CHAPTER V

WHY CONGRESS HAS BEEN SO SLOW

_No one answer covers all reasons: Quiet request to Congress for repeal might have succeeded twenty years ago, before sensational law-breaking created prejudice: Laws defied without first attempting their repeal: Speeches and writings of early agitation not calculated to induce Congressional initiative: Struggle announced in advance as likely to be long and bitter “fight”: Shortage of funds for publicity on behalf of bill the second reason for slowness of Congress: Third and most dominant reason found to be general embarrassment over subject: Distaste, inhibition and fear, in varying degrees almost universal among Congressmen: Striking instances: Fears covered careers, colleagues, families and constituents: Fear on behalf of young girls greatest of all: Political opposition to birth control legislation mis-interpreted by “radicals”: Abortive attempt in Harding presidential campaign to use his tentative interest in this bill against him: Club women afflicted with inhibitions similar to those of members of Congress: It is leaders, not members who hold back endorsement by large organizations: Organized labor women endorse repeal ahead of club women._

No one comprehensive answer can be given to the question as to why Congressmen have not yet acted on the removal of the chief of a set of laws which all of them know will inevitably be removed, and which all of them admit are not enforced now and never could be, and which they themselves, like most of the educated and privileged folk everywhere, have proceeded to break with impunity.

However, the answer is not a complicated one. Part of the answer probably is that Congress was not quietly asked to do this thing many years ago, say fifteen or twenty, before the birth control movement had become a defiantly agitational matter, abounding in spectacular law-breaking, denunciatory meetings, jail sentences, hunger strikes, and general hullabaloo of the sort toward which most men in politics feel a stiff aversion if not actual antagonism. The birth control movement, as most of the Congressmen of the present generation have witnessed it, did not begin with any request for a change in the laws, but burst into flame about ten years ago with a sensational campaign to induce defiance of the laws on a large scale. It cannot be wondered at, since no one went to Washington then and concretely asked that a bill be introduced to change the laws, that Congressmen did not step forward on their own initiative and offer to do it. Their minds did not work that way. Instead, they merely looked upon all the “noise,” so far as they thought about it at all, as something with which they wanted to having nothing to do.

It seems a fair guess that if in 1905 or thereabouts, when the effort of the seventies to repeal the entire Comstock obscenity statutes was well in the past, some group of “solid citizens,” lawyers, doctors, ministers and the like,—had gone to Washington and laid before Congress the fact that Comstock had obviously blundered when he included contraceptive information in the obscenity law, and that it was a very simple matter to correct the blunder,—it might have been done forthwith, without any particular self-consciousness or any struggle. But, of course, such a guess is incapable of proof, since no one tried the experiment at that time. And when it was tried in 1919, the later developments in the birth control movement had already stimulated and aggravated the aversion and inhibition on the part of the members of Congress which has ever since been the most serious barrier to progress.

In looking back at some of the writings and utterances which appeared a decade ago, it is perhaps not surprising that many members of Congress looked askance when in 1919 they were asked to tackle the birth control question. For instance, “The Woman Rebel,” the paper which Margaret Sanger published and edited in 1914 in New York as her first message to the public, contained the following editorial announcements:

“The aim of this paper will be to stimulate working women to think for themselves and to build up a conscious fighting character.

“It will also be the aim of the Woman Rebel to advocate the prevention of conception and to impart such knowledge in the columns of this paper.

“As is well known, a law exists forbidding the imparting of information on this subject, the penalty being several years’ imprisonment. Is it not time to defy this Law? And what fitter place could be found than in the pages of the Woman Rebel?”

These items were in the opening issue of the paper and were unaccompanied by any request to Congress or the New York Legislature to change the laws, or any appeal to the public to try to have them changed. The launching of this message was also linked with other matters, which were far from an inducement to average legislators to volunteer to remedy the laws relating to birth control. For example in that same first issue of the paper was this by the editor:

_A Woman’s Duty._—To look the whole world in the face with a go-to-hell look in the eyes; to have an ideal; to speak and act in defiance of convention.

Also this: “_The Rebel Women Claim_:

The right to be lazy, The right to be an unmarried mother, The right to destroy, The right to create, The right to love, The right to live.

And this by a contributor, J. Edward Morgan:

_My Song_—a prose poem. I dwelt apart in a world of song, But did not sing. Biding my time, I listened to all songs that I might sing, when my soul should find its song.

* * * * *

One note clear, pure, lucid, telling all, answering all, unanswerable, the Song of Songs, My Song, the Song of the Bomb.

This issue also published the I. W. W. preamble, which in those days had more power to alarm than it has had since. The July number contained “A Defense of Assassination” by Herbert A. Thorpe. Also this editorial:

The rich man places his wife on a pedestal and serves her with docility in order that she may be admired and he, be envied. He has raised her to the rank of queen. This deified woman is one of the new idols at whose feet plundering plutocracy lays the shining gold wrung from the sweat and blood of the toiling long-suffering masses....

If we do not strike the fetters off ourselves, we shall be knocked about till we forget the fetters.... We have done with your civilization and your gods.... Let us turn a deaf ear to the trumpet-tongued liars clamoring for Protection, Patriotism, Prisons, Police, Workhouses and Large Families. Leave them to vomit their own filth, and let us take the good things mother earth daily offers unheeded, to us her children.

In the July issue there was also the announcement of the forming of a Birth Control League, one of the objects of which was “to agitate vigorously for the repeal of State and Federal laws against the spreading of knowledge relative to methods for the prevention of conception.” But no officers were announced other than a secretary; no later notice of a program appeared; and the organization seems never to have functioned enough even to begin carrying out any legislative program. The magazine lasted less than a year, and over half the issues printed were declared “unmailable” by the Post Office authorities.

The strident tone which had characterized this publication was somewhat modified by 1917 when Mrs. Sanger started the Birth Control Review and became its editor, but her chief message was still to break the laws rather than to get them changed. For instance in the opening number of the new magazine, two signed editorials contained these statements:

No law is too sacred to break. Throughout all the ages, the beacon lights of human progress have been lit by the law-breaker.

The law to-day is absolute and inexorable.

The race has progressed but the law has remained stationary—a senseless stumbling block in the pathway of humanity, a self perpetuating institution, dead to the vital needs of the people.

Against the State, against the Church, against the silence of the medical profession, against the whole machinery of dead institutions of the past, the woman of to-day arises.

She no longer pleads. She no longer implores. She no longer petitions. She is here to assert herself, to take back those rights which were formerly hers and hers alone.

If she must break the law to establish her right to voluntary motherhood, then the law shall be broken.

Shall the millions of women in this State bow their heads to the yoke of slavery imposed by this law?

Shall we sit quietly with folded hands and wait,—wait for our gentlemen law-makers to consider our right to voluntary motherhood?

Shall we not instead violate so brutal a law and thereby teach our law-makers that, if they wish women to obey their man-made laws, they must make such laws as women can respect?

Assailing and defying the laws without taking steps to change them, naturally induced a more dramatic situation than any quiet business-like expedition to Washington or Albany could have brought about. And as it is drama which attracts newspaper publicity, it was inevitable that the birth control movement should have developed an atmosphere of violence. And it was inevitable too, that Congressmen, without having any accurate or consecutive knowledge of the events in this drama, should sense the atmosphere of it, and stiffen accordingly, and should retain an impression which was very difficult to antidote later, when they were asked to use their common sense about repealing the law. Common sense does not readily over-leap prejudice.

Another factor in the atmosphere of the movement which was developed at this same time, and which also seeped into Congress, and with quite as much damaging reaction, was the cultivation of the idea that the struggle was bound to be a very long and bitter one. In launching the Birth Control Review, Mrs. Sanger addressed this broadside “To the Men and Women of the United States:

Birth control is the most vital issue before the country to-day. The people are waking to the fact that there is no need for them to bring their children into the world haphazard, but that clean and harmless means are known whereby children may come when they are desired, and not as the helpless victims of blind chance.

Conscious of this fact, heretofore _concealed from them by the forces of oppression_, the men and women of America are demanding that this vitally needed knowledge be no longer withheld from them, that the doors to health, happiness and liberty be thrown open, and they be allowed to mould their lives, not at the arbitrary command of church or State, but as their conscience and judgment may dictate.

But those to whose advantage it is that the people breed abundantly, well intrenched in our social and political order, _are not going to surrender easily to the popular will. Already they are organizing their resistance and preparing their mighty engines of repression to stop the march of progress while it is yet time. The spirit of the Inquisition is abroad in the land. Its gaunt hand may even now be seen reaching out over bench and bar, making pawns of clergy and medical profession alike._

_The struggle will be bitter. It may be long. All methods known to tyranny will be used to force the people back into the darkness from which they are striving to emerge._

The time has come when those who would cast off the bondage of involuntary parenthood must have a voice, one that shall speak their protest and enforce their demands. Too long have they been silent on this most vital of all questions in human existence. The time has come for an organ devoted to the _fight for birth control in America_....

If you welcome this Review, if you believe that it will aid you in _your fight_, make it yours....

Raise your voice, strong, clear, fearless, unconditionally to the protection of womanhood, _uncompromisingly opposed to those who, to serve selfish ends, would keep her in ignorance_ and exploit her finest instincts.

(The italics are ours.)

The work of the birth control movement was here laid down in terms of “fight”; bitterness and tyranny were predicted; the picture of a long struggle was outlined. These were the days when Mrs. Sanger at her many meetings was saying, “I have dedicated my life to this fight.” The newspaper headlines were quick to reflect the tone of this kind of thought. It unconsciously became more or less the habit of mind of the thousands who read the newspapers, particularly of those whose reading was limited mostly to headlines. And it was not at all unnatural that it also became the view-point of many of those who were active in the movement. For, sad but true, the world not only “loves a lover,” but loves a fight. The instinct to dramatize life is so compelling and so universal that it often leads to the overstating and even mis-stating of a situation, and to action that produces excitement and complication, which tends to postpone rather than facilitate a solution. The leaders of movements as well as play-wrights are sometimes not immune to the temptation to make a four act play out of a one act plot.

To appeal for preparations for a “long-fight” against the tyranny of the “man-made laws” before the law-makers had been so much as asked specifically to change the laws would seem to be not only the cart before the horse, but a fairly sure way of prejudicing the case in advance in the minds of the law-makers. And this tendency was strengthened by the fact that so much was read into the retention of these old Comstock laws that was not really there. Granted that the attitude of legislators on this subject has warranted severe criticism, ever since 1919, when it was first put squarely up to Congress to do the thing that was fundamentally needed, it was simply “seein’ things” in 1917 before any legislative effort had been made at all, except the feeblest sort of a beginning in New York legislature to describe the retention of the Comstock laws, as evidence of the “forces of oppression” which were “organizing their resistance and preparing their mighty engines of repression to stop the march of progress,” and to predict that “all the methods known to tyranny will be used to force the people back into the darkness from which they are striving to emerge.”

The actual average legislator, when talked with face to face, proved to be the farthest removed from Mrs. Sanger’s vision of the “spirit of the Inquisition” whose “gaunt hand may even now be seen reaching out over bench and bar, making pawns of clergy and medical profession alike.” Instead he was merely repelled by the racket of the birth control movement, prejudiced because it had been linked with revolutionary “radicalism” in general, and embarrassed by the fact that the subject touched upon sex. Moreover he was found to be ridiculously ignorant as to just what the Comstock laws provided anyhow. It never occurred to him to demand their enforcement, and he was quite willing to infringe them himself, if his personal need required it. He did not in any way match up to the picture of an “oppressive force.” He was just a man immersed in politics, who had never been directly asked to repeal the Comstock laws, and had never dreamed of doing it by himself without being asked, and who when asked, hastily shot off all the “rationalizing” he could think up, to protect himself from having to take any responsibility about a “disagreeable subject.” That was about all there was to it. He would make a very poor showing in the rôle of an aggressor; in fact many of them have shown rather absurd indications of wanting to run. They were not in the least interested in the enforcement of the law. They just wanted to let it alone, not because they approved it, but merely because they found it uncomfortable to do anything about it in any way.

A demonstration of law-breaking has unquestioned effectiveness as advertising for an idea; but its efficacy would seem more wisely utilized as a protest against a refusal to change the law than as a publicity appeal before any request for the change had been made.

It seems regrettable that the experiment was not at least tried of asking for the change of the laws first, and saving up the law-breaking demonstration until either the legislators had refused or had delayed, beyond reason, to act. However, it was not arranged that way in 1916, and one may only guess at what might have happened if it had been. Perhaps the illegal clinic and the jail sentences might all have been avoided, and legal freedom for contraceptive knowledge through all the natural channels for its circulation might by to-day have become a matter of course. Who knows?

However, circumstances being as they were, there was no choice but to adjust as might be to them, and antidote, as rapidly and thoroughly as possible, the prejudices which had been established. The writer’s first experience in trying to do this was in Albany, when one of the evasive legislators had suggested conferring with a leading official in the State Health Department. The latter was not averse to the idea of a revision of the Comstock law. In fact he admitted all the arguments. But he was adamant when it came to recommending the Legislature to act; for he could not make himself disassociate the reasons for the repeal from his violent prejudice against the “wild” words and actions of the birth control advocates. The things he “knew” about Mrs. Sanger far exceeded anything the facts warranted: he had not stopped to find out the truth, but had a settled conviction that could not be budged, until at the very end of an hour’s earnest talk, when he managed to admit that the proposition to revise the laws should be considered on its own merit, regardless of anything else.

Similarly in Washington, when various members of Congress cited the “wild radicals” who had “agitated about this thing,” they had to be laboriously diverted to the consideration of the fact that there was nothing wild at all about the control of parenthood, that the most conservative classes were those who had achieved it first and most, and that Congress was being asked only to correct Comstock’s blunder of banning science along with indecency, so that the law would reflect the belief and practice of the educated normal men and women of the country. It was far slower and harder work than it would otherwise have been, just because of the “fighting” psychology which had been established in the birth control movement.

All of which leads to the second part of the answer to the question as to why Congress has been so slow to act, and that is, that the group working for the Cummins-Kissel and Cummins-Vaile Bills did not have adequate funds for the constructive publicity work necessary to offset the prejudices and dissipate the inhibitions of the members of Congress.

But the third and last part of the answer is by far the dominant part, and that is, as had doubtless been evident through all the previous pages of this book, that the subject is embarrassing. It brings sex considerations and sex consciousness to the surface. And this creates varying degrees of fear and inhibition. It would have done that to a certain degree, no doubt, even if the proposition had come to Congress before the birth control movement flared into a sensational affair ten years ago. But with the background of the modern movement as it has been, the tendency has been greatly augmented, so that the fear of being conspicuous in the matter has been the outstanding obstacle. The inhibition has been very powerful in many instances. But there is much reason for concluding that the six years of effort directly with the members of Congress, together with the greatly increased articulateness of the public, has worn the inhibitions so thin and lessened the fears so much that they should evaporate in the very near future, and let the latent common-sense of the majority of the members have an unimpeded chance to function.

An assertion of this sort, that sex consciousness and fear have been the chief reason for the delay in Congress, needs the backing of proof, especially as one dislikes to believe it and would prefer to assume it to be impossible. It must be said at the outset, that probably the same reaction would have been found among any other 435 men, if placed in a similar position. The members of Congress are presumably representative of American life and feeling. They are not unique. The attitude of almost any average citizen with regard to birth control is that he wants the information, but he does not want to make himself conspicuous in getting it. Just so with members of Congress. And the sticking point with them was that they would have to be conspicuous in regard to it, if they sponsored the bill or voted it out of Committee.

In giving various instances of the evidence of the fear and distaste which have been so chronic among the members of Congress it is best, for the purposes of this book, that they shall stand just as instances, without names. It makes relatively little difference what particular Senator or Representative said or did this or that. The only matter of consequence is that this inhibition has been notably prevalent, and that it is the one thing which has chiefly held back the bill from passage.

The general policy of the Voluntary Parenthood League has been to report in its paper the character and episodes of the blockading of the bill, and all official action regarding it, but not to make public the revealing interviews with the individual members of Congress. The one exception to this custom was at the close of the 68th Congress in March, 1925, when a report on the stand of each member of both Judiciary Committees was given in the Birth Control Herald (March 10). It was prefaced as follows:

“The following résumé of the stand of the members of the Senate and House Judiciary Committee on the Cummins-Vaile Bill is compiled from their own statements either in interviews or in letters. The interviews have been promptly and carefully recorded immediately after their occurrence, and are now on file in three volumes in the office of the Voluntary Parenthood League.

“When the League began its work in Congress in the summer of 1919, no publicity was given to the interviews with the various members. It seemed a wise policy at that time, for many reasons. But now that nearly six full years have elapsed, and Congress still chooses to delay action on the bill, and is willing to be a party to the maintenance of laws which misrepresent the established practice and policy of the people, it seems only fair to those who have given their support to the bill, to present to them the record of the Committee members up to date, so that responsibility, praise and blame may be the more accurately allocated.

“Since the first introduction of the bill, each member of both Judiciary Committees has received from the V. P. L. about fifty separate letters or publications in regard to the bill, beside the many letters and telegrams which have been sent by individuals from all parts of the country. They have all received the Report of the two Hearings on the bill. They have all been interviewed, some of them so repeatedly that the records cover many pages in the interview books.” (_The Birth Control Herald._)

Senator Cummins, as noted in a previous chapter, repeatedly said that undue sex consciousness was the reason the men on the Committee tried to shelve the bill and to avoid a vote on it. Senator Dillingham, who died in 1923, said there was no question but that embarrassment was the major difficulty which prevented the men from doing justice by the bill. Space forbids even the jotting down of all the indications of this fact, which were accumulated in the observation of Congress in six years, but the following bits will serve as examples.

The two Senators who returned literature sent to them, and marked it “Refused.” The Senator who declined interviews on the ground that he “would not discuss this bill with any _woman_.” The Senator who evaded interviews for over two years, and who then vibrated between declaring that he would not “say a word previous to a public hearing,” and explaining his general fear of the whole question of birth control, and who wound up a hectic dissertation on the subject, with this remark: “If I were the Creator and were making the universe all over again, I would leave sex out. It is too powerful, too dangerous.” The Senator who said, “The whole subject is so damn nasty, I can’t bear to talk of it or even think of it.” The Senator who said “This bill is practically an invitation to lechery.” The Representative who construed it as a personal insult that a digest had been made from the autobiographies in the Congressional Directory showing the average number of children in the families of the members of Congress, and who confessed in the middle of a long tirade, that the reason Congress didn’t act on the bill, was that the members were “afraid of it.”

The evidences of fear were found to be numerous and various but all of them seemed quite clearly due, directly or indirectly, to some form or other of distrust of human capacity to integrate this phase of sex knowledge into life, with safety, to morals or regard for decorum. These fears were almost wholly in regard to or on behalf of other people, not themselves; and the range of the fears covered their colleagues in Congress, their families, their constituents, the Catholics, the public in general, but most of all the young people. The high school girl who is guaranteed to go to the devil from learning what birth control information is, has been by all means the most vivid character in the whole realm of birth control phantasy. Judging by the extent of the expression of alarm felt on her behalf, it would seem as if she constituted about seven-eighths of the entire population. At any rate she has seemed to fill the whole horizon of many of the members of Congress. No such concern was expressed regarding the young boys.

The one fear, however, which did relate to the member of Congress himself, was as to his own career, and the effect which taking an interest in the bill might have upon it. In discussing the extent of this fear, one of the senior Senators ventured the opinion that “there never was a man in public life who did not consider his career first,—he has to, if he is going to get anywhere.” More than one Senator refused to sponsor the bill on the ground that it would give too good an opportunity to political opponents to “have fun” at his expense. The type of “fun” they anticipated was apparently somewhat like that in which some of the Congressmen indulged when Mr. Kissel first introduced the bill. A story which then went the rounds of Congressional gossip was that “Kissel, being a lame duck, will be out of a job in two months and so he has introduced the birth control bill to pave the way for getting rich by manufacturing contraceptives.” Mr. Kissel shed the jollying with good grace, and when one of his colleagues inquired why he “wanted to do a thing like sponsoring that bill” he came back cheerfully with, “because there were 434 of you others who wouldn’t.” But there was a more serious side to the possibilities of this sort of fun, as recognized by one of the representatives who was facing a re-election campaign at the time when he was asked to consider sponsoring the bill. He was very candid in saying that he did not intend to be defeated, and that he knew he had political enemies who would not scruple to use this bill against him by circulating stories which it would cost him more to contradict and explain than he cared to spend. And he added, “Maybe you will call that political cowardice, and maybe it is, but anyway that is where I stand.”

There seemed to be general agreement that “anything sexy” had special power to damn a man in public life. “I can’t afford to touch it” was an often heard remark, from men who thoroughly approved the bill. The dread of facetious or vulgar comment from other members of Congress was a very real and often indicated dread. A Senator who was defeated for re-election, was horrified at the suggestion that he might help the bill along as a service in the last session of his term. “If I were to vote for this bill, my people wouldn’t let me come home,” he said. Another Senator who sincerely wanted the bill to pass felt very cramped in his advocacy of it, because of the fears of his family, who thought the thing “not nice,” and that it was not good for his reputation to have anything to do with it. In the case of one Representative his fears loomed so large that they encompassed the whole population. “Why,” he said, “if Congress should do such a thing (as to pass the bill) the population would rise like a mob, and the only reason they are not doing it now is because they don’t know it is under consideration.” A Senator whose fear regarding “the fourteen year old girls” was well nigh an obsession and who said, “You want to make everybody prostitutes,”—was able when speaking seriously, to modify his fears only to the extent of saying, “If this information could be confined to the intelligent and cultured people, and kept out of the hands of the vicious and ignorant, it might be another matter, but that can’t be done.” From that, he argued that no one should be allowed to have it, although he had admitted previously in the same conversation that information did circulate anyway in spite of the law.

The most striking element in the expression of all these fears has been the way in which the fear, and the sex consciousness which is back of it, seems to prevent the use of the mind in an ordinary logical fashion. Two and two do not make four, but a hundred, or any preposterous number. No conclusion is too absurd to jump at, when impelled by this fuddled embarrassment and vague terror. Some of the most squeamish members have taken refuge in the stout declaration that they have never heard of the bill and don’t know anything about it, or about the subject of birth control; and this in spite of the fact that they had received many letters and much literature for over five years. They have been so occupied in devising ways to wriggle out of discussing the bill at all, that they failed to realize how they gave themselves away, within a few minutes after they knew “nothing about it,” by telling of how they had talked the matter over with other members and they all agreed that “nothing can be done about it in this session.”

The general tendency of the members who have been beset with fear, has been to avoid all talk and consideration as much as possible. But one member of the House Judiciary Committee was an exception; he leaned to loquacity. As his remarks give a vivid picture of the lengths to which fear and super sex-consciousness can distort an otherwise reasonable mind, the substance of one of the recorded interviews with him is given here.

“Hon. Mr. X of ——,

“I hear you are going to make a speech against the bill, Mr. X.” “Yes, if necessary I am, though I expect to kill the bill in Committee. But I shall make a speech on the floor if I have to.” “It is a great advantage to be a lawyer, if you are going to work against this bill, Mr. X.” He agreed heartily to that, said it was an advantage on any bill to be a lawyer.

“Yes, for you will have the sort of mind that whittles away all the irrelevant stuff, and puts attention on the real points of the bill, and those are very simple as well as important.” “I see what you are driving at, Mrs. D——, but to my mind the most important consideration is the danger which this bill would make for young girls, and I am against it for that reason.”

“Do you then really distrust the majority of young girls?” He thought he did,—that he had to, as a practical man, knowing the world and its ways.

“If you had been a lawyer, as I have, and tried quantities of bastardy cases, you would see why.” Asked if he didn’t think a lawyer’s experience was like a doctor’s, limited largely to the pathological side of life, and that one had to consider the great fairly normal majority. Well, he felt the majority were weak and could be safeguarded only by their fear of “getting in a family way.”

“Would you be willing to say that publicly, Mr. X? It is a pretty serious thing for a man in public life, representing the people, to say he distrusts them. I can understand your talking that way privately, but would you want to say it openly.” “Yes, I would, for I believe it.”

“Suppose there were a public meeting in your district, Mr. X, and you stood before an audience of your own constituents, and told them that you believed that most of the young folks were better off ignorant than with knowledge on this subject, because they couldn’t withstand the temptation to misuse it, and so the laws that tried to keep them from knowing were good laws. Then suppose someone else were standing beside you, saying just the reverse, another Congressman who might say, ‘My dear young friends, I believe in you. I know you are human, with all the impulses that sway live people, and I know that some people are swayed when they ought not to be, but I believe the majority have the strength of mind and character to go right, even if they do know how to go wrong and cover it up, and so I am against all laws that try to keep knowledge away from you.’ Which man do you think would get the response of the audience?”

“Oh, of course it would be the one who said he believed in them, that’s natural. They would want to believe in themselves, too, but think how it would be that night, when the young girl goes out with the boy, and she can’t help thinking, what difference will it make if nothing ever shows? And then she will forget all about character, and will let herself go, whereas if she was afraid of the practical results, she wouldn’t. Yes, there are thousands of girls that are held back just that way.”

Then I asked if he didn’t know that there was such a lot of contraceptive knowledge in circulation—and most of it bad too—that the number of girls that could be protected by their ignorance was diminishing every hour, and that there was absolutely no effort at enforcement of the laws? He said people argued that way about enforcing the prohibition laws, but he thought it ought to be enforced and could be. He insisted he was “just being practical, that’s all.” I insisted that I was the more practical, as I had faith in knowledge and strength which were dynamic, and not in just fences, which are dead. “Well, you certainly are a pretty talker, Mrs. D—— and I may be wrong. Of course, if you can convince me....” “I don’t think I can convince you, but I think you can convince yourself, if you make a business of turning your face toward the light instead of to the darkness.”

“Well anyhow, you think what would happen in all these government boarding houses over here,” pointing out the window to the wartime buildings which still house hundreds of women clerks, “a lot of them are confirmed old maids too, but I wouldn’t trust what would happen to them, if they all knew they could do what they pleased and no one would be the wiser.”

The above instance is given, not because it represents the state of mind of the average member of Congress, for it does not. It is an extreme case. But it does give in exaggerated fashion, an indication of what is the background of feeling and thought among a very large number of members, though in a much milder and more dilute form. This particular Congressman may prove to be pugnacious to the last, but the majority show strong evidence that their fears and inhibitions can be melted away by the sunlight of wholesome public opinion, frankly expressed.

It can not be too emphatically stated that the average member of Congress would probably much rather be reasonable in this matter than not, but he has not quite reached the point where it is as easy to be reasonable as it is to be evasive. However, it has not been altogether rare to find a perfectly untrammelled mind like that of one of the leading Senators, who sailed into brisk consideration of the bill, like a fresh breeze on a muggy day; “Of course, I don’t see how anyone could vote against it.” On being told that some of the Senators on the Judiciary Committee seemed too inhibited to want the bill reported out, he said, “H’m,—prudes, are they?” and ran his eye over the list of Committee members to locate the prudes. “There are Senator So-and-so, and So-and-so, surely they will be for it,—just plain common sense.” “And decency,” added the interviewer. “A combination of both, yes.” He would speak to some of the members. He saw “no reason on earth why it should not pass.”

As the fear about the young people has been the most persistent of all fears expressed by members of Congress, and the one about which their minds have been most rutty, a special answer to it was prepared and sent to every member of both Houses. _It_ was entitled; “_Yes, but won’t it increase immorality? Isn’t letting down the bars dangerous?_” and the substance of it was as follows:

When Congressmen say, “Yes, but won’t this letting down the bars, mean that the unmarried and the young will have nothing to deter them from illicit relations?” We, in turn, make these queries:

“Well, will it?”

“Do you really believe that most people have no positive standards of conduct?”

“Are they kept what is called ‘straight’ only by their ignorance of the fact that sex relations need not result in parenthood unless so intended?”

“Is it your sober opinion that fear of ‘results’ and ignorance as the control of conception are the only deterrents from general promiscuity?”

When a Congressman voices this wholesale distrust of his fellow citizens in regard to contraceptive knowledge, is it irrelevant to inquire if the expressions of faith in the people such as appear in pre-election campaign speeches are all mere platitudes: “If you do really consider most people intrinsically unworthy in this regard are you ready to go before your constituents and tell them so? Are you willing to explain to them that your hesitation about the Cummins-Vaile Bill is because you think they are so weak or so vicious that they would abuse contraceptive knowledge if it were made easily accessible?”

A fair test of the validity, and even the sincerity, for any such generalization as this, is to apply the idea to our own selves. Surely we assume that our own lives are decently guided by something beside mere fear of “consequences.” We can hardly consider ourselves unique in this regard, either. We cannot think that we have any personal monopoly of principles, moral standards or good taste. We surely cannot picture ourselves as standing alone in the world on a pedestal of superiority, with all the others below in a morass of moral obliquity. If we dare trust ourselves with this knowledge, and we know we do, must we not also dare to trust others?

All these disconcerting inquiries are seldom pressed home, however, with most Congressmen, for they usually think twice rather quickly, and they admit that the tendency of a few to abuse knowledge is no reason for trying to keep the mass of people ignorant.

They admit when they stop to think, that knowledge of all kinds can be abused and that it is abused every day by some people. Even reading, writing and arithmetic are abused, by forgers, embezzlers and the like, but that is no reason for not teaching these pre-requisites of civilization to everyone. The elements and natural forces can be dangerous for mankind as well as beneficent. Fire, water and electricity can all do frightful damage if they get out of hand, but under proper human control, they are blessings and fundamental necessities.

But it is the case of the young that stays longest in the mind of the doubting Congressman as a cause of apprehension. Usually it is the young girl whose “virtue” he thinks can be safeguarded by keeping her ignorant. If he is asked, “Why the sex distinction?” he is apt to admit that what is being safeguarded is convention rather than virtue, as the girl’s lapse would become known while the boy’s need not.

However he is almost certain to end by admitting that it is a poor kind of saint that does not know how to sin; that ignorance is not synonymous with character; that it is an insult to young people in general to assume that they cannot be trusted with knowledge; that if he would not so insult his own children, he should not be ready to insult other people’s children; that such protection as ignorance may provide is ephemeral, for knowledge may reach the young person any day; that it is primarily the fault of the older generation if children have been so poorly reared that they naturally “go wrong” instead of right; that finally it is better that those who insist on promiscuity should not further add to the situation by bringing innocent babies into the world.

It is becoming more and more evident that those people, young or older, who are strongly impelled to irregular relations are the sort who most readily find ways to secure the forbidden information, and it is folly to try to deprive the millions of wholesome, needy and responsible parents who should have this knowledge, in a vain effort to keep the irresponsible uninformed. Indeed, with birth control knowledge, the undesirable elements in the population will tend to die out faster than they otherwise would, by virtue of the fact that they will not be reproducing their kind.

In the last analysis, might it not be better for the race, if birth control knowledge could be given to only one class of people, that it should be made available first of all to the generally promiscuous? They make very poor parents, and the sooner they die out the better.

It can hardly be doubted that the people who bring up this immorality bogie, as an excuse for holding back contraceptive knowledge from the public, are unconsciously trying to divert their minds from their own sense of discomfort and uncertainty regarding matters pertaining to sex. They are advancing what the modern psychologist calls “good reasons but not real reason.” They are “rationalizing.” They can quite well fool themselves, too, into believing that they are animated by a disinterested concern for social welfare. But presently, if they are willing to think the thing through, they may see that what they are really doing is trying to avoid or postpone the responsibility which faces all normal adults, to meet the fundamental problems of life squarely, and to help educate the human race into a triumphant and thorough solution of them.

The hope of the world lies on the far side, not the near side of knowledge.

A few years ago there was much heated assertion current among “radicals” about how church and State, and especially how “big business” wanted to suppress the knowledge of birth control; how the church (meaning mostly the Roman Catholic church) wanted more souls born, at no matter what cost, so they could be counted in the fold; how the militarists wanted more “cannon-fodder”; how the “interests” wanted more “wage-slaves” to exploit; and how the “government” wanted more millions of citizens to build up and fight for a State that would be dominant in the world; and how “politics,” the servant of all these “tyrannies,” was the force which would hold birth control progress back, in any attempted effort at legislation.

But “politics,” as represented by the men in Congress, whose views have been sampled in the last six years, does not act at all in accord with the pattern laid out for it by the “radical.” Politics, that is, political organization, re-acts just about as the individual men do. It squirms at the idea of any constructive service regarding the release of birth control information from legal ban, and the only use it has for the subject at all is a means of damning a political opponent, or rather to threaten to use it thus, in the event that other ammunition fails. If the hypothesis of the “radicals” had been sound, there would surely have been some evidence of it among the 435 men who constitute Congress. Some interest would have been shown in having the present suppressive laws enforced, but as a matter of fact, not a vestige of any such interest has been found, and there has been a general admission that the laws do not and cannot work. Occasional, feeble and ignorant remarks about race suicide are the nearest approach to an interest in making the laws effective, that has been discernible in Congress.

An extreme example of this false assumption as to why politics has thus far balked at helping to repeal the suppressive laws, is found in an editorial signed by Margaret Sanger, in the Birth Control Review of May, 1921. It was written after the first short effort to induce the New York Legislature to pass a “doctors only” bill, and was apropos of the facts that one Assemblyman who had promised to introduce the bill had backed out, “after consulting with some of the leaders of the Assembly who strongly advised” him not to do it, as it would do him “an injury” that he “could not overcome for some time”; that another Assemblyman, who was a physician, had “refused on the ground of levity from his associates”; and that a third had decided against doing it “after consulting with party leaders in New York.” Part of this editorial comment was as follows:

To expect aid or even intelligent understanding of birth control from the typical Albany politician; to be disappointed because of the ignorance of these so-called “legislators”; to be discouraged because of their failure to remove the coercive and criminally obscene insult to American womanhood from the statute books[3]—this would be to succumb to emotion rather than to profit by the invaluable knowledge we have gained from our experience at Albany. The great fact is this. We can expect nothing from the politician of today. If we must use the weapon of politics to further the progress of birth control, it must be the politics created by ourselves.

When the first birth control clinic in America was declared a “public nuisance” by the courts, we were advised by well-meaning friends that the legal way, the political way, the legislative way, was the only safe and sane method of propaganda. This has now been put to the test. And we discover that the successful politician is not only mentally unable to understand the aim of birth control, but moreover he himself is the very product of those sinister forces we are aiming to eradicate from human society.

Your successful politician is the demagogue who knows the best tricks to catch the greatest number of votes. He is the hypnotist of great, docile, submissive, sheep-like majorities. He is interested in number, not intelligence. Therefore to expect such masters, who by hook or crook, ride roughshod into public office or slide into seats of the State Legislature to understand or support a program which aims at the creation of self-reliant, self-governing,[4] independent men and women, would be to neglect one of the most important factors among the resources of our opponents. But we did expect something more among men elected to public office than the embarrassed giggle of the adolescent, the cynical indecency of the gangster, in the consideration of a serious sexual and social problem.

Perhaps, moreover, we failed to take into consideration the vast power wielded today by the politician in control and administration of the public charities, hospitals, and “correctional” institutions for the support and maintenance of the victims of compulsory motherhood.

“Our politicians today profit from human misery. They have an interest, direct or indirect, in the production through uncontrolled fecundity, of the unfit, the underfed, the feebleminded and the incurably diseased. Their interest, financially, is in the increase of our institution populations, with their insistent demands for appropriations from the City and State. Most eugenists dub the victims of our legal and social barbarism “the unfit.” The victims are not the “unfit” but these blind leaders of the blind—the politician, the profiteer, the war-making patriot, the criminal moralist, who is urging men and women to “increase and multiply.”

Statements of this sort were repeatedly made at public meetings for a number of years. They came to be so widely circulated that they were generally accepted among many of the groups which were agitating for social revolution or reconstruction, without much of any analysis to find out whether or not they were an accurate interpretation of the opposition of “politics” to changing the laws affecting birth control information. It is perhaps not strange that this sort of talk became common, but it had two serious disadvantages, one that it shot wide of the mark, and the other that it served to increase the prejudice of law makers against the whole program for correcting the laws, and added perceptibly to their distaste for taking a personal part in that program.

Every bit of direct experience with legislators augments the conclusion that the chief reason the individual legislator hangs back is because he is afraid it will “queer him” to stand for any action, and the reason that “political leaders” advise the legislators to let the subject alone is precisely the same. The subject is embarrassing, that’s all. As one of them advised another, “Whatever you do, don’t get mixed up in any sex stuff. No man in politics can afford that.”

A striking proof of the foregoing point was an occurrence in the presidential campaign in 1920. Senator Harding, when a member of the Public Health Committee of the Senate (since abolished) had written to the Director of Voluntary Parenthood League saying, “I have not had time to study carefully the provisions of your bill, but at first reading I find myself very much inclined in its favor.” This statement was given to the press. Presently it was taken up by some of the opposition campaign speakers who ran short of thunder, and they began spreading the news that if Harding were elected president, “government means would be used to enforce birth control.” No details were given but it was insinuated that the project would be an unheard of intrusion into private life. A representative from the Democratic Headquarters was sent to the office of the Voluntary Parenthood League to secure a photostat copy of the note which Mr. Harding had written. The young man who bore the message happened to be interested in the work of the League, and he frankly admitted that the errand was distasteful to him, as the distorted use it was planned to make of this note was such as would not only reflect discredit upon Mr. Harding, but upon the League. He said he considered it most unwise campaign tactics, and he was the more disturbed over it, because some of the campaign managers had admitted that they themselves approved the bill, but as they considered it a good handle for slurring Harding, they were perfectly willing to use it in that manner for campaign purposes. Their plan, however, was checkmated by some of the levelheaded women then active in the Democratic campaign; they instantly notified the men that it would never, never do. They reminded the men that no matter how relatively silent the organized women of the country might have been on this subject, there was no doubt whatever that they believed in controlled parenthood; obviously, for they had achieved it; and any discreditable slam at birth control would be nothing but a boomerang for the Democratic campaigners. The whole idea was promptly abandoned.

It has been frequently said, inside of Congress and out, that if the “club women” had endorsed the Cummins-Vaile Bill, it would have been passed by the last Congress. There is clearly no way to prove it, but there are certain facts to be stated which throw some light on the subject. In the first place the club women have not been completely silent. In the next place, it is just as obvious that the club women believe in the control of parenthood as that Congressmen do, and that they have not and will not observe the laws which forbid access to the information. The birth rate in both groups is prima facie evidence, which no candid person would deny, as it is out of the question to assume that the educated and more or less privileged class to which both groups belong, are made up of people who are for the most part either ascetic or sterile. The only possible inference is that control of the growth of the family has been achieved by the utilization of contraceptive knowledge. Congressmen are just as able to take note of this situation as any other observers, but when they talk of waiting for the club women to voice their opinions officially in a body, they are merely exercising their ingenuity in thinking up one more form of excuse for not acting.

And the women, to the extent that have been backward about acknowledging what their lives prove, seem to be motivated by exactly the same sort of embarrassments and inhibitions as afflict the members of Congress. And similarly also, their inhibitions are wearing thinner all the time, and there is good reason to believe that ere long the organized women who belong to the more or less privileged class will follow the lead of the organized labor women who, in June, 1922, passed the following resolution at the annual convention of the National Women’s Trade Union League:

_Whereas_ the effect of certain laws of the United States, both State and Federal, is to withhold contraceptive information from the women of the working classes, while it is in most cases readily available to the well to do; and

_Whereas_ it is important that in this, as in other matters, the best scientific information should be available to the peoples’ need, regardless of their economic standing: Therefore be it

_Resolved_, That we, the National Women’s Trade-Union League, in convention assembled, go on record as opposed to all laws, State and Federal, which in effect establish censorship over knowledge which, if open to one, should be open to all who care to secure it.

However in fairness to the rank and file of the club women it must be stated that two years earlier, in June 1920, they gave every evidence of being willing and even glad to pass a resolution of protest against the barriers to contraceptive knowledge, and it was only the timidity of the leaders which prevented their having full opportunity to do so. This circumstance occurred at the Biennial Convention of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs at Des Moines, and was reported as follows in the Birth Control Herald:

At the Des Moines Convention in 1920, at the close of Mrs. Dennett’s address to the Health Conference on “Children by Chance or by Choice,” the delegates began a rapid fire of questions. Mrs. Dennett asked if she might put just one question to the delegates, namely, as to how many of them wanted the prohibitive laws of this country regarding contraceptive knowledge to remain as they are now without change. Not a hand was raised, whereupon Mrs. Dennett said “That is interesting in view of the fact that your Resolutions Committee has declined to report out a resolution on that question.” Instantly a delegate asked the Chairman, Mrs. Elmer Blair, to have the resolution read. The delegates listened hard. A second slow reading, was asked for. Then without pause someone moved the adoption of the resolution and it was carried _unanimously_ with a rising vote of thanks to the speaker. Over 500 delegates were present, constituting about a third of the whole Convention.

The wording of the resolution was as follows:

_Whereas_ one of the primary necessities for family and therefore for public health, is an intelligently determined interval between pregnancies, to be secured by regulating the inception of life and not by interfering with life after it starts, and

_Whereas_ the lack of knowledge as to how to secure such an interval frequently results in serious disaster for mothers and babies and indirectly for the entire family and community.

_Be It Resolved_ that this Conference on Public Health urges the speedy removal of all barriers, due to legal restrictions, tradition, prejudice or ignorance, which now prevents parents from access to such scientific knowledge on this subject as is possessed by the medical profession.

Of course it was evident that any resolution which was carried unanimously by a third of the delegates would carry by at least a good majority if submitted to all the delegates, and the rebuke thus administered to the resolutions committee created quite a bit of consternation among the officers of the Federation. But the resolution was not submitted to the whole convention, nor has one been allowed to come forth at any subsequent convention, although considerable effort has been made to have it done. The nearest approach to it has been the making of a recommendation by the officers, that the whole subject of birth control be “studied by the clubs.”

If, as some of the Club women say, the chief reason for not endorsing voluntary parenthood is because the Catholic members are opposed, it would seem a perfectly simple matter to remind the Catholic women in the first place that they are a very small minority, and in the second place, that there is nothing compulsory about the use of contraceptive knowledge. If Catholics wish to remain ignorant on the subject, they are, and should be entirely free to do so, but they should not seek to enforce ignorance on others. (_B. C. Herald._)

It is said that the Catholic Clubs have threatened to secede from the Federation if a birth control resolution were passed, and that the leaders are so concerned to keep up the membership in the federation that they, like the political party leaders, have put organization first and left fair play to the mass of citizens to take care of itself as best it might. But there seems also evidence that the excuse about the Catholics is in part at any rate, a cover for the underlying excuse of embarrassment about dealing with the subject at all.

Practically all roads of investigation in this matter lead back to this one difficulty. If that were overcome, the minor obstacles would seem inconsequential. A situation similar to that found in the women’s clubs has developed in public welfare organizations of many sorts. The members were ready to move, but the leaders and officials were full of doubts and excuses. Ever since 1918, various members of the Social Work Conference, which annually gathers together representatives from nearly all the public welfare organizations of the country, who have been clamoring to have the question of birth control placed on the official program of the Conference, but thus far it has been relegated to “side show” meetings. In 1922 the request was formally made in a resolution passed with but one feeble dissenting vote, at a meeting with several hundred delegates present, but the officers have still held back at all the subsequent Conferences.

This inhibition of leaders has been so persistent that a definite effort was made by the Director of the Voluntary Parenthood League to try to help them break through it, and release their naturally helpful instincts so they could function without hindrance. It took the form of a semi-open letter, which was marked, “Not for publication—at present,” and read as follows:

Dear Citizen:

The Cummins-Vaile Bill has wide-spread, splendid and rapidly increasing endorsement. But there are still some persons of consequence, who believe in the aims of the legislation, who say, “I do not feel free to express my opinion, on account of my position.” They explain that as they are officially connected with this or that organization, they are obliged to forego giving any endorsement, though “personally in hearty sympathy.” They are fearful lest their individual opinions should be deemed official.

This attitude is noticeably frequent among leaders of women’s organizations and welfare groups. They say, “Until my organization speaks, I cannot do so.” But large organizations, as such, speak their views only at annual, or even biennial conventions. So they are often precluded from giving timely assistance to important moves for social welfare. Thus the leaders are prevented from letting their individual opinions be of service at critical moments.

Granted that it is a real problem for officials to determine what is absolute wisdom in working out the dual functions of personal and public life, is it not a mistake to assume that an officer of an organization is of necessity so submerged in the office, as to lose all personal identity and freedom of opinion? Officers are seldom chosen unless they are persons of significance _apart_ from the position. Office-holding should not be allowed to obliterate that significance.

In regard to removing the drastic laws which prohibit access to birth control knowledge, I believe there are very few leaders of fine mind and good heart like yourself, who can be satisfied to remain silent any longer, if they realize the good they may do by speaking out.

And further, I believe that an analysis of the probable other reasons that doubtless account in many instances, for the silence up to date, may make it easier to help in this important matter.

Are you willing to think it out with me?

Looked at quite simply, it seems to be just matter of generous spirit.

It is plain that not only leaders, but a large majority of members of social, civic and welfare organizations, are of the well-to-do educated class which has already obtained and utilized birth control knowledge, despite the laws. The birth rate in families of this class is clear proof that the majority believe in family limitation. Otherwise they would not so universally have achieved it. To assume that sophisticated people who have learned enough of this legally forbidden knowledge for the effective use in their own lives, are not willing to let the millions of unsophisticated poor have legal access to similar knowledge, is to assume a degree of conscious selfishness that is unwarranted. They would not shut their hearts against the multitudes of mothers, such as the wife of the rural delivery letter carrier, who writes as follows:

“I have searched far and wide for knowledge. I have been given advice how to produce abortion, but life was too dear to risk that. So I have stumbled along hoping some day to gain the desired knowledge. In my thirteen years of married life I have given birth to eight children, beside one miscarriage following an attack of flu-pneumonia. I have five girls and two boys living, the oldest girl is past twelve, just ready to pass into womanhood. It makes me shudder to think of the possibility of her going through what I have. I have tried to find out from doctors some preventive measure, but a sneer is my answer. I am now only thirty-six years old, far from being too old for pregnancy, but I feel I cannot possibly bring any more into the world to suffer I know not what. If I had not had one of the best husbands God ever made, I believe I would not have been able to bear up under it all. With only an R. F. D. carrier’s salary for living, it has been a struggle for us both. But God willing, I am going to persevere till I find out how to prevent pregnancy occurring so often, not only for myself, but for my five girls, and also for countless other girls to take our places in the future.”

The consciousness of belonging to the privileged class which has obtained at least some of this knowledge in spite of the laws, should be enough, I sincerely believe, to make the leaders who have till now held back their endorsement, feel that any further holding back is unworthy of their true responsibility as leaders. A leader is one who finding the way good and right opens that way to others.

But something seems to inhibit this natural and generous response to human need, something beside holding office. What is it?

Let me tell you the situation, as we who are shouldering this work for birth control legislation, have found it. I think that the elusive something may be discovered and the barrier eliminated.

In the first place officers are by no means consistent in refusing to express opinions because subjects are outside the direct scope of their organizations. So is it not a reasonable inference that, when this excuse is offered in regard to birth control legislation, it is unconsciously used to cover some other reason?

The leaders often tell us that they would have had this subject presented to their organizations, but they feel that “the time is not yet ripe,” that “the members are not ready,” etc. Yet they well know that the members believe in family limitation and spaced births, as they achieve both.

Is not this inconsistency and excuse what the psychologists call a “defense mechanism”? And is not that mechanism unconsciously built up to cover embarrassment? Sex taboo is still far reaching in spite of modern education. So it is not uncommon to find people who have long ago accepted and acted upon the principle of controlled parenthood in their own lives, but who shrink from the possibility of having that acceptance made publicly noticeable. They even dread a discussion of the dire need of contraceptive knowledge among the ignorant, lest it be too compelling.

In other words, sex consciousness overwhelms conscience, which otherwise would be sensitive to human need and responsive to public welfare.

If this seems to you a precipitate inference, just run over the following résumé of our experience in various organizations.

* * * * *

It has been repeatedly proved at conventions that the members were ready to adopt endorsing resolutions, if only the leaders would permit their being discussed and voted upon. The story of the ways in which organization opinion has been actually suppressed by leaders is a significant phase of social history in this country.

At one great convention, when the large and representative resolutions committee had decided to recommend a resolution, the officers, by dint of prolonged effort into the small hours of the night, coerced the committee into reversing its decision. At another, when it became evident that a resolution would be carried if discussed on the floor, the officers, by appealing to administration loyalty, succeeded in preventing a vote to permit discussion. At another, after being refused by a small resolutions committee and the board of directors, the resolution was brought up from the floor when a full third of the delegates were present, and was carried unanimously. At another, after the resolution had been carried by a sizable majority of the members, the leaders manoeuvered a vote to rescind. At another, over six hundred delegates voted to ask their directors to put this subject on the official program of the next year’s convention. It has not yet been done, though two years have elapsed.

Over and over at meetings of various sorts, the audience has been asked, “How many of those present want the laws suppressing birth control information retained.” And hardly a hand has been raised. “How many want them repealed?” And nearly every hand has come up.

Ironically enough, on several occasions, the very leaders who have prevented any convention endorsements of legislation to free birth control knowledge or even the recognition of the principle of controlled parenthood, have not hesitated to come to the Director of the Voluntary Parenthood League, with this sort of request. “Do you mind telling me what are the most up-to-date contraceptives, and what doctors give the best scientific instructions on methods?” They hasten to add that personally they are in full sympathy with our movement, and usually they want the information for a daughter or a friend, or some one near and dear, whom they wish to have the best knowledge.

The above is a sad story, and the only reason for telling it is to understand what it implies.

_In the light of modern psychology_, it is understandable why groups, i.e., audiences and delegates, are ready to vote for a resolution, while leaders are loath to initiate or permit action. Whenever any question induces the sort of embarrassment that emanates from sex consciousness, it is inevitably easier to act as one of a group than to act by one’s self. Yet leaders, just because they are such, have exceptional opportunity to let their opinions be of service to humanity. And is not the obligation of mature minds to see to it that, so far as possible, such inhibitions are not allowed to interfere with being just and generous to one’s fellows?

The Congressmen who are now being asked to pass the Cummins-Vaile Bill are tempted to move all too slowly, because they have precisely these same inhibitions that have afflicted the leaders of organizations. The one thing that will most easily inspire Congressmen to move quickly in this matter, is to be relieved in their own minds, by assurance from just such leaders as you, that they will be doing wisely and well to vote for this bill. By shedding your own inhibitions for the sake of others, you will distinctly help Congressmen to shed theirs.

The tests to which some of the leaders have been put, especially among the women’s organizations, have brought forth some ludicrous moments. For instance the National League of Women Voters has circulated “A Pledge For Conscientious Citizens,” written by its President, Mrs. Maud Wood Park, which included this item: “To obey the law even when I am not in sympathy with all its provisions.”

This pledge, if applied to the laws prohibiting access to contraceptive knowledge, looks comic indeed, for the National League of Women Voters is made up of women who very obviously have not the remotest intention of abiding by those laws. They belong for the most part to the same general class as that which formed the basis of the report issued by the Bureau of Social Hygiene, of which Dr. Katherine Bement Davis is the executive secretary; this report gave answers to a questionnaire sent to 1000 married women, mostly college graduates, in which 74% said they used contraceptive methods.

When a National Conference on Law Enforcement was called in Washington in 1924, in which representatives of all the leading women’s organizations took part, inquiry was made of the program committee as to whether there would be discussion of the enforcement of the law which is more broken than any other in the United States, not excepting the prohibition law, namely, the law forbidding access to contraceptive knowledge. The inquiry produced consternation. The enforcement of that law was not so much as mentioned on the program. The laxity of officials and the indifference and criminality of citizens regarding other laws came in for due attention, but not this one—horrors, no! It reminds one of the little girl who had been brought up in luxury, and who had never experienced any method of transportation except her little perambulator and the family limousine. She was making her first trip with her father in a street car, a very crowded one, and she piped up, “Father, there are too many people in this car.” “Yes, my dear, shall we get out?” “Oh, no, father, not _us_.” So the conscientious women wanted thorough-going discussion of law enforcement, but not that one. Perish the thought!