evening service. I had not been very well in the afternoon, but I
promised over the telephone to be there if I could. I was late and the
meeting had already begun. As I slipped in at the rear I heard the
chairman refer to me as a Joan of Arc. Entirely too many Joans of Arc
were floating about in those days. Not wishing to be a disappointment I
turned right around and walked back to the hotel. Since no one had ever
seen me, both my entrance and exit went unremarked.
I admired robust, vital women; they appeared so efficient, and I
regretted the fact that I did not give the same impression. I felt that
way, but could not help resembling, as someone phrased it, “a hungry
flower drooping in the rain.” If I were in a room with ten people and
somebody came in who expected me to be present, she invariably
approached the biggest woman and addressed her, “How do you do, Mrs.
Sanger?” For a brief while I tried to make myself seem more
competent-looking by wearing severe suits, but this phase did not last;
for one thing, effective simplicity cost money and I did not have enough
to be really well-tailored. However, the anonymity due to my appearance
was, on the whole, fortunate. I was always able to go along any street,
into any restaurant or shop, and seldom be identified, and this made it
possible for me to maintain a relatively private life.
A dinner was given at Portland; the chairman, who had seen Susan B.
Anthony and many other women with causes come and go, made a short
speech of introduction. I rarely remember what people say on such
occasions, but one of her statements has remained in my mind. “I would
like to see Margaret Sanger again after ten years. Most movements either
break you or develop the ‘public figure’ type of face which has become
hard and set through long and furious battling. But her cause is
different from any other I have ever known. I should like to see how she
comes out of it.”
I have thought of this many times—how, if the cause is not great enough
to lift you outside yourself, you can be driven to the point of
bitterness by public apathy and, within your own circle, by the petty
prides and jealousies of little egos which clamor for attention and
approbation.
One of the first persons I met in the city was Dr. Marie Equi, of
Italian ancestry and Latin fire. Definitely, she was an individualist
and a rugged one. Her strong, large body could stand miles and miles on
horseback night or day. She had been brought up in the pioneer era when
medical work was genuine service. If cowboys or Indians were in fights,
difficulties, jail, Dr. Equi was always on hand to speak a good word for
them.
It was in Portland that I realized _Family Limitation_, which had been
crudely and hurriedly written in 1914, needed revising. The working
women to whom it was addressed needed the facts. It had served its
purpose in its unpolished state, but the time had now come to reach the
middle classes, for whom it required a slightly more professional tone.
Dr. Equi gave me genuine assistance in this matter.
The wider the distribution of the pamphlet, the happier I was. Since it
had not been copyrighted, anybody who wanted to could reprint as many as
he wished, and I.W.W. lumberjacks, for example, transients without
families who moved to California for the crop harvesting in the summer,
often thus provided themselves with a little extra money as they
journeyed from place to place. When they unrolled the blankets draped
over their shoulders out dropped a half-dozen or so pamphlets.
An automobile mechanic of Portland had made one of these reprints and
asked me whether he could sell it at my next meeting. I myself had never
distributed _Family Limitation_ publicly, but if any local people wanted
to do so, I had no objection. Accordingly the mechanic and two of his
friends sold copies and were arrested. Their trial was postponed so that
I could deliver my proposed lectures in Seattle and Spokane.
When these were over I came back to serve as a witness, and at another
meeting held the night preceding the trial four more of us were
arrested, Dr. Equi, two Englishwomen, and myself. I was tremendously
gratified by seeing women for the first time come out openly with
courage; over a hundred followed us through the streets to the jail
asking to be “let in too. We also have broken the law.”
The city jail was nice and clean and warm. The girls, who were not
locked in cells, scampered around talking over their troubles and
complaints with Dr. Equi, and receiving condolence and wholesome advice
in return.
The seven of us were tried together the next day. Two lawyers took upon
themselves the responsibility of defending us, and they were splendid.
We were all found guilty. The men were fined ten dollars, which the
Judge said they need not pay; the women were not fined at all.
The papers made a great to-do about the affair but it was not a type of
publicity of my choosing and did little to bring the goal nearer. The
year 1916 was filled with such turmoil, some of it useful, some not. The
ferment was working violently. Everybody began starting things here and
there. Many radicals, some of whom I did not even know, were
distributing leaflets, getting themselves arrested and jailed. Meetings
were being held in New York on street corners, at Union Square, Madison
Square.
You had to keep a steady head, to be about your business, to make
careful decisions, to waste the least possible time on trivialities; it
was always a problem to prevent emotional scatter-brains from disturbing
the clear flow of the stream. The public, quite naturally, could not be
expected to distinguish between purposeful activities and any others
carried on in the name of the movement.
Emma Goldman and her campaign manager, Ben Reitman, belatedly advocated
birth control, not to further it but strategically to utilize in their
own program of anarchism the publicity value it had achieved. Earlier
she had made me feel she considered it unimportant in the class
struggle. Suddenly, when in 1916 it had demonstrated the fact that it
was important, she delivered a lecture on the subject, was arrested, and
sentenced to ten days.
Ben Reitman, who used to go up and down the aisles at meetings shouting
out Emma Goldman’s _Mother Earth_ in a voice that never needed a
megaphone, was also arrested when the police found on the table of her
lecture hall in Rochester several books on birth control. One of these
was by Dr. Robinson, who had hastily published a volume purporting to
give contraceptive information. The unwary purchaser discovered when he
came to the section supposed to give him the facts for which he had paid
his money that the pages were blank and empty.
Of far greater interest to me was the decision of Jessie Ashley, Ida
Rauh, who was Max Eastman’s wife, and Bolton Hall, a leader in the
single tax movement, to make test cases on the grounds that the denial
of contraceptive information to women whose health might be endangered
by pregnancy was unconstitutional since the Constitution guaranteed each
individual the right to liberty. These three had themselves arrested on
birth control charges. They were all three convicted and given a choice
of fines or terms in prison. They paid the former, announcing that they
would appeal, but, most unfortunately, as it turned out later, they did
not carry through their intentions.
A sympathetic thing if not a wise one was being done by a young man in
Boston named Van Kleek Allison, who started handing out leaflets to
workers as they emerged from factories. Early in the summer he gave one
to a police decoy, was arrested and sentenced to three years. Dear old
Boston, the home of the Puritan, rose in all its strength and held a
huge meeting of protest on his behalf.
This was the occasion of my first heckling. A Jewish convert to
Catholicism, named Goldstein, began belligerently to fling questions at
me. It was not in the sense of trying to find out the answers, but as
though he had them wrapped up in his own pocket and were merely trying
to trap me, and he, in turn, had his answers ready for mine. But after
my Western experiences I was not unprepared and was aided, furthermore,
by other members of the audience who spoke in my defense when he became
almost insulting.
I never made light of questioners and never judged any question too
trivial or unworthy of an honest response. I believed that for each
person who had the courage to ask there must be at least twenty-five who
would like to know, and I have never assumed anyone was seeking to trick
me into giving illegal information, even though his inquiry might appear
as intended to confuse me or be vindictively thrust at me. I usually
replied, “That’s an interesting point. I’m glad you raised it,” and then
proceeded to discuss it as best I could.
Another heckling in Albany resulted in a joyous reunion. Somebody in the
audience insisted my work was unnecessary. I would ordinarily have paid
no attention, not considering the statement at all personal. But there
arose a lady, wearing a high lace collar propped up with whalebones, and
a hat that sat flat on her head, a ghost out of my school-girl days. “I
am acquainted with Margaret Sanger,” she stated. “I have slept with her,
I have lived with her, I have worked with her, I have delivered her, and
I have named my baby for her.” Here was dear old Amelia come to champion
me. Her type of dress had remained the same as fifteen years before, but
so had her loyalty and wit. The lecture over, we went back together to
her home in Schenectady; she hauled out from the attic scrapbooks and
photographs and snapshots taken at Claverack, and we sat on the floor
and rocked with laughter until three in the morning.
When I returned to New York after my long trip I took a studio apartment
in what seemed like a bit of old Chelsea on Fourteenth Street way over
between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Gertrude Boyle, the sculptress, had
the one below me, and my sister Ethel moved in above. Occasionally
father came down from Cape Cod to spend some time with us.
Although it was never quite warm enough, because it lacked central
heating, it hardened me physically, and the open fireplaces, stoked
incessantly by expansive and voluble Vito Silecchia, the Italian coal
vendor, kept the air fresh and clean. The lovely high ceilings, the tall
windows, and the broad doors flung wide between the rooms, gave an
atmosphere of space, and the marvelous carved woodwork was a joy. The
windows in the rear were draped with light yellow curtains, reflecting
an illusory glow of sunshine. Above one of these grew a Japanese
wistaria vine; whenever I looked up I saw this little bit of spring.
_Chapter Seventeen_
FAITH I HAVE BEEN A TRUANT IN THE LAW
“_If a woman grows weary and at last dies from
childbearing, it matters not. Let her only die from
bearing; she is there to do it._”
MARTIN LUTHER
In the fall of 1916 whoever walked along the corridor of the top floor
of 104 Fifth Avenue could have seen the words “Birth Control” printed on
the door leading to an office equipped in business-like, efficient
manner with files and card catalogs. Presiding over it was Fred Blossom,
the perfect representative. He had told me at Cleveland he was tired of
ameliorative charity and, wanting to do something more significant, had
offered six months for this work. Now indefatigably he wrote, spoke,
made friends, and, most important, raised money. His meals were limited
to an apple for luncheon and a sandwich for dinner; he seldom left the
office until midnight.
Like a vacuum cleaner Blossom sucked in volunteers from near and far to
help with the boxes and trunks of letters which had come to me from all
over the country—one thousand from St. Louis alone. As long as I had had
no stenographic aid I had been able only to open and read them and put
them sadly away. At last with fifteen or twenty assistants the task
began of sorting these out and answering them. The contents almost
invariably fell into certain definite categories, and I instituted a
system so that such and such a paragraph could be sent in response to
such and such an appeal.
We had only one paid stenographer—little Anna Lifshiz, who soon became
far more a co-worker than a secretary. If we had no money in the bank
she waited for her salary until we did. When I met Anna’s mother, who
graced her hospitable home with an old world dignity, I realized that
her daughter’s fine character had been directly inherited. Every
Christmas I used to receive a present of wine and cakes of Mrs. Lifshiz’
own make, and Anna always said when she brought them, “My mother prays
for your health, your happiness, and that you will keep well.”
I had been encouraged by the interest aroused during my Western trip,
but was by no means satisfied. The practical idea of giving
contraceptive information in clinics set up for that purpose had seemed
to meet general approval everywhere. Boston at this time appeared a
possible place to begin. Though Allison had to serve sixty days in the
House of Correction at Deer Island, the sum total of his sensational
trial had been good. Before his arrest there had been no league in
Massachusetts, and with his arrest had come publicity, friends, workers,
meetings, letters, interviews, all of widespread educational value.
More important than the enthusiasm which had been stirred up, the best
legal authorities in Boston had decided that contraceptive information
could be given verbally by doctors as long as it was not advertised. The
interpretation to be put on advertising held up the actual opening of a
clinic. The old spirit was there to wage battle but it was a question of
getting leadership, and this did not come about; no women doctors were
willing to take the risk. If the citizens of Massachusetts had then
seized the opportunity to broaden their laws, writers and speakers might
now have more freedom in expressing themselves.
Blossom soon organized the New York State Birth Control League to change
the state law. Beyond introducing a bill it made little headway and soon
expired. It was just one of those many groups that met and talked and
talked and did nothing effective.
The legislative approach seemed to me a slow and tortuous method of
making clinics legal; we stood a better and quicker chance by securing a
favorable judicial interpretation through challenging the law directly.
I decided to open a clinic in New York City, a far more difficult
proceeding than in Boston. Section 1142 of the New York statutes was
definite: _No one_ could give contraceptive information to _anyone_ for
_any_ reason. On the other hand, Section 1145 distinctly stated that
physicians could give prescriptions to prevent conception for the cure
or prevention of disease. Two attorneys and several doctors assured me
this exception referred only to venereal disease. In that case, the
intent was to protect the man, which could incidentally promote
immorality and permit promiscuity. I was dealing with marriage. I wanted
the interpretation to be broadened into the intent to protect women from
ill health as the result of excessive childbearing and, equally
important, to have the right to control their own destinies.
To change this interpretation it was necessary to have a test case.
This, in turn, required my keeping strictly to the letter of the law;
that is, having physicians who would give only verbal information for
the prevention of disease. But the women doctors who had previously
promised to do this now refused. I wrote, telephoned, asked friends to
ask other friends to help find someone. None was willing to enter the
cause, fearful of jeopardizing her private practice and of running the
risk of being censured by her profession; she might even lose her
license.
They had before them the example of Dr. Mary Halton who of all the women
I have known has perhaps the best understanding of the hidden secrets of
the heart. She has never reached her deserts, and doubtless never will
have the honors due her, though she has an unknown audience who love her
not only because she has done something directly for them but because
they have heard of what she has done for others. She has what to my mind
is the attitude of the real physician; that it is not enough merely to
cure ailments—surroundings, heartaches, privations must also be given
attention. Her office is a human welfare clinic to which women of all
classes, ages, nationalities go for advice, occasionally without even
return carfare. The unmarried ones, who in asking help from doctors or
clinics seldom admit they are unmarried, trust so deeply in Dr. Mary
that they unburden themselves freely.
Dr. Mary had previously been on the staff of the Grosvenor Hospital and
had held her evening clinic there. To one of her patients who had been
operated on for glandular tuberculosis she had prescribed a cervical
pessary. When a few evenings later the woman had come back to be
refitted, Dr. Mary had been out and her substitute, horrified and
shocked, had presented the matter to the board. Dr. Mary had been called
before them. She had told them in no uncertain terms that the giving of
contraceptive information to patients in need of it was part of her work
and that she had a right under the law to do so.
The board had disagreed with her and asked for her resignation.
I did not wish to complicate the question of testing the law by having a
nurse give information, because a nurse did not come under the Section
1145 exception. But since I could find no doctor I had to do without.
Ethel, a registered nurse, had a readiness to share in helping the
movement, though she did not belong to it in the same sense as I. Then,
as long as I had to violate the law anyhow, I concluded I might as well
violate it on a grand scale by including poverty as a reason for giving
contraceptive information. I did not see why the hardships and worries
of a working man’s wife might not be just as detrimental as any disease.
I wanted a legal opinion on this if possible.
My next problems were where the money was to come from and where the
clinic was to be. Ever since I had announced that I was going to open
one within a few months I had been buried under an avalanche of queries
as to the place, which for a time I could not answer. The selection of a
suitable locality was of the greatest importance. I tramped through the
streets of the Bronx, Brooklyn, the lower sides of Manhattan, East and
West. I scrutinized the Board of Health vital statistics of all the
boroughs—births and infant and maternal mortality in relation to low
wages, and also the number of philanthropic institutions in the
vicinity.
The two questions—where and how—were settled on one and the same day.
That afternoon five women from the Brownsville Section of Brooklyn
crowded into my room seeking the “secret” of birth control. Each had
four children or more, who had been left with neighbors. One had just
recovered from an abortion which had nearly killed her. “Another will
take me off. Then what will become of my family?”
They rocked back and forth as they related their afflictions, told so
simply, each scarcely able to let her friend finish before she took up
the narration of her own sufferings—the high cost of food, her husband’s
meager income when he worked at all, her helplessness in the struggle to
make ends meet, whining, sickly children, the constant worry of another
baby—and always hanging over her night and day, year after year, was
fear.
All cried what a blessing and godsend a clinic would be in their
neighborhood.
They talked an hour and when they had finished, it seemed as though I
myself had been through their tragedies. I was reminded of the story of
a Spaniard who had become so desperate over the injustice meted out to
innocent prisoners that he had taken a revolver into the street and
fired it at the first person he met; killing was his only way of
expressing indignation. I felt like doing the same thing.
I decided then and there that the clinic should open at Brownsville, and
I would look for a site the next day. How to finance it I did not know,
but that did not matter.
Then suddenly the telephone rang and I heard a feminine voice saying she
had just come from the West Coast bringing from Kate Crane Gartz, whom I
had met in Los Angeles, a check for fifty dollars to do with as I
wished. I knew what I should do with it; pay the first month’s rent. I
visualized two rooms on the ground floor, one for waiting and one for
consultation, and a place outside to leave the baby carriages.
Fania Mindell had left Chicago to assist me in New York. It was a
terribly rainy day in early October that we plodded through the dreary
streets of Brownsville to find the most suitable spot at the cheapest
possible terms. We stopped in one of the milk stations to inquire about
vacant stores. “Don’t come over here,” was the reply. Many social
organizations were being established to meet the demands of poverty and
sickness, and we asked of them all, only to receive the same
response—“We don’t want any trouble. Keep out of this district.” The
mildest comment was, “It’s a good idea, but we can’t help you.” Although
they agreed the mothers of the community should limit their families,
they seemed terrified at the prospect of a birth control clinic. It
sounded also as if they were afraid we would do away with social
problems and they would lose their jobs.
Brownsville was not unique; Brooklyn was and still is dotted with such
dismal villages, and even Queens with its pretensions to a higher
standard has its share. But Brownsville was particularly dingy and
squalid. Block after block, street after street, as far as we could see
in every direction stretched the same endless lines of cramped,
unpainted houses that crouched together as though for warmth, bursting
with excess of wretched humanity.
The inhabitants were mostly Jews and Italians, some who had come to this
country as children, some of the second generation. I preferred a Jewish
landlord, and Mr. Rabinowitz was the answer. He was willing to let us
have Number 46 Amboy Street at fifty dollars a month, a reduction from
the regular rent because he realized what we were trying to do. Here in
this Jewish community I need have no misgivings over breaking of windows
or hurling of epithets, but I was scarcely prepared for the friendliness
offered from that day on.
I sent a letter to the District Attorney of Brooklyn, saying I expected
to dispense contraceptive information from this address. Without waiting
for the reply, which never came, we began the fun of fixing up our
little clinic. We had to keep furnishing expenses inside the budget, but
Fania knew Yiddish and also how to bargain. We bought chairs, desks,
floor coverings, curtains, a stove. If I were to leave no loophole in
testing the law, we could only give the principles of contraception,
show a cervical pessary to the women, explain that if they had had two
children they should have one size and if more a larger one. This was
not at all ideal, but I had no other recourse at the time. However, we
might be able to get a doctor any day and, consequently, we added an
examination table to our equipment.
Mr. Rabinowitz spent hours adding touches here and there to make the two
shiny and spotless rooms even more snow-white. “More hospital looking,”
he said.
Meanwhile we had printed about five thousand notices in English,
Italian, and Yiddish:
MOTHERS!
Can you afford to have a large family?
Do you want any more children?
If not, why do you have them?
DO NOT KILL, DO NOT TAKE LIFE, BUT PREVENT
Safe, Harmless Information can be obtained of trained Nurses at
46 AMBOY STREET
NEAR PITKIN AVE.—BROOKLYN.
Tell Your Friends and Neighbors. All Mothers Welcome
A registration fee of 10 cents entitles any mother to this information.
These we poked into letter boxes, house after house, day after day,
upstairs, downstairs, all over the place, viewing sadly the unkempt
children who swarmed in the alleyways and over the fire escapes of the
condemned tenements and played on the rubbish heaps in the vacant lots.
Seldom did we see a woman who was not carrying or wheeling a baby. We
stopped to talk to each and gave her a supply of leaflets to hand on to
her neighbors. When we passed by a drugstore we arranged with the
proprietor to prepare himself for supplying the pessaries we were going
to recommend.
The morning of October 16, 1916—crisp but sunny and bright after days of
rain—Ethel, Fania, and I opened the doors of the first birth control
clinic in America, the first anywhere in the world except the
Netherlands. I still believe this was an event of social significance.