some of the more remarkable characters were the first children, and
often the only child as well. For instance, Isaac was an only child,
born after long years of preparation. Isaac’s only children were
twins—Jacob, the father of all Israel, and Esau. Samuel, who judged
Israel for forty years, was an only child. John the Baptist was an
only child, and his parents were well along in years when he was
born.
Archbishop Hayes delivered his final pronunciamento in his Christmas
Pastoral:
Children troop down from Heaven because God wills it. He alone has
the right to stay their coming, while He blesses at will some homes
with many, others with but few or with none at all.... Even though
some little angels in the flesh through moral, mental, or physical
deformity of parents may appear to human eyes hideous, misshapen, a
blot on civilized society, we must not lose sight of this Christian
thought that under and within such visible malformation there lives
an immortal soul to be saved and glorified for all eternity among
the blessed in Heaven.
Heinous is the sin committed against the creative act of God, who
through the marriage contract invites man and woman to co-operate
with him in the propagation of the human family. To take life after
its inception is a horrible crime; but to prevent human life that
the Creator is about to bring into being is satanic. In the first
instance, the body is killed, while the soul lives on; in the
latter, not only a body, but an immortal soul is denied existence in
time and in eternity. It has been reserved to our day to see
advocated shamelessly the legalizing of such a diabolical thing.
A monstrous doctrine and one abhorrent to every civilized instinct, that
children, misshapen, deformed, hideous to the eye, either mentally or
constitutionally unequipped for life, should continue to be born in the
hope that Heaven might be filled!
General opinion was that controversy gave us free publicity, and it did,
column after column, but to my mind it was of the negative kind. The
truths falsified and motives aspersed had to be debated, corrected, and
argued away, and this took time from constructive work. The press wanted
to keep up the excitement and manufacture news, but I did not. As a
matter of fact the hullabaloo was usually done for me; the blundering of
the opposition often saved my voice.
The correspondence through the press was dropped, but meanwhile the
American Civil Liberties Union, spurred on by Albert de Silver, from
whom we had previously sought advice and who had helped us raise funds,
had urged me to institute action for false arrest. This I knew would be
a fruitless task, but I did consent to the demand for an investigation.
Commissioner Enright was said to be out of the city, but Chief Inspector
Lahey, acting in his place, was to determine whether charges should be
preferred against Captain Donohue for having stopped the meeting.
On December 2nd, in a small room closed to the press, Mr. Lahey sat at
the head of a long table. On his right was a chair to which I was
called. On his left, opposite me, was a heavy man with a big bulldog
head, wearing a black alpaca coat. He fixed his eyes straight on mine as
though he intended to hypnotize me and influence by sheer terror what I
was to say. His features were so set, his expression so immobile, that I
sensed animus. I refused to return his gaze but faced the Inspector
instead.
The interrogation, prompted by this sinister individual, who bent over
occasionally to murmur into Mr. Lahey’s ear, held bitter malice.
Nevertheless, I answered every query as completely and as honestly as I
was able. I had nothing to hide, and still believed that my interlocutor
could arrive at no decision unless he heard the truth in its entirety. I
was all for telling it.
But never throughout any of the hearings could either the examiners or
police be kept to the point. They were not genuinely trying to find out
who had given the orders and why, but attempting to justify the illegal
proceedings; and always they went off into vague irrelevancies
extraneous to the issue, such as trying to embarrass dignified, elderly
witnesses by asking, “What are you doing with birth control?”
Chiefly the investigation focused around the Brownsville clinic raid. I
denied emphatically that certain contraceptives for use by men only had
ever been there; they were of a type which I did not recommend, and had
been brought in by the police themselves.
“Do you mean to say, Mrs. Sanger,” went on Mr. Lahey, “that this
statement of the police officer as written into the records was untrue?”
“I do.”
Mr. Lahey lifted an official finger to an attendant. The door of the
anteroom opened and Mrs. Whitehurst, who had been the leader of the
raid, was dramatically framed before us.
“Do you say that if she,” he waved to her, “made the statement referred
to in the police records, she lied?”
“She did,” I affirmed. This was the first time in all my life that I had
ever called a person a liar. I felt as though I had stepped down into
the lower brackets of common decency, but the police are accustomed to
such words, and I had to meet the circumstances.
Mrs. Whitehurst was instantly dismissed. I, too, was dismissed, and
Juliet took my place. She had learned from her husband and other lawyers
how witnesses could protect themselves, and tossed off her answers
readily, now and then returning, “I don’t know,” and, frequently, “I
don’t remember.” The black-coated gentleman who had hoped to trip her up
but was getting nowhere, became exasperated and said roughly to Mr.
Lahey, “Oh, stop this! Ask her if she’s read the law.”
Juliet admitted she had read Section 1142, but, to further questioning,
replied she did not recall when, she had not read it in my presence, she
might or might not have talked it over with me.
Mr. Lahey rose and left the room. Then the Unknown shouted to a young
Irishman who had been busily taking notes, “Arrest that woman!”
We could not have been more astonished if a thunderbolt had struck the
place. For a few seconds, which seemed longer, everyone was paralyzed.
At last Mr. Marsh asked, “On what grounds is Mrs. Rublee arrested?”
“She has violated Section 1142.”
“She said she had read the law—is that a crime?”
No answer.
Mr. Marsh then inquired, “On whose authority is Mrs. Rublee arrested?”
Dead silence. No reply while the Unknown and the stenographer muttered
together. Finally, when Mr. Marsh repeated the question, the latter
replied, “I do. I arrest her on my own authority. Patrolman Thomas J.
Murphy.”
Mr. Marsh said to the Unknown, “It’s customary for brothers of the law
to give each other their names. Mine is Robert Marsh, practicing
attorney. May I not know with whom I am speaking?”
“I’m just a bystander.”
“Well, Mr. Bystander, won’t you instruct the police officer to be more
explicit in his statement of facts?”
“Look here, Marsh, I’m telling you the officer is arresting this witness
on his own initiative.”
He, too, left the room.
Juliet, Mr. Marsh, and I entered her car and young
Stenographer-Patrolman Murphy, obviously ill at ease, sat beside the
chauffeur. At the Elizabeth Street Court, Magistrate Peter A. Hatting
smiled cheerfully at us from behind his desk, “Well, where’s the
prisoner?”
Murphy made a feeble gesture in Juliet’s direction and said in a whisper
which we could overhear, “It’s a birth control case.”
“Oh, I see. Well, what was she selling—where are the articles?”
Murphy could produce none.
“Well, well, where is the evidence?”
Murphy looked even more embarrassed, mumbled that he didn’t have any.
“Well, the court is adjourned anyway, and we’ll have to wait until this
afternoon.”
I was turning my back on Murphy, very cross at him, but Juliet asked him
to lunch with us. “He didn’t want to arrest me, did you, Mr. Murphy?”
And Mr. Murphy shook his head most decidedly.
While we ate, he explained that our Unknown was Assistant Corporation
Counsel Martin W. Dolphin, with offices in the Police Department, that
he himself was Mr. Dolphin’s private secretary, that he had been brought
to the inquiry merely to take dictation, that he had been only ten
months on the force, that he had never arrested anybody before, and that
when Mr. Dolphin had said to arrest Mrs. Rublee he had protested, “Why,
I can’t arrest her. I haven’t seen her do anything to be arrested for!”
“I’m awfully sorry,” he went on, addressing Juliet, “but I had to obey
orders. If I didn’t, I’d be in an awful mess. Gee, why didn’t they get
some of the old fellows down there to do it?”
When we returned to court, Assistant District Attorney Wilson said to
Magistrate Hatting, “Your Honor, I have no evidence in this case. The
police have furnished nothing to the District Attorney’s office. If I
have not sufficient evidence by three-thirty I’ll dismiss the whole
thing.”
Then we waited. Eventually the expected “minutes and statement” arrived.
Murphy swore that they were true—to Juliet’s wholehearted disgust. Her
faith in human nature had been betrayed; she did not see why he
preferred to keep his job rather than his self-respect. Magistrate
Hatting seemed anxious to make everybody comfortable—Juliet, the
Catholics, the police, and the public—and to convey the impression
nobody was really to blame.
Since the wife of a prominent lawyer had become involved, people in high
places in New York had an obligation to protect their own. Publicity had
been great before; now it was multiplied tenfold. A letter was addressed
to Mayor Hylan:
The action of the Police Department ... constitutes such a wilful
violation of the right of free speech as to cause grave alarm to the
citizens of New York, who have a right to know why such outrages
have taken place, what motives and influences are behind them, and
whether any conspiracy exists in the Police Department to deny the
right of free speech and the equal protection of the law to citizens
of New York. This obviously is a matter of the gravest concern.
We, therefore, ask an immediate and full investigation to be
followed, if the evidence warrants, by such disciplinary measures
against the officials found to be guilty as will discourage similar
offenses hereafter.
This demand was signed by Henry Morgenthau, Sr., Herbert L. Satterlee,
Paul D. Cravath, Lewis L. Delafield, Charles C. Burlingham, Samuel H.
Ordway, Pierre Jay, Paul M. Warburg, Charles Strauss, Montgomery Hare.
As a result, Mayor Hylan delegated David F. Hirshfield, Commissioner of
Accounts, to supervise an investigation into the previous investigation.
The first session was diverted into a discussion of the merits of birth
control. The Commissioner was facetious, and, when Mr. Marsh kept after
him for interrupting witnesses and getting off the subject, finally said
he had been insulted and refused to continue as long as Mr. Marsh
represented us.
At the three subsequent hearings Emory R. Buckner took charge of our
interests. Dolphin, although summoned, did not appear at any of them.
Captain Donohue testified that Desk Lieutenant Joseph Courtney had
received the information over the telephone, and had passed it on to
him. So far as he knew it was the telephone operator who had given the
orders to close the meeting. But he would, he said, have done so anyhow.
“What law did Mrs. Sanger violate?” asked Mr. Buckner.
“She was disorderly. I requested her several times to leave the platform
and she defied me and said she would not do it. She caused quite a
commotion and people were all hollering and yelling, a general
commotion.”
“You think it was a crime for her to commence to speak after a Captain
of Police had told her not to?”
“Yes.”
“Was Miss Winsor also arrested because she attempted to speak after
being told to keep quiet?”
“She said she knew a woman who had nine children and the audience
commenced to holler and try to pull the policemen off the stage.”
Even the Commissioner was becoming annoyed at Donohue’s inanities. He
said to Mr. Buckner, “You do not have to put any witnesses on to show
the intelligence and the lack of sight or foresight of the Captain. You
and I, I think, will agree on that point.” And then he turned to
Donohue. “Now, Captain, will you tell me the reason for acting in the
Hall as you did to prevent that meeting? You see, I do not know whether
you understand me or not. You policemen, you do not usually understand
ordinary language. I want to know what was in your mind; why did you act
as you did, that is all.”
“Because I had orders to do so.” But he would not admit they came from
any further back than the Desk Lieutenant.
Officer Murphy was put on the stand next, and the Commissioner gave him
a chance to explain what had prompted him to make the arrest. “I figured
this way. If it would be a crime to run such a meeting or hold such a
meeting in the City of New York according to the Penal Law, if Mrs.
Rublee was an assistant with Mrs. Sanger or anybody else in running such
a meeting, and there were distributed circulars regarding prevention of
conception, Mrs. Rublee was just as much responsible for the
distribution of these circulars as anybody else.”
“The circulars stated there would be a public mass meeting at Town Hall
on birth control,” said Mr. Buckner promptly. “Is that a crime?”
The Commissioner interrupted. “Mr. Buckner, you do not expect this young
man to be interested in that. He is too young to know about birth
control. The old, bald-headed ones are the only ones that are interested
in it.”
And late in the afternoon he said, “I am too busy and have too much work
to do, so we won’t have any summing up.”
At the concluding session Desk Lieutenant Courtney disclaimed all
liability, saying the only order given to Captain Donohue was to take a
number of policemen to the meeting and see that the law was not
violated; thereafter the Captain had acted on his own responsibility.
As far as I was concerned the final scene in the farce took place before
the elderly and firm Judge John W. Goff, one of the official referees of
the Supreme Court who was to hear the charges before the New York Bar
Association as to whether Dolphin should be disbarred. He was summoned
again in vain until Judge Goff said angrily, “Unless he comes within the
hour, I’ll subpoena him,” and at last, still in his alpaca coat, he put
in an appearance. I was on the stand almost an entire afternoon during
which the attorney representing Dolphin was attacking me personally
instead of inquiring into Juliet’s arrest.
“Do you know Carlo Tresca?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know Alexander Berkman?”
“Yes.”
I could now see what was coming; radicals were always made the whipping
boys and, in lieu of specific charges, any acquaintance with them was
made to seem incriminating.
“Do you know Emma Goldman?” Here the attorney’s voice rose in outrage,
and he looked at Judge Goff as though to say, “There you have it.”
“Yes,” I reiterated, “but I also know Mrs. Andrew Carnegie and Mr. John
D. Rockefeller, Jr. My social relations are with people of varying ideas
and opinions.”
The next attempt was a subtle sort of third degree, aiming to confuse me
and imply I was an inaccurate witness. “What was the precise time you
entered the room where Mrs. Rublee was arrested? How large was it? How
long, how wide, how high, how many windows were there? Who was called
first? Where were you sitting? How far was Inspector Lahey from your
chair? Were you second, third, or fourth on the right side or left side?
How wide was the table, how long? Where was the door located relative to
the table?”
Usually I could not have remembered one such immaterial and unnecessary
detail. But that afternoon I was given second sight. I could visualize
the room; my mind seemed to be projected into it so that every
particular stood out with the utmost clarity. It was an excellent lesson
to me; thereafter I observed much more carefully.
After hours of this cross-examination I was physically exhausted, as
though I had been flung back and forth, beaten and pounded from the
bottom of my feet to the top of my head. I almost looked at my arms to
see whether they were black and blue, they ached so.
It was all useless. The police went unreprimanded, Donohue was promoted
when things had quieted down, and Dolphin, though Judge Goff recommended
prosecution and the Court of Appeals stated that his conduct was
“arbitrary and unlawful,” was not disbarred because he had not been
acting in an official capacity when he had ordered the arrest. In spite
of the inconvenience, the humiliation of halls closed, covenants
broken—exactly nothing happened.
_Chapter Twenty-five_
ALIEN STARS ARISE
In the summer of 1921 I had signed a contract with the Kaizo group,
which had arranged a series of lectures in Japan by four speakers:
Albert Einstein was to explain relativity, Bertrand Russell the
consequences of the Peace of Versailles, H. G. Wells his version of
international accord, and I was to discuss population control,
delivering in March and April eight to ten lectures of five hours each.
The five-hour clause I innocently believed to be merely a mistake on the
part of the translator, but I had faith in the common sense of human
nature and expected the error to be taken care of when I arrived.
January and February were months of feverish activity. I spoke in city
after city—Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and elsewhere—rushing back
to New York to Town Hall hearings and farewell luncheons and dinners.
The prolongation of the Town Hall episode had been entirely unforeseen.
If bookings had not already been made requiring my departure in
February, I should have postponed the trip. But I had promised, and
lecture dates were binding obligations.
Stuart was at Peddie Institute where my brother Bob had gone, captain of
his football team, preparing for college, having a full and rich time.
Grant was there also but he was barely thirteen; I could not bear to put
the broad Pacific between us. The headmaster warned me that he was only
beginning to adjust himself to the school and his studies, and would be
set back at least a year if I took him with me. I agreed to reconsider,
but I am afraid I had made up my mind beforehand. With scant ceremony
and scarcely enough clean shirts, I bundled him up and away, leaving the
turbulence of New York behind.
Since Grant was to travel on my passport, I had to have it renewed, and
had telegraphed Washington for it to be sent to the West Coast where the
detail of a visa could also be attended to. At San Francisco it was
waiting. With the little book and Grant in tow I presented myself to the
Japanese Consul. Instead of stamping it as the usual mere formality, he
examined it carefully and then, apologizing profusely, regretted very
much that the Japanese Imperial Government could not give me a visa.
Here was a state of things. I asked him whether he could find out the
precise reasons. Was it that I as a person could not go there, or was my
subject taboo? The next day, after a cable to Tokyo and much polite
bowing, he notified me it was both. In varying degrees of amusement and
indignation the papers published the fact that the Japanese were turning
the tables on the United States; by our Exclusion Act we had implied
they were undesirable citizens, and now it was an American who was
undesirable to them.
The steamship company would not sell me tickets on the _Taiyo Maru_
without the visa. Two days previous to her sailing a Japanese who had
been in the United States for the Washington Conference proffered a
letter of introduction. He deplored the action of his Government and was
desirous of being helpful. “The _Taiyo Maru_ is going on to Shanghai.
Why don’t you get a Chinese visa?”
I always chose to go forward, and there was always a chance that a way
might open. A hundred and fifty Japanese who had been at the
conference—delegates, professors, doctors, members of the diplomatic
corps, secretaries—were returning by this same vessel. Once on board I
could meet them simply and informally, and I was sure I could convince
them I was not dangerous. The Chinese Consul granted a visa without
question, our tickets were delivered, we sailed on the _Taiyo Maru_.
I had never before been on a Japanese liner. The segregation between
whites and Orientals horrified me. Here were the aristocrats of a people
by nature intelligent, well-bred, well-clothed, inclined to be friendly,
taking Grant under their wing, and teaching us both, amid much laughter,
to eat with chopsticks. They had made valiant efforts to adapt
themselves to Occidentalism; they had altered their dress and fashion of
eating—substituting coats, collars, shoes for loose kimonos and soft
felt slippers, forks and knives for chopsticks; they sat on chairs
instead of kneeling comfortably on the floor. Yet my compatriots kept
themselves aloof. Never did I see the two groups together in
conversation; they joined only in sports.
At night members of the crew wrestled in the moonlight, and I gazed down
at their deck, marveling at the grips, the holds, the stoutness of legs,
the strength of backs and arms, the quickness of action, the primitive,
guttural calls of the umpires. Others of the crew stamped their feet
and, for good luck, threw pinches of salt towards their respective
champions.
Two days out the Japanese asked me to address them. I willingly
complied, and the dining room was closed off for the purpose. Admiral
Baron Kato, who was later to be Prime Minister, and headed the
delegation, talked to me afterwards. He had the culture, courtesy,
restraint, and suavity of a true gentleman, rather than the mien of the
war lord his title seemed to imply.
Equally genial was Masanao Hanihara, then Vice Minister of Foreign
Affairs and destined to be Ambassador to the United States. He knew
American ways and manners, or mannerisms, if you wish to name them so;
he was understanding, and perhaps one of the most fluent of the Japanese
I met in the ease of his English. He told me his people were not likely
to accept the idea of birth control as a social philosophy, though they
were bound to accept the economic aspects, and all the young would be
interested as individuals.
Not until later did I learn how happily my contact with these two
gentlemen had resulted. They had separately cabled their Government
asking that I be allowed to lecture in Japan.
At Honolulu I had one short afternoon into which to crowd so much. With
leis hung about my neck I was whisked off for lunch to a magical house
at Waikiki, then to a big meeting. What surprised and pleased me most
was the complete absence of race prejudice. I looked out over faces,
mostly American but with a liberal sprinkling of Chinese and Japanese in
their native costumes and Hawaiians in bright Mother Hubbards. Honolulu
was the only place I had found where, class for class, internationalism
did exist.
Two Japanese correspondents followed my zigzag trail, notebooks in hand,
pencils working furiously. They even inserted questions as I was swept
towards the boat where, breathless and almost in a daze, we were
garlanded once more. They had a scoop and were going to cable their
favorable impressions to their papers in Japan.
Their efforts had definitely produced a favorable reaction on board
ship. Individuals and delegations of Japanese came into my stateroom at
any time—morning, afternoon, or evening—“to be informed.” Although they
did not knock, this was not considered an invasion of privacy, provided
they bowed profoundly on their way in; on entering and on leaving they
bowed and bowed, again and again. They seemed to know more about my
affairs and my children than I did myself, mentioning things I had
completely forgotten, even reminding me of my unspoken thoughts of long
ago.
Past experience had taught me that when a despotic and arbitrary screen
was interposed between birth control and the people, the desire for
knowledge was immeasurably enhanced. This was particularly true in
Japan, where the recent renaissance had quickened the public mind. At
the announcement I could not land, officialdom was subjected to frank
criticism.