Part 33

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