CHAPTER IV

THE HEARINGS ON THE CUMMINS-VAILE BILL AND THE AFTERMATH

_Delay in arranging hearings analogous to delay in sponsoring bill: Joint Hearings by Senate and House Judiciary Sub-Committees held on April 8 and May 9, 1924: Mr. Vaile in opening remarks pleads for restoration of American freedom to acquire knowledge, which was taken away 50 years ago: Birth rate in United States proves that people want to get some information in spite of law: Catholic speakers discuss birth control, not the bill: Wages of government employees quoted as reason for passing bill: Prof. Field shows historically that suppression does not suppress: Mrs. Glaser argues for freedom for scientists to learn and teach regarding control of human fertility: Mrs. Carpenter shows how Federal law operates to prevent Chicago Clinic: Prof. Johnson gives eugenic view-point: Hearing reopened at request of Catholics: Lengthy irrelevancies: Congressman Hersey heckles the witnesses: Report of Senate Sub-Committee a sop to the workers for the bill: Unique effort to get vote of full Committee before adjournment, as aid to reducing inhibition in next Congress._

The Hearings on the bill, and the circumstances connected with them offer further light upon the workings of the Congressional mind, or rather the reaction of Congressional feeling concerning this subject. With all due allowance for the fact that the Congressional calendar is always “crowded” and that most legislation in the nature of things under the present system may, and usually does, move very slowly, there has been every evidence that the impulse to postpone committee consideration and action on this bill as long as possible was most compelling in the Judiciary Committee of both Houses. It was a replica of the hedging about sponsoring the bill, which had characterized the few preceding years, when the various desired sponsors “passed the buck” by saying at the beginning of a session that they were so very busy getting their “important” projects started they could not stop to consider taking on this measure too, and toward the close of a session they were similarly so driven finishing up their “important” projects that they couldn’t think of anything else, and in the middle of a session they were just as able to find “alibis” as at any other time. As Senator Cummins has repeatedly said, “The men dislike the thing so!”

The last introduction of the bill was made fairly early in the first session of the new Congress, that is on January 30th. Yet it was not until the middle of March that the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee could be persuaded to appoint the necessary sub-committee in order that a hearing might be held. And it was not till a week later still that the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee decided as to which of the three standing sub-committees he would refer the bill. The first Hearing was held on April 8th, jointly by the Senate and House sub-committees as a time saving arrangement. The Sub-committee chairman declined to ask their committees for a vote on reporting the bill until after the testimony given at the hearing should be printed. Weeks of delay followed before the printing was achieved. During this time it became obvious that some plan was holding things up and presently it appeared. The hearing was to be reopened at the request of the Roman Catholics. At the first hearing the chairman had made the usual inquiry, “Is there any other opponent of the bill that desires to be heard?” There was no one. The opposition had exhausted its resources with five speakers, so the hearing continued with the testimony of the remaining four out of the ten speakers in favor of the bill.

At the second hearing which did not come till May 9th no new points were made, but a very long paper was read elaborating the Roman Catholic arguments against birth control and emphasizing the fact that the Catholics were not willing to trust their own people if access to contraceptive information were made lawful. This delay carried over consideration of the bill by the sub-committee so late into the session that they claimed it would not be possible to make a report and have it acted upon by the full Judiciary Committee previous to adjournment. And the relief of some of the members over once more putting off action on “the birth control bill” was plainly evident. This relief was covered (in many instances unconsciously so) by all sorts of argument which was quite irrelevant to the bill, but which served well enough as a means of making the question seem vastly complicated and one over which a conscientious law maker must ponder long and hard. In the strenuous effort which was made to secure at least a committee report before the adjournment of Congress, the following appeal to stick to the point was sent by the Director of the Voluntary Parenthood League to every member of the Judiciary Committee:

Judging by conversation with members of the Judiciary Sub-Committee, there seems to be a great temptation to discuss the Cummins-Vaile Bill emotionally rather than logically. As all the members are lawyers, I hope it will not be taken amiss to urge that, at the meeting to decide on reporting the bill, the discussion will be strictly limited to the LAW points.

I respectfully venture this suggestion because of the short time remaining in which to act during the present session, and not because the ramifications of the subject of the bill are not important. They are indeed. And we, who are specially voicing the public need for this bill are, in common with the members of the Sub-Committees, deeply interested in the problem of population, sex education, the morality of the young, and all other questions allied to the control of parenthood. But we realize that they are outside the practicable and legitimate field of legislation. They are problems in sociology and education. They therefore should not be entangled at this time with the very simple reasons for reporting out this bill at once.

(A brief résumé of the reasons followed which is not given here because a similar and more comprehensive one is to be given later.)

Congress might be excused for not repealing these defunct laws long ago, on its own initiative. But now that large numbers of citizens have, for five years, been definitely asking Congress to act, there can be no tenable excuse for not making an immediate and favorable report.

But the temptation to postpone decision and to befog the issue with irrelevancies won for that session, and the bill had to go over to the short session the following December.

The Hearings Report gives many significant side lights as to the psychology of those who appeared for and against the bill, and of certain members of the Judiciary Committee. It is impracticable to quote lavishly here from the seventy-nine pages of the document. But a few of the remarks which bear most pertinently on the salient points for the bill and some which indicate the attitude of the committee members may well be noted.

The members of the Senate Sub-Committee were Senators Spencer of Missouri, Norris of Nebraska and Overman of North Carolina, and the members of the House Sub-Committee were Congressmen Yates of Illinois, Hersey of Maine, Perlman of New York, Larson of Minnesota, Thomas of Kentucky, Major of Missouri and O’Sullivan of Connecticut. Senator Spencer presided.

Mr. Vaile in his opening remarks said: “These bills do not propose any new or strange legislation, and these bills themselves do not propose to teach birth control.” He was at once interrupted by Mr. Hersey who asked, “You said that this is no new matter. Is there any legislation of this sort that has been passed hitherto?” To which Mr. Vaile replied, “The legislation on this matter consists of our statutes classifying contraceptives as obscene of themselves. We are the only country in the world having this legislation. We did not have it prior to 1873. The bill, therefore, proposes no new or affirmative doctrine. It simply proposes to make lawful what was lawful in the United States prior to 1873. It does not propose to do this by any new or affirmative legislation, but by simply striking those provisions from five sections of our Penal Code.”

“Let me, at the outset, refer to a question which immediately bobs up in the minds of everybody with whom you discuss this subject. They say, “It will promote immorality.” Let me ask the committee, in all fairness, if the morality of this country is strikingly superior now to what it was before 1873. You can not pick up a daily paper, you can not go into a church, you can not hear a subject of public morals discussed to any great length by any speaker but what you will be advised that we are at a lower stage of morals than we were 50 years ago. Fifty years ago we did not have such a statute on our books. Certainly the insertion of this proviso in our statutes has not noticeably increased the morality of the United States. It is common knowledge that methods of contraception are used by the educated, the well-to-do classes of the community. Would anybody say that these classes are conspicuously less moral than those who can not obtain this information and have no knowledge of it? I think that would be a great reflection on many people, with certainly a highly developed civic consciousness, people prominent in every good work of the community, all of whom as a matter of common knowledge, of which this committee can take judicial notice, do have and use this information....

“I submit, in all fairness, by merely removing the provisions which we put into the code 50 years ago, and which did not exist theretofore, we won’t be rushing on a downward path, so far as we can judge by our own experience of that of any other country.

“Now, that raises another question. Is lack of knowledge the best method or even a safe method to prevent vice? Would you insult your daughters by insinuating to them that it is only because they can not get such information as this that they remain good? Of course you would not. Why, then, pass that insult to every other daughter in the United States?

“And, furthermore, if this knowledge can be obtained, though unlawfully—and we all know that it can be obtained unlawfully, or at least without the sanction of law—if it can be obtained, why, then, merely to make it illegal is a very poor way to protect anybody’s morality, because they can certainly get the information.”

At the close of his remarks Mr. Vaile introduced the writer, who in turn introduced the other witnesses for the bill. Her own remarks included the following:

If agreeable to the gentlemen of the committee, we will divide the testimony that we will present to you under two different categories. One, the direct reasons for the passage of this bill from the point of view of law and the rights of citizens. The other bits of testimony that we are ready to present to you if you desire and if agreeable to you, are certain evidences that the utilization of this knowledge in this country and throughout the world has tended toward racial and individual welfare.

This is not logically and directly speaking necessarily an argument for the passage of this bill, but it is distinctly reassuring, I should say, to Congress when it stands for this measure, to know that the action is in harmony with what has been generally considered by all impartial observers as something which makes for race progress and race betterment.

To begin with the logic, which is less human but possibly more convincing to a committee made up exclusively of lawyers; the continuance of the five statutes which this bill proposes to amend seems to us not tenable, either on grounds of justice or public policy, because first, the majority of the people do not approve of the suppression of knowledge of the regulation of parenthood by the control of conception. When I make this somewhat dogmatic statement I offer to you the best and most conclusive proof there is, namely, the official figures on the birth rate of our country. The birth registration area, if I am correctly informed, covers 22 States, but presumably the population of those 22 States is of about the same character as the population of the remainder of the States, and therefore the birth rate, so far as is recorded, is an exceedingly valid argument.

The birth rate for the country, averaging those States, stands at 22.8 a thousand. A birth rate that I might call natural, that is unguided by the mind of man and simply resulting from instinct and physical impulse, would run from 50 a thousand up, and 50 is an exceedingly conservative figure. Therefore, family limitation by intention has already long been in the world, and for a very long period, in spite of the fact that we have maintained for half a century laws which theoretically keep our entire population in absolute ignorance.

No citizen, so far as I know, has yet come to Congress and said this to his Representative or Senator: “Will you please keep these present laws as they stand now? I personally consider the control of conception rightly classed as indecency. I have no knowledge on the subject, and I don’t want any. Moreover, I wish my ignorance legally perpetuated because I do not think I should be trusted with it. I need to have my Government protect me from the temptation to misuse it.”

No citizen, I take it, has thus far come to you with that plea on his own behalf. The protests—and you have received some against this measure—have seemed to be wholly on the ground that access to this forbidden knowledge would be dangerous for somebody else, not for the people who themselves protest. Unless it can be proved that there are more citizens who deliberately ask to be kept in ignorance than there are those who want access to this knowledge there can be no justification for not passing this measure. In view of the proof which the birth rate gives, that the majority believe in, because they achieve family limitation, it is hardly likely that those who want to be kept in ignorance can be anywhere near a majority. Asking that others be kept in ignorance is not a valid argument for any legislation.

The abuse of knowledge should be handled in some other way than attempting to maintain ignorance on the part of the population. The present laws as they stand are predicated on distrust by the Government of the mass of its citizens, which is an intolerable principle for laws in a supposed democracy. It is a principle, for instance, which no Member of Congress would care to expound, I think, let us say, in a pre-election campaign. Fancy a Senator or Congressman making a campaign address in which he would state that he deemed his constituents too weak morally to be trusted with scientific knowledge about sex matters. It is incredible. We do not ordinarily cast a wholesale insult upon our fellow citizens. We think too well of the average American to do that, and certainly no such insult should be found in our laws.

_Reverend John A. Ryan_, speaking on behalf of Catholics in general said:

We regard these practices about which information is proposed to be given as immoral—everlastingly, essentially, fundamentally immoral, quite as immoral as adultery, for instance, or rather a little more so, because adultery, whatever may be its vicious aspects, does not commit any outrage upon nature, nor pervert nature’s functions.

We maintain that these practices are detrimental to the family; that they are not in the interest of better families; that they mean the promotion of selfishness within the family and a great reduction in the capacity to endure, the capacity to face hardships, the capacity to do little things, to do the things of life without which there is no consistent achievement or any kind worth while.

_Dr. Lawrence Litchfield_, former President of the State Medical Society of Pennsylvania, testified that he had

practiced medicine for 36 years. I have been interested in international movements for the control of and the abating of venereal diseases, child labor, and tuberculosis. All of these problems for the benefit of the human race bring us back one after another to the necessity for intelligent birth control. The human race has the same right and need for scientific development that other animals have. We have many laws and many books and many theories that control the breeding of animals, but the breeding of human beings is left entirely to chance.

_Senator Spencer_: Is there any law in Pennsylvania against a physician freely communicating to his patients?

_Doctor Litchfield_: Yes. If a patient of mine whom I believe would be seriously injured by not having the information to prevent conception wrote me for such information I am legally unable to send it to her. If she comes into my office and the doors are locked, I tell her what I think is wise.

_Senator Spencer_: Do the doors necessarily have to be locked?

_Dr. Litchfield_: The information can not be given publicly.

_Senator Spencer_: But I mean, there is no law in Pennsylvania is there, which prevents a doctor from communicating information of this sort to his patients?

_Dr. Litchfield_: There is, as I understand it. I might say, further, as a side light on this question, last summer in Europe my wife and I found a book which we read and thought would be a very good thing for our young married daughter to have, and I decided to import some of these books and give them to my patients who were recently married. I send an order to England and received an answer that the book could not be imported, because it was regarded as obscene.

_Mrs. S. J. Bronson_, Secretary of the Voluntary Parenthood League spoke for the bill from the practical standpoint of the wage earner, and said in part:

Congress need look no further than to the vast arm of Government employees to find ample reason for the immediate passage of this measure. The human story revealed in the pages of dry figures of the official register is most compelling. It shows that in the Federal civil service alone there are 548,531 employees. The addition of State and municipal employees would carry the figure into the millions for the whole country. There seems to be no official statement of what the average Government salary is; but the director of the Voluntary Parenthood League has made an illuminating estimate by taking 100 names in alphabetical sequence from the directory in the official register. (It does not include Members of Congress, the Army or Navy, or post-office employees.) These hundred employees includes clerks, guards, charwomen, draftsmen, attendants, teachers, firemen, laborers, machinists, accountants, customs inspectors, watchmen, foremen, supervisors, a harness maker, a seamstress, and a judge. The average salary proves to be $1605. There were only 5 who get over $3000, and there were 18 getting below $1000. It is a fair guess that any other 100 names taken from the book at random would tell about the same story.

Now, is it fair play for the Government to retain laws which try to keep its own direct employees in utter ignorance as to how to regulate their families somewhere in proportion to their earnings? As the Government can never provide unlimited wages for its servants, it ought at least to allow them legal access to the knowledge by which they may, if they choose, safeguard themselves against unlimited families.

Please also bear in mind some representative facts about non-Government wage earners. In the peak of what was called war prosperity the average wage in the shipyards was only $1411, nearly $300 short of the standard set by the War Labor Board. The average wage of the railroad workers in the same period was $1137. Dr. P. P. Claxton, former commissioner of education, gave $630 as the average school teacher’s salary in 1918. The average weekly wage of the New York factory workers before the after-war slump was $23.10, and in 169 sorts of factory work in Massachusetts during the first year of the war only a little over one-seventh of the adult males were earning about $25 a week.

At the same time health authorities agree that a growing child should have a quart of good milk a day. Also that there is no adequate substitute for milk. At 15 cents a quart the bill for milk alone for six children would be over $6 a week. Of course, a man earning $25 a week can not provide that and all the other necessities too, and so his babies are puny. Or if they pull through it is at the expense of the parents’ vitality, or else charity steps in to save them. And when the children reach adolescence, the age when most of all they need alert, intelligent parents, the father and the mother—especially the mother—are worn out and dull, unfit to take a strong hand in rearing a race that will have brains and brawn and character.

The point I urge is fair play for the millions. These, and other millions to follow, will for an indefinite period make up the actual majority in this country. They can not be left out of consideration. They are “the people.”

We are bound to believe that on the whole they are decent, normal, responsible folks, who naturally love children and want as many as they can wisely rear; but they can not afford so very many, nor have them so close together that the family welfare depreciates beyond redemption. That parents and children should be crushed by the very things which ought to be the cause of their deepest happiness is too ironic. Congress surely has the heart to look at this matter humanely.

All too often young married couples start out in life with an inadequate income even for the preparation of the first child, and the young wife finds she must continue working for the first year at least in order to help meet the expense which the birth of a baby involves. No decent, self-respecting woman wants to become the object of charity.

Gentlemen, I ask you in particular to bear in mind the great army of these young married people, who are facing life and parenthood with high hopes and ambitions, and who have no background of financial security, with nothing but their individual earning power to safeguard themselves and their children. It is somewhat the fashion nowadays to decry the young people, and doubtless some of the worry is warranted, but also there are unnumbered thousands who long for and are working for everything that is fine and beautiful, including families of sturdy, well-born, and well-bred youngsters who will make the next generation. On behalf of these young people I beg you to enact this bill, so they may have free and proper access to whatever help science can give them in the vital task that is ahead of them.

The Secretary of the National Council of Catholic Women, _Miss Agnes G. Reagan_, claimed that the bill requested Congress “to open the gates that information ruinous to Christian standards of family life may stream through the mails and flood the land.” She asserted that birth control methods are “all contrary to the moral law and forbidden because they are unnatural,” that they were “intrinsically wrong,—as wrong as lying and blasphemy.” As to the effect upon young people, she said:

I speak from a rather wide and perhaps a sad experience in investigating conditions among young people who have become delinquent, and in many cases their delinquency was due to the fact that they could secure at the present time information concerning such practices; and that that information will certainly be much more widespread if this bill should be passed no one who has had dealings with young people has the slightest doubt. The United States in opening the mails to this sort of literature will do something that would be fatal to our young people.

_Professor James A. Field_ of Chicago University, speaking for the bill, gave some historic proofs that legal attempts to suppress knowledge, especially that connected with sex, only serve to stimulate thought, increase curiosity and promote education. He instanced the situation in England about fifty years ago when obscenity prosecutions were instituted for circulating two hitherto relatively unknown pamphlets (both as it happened written by Americans, “Moral Physiology” by Robert Dale Owen who was a member of Congress from Indiana, and “Fruits of Philosophy” by Dr. Knowlton of Boston). And then what happened? The case (against Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant) came before the greatest and highest court in England.

What would happen if the same high jurisdiction in this country took up a little pamphlet that nobody had heard of and such a pamphlet were taken up and challenged as destructive to public morals? Everybody would want to know what the pamphlet was all about. Well, that is what happened in England. There the pamphlet had sold to a small extent, really negligible in its extent, for 40 years. During the progress of the trial it sold to the extent of 125,000 copies.

The solicitor general prosecuted the case and admitted those figures. He apologized to the jury; he said the case was a mischievous case in its origin and bound to be mischievous in its results. He said he was really sorry he had anything to do with it.

The chief justice, in summing up, said everybody that had followed the case would agree on that, that no more ill-advised and injurious case had ever been brought before a court in his opinion.

A competent observer remarked that that prosecution had put the agitation forward by 25 years; and, in fact, so far as a great many people were concerned, it created the situation as an agitation. A great many people would never have known of it except for this and do not know that except as having this origin.

How about this country? There have been isolated cases, but so far bringing it to the attention of the people generally in the last ten years or so, that is due to what happened in New York within a decade. A nurse was working among the poor in New York and she was shocked to find that the mouths of physicians were stopped from giving advice to women about avoiding the sort of misery into which they had fallen. She found herself against the law. She started to publish what she thought were messages of health for women, but she found that was an infringement of the Federal postal laws, and her publications were suppressed. She then withdrew to England, which had passed this state of prosecution. She came back to this country with new enthusiasm, and before the storm was over she started a clinic. That was against the law of New York. Her sister was imprisoned in that connection, and they had a hunger strike, and all this appeared on the front page of the papers for 14 days or some such time, and the thing flared over the country. And out of that has come definite organization, definite propaganda, which I think quite frankly and calmly we should not have at all in this country if it had not been there was legal opposition against which people felt moved to organize. Now, what has this law, 50 years of it, and of the State laws that have copied it—what have they accomplished in this country?

They have not stood in the way of birth control, which is widely spreading, and a very widely approved practice; they have not stood in the way of the sale of instruments of birth control. I think it is fair to say that anybody that is aware of what is going on knows that traffic flourishes for whoever chooses to take advantage of it, in spite of the laws. But the law makes it relatively more difficult, for people who are without reputation or character to get the sort of information and medical advice, and sort of chance to think about these things for themselves which the other people have.

An exceptionally pertinent presentation of salient points was made by _Dorothy Glaser_, who spoke also for her husband, Dr. Otto Charles Glaser, who is the head of the department of biology at Amherst College:

It seems to me that there is a slight misunderstanding on the part of the various religious organizations here represented, especially the Catholics, about the Vaile bill, and I would like to discuss it from the scientific point of view. I feel that we only stand on our rights as American citizens on this proposition.

We do not object to the teachings of the Catholic faith on this subject for their own people. But we do feel that it is up to their own priests to advise them, instruct them, and keep them in order. They have no right to ask Federal aid to help the priests in matters of church discipline. I would make the same reply to any other sect. Suppose, gentlemen, that the Christian Scientists came to you and said that they could not keep their people from using doctors. Would you then pass legislation to do away with medical knowledge at the request of these Christian Scientists? We have no objection to their taking any attitude on this matter, but we do object to their method of forcing it on others. We wish to be free to create scientific values without their interference. This is very difficult in the field of birth control, because under the present law the scientist is not free to work in this particular field. In every other than the human species there is freedom. The United States Bureau of Fisheries have a corps of scientists who work across the road from us in the department’s laboratories at Woods Hole. They carry on experiments at Government expense with huge tanks of eggs and sperm. They limit the birth of the fish until such time as the temperature, season, and other environmental conditions are right, so that the young fish may have a square deal. But then America wants the best possible fish. The Bureau of Animal Husbandry is carrying on work in fertility, and I have a letter from Doctor Cole, the chief of this department, indorsing the Vaile Bill. Now, however, if some one is very much interested in problems of fertilization in his own species and wants to work in this field, to create new material for the use of the medical profession, what happens? He goes to his laboratory; and suppose he makes a discovery; if he then tells anybody, if he publishes what he has discovered, or whispers it through the keyhole, he is in the position of Galileo, about 400 years ago. He is likely to go to jail for giving his scientific knowledge to the world. In fact, the law tells him that it is obscene. He can, however, publish it in any other country in the world, except the United States.

Of course, we can not agree with the point that has been made this morning, that it is an interference with nature, nor grant that that is a logical argument. For scientific discovery and all medicine is an interference with nature, as are electric lights and plumbing. In fact, it is when we do not know how to interfere with her that many of our worst calamities befall us. The flu came so suddenly that science could not help, and few of us enjoyed letting nature run her course. In the case of yellow fever the Government scientists stepped forward and through birth control of the mosquito, a rank interference with nature, removed one of the greatest menaces to the South.

Again, I would like to emphasize the right of every American to all the scientific information that we can give him and to insist that no group have the right to keep it from him. The scientist has not found that ignorance is bliss. Is it, then, unreasonable for him to ask why his Government, which stands for free education and the public-school system, should write into a law in this instance a faith in man’s ignorance about himself? I plead, then, for the removal of this law which would restrict man’s knowledge about himself. Have we not faith enough in the people to let them have such information as we possess, or are some fields of science to be kept for the favored few?

Of course, the point of restriction of experimentation, had it come up in other relations, would have been a serious thing for all of us. As an example, the man who discovered insulin, the only known control for diabetes, could never have made this discovery had he been prevented by law from having free access to the material and work done by others before him. There is much valuable material being published in European laboratories. If, however, any scientist or physician brings this material into our country for use in our laboratories that we may advance our knowledge in this field, he is likely to go to jail by reason of the fact that the law tells us it is obscene literature. It can only be done on the boot-legging basis.

We have at present students at Amherst going into all professional fields, many to medical schools, but they may not be given any information in relation to this subject, even though they may ultimately want to use it for the control of venereal disease among their patients. They, like the rest of us, must just find out what they can as best they may.

One other point I should like to touch on in regard to the scientific point of view: We hear a great deal about “interference with nature” and the “right of the child to be born.” To speak perfectly frankly, for a scientist this is nonsense, for in the light of the facts it leads to the reductio ad absurdum. I am sorry if I shocked the reverend father, who has just told us that these are things not even to be mentioned among Christians. The scientist must face all facts, sex included. The recent studies of bubonic plague in China have been unsavory and have been made at great personal risk. But some one must have the courage to face all of life, not selected sections of it.

It has been found that every human female has 3600 eggs and every male liberates 2,500,000 sperm at a time. Now, if the “right of the child to be born” means anything at all it must mean, then, the right of the egg to be fertilized, for it does not become a child until it does. Which, then, gentlemen, is the sacred egg? I would say that it is that egg which is fertilized at a time when both parents are in a position to give it a square deal; to give the child food, care, and the sort of environment which goes to the making of a decent American citizen.

I say again, we have no antagonism to the churches. The scientist would simply like to be left free to investigate his material and to put it at the disposal of all the American people, without church interference. We simply want the American people trusted with the best information that we can give them about this matter; that all, not some, may have the right to use it or not, as they see fit.

_Mrs. Benjamin Carpenter_ showed how the precedent of the Federal law had been utilized by the courts to suppress the Parenthood Clinic in Chicago, even though Illinois has no State law prohibiting the giving of verbal information, as elsewhere described in this book. Her closing words were:

I ask you, gentlemen, is it not a shameful thing that when women are anxious to have children, and ask only for information as to how to space their children so that they can recover from one pregnancy before they are plunged into another one; or when they feel that they have had all the children they can possibly bring up as good citizens—and it is the women who bear the children—they want information, and it is refused them; in this twentieth century is it not shameful that any scientific information should be classed as obscene?

The point of view of the eugenicist was vigorously upheld by _Prof. Roswell Johnson_ of Pittsburgh University, formerly investigator in experimental evolution for Carnegie Institute, and teacher of biology in the University of Wisconsin and Harvard University:

I wish to call your attention to the very great importance of this legislation for the future American racial composition. In my opinion only the immigration law and the projects for international comity can compare with this bill in so far as they affect the future of this American stock.

There are two kinds of children—welcome children and unwelcome children. This bill will reduce to an important extent the number of unwelcome children. It will increase to a considerable extent the number of welcome children.

Now, if the individual himself will cooperate in this matter, why should we not seize on that opportunity?

We talk in the eugenics movement of coercive legislation, of sterilization, of segregation, and of the regulation of the marriage laws; but here is a case where the individuals themselves, many inferior individuals say, “I won’t have this child if you will show me how not to have it.”

So I urge you not to continue the present law, which will mean absolutely and certainly a large continued contribution of inferiors to our stock.

Gentlemen, this is an urgent matter. If you let this go over for two years, into the next Congress, you are bringing on a very large number of inferior births that can be avoided. You know the number that are concerned in the immigration bill now pending—367,000 a year; 367,000 a year is no more than you are dealing with here. Now, do you deliberately want to add to the American people 367,000 individuals, we will say roughly, who will be, on the average, inferior?

_Mr. Hersey_: How do you prevent that—how does this bill prevent that?

_Mr. Johnson_: This bill will make it possible for individuals who have difficulty in getting access to efficient birth-control literature to get it. At present 80 per cent of the married women are trying one way or the other to achieve birth control. The less-informed women are blundering along with inadequate methods that they employ for lack of better, but which they can not rely on. Therefore by throwing open the distribution of literature, putting this on a scientific basis, like any other science, anybody can go and get material from authoritative sources and thus make it possible for the individual of limited opportunities to get that reliable information.

_Mr. Hersey_: Do you not think that that information, if admitted, would be found by the bad stock and good stock just the same?

_Mr. Johnson_: Yes.

_Mr. Hersey_: And are you not getting the proportion of good stock really lower by this method instead of increasing it?

_Mr. Johnson_: No; I do not admit that. Take Wellesley graduates, for instance. Their birth rate is already very low. The existence of birth-control methods has already had its effect. The scientific group as a whole knows now relatively reliable methods. What we plead for is their improvement and equalization of methods throughout the population.

The American stock is getting worse to-day, in my opinion, and that is a very serious thing. But in view of the great disparity in birth rates which we have relatively between the superior and inferior stock—

_Mr. Hersey_ (interposing): I want to know the practical side. You claim this bill will increase the population in the matter of superior stock and decrease it in the matter of inferior stock. Now, how can you accomplish this by this bill?

_Mr. Johnson_: It is accomplished in this way: If you decrease the proportion of inferiors in the population you increase the general economic and social welfare of the whole population.

_Senator Spencer_: You increase the relative number of superiors?

_Mr. Johnson_: Yes: and absolutely also. If we increase the social welfare, then the superiors are willing to have more children and will have more children. One of the things that prevents superiors from having more children is the excessive reproduction of inferiors.

The appraisal of the merit of any proposed legislation is often facilitated by an inspection of the objections offered to it, and by consideration of the circumstances under which the objections are made. But to reproduce here the whole fifteen pages of closely printed words that constituted the testimony of the chief opposition speaker for whom the Hearing on the Cummins-Vaile Bill was reopened a month later, would be quite as much of an imposition on the reader as it was upon the Committee who had to listen to it, and upon the government which had to print it. It is estimated that it costs 50 cents a word to print the Congressional Record. Reports cost presumably about the same. But in view of the grave inhibition as to action which afflicted the Judiciary Committee, it may be that they felt grateful rather than imposed upon, for the delay involved and the time consumed; it put off the responsibility of doing anything just so much longer. It may be significant that the Chairman of the Hearing said at the close of this interminable statement, “We are very glad to have heard from you,” and no such similar appreciation was expressed to any of the other speakers.

The circumstances under which this second hearing was held are noteworthy. It came on May 9th. Ten days previous it was discovered that the reports of the first hearing were all ready to print, but were being held on official order. On May 3rd the Director of the Voluntary Parenthood League was told by the Secretary of the Chairman of the House Sub-Committee that the Chairman of the full Committee wished some additional material added to the Hearing Report, and that the printing would be delayed on that account. As several written statements had been filed as part of the testimony which there had not been time to have read at the Hearing, the assumption was that this material was another such statement. But by May 7th it was learned that the Hearing was to be reopened on the 9th. There was no publicity on the announcement and it was only at the eleventh hour that Mr. Vaile himself was notified. Fortunately friends of the bill came on telegraphed call, to be on hand to answer the opposition or the queries of the Committee.

Another noteworthy fact in the circumstances is that the chief speaker for the opposition at this second Hearing was a young Catholic woman, a social worker, Miss Sara E. Laughlin of Philadelphia, who three years previously had joined the Voluntary Parenthood League, with professions of great interest. She had paid regular annual membership dues, which act, according to the membership blanks, constitutes endorsement of the objects of the League, the first of which is the removal of the Federal law which prohibits the circulation of contraceptive information.

Most of her testimony was discussion of the morality of birth control rather than the question of the right of the citizen to have access to the knowledge, which is the point of the bill. It was a general denunciation of the birth control movement and the procedure of its advocates. The following excerpts are characteristic of the whole:

_Miss Laughlin_: Mr. Chairman, in this instance I am representing the International Federation of Catholic Alumnae. That organization is exactly what its name implies—a federation of the alumnae of the Catholic academies and colleges of the United States and some other countries.

I am here to-day because I am in the position at present of chairman of the bureau of girls’ welfare in that organization, and therefore I must be concerned about such matters of public welfare as are involved in this bill.

Because of a difference in training and a belief in the conserving value of a decent reserve, we are not nearly so vocal as the proponents of this bill, but see it as our duty to become more so, as it seems that this is necessary to safeguard the moralities which we believe to be involved in this question.

Partly through the activities of the Voluntary Parenthood League and the Birth Control League, sex relations and allied subjects were removed from their proper place in medical textbooks and necessary instruction in right conduct by proper authorities to each new generation, and have become in many quarters matters of general conversation even in mixed gatherings. As a professional social worker who has dealt with a number of girls, I can not state too strongly the unfortunate effect of this general stimulation of discussion of sex matters, about which everybody admits from a scientific point of view very little is known.

Just as we have never shirked considering any phase of human nature when human interests were to be served, we do not now evade our obligation to state publicly our point of view on the proposed measure, however much we regret the necessity.

You are asked to “redeem the United States from the odium of being the only country to penalize birth control as indecency.” We think this is not an odium, but shows a wise concern for the mental and moral health of our people. We think it preferable to the English problem of recalling indecent and improper literature after it has once been released.

We do not advocate the dissemination of this knowledge any more than we would advocate the dissemination of doses and methods of administering deadly poison. This sort of knowledge is in the possession of all physicians. We do not feel that we are discriminated against because it is not made readily accessible to us.

You are told that doctors advocate the passage of this bill because they are not told about the control of conception in a medical school, and their patients keep asking them for this instruction. You are told frequently, too, that doctors are giving this instruction. Yet you are told that they do not have it.

You are told that “millions of self-respecting parents resent the legal insult by which the information as to control of conception is made unmailable.” We ask you to give your attention to the millions who are grateful for this provision, because they are convinced of the grave danger which would attend its removal.

If we were concerned only for our own welfare, we would not raise our voices now in opposition, but by refusing to discuss the measure lend our passive assistance to its enactment.

We belong to an organization which has stood the test of time better than any other organization the world has seen.

_Mr. Yates_: Meaning—

_Miss Laughlin_: Meaning the Catholic Church. We could assume, therefore, if we could be guilty of such callous indifference to the effect on our fellow citizens, that this was a providential measure intended to enable us to inherit the earth. Following this line of reasoning, we could conserve our efforts and devote our time to keeping our people as free as possible from this pernicious propaganda, and reap the material rewards. Such a procedure would be contrary to the spiritual and ethical principles we have accepted, and abhorrent to any body of Christian people.

I can not, as the organization proposing this measure presumes to do, speak for millions, but I can speak from personal knowledge of hundreds of mothers in whose homes I visit year after year in the course of work with their children. They do not want this information for their own use, and they do not want it circulated to be used as an insidious snare for their children when they have reached maturity.

Compare this last statement about not speaking on behalf of millions, with the seventh item from Miss Laughlin’s testimony quoted above in which she asks the Committee to consider “the millions” who are, she asserts, “grateful for this provision” in the present law which denies them access to knowledge.

Compare also her statement of her individual experience with “hundreds of mothers” who “do not want this information” with the experience of both the New York and the Chicago Clinics, in which the proportions of Catholic women who request contraceptive instructions is sizable. The New York Clinic reports the percentage as thirty-two, and the Chicago Clinic as thirty. However, any divergence of testimony that there may be as to whether Catholics want or will utilize contraceptive information is rather beside the point so far as Congress and the bill are concerned. The issue is not as to whether individuals or groups want this knowledge but as to whether anyone who does want it shall have his right to get it recognized by law.

The Chairman of the Hearing allowed a rebuttal to the Catholic testimony by the Director of the Voluntary Parenthood League to be filed as part of the Hearing report. It reads as follows:

The question in the bill is not the control of conception but the right of the citizen to have access to scientific knowledge. The utilization of that knowledge is left entirely to the individual.

Most of the testimony presented by the Catholic speakers is irrelevant. They argued the question of birth control, which is not per se before Congress. If the Catholics could persuade some one to introduce a bill which would make the control of conception a crime, the arguments against birth control would be genuine, but without such a bill they are not.

It would seem doubtful as to whether leaders in the Catholic Church would wish, on second thought, to put themselves on record as opposed to the principles of freedom as to belief and action in private life. As they wish to conserve these principles as applied to their own right to teach and preach their beliefs, they may well take thought about trying to utilize law to suppress the right of others to do the same.

There are about 18,000,000 Catholics in this country. As, therefore, they form less than one-sixth of the population, their protest against the Cummins-Vaile bill amounts to a demand that the laws of the country should be made to reflect the religious creed of a small minority.

Moreover, their protest against the bill implies a distrust of their own church people that will prove embarrassing to the leaders if persisted in. Since the teaching of the church is against the use of contraceptive knowledge, are the leaders to announce thus publicly that they have so little faith in the efficacy of church teaching and so little trust in the moral rectitude of the church members that they would wish to invoke the arm of the law to keep the people in ignorance. If the church people can not be assumed to have the loyalty and strength to live up to their own beliefs, it is surely stretching the bounds of reasonableness for the Catholic leaders to suggest that the non-Catholic population, which is five-sixths of the whole, should go without this knowledge in order to protect the Catholics from their own weakness.

The inappropriateness of the Catholic attitude is well brought out by the following excerpts from a recent letter from a member of our league to the chairman of the Senate Sub-committee of the Judiciary:

“You would not agree that, at the behest of the Methodists, or the Elks, or the Young Men’s Hebrew Association there should be passed a Federal law to apply to the whole American public, which law represented merely a belief. You can not then, believe that a law should fail to pass merely because it does not accord with the Catholic belief. A law, being a rule of action, should not stand for what is simply an article of faith. The Cummins-Vaile Bill does not enjoin any action or the refraining from any action. It simply will give legal status to certain scientific knowledge and means which are now proscribed. No one will be compelled to learn the knowledge; no one will be compelled to use the means. No belief will be interfered with; no rule of action will be laid down. The principle of making laws to satisfy a religious group, crystallizing religious beliefs into rules of action for all the people, went out of this Government with the adoption of the United States Constitution.”

Various inaccuracies in Miss Laughlin’s statements regarding the publications of the Voluntary Parenthood League were answered at the Hearing, but that part of the report is not germane to the subject of this book, except as to the correction on one point which led to a series of question and answers which give light on the working of the minds of some of the Committee.

_Mrs. Dennett_: There are one or two other inaccuracies that it is worth while to comment upon. One was that this knowledge is already in the possession of all physicians. That is not the case. We have here the president of one of the State medical associations, who will be glad to give you further facts in regard to it. The fact that we receive quantities of letters from physicians asking us to provide them with such knowledge from our headquarters—a thing we can not do legally,—of course, is sufficient to refute that statement.

_Mr. Hersey_: You have just made a statement denying that this knowledge of birth control, if that is the proper term, is in the hands of the physicians of America to-day?

_Mrs. Dennett_: On account of the laws, primarily.

_Mr. Hersey_: Well, some one has got it. What proportion of the physicians of America have that information now?

_Mrs. Dennett_: It is quite impossible for us to tell. I do not know that any survey has been made.

_Mr. Hersey_: Who has thorough information upon this subject?

_Mrs. Dennett_: Nobody, so far as I have yet heard, in the medical profession, or among students of biology, claims to have final and complete information.

_Mr. Hersey_: Does the organization for birth control which you represent possess the information that you want disseminated now to the public?

_Mrs. Dennett_: The organization consists of thousands of members. Do you mean all the members, or the officers, or what?

_Mr. Hersey_: Any part of your organization.

_Mrs. Dennett_: It has some information, certainly.

_Mr. Hersey_: Is that information perfect information? Do you know anything about the remedy that you are asking for?

_Mrs. Dennett:_ It is not claimed to be absolutely perfect. No.

_Mr. Hersey_: Do you know what you are asking this committee to do, madam? You are asking us to do this: To report out a bill here, assuming from evidence before this committee that this committee has definite information that there exists at the present time, in somebody’s mind, this information that you say is so precious, to be disseminated among the people, and which we know nothing about. We have no evidence that anybody possesses the perfect remedy for this evil of which you complain—the bearing of children. You do not claim to have it yourself, and your organization does not claim to have that perfect information. You can not point us to a doctor who has it, and to whom we could go for the information. You ask us to say that there is such a thing that the people can have if we pass this bill. You can see the spectacle that we would make of ourselves in the House if Members should get up and ask this committee: “Do you know anything about this matter that you are asking us to adopt; whether it is a remedy for this evil of childbirth, or whether it is simply some quack that wants to sell something, and wants us to remove the bar, which is the United States law, against sending this knowledge through the mail or disseminating it among the people? You want us to allow that information to be made public, through some one who claims to have it, and you have not even an endorsement of the American Medical Association that there is such a thing as a perfect remedy for the evil of which you complain.”

_Mrs. Dennett_: It would be, from our point of view, the height of absurdity to expect busy committees in Congress to be themselves authorities on questions of science; and for us to demand the passage of a law that will allow scientists to perfect their own knowledge, which now they can not perfect, because of the law—

_Mr. Hersey_ (interposing): Why not perfect their knowledge?

_Mrs. Dennett_: Because the law prevents.

_Mr. Hersey_: No; it does not. Somebody has this knowledge, perfected or not perfected. Is it perfected or not, now?

_Mrs. Dennett_: It can not be perfected until scientists are legally free to study it.

_Mr. Hersey_: You must have your remedy before you can send it through the mail. You are asking us to send through the mail something that is not perfected.

_Mrs. Dennett_: Research work can not be carried on legally on this subject so long as the laws stay the way they are. That is the point.

_Mr. Hersey_: Then, you claim that the research work has not commenced yet on this matter?

_Mrs. Dennett_: I do not. It has gone on sub rosa, illegally, and on a bootlegging basis. That is a most undesirable basis for scientific research work. There are no exemptions for the medical profession to these Federal laws—none whatever—and I should be glad to submit to the committee the statement in writing from the solicitor for the Post Office Department, that there are no exemptions for individuals or groups of any sort. The medical profession, therefore, is most seriously handicapped.

_Mr. Hersey_: Well, why does not the American Medical Association at its annual meetings, recommend that Congress pass a bill like this to relieve them of that difficulty? Why do they not go on record? Why is it necessary for your organization of women to come in here, without knowledge of what you are asking for?

_Mr. Vaile_: May I make a statement, Mr. Chairman?

_Mr. Hersey_: Yes; I should be glad to have you.

_Mr. Vaile_: My understanding is, that there is reliable information at present—not claimed to be very great, but reliable, as far as medical science can get reliability at the present day—which we want to be able to send through the mails.

_Mr. Hersey_: Where is it?

_Mr. Vaile_: Mrs. Dennett can tell you, I think.

_Mr. Hersey_: I wish she would.

_Mrs. Dennett_: There are admirable publications upon the subject abroad. They can not be legally brought into this country. There are some publications in this country being illegally circulated by well known medical authorities, without the names attached. Their names can not be attached until the law allows. Otherwise they are criminal, indictable under the present laws.

_Mr. Hersey_: Do you think there is some man of high medical standing in America to-day who has this information?

_Mrs. Dennett_: There are a great many.

_Mr. Hersey_: Is it possible for you to find one of those medical men of high standing in the profession to come before this committee and say that his experience has shown that this remedy that he has, even if secret, is all right?

_Mrs. Dennett_: We have one here to-day, and I will gladly yield to him—Doctor Litchfield of Pennsylvania.

_Mr. Hersey_: We will be glad to hear from him. This legislation asked for is to make available to the people something that will prevent conception?

_Dr. Litchfield_: There is not any one thing asked for. We ask for the freedom of the mail to give suitable information to suitable cases of methods that are applicable and desirable.

_Mr. Vaile_: If the Chair will excuse a suggestion, I understand that it is against the law in the District of Columbia, following and going a little further than the Federal statute, to give, even verbally, information concerning birth-control methods.

_Mr. Hersey_: I am not asking for the information itself. I am asking this doctor, who is presented here as a witness, as an expert, if he knows—

_Dr. Litchfield_ (interposing): I know several methods of contraception that are reliable, harmless, and desirable in suitable cases.

_Mr. Hersey_: And you claim that you are about the only man in your profession who has that knowledge?

_Dr. Litchfield_: Not at all. There are millions that have. I studied in Europe, as a large majority of the profession do.

_Mr. Hersey_: Then your idea is that most physicians in practice know what you know, is that it?

_Dr. Litchfield_: No; I would not say that.

_Mr. Hersey_: The best physicians would know it, would they not?

_Dr. Litchfield_: Those who have studied abroad, and who have been interested in this phase of preventive medicine, know it.

_Mr. Hersey_: Is there anything in the law that you understand prevents you from talking with a brother physician and giving him your knowledge?

_Dr. Litchfield_: Certainly there is. In some states you are forbidden to give contraceptive knowledge to any one, either verbally or through the mail.

_Mr. Hersey_: Your remedy is effective, is it?

_Dr. Litchfield_: Certainly; yes.

_Mr. Hersey_: Are you the only one in Pittsburgh that knows about it?

_Dr. Litchfield_: I do not know about that.

_Mr. Hersey_: Where did you get this information?

_Dr. Litchfield_: I got it in Europe.

_Mr. Hersey_: How many kinds of information have you?

_Dr. Litchfield_: I suppose there are a dozen different remedies. Perhaps there are four, five, or six that are approved by those of experience. Most of the methods would be covered by two or three.

_Mr. Hersey_: Have you tested your method?

_Dr. Litchfield_: I said I have; yes, sir.

_Mr. Hersey_: Have you found them all right?

_Dr. Litchfield_: I found them harmless and desirable. I will not say that they are all right. Nothing is perfect in medical science yet. We are progressing, and we want to progress still further, not only for doctors, but biologists and scientists.

_Mr. Hersey_: If this legislation is passed removing this ban, would you publish your information?

_Dr. Litchfield_: It would not be necessary for me to publish it. Others directly interested in that work would publish the information.

_Mr. Hersey_: Do you not think there would be more money in it for you?

_Dr. Litchfield_: If I were looking for money, I would not be here to-day.

_Mr. Hersey_: Who is going to publish the information?

_Dr. Litchfield_: The physicians have been writing books on this subject, devoting themselves to these particular branches of medicine, and will publish the books as soon as the ban is removed.

_Mr. Hersey_: Are you a member of the American Medical Association?

_Dr. Litchfield_: I am.

_Mr. Hersey_: Why have you not succeeded in getting them to adopt this?

_Dr. Litchfield_: The medical society has been very busy, but they will do this eventually. The president of the American Medical Association told me so. I met him in conference at Atlantic City, and he said all the members were in favor of birth control, and it was only a question of time that we should have it. I am not authorized to give his name, but he stands as the first man in American medicine.

_Mr. Hersey_: Where you felt you had a patient bearing a child, who would be in danger of her life, there is nothing in the law at present that would prevent you from pursuing your remedy, is there?

_Dr. Litchfield_: There is something in the law of my State that prohibits me.

_Mr. Hersey_: The proponents of this measure contend, as I understand, that some of them do not want to have the trouble with the child, they do not want to have the child on account of the annoyance.

_Dr. Litchfield_: No; the statement that was made this morning that morality depends on opportunity for conception is an insult to American women. I have been practicing medicine for 25 years, and I do not figure that the morality of the young American women would be influenced in the slightest degree if contraceptive methods become public property. I think morality is something higher, and I do not think Congress is asked to pass statutes in favor of morality any more than they are asked to pass a law that everybody should be a Roman Catholic.

_Mr. Hersey_: When was this ban fixed?

_Dr. Litchfield_: 1873.

(For five years Mr. Hersey like all members of Congress had been receiving literature and data frequently, which gave the history of the Comstock law, and all the pertinent facts concerning it.)

_Mr. Hersey_: And the immediate thing desired here is the repeal of the prohibition of the use of the mails for these methods? If this law were passed you would be confronted by your State.

_Dr. Litchfield_: We would have to have the State laws changed.

_Mr. Hersey_: Do you mean to say that at the present time you are prohibited by your State law of advising a patient or communicating through another doctor methods of birth control?

_Dr. Litchfield_: Yes, sir.

_Mr. Major_: Do you not think that the main trouble in this country now is lack of children, instead of having too many?

_Dr. Litchfield_: Too many children in a certain strata is very undesirable.

_Mr. Major_: I remember the old poem, “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe, who had so many children she didn’t know what to do.” There was another old poem, “There was a woman who lived in a shoe, who didn’t have any children; she knew what to do.” I have heard that all my life.

_Dr. Litchfield_: I do not think that knowledge will prevent the average woman from having children.

_Mr. Major_: But they do not have many children. I can remember my grandmother and her three sisters, four women married before they were 18, who raised over 11 children and lived to be over 80 years of age. There are seven in my family. I have a daughter with two children. If it keeps on, her daughter will not have any children. That looks to be the trouble; the people that ought to have children do not. A bill like this, to put this information around in news stands, where it can be picked up anywhere, as these women say, I do not know how you feel about it, but I have always felt the very fear of consequences. I have felt that it would promote immorality.

I want to say another thing to you, Doctor. I was State’s attorney in my court and my county, which is one of the best in the world, for six years, and during that time I suspect I had at least four seduction cases a year. There has not been a seduction case there now for 20 years. That looks like this information is leaking out in some way.

_Dr. Litchfield_: It is not getting in the right hands.

_Mr. Major_: It is getting out. I do not think human nature is changing, but those cases are only heard of when there is pregnancy in a seduction case, and there has not been a seduction case there for 20 years. When you go into different courts you do not hear of it, and it used to be of frequent occurrence, and the only explanation in my mind is that these people are securing from some source the knowledge to prevent conception, and the effect of it is that the people that ought to be having families, and I mean like the lady that spoke this morning—my idea about the best people in this country is that they should not bring up one or two spindley children that do not know how to take care of themselves. They do not have families any more where the girls hand down one dress to another. That is past in this country.

(The English in the above is unedited. It is reprinted exactly as it appears in the government report of the Hearing.)

_Dr. Litchfield_: I agree; but for every case of seduction there are over 100 cases of worthy, industrious, virtuous, loving mothers who are having their children too close together, and if they had the knowledge to space their children and conserve their own health it would be better than to raise such terribly big families and themselves be broken down in middle life by too frequent pregnancy. We are not working for the profligate who becomes easily seduced and becomes pregnant. They are an inconsiderable number compared with the worthy people that should have the protection that science can give them. The enormous number of women who die before middle life on account of too frequent pregnancy, whose health is broken down, so that they leave a large family of motherless children, could be done away with.

_Mr. Yates_: Does that frequently occur?

_Dr. Litchfield_: Yes.

_Mr. Yates_: I have a daughter who had four babies, and she is fatter and prettier now after having the four.

_Dr. Litchfield_: She did not have one each year?

_Mr. Yates_: No. Now, the question I have had in mind that has been troubling me—would it not happen, if we removed the prohibition of the use of the mail—in other words, if the mails were thrown open would it not happen that every cheap publication in the country could advertise to send 50 cents and they would get this information; would not that be an evil, to have these things upon the news stands, in depots, and places like that?

_Dr. Litchfield_: I do not think so.

_Mr. Yates_: I am referring to the masses. That is what I am talking about.

_Dr. Litchfield_: I feel that legitimate sources of information will be the recognized source. I do not think that it will be a thing peddled on the news stands.

_Mr. Hersey_: What will hinder it?

_Dr. Litchfield_: If it is peddled on the news stand it will not do as much harm by reaching the immoral as good will be done by the worthy, well-meaning, industrious citizens. The people deserve health and protection, and the knowledge of science will give them that protection. I got a book in England that I wanted to send my daughter, and I was forbidden to bring it into the country because of the mails. They would not allow it.

_Mr. Hersey_: Could not you instruct your daughter without the book?

_Dr. Litchfield_: No sir; my daughter is a citizen of Holland. I would like to give this book to all young friends, patients of mine who are about to be married.

_Mr. Hersey_: Why not give it to the members of the committee?

_Dr. Litchfield:_ The custom-house will not let it come in.

_Mr. Hersey_: I would like to submit it to my home physician whom I trust.

_Dr. Litchfield_: Would you like me to smuggle a copy in? I know how.

_Mr. Hersey_: You are asking us to pass something that we do not know anything about.

_Dr. Litchfield_: We want the freedom to use the mails.

_Mr. Hersey_: Using the mails would bring it in?

_Dr. Litchfield_: But we are liable to get caught.

(If the reason for the verbal fencing on the part of the writer under the heckling of Congressman Hersey is not readable between the lines, it is well to say that it was for two reasons, one the natural hesitancy of a layman to make specific claims as to just what the medical profession knows, as such statements should come from the physicians themselves; the other a desire to avoid being led into giving any information which would render the reports of the Hearing unmailable, under Section 211.)

_Mr. Johnson_: It has been stated that this is a distasteful subject. Gentlemen, it seems to me that even if true it is irrelevant. The Judiciary Committee must deal with many things, distasteful. But I do not believe it is true. How can anything which deals so fundamentally with one of the three fundamental things of life be distasteful? That is an utter inconsequential consideration.

I wish to call attention to the fact that there is in some States a law that says that a refusal to cohabit for one year is a ground for divorce.

A method of control of reproduction, which is sanctioned by a large number of people, that by the “natural” method—that is, abstinence at periods in the monthly cycle—is also prohibited as to dissemination by the mails by this law.

_Mr. Hersey_: You are giving us the secret?

_Mr. Johnson_: That is one of the methods, and is considered “natural” and hence not opposed by the opponents of this law.

_Mr. Hersey_: Known to every woman in the world.

_Mr. Johnson_: Yes; and it is very unreliable.

_Mr. Hersey_: Is it as reliable as your method?

_Mr. Johnson_: No.

_Mr. Hersey_: Do you know the method advocated here?

_Mr. Johnson_: Yes; there are several methods.

_Mr. Hersey_: Better than that one?

_Mr. Johnson_: Why, of course.

Although Congressman Hersey was the one Committee member at the Hearings who talked at length, his mental processes were by no means representative of the Judiciary Committee as a whole. Most of the others evinced clearer thought and a more wholesome view-point. But many of them were willing enough to let Mr. Hersey “go on.” Some confessed to getting amusement from it, and some were apologetic about his “surprising ways,” but all of them who preferred postponement to acting on the bill derived comfort from knowing that Mr. Hersey’s antagonism would furnish excuse for further “consideration” for quite some time. And it proved to be serviceable in this regard, for at last accounts he was still saying that the bill would never be reported out of Committee if he could help it; and the sixty-eighth Congress adjourned without seeing the bill reported, that is, not by the House Judiciary Committee, though the Senate Sub-Committee did give it a unanimous report “without recommendation.”

During the next session when every effort was being made to produce a vote on the bill from the two full Judiciary Committees, the advocates of the bill were offered _still further hearings_. This offer was made by the Chairman of the House Sub-Committee and also by a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, both of whom gave as excuse for not coming to a conclusion on the bill after five years of consideration, that they were so “terribly busy”; the calendar in this short session was so “jammed with important legislation”; there was so much “stuff” to read about endless bills,—“I sent my secretary for the data on one the other day, and would you believe it, Mrs. Dennett, there were seven volumes,” implying that he had not had time to read the report of the hearings on this bill. Yet they offered more hearings, by way of still further congesting their own calendar.

No one can deny the existence of a legislative jam in every session of Congress, or that business piles up appallingly in every short session. Three weeks from the end of the last session of the sixty-eighth Congress, Senator Stanley said on the floor of the Senate, “Congress has before it in the present session 17,946 bills, resolutions and joint resolutions. As in most Congresses, the large majority of these bills relate to private or local matters like individual pensions, buildings bridges, etc., and relatively few deal with public questions or national welfare.” The conduct of members of Congress under these circumstances, and the choices made by the steering committees as to which measures shall be scheduled for attention, and allowed a chance on the floor, and also the number and character of the unscheduled measures which are taken up and passed by unanimous consent, make serious food for thought for citizens with inquiring minds.

Near the close of the session, it was obvious that the Cummins-Vaile bill would not be allowed any sort of a chance by the Senate steering committee even if reported out by the full Judiciary Committee in time for a vote on the floor without discussion. In fact the leading member of the steering committee was quite explicit in saying so. It looked as if the report (“without prejudice” as at first suggested by Senator Overman, and “without recommendation” as finally filed by Senator Spencer) had been only a sop to those who had labored for the bill, a safe tribute to their “patience” and “hard work.” However, the proponents of the bill, because of the inescapable conviction that the chief reason for Congressional inaction had been the “general distaste” of members for dealing with it openly, decided upon a plan for possibly getting a favorable vote from the full Judiciary Committee of Senate before adjournment, as a means of helping to break down the inhibitions of the other members of the Senate, and so to pave the way in the next Congress for easier and quicker passage of the bill.

Senator Cummins, then Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said he would call for a vote of the Committee on the bill at any time before the end of the session if a majority were willing to vote for a favorable report. It would require nine votes to win the report. The plan adopted was an unusual and informal one, a sort of layman-citizen’s way of cutting through the tangle of business. There were but twenty-six days left in the session including Sundays. The carrying out of this plan was described as follows in The Birth Control Herald (March 10, 1925) under these headlines: “A Mental Daily Dozen Prescribed for the Judiciary Committee by the V. P. L. as an Aid to Action on Cummins-Vaile Bill; Method Urged as Congressional Minute-Saver in Legislative Rush Toward Close of Session”:

Not to Walter Camp’s records, but to the tune of facts and reasoning arranged by the Voluntary Parenthood Director, the members of the Judiciary Committee in both Senate and House, were urged to stimulate healthy thought on the Cummins-Vaile Bill, with a view to reaching a Committee decision by the time the twelfth mental exercise was finished.

This dozen of “setting up” exercises were prescribed as an aid toward overcoming the paralysis of the reasoning faculties, induced by the embarrassment of sex consciousness, which seem to rise to the surface in the minds of most of the members, when dealing with the “birth control” bill.

The “dozen” consisted of a daily sequence of notes to each member, each note covering a single point for the bill, and so short that it would take no more than two minutes to read. The plan was offered as a first aid to minute-saving in the legislative rush toward the close of the session. One reason a day keeps the “no-time-for-consideration” argument away. There are spare minutes despite the legislative jam,—observation from the galleries proves it, says Director Dennett, after her long experience in watching the members of Congress write, talk with each other, swap jokes, or have forty winks, while their colleagues deliver themselves of their views, at great length on the floor.

The twelve notes are given below. To save space the introductory and closing words of each note are omitted.

February 6, 1925.

_POINT ONE._—Accepting the probability that there will not be time, before the close of the present session, to have the Cummins-Vaile Bill discussed at length, either in the Judiciary Committee or on the floor, we are asking each member of the Judiciary Committee to consider _informally_, the very few simple points in the bill, with a view to securing, if possible, a vote in committee without appreciable debate.

We sympathetically recognize the fact that, under the existing Congressional system, _thorough_ consideration for all bills is a physical impossibility for the individual Congressman, no matter how conscientious he may be; also that group consideration in Committee or by the whole House, is subject to great limitation.

For these very reasons we ask that, as practicable procedure, a decision on this bill be arrived at by the above suggested method of informal discussion, with us and with other committee members, one by one, as leisure moments during House sessions permit.

Just as we sympathize with you in your impossible legislative obligations, we assume your sympathy with us, a group of representative citizens, who after nearly six years of effort, are rightly asking action from the only body that can give it. So we ask your tolerant and cooperative reception of the memoranda of single points which will be presented to you in sequence during the next ten days.

The first one is given herewith, namely, the marked article in the enclosed paper, showing that the main principle involved in the Cummins-Vaile Bill has been previously well argued by two distinguished members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

(The enclosure was a copy of the Birth Control Herald of January 20, giving excerpts from the arguments of Sen. Borah and Sen. Stanley on suppressing information about betting. See Appendix No. 13.)

February 7, 1925.

_POINT TWO._—Constitutionally guaranteed, old-fashioned American liberty is the issue in the bill. “Birth control” is not. The latter is properly a question for individual decision in private life. The bill simply removes the legal barrier to knowledge as to what birth control may be. In other words, it is a question of freedom of speech and of the press.

Members of the Judiciary Committee are credited with judicial minds, and the ability to disassociate relevant from irrelevant argument. Much of the previous discussion, both informally and at the two Hearings, has been irrelevant; i.e., about birth control.

The few facts which constitute the relevant arguments, have, so far as I know, never been denied by any member of the Committee.

February 9, 1925.

_POINT THREE._—No law exists which defines information as to the control of conception as, per se, obscene, indecent or in any way immoral.

This information therefore should not be legally classed with penalized obscenity, indecency and immorality. The Cummins-Vaile Bill removes it from this classification. But the bill leaves the five statutes in question, amply empowered to suppress any particular instance of this information, which is given in a way that warrants judicial decision that it is obscene, indecent or of immoral import.

The existing laws originally aimed at obscenity, not at science, but because of hasty enactment, the scientific information was prohibited also. The Cummins-Vaile Bill removes the error.

February 10, 1925.

_POINT FOUR._—The control of parenthood by the utilization of contraceptive knowledge is an act which is entirely lawful, throughout the whole United States (with the single exception of Connecticut, where an obsolete law making it a crime still remains on the books,—the only instance of the sort in the world).

But _to secure or to give_ this knowledge, via any public carrier, is a crime under Federal law (and also under the laws of twenty-four States whose obscenity statutes have been modelled closely on the Federal statutes).

To deny to citizens the use of public carriers to convey knowledge regarding an act which is in itself lawful, is a legal abnormality that should long ago have been corrected. The Cummins-Vaile Bill will do it.

February 11, 1925.

_POINT FIVE._—There is no denying that the control of parenthood is already a general practice among educated Americans, including of course members of Congress, as it is among educated people in all countries.

Our prohibitive laws obviously therefore do not reflect the policy of what we call our best people. When the universal trend of intelligent people is to get and make use of the contraceptive knowledge which the laws forbid,—that is, to become lawbreakers,—is it not high time to change the laws?

The Washington Post, in an editorial recently said, “The first duty of Congress is to ascertain the will of the people. The second is to enforce and obey it.”

February 12, 1925.

_POINT SIX._—The portions of the present laws which the Cummins-Vaile Bill will repeal, are unenforced and unenforceable.

The prohibition of the dissemination of contraceptive knowledge is probably the most broken of all the laws on the statute books. The existing traffic in contraceptives is appalling, from the point of view of law enforcement.

If Congress does not believe in the existing laws enough to even protest against the utter laxity of the authorities, whose duty it is to enforce the laws, it surely should hasten to remove from the authorities the obligations which they will not and can not fulfill.

February 13, 1925.

_POINT SEVEN._—One of the most shocking features of the unenforceability of the present laws prohibiting the circulation of contraceptive knowledge is the great and rapidly increasing volume of underground information and means which circulates despite the laws.

This information is almost wholly unauthorized by reputable scientists, is largely unreliable and inadequate, is considerably harmful and dangerous, and alas, is even vulgar and smutty in its form. The means, which are camouflaged as for other purposes, are an opportunity for conscienceless profiteering, and, like the information, are uncertified by proper authorities.

The only effective antidote possible is to make the circulation lawful, so that it can be properly inspected and made subject to the Drugs Act; and so that the first class medical experts may have a lawful and decent opportunity to denounce the quacks and profiteers, and to supplant their abominations with dignified, reliable, scientific, hygienic information.

The Cummins-Vaile Bill opens the way for this tremendously needed effort on the part of our best doctors, who are now tied hand and foot by the laws, or are obliged to resort to the undignified process of boot-legging their scientific teaching.

The doctors can save the day, if they are given a chance. Is it fair for Congress to hinder any longer?

February 14, 1925.

_POINT EIGHT._—The St. Louis Times recently published the leading editorial, which follows:

“_A Bill for Moral Health_

“Nothing comes closer to the minds and hearts of healthy Americans than the begetting, bearing and rearing of children. Unfortunately this subject has been relegated to the limbo of the unclean, the indecent, the nasty jokesmith; and much teaching and thinking has made it so.

“A long step toward cleansing the people’s minds and hearts of the prevalent false standards, clearing the visions and correcting conclusions, has been taken by the Voluntary Parenthood League. But it has taken this organization of influential citizens five years to overcome the paralyzing fears that beset both rulers and people, and get the Cummins-Vaile bill into Congress.

“Honorable physicians and scientists have been blocked from circulating wholesome information on contraception. Nevertheless, charlatans flourish like weeds. Practically every boy and girl can talk glibly of the subject, and their misinformation has come principally from foul sources.

“It is time to protect physicians and social workers, and save our children from false, foolish and foul ideas of life, to make the human body and its functions clean subjects of definite knowledge and control.

“Congress should pass the Cummins-Vaile Bill unanimously in the interest of public health, morals and decency.”

February 16, 1925.

_POINT NINE._—As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee has recently brought up a point which frequently occurs in discussion, it may be well to call it to the attention of the other members; i.e., that the control of parenthood can be achieved without the utilization of any scientific knowledge,—merely by abstinence from the relationship which results in conception.

This is offered as a reason for retaining the law which bans knowledge of scientific methods.

Apart from the question of the constitutionality, justice or propriety of such prohibitive legislation, it must be remembered that in the marital relation abstinence does not have the sanction of law. In many States refusal to cohabit, as an element of desertion or of cruelty and indignity is ground for divorce. Hence abstinence thus penalized is no free or practicable alternative for the compulsory ignorance decreed by the statute.

Thus it follows that the only sort of parenthood which has the thorough sanction of American laws is the irresponsible, unintentional sort,—parenthood of no higher standard than that of the wild animals.

Is it not high time to make the laws catch up with civilization?

February 18, 1925.

_POINT TEN._—Government officials themselves are guilty of flagrant violations of statutes prohibiting circulation of contraceptive knowledge. But they are not indicted for their crimes,—one more evidence that the government makes no valid effort to enforce the laws on this subject.

The following recent instances are noteworthy:

1. The Library of the Surgeon General has received and is loaning to readers the November issue of the American Journal of —— published by the —— Company of ——. It contains a report by Dr. —— on methods of controlling conception,—the report being the result of research by the New York Committee on ——.

To mail the magazine from —— to receive and loan it in Washington are criminal acts under the law.

2. The Congressional Library has received from England and has loaned to readers the new volume entitled —— by Dr. ——, published by —— London. It is a “Manual for the Medical and Legal Professions,” and is considered one of the best and most comprehensive works on the subject in the world.

To pass the book through the customs, to transport it to Washington, to list it in the library catalogue, and to lend it to readers are criminal acts under the law.

The same volume has been borrowed by several members of the Judiciary Committee,—again a criminal act.

3. In considering these instances of official crime it is well to note the recent utilization of the laws on this subject, to secure the imprisonment of Carlo Tresca, who published in his Italian paper in New York a two line advertisement of a book on birth control. He was notified by the post office that his paper was thereby made unmailable. The two lines were deleted and the edition was mailed. But he was subsequently convicted for the offense. President Coolidge yesterday commuted the sentence, after reviewing evidence showing that Tresca had first been arrested on another charge instigated by those who objected to his political views, but who, unable to jail him for those, resorted then to the charge of violation of the laws prohibiting circulation of birth control knowledge.

Do not such facts point conclusively to the obligation of Congress to repeal these laws which are not and can not be justly enforced? To accomplish this repeal is the object of the Cummins-Vaile Bill.

NOTE: The names of the publishers and authors in the above letter cannot be printed without infringing the Federal law.

February 19, 1925.

_POINT ELEVEN._—Fear to trust the people, especially young people, with access to contraceptive knowledge, is practically the only objection now offered to this bill, by members of Congress.

Can it possibly be a sound objection in view of the following points:

_a._ This country is founded upon faith in the people. Does Congress wish to maintain laws which repudiate that faith.

_b._ Can any member of Congress who expects, and rightly, that the people should have faith in him to the extent of electing him, turn around and distrust them? Surely every member of Congress would trust himself with any known or yet to be discovered facts as to the control of conception. Surely also he would not consider himself unique in such trustworthiness. The American people can not be divided into sheep and goats in this matter, with the assumption that the majority are goats.

_c._ One member of the Committee recently gave it as his opinion that the large majority of young women in this country refrain from illicit sexual relations only from fear of pregnancy. On being asked if he would be willing to state this opinion publicly to his constituents, he answered, “No, I do not think it would be wise to do so.” Does not the fact that alarm is felt almost exclusively in regard to young women and does not include young men, indicate that the concern may be merely for conventions instead of for character?

_d._ Even if the assumption were tenable that most young women are “straight” through fear only, the indictment would fall primarily on the parents, clergy and teachers who would have to stand convicted of failure as sources of education, example and inspiration. Can any member of Congress seriously hold an utter distrust of the educational and moral facts in our civilization?

As an opportunity for clean faith in the people this bill is unexcelled. Can you be counted on to be one who will meet it squarely?

February 20, 1925.

_POINT TWELVE._—It has been repeatedly stated by many members of Congress that the main reason why action on the bill has been delayed is because of distaste for legislating on any subject that brings sex considerations to mind. Granted the existence of a certain embarrassment, does the Judiciary Committee wish any longer to stand before the public as a body which will permit embarrassment to displace reason and responsibility to the people?

Members have told us that dread of being conspicuous in this matter has inhibited them. Such feeling is somewhat natural, and may have been more or less excusable as a reason for not acting when this legislation was first proposed in 1919. But now in view of all the data submitted, the long delay, and the fact that no substantial arguments against the bill have been advanced by anyone, is it not time to cast aside feeling and let common sense win? “Eventually, why not now?”

We wish to honor each member of the Committee with the assumption that he will prefer to base his stand upon a courageous sense of decency and justice to the people, rather than on either embarrassment or fear.

Regardless of whether there may or may not be opportunity for action on the Floor during the session, are you not willing now to state whether, in your individual opinion, the bill should have at least favorable report from the committee on the merit of the question?

We respectfully request your statement as to what your own stand is, and enclose for your convenience, a slip and an addressed envelope. If our twelve points for the bill, which have been submitted in single notes since February 6th, are not now at hand, and you wish duplicates of any or all of them for review, we will gladly supply them on your request. The series will be made public, together with a report on the stand of the members of the Committee.

_The Enclosure_:

I stand for a favorable report on the Cummins-Vaile Bill (S. 2290 H. R. 6542).

I am opposed to a favorable report on the Cummins-Vaile Bill (S. 2290 H. R. 6542).

I am not ready to state my stand on the Cummins-Vaile Bill (S. 2290 H. R. 6542).

(Kindly mark which line represents your opinion.)

Signed .......................

Member of Judiciary Committee.

The nine necessary votes in the Senate Judiciary Committee could not be marshalled before the close of the session. One of the chief reasons was that word had gone the rounds, emanating apparently from the small group which controls the Senate program, that this bill was not to be included among those scheduled for attention at this session, so the Judiciary members felt little concern about deciding their own position on the legislation. Above everything was the sheer distaste which most of the members feel for dealing with this bill, officially. It touches upon sex, which induces embarrassment, which creates inhibition, which resulted in leaving the bill “on the table” where it was placed after the report “without recommendation” by the Judiciary Sub-Committee of three, before whom the two Hearings were held last Spring.

In the House Judiciary Committee the situation was about the same. The Chairman of the Sub-Committee before which the Hearings had been held stated that he was sure that “not a single member of his committee _wanted_ to vote on the bill.” He did not undertake to say whether they approved or disapproved the bill, but merely that they did not want to vote on it. He said he was not ready to express his own opinion on this measure, that he had not yet made up his mind, and was “too busy” to do so. But he offered to arrange _another_ Hearing if it were desired. He was entirely agreeable to anything except action. But as to that he said, “I don’t see the use of trying to make reluctant men act.”