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.