested
Dr. Ankelsaria to stop his writing immediately.
The night I was leaving Calcutta for Benares, the worthy doctor insisted
I have dinner at his sister’s home, a real Indian feast. Among the
guests was an amazing individual who greeted me as though we were old
friends, and I wondered where in heaven’s name I had ever known him.
Then suddenly I remembered—Carnegie Hall four years earlier, jammed to
the doors, some woman relinquishing her seat because she thought the
subject of the lecture was more important for me than for her, then the
appearance of the thick-set Swami from California, black hair hanging to
his shoulders, and my amazement that in good old America in the days of
the great depression five thousand people could be induced to chorus
after him in unison, “I am love, I am love,” swaying, hypnotized by
their own rhythm, until the lofty hall vibrated and thundered. At the
end of five minutes I had thanked the lady who had given me her place
and tiptoed silently out.
Now here in Calcutta I met again the Swami, clad in his ochre-colored
robe, back in India for the first time in many years. He inquired after
my health, assured me he had been aware of what I had been doing in
America, was so sorry I had not seen his home in Los Angeles. I said I
would visit him when next I went to California.
Instead of being taken to the train in Ankelsaria’s unpretentious car, I
was transported in the Swami’s elegant Rolls-Royce with the top lowered.
As we went swishing through the streets, passers-by jumped on the
running boards, dozens of others followed us, all wanting to touch the
hem of the Swami’s robe. By the time we had reached the station there
were a hundred in our wake. I caught sight of Joseph at the gate, and on
the platform, with one eye out for me, was Anna Jane surrounded by her
formal English friends in evening dress; the train was to depart in a
few minutes. When she saw me approaching with the Swami and his retinue
she dashed into the compartment to compose her features. Then we stood
at the doorway as we pulled out to watch the Englishmen turning away a
little stiffly, and the Swami, one of the incongruous but well-wishing
acquaintances whom birth control attracts, waving a vigorous good-by.
_Chapter Thirty-eight_
DEPTH BUT NOT TUMULT
Of all the cities of India Benares left the worst impression on me; so
many things exaggeratedly extolled do not live up to expectations. I
never encountered more confusion of religious symbols—the Temple of
Gold, the Monkey Temple, the Snake Temple—quite out of place in a holy
city. I did not like temples. They made me feel queer in the middle, so
smelly and such relics of ages gone by. Worshipers bowed low, resting
their foreheads on the wet and slimy floors where thousands of people
were walking in and out. Around the doors were beggars—blind, maimed,
diseased. In the grounds were animals of every kind—monkeys, oxen,
buffaloes, goats for the sacrifice; vultures and crows were flying
overhead.
Most foreigners disliked the Ganges, floating with horrors, but I found
it at dawn comparatively clean, and by far the most attractive thing
there. We had risen early to see the Brahmins, the first-comers, men and
women, old and young, bathing in the holy water. Mourners were sitting
on a hillock some twenty feet away from a burning ghat, still aflame,
waiting until the fire died down and the ashes could be swept into the
river. This seemed to me a more wholesome manner of dealing with the
dead than the Western custom of burial.
Later Joseph, whose cough was increasing, led us through the narrow
streets to the bazaars. Screaming mobs of vendors lured you towards lace
shops or to buy brasses or silks. They came up to offer you cards. If
you took one, competitors shouted and yelled, “He’s a liar, a thief, a
robber, don’t go with him! His goods are fake!” Although some of the
wares were exquisite, this ferocity again did not coincide with my
conception of a holy city.
Allahabad was more like a college town, and there I visited Mrs. Ranjit
Sitaram Pandit, the sister of Jawaharlal Nehru, whom I had met in
London. Her home was old and spacious, a nucleus of intellectual thought
and activity.
She sponsored a meeting to which about six hundred students came. It was
inspiring to see fine young people attempting to weave together your
philosophy and theirs. They were extremely sensitive—more than most
audiences, I think. But, as was the case with youth elsewhere, they made
light of anything that could be made light of. After the meeting free
literature was announced, and in two minutes it was a regular football
rush. We had to throw the pamphlets over their heads to keep them from
stampeding the platform in their headlong scramble.
At the Purdah Club the audience, of course, was entirely women; many, in
their early twenties, already had large families. They were little
accustomed to frank examination of such subjects, but, on the other
hand, did not want mere theories. By the time questions were in order
they had recovered from their giggling and were ready to talk seriously.
As usual, some came up afterwards to query me personally on matters that
could better and more profitably have been discussed with all.
On reaching Agra we reserved the Taj Mahal for sunset. Fortunately, only
a few people were there, so that the quiet was intensified. Words are
inadequate to describe its dignity and chastity; it seemed to breathe
the essence of beauty. It was not overwhelming, as were some of the
world’s wonders, but it had a perfect simplicity. I stayed until the sun
sank, and in the afterglow the marble shone in a mystic effulgence, like
something in another dimension reflected in the still, translucent pool.
There was not a cloud in the sky, just radiance everywhere. Before
daybreak I climbed again to the top of the gate tower and watched the
rising sun cast its shadow on the dome. With reluctance I turned away to
catch the train for Baroda.
After a long journey we arrived at the capital at three in the morning.
I had been invited as a state guest, and, in spite of the hour, we were
met by the secretary under a handsome hat of red and gold and black.
Immediately you felt a touch of Paris in the way clothes were worn in
Baroda.
Arrangements had been made for my audience with the Gaekwar, who had
been put on the throne by the British Government. He was a most
progressive ruler for his two and a half million subjects, aiming at
compulsory education and the abolition of caste restrictions. In the
immense anteroom of the Palace were ten or fifteen tall Indians with
gorgeous turbans, who must have been more than just ordinary officials.
The Gaekwar, short, vigorous, alert, shook hands and recalled that he
had been President of the World Fellowship of Faith at Chicago, which he
said had been the greatest honor of his life, and that he remembered my
talk there.
“Her Highness wishes to meet you this afternoon. She is beginning to
spend much time on health work and you must get her interested in what
you are doing. She will be a good friend to you.”
At the appointed hour I went to see the Maharani, quite different from
her husband, very grave, only recently out of purdah and still keeping a
separate palace. She knew hardly anything about birth control, but
maintained a welfare center for mothers and infants.
I had heard from many sources that this class, that class, and the other
class would welcome or oppose birth control, none of which statements
had hitherto proved to be accurate. The State Medical Officer, who was
very close to the Maharani, had a further thesis which he stated as he
was taking me to the Maharani’s settlement, a little place where forty
or fifty women, each one with a child, were sitting. “These women have
been brought up to the duty of having children and are so shy and modest
that they would not listen to anything on birth control.”
He sounded as though he were antagonistic, but he was merely indicating
the difficulties as he saw them. I replied that I had never yet
encountered women who, when the subject was put to them in a way they
could understand, were not eager to hear more. I suggested, “There’s a
Mohammedan who has a sickly baby. How old is she?”
“Twenty.”
“How many children has she?”
“Three.”
“Did she have more?”
“Two died.”
“How old is this one?”
“Five or six months.”
“Wouldn’t she prefer to wait until this baby is strong and well before
she has any more?”
The woman had no opportunity to answer. The whole flock moved up. “I do!
We do! Has this lady something like that? That’s what we want!”
The medical officer was genuinely astonished. “I must tell this to her
Highness.” When I myself saw the Maharani for the second time she spoke
far more favorably of birth control.
Eventually I was on my way to Trivandrum, capital of Travancore, to lend
whatever support I could towards the resolution for birth control at the
All-India Women’s Conference. The larger part of the population of this
semi-independent southern state was of Dravidian origin, among whom
child marriage scarcely existed. Here widows were allowed to remarry,
divorce was permissible for either party, and women occupied a unique
position because property descended to the children of a man’s sister
rather than to his own.
Some of the other state guests had already arrived. One charming girl
especially attracted me. She was warm-hearted, kindly, longing to serve
humanity, and prepared to dedicate her life to Gandhi’s teachings. When
I asked her to what she intended to devote herself, she answered, “Show
the depressed classes that women of my type can clean their latrines. If
I can do it, then they will see that it is not such an unworthy
occupation after all.”
Believing this futile, I said, “Don’t you think perhaps you’re wasting
your efforts? Why not do something constructive, teach the mothers to
wash and feed their children properly?”
She was determined, however, to sacrifice herself. “Gandhi wants the
latrines cleaned.”
The Maharani of Travancore, Sethu Parvathi Bai, was titular head of the
Conference, but the guiding spirit was a Parsee from Hyderabad, Mrs.
Rustomji Feridoonji, a woman in her fifties, hair almost white, a
scholar with command of English, German, and French, with the polish of
India and the West as well, alert and aware of everything going on in
the world. She and several like her were an inspiration to others of the
East and could put to shame many Westerners in their courage and vision.
They had seen immediately the necessity of having the movement under the
control of public health. In what was virtually a form of socialized
medicine municipalities were already sending out midwives, nurses, and
doctors to the poor classes. Wherever vaccination went, the birth
control advocates planned to follow with contraceptive information. With
Mrs. Feridoonji and the rest of the committee I helped to draw up a
resolution to this effect.
The second afternoon the Maharani entertained at a garden party.
Fountains were splashing, lakes and pools were lustrous in the sunlight.
The dancing was executed by children and older girls, the couples moving
round and round, precise little steps this way and that and up to each
other without apparently lifting their feet from the ground.
The Maharani and I took a short stroll together and she asked me
particularly to come to her palace the next morning at seven o’clock. I
had really no idea why she wanted to see me, and was uneasy, because the
debate over our resolution was to begin at nine. Nevertheless, I obeyed
her behest. We started our conversation with a pleasant chat about
bringing up children, especially when they were alone in the family
without playmates. I realized she was hesitating over coming to the
point. All the time the minutes were slipping by.
Eventually she took the plunge; her situation as President of the
Congress was very delicate. She had been warned that the Catholics would
withdraw from the Conference if the resolution were passed, and hoped,
therefore, I would not find it necessary to speak for it.
“But,” I protested, “I’ve been invited especially to present this
question.”
“You could substitute another subject which might be of greater
importance to India.”
“But what?” I asked.
“Well,” she suggested, “why not brothels? It’s a disgrace to have
brothels in India—mind you, there are none in Travancore. Indian women
won’t mention them, but you’re an American—you can. What we need most is
to do away with brothels.”
I could readily see the Maharani’s position. Her social secretary was a
Catholic, and large numbers of her Eurasian subjects were of the same
faith. But I said the needs of millions of women in India were more
urgent than the demands of a few Catholic missionaries. She took it
beautifully and agreed. “I shall stay here because I feel the discussion
ought to be full and free,” she said. “I only want you to tell Mrs.
Feridoonji to give your opponents two speakers for every one on your
side.”
There was considerable heat. No Indian women were against it, only
converted Eurasians; all mothers were for it and all those against it
were unmarried. Never had I heard so much talk of the lusts and passions
of men as from the latter. They put forth the same old arguments,
absolutely as though a phonograph record had been sent around the world.
Nothing could have been more monotonous, repeated as they were from
press, platform, and books. You might challenge them, break them down,
correct them, but to no avail. The greater the vehemence, the more
brilliant the opposition thought it had been. You had to ask yourself,
“How did I phrase that answer twenty years ago?” We were utterly tired
out when the vote was at last counted; we had won by eighty-four to
twenty-five. The Catholics kept their word. None came back that
afternoon. But, since it was the end of the Conference, this also did
not matter.
The following day I was off to lecture in Madras, Anna Jane to visit in
Ceylon. The solicitous Joseph intimated he was needed more to pick up
after her than after me. “All right,” I agreed. “But you don’t have to
take the luggage with you. Put it in my compartment.” Joseph, however,
made a mistake and established me on the wrong train; it went no further
than Madura. The next morning about eleven everybody was told to get
out, and there I was with seventeen pieces of luggage of my own and as
many more of Anna Jane’s.
It so happened that a young doctor of Calicut, Manjeri Sundaram, had at
Trivandrum invited me to speak in his city. When I had replied that I
could not at this juncture, he had pleaded, “I’ll go wherever you go. I
must talk to you lots and lots and lots. Whenever you’re not sleeping if
you’ll allow me please to come with you and talk to you.” I had
discouraged him in a most thorough manner, but now he came up to help
with my luggage and secured coolies to sit on it while we saw some
thirty acres of temple.
At Madras, in the Tamil country, the turban-less natives were much
darker, the costumes white and uninteresting. Sir Vepa Ramasan took me
in charge. He was a retired judge of the High Court, a very imposing man
of means who had devoted much of his wealth to a little Malthusian
magazine and stirred things up ever since 1930. As was customary, the
meeting he had arranged was from five to six, a period which by
Occidentals is spent ordinarily over tea, cocktails, or apéritifs, but
put by the Indians to good use. The men had left their offices by that
time; it was cooler and still they could get home for dinner.
Sir Vepa, handsome, dominant, erect in bearing, not at all appearing his
age, was chairman. Once my forty-minute talk was over, he called for
questions in his rich, clear voice. A man produced one I thought was
simple, but Sir Vepa eyed him severely, “That is not allowed!”
“I’ll ask it in a different way.” And he did so.
“I still say it is not allowed!”
“May I ask another?”
“Let me hear it.”
Sir Vepa heard it, and dismissed it. “That’s in the same
category—argument!”
The man jumped up and protested loudly. “Sit down!” roared Sir Vepa, and
the man sat as though he had been hit on the head.
Someone else, five or six seats off, brought up a new question, which
also seemed easy enough to answer. But again Sir Vepa ruled, “That does
not belong to the subject!”
The man wilted.
Now the first questioner was passing a paper over his shoulder to a
third Indian who shook his head violently; he declined to be mixed up in
it.
Query after query was disallowed. Finally a weak voice on the side asked
about the French birth rate. Sir Vepa turned on him and said, “You look
like an intelligent person, but if you have sat for forty minutes
listening to this address, and you have not understood it, then you are
not intelligent enough to warrant a lady’s coming ten thousand miles and
wasting her breath!”
The audience was laughing at Sir Vepa’s judicial sternness. I, on the
other hand, was rather depressed. As we were leaving I said to him, “I
wish you had let me reply to them.”
His expression held surprise: “I’ve been answering them and battling
with these same people for twenty-five years. They only come to confuse.
They are enemies of the cause and I give them no quarter!”
That settled the situation in Madras.
Since I was no more than an hour by motor from Adyar, the former home of
Annie Besant, who had been such an influence in the movement, I made a
pilgrimage there. As I walked down winding pathways under huge banyans,
cocoanuts, and bananas, ever and again glimpsing the lovely water of the
Bay in the distance, I imagined I caught an echo of her words reaching
across the decade since I had heard her explain the philosophy of
reincarnation: the more you have evolved here on earth, the less certain
it is that you will have to return to undo your mistakes—best clear them
up as you go along.
Annie Besant, as soon as she had become a Theosophist, had withdrawn her
books on population. I was interested to find out the attitude of
present Theosophists towards birth control, and discovered that those at
Adyar were persuaded of its importance. Among their beliefs was that
great souls did not reincarnate unless the bodies of parents, their
vehicles for birth, were perfect. If they were to perform their
missions, they must wait for purity in their physical vestures.
I had determined to take advantage of Paul Brunton’s offer and visit Sri
Ramana Maharshi, the sage of Arunachala, the quondam Hermit of the Hill
of the Holy Beacon, and one of the last of Hindustan’s race of noble
rishis. Consequently, one evening a little after six, the train came
around the bend and I beheld the sacred mountain, according to ancient
lore the heart center of the god Siva and, therefore, of the world. I
knew it must be _the_ mountain even without being told so. The sun had
just set, and the afterglow gave a lovely, serene effect.
The Maharshi’s secretary, Shastri, met me, and we walked through the
gathering dusk to the guest house about a half-mile away, a simple room
with veranda in front. Paul Brunton had not been able to come because it
was the Maharshi’s birthday and thousands of devotees had to be fed.
Shastri was very loquacious, and wanted me to realize that the apparent
success I was having was only with the educated classes; the masses knew
nothing of it. This, I said, would come in time.
After breakfast I looked out at the great tamarind trees on the lawn, up
and down which monkeys ran. Often twenty, from babies up to
grandparents, were in sight all at once. The windows had to be
barricaded at night to shut them out of your room; they especially loved
bananas but did not disdain cakes of soap.
While I was watching them scamper about, Paul Brunton pedaled up on a
bicycle accompanied by a tonga for me. The driver cried out continually,
“Haiee! Haiee!” which seemed to mean both for people to get out of the
road and for the white bullock to move faster; he shouted himself hoarse
at other drivers, who went higglety-pigglety this way and that through
the streets. We stopped at the market for a few bananas as a gift for
the Maharshi; he preferred food to flowers, because this he could give
away. Then we trotted along through the thickly settled village, always
hearing far and near the rumbling of the carts and the screeching of the
drivers, “Haiee! Haiee!”
At last we reached the _ashram_ at the bottom of the Hill. Shastri
gathered up the bananas in his hands, but no sooner had he turned to
help me out of the tonga than a temple monkey leaped from a neighboring
tree, snatched two of them, and as quick as a flash had the skins off
and had gobbled them down with no concern whatsoever as to the ethics of
his conduct. Instead, he peered around for another grab.
Shoes and sandals were left outside the _ashram_, and Shastri went ahead
to announce my arrival. I bowed in the entrance and took my place on the
floor just within, crossed my legs under my skirt, and looked about me
to feel and sense the atmosphere. The Maharshi, naked save for a loin
cloth, was sitting cross-legged on a silk-covered couch, pillows behind
him and a leopard skin thrown over the foot. A small charcoal fire and
incense, which attendants kept burning all day, sweetened and made heavy
the air. The Maharshi’s luminous eyes were fixed in a trance, although
sometimes his fan lifted a bit and his stare widened.
At first it was nicely quiet; then some women began to sing in a
high-pitched tone, much through the nose and head, doubtless good for
the pineal gland, once supposed to be the seat of the soul. The men
chanted aloud and someone played a stringed instrument.
Towards eleven the Maharshi shared his gifts among those who sat in
reflection, and shortly afterwards a man from Kashmir, six feet tall and
massively built, entered, prostrated himself as hundreds had done
already, falling full length, hands outspread above him on the floor,
touching his brow three times. As he rose again his whole body shook,
tears streamed down his cheeks. To see women cry from excess of emotion
did not bother me, but when a man of such a type as this, in no sense a
weakling, went into paroxysms of ecstasy, it was beyond my
comprehension. With no critical intent, but curious to know why he had
been so moved, we asked what had happened to him.
“When I came into the Maharshi’s presence it was as though electricity
had passed through my body. I felt when I bowed I would be calmed, yet
when I looked into those eyes, he was like a flame.”
This pilgrim had come with financial problems, illness in his family,
and other troubles, but two or three hours of contemplation had wiped
them out; he knew they were insignificant and trivial in contrast to his
regeneration. In faith, the people in the _ashram_ were comparable to
those who cast away their crutches at some miracle-working shrine,
except that they had come for inner illumination rather than healing for
bodily ailments. They visited the Maharshi to receive the radiance of
his soul, just as we sought the sun to be warmed.
Only when children or babies were made to prostrate themselves did the
Maharshi smile, somewhat skeptically it seemed to me. He appeared amused
when a boy of three or four began a prayer in Tamil but forgot the rest.
Otherwise he remained apart from it all. He was gradually withdrawing
himself and letting go material things. He wanted spiritually to fade
away, leaving the shell behind.
The second day the Maharshi slept; nothing save an occasional singer
broke into the hush, or a monkey had the temerity to dash in and seize
an orange.
For the third day I attended the _ashram_. Now the meditation was like a
linking up of mind and emotion, where even breathing was stilled. I
could understand why the yogis went into the silence. Even the noises
next door, the clatter of dishes, sounded remote and very far away. It
was a state of consciousness rather like that which precedes sleep.
I regretted that I did not feel the Maharshi’s power. His utter
indifference—sitting all day in a semi-trance, engaging in no
activity—seemed to me a waste. Nevertheless, I was most grateful to Paul
Brunton for the experience, and understood the Indians better
thereafter. They saw within and beyond the external appearance; this was
at the very basis of their character, akin to the sensitivity of the
grapevine telegraph. All people in the Orient spoke of it. Something
happened to you or to me and before you could get to another place by
the fastest conveyance it was known. Perhaps it was a primitive function
of mind, this form of thought transference, but it existed there.
Dr. Sundaram, who popped up again when I returned to Madras, was still
insistent that I go to Calicut, and I finally gave in. I was glad I had
done so, because this city of forty thousand, ringed around a bay on the
Malabar Coast and caressed by gentle breezes, was a beautiful spot with
forests of palms. The almost-black women wore saris of vari-colored
blues and greens, violets and yellows, with garlands of jasmine about
their necks, plump, formal bouquets of roses in their hands, and in the
center of every forehead was a circular red caste mark.
The meeting was held in the courtyard of a Buddhist temple. The sun was
setting and part of the shell-pink sky was melting into deep carmine,
like a flower. Directly in front sat three priests, each with shaved
head, orange robe, and thick stave. Hundreds of rooks were chattering
and other birds twittering in the trees, children were shouting at their
games, the shrill chant of pilgrims walking through the streets
saturated the dust-filled dusk. Mainly you heard the tinkling of the
bullocks going up and down the road. The audience sat in utter silence
surrounded by all these sounds.
Two days later we motored through the heavy woods to Mysore. Joseph,
still coughing until it racked his frame, had rejoined me. I took my
little drug shop and administered Vitamin A and D tablets, curing him
and achieving thereby a reputation. Other Indians began hunting up colds
and asthma and pains, and coming to me to give them some American
medicine, in which they had much faith.
Soon I was on the train to Bangalore, again as state guest. The Dewan of
Mysore, Sir Mirza Ismail, knew everybody in Europe, was well informed on
Western methods of health, and was full of ideas about public buildings,
roads, streets, industries, and the great dam which was to furnish
electricity for the state. He was the first person in India who inquired
after Katherine Mayo. I had been expecting to meet antagonism because of
_Mother India_, which I myself now considered misleading. Certainly the
conditions when I was there seemed vastly different from those she had
depicted only a few years earlier.
The British believed every word true, but most of the Indians I saw
looked upon Miss Mayo as having gone into their homes and then betrayed
their confidences. They claimed she was definitely prejudiced, and, like
the clever craftsman she was, had fixed her statistics. For example,
when she discussed the age of marriage, she made sweeping statements and
quoted on page so and so of such and such a report; you turned there and
they were correct, and that was the reason for the astounding acceptance
of her book. Nevertheless, she had violated the spirit, because two
pages further in the same report followed an explanation of, or
exception to, her conclusions.
Mirza Ismail, a Mohammedan, thought she had benefited Indians by shaking
them awake, and that the facts she had brought out, even if not true of
all the country, should be corrected; that India had to defend herself
was good for her.
After visiting Hyderabad, which was pleasant and social, and after
seeing this startling landscape in which the mountains seemed to have
been smashed by a giant maul into enormous pieces, I started towards
home. India was a land of dramatic contrasts—the highest mountains, the
hottest plains, the densest jungles, the most violent rains. The
loveliest architecture in the world was set against a background of
nauseating squalor. Wealth beyond calculation existed alongside poverty
that was living death, dazzling mental attainments beside an ignorance
utterly abysmal. I could not tell precisely what the results of the trip
had been; these rarely came immediately. And, if you had to hammer away
and hammer away for years in the United States, you had to do it ten
times over in India.
A terrific change in temperature froze me at Hong Kong; the poor huddled
around little fires in the streets. Dr. Arthur Woo, a Rockefeller
Foundation protégé, enthusiastic, full of energy, like magic procured
quarters for me in one of the crowded hotels on the top floor, quiet and
restful but, oh, how cold!
According to my schedule I was to remain twenty-four hours, into which
were to be crammed a lunch, a tea, a lecture, a Chinese supper, and a
public meeting. Then I decided to stay over a day for a medical
gathering. Ho Kum Tong, a wealthy Chinese, provided another luncheon in
his beautiful home.
In Hong Kong I heard rumors of a practical scholar in eugenics, in which
the Chinese were very much interested. He was said to have, in addition
to a wife, thirty concubines, by each of whom he had had three children.
One of the Negro offspring—tall, kinky-haired, and oblique-eyed—was a
most extraordinary-looking youth; he did not appear to belong anywhere.
The daughters were much larger of stature than the average Chinese; all
were educated and doing excellent work. Not only the features of the
cultured types on the Island, but even those of the coolies, the
longshoremen, struck me as growing less Oriental and more Anglo-Saxon,
the foreheads fuller, the eyes less slanting.
When I reached Japan I found that Westernization had leaped ahead. Tokyo
was not the same city I had seen in 1922—automobiles and wide-paved
streets, many bicycles, many men and small children in European dress.
Everywhere also was an atmosphere of tenseness on account of the
assassination of the cabinet members about ten days before. Telephone
communication in English was forbidden; people in Yokohama were unable
to get to Tokyo because all transportation was cut off. War seemed
inevitable. Baroness Ishimoto told me the activities of her organization
had been curtailed, but articles and discussion and the spreading of
knowledge had continued. The dissemination now was as it had been in
France—from house to house, family to family, by word of mouth instead
of under proper auspices.
At the end of a dismal voyage to Honolulu, I had hardly registered at
the hotel when I heard a feminine voice in my ear, “Are you Mrs.
Sanger?”
“Yes.”
Dr. Muriel Cass, as this welcoming committee turned out to be, knew that
I was recently out of a hospital, and disappeared for a few moments to
telephone for a doctor. When he arrived she said, “All we want of you is
to give Mrs. Sanger something to keep her going. She’s got eight
lectures to deliver.”
I felt like a poor old war horse being fed the last measure of oats. I
had a horrible memory of two weeks of fog and rain and cold at Memorial
Hospital in Hong Kong, and now here I was to die in Honolulu.
But Dr. Cass, an efficient, self-sacrificing manager, did the most
amazing things for me. She ordered the telephone operator to switch
every call to her. There I was, quite alone. Nobody could see me or even
talk to me; I must conserve my strength for the meetings. Repeatedly she
rushed me to and from halls, put me in cars, and trundled me off to bed.
Really I was better after each lecture than I had been before. When I
left Honolulu she herself was so worn out she had to take a vacation,
but I was nearly well.
The hospitality and luxuriance of this Pacific paradise were almost
indescribable. Hula-hulas at the hotels, bathing on the beaches,
outriggers swooping in, the native women in great flowered Mother
Hubbards twining leis, the songs they sang, the air of leisure and fun
and play, these made Honolulu a city apart. It was the sounding board of
the Orient, people going, people coming back, but all there to enjoy
themselves.
In Honolulu I repacked and, to save space, stuffed Grant’s tiger skin in
the trunk around my box of Darjeeling tea. When, four weeks later, I
ripped off the cover at Willow Lake, it was reeking with camphor. I
tried to aerate the leaves, dry them out, fumigate them with sunshine,
but it remained moth ball tea. One package I had given away before I
discovered the tragedy. Its receipt was ignored. No thank-you letter, no
mention of it. The other friends to whom I had planned to present this
choice gift had to go without.
I spent the summer at Willow Lake and in the winter, remembering Arizona
from the time I had been there with Stuart, went out again in response
to the summons of the desert. My husband and I found a house near Tucson
of adobe, trimmed in blue. The mountains, not distant or aloof or
towering over all, reached into the sky, but they were also somehow
intimate, cupping the town gently on all four sides.
You settled there in the Catalina foothills and felt such a part of the
whole. The first thing when you opened your eyes, before actual dawn,
you beheld the gold and purple and then the entire sky break into color.
In the evening the sunsets were reflected on the mountains in
pink-lavender shades; sometimes the glow sprayed from the bottom upward,
like the footlights of a theater, until the tips were aflame. Sunset
vanished as quickly as sunrise, never lingering long.
When the marvel of spring came to the desert, you saw the cactus and the
flowering, saw the brown floor change to delicate pale yellow, stood in
awe of nature daring to live without water. You were reminded of the
futility of wearing out your life merely providing food and raiment.
Like the challenge of death, which so many of the people there were
gallantly facing, the desert itself was a challenge.
_Chapter Thirty-nine_
SLOW GROWS THE SPLENDID PATTERN
“_There is no force in the world so great as that of an
idea when its hour has struck._”
VICTOR HUGO
Looking back at the past is like peering from some promontory upon a
varied landscape. The years run through it like a road winding through a
valley. With the passage of time you get a far-sweeping view, and the
small details become blurred and difficult to recall. I wonder whether
there should not be a school course to emphasize the importance of
keeping diaries, so that you would know the really momentous happenings
to put down. Mostly you scribble notes intended to call up a picture
rather than an actual account of what has happened—memoranda of dates,
engagements and events, leaving the results to recollection. Some
inequality in this chronicle as to what is significant and what is
not—some gaps in my remembrance of events—may have been the result.
It is strange what tricks the mind can play. My father, the person who
had done most in shaping my growth, died in 1926 at the age of eighty.
The day he was buried in Corning I was passing the bank on the corner of
the town square with my brothers Dick and Bob, and we chanced to glance
simultaneously at the clock tower. Faintly startled, we gazed at each
other and Dick exclaimed, “Look at that little tiny thing! I’ve always
thought it was as big as the Eiffel Tower!”
In all of our travels each of us had been convinced that nothing ever
was so tall as that tower. That can happen to so many youthful memories.
Months and miles that seemed so long then are so short later.
The same year that took my father summoned also my sister Mary, whose
cruel immolation at the shrine of family duty had obliged her to forego
marriage; even though I had seen her but seldom, she, too, had had an
important influence over me and remained a dear presence whose loss I
felt deeply. Out of eleven children seven are still living. Families
have a separate and distinct role in your existence. They are closer yet
more apart than friends, but often you discover that you have nothing
save the ties of childhood to keep you together.
What I have been able to contribute to the birth control movement has
been the result of forces which set a clear design almost from infancy,
each succeeding circumstance tracing the lines more sharply: my being
born into a family so large as to be in part responsible for my mother’s
premature death; my preparation as a nurse, which awoke me to the
sorrows of women; the inspiration of having come into contact with great
minds and having claimed many as friends. It may have been destiny as
some have said—I do not know.
To have helped carry the cause thus far has been at times strenuous, but
I have never considered it a sacrifice. Every conscious hour, night and
day, in any city, in any country, has brought its compensations. My life
has been joyous and exulting and full because it has touched profoundly
millions of other lives. It is ever a privilege to be a part of
something unquestionably proved of value, something so fundamentally
right.
From time to time wonder is expressed that so much has been accomplished
in so short a period. The fact remains that in an era when huge fortunes
have been spent in alleviating human misery progress has been painfully
slow. Countless women still die before their time because the bit of
knowledge essential to every life is still not theirs. Birth control
must seep down until it reaches the strata where the need is greatest;
until it has been democratized there can be no rest.
It is true that great advances have been made in the realm of theory.
You can almost tell people’s age now by their attitude towards birth
control. To the young it is merely one of the accepted facts; if
questioned, they assume the whole matter must have been settled long
ago.
Over and over again in the past a new epoch has adopted a concept
censured by the preceding one, and has wondered derisively how its
forefathers could have been so blind to anything so obvious. The use of
anesthetics for mothers in childbirth was once condemned as an unholy
attempt to escape the Biblical curse pronounced against all women, and,
similarly, evolution as striking at the roots of Christianity. Battles
over impiety, heresy, blasphemy, obscenity have been fought, temporarily
lost, and finally won. Science whittles away such obstructions little by
little. “The Moving Finger writes; and having writ moves on.” In
January, 1937, in that same Town Hall where fifteen years before I had
been forbidden to speak, and whence I had been haled into court, I was
honored with a medal. Pearl Buck said on one occasion, “The cause
conquers because youth is for you. I have lived in China so long, and
know what it is to wait until the old ones die and the young can do what
is necessary to be done.” I am glad both my sons are doctors with a
background of human interest to which has been added a scientific
quality of mind that can aid in pushing the horizon of service further
into the future.
I am often asked, “Aren’t you happy now that the struggle is over?” But
I cannot agree that it is. Though many disputed barricades have been
leaped, you can never sit back, smugly content, believing that victory
is forever yours; there is always the threat of its being snatched from
you. All freedom must be safeguarded and held. Jubilation is unwarranted
while the world is in warring turmoil, each political unit trying to
hold on to what it has—some threatening to take it away and others
looking covetously towards outlets in countries not yet completely
filled. The application of the movement to nations which should, in the
interests of peace, control their populations, must endure.
Before 1914 the world trend was towards unity and peace. But a typhoon
then caught us and turned us upside down. We began to whirl violently in
one direction—that of individual and national emancipation, until at
last the great wind blew crowns from the heads of Tsars and Kaisers,
sweeping power into the hands of the populace.
When that War had first burst upon a shocked world people everywhere
stood aghast and wept for the slaughter of men they did not know. But
after four years, in self-defense, they armored themselves against the
emotion which should be aroused by any cruelty, and became calloused and
hardened until the deaths of thousands left nations unmoved.
Then came the vortex, the center, of the storm, and we awaited
breathless the approach of the opposite edge. Everything had been lashed
down in readiness, the life lines had been strengthened. Finally, all we
had considered constant in rational thought, morals, ethics, started to
go with equal violence in the other direction towards dictatorship and
nationalism and race prejudice—a giving over of individual freedom. The
immediacy of the deaths of women in childbirth seemed so small in
comparison, of so little consequence; no longer were felt the pains of
problems which used to be of such deep concern.
Over and over again I hear, “How do you fit birth control into a world
in which dictators are clamoring for more and yet more people?” I can
only answer that momentum must now derive its power from some other
source than arousing sympathy. The present insensitivity is due to a
horror of hovering peril. Many will be swept away and destroyed but when
the battered hulls of the various ships of state emerge into calmer
seas, a lesson may have been learned, perhaps, whereby these vessels may
be made more seaworthy.
The Greeks, with their innate genius for dramatizing basic truths in
images of telling beauty, established of old the relay torch race, or
Lampadephoria, in honor of the Titan Prometheus, who had bestowed the
divine gift of fire upon humanity. The contest was held at night, the
great flambeaux being appropriately kindled at the altar of Eros.
Participation was not a distinction indiscriminately conferred; those
elect were fitted by discipline to hand on the vital flame, just as
parents need training before becoming eligible for their grave
responsibilities. The figures speeding around the course symbolize the
passing on of the spark of life from generation to generation. Each
runner must deliver his torch undimmed to his successor.
“Build thou beyond thyself,” said Nietzsche, and this the birth control
movement is doing. All peoples will in the future have greater regard
for the quality of the bodies and brains which must be equipped for the
task of building the future civilization; birth control will be the
cornerstone of that great structure.
INDEX
Abbott, Leonard, 74
Abortion, 89ff., 217, 285, 449, 450
Academy of Medicine, 181, 358, 404, 405, 410
Ackermann, Frances Brooks, 188, 260, 261, 392, 395, 417
Adams, Maude, 37, 38
Agra, 479
Albany, N.Y., 208, 292, 411
Aldred, Guy, 136, 274
Allahabad, 479
Allison, Van Kleek, 207, 211
American Birth Control League, 300, 359, 369, 392ff., 409, 415
American Civil Liberties Union, 309
American Federation of Labor, 78, 80, 421
American Medical Association, 416, 421, 430
American Public Health Association, 298
American Women’s Association, 413
Ankelsaria, Dr., 476ff.
Anti-Religious Museum, Leningrad, 440
Arizona, 459, 460, 491
Armory Exhibition, N.Y., 68
Ashley, Jessie, 71, 96, 100, 101, 207, 232, 234, 252, 264
Astor, Lady Nancy, 390, 391
Atlanta Ga., 413
Bamberger, Charles J., 176, 258
Barber, Billy, 434
Barber-Surgeons’ Hall, 462, 463
Barcelona, 154ff.
Baroda, 479ff.;
Maharani of, 480, 481
Barr, Sir James, 272
Bass, Mrs. Robert P., 459
Batum, 455
Bavaria, 287ff.
Bedborough Trial, 135
Bell, George H., Commissioner of Licenses, 252
Bellamy, Edward, 268
Bellows, George, 74
Belmont, Mrs. O. P., 381
Benares, 476, 478ff.
Bendix, Dr. Kurt, 389
Bennett, Arnold, 186, 371
Berger, Victor, 83
Berkman, Alexander, 71, 314
Berlin, 1920, 280ff.;
1927, 388
Besant, Annie, 127, 142, 172, 485
Bijur, Justice Nathan, 252
Bird, Mrs. Charles Sumner, 460
Birth Control, history of, 125–129;
morality of, 298, 301;
origin of name, 107, 108
_Birth Control Review_, 252ff., 393, 395
Bland, J. O. P., 299
Block, Anita, 76, 96, 180
Blossom, Frederick A., 198, 210, 251, 253ff.
Bocker, Dr. Dorothy, 358ff.
Bombay, 466ff.
Borah, Senator William E., 420, 422
Bose, Sir Jagardis Chandra, 475
Boston, Mass., 207
Boyce, Neith, 96
Boyd, Mary, 362
Boyle, Gertrude, 208, 296
Bradlaugh, Charles, 127, 142
Brattleboro, Vt., 368
Bratton, Senator Sam. G., 420
Brevoort Hotel dinner, 187ff.
British Museum, 124f., 130, 142
_Brooklyn Eagle_, 221
Brooklyn, Raymond Street Jail, 221ff.
Broun, Heywood, 263, 293, 373
Browne, F. W. Stella, 129
Brownsville, clinic, 213ff.;
mothers, 231, 244, 414
Brunton, Paul, 462, 486
Brush, Charles, 417
Bryan, William Jennings, 39
Buck, Pearl, 495
Buckmaster, Lord, 370f., 398
Buckner, Emory R., 313ff.
Bullitt, Ambassador William G, 443ff.
Bundesen, Dr. Herman, 361
Bureau of Social Hygiene, 78
Burns Detective Agency, 406
Byrne, Mrs. Ethel, 95, 186f., 208, 216, 224–234
Byrne, Jack, 42
Cairo, Egypt, 352ff.
Calcutta, 471ff.
Calicut, 488f.
_Call_, New York, 74, 76ff., 109
Cap d’Ail, 380
Caraway, Senator Hattie, 422
Carlile, Richard, 114
Carpenter, Alice, 187
Carpenter, Mrs. Benjamin, 361
Carpenter, Edward, 121, 130f., 139, 186
Carr-Saunders, Sir A. M., 379
Cass, Dr. Muriel, 491
Catalans, 162ff.
Catholics, 19ff., 218, 294, 303ff., 411ff.
Catholic Welfare Conference, 415
Caucasus, 454ff.
Chance, Clinton, 359, 379
Chautauqua, 34, 39
Chicago Conference, 361
Chicago, speaking experience in, 196
Clapp, Elsie, 118
Claverack College and Hudson River Institute, 35ff.
Clayton, Judge, 186, 189
Clinic, anecdotes, 399ff.;
Brownsville, 213ff., 310;
Dutch, 143ff., 290;
English, 296;
Massachusetts, 211;
New York, 211, 298, 358, 398–407;
origin of term, 143;
plans to establish, 190f.;
Rutgers system, 146
Clinical Research Bureau, 360, 398
Clyde, Mrs. Ethel, 433, 437, 444, 455
Coghlan, Father, of Corning, 20, 21
Colgate University, 365f.
Columbia Colony, 61, 268
Committee of One Hundred, 229, 231, 300
Communism, Bavaria, 288ff.;
Russia, 436ff.
Comstock, Anthony, 77, 176
Comstock Law, 77, 111, 130, 182, 414, 427
_Confédération Générale de Travail_, 101
Conference, Chicago, 361;
First National Birth Control, 298ff.;
Fifth International, 337, 354;
Los Angeles, 416;
Regional, 416;
Sixth International Malthusian and Birth Control, 369ff.;
World Population Conference, Geneva, 376–388;
Zurich, 408ff.
Connecticut, birth control legislation, 293f.
Content, Assistant District Attorney Harold A., 115, 120, 180ff., 189
Contraception, 104, 143, 290, 363f., 407ff.
Cooper, John M., Ph.D., 415
Copeland, Senator Royal S., 427
Cornell Medical School, 433
Corning, N.Y., 11, 19, 24, 27f., 43, 493
Corrigan, Magistrate Joseph E., 306
Coughlin, Father Charles E., 425
Courtney, Lieutenant Joseph, 313
Cousins, Margaret, 461
Cox, Harold, 172, 272, 296, 299, 303f.
Crane, Judge Frederick E., 292, 296
Crew, Dr. A. F., 380
Cummings, Attorney General, 428
Darjeeling, India, 475
Darrow, Clarence, 185
Dave, Victor, 100f.
Davenport, C. B., 374
Dawson, Baron, of Penn, 294f., 370f., 411
Day, Mrs. George H., Sr., 293, 396, 415
Debs, Eugene V., 69f., 351
Delafield, Mrs. Lewis L., 230, 304, 396
Dennett, Mary Ware, 180f., 189, 414, 416
Denver, Colo., 201
de Silver, Albert, 309
Detroit, 366
de Vilbiss, Dr. Lydia Allen, 298, 358
Dick, Mrs. Alexander C., 417
Dickinson, Dr. Robert L., 404f., 407, 430
Di Gregorio, John, 81
Dineen, Monsignor Joseph P., 304ff.
Dodge, Mabel, 72ff.
Dolphin, Martin W., 312ff.
Donohue, Captain Thomas, 304ff.
Drummond, Sir Eric, 379, 386
Drysdale, Bessie, 128, 290, 296
Drysdale, Dr. Charles R., 128, 143
Drysdale, Dr. C. V., 128ff., 178, 290, 296, 373
Drysdale, Dr. George, 128
Dunlop, Dr. Binnie, 129, 170
Durant, Ida Kaufman, 75
Durant, Will, 75, 434
Dutch Neo-Malthusian League, 143ff.
East, Professor E. M., 364, 387
Eastman, Crystal, 108
Eastman, Max, 182, 185
Eddy, Sherwood, 435, 448
Egypt, 352ff.
Ellis, Edith, 137ff., 176
Ellis, Havelock, 75, 94, 133–141, 166, 276ff., 286, 370
England, 1914, 122ff.;
1915, 169ff., 268ff.;
1922, 354f;
1924, 370ff.;
1927, 379, 381;
1936, 462ff.
Enright, Police Commissioner, 302
Equi, Dr. Marie, 205f.
Erie Railroad, 25
Ernst, Morris, 404, 406ff., 427
Esther, 36, 45
Ettor, Joe, 80, 83
Eugenics, 374f., 415
Fabian Hall address, 170
Fabian Society, Liverpool, 122
Fairchild, Professor Henry Pratt, 387, 420
_Family Limitation_, 112, 117, 119f., 121, 176, 182, 184f., 206, 232,
253, 262, 321, 342
Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, 411
Federal Legislation, 414–428
Feminists, 187
Ferch, Johann and Betty, 373f.
Feridoonji, Mrs. Rustomji, 481ff.
Ferrer, Francisco, 74, 123, 162f.
Ferrer School, 74
Fischer, Louis, 448
Fishbein, Dr. Morris, 417
Fishkill, 357
Fitzgerald, Adelaide, 54
Fitzpatrick, George, 68
Flack, Principal of Claverack, 39
Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley, 72, 79
Flynn, Tom, 79
France, 99ff., 153
Freschi, Judge John J., 229
Frick, Henry Clay, 72
Friedrichshaven, 289f.
Frohman, Charles, 36f.
_Fruits of Philosophy_, 126f.
Fuller, Orson, phrenologist, 19
Gaekwar of Baroda, 480ff.
Galdós, Pérez, 164
Gandhi, 462, 465, 467ff., 481
Garth, Dr. William H., 396
Gartz, Kate Crane, 214
Gassaway, Percy, 427
General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 430
Geneva, Switzerland, 378ff.
Genss, Dr. Abram B., 450
George, Henry, 17f., 204, 268
Germany, 253f., 377, 388
Gillett, Senator Frederick Huntington, 419, 422
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 108
Gini, Corrado, 385
Giovanitti, Arturo, 80, 83
Giovanitti, Carrie, 81
Glasgow, Scotland, 96ff., 274ff.
_Globe_, New York, 74, 90
Goff, Judge John W., 314f.
Goldman, Emma, 72, 203, 207, 314
Goldstein, Dr. Ferdinand, 373
Goldstein, J. J., 224–238, 258, 305
Goldstein, Rabbi Sidney, 420
Gompers, Samuel, 78, 83
Grotjahn, Dr. Alfred, 388
Guy, Harry, 463
Hague, Netherlands, 145
Haire, Dr. Norman, 290
Hall, Bolton, 207, 234
Halton, Dr. Mary, 188, 212f., 266, 296f.
Hancock, Representative Frank, 423
Hand, Judge Augustus, 427
Hand, Judge Learned, 427
Hanihara, Masanao, 318
Hapgood, Hutchins, 74, 96
Harman, Moses, 374
Harris, Dr. Louis T., 407
_Harum, David_, 44
Hastings, Senator Daniel O., 426f.
Hastings-on-Hudson, 61ff., 96
Hatfield, Senator Henry D., 423, 426
Hatting, Magistrate Peter A., 311
Hawthorne, Charles, 96
Hayes, Archbishop Patrick J., 299, 306ff.
Haynes, E. P. C., 172
Haywood, William (Big Bill), 70, 75, 80, 84, 96, 100f., 104, 264
Hazel, Judge, 115, 118, 120, 180
Healey, Representative Arthur D., 424
Health Day, Moscow, 444
Henri, Robert, 74
Hepburn, Mrs. Thomas, 188, 293, 395, 417
Herrmann, Justice Moses, 229
Higgins, Anne Purcell, 11, 16, 27, 41
Higgins, Bob, 493
Higgins, Dick, 493
Higgins, Ethel, 22, 26, 42ff.;
_see_ Byrne
Higgins, Henry George McGlynn, 29ff.
Higgins, Joe, 27
Higgins, Mary, 14f., 34, 63, 494
Higgins, Michael Hennessey, 12ff., 27ff., 41ff., 114, 208, 265, 493
Higgins, Nan, 34f., 59, 63, 265
Himes, Professor Norman, 365f.
Hindus, Maurice, 434
Hirschfeld, Dr. Magnus, 286f.
Hirshfield, David F., 313
Hogan, Assistant District Attorney, 406
Holden, Dr. Frederick C., 407
Holland, _see_ Netherlands
Holland-Rantos Co., 364, 396
Holmes, John Haynes, 253
Holt, Dr. Emmett, 297f.
Hong Kong, 348ff., 490
Honolulu, 318f., 491
Horder, Baron Thomas, 463
Houghton family of Corning, 28;
_see_ Hepburn
How-Martyn, Edith, 170, 379, 382, 386, 409, 465
Howe, Marie, 108
Hu-Shih, Dr., 340, 342, 347
Hull House, 196
Huxley, Julian, 379
Hyderabad, 489
Hylan, Mayor, 312f.
Ibsen, 435
India, 351, 461–490
Indianapolis, 199
Industrial Workers of the World, 69, 80, 102, 204f., 265, 447
Inge, Dean, 273, 377f.
Ingersoll, Colonel Robert G., 20f.
Institute for Experimental Medicine, Russia, 441
Institute for Protection of Motherhood and Children, Russia, 441, 450
Institute of Politics, Williamstown, 377
International Information Center, 461
Ireland, 277ff.
Ishimoto, Baron Keikichi, 296, 319
Ishimoto, Baroness Shidzué, 296, 319f., 322f., 491
Ismail Mirza, 489
Israel, Rabbi Edward L., 424
Italy, overpopulation, 377
Jacobs, Dr. Aletta, 142, 148, 374, 408
Jacoby, Dr. Abraham, 181, 188
Japan, 295f., 317–336, 346, 377, 490
Jaurès, Jean, 101, 143
Jensen, Fru Thit, 373
Johnson, Alvin, 384
Johnson, Professor Roswell H., 420
Junior League, 420
Kahn, Dr. Morris H., 226
Kaizo, 296, 316, 320, 325, 327
Kalimpong, 474
Kaminsky, Dr., 448ff.
Kato, Baron Admiral, 318
Kaufman, Viola, 416, 428f.
Kavanoky, Dr. Nadina, 437
Kennedy, Anne, 261, 292, 301, 303, 305, 396, 415
Kennedy, Dr. Foster, 407
Key, Ellen, 111, 389, 435
Keynes, John Maynard, 354f., 376
Killarney, 277
Kingsbury, John A., 414, 434
Knights of Labor, 20
Knoblauch, Mary, 252, 260, 351
Knopf, Dr. S. Adolphus, 364
Knowlton, Dr. Charles, 126
Knox, Assistant District Attorney, 189
Kollwitz, Käthe, 284
Komroff, Manuel, 74
Korea, 327f.
Krishnavarma, Shyamaji, 102
Ku Klux Klan, 366f.
Kyoto, 334ff.
Lahey, Chief Inspector, 309
Lapouge, Dr. G. O., 372
Larkin, Jim, 351
Latz Foundation, 412
Lawrence textile workers’ strike, 80ff.
League of Nations, 378f., 383
Lebedova, Dr., 450
Lectures, Albany, 208;
Boston, 207;
Brattleboro, Vt, 367h;
Calcutta, 472;
Calicut, 488;
Chicago, 197;
Colgate University, 365f.;
Denver, 201;
Detroit, 366;
Glasgow, 274ff.;
Indianapolis, 199;
Ku Klux Klan, 366f;
Los Angeles, 203;
Madras, 484;
Minneapolis, 198;
Pittsburgh, 196;
Portland, Ore., 204;
St. Louis, 198;
San Francisco, 203;
subject matter, 193ff.;
Tokyo, 327;
Women’s Co-operative Guild, London, 274
Lehr, Representative John C., 424
Lewis, Burdette G., 228
Liebknecht, Karl, 284
Lifshiz, Anna, 210f., 258, 259, 428
Lippmann, Walter, 74, 188, 199
Little, Clarence C., 374, 378, 386
Livadia, 456
Liverpool, 1914, 122ff.
London, 124, 268;
_see_ England
Lopokouva, Lydia, 355
Los Angeles, 203
_Lusitania_, 176
Luxemburg, Rosa, 112, 284
McAdoo, Chief Magistrate, 403, 405
McCann, Warden Joseph, 240, 245
McCarran, Senator Pat, 426f.
McCormick, Mrs. Stanley, 383
MacFadden, Bernarr, 145
McGraw, Mrs. William, Sr., 366
McInerney, Justice, 177, 226
McNamara, Patrolwoman Anna, 403, 406
Madras, 484ff.
Maharani, _see_ Baroda and Travancore
Maharshi, Sri Ramana, 462, 485ff.
Mallet, Sir Bernard, 379, 385f.
Malthus, Thomas Robert, 94, 125, 433
Malthusian League, 127;
_see_ Neo-Malthusian
Malthusianism, 387, 449
Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital, 55
Marion, Kitty, 256ff.
_Married Love_, 171f.;
_see_ Marie Stopes
Marsh, Robert McC., 304, 312
Martin, Anne, 273
Martin, Mrs. Marjorie, 382
Marx, Karl, 68, 275, 439f.
Maternal Health Committee, 410
Mayo, Katherine, 461, 489
Megaw, Sir John, 464
Mehta, Mrs. Soudamini, 472
Mencken, H. L., 416
Mensinga, 143, 408
Methodists, 35f., 38, 421
Mill, John Stuart, 125
Millard, Dr. C. Killick, 273
Milwaukee, 411
Mindell, Fania, 197, 214ff., 230, 258
Minor, Robert, 200
Mischkind, Rabbi, 410
Missionaries in China, 344
Moffatt, Mrs. Douglas, 420
Moley, Professor Raymond, 307
Montserrat, 162
Moore, Mrs. Hazel, 417f.
Morgan, Anne, 414
Morrow, Dr. Prince, 78
Moscow, 439, 443ff.
Moscowitz, Judge Grover, 427
_Motherhood in Bondage_, 362
_Mother India_, 489
Moyston, Guy, 364
Mühsam, Erich, 288
Mundell, Dr. Joseph J., 424f.
Murphy, Patrolman Thomas J., 311ff.
Mussolini, 377
Mysore, 489
Naidu, Mrs. Sarojini, 466
National Birth Control League, 108, 180, 189, 196, 414
National Catholic Welfare Conference, 423
National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control, 417
National Council of Jewish Women, 429
Nehru, Jawaharlal, 462, 479
Neo-Malthusian League, 124, 128, 169, 272, 290
Neo-Malthusian movement, 103, 107, 146ff., 169, 285, 290
Netherlands, 142–149
New Jersey, legislation, 294
New York County Medical Society, 405
New York Society for Suppression of Vice, 77, 176, 258
New York State Birth Control League, 211
New York State law, 211, 224, 292
New York Women’s Publishing Company, 260
Norris, Senator, 419
Norton, Hon. Mary T., 420
Nursing training and experience, 46–57, 86–92
O’Brien, Joseph, 96
Odling, Mrs. Norman, 473ff.
O’Keefe, Judge George J., 229
O’Ryan, Major General John J., 295
Osborne, Thomas Mott, 198, 242
O’Shea, William, 392
Owen, Robert, 126
Owen, Stanley, _see_ Lord Buckmaster
Pandit, Ranjit Sitaram, 479
Pankhurst, Emmeline, 112, 256, 293
Pankhurst, Sylvia, 276
Parents’ Exhibition, 392
Paris, 99, 153
Park Avenue subway explosion, 57
Parker, Robert Allerton, 252
Parsons, Elsie Clews, 189
Paterson silk strike, 84
Pearl, Dr. Raymond, 364, 386
Peddie Institute, 431f.
Peking, 339ff.
Peking National University, 340
Peking Union Medical College, 342
Pepper, 359
Pessary, 143, 427
Peterson, Dr. Frederick, 297
Philips, Anna Jane, 462ff.
Philips, Mrs. John, 461
_Physical Culture_, 145, 152
_Pictorial Review_, 180
Pierce, Representative Walter M., 424
Pillay, Dr. A. P., 465
Pinchot, Amos, 192, 233
Pinchot, Mrs. Amos (Minturn), 229, 232f., 410
Pissoort, Dr. Elizabeth, 403
Pittsburgh, Pa., first state league, 196
_Pivot of Civilization_, 299
Place, Francis, 126, 294
Pollock, Simon H., 118
Pope, 411ff.
Population, Chinese, 347f.;
conference at Geneva, 376–387;
historical resume, 125ff.;
Japanese, 298, 326;
Russian, 450;
United States, 376;
world, 376ff.
Porter, Noel, 274
Portet, Lorenzo, 123, 153ff.
Portland, Ore., 204
Post Office, New York, 110, 261
Potter, Rev. Charles Francis, 420
Prison experiences, 221ff., 240–250
Prostitution, Chinese, 345f.
Protestant Episcopal Church, 410
Provincetown, Mass., 95ff., 264
Putnam, Major General G. P., 172, 377
Queens County Penitentiary, 240–250
Rabbis, Central Conference of, 411
Rai, Lajpat, 351
Raid, Brownsville, 310;
Fifteenth Street Clinic, 402ff.
Ramasan, Sir Vepa, 484f.
Rappard, Williams, 378
Raugh, Mrs. Enoch, 196
Rauh, Ida, 207, 234
Raymond Street Jail, 221ff.
Reed, John, 70, 84, 182, 264
Reedy, William Marion, 199f.
Reid, Mrs. Ogden, 306
Reiland, Dr. Karl, 307, 405
Reitman, Ben, 207
Reynal, Eugene Sugney, 54
_Rhythm of Sterility and Fertility in Women_, 412, 425
Ridge, Lola, 74
Riese, Dr. Herthe, 389
Riviera, 380ff.
Roberts, Walter A., 252
Robertson-Jones, Mrs. F., 384, 395
Robinson, Dr. William J., 171, 181, 207
Rockefeller, John D., Jr., 78, 315
Rocker, Rudolph and Milly, 280ff.
Rodman, Henrietta, 108, 187f.
Roman Catholic, _see_ Catholic
Roosevelt, Theodore, 201
Rose, Florence, 433, 444f.
Rosenbluth, Magistrate, 404ff.
Ross, Edward Alsworth, 94, 364, 434
Ruben-Wolf, Dr. Marthe, 388, 449
Rublee, Juliet Barrett, 300ff., 310ff., 395
Russell, Chief Justice Richard B., 413
Russell, Lillian, 37
Russia, 290, 433–459
Rutgers, Dr. Hoitsema, 143ff., 290, 408
Ryan, Monsignor John A., 415, 423
Sacco-Vanzetti, 384
Sachs case, 89ff.
St. Moritz, 390
San Francisco, 203
Sanger, Grant, 65f., 76, 95, 97, 99, 116, 266f., 316ff., 332, 340, 350,
352ff., 431ff., 437, 443f., 459, 475, 491
Sanger, Margaret, Arizona, 459f., 491;
Brownsville clinic, 213–223;
Cape Cod, 94ff.;
childhood, 24ff.;
China, 337–348;
Columbia Colony, 61;
dramatic aspirations, 37;
Egypt, 352ff;
England, 1914, 121ff.;
1915, 169ff.;
1920, 268;
1924, 370ff.;
1936, 462ff.;
father, _see_ Michael Hennessey Higgins;
Federal indictment, 114–120, 180–190;
Fourteenth Street apartment, 208, 266;
France, 100–105;
Geneva, 376–388;
Germany, 1920, 280–290;
1927, 388ff.;
Glasgow, 1913, 96ff.;
1920, 273f.;
home, Corning, 12;
Hastings, 61ff.;
Tucson, 459f., 491;
Willow Lake, 357;
Hong Kong, 349f., 490;
India, 461–490;
Japan, 316–336;
Korea, 337f;
lecture tour, 1916, 192–208;
Liverpool, 122ff.;
marriage to William Sanger, 58ff.;
marriage to J. N. H. Slee, 355ff.;
mother, _see_ Anne Purcell Higgins;
Netherlands, 142–149;
nurse, 46–57, 86–92;
Post Avenue apartment, 107;
prison term, 238–250;
Provincetown, Mass., 95ff.;
radicals, 68–85;
religious training, 21;
Russia, 433–459;
Sachs case, 89–92;
St. Moritz, 389;
St. Nicholas Avenue apartment, 59;
Saranac, 58ff.;
school, 27f., 33ff.;
Scotland, 1913, 96ff.;
1920, 273–276;
sisters, _see_ Mary and Nan Higgins and Ethel Byrne;
Socialism, 75ff.;
Spain, 153–168;
Switzerland, 299, 376–391, 408ff.;
teacher, 40f.;
Town Hall raid, 301–315;
trial for Brownsville clinic, 224–238;
Truro, 264;
tuberculosis, 58;
_Woman Rebel_, 106–120;
World Population Conference, 376–388;
Yonkers, 60;
Zurich, 408ff.
Sanger, Peggy, 65, 95, 97, 99, 103, 116, 175, 181f.
Sanger, Stuart, 59, 61, 63ff., 66, 75, 95, 97, 100, 116, 316, 402, 404,
431ff., 459, 492
Sanger, William, 56, 58, 60ff., 66, 68, 76, 104, 136, 176ff., 258
Sangster, Margaret E., 264
Sara, Henry, 136, 173
Saranac, N.Y., 58
Schmid, Dr. Julius, 54, 59
Schmid, Julius, manufacturer, 364
Schreiner, Olive, 11, 138ff.
Schroeder, Theodore, 112
Scotland, 96ff., 274ff.
Selincourt, Hugh de, 172f.
Seoul, 338
Shanghai, 343ff.
Shatoff, Bill, 117
Shaw, Bernard, 138, 371f., 411
Siegfried, André, 380
Silecchia, Vito, 250, 423
Simkhovitch, Mary, 225
Simonds, Herbert, 364
Sinclair, Upton, 69, 457
Singapore, 350ff.
Skidmore, Consul General at Tokyo, 320f.
Slee, J. Noah H., 355ff., 379
Smedley, Agnes, 252, 253, 351, 388, 456
Social agencies, criticism, 196f.
Socialism, 23, 68ff., 75f., 96, 109
Spain, 153–168
Spargo, John, 68
Spinney, Mabel, 260
Spinney, William, 245
Spermatoxin, 442
Stalin, 437, 439, 446
Stalingrad, 452
Steffens, Lincoln, 68
Stillman, Clara, 180
Stoddard, Lothrop, 302
Stokes, J. G. Phelps, 73
Stokes, Rose Pastor, 74, 188
Stone, Dr. Abraham, 434
Stone, Dr. Hannah M., 360, 363, 374, 399, 403f., 434
Stopes, Marie, 171, 186, 272
Strike, laundry workers, 78;
Lawrence textile workers, 80;
Paterson silk workers, 83
Stritt, Frau Maria, 112, 285
Strunsky, Anna, 74
Stuart, Amelia, 36, 54, 208
Sullivan, matron at penitentiary, 240, 244
Sullivan, Mrs. Mary, 403f., 406, 408
Summers, Hatton W., 424
_Sun_, New York, 110, 186
Sundaram, Dr. Manjeri, 485, 488
Swan, Judge Thomas, 427
Swazey, George, 258, 259
Switzerland, 299, 376–391, 408ff.
Syndicalism, 101f.
Syracuse, 411
Tagore, Rabindranath, 471f.
Taj Mahal, 479
Tarver, Representative Malcolm C., 424
Thomas, Albert, 379
Tiflis, 454ff.
Tilton, Dr. Benjamin, 396
_Times_, New York, 305f.
Timme, Mrs. Walter, 395, 417
Todd, Helen, 232, 258, 259
Tokyo, 322ff.
Toss, Irish setter, 15f.
Town Hall episode, 301ff., 306, 495
Trautman, William E., 80
Travancore, Maharani of, 481ff.
Tresca, Carlo, 80, 314
Trial, Ethel Byrne, 226ff.;
Fania Mindell, 230;
Margaret Sanger, 230ff.
_Tribune_, New York, 191, 306
Trivandrum, 481ff.
Trudeau, Dr., tuberculosis specialist, 58f.
Truro, Mass., 26ff.
Tucson, 460, 491
Ullrich, Dr. Mabel, 198
Untermyer, Samuel, 183ff.
Vanderlip, Frank, 295
Vandeveer, Mrs. J. B., 419
Vickery, Dr. Alice, 128, 169f., 172, 178, 273
Volga trip, 451ff.
Voluntary Parenthood League, 414f.
Vorse, Mary Heaton, 96, 188, 264
Wald, Lillian, 225
Wales, 123
Walling, William English, 74
Walton, Sidney, 464
Walworth Center, 296
Webster Hall, 82
Welch, Dr. William, 385
Wells, Catherine (Jane), 270ff.
Wells, H. G., 186, 268ff, 299, 316, 370, 380, 440
Westminster School, 432
_What Every Girl Should Know_, 77, 216, 219, 224, 230, 256
_What Every Mother Should Know_, 77
Whelan, Grover A., 405
Whitehurst, Margaret, 220, 310
White Plains Hospital, 45–57
White, Stanford, 56
Whitman, Governor Charles S., 232, 233, 255
Willett, Howard, 54
Williams, Dr. John Whitridge, 420
Williams, Dr. Linsley, 405
Williams, William E., 256
Willson, Dr. Prentiss, 425, 430
Wilson, Assistant District Attorney, 312
Wilson, Dr. C. I., 421
Wilson, President Woodrow, 186, 268
Winsor, Mary, 303f., 306, 313
Witcop, Rose, 136, 173, 280
Wobblies, _see_ I.W.W.
_Woman and the New Race_, 266, 299, 362
_Woman Rebel_, 106–120, 170, 173, 184, 252
Woman suffrage, 17, 38, 190
Women’s Co-operative Guild, England, 273
Woo, Dr. Arthur, 490
Wood, C. E. S., 204
Woodward, Dr. William C., 417
Workhouse, Blackwell’s Island, 228, 240
_World_, New York, 227, 229, 299, 306, 384
World War, 131f., 143f., 148ff., 253f.
Yalta, 456
Yarros, Dr. Rachelle, 361
Yoshiwara, Tokyo, 332, 333
Zurich Conference, 408ff.
[Illustration]
_Books That Live_
The Norton imprint on a book means that in the publisher’s
estimation it is a book not for a single season but for the years.
W·W·NORTON & CO·INC.
70 FIFTH AVENUE
NEW YORK
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Changed “going to forbidden” to “going to forbidden” on p. 39.
2. Changed “to very life” to “to every life” on p. 494.
3. Changed “char-à-banc” to “char-à-bancs” on p. 458.
4. Silently corrected typographical errors.
5. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
6. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Margaret Sanger; an autobiography." ***
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