Part 22

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.”