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.