CHAPTER II

HOW IT HAPPENED

_How it came about that information concerning one item of science became a criminal indecency: Anthony Comstock’s blundering bequest to the people: Congress an unwitting partner: States hastily followed suit: United States the only country to class contraceptive information with penalized indecency: Legislation aimed at indecency but hit science: Europe laughs at our “Comstockery”: Documentary proof that Comstock and his successor, Sumner, did not expect laws to prevent doctors from giving and normal people from using contraceptive instructions._

“The evil that men do lives after them,”—likewise their stupidity and blunders. For over half a century the people of the United States have been the victims of a great error which Anthony Comstock and Congress unwittingly committed in connection with their commendable effort to free the young people of the country from contamination by those who were then trafficking extensively in smutty literature and inducements to sex perversion.

Their error in judgment was to include in Section 211 of the Penal Code the two words “preventing conception.” In their eagerness to abolish the promotion of the misuse of contraceptive knowledge in connection with morbid and irregular practices, they rashly framed the law so as to forbid all circulation of any knowledge whatever, thus making it in the eyes of the law just as much a crime for high-minded responsible married people to learn how to space the births in their families wisely, as for the low, vicious or perverted few to spread information about how to abuse this knowledge in abnormal, unwholesome ways.

The Congressional Record of the short session of Congress which ended on March fourth, 1873, shows beyond any reasonable doubt that Anthony Comstock himself had no intention of penalizing _normal_ birth control information. He was simply so bent upon wiping out the shocking commerce in pornographic literature which disgraced that period that he rushed headlong into the question of legislation without due consideration as to the results, which have made the United States the laughing stock of Europeans, and which have even prevented the lawful circulation of medical works for the medical profession.

The Record reveals the fact that the first draft of the bill contained the following exemption after the prohibition of all information as to the prevention of conception or as to abortion, “except from a physician in good standing, given in good faith.” Why this exemption was later omitted does not appear in the Record, but its original existence proves that there was at least some glimmering of realization somewhere that a wholesale prohibition was not the aim of the statute. There is wide spread evidence that present day public opinion would not be at all satisfied with any such exemption, even if it had been left in the bill, because contraceptive knowledge is part of general hygiene and education, and not a physician’s prescription as for disease, though of course the knowledge emanates naturally from the professional scientists who have made a study of this subject.

A little sober forethought would not only have spared the country from the unique disgrace of this careless legislation, but it would to a considerable extent have spared the country from the need for a birth control movement,—an advantage of no mean proportions!

Not one of our Senators is in Congress now who was in Congress then, not even the most venerable of them, but it would seem that the least which this present Congress can do is to redeem the record of their predecessors with all possible grace and speed.

The Comstock bill was introduced on February 11, 1873, passed by both Houses and signed by President Grant before the close of the session on March fourth.

The chronology of the history of the Bill in both Houses is very brief. There was practically no discussion on the subject matter. There were no speeches delivered, until _after_ the bill was passed. The measure was granted unanimous consent action in the Senate, and was passed under a suspension of rules in the House. There was no roll call on the passage of the bill in either House. It slipped under the wire for the President’s signature on the very last day of the session. And Comstock went home happy.

The sequence of events was as follows:

The bill was sponsored in the Senate by Senator Windom of Winona, Minnesota, and introduced on February 11th. The measure was referred to the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, and reported out without amendment two days later, on February 13th. No public hearings were held.

On February 14th the bill was recommitted to the Committee on motion of Senator Buckingham of Connecticut who thereafter took charge of the bill on the floor. It came promptly back the next day, amended and approved by the Post Office Committee, but neither the bill nor the amendment was discussed. The writer has personally inquired whether there is an official report on the bill in the files of the Post Office Committee, and was told that there is none. Senator Buckingham asked unanimous consent to take up the bill, saying, “I think there will be no objection to it.” Senator Thurman of Ohio protested that it was too important to vote on without deliberate investigation, and asked that it go over. It did, for two days.

On the 20th, by unanimous consent the business of the “morning hour” was extended for ten minutes to permit discussion of the bill. But the discussion was remarkably unilluminating as to the merits of the bill. Senator Buckingham offered an amendment which omitted the clause providing exemption for contraceptive information on prescription of a duly licensed physician, given in good faith. Two Senators asked Senator Buckingham to explain the difference between the amended version and the previous version. He evaded explaining.

Senator Hamlin of Maine urged that the measure be accepted as approved by the Committee and “not to tinker with it on the floor.” Senator Conkling of New York insisted that the bill be printed as amended, “in order that we may know something at least of what we are voting upon.” He said, “For one, although I have tried to acquaint myself with it, I have not been able to tell, either from the reading of the apparently illegible manuscript in some cases by the Secretary, or from private information gathered at the moment, and if I were to be questioned now as to what this bill contains, I could not aver anything certain in regard to it. The indignation and disgust that everybody feels in reference to the acts which are here aimed at may possibly lead us to do something which, when we come to see it in print, will not be the thing we would have done if we had understood it and were more deliberate about it.”

When Senator Conkling thus cautioned the Senate to be careful in the framing of the Comstock bill, he had what might be called almost feminine intuition. For as history has conclusively proved, the Senate did precisely that thing. It prohibited what it had no intention of prohibiting,—the spread of scientific education of the wise spacing of births in the human family.

But the warning was unheeded and there was no further discussion. The next day, February 21st, the bill was called up and passed.

The history of the bill in the House is even more brief. On February 22nd a message was received from the Senate that the bill had been passed and the concurrence of the House was requested.

On March first Representative Merriam of Locust Grove, New York, moved to suspend the rules and “take from the Speaker’s table and put upon its passage the bill (S. 1572).” Mr. Kerr of Indiana moved its reference to the Judiciary Committee, saying, “Its provisions are extremely important, and they ought not to be passed in such hot haste.” Mr. Cox of New York inquired if debate was in order. The Speaker ruled that it was not. Mr. Merriam moved to suspend the rules and pass the bill. The necessary two-thirds vote to suspend the rules were polled, and the bill was passed without a roll call.

_After the passage of the bill_, Mr. Merriam obtained leave to print remarks on it in the Congressional Record.

Can any candid reader of the record of how this measure was presented to Congress and passed by the members without debate, possibly assume that the bill was aimed at the complete suppression of access to scientific knowledge for normal use?

If that had been the aim of the bill, surely some of the members would have been more insistent than they were upon discussing the provisions of the bill. It is interesting in this connection to note how John S. Sumner, Comstock’s successor, has attempted to refute the criticism that the Comstock bill was passed in careless haste. In a letter which he wrote to Senator Cummins on January 23, 1923, protesting against the Senator’s bill to repeal the Comstock blunder, he gives as his first proof that “this bill was thoroughly considered by some of the most brilliant members of the Senate at that or any other time,” the opening paragraph of Mr. Merriam’s “leave to print” remarks, and states that it was “in the House of Representatives on March 1, 1873” that the Congressman said them. We can give Mr. Sumner the benefit of the doubt that he read the Congressional Record so carelessly that he did not notice that the bill was passed before the Senate could possibly have read Senator Merriam’s arguments urging its passage. But it is also noteworthy that in this letter to Senator Cummins, he omits to state the date (March first) on which the bill was passed. He simply says that it was “subsequently passed by the Senate.” It is also significant that Mr. Sumner puts the Merriam (unspoken) speech at the head of page of excerpts he quotes from the Congressional Record, when as a matter of fact it was the last occurrence in the Senate. It took place after the bill was enacted, and was therefore no factor whatever in its enactment.

For some years previous, excellent publications containing contraceptive instructions of a dignified and scientific sort had been increasingly circulated in the United States, notably the book by Dr. Trall which was sold in such quantity in the sixties that it would rank well as a “best seller” in present days. It would also still rank high as authoritative teaching regarding the control of conception if it could be published in full today.

The fact that the control of conception was not once mentioned by any member on the floor of either House is most convincing evidence that their minds were not taken up with that question, but that they accepted on faith the general aim of the measure, which was to suppress gross indecencies. In this connection a further quotation from Sumner’s letter to Senator Cummins is noteworthy. Although he attempts to convince the Senator that the Comstock bill had ample attention from Congress and was thoroughly understood before it was passed, and that it was also backed by the press of the country, he was unable to muster a single quotation from a member of Congress or from the press that so much as named the control of conception, much less discussed whether information regarding it should be banned in the law. His contention has no more strength than the mere statement that “each time the bill came before Congress it was described as a measure for the suppression of trade in and circulation of obscene literature and articles of immoral use.” Nor are the few press items he quotes any more specific. He tried to make them so by underlining the word _articles_ in each one. But as there are various “articles” used or usable in abnormal sex practices, the mention of “articles” does not connote the control of conception, and certainly not the use of contraceptives in normal life. So his contention is flimsy to the last degree. Congress knew that it had voted to suppress indecent matter, but it did not know it had also voted to suppress scientific knowledge.

People who well remember Comstock’s procedure during the short session of 1873 have described his very effective way of getting support for his bill. He simply showed to the members of Congress whom he interviewed, specimens of the disgusting pictures and publications which were then in circulation and from which the publishers were deriving large profits. The stuff was so obviously outrageous and it was so revolting to know that it was being diligently spread among the youth of the country, that the response of the Congressmen to his proposed bill for making the matter unmailable was immediate. This is the outstanding fact which accounts for the ease with which the bill was put through without debate. In writing of his own work afterward, Comstock said, “I am positive I personally presented the full facts to the large majority, both in the Senate and House.”

Below are extracts from the _only_ speech made in behalf of the Comstock bill, and that speech was _never spoken on the floor of the House_. “Leave to print” speeches have long been a peculiar and questionable characteristic of American legislation, and this instance is of exceptional peculiarity in that the “speech” was made _after_ the bill was passed.

In the whole long document of which only a brief portion is given here, there is only one mention of the words “preventing conception” and that is in a letter which Mr. Merriam quotes from Comstock and this _one mention is solely in connection with indecencies and perversions_.

“Mr. Speaker, the purposes of this bill are so clearly in the best interests of morality and humanity that I trust it will receive the unanimous voice of Congress. It is terrible to contemplate that more than 6000 persons are daily employed in a carefully organized business, stimulated to activity by all the incentive that avarice and wickedness can invent, to place in the schools and homes of our country books, pictures and immoral appliances, of so low and debasing a nature that it would seem that the brute creation itself would turn from them in disgust.”

With this, his opening paragraph, Mr. Merriam proceeded to express his confidence that Congress would so act and that “the outraged manhood of our age” would condemn this traffic which sought to make “merchandise of the morals of our youth.” Recent revelations had shown that no school or home was safe from these “corrupting influences” and that “the purity and beauty of womanhood has no protection from the insults of this trade.”

Mr. Merriam said further that this trade was worse than war, pestilence or famine. Only this subtle influence, now revealed, could explain the “crime and depravity in this our day.” He then praised the revelations made by “one young man in New York whose hand with determined and commendable energy is falling heavily upon the workers in this detestable business,” referring to his exhibit of over 15,000 letters received by dealers in this literature from students of both sexes in all parts of the country. These and other letters in the Dead Letter Office had exposed a regular circulating library of obscene books and pictures. Most of the book plates had been recently seized and destroyed.

With the object of placing all the facts before Congress and the country, Mr. Merriam placed in the Record as part of his remarks a long letter which he had received from Anthony Comstock of New York. The letter is dated January 18, 1873, and its first paragraphs are as follows:

“Dear Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of the 12th instant in which you ask for a statement from me in reference to the traffic in obscene literature.

“There are various ways by which this vile stuff has been disseminated. First, by advertising in the above named papers. Some weeks there is not a single advertisement in some of these papers that is not designed either to cheat or defraud, or intended to be a medium of sending out these accursed books and articles. For instance, I have arrested a number of persons, one in particular, who advertised a musical album to be sent for fifty cents. I sent the fifty cents, and received back a catalogue of obscene books with the following card attached: ‘The album is only a pretense to enable us to forward you a catalogue of our fancy books. Should you order these books your fifty cents will be credited.’

“It is needless to say I ordered, then arrested him, locked him up in the New Haven Jail, and he has been indicted by the grand jury in the United States Court of Connecticut and now is held in bail for trial. In the same way, by advertising beautiful views or pictures of some celebrated place or person, men receive answers from innocent persons for these pictures, and among the pictures sent will be one or more of these obscene pictures and catalogues of these vile books and rubber goods. For be it known that wherever these books go, or catalogue of these books, there you will find, as almost indispensable, a complete list of rubber articles for masturbation or for the professed _prevention of conception_. (The italics are ours.)

“Secondly: The abominations are disseminated by these men first obtaining the addresses of scholars and students in our schools and colleges and then forwarding these circulars. They secure thousands of names in this way, by either sending for a catalogue of schools, seminaries, and colleges, under the pretense of sending a child to attend these places, or else by sending out a circular purporting to be getting up a directory of all the scholars and students in schools and colleges in the United States, or of taking the census of all the unmarried people, and offering to pay five cents per name for list so sent. I need not say the money is seldom or never sent, but I do say that these names, together with those that come in reply to advertisements, are sold to other parties so that when a man desires to engage in the nefarious business he has only to purchase a list of these names and then your child, be it a son or daughter, is as liable to have thrust into its hands, all unbeknown to you, one of these devilish catalogues.

“You will please observe that this business is carried on principally by the agency of the United States mails, and there is no law by which we can interfere with the sending out of these catalogues and circulars through the mail, except they are obscene on their face; and there are scores of men that are supporting themselves and families today by sending out these rubber goods, etc., through the mails, that I cannot touch for want of law. There are men in Philadelphia, in Chicago, in Boston and other places who are doing this business, that I could easily detect and convict if the law was only sufficient.”

Mr. Merriam then concluded as follows:

“With the passage of this bill I shall have performed a most uninviting duty. No man even when compelled by a conscientious conviction of official duty, goes willingly down into the gutters of human depravity to act as scavenger to root out moral deformities. He fights to advantage who knows his enemy. The good men of this country who regard their homes as their sanctuaries, warned by this exposure, will act with determined energy to protect what they hold most precious in life, the holiness and purity of their firesides.”

So much for the story of how the Federal statutes happened to be fastened upon American law. The example was contagious. A veritable epidemic of State legislation in similar phraseology ensued, until ere long, there were only two States without obscenity statutes which echoed the Federal law and which, in many instances, went much further than the Federal law in suppressive policy. American laws in this regard stand unique among those of the nations of the world. In various countries there are obscenity statutes and regulations, but in none save the United States is contraceptive information, _per se_, classed with penalized indecency. In no other country is science reduced to the level of obscenity in the law. Bernard Shaw said twenty years ago, “Comstockery is the world’s standing joke, at the expense of the United States.”

Some degree of praise and a deluge of denunciation has been poured upon Anthony Comstock for the legislation he initiated, the arrests and suppressions which he accomplished, and for the spying methods he used, to entrap those whose activities he considered criminal. Any final or complete estimate of his qualities, and the value of his work to the people of the country would be out of place in this book, but it may be of use, in considering what sort of legislation the country should have, to get at something of the _why_ of Comstock’s efforts. The fairest way to arrive at an unprejudiced conclusion about him would seem to be to let him speak for himself, by quoting from his own books describing his major work, and then to give the reader representative glimpses of his work and his psychology through the words of both his ardent supporters and his adverse critics.

But first it is essential to bear in mind that the dent Anthony Comstock made in American life was considerably due to the fact that he was given special power both by Congress and by the New York State Legislature to act as a government agent in securing arrests. This power, coupled with the almost unparalleled energy of the man, made his career exceptional. Had it not been for these two factors, it might perhaps seem clear that his psychology was not so very different from that of many less well known folk of his day and our own,—the perfectly respectable, and to all outward appearance normal people, who see sex as something innately nasty and dangerous: the only difference being that while Comstock, armed with his governmental power, translated his feeling into prodigious activity in the way of suppressing people, the others, lacking his official power and his energy, have remained rather inert. They have not therefore become conspicuous characters. The Comstock psychology, in modified and milder form, appears to be not at all a rarity.

The way in which Comstock got his special power to enforce the Federal law is described by his biographer, Rev. C. G. Trumbull in his book, “Anthony Comstock, Fighter,” as follows: “Immediately after the patience-taking passage of the bill in Congress ..., Senators Buckingham, Windom, Ramsey, and Representative Merriam united in asking Post Master General Jewell to appoint Comstock a special agent of the Post Office Department to enforce the laws. The Post Office Bill was still pending; the Post Office Committee offered this proposition as an amendment, and it was passed with the bill.” The Post Master General agreed to make the appointment, if an appropriation were voted for the salary and per diem expenses. Comstock went before the Committee on Appropriations and opposed the salary, on the ground that the position would thus be kept out of politics. He was appointed and held the office for thirty-three years. The Y. M. C. A. paid him $100 a month “to compensate him for the time lost from his business.” He was still ostensibly a grocery clerk. When Cortelyou was Post Master General, he insisted that Comstock should take a salary and be a government employee on a regular basis. At this time also his title of “Special Agent” was changed to “Inspector.” This occurred in about 1910. The duties of the office, as given by the Postal Laws, include the following: the “investigation of all matters connected with the postal service,” “alleged violations of law” and “when necessary to aid in the prosecution of criminal offenses.” Postal employees are “subordinate to post office inspectors when acting within the scope of their duty and employment.” “Inspectors are empowered to open pouches and sacks to examine the mail therein.” When authorized by the Post Master General, they are empowered to “make searches for mailable matter transported in violation of law,” to “seize all letters and bags, packets or parcels, containing letters which are being carried contrary to law on board any vessel or on any postal route.”

Comstock’s special power under New York State law was in connection with his position as Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. This Society was incorporated by the New York Legislature in May, 1873,—within six weeks of the passage of the Comstock bill by Congress. Section 3 of the Act of Incorporation states the object of the society to be “the enforcement of the laws for the suppression of the trade in and circulation of obscene literature and illustrations, advertisements, and articles of indecent and immoral use, as it is or may be forbidden by the laws of the State of New York or of the United States.” Section 5 contains an extraordinary provision, which reads this way: “The police force of the city of New York, as well as of other places, where police organizations exist, shall, as occasion may require, aid this corporation, its members or agents, in the enforcement of all laws which now exist or which may hereafter be enacted for the suppression of the acts and offenses designed in Section 3 of this Act.” Note that the police force was to aid the Society, not the Society the Police. An almost incredible further provision in the original Act of Incorporation was that “One half the fines collected through the instrumentality of the Society, or its agent, for the violation of the laws in this act specified, shall accrue to its benefits,”—a provision which fortunately was soon repealed.

This unusual sharing of official responsibility for law enforcement between government officials and private citizens was carried still further, by the enactment, two years later, of Section 1145 of the New York Criminal Code, which under the general heading of “Indecency” is subtitled, “_Who may arrest persons violating provisions of this article_” and reads thus: “Any agent of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice upon being designated thereto by the sheriff of any county in the State, may within such county make arrests and bring before any court or magistrate thereof having jurisdiction, offenders found violating the provisions of any law for the suppression of the trade in and circulation of obscene literature and illustrations, advertisements and articles of indecent or immoral use, as it is or may be forbidden by the laws of this State or of the United States.” According to John S. Sumner, the present secretary of the Society, Comstock “_was always deputized_” by the sheriff. “He liked the arresting and all that sort of thing,” said Mr. Sumner with a rather tolerant smile; “I don’t care much for it, myself.”

This special power with which Comstock was vested by the State was questioned, but never with sufficient force to revoke the act which conferred it. Mr. Courtlandt Palmer, a lawyer of distinction, made a most earnest criticism of the Comstock laws in the New York Observer of April 26, 1883, in which he said, “These laws tend to confine administration to certain classes. The district attorneys are the only democratic prosecutors of the cases under consideration by the Society for the Suppression of Vice.” He spoke of the Society as endeavoring to “supplement and supplant the regular process of law by confiding the machinery of justice to special and irresponsible associations upon whom is conferred the unrepublican power not only of prosecution but of arrest.”

In selecting representative passages from Comstock’s own words, space forbids the giving of any large number. Choosing is a bit difficult, because Comstock’s style of expression was so redundant, so abounding in detail, that concise quotations are not easy to provide. Selections pertinent for our present use are first those which indicate his general psychology,—the mental background on which he built his career, and then those which show the place he gave in his own mind to the subject of the control of conception.

The titles of his two sizable books are “Frauds Exposed” and “Traps for the Young.” They constitute his life story in his own words. He was proud of having arrested 3873 persons, of whom 2911 were convicted. Satan was to him a very live foe. He dramatized the combat with this enemy to the highest degree. His reports of his adventures in making arrests read, not like the recapitulations of a dutiful officer or of a trained welfare worker, but rather like the dime novels which he so roundly denounced. He wound up the story of one of his captures in Boston with the exuberant exclamation, “Then ho for the Charles St. Jail!”

Satan to him was apparently the representative of obscenity; and obscenity, if not completely synonymous with sex, was very nearly so. At any rate the idea of obscenity as an enveloping enemy permeated every other subject that Comstock touched upon. It seems as if he felt that practically all roads led to obscenity, and that it was his duty to block all the roads. In the opening chapter of “Traps for the Young,” after describing in detail box traps, fox traps, partridge snares, bear traps, rat traps, etc., he says: “Satan adopts similar devices to capture our youth and secure the ruin of immortal souls ... the love story and cheap work of fiction captivate fancy and pervert taste ... rob the child of the desire to study.... There are grave questions in the minds of some of our best writers and of our most thoughtful men and women, whether novel reading _at its best_ does not tend downward rather than upward.... Light literature then is a devil trap to captivate the child by perverting taste and fancy.” (The italics are ours.)

Fear was apparently as great a factor in Comstock’s make-up as his vigor. He seemed to have little trust in the self-reliant virtue of people of any age and almost none at all in young people. Here is another bit from the “Traps”: “Drop into the fountain of moral purity in our youth the poison of much of the literature of the day, and you place in their lives an all pervading power of evil. A perpetual panorama of vile forms will keep moving to and fro before the mind, to the exclusion of the good. _Evil influences burn themselves in._ Vile books and papers are branding irons heated in the fires of hell, and used by Satan to sear the highest life of the soul. The world is the devil’s hunting ground, and children are his choicest game.”

The Chapter headings which Comstock chose for the “Trap” book are indicative of his mental trend. This is the list:

I. Household Traps (light literature) II. Household Traps continued (newspapers) III. Half-dime Novels and Story Papers IV. Advertisement Traps V. Gambling Traps VI. Gambling Traps continued VII. Gambling Traps continued VIII. Death Traps by Mail (Obscenity) IX. Quack Traps X. Free Love Traps XI. Artistic and Classical Traps XII. Infidel and Liberal Traps XIII. More Infidel and Liberal Traps

In a letter read on the fortieth anniversary of his Society, Comstock said, “Let me emphasize one fact, supported by my nearly forty-two years of public life in fighting this particular foe. My experience leads me to the conviction that once these matters (obscenity) enter through the eye and ear into the chamber of imagery in the heart of a child, nothing but the grace of God can ever blot it out.” One wonders how lively Comstock’s faith in the grace of God may have been, inasmuch as he was willing to give it so few chances to function. His own words and his actions seem to invite the conclusion that his fear was considerably larger than his faith.

In an interview with Comstock by Mary Alden Hopkins in Harper’s Weekly of May 22, 1915, he asserted that the “existing laws are a necessity in order to prevent the downfall of youth of both sexes.... To repeal the present laws would be a crime against society and especially a crime against young women.” Apparently he felt that young women were especially weak in their power of resistance to obscenity. In the same interview, speaking of the Federal law, Miss Hopkins asked, “Does it not allow the judge considerable leeway in deciding whether or not a book or a picture is immoral?” “No,” replied Mr. Comstock, “the highest courts in Great Britain and the United States have laid down the test in all such matters. What he has to decide is whether or not it might rouse in young and inexperienced minds, lewd or libidinous thought.”

Here we have at least one key to Comstock’s attitude. It is evident from the passages already quoted and from his record as a prosecutor of many persons of fine standing, good taste and high ideals, that the things which he thought could arouse lewd or libidinous thought were legion, and he detected that quality in all manner of instances when it was not at all evident to others. For example, he describes on page 163 of the “Traps,” how he made an arrest at what he called a “free love convention.” He said he slipped into the hall unnoticed, and “looked over the audience of about 250 men and boys. I could see lust in every face.” If ever anyone had a sturdy belief in the fall of man, it would seem to be Anthony Comstock. Human nature to him was innately corrupt, or at least so large a part of it was corrupt that, in his view, it warranted suppressive laws applying to everyone whether clean minded or depraved. This attitude was plainly indicated in a later part of the above mentioned interview with Miss Hopkins. She says, “I was somewhat confused that Mr. Comstock should class contraceptives with pornographic objects which debauch children’s fancies, for I knew that the European scientists who advocate their use have no desire at all to debauch children. When I asked Mr. Comstock about this he replied,—with scant patience for “theorizers who do not know human nature.” “If you open the door to _anything_, the filth will all pour in and the degradation of youth will follow.” (The italics are ours.)

That he dramatized himself as a hero and a martyr seems quite evident all through his career. When the Hearing was held on the petition to repeal his laws shortly after they were passed by Congress, he describes the scene thus: “As I entered the Committee room, I found it crowded with long-haired men and short-haired women, there to defend obscene publications, abortion implements and other incentives to crime, by repealing the laws. I heard their hiss and curse as I passed through them. I saw their sneers and looks of derision and contempt.... It was not the blackening of my reputation that weighed me down, so much as the possibility that one of the most righteous laws ever enacted should be repealed or changed.”

His faculty for reading into things what was in his own mind was never more clearly demonstrated than by his description in “Frauds Exposed,” of the work of the National Liberal League, an organization formed in 1876, one of the chief objects of which was the repeal of the Comstock laws. He devoted a long chapter to it, writing in great detail of how “Infidelity” had “wedded Obscenity.” At the first convention of this League, Comstock says, they “espoused the cause of nastiness” and “considered means to aid and help the vendors of obscene publications.” He asks, “Do infidelity and obscenity occupy the same bed? Are they appropriately wedded?” He declared that at this convention they “proclaimed the banns between Infidelity and Obscenity in the following resolution, which he quotes as overwhelming proof of the nastiness of the organization:

_Resolved_, that this League, while it recognizes the great importance and absolute necessity of guarding by proper legislation against obscene and indecent publications, whatever sect, party, order or class such publications claim to favor, disapproves and protests against all laws which by reason of indefiniteness or ambiguity, shall permit the prosecution and punishment of honest and conscientious men for presenting to the public what they deem essential to the public welfare, when the views thus presented do not violate in thought or language the acknowledged rules of decency; and that we demand that all laws against obscenity and indecency shall be so clear and explicit that none but actual offenders against the recognized principles of purity shall be liable to suffer therefrom.

_Resolved_, that we cannot but regard the appointment and authorization by the government of a single individual to inspect our mails with power to exclude therefrom whatever he deems objectionable, as a delegation of authority dangerous to public and personal liberty, and utterly inconsistent with the genius of free institutions.”

“Therefore,” says Comstock triumphantly, “I charge that they defended obscenity for the love of it.”

A welter of adjectives was an outstanding feature of Comstock’s books. He gives his reader very little opportunity to judge for himself as to the character of the crimes his prisoners committed, for he does not state concretely what they were, but he uses phrases about them such as “diabolical trash,” “carrion,” “leprous influences,” etc. On only two pages opened at random in the “Traps” book, were noted the following words and phrases: “moral vulture,” “terrible talons,” “cancer,” “damns the soul,” “frightful monster,” “homes desolated,” “whited sepulchres,” “putrefying sores,” “immense cuttlefish,” “turgid waters,” “jackal,” “pathway of lust,” “lust is the boon companion of all other crimes.” In the light of modern psychology, this choice of language carried to such extreme, betrays fear and sex obsession to a degree that would hardly seem to fit a man for sound service either as a law maker or as an enforcer of the law.

However, now let us take a look at Comstock through the eyes of others. His biographer, Rev. C. G. Trumbull, wrote of him thus toward the close of his career: “Mr. Comstock today likes to dwell upon what he calls the wonderful goodness of God in those early days of the fight for purity. And it _is_ a story of God’s work, not man’s, when we remember that it was an unknown clerk, twenty-eight years old, who had hardihood to go to the national capitol with the idea of getting his own convictions put into legislative action; that finding there two or three other bills pending in the same field (one regarding the District of Columbia instigated by the Washington Y. M. C. A., the other by Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, amending the inter-state commerce law to prohibit sending obscene matter from one State to another) he stuck to it till all were merged in a single bill of five comprehensive sections; that he prayed his bill through both houses in the strenuous closing hours of the winter session, and that he returned home under appointment as a staff officer of a cabinet officer of the United States!” Dr. Trumbull adds that the Y. M. C. A. “gladly paid the expenses of the Washington campaign.”

That is the viewpoint of a friend and admirer. Now we turn to the slant from which Comstock was viewed by one of his most severe critics, D. M. Bennett of New York, editor of “The Truth Seeker” and a leader in the agnostic and liberal group known as the National Liberal League. Comstock alluded to this organization as “debauching the public conscience,” and as “this pestilence which drags down and never builds up.” Comstock secured the arrest and conviction of Bennett on an obscenity charge, and Bennett wrote at great length several articles to prove that Comstock’s real animus against him was religious intolerance, and that the obscenity charge was a subterfuge. Bennett served a sentence of several months in the Albany jail. In his pamphlet, “Anthony Comstock,—His Career of Cruelty and Crime,” published in 1878, Bennett says: “Far be it from the writer to deny him any of the good he has performed, though the means by which he reaches his ends, and by which he brings the unfortunate to punishment, are not such as good men approve. Among a certain class of vile publishers, he has accomplished a reform that must be placed to his credit, but the system of falsehood, subterfuge and decoy-letters that he has employed to entrap his victims and inveigle them into the commission of an offense against the law is utterly to be condemned.

“The want of discrimination which he has evinced between those who were really guilty of issuing vile publications, and whose only object was to inflame the baser passions,—and those who published and sold books for the purpose of educating and improving mankind, has been a serious defect with this man. While he suppressed much that is vile, he has to a much larger extent, infringed upon the dearest rights of the individual, thus bringing obloquy and disgrace upon those who had a good object in view. And upon those who in a limited degree were at fault, he has been severe and relentless to a criminal extent. He has evinced far too much pleasure in bringing his fellow beings into the deepest sorrow and grief; and under the name of arresting publishers of and dealers in obscene literature, he has caused the arraignment of numerous persons who had not the slightest intention of violating the rules of propriety and morality.”

Further on in the same pamphlet, Mr. Bennett says: “Being questioned at a public meeting in Boston, May 30, 1878, where he was endeavoring to organize a branch of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, he was asked the following question by the Rev. Jesse H. Jones, a Congregational minister: (1) ‘Did you, Mr. Comstock, ever use decoy letters and false signatures?’ (2) ‘Did you ever sign a woman’s name to such decoy letters?’ (3) ‘Did you ever try to make a person sell you forbidden wares, and then when you had succeeded, use the evidence thus obtained to convict them?’ To each of these questions Comstock answered, ‘Yes, I have done it.’”

One of the best known instances of Comstock’s decoy system for securing arrests was that of William Sanger. As described by Mr. Sanger in a written statement prepared for his trial and which the judge allowed him to present only in part, the circumstances were these. On December 18, 1914, a man had come to his studio, saying that his name was Heller, that he was a dealer in rubber goods and sundries, that he had read Mrs. Sanger’s booklets “What Every Girl Should Know” and “What Every Mother Should Know,” that he had enjoyed reading them and was in sympathy with her work. He then asked for a copy of the pamphlet on family limitation. Mr. Sanger said he had none. The man insisted, asked if Mr. Sanger could not find one around somewhere for him, as he wanted to reprint it in several languages for distribution among the poor people he worked with and with whom he did business. Mr. Sanger took the trouble to hunt about among his wife’s belongings and found a single copy of the booklet, which he gave to the man. A month later Anthony Comstock appeared and arrested him for having given contraceptive information contrary to the New York law. The man who came to him as Heller, was in reality Comstock’s spy. His real name is Bamberger and he is still in the employ of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. Mr. Sanger stated that Comstock on the day of his arrest had offered to get him a suspended sentence if he would plead guilty. Mr. Sanger declined and he was sentenced to thirty days in the workhouse, which sentence he served.

This leads logically to the next consideration, namely, the place which Comstock gave in his own mind, and thus in the laws he framed, to contraceptive knowledge. And again let him first speak for himself. In a letter which he wrote on April 28, 1915, to Mrs. Clara Gruening Stillman, Secretary of the National Birth Control League (the first national birth control organization in this country) he said: “A letter dated April 23, 1915, purporting to have been sent out by you as Secretary of the Birth Control League, has been referred to this office. In this letter you say, ‘The law, both State and Federal at present makes it a crime even for physicians to give information as to methods, no matter how essential such knowledge may be to the physical and economic well-being of those concerned.’ There is not a word of truth in this statement, and you cannot find a single case, since the enactment of these laws, to justify such a statement on the part of your League.” Further on in the same letter he says: “I challenge your League to produce a single case where any reputable physician has been interfered with or disturbed in the legitimate practice of medicine. Do not make the mistake, however, of classifying the quack, and the advertiser of articles for abortion and to prevent conception, with reputable physicians.

“You cannot safeguard the children on the public streets by turning loose mad dogs, neither can you elevate their morals by making it possible for them to sink themselves to the lowest levels of degradation, by furnishing them with the facilities to do so.... I shall be very happy to meet a representative of your League at any time and show the laws in detail and the necessity for their existence precisely as they are; and I can assure you that they will not be changed either by the Legislature or by Congress.”

Again in the interview with Comstock by Mary Alden Hopkins, from which quotation was made above, he responded to her question, “Do not these laws handicap physicians?” by this reply, “They do not. No reputable physician has ever been prosecuted under these laws.... A reputable doctor may tell his patient in his office what is necessary, and a druggist may sell on a doctor’s written prescription drugs which he would not be allowed to sell otherwise.”

This is a baffling sort of mind to deal with. For either he did not fully realize the meaning of the laws which he himself framed, or else he hopelessly confused the actual wording of the laws with his personal choices as to the people to whom they should apply. For the Federal law as enacted by Congress and as it stands to this day contains no exemptions or qualifications whatever, as to the giving of contraceptive information. It is just as criminal for a conscientious doctor to send needed contraceptive instructions to a patient, as for a sex pervert to send an advertisement of contraceptive means with his depraved literature. And in the District of Columbia and in at least seventeen States it is just as criminal for a reputable doctor to instruct a patient, even verbally in the privacy of his own office, as it is for any low-minded person to peddle pornographic stuff containing contraceptive directions. The language of these laws is perfectly plain; they are flat, sweeping prohibitions and apply to everybody alike. It would seem almost incredible that Comstock should have dared to assert that they did not forbid physicians, or to assume that because neither he nor the government officials chose to enforce the laws on all offenders, that the laws, therefore did not apply to all offenders. But perhaps his mind was so focussed on the fact that he had not himself prosecuted any physicians whom he considered reputable, that he assumed the impossibility of their being prosecuted by any one.

However, it seems doubtful that he was quite so oblivious as to the plain import of the law’s words, as to sincerely think they did not mean what they said. It seems more likely that in planning laws as he did with their sweeping prohibition, he was instinctively acting to provide himself and those who were involved in the enforcement of the laws, with an absolutely unhampered opportunity to decide who among the law-breakers were “reputable” and what was “obscene,” “immoral,” etc., and to pick out whatever offender they chose for prosecution. He knew of course that complete enforcement was utterly impossible, but to be able to make the law effective here and there according to his own will, was a use of power that was very evidently to his liking.

Comstock’s moral code on this matter would seem then to boil down to about this, if he had presented it, shorn of all his adjectives and settings: some perverts use contraceptives, therefore the law should not allow any one at all to secure them or know anything about them, and besides, as most of those who are not perverts can’t be really trusted anyhow, hearing about or seeing contraceptives would be pretty sure to make them go to the devil, especially young people, so the complete prohibition is after all the safest; however, if you happen to be decent and you can manage to get a doctor to give you some information, I will not have the doctor prosecuted, that is, provided he is _my idea_ of reputable.

The question for present day citizens is as to whether they want to retain laws framed by a man holding such a concept, and which laws accurately reflect that concept, or whether they want to revise the laws to reflect the concepts held by the majority of the fairly normal wholesome-minded people of this country who have long ago proved their belief in the control of conception by practicing it,—that is, as best they can under the handicap of the laws.

While Comstock’s successor, John S. Sumner, still echoes the Comstock code, it is a considerably fainter echo than it was a decade ago. Sumner’s expression of his views is much less hectic and denunciatory than was Comstock’s. He concedes more than Comstock ever did, and a good bit more than he did himself, when he first fell heir to Comstock’s mantle. There are many New Yorkers who recall the crowded meeting at the Park Avenue Hotel when Sumner was one of the speakers in a symposium on birth control, and how he asserted that there was no need for birth control knowledge in the world, because if there got to be too many people, there would always be war, famine and disease to counteract overpopulation, and how he was hissed for saying it. Contrast that attitude of mind with what he wrote some eight years after, in his previously quoted letter of January 23, 1923, to Senator Cummins, in which he said, “There is no disputing the fact that parents should use judgment in bring children into the world. Questions of health, heredity, environment and economic situations make this desirable.... The ever increasing number of social and medical organizations and combinations of the two that have to do with the welfare of the people are and will be more and more in position to refer the individual family to the proper authoritative sources of contraceptive information, under the present laws, namely to the proper maternity hospital or physician.” Of course Mr. Sumner knows quite well that “under the present laws” in many of the States this information could not be lawfully given as he describes, and he also knows that no physician anywhere in the whole country could lawfully send any such instructions to a patient by mail. Later in the same letter is this sentence: “The imparting of information regarding this subject should be confined to reputable physicians after personal investigation of the particular case.” (Just how the laws could be expected to operate to compel the persons to whom the information is imparted by the physician to keep it a dead secret, Mr. Sumner does not state.)

These quotations suggest several important points for discussion in connection with propositions for revising the laws, but their usefulness for the moment is to provide documentary evidence that both Comstock and Sumner, the latter more than the former, have not looked upon the present laws as a means of preventing doctors from giving and normal people from using contraceptive information. That they would prevent it, if enforced, they could not deny, but that only proves conclusively that the present laws are very ill-framed, even from the view points of Comstock who initiated them, and of Sumner who, as yet, does not want them changed.