CHAPTER I

THE TWO FIRST FEDERAL EFFORTS

_The big repeal petition of 1876 started by National Liberal League: Comstock’s obscenity exhibit wins again: Sanger arrests crystallize growing movement for repeal of law: National Birth Control League founded March, 1915, first organization of the sort in the United States: Repeal bills drafted: Petitions circulated: Noted English sympathizers help._

Three years after Congress enacted the Comstock bill, thousands of citizens started a petition for its repeal. The number has been variously estimated at from 40,000 to 70,000. Comstock credits it with the latter figure in his book, “Frauds Exposed.” The petition was initiated and the signatures collected by the National Liberal League. There was much publicity concerning it, and mass meetings were held in various cities. It was presented to Congress, early in 1878 by a Committee of Seven, consisting of Robert G. Ingersoll of Illinois, Chairman, Charles Case of Indiana, Darius Lyman of Ohio, J. C. Smith of Massachusetts, Jonathan B. Wolff of New York City, W. W. Jackson of Washington, D. C. and J. Weed Corey of Penn Yan, N. Y., Secretary.

The petition was a comprehensive protest against the whole spirit and content of the Comstock laws, as un-American, unjust and unwise. Section 4 of the Petition read in part as follows: “Your petitioners further show that they are convinced that all attempts of civil government whether State or National, to enforce or favor particular religious, social, moral or medical opinions, or schools of thought or practice, are not only unconstitutional but ill-advised, contrary to the spirit and progress of our age, and almost certain in the end to defeat any beneficial objects intended.

“That mental, moral and physical health and safety are better secured and preserved by virtue resting upon liberty and knowledge, than upon ignorance enforced by governmental supervision.

“That even error may be safely let free, where truth is free to combat it. That the greatest danger to a republic is the insidious repression of the liberties of the people.

“That wherever publications, pictures, articles, acts or exhibitions directly tending to produce crime or pauperism are wantonly exposed to the public, or obtruded upon the individual, the several States and territories have provided, or may be safely left to provide, suitable remedies.

“Wherefore your petitioners pray that the statutes aforesaid may be repealed or materially modified, so that they cannot be used to abridge the freedom of the press or of conscience.”

The petitioners asked Congress for action on the petition, and the Committee of Seven requested a Hearing on it. After more or less prodding, the House Committee on the Revision of Laws, granted a Hearing. Comstock’s characteristic version of the insistence by the Committee of Seven on being heard, was: “After six weeks of plotting and scheming they at last secured a hearing.”

Comstock and Samuel Colgate, one of the earlier officials of the Society for the Suppression of Vice were the only ones appearing against the petition. Comstock described the event in his book “Traps for the Young,” and says that the House Committee reported its belief that the “statutes in question do not violate the Constitution, and ought not to be changed.” He also wrote of it in his letter of April 28, 1915, to Mrs. Clara Gruening Stillman, Secretary of the National Birth Control League, from which quotation was made in Chapter Two of