individual doctors may break away, in the long run most medical progress
proceeds by group action.
Since the hospitals were laggard in this matter, I decided to open a
second clinic of my own. It was to be in effect a laboratory dealing in
human beings instead of mice, with every consideration for environment,
personality, and background. I was going to suggest to women that in the
Twentieth Century they give themselves to science as they had in the
past given their lives to religion.
In addition to the usual rooms I planned to have a day nursery where
children could be kept amused and happy while the mothers were being
instructed. A properly chosen staff could enable us to have weekly
sessions on prenatal care and marital adjustment. Gynecologists were to
refer patients to hospitals if pregnancy jeopardized life; a specialist
was to advise women in overcoming sterility; a consultant was to deal
with eugenics; and, finally, since anxiety and fear of pregnancy were
often the psychological causes of ill health, a psychiatrist was to be
added. I intended, furthermore, that it should be a nucleus for research
on scientific methods of contraception; domestically manufactured
supplies of tested efficacy could not, at that time, be procured.
Because organized medical support was lacking, I tried to see what could
be done with individuals, writing to various doctors to inquire whether
they were willing to sponsor such an undertaking. Several asked me what
methods I was recommending, but Dr. Emmett Holt, then the outstanding
pediatrician of New York, whose book, _The Care and Feeding of
Children_, was the bible of thousands of mothers, invited me to come to
his office; before making any endorsement he wanted to know more about
it.
I packed up all my European supplies and showed them and explained them
to Dr. Holt, who had called in also an obstetrician and a neurologist,
Dr. Frederick Peterson, for the discussion. The usual attitude of the
child specialist was, “Our living depends upon babies. Why should we
advocate limiting the supply? The more the merrier. If you cut down,
you’re taking our maintenance from us.” But Dr. Holt said, “A thoroughly
reliable contraceptive would be a godsend to us. If the family cannot
afford a nurse we must rely on the health and strength of the mother to
keep her baby alive. If pregnancy can be postponed for a few years, not
only the baby who has been born, but the baby who comes after is much
more likely to survive.”
Dr. Holt lent us his name, one of the first important physicians to do
so, thus setting an example which eventually others followed. Five or
six men and women doctors agreed to stand behind the clinic.
But I had to have more than verbal approval. Unless the clinic were to
be conducted by a doctor with a New York practicing license, it would
not be there to stay. In early autumn I brought together an interested
group to discuss the possibility of a location on the East Side near
Stuyvesant Square, and Dr. Lydia Allen de Vilbiss, whom I had met at the
Indianapolis social workers’ conference, was going to form her own
medical committee behind her and build it up. On the basis of her
promise, I signed a year’s lease for a small suite of rooms at 317 East
Tenth Street, from which a dentist had just moved out, appropriately
situated on the ground floor in a densely populated section.
The legislative activities and planning for a clinic had taken much of
my attention during the year, but the central theme was the
determination to hold the First National Birth Control Conference,
November 11–13, 1921, at the Plaza Hotel in New York. I timed it
purposely to coincide with a meeting of the American Public Health
Association, hoping that if we could only convince these officials of
the need for birth control, they would use it in their own work.
In addition to the health aspect, we planned to treat of population and
also have a doctors’ meeting on methods and technique. But “flaming
youth” was having its fling, and the great clamor of the moment was
directed towards the moral issue. Opponents were constantly hurling the
statement that immorality among young people was to be the inevitable
fruit of our efforts. This I did not believe. I knew that neither
morality nor immorality was an external factor in human behavior;
essentially these qualities grew and emerged from within. If the youth
of the post-War era were slipping away from sanctioned codes, it was not
the fault of birth control knowledge any more than it was the fault of
the automobile, which made transportation to the bright lights of the
city quick and easy. Immorality as a result should not be placed at the
door of Messrs. Ford or Chrysler.
In order to have a free and fair hearing we proposed a large open
meeting to wind up the Conference, and invited ministry and clergy of
all denominations, including Archbishop Patrick J. Hayes, who was the
spokesman of the Catholic Church in New York.
The movement was older in England and had already established its
dignity there. Consequently, the presence at the Conference of such an
outstanding Englishman as Harold Cox was certain to carry weight. To
persuade him to take the sea voyage I sailed for Europe. When I arrived
in London I found him unwell, and his doctors at first refused him
permission to travel. Under the circumstances it was very fine of him to
promise to come. J. O. P. Bland also said he would look in on the
Conference if only to give it his blessing. He was a dark-haired, witty,
amusing North-of-Irishman who had lived much in the Orient and become an
authority on Far Eastern matters, an internationalist in all his
thinking. He was one of those who always helped to hold up your right
hand.
My object in England having been attained, I went on to Switzerland with
a definite aim; I had formed a habit in my nursing days, when I was
waiting in the night to give medicine or treatment to a patient, of
occupying the time putting down experiences and thoughts that came to
me. The same habit continued. After lectures, while I was still sizzling
with excitement, I often relieved the tenseness by writing down answers
to questions I feared I had not covered adequately. Before I knew it I
had material gathered for a book, and even some chapters in rough draft.
They needed pulling together and polishing off and I went to bed in
Montreux for a month to do this. I had regarded _Woman and the New Race_
as my heart book; this, _The Pivot of Civilization_, was to be my head
book. I brought it back with me to the United States and Wells, who was
reporting the Washington Disarmament Conference for the New York
_World_, wrote an introduction.
To make our Conference a success it had to be under the auspices of an
organization. I had always had a dread of them. I knew their weaknesses
and the stifling effect they could have. They seemed heavy and
ponderous, rigid, lifeless, and soulless, often caught in their own
mechanism to become dead wood, thus defeating the very purposes for
which they had initially been established. Even the women who were able
and clever at systematizing such bodies terrified me with their
rule-and-rote minds, their weight-and-measure tactics; they appeared so
sure, so positive that I felt as if I were in the way of a giant tractor
which destroyed mercilessly as it went.
In spite of this dread I had reasoned out the necessity for an
organization to tie up the loose ends. Although it might be limiting and
inhibiting to the individual, it had other advantages of strength and
solidity which would enable it to function when the individual was gone.
Therefore I sent a questionnaire to leaders in social and professional
circles, asking them whether the time had not come for such a national
association; the replies almost unanimously confirmed this decision.
The evening before the Conference was to open, a few friends gathered
together to launch the American Birth Control League. Its aims were to
build up public opinion so that women should demand instruction from
doctors, to assemble the findings of scientists, to remove hampering
Federal statutes, to send out field workers into those states where laws
did not prevent clinics, to co-operate with similar bodies in studying
population problems, food supplies, world peace. After the dinner, given
at Mrs. George F. Rublee’s home, we talked over specific plans for the
year and set in motion the machinery for having the League incorporated.
Juliet Barrett Rublee had been one of the pioneers, a member of the
original Committee of One Hundred, and all the way through the years she
has never wavered from my side. No more inspired idealist was ever
initiated into a movement. The imagination of this picturesque, romantic
wife of a conservative lawyer had been so fired that she dedicated to it
her entire devotion, loyalty, partisanship. Others had rallied their own
personal friends around the idea, but Juliet’s influence brought in her
husband’s associates—the Cravaths, Morrows, Lamonts, Dodges, and
Blisses.
Juliet’s parties were always gay and interesting, with an atmosphere
nobody else could create. Her small, engaging dining room was as
colorful as she herself—the only woman I ever knew who dared to wear
bright greens, reds, yellows, all together. For lunches, teas, and
dinners in behalf of the cause she practically turned over her home in
Turtle Bay Gardens.
A goodly number attended the opening of our Conference, which,
appropriately, coincided with that of the great disarmament conference
at Washington. The medical meeting, where contraceptive technique was
discussed, was so crowded that latecomers could not squeeze in. The
doctors who did find places, each apparently surprised to see his
confrères there, expected us to have a hundred percent sound methods;
they seemed disappointed because we had no magic up our sleeves and told
them quite frankly we had not. The best we could do was show what
devices were being employed, including those from the Netherlands and
the preparation I had found at Friedrichshaven, with the warning that
they had not been tested for efficacy.
After two full days nothing remained but the Sunday evening mass meeting
on “Birth Control, Is It Moral?” For this we had selected the Town Hall
on West Forty-third Street, a new club designed as a forum for adult
education; the auditorium was often used for discussion of questions of
civic interest. Harold Cox was to deliver the first speech and I was to
follow.
Always, when I am to speak, I attempt to visualize the hall and the
audience in order to feel my way into the subject. When I cannot do so,
I have invariably been met by blocked doors. Throughout Sunday, try as I
would to “tune in” to the approaching event, I could not do it. I kept
remembering a dream I had had the night before in which I was carrying a
small baby in my arms up a very steep hill and came rather abruptly to a
slope which became a mountain side of rock and slippery shale; I had
nothing to grasp to prevent me from sliding. The baby cried continually
and I wanted to comfort it, but I dared not use my right hand because it
was held up like a balancing rod which saved us both from falling. That
miserable dream made me drowsy all day. My brain seemed numb. I simply
could not think of what I was going to say.
Anne Kennedy had gone ahead to the Town Hall at about seven o’clock.
Harold Cox and I had dined at Juliet’s but I could not eat; I was
interested neither in the food nor the conversation. I still had an
absolute blank in front of me. Juliet was congratulating me that soon,
with the Conference over, I could have a rest. Ordinarily when I am
approaching the end of a particular job I begin to feel released, but
this time I could not reassure her; I was nervous, anxious, and
apprehensive.
Our taxi swung into West Forty-third Street and crept cautiously along
through a swarming aggregation. “Heavens!” I said. “This _is_ an
overflow with a vengeance.”
We dismounted and pushed our way to the Town Hall doors. They were
closed and two policemen barred our path when Mr. Cox and I attempted to
enter. “This gentleman is one of the speakers and I am another,” I said.
“Why can’t we go in?”
“There ain’t gonna be no meeting. That’s all I can say.”
I had not the faintest idea of what was happening. A newspaper man
standing near by suggested, “Why not call up Police Commissioner Enright
and see what the trouble is?”
Juliet and I rushed across the street to a booth and she telephoned
police headquarters. No one could say where the Commissioner was. As far
as they knew no orders to forbid the meeting had been issued.
Then I put through a call for Mayor Hylan. While I was waiting for the
connection I kept my eyes on the Town Hall entrance and saw that
policemen were cautiously opening the doors to let out driblets of
people. If they could get out I could get in, so I abandoned the
telephone and wove my way through the throng until I reached the doors,
slipping in under the policemen’s arms before they could stop me.
Dignified health officers from all over the country, lawyers and judges
with their families and guests were standing about, grumbling, vague,
reluctant to depart, wondering what to do.
I fairly flew up the aisle but halted in front of the footlights; they
were as high as my head and another blue uniform was obstructing the
steps leading to the stage. Suddenly Lothrop Stoddard, the author, tall
and strong, seized me and literally tossed me up to the platform. A
messenger boy was aimlessly grasping flowers which were to be presented
after my speech. Stoddard grabbed them briskly, handed them to me, and
shouted, “Here’s Mrs. Sanger!”
“Don’t leave!” I called to the audience. “We’re going to hold the
meeting.”
A great scramble began to get back into the seats. The hall was in a
turmoil; the front doors had been stampeded and those in the street were
pressing in, only to find their places gone. The boxes and galleries
were soon filled, the stage was jammed, hundreds were crowded in the
rear. I cried, “Get in out of the aisles!” I knew the meeting could be
legally closed if they were blocked, and I did not want fire regulations
to be used as a pretext.
I still had no idea of what had gone on earlier when I commenced my
lecture, but had uttered no more than ten or twelve words when two
policemen loomed up beside me and said, “You can’t talk here.” A
thundering applause broke out as though it were the only relief for
angry, indignant, rebellious spirits.
“Why can’t I?”
I started again but my voice could not be heard. I then suggested to
Harold Cox, “Perhaps they’ll let you speak. Try it.” This white-haired
and pink-cheeked gentleman walked to the edge of the platform with a
dignity of bearing about as distantly removed from immorality as could
be imagined. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “I have come from across
the Atlantic—” but that was as far as he got before he was led back to
his seat by a policeman.
Then Mary Winsor, an ardent suffragette, sprang up, but they stopped her
also. As soon as one was downed, another jumped to his or her feet. I
did not know the names of some of the volunteers, who were not even
allowed to finish their “Ladies and gentlemen.”
Meanwhile, Anne Kennedy was telling me as best she could what had
happened prior to my arrival. When the house had been half filled, a man
had come to the platform and asked, “Who’s in charge?”
“I am,” Anne had answered.
“This meeting must be closed.”
“Why?”
“An indecent, immoral subject is to be discussed. It cannot be held.”
“On what authority? Are you from the police?”
“No, I’m Monsignor Dineen, the Secretary of Archbishop Hayes.”
“What right has he to interfere?”
“He has the right.” Here he turned to a policeman. “Captain, speak up.”
“Who are you?” Anne had demanded.
“I’m Captain Donohue of this district. The meeting must be stopped.”
Capable and cool-headed Anne had replied, “Very well, we’ll write this
down and I’ll read it to the audience. ‘I, Captain Thomas Donohue, of
the Twenty-sixth Precinct, at the order of Monsignor Joseph P. Dineen,
Secretary to Archbishop Patrick J. Hayes, have ordered this meeting
closed.’”
The listeners had sat petrified while she had read them this strange
admission. No hissing or booing then. They had just sat. It was one
thing to have the hall shut by a mistaken or misguided police captain; a
very different thing to have it done by a high dignitary of the Roman
Catholic hierarchy.
Monsignor Dineen was now stationed in the back of the hall, and Anne
pointed him out to me, of medium size, in plain attire, calmly directing
the police by a casual nod of the head or a whisper to a man who acted
as runner between him and the Captain on the platform.
Confusion and tumult continued for at least an hour. Newspaper men were
scribbling stories; those who could not get in were creating commotion
outside; the reserves had been summoned. It was bedlam. Miss Winsor
tried to speak two or three times; I, at least ten. But I knew that I
had to keep on until I was arrested in order that free speech might be
made the issue. To allow yourself to be sent home at the order of the
police was accepting the police point of view as to what was moral.
Moreover you were bound for the principle of the thing to carry it into
the court for a legal decision; if the pulpit and press were denied you,
you must take it to the dock.
Captain Donohue kept repeating to me, “Please get off this stage before
you cause disorder.” Police now began to hustle the audience towards
half a dozen exits, and finally Miss Winsor and I were put under arrest;
Robert McC. Marsh, Mrs. Delafield’s son-in-law, offered to act as our
counsel.
Juliet said to an officer, “Why don’t you arrest me too?”
“Well, you can come along if you like,” he agreed. So we walked together
up Broadway to the station at West Forty-seventh Street, policemen
flanking us. The crowd, still jeering the reserves, who had been trying
vainly to clear the way, fell in line and marched behind us. A patrol
wagon then took us to night court where we were arraigned before
Magistrate McQuade. Someone had telephoned J.J. and he came up later,
but Mr. Marsh had already taken care of the necessary formalities. We
were released on our own recognizances, to appear at court the following
morning.
It was now some time after midnight, but we all went back to Juliet’s
apartment. Harold Cox was shocked, not only by the roughness of the
police, but also by the supineness of the audience, which had done
nothing but make a noise. “Had this been in London, they would never
have been able to stop the meeting! We would have defended our rights,
used every chair and door and window to barricade the place, even though
we might have been beaten in the end.”
Anne Kennedy had brought the reporters, and they were waiting for us.
They wanted to make out a story of police stupidity and let it go at
that, unable to believe her when she told them it was the Archbishop who
was responsible. A _Times_ reporter called up the “Power House,” as St.
Patrick’s Cathedral was colloquially termed, reached Dineen himself, and
asked for verification. “Yes,” said the Monsignor, “we closed the
meeting.”
Then and there we decided to hold a second one as soon as possible at
the same place.
It was well on towards five o’clock when at last I fell in my bed. I
sank to slumber, but it was only to find myself still carrying that same
baby up the steep and sliding mountain, balancing myself with upraised
hand. The sky was dark, the way unmarked. Wearily I stumbled on.
_Chapter Twenty-four_
LAWS WERE LIKE COBWEBS
“_And heard great argument,
About it and about; but evermore
Came out by the same door wherein I went._”
EDWARD FITZGERALD
Promptly at nine the morning after the wretched Town Hall affair Miss
Winsor and I appeared before Magistrate Joseph E. Corrigan and the case
was dismissed in five minutes. Neither Monsignor Dineen nor Captain
Donohue was in court. Here was a ridiculous thing—the Catholic Church
held such power in its hands that it could issue orders to the police,
dissolve an important gathering of adult and intelligent men and women,
and send them home as though they were naughty children—and then not
feel called upon to give any accounting.
The papers expressed the greatest indignation. Even the most
conservative were placed in the trying situation of defending birth
control advocates or endorsing a violation of the principle of free
speech, which “must always find defenders if democracy is to survive.”
It was to be expected that the _World_ would be up in arms, but the
_Times_ carried a headline that Archbishop Hayes had closed the meeting,
and the _Tribune_ was spurred on by the indignation of Mrs. Ogden Reid,
who had been present at the Town Hall.
Apparently the Church had not expected to render any explanation
whatsoever. Then, faced with a battery of reporters, Monsignor Dineen
made a statement:
The Archbishop had received an invitation from Mrs. Margaret Sanger
to attend the meeting, and I went as his representative. The
Archbishop is delighted and pleased at the action of the police, as
am I, because ... I think any one will admit that a meeting of that
character is no place for growing children.... The presence of these
four children at least was a reason for police action.
He had not improved his position. The scoffing was redoubled when it was
learned that the four “children” were students of Professor Raymond
Moley’s class in sociology at Columbia University; Monsignor Dineen had
not seen beyond their bobbed hair.
Only a small section of the public had been aware of our modest little
conference; even fewer had known of the proposed Town Hall meeting. Now
the publicity was tremendous. Many Catholics themselves condemned Church
tactics, and Archbishop Hayes had to defend himself:
As a citizen and a churchman, deeply concerned with the moral
well-being of our city, I feel it a public duty to protest ... in
the interest of thousands of ... distressed mothers, who are alarmed
at the daring of the advocates of birth control in bringing out into
an open, unrestricted, free meeting a discussion of a subject that
simple prudence and decency, if not the spirit of the law, should
keep within the walls of a clinic.... The law was enacted under the
police power of the Legislature for the benefit of the morals and
health of the community.... The law of God and man, science, public
policy, human experience, are all condemnatory of birth control as
preached by a few irresponsible individuals.
The seventh child has been regarded traditionally with some peoples
as the most favored by nature. Benjamin Franklin was the fifteenth
child, John Wesley the eighteenth, Ignatius Loyola was the eighth,
Catherine of Siena, one of the greatest intellectual women who ever
lived, was the twenty-fourth. It has been suggested that one of the
reasons for the lack of genius in our day is that we are not getting
the ends of the families.
This statement appeared synchronously with our second meeting. The Town
Hall had been booked ahead for several weeks; consequently, we had
engaged the big Park Theater in Columbus Circle. It was packed fifteen
minutes after a single door was opened. Dr. Karl Reiland of St. George’s
Church was a new recruit on the platform; otherwise our program was the
same as before, and a balanced and poised discussion proceeded without
acrimony or excitement. Outside, however, two thousand people were
clamoring to get in, even climbing up the fire escapes. Orators were
haranguing from soapboxes, men were pounding each other with their
fists, Paulist fathers were selling pamphlets against birth control.
In my open letter of reply to Archbishop Hayes I said:
I agree with the Archbishop that a clinic is the proper place to
give information on birth control.... I wish, however, to point out
the fact that there are two sides to the subject under
consideration—the practical information as distinct from the
theoretical discussion. The latter rightly may be discussed on the
public platform and in the press as the Archbishop himself has taken
the opportunity to do.
And then, citing Scripture: