The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 4: 'Round the World for Birth Control, 1920-1966 9780252040382, 9780252098802

Table of contents :
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Editorial Method
Abbreviations
Chronology
Chapter 1: Abroad!
1. Feb. 1920 / “Light for Mexico and South America”
2. Aug. 18, 1920 / “Women in Germany”
3. Sept. 7, 1920 / “Women in Germany”
4. Oct. 1, 1920 / From Johannes Rutgers
5. Feb. 18, 1922 / To the Government of Japan
6. Feb. 19, 1922 / To Hugh de Selincourt
7. Mar. 8, 1922 / To Anne Kennedy
8. Mar. 10, 1922 / Journal Entry
9. Mar. 12, 1922 / From Roberto Haberman
10. Mar. 14, 1922 / Journal Entry
11. Mar. 14, 1922 / “Overpopulation as a Cause of War”
12. Mar. 17, 1922 / Journal Entry
13. Mar. 18, 1922 / Journal Entry
14. Mar. 19, 1922 / Journal Entry
15. Apr. 7, 1922 / Journal Entry
16. Apr. 11, 1922 / Journal Entry
17. Apr. 13, 1922 / Journal Entry
18. Apr. 16, 1922 / To Juliet Barrett Rublee
19. Apr. 25, 1922 / Journal Entry
20. Apr. 30, 1922 / Journal Entry
21. May 1, 1922 / Journal Entry
22. Journal Entry
Chapter 2: Putting Birth Control on the Map
23. Apr. 5, 1923 / From Shidzue Ishimoto
24. Jan. 10, 1925 / To Lord Bertrand Dawson
25. Mar. 31, 1925 / “The Sixth International
26. Mar. 31, 1925 / International Federation
27. Apr. or May, 1925 / From Agnes Smedley
28. July 8, 1925 / From Mohandas K. Gandhi
29. Aug. 20, 1925 / From H. G. Wells
30. Aug. ?, 1925 / To H. G. Wells
31. Sept. 1925 / “Mahatma Gandhi and Birth Control in India”
32. Sept. 30, 1925 / From Rabindranath Tagore
33. Nov. 11, 1925 / To Rabindranath Tagore
34. Nov. 23, 1925 / To Adolfo Bernabé
35. Mar. 30, 1926 / To Clarence Cook Little
36. Mar. 31, 1926 / From José A. Lanauze Rolón
37. July 4, 1926 / To Edith How-Martyn
38. Oct. 23, 1926 / To Edith How-Martyn
39. Feb. 4, 1927 / From John Maynard Keynes
40. Apr. 8, 1927 / To Juliet Barrett Rublee
41. May 22, 1927 / To Hugh de Selincourt
42. Aug. 27, 1927 / From Edith How-Martyn
43. Oct. 4, 1927 / To Edith How-Martyn
44. Oct. 13, 1927 / To Penelope B. Parker Huse
45. Nov. 8, 1927 / From Otto Lous Mohr
46. Dec. 11, 1927 / To Edith How-Martyn
47. Dec. 18, 1927 / To Edith How-Martyn
48. Jan. 9, 1928 / From Susanna Green
Photo Section
Chapter 3: Zurich
49. Mar. 30, 1928 / To Agnes Smedley
50. Jan. 3, 1929 / To Katharina Lipinski Stützin
51. Jan. 15, 1929 / To John Maynard Keynes
52. Jan–Feb. 1929 / “Motherhood Enslaved in Italy”
53. Feb. 15, 1929 / To Edith How-Martyn
54. Feb. 22, 1929 / From Agnes Smedley
55. Mar. 4, 1929 / To Katharina Lipinski Stützin
56. Apr. 4, 1929 / To Edith How-Martyn
57. Sept. 7, 1929 / To Clinton F. Chance
58. Nov. 21, 1929 / Excerpt from Agnes Smedley
59. May 9, 1930 / To Clinton F. Chance
60. July 1, 1930 / From Client
61. Sept. 1, 1930 / “President’s Opening Address
62. Nov. 17, 1930 / To Juan Monforte
63. Mar. 8, 1931 / From Shidzue Ishimoto
64. Apr. 7, 1931 / To Shidzue Ishimoto
65. Apr. 8, 1931 / To Agnes Smedley
66. May 4, 1931 / From Agnes Smedley
67. June 29, 1931 / To the Nihon Sanji Chôsetsu Renmei
Chapter 4: “The World Needs You”
68. Sept. 18, 1931 / To Edith How-Martyn
69. Oct. 23, 1931 / From Hildegart Rodríguez Carballeira
70. Nov. 20, 1931 / From Shidzue Ishimoto
71. Jan. 10, 1932 / To Edith How-Martyn
72. Feb. 3, 1932 / From Herman Rubinraut
73. Feb. 19, 1932 / To Hildegart Rodríguez Carballeira
74. Mar. 24, 1932 / To Herman Rubinraut
75. Apr. 1, 1932 / To Inés Lassise y Sierra de Marin
76. June 23, 1932 / From Edith How-Martyn
77. July 31, 1932 / To Edith How-Martyn
78. Sept. 15, 1932 / From Karla Popprová-Molínková
79. Oct. 4, 1932 / From Edith How-Martyn
80. Oct. 20, 1932 / To Edith How-Martyn
81. Dec. 3, 1932 / From Gerda Sebbelov Guy
82. Dec. 12, 1932 / To Karla Popprová-Molínková
83. Jan. 4, 1933 / To Adolf Meyer
84. Apr. 29, 1933 / To Franklin Delano Roosevelt
85. July 4, 1933 / To Havelock Ellis
86. Nov. 14, 1933 / To Herman Rubinraut
87. Feb. 14, 1934 / From Edith How-Martyn
88. Apr. 12, 1934 / From Shidzue Ishimoto
89. July 7, 1934 / To Gerda Sebbelov Guy
90. July 12, 1934 / To J. Noah Slee
91. July 17–19, 1934 / Excerpts from Report on Leningrad
92. July 20, 1934 / Excerpts from Journal Entry
93. July 24, 1934 / Excerpts from Journal Entry
94. July 29, 1934 / To Isaak Leont’evich Braude
95. Nov. 8, 1934 / From Herman Rubinraut
96. Feb. 2, 1935 / To Anna Ngan Chang Chou
97. Mar. 8, 1935 / To George Andreytchine
Chapter 5: “Mother India”
98. July 16, 1935 / To Margaret Cousins
99. Aug. 13, 1935 / To Marian Paschal
100. Nov. 1, 1935 / Journal Entry
101. Nov. 14, 1935 / To C. P. Blacker
102. Nov. 20, 1935 / Journal Entry
103. Nov. 27, 1935 / To Mohandas K. Gandhi
104. Nov. 27–29, 1935 / Excerpts from Journal Entry
105. Nov. 30, 1935 / To Gerda Sebbelov Guy
106. Dec. 2, 1935 / Journal Entry
107. Dec. 4, 1935 / To Edith How-Martyn
108. Dec. 6, 1935 / From Client
109. Dec. 9, 1935 / To J. Noah Slee
110. Dec. 24, 1935 / From Client
111. Dec. 30, 1935 / To Client
112. Jan. 2, 1936 / News from Margaret Sanger
113. Jan. 10, 1936 / Journal Entry
114. Jan. 19, 1936 / “Does Mr. Gandhi Know Women?”
115. Jan. 30, 1936 / To Mohandas K. Gandhi
116. Jan. 30, 1936 / To John Henry Guy
117. Feb. 2, 1936 / To Havelock Ellis
118. Feb. 17, 1936 / Journal Entry
119. Mar. 4, 1936 / To Edith How-Martyn
120. Aug. 14, 1936 / To José Siurob Ramírez
121. Oct. 20, 1936 / To Mohandas K. Gandhi
122. Oct. 21, 1936 / To S. W. Lee
123. Nov. 6, 1936 / To the BCIIC Council
124. Dec. 1936 / “The Soviet Union’s Abortion Law”
Chapter 6: A Troubled World
125. Jan. 25, 1937 / To Eleanor A. Hawarden
126. Mar. 26, 1937 / To Mei-ling Soong
127. May 15–17, 1937 / Journal Entry
128. May 18, 1937 / To Katherine Blondel
129. May 26, 1937 / Journal Entry
130. June 1937 / “What Margaret Sanger Thinks of Mussolini”
131. July 30, 1937 / To Florence Rose
132. Aug. 16–24, 1937 / Journal Entry
133. Aug. 30, 1937 / Speech at Opening Reception at Tokyo Clinic
134. Sept. 2–5, 1937 / Excerpt from Journal Entry
135. Oct. 29, 1937 / To Anna Ngan Chang Chou
136. Oct. 29, 1937 / To Edith How-Martyn
137. Jan. 11, 1938 / From Shidzue Ishimoto
138. Mar. 18, 1938 / To Frank Wang Co-Tui
139. June 3, 1938 / To Margaret A. Pyke
140. Oct. 9, 1938 / From Stephen Haweis
141. Mar. 30, 1940 / From Charles E. Pengelley
142. Sept. 9, 1940 / To Clarence James Gamble
143. Feb. 25, 1941 / To Mary Reinhardt Lasker
Chapter 7: Reviving the International Movement
144. Oct. 25, 1945 / To Douglas A. MacArthur
145. Dec. 1, 1945 / To Shidzue Ishimoto Katō
146. Mar. 30, 1946 / To Anne-Marie Durand-Wever
147. Aug. 6, 1946 / To Ethel B. Weed
148. Aug. 25, 1946 / To Florence Rose
149. Dec. 23, 1946 / From Shidzue Ishimoto Katō
150. Jan. 16, 1947 / To Shidzue Ishimoto Katō
151. Mar. 29, 1947 / To Ernst Gräfenberg
152. July 26, 1947 / To Florence Rose
153. Feb. 1, 1948 / To Mary Reinhardt Lasker
154. Aug. 28, 1948 / To Mary Worley Compton
155. Feb. 8, 1949 / To Helen Donington Cohen
156. July 18, 1949 / To Shidzue Ishimoto Katō
157. Sept. 10, 1949 / To George H. Hendricks
158. Oct. 11, 1949 / To Mary Worley Compton
159. Oct. 15, 1949 / To Shidzue Ishimoto Katō
160. Feb. 13, 1950 / Statement on General Douglas MacArthur
161. Feb. 21, 1950 / To Florence Mahoney
Chapter 8: The International Committee on Planned Parenthood
162. Jan. 23, 1951 / To Clair E. Folsome
163. July 10, 1951 / From Client
164. Aug. 30, 1951 / To Abraham Stone
165. Sept. 5, 1951 / To Dorothy Hamilton Brush
166. Oct. 8, 1951 / To Katharine Dexter McCormick
167. Oct. 25, 1951 / To C. P. Blacker
168. Dec. 3, 1951 / To Jawaharlal Nehru
169. Jan. 24, 1952 / To Dorothy Hamilton Brush
170. Mar. 7, 1952 / To Abraham Stone
171. May 29, 1952 / To Dorothy Hamilton Brush
172. June 28, 1952 / From Albert Einstein
173. July 8, 1952 / To Eleanor Roosevelt
174. July 11, 1952 / To Albert Einstein
175. Sept. 4, 1952 / To C. P. Blacker
176. Sept. 12, 1952 / To Vera Houghton
177. Nov. 8, 1952 / Excerpt from “Greetings from Japan”
Chapter 9. The Culmination of a Life's Work
178. Nov. 10–12, 1952 / Excerpt from “Greetings from India”
179. Nov. 20, 1952 / Excerpts from “Greetings from India”
180. Dec. 8, 1952 / From Helen Keller
181. Jan. 8, 1953 / To Gobindram J. Watumull
182. Jan. 10?, 1953 / To Dorothy Hamilton Brush
183. May 29, 1953 / To Kageyas W. Amano
184. Aug. 15, 1953 / Excerpts from Journal Entry
185. Aug. 18, 1953 / To Lawrence Lader
186. Aug. 21, 1953 / To Dorothy Hamilton Brush
187. Aug. 23?, 1953 / Excerpts from Journal Entry
188. Nov. 10, 1953 / To William Vogt
189. Nov. 16, 1953 / To Kan Majima
190. Jan. 18, 1954 / To C. P. Blacker
191. Feb. 9, 1954 / To Gladys May Farquharson
192. Mar. 5, 1954 / To Lotte A. Fink
193. Apr. 9, 1954 / “Japan”
194. Apr. 16, 1954 / To Katharine Dexter McCormick
195. Apr. 18, 1954 / To Abraham Stone
196. June 25, 1954 / To Dhanvanthi Rama Rau
197. Jan. 17, 1955 / To Mary Reinhardt Lasker
198. Feb. 8, 1955 / To Vera Houghton
199. Oct. 18, 1955 / To Kuo Mo-Jo
200. Oct. 31, 1955 / To Dorothy Hamilton Brush
Chapter 10: The Trials of Being President
201. July 10, 1956 / To Hsue-Shen Tsien
202. Nov. 12, 1956 / To Dorothy Hamilton Brush
203. Apr. 10, 1957 / From C. P. Blacker
204. July 18, 1957 / To C. P. Blacker
205. Nov. 15, 1957 / To Ellen Jensen Watumull
206. Aug. 14, 1958 / To Rufus S. Day Jr.
207. Jan. 13, 1959 / To C. P. Blacker
208. Mar. 21, 1959 / To Amy du Pont
209. To Mary Reinhardt Lasker
210. Feb. 19, 1960 / To Martha Baird Rockefeller
211. Dec. 1966 / C. P. Blacker Tribute to Margaret Sanger
212. Nov. ?, 1955 / Burial Instructions
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

VOLUME 4 :

’ ROUND

THE WORLD FOR BIRTH CONTROL, 1920–1966

The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger

Edited by Esther Katz Peter C. Engelman and Cathy Moran Hajo, Associate Editors

The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger

z volume 4 ’round the world for birth control 1920–1966

z the selected papers of margaret sanger Volume 4: ’Round the World for Birth Control, 1920–1966 Esther Katz, Editor Associate Editors Peter C. Engelman Cathy Moran Hajo

university of illinois press urbana, chicago, and springfield

© 2016 by Esther Katz All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America c 5 4 3 2 1 ∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper. Publication of this volume was assisted in part by grants from The National Endowment for the Humanities, The National Historical Publications and Records Commission, The Anderson-Rogers Foundation, The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, The Brush Foundation, The Clayton Foundation, The Colcom Foundation, The Dickler Family Fund, The Lucius and Eva Eastman Fund, Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund, The Henry Luce Foundation, The Andrew Mellon Foundation, The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and The Samuel Rubin Foundation. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sanger, Margaret, 1879–1966. The selected papers of Margaret Sanger / edited by Esther Katz ; assistant editors, Cathy Moran Hajo and Peter C. Engelman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. v. 4: ’Round the world for birth control, 1920–1966. isbn 978–0–252–04038–2 (cloth : acid free paper) 1. Sanger, Margaret, 1879–1966. 2. Sanger, Margaret, 1879–1966—Correspondence. 3. Birth control—United States—History—20th century. 4. Women’s rights—United States—History—20th century. I. Katz, Esther. II. Hajo, Cathy Moran. III. Engelman, Peter. IV. Title. hq764.s3a25   2003 363.9'6'09730904—dc21  2001005959

To Alexander Sanger and Mary Beth Norton with gratitude for their unwavering support —Esther Katz

z Contents Acknowledgments  xv Introduction  xix Editorial Method  xxvii Abbreviations  xxxiii Chronology  xli Chapter 1: Abroad!   1 1. Feb. 1920 / “Light for Mexico and South America” 2. Aug. 18, 1920 / “Women in Germany” 7 3. Sept. 7, 1920 / “Women in Germany” 13 4. Oct. 1, 1920 / From Johannes Rutgers 18 5. Feb. 18, 1922 / To the Government of Japan 20 6. Feb. 19, 1922 / To Hugh de Selincourt 20 7. Mar. 8, 1922 / To Anne Kennedy 23 8. Mar. 10, 1922 / Journal Entry 26 9. Mar. 12, 1922 / From Roberto Haberman 30 10. Mar. 14, 1922 / Journal Entry 32 11. Mar. 14, 1922 / “Overpopulation as a Cause of War” 12. Mar. 17, 1922 / Journal Entry 41 13. Mar. 18, 1922 / Journal Entry 44

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34

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vii

viii  •  contents



14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

Mar. 19, 1922 / Journal Entry   47 Apr. 7, 1922 / Journal Entry   49 Apr. 11, 1922 / Journal Entry   51 Apr. 13, 1922 / Journal Entry   51 Apr. 16, 1922 / To Juliet Barrett Rublee   53 Apr. 25, 1922 / Journal Entry   56 Apr. 30, 1922 / Journal Entry  56 May 1, 1922 / Journal Entry   60 June 10, 1922 / Journal Entry   64

Chapter 2: Putting Birth Control on the Map   65 23. Apr. 5, 1923 / From Shidzue Ishimoto  69 24. Jan. 10, 1925 / To Lord Bertrand Dawson  71 25. Mar. 31, 1925 / “The Sixth International Birth Control Conference”   74 26. Mar. 31, 1925 / International Federation of Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Leagues Minutes   77 27. Apr. or May, 1925 / From Agnes Smedley   81 28. July 8, 1925 / From Mohandas K. Gandhi   83 29. Aug. 20, 1925 / From H. G. Wells   84 30. Aug. ?, 1925 / To H. G. Wells   85 31. Sept. 1925 / “Mahatma Gandhi and Birth Control in India”   87 32. Sept. 30, 1925 / From Rabindranath Tagore   90 33. Nov. 11, 1925 / To Rabindranath Tagore   91 34. Nov. 23, 1925 / To Adolfo Bernabé   92 35. Mar. 30, 1926 / To Clarence Cook Little   94 36. Mar. 31, 1926 / From José A. Lanauze Rolón   96 37. July 4, 1926 / To Edith How-Martyn   98 38. Oct. 23, 1926 / To Edith How-Martyn   103 39. Feb. 4, 1927 / From John Maynard Keynes   106 40. Apr. 8, 1927 / To Juliet Barrett Rublee   107 41. May 22, 1927 / To Hugh de Selincourt   111 42. Aug. 27, 1927 / From Edith How-Martyn   114 43. Oct. 4, 1927 / To Edith How-Martyn   115 44. Oct. 13, 1927 / To Penelope B. Parker Huse   119

contents  •  ix



45. 46. 47. 48.

Nov. 8, 1927 / From Otto Lous Mohr   124 Dec. 11, 1927 / To Edith How-Martyn    126 Dec. 18, 1927 / To Edith How-Martyn    130 Jan. 9, 1928 / From Susanna Green    133

Chapter 3: Zurich    137 49. Mar. 30, 1928 / To Agnes Smedley    139 50. Jan. 3, 1929 / To Katharina Lipinski Stützin    142 51. Jan. 15, 1929 / To John Maynard Keynes    144 52. Jan–Feb. 1929 / “Motherhood Enslaved in Italy”    146 53. Feb. 15, 1929 / To Edith How-Martyn    149 54. Feb. 22, 1929 / From Agnes Smedley    152 55. Mar. 4, 1929 / To Katharina Lipinski Stützin    156 56. Apr. 4, 1929 / To Edith How-Martyn    158 57. Sept. 7, 1929 / To Clinton F. Chance    161 58. Nov. 21, 1929 / Excerpt from Agnes Smedley    165 59. May 9, 1930 / To Clinton F. Chance    172 60. July 1, 1930 / From Client    179 61. Sept. 1, 1930 / “President’s Opening Address Seventh International Birth Control Conference”    180 62. Nov. 17, 1930 / To Juan Monforte    183 63. Mar. 8, 1931 / From Shidzue Ishimoto    184 64. Apr. 7, 1931 / To Shidzue Ishimoto    187 65. Apr. 8, 1931 / To Agnes Smedley    188 66. May 4, 1931 / From Agnes Smedley    191 67. June 29, 1931 / To the Nihon Sanji Chôsetsu Renmei    194 Chapter 4: “The World Needs You!”    196 68. Sept. 18, 1931 / To Edith How-Martyn    198 69. Oct. 23, 1931 / From Hildegart Rodríguez Carballeira    199 70. Nov. 20, 1931 / From Shidzue Ishimoto    204 71. Jan. 10, 1932 / To Edith How-Martyn    206 72. Feb. 3, 1932 / From Herman Rubinraut    209 73. Feb. 19, 1932 / To Hildegart Rodríguez Carballeira    213 74. Mar. 24, 1932 / To Herman Rubinraut    214

x  •  contents



75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89.



90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97.

Apr. 1, 1932 / To Inés Lassise y Sierra de Marin   215 June 23, 1932 / From Edith How-Martyn   217 July 31, 1932 / To Edith How-Martyn   221 Sept. 15, 1932 / From Karla Popprová-Molínková   223 Oct. 4, 1932 / From Edith How-Martyn   227 Oct. 20, 1932 / To Edith How-Martyn   230 Dec. 3, 1932 / From Gerda Sebbelov Guy   231 Dec. 12, 1932 / To Karla Popprová-Molínková   233 Jan. 4, 1933 / To Adolf Meyer   234 Apr. 29, 1933 / To Franklin Delano Roosevelt   236 July 4, 1933 / To Havelock Ellis   238 Nov. 14, 1933 / To Herman Rubinraut   240 Feb. 14, 1934 / From Edith How-Martyn   242 Apr. 12, 1934 / From Shidzue Ishimoto   246 July 7, 1934 / To Gerda Sebbelov Guy and Edith How-Martyn   248 July 12, 1934 / To J. Noah Slee   251 July 17–19, 1934 / Excerpts from Report on Leningrad   253 July 20, 1934 / Excerpts from Journal Entry   257 July 24, 1934 / Excerpts from Journal Entry   259 July 29, 1934 / To Isaak Leont’evich Braude   261 Nov. 8, 1934 / From Herman Rubinraut   264 Feb. 2, 1935 / To Anna Ngan Chang Chou   267 Mar. 8, 1935 / To George Andreytchine   268

Chapter 5: “Mother India”   274 98. July 16, 1935 / To Margaret Cousins   277 99. Aug. 13, 1935 / To Marian Paschal   279 100. Nov. 1, 1935 / Journal Entry   282 101. Nov. 14, 1935 / To C. P. Blacker   284 102. Nov. 20, 1935 / Journal Entry   287 103. Nov. 27, 1935 / To Mohandas K. Gandhi   289 104. Nov. 27–29, 1935 / Excerpts from Journal Entry   290 105. Nov. 30, 1935 / To Gerda Sebbelov Guy   293 106. Dec. 2, 1935 / Journal Entry   297

contents  •  xi



107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124.

Dec. 4, 1935 / To Edith How-Martyn   305 Dec. 6, 1935 / From Client   308 Dec. 9, 1935 / To J. Noah Slee   309 Dec. 24, 1935 / From Client   312 Dec. 30, 1935 / To Client   314 Jan. 2, 1936 / News from Margaret Sanger   315 Jan. 10, 1936 / Journal Entry   322 Jan. 19, 1936 / “Does Mr. Gandhi Know Women?”   325 Jan. 30, 1936 / To Mohandas K. Gandhi   330 Jan. 30, 1936 / To John Henry Guy   331 Feb. 2, 1936 / To Havelock Ellis   334 Feb. 17, 1936 / Journal Entry   336 Mar. 4, 1936 / To Edith How-Martyn   337 Aug. 14, 1936 / To José Siurob Ramírez   341 Oct. 20, 1936 / To Mohandas K. Gandhi   343 Oct. 21, 1936 / To S. W. Lee   345 Nov. 6, 1936 / To the BCIIC Council   346 Dec. 1936 / “The Soviet Union’s Abortion Law”   348

Chapter 6: A Troubled World   352 125. Jan. 25, 1937 / To Eleanor A. Hawarden   354 126. Mar. 26, 1937 / To Mei-ling Soong (Madame Chiang Kai-shek)   358 127. May 15–17, 1937 / Journal Entry   360 128. May 18, 1937 / To Katherine Blondel   362 129. May 26, 1937 / Journal Entry   364 130. June 1937 / “What Margaret Sanger Thinks of Mussolini”   365 131. July 30, 1937 / To Florence Rose   371 132. Aug. 16–24, 1937 / Journal Entry   375 133. Aug. 30, 1937 / Speech at Opening Reception at Tokyo Clinic   377 134. Sept. 2–5, 1937 / Excerpt from Journal Entry   380 135. Oct. 29, 1937 / To Anna Ngan Chang Chou   384 136. Oct. 29, 1937 / To Edith How-Martyn   386 137. Jan. 11, 1938 / From Shidzue Ishimoto   391 138. Mar. 18, 1938 / To Frank Wang Co-Tui   396

xii  •  contents



139. 140. 141. 142. 143.

June 3, 1938 / To Margaret A. Pyke   398 Oct. 9, 1938 / From Stephen Haweis   399 Mar. 30, 1940 / From Charles E. Pengelley   402 Sept. 9, 1940 / To Clarence James Gamble   405 Feb. 25, 1941 / To Mary Reinhardt Lasker   407

Chapter 7: Reviving the International Movement   410 144. Oct. 25, 1945 / To Douglas A. MacArthur   413 145. Dec. 1, 1945 / To Shidzue Ishimoto Katō   415 146. Mar. 30, 1946 / To Anne-Marie Durand-Wever   417 147. Aug. 6, 1946 / To Ethel B. Weed   419 148. Aug. 25, 1946 / To Florence Rose   421 149. Dec. 23, 1946 / From Shidzue Ishimoto Katō   425 150. Jan. 16, 1947 / To Shidzue Ishimoto Katō   428 151. Mar. 29, 1947 / To Ernst Gräfenberg   429 152. July 26, 1947 / To Florence Rose   431 153. Feb. 1, 1948 / To Mary Reinhardt Lasker   434 154. Aug. 28, 1948 / To Mary Worley Compton   437 155. Feb. 8, 1949 / To Helen Donington Cohen   439 156. July 18, 1949 / To Shidzue Ishimoto Katō   443 157. Sept. 10, 1949 / To George H. Hendricks   445 158. Oct. 11, 1949 / To Mary Worley Compton   447 159. Oct. 15, 1949 / To Shidzue Ishimoto Katō   449 160. Feb. 13, 1950 / Statement on General Douglas MacArthur   451 161. Feb. 21, 1950 / To Florence Mahoney   452 Chapter 8: The International Committee on Planned Parenthood   455 162. Jan. 23, 1951 / To Clair E. Folsome   457 163. July 10, 1951 / From Client   460 164. Aug. 30, 1951 / To Abraham Stone   461 165. Sept. 5, 1951 / To Dorothy Hamilton Brush   464 166. Oct. 8, 1951 / To Katharine Dexter McCormick   467 167. Oct. 25, 1951 / To C. P. Blacker   470 168. Dec. 3, 1951 / To Jawaharlal Nehru   473

contents  •  xiii



169. 170. 171. 172. 173. 174. 175. 176. 177.

Jan. 24, 1952 / To Dorothy Hamilton Brush   475 Mar. 7, 1952 / To Abraham Stone   478 May 29, 1952 / To Dorothy Hamilton Brush   480 June 28, 1952 / From Albert Einstein   484 July 8, 1952 / To Eleanor Roosevelt   486 July 11, 1952 / To Albert Einstein   488 Sept. 4, 1952 / To C. P. Blacker   489 Sept. 12, 1952 / To Vera Houghton   493 Nov. 8, 1952 / Excerpt from “Greetings from Japan”   496

Chapter 9: The Culmination of a Life’s Work   499 178. Nov. 10–12, 1952 / Excerpt from “Greetings from India”   502 179. Nov. 20, 1952 / Excerpts from “Greetings from India”   505 180. Dec. 8, 1952 / From Helen Keller   511 181. Jan. 8, 1953 / To Gobindram J. Watumull   512 182. Jan. 10?, 1953 / To Dorothy Hamilton Brush   514 183. May 29, 1953 / To Kageyas W. Amano   518 184. Aug. 15, 1953 / Excerpts from Journal Entry   519 185. Aug. 18, 1953 / To Lawrence Lader   522 186. Aug. 21, 1953 / To Dorothy Hamilton Brush   524 187. Aug. 23?, 1953 / Excerpts from Journal Entry   525 188. Nov. 10, 1953 / To William Vogt   526 189. Nov. 16, 1953 / To Kan Majima   529 190. Jan. 18, 1954 / To C. P. Blacker   531 191. Feb. 9, 1954 / To Gladys May Farquharson   533 192. Mar. 5, 1954 / To Lotte A. Fink   537 193. Apr. 9, 1954 / “Japan”   538 194. Apr. 16, 1954 / To Katharine Dexter McCormick   541 195. Apr. 18, 1954 / To Abraham Stone   544 196. June 25, 1954 / To Dhanvanthi Rama Rau   546 197. Jan. 17, 1955 / To Mary Reinhardt Lasker   552 198. Feb. 8, 1955 / To Vera Houghton   554 199. Oct. 18, 1955 / To Kuo Mo-Jo   557 200. Oct. 31, 1955 / To Dorothy Hamilton Brush   560

xiv  •  contents

Chapter 10: The Trials of Being President   564 201. July 10, 1956 / To Hsue-Shen Tsien   568 202. Nov. 12, 1956 / To Dorothy Hamilton Brush   571 203. Apr. 10, 1957 / From C. P. Blacker   577 204. July 18, 1957 / To C. P. Blacker   582 205. Nov. 15, 1957 / To Ellen Jensen Watumull   587 206. Aug. 14, 1958 / To Rufus S. Day Jr.   590 207. Jan. 13, 1959 / To C. P. Blacker   596 208. Mar. 21, 1959 / To Amy du Pont   599 209. July 14, 1959 / To Mary Reinhardt Lasker   602 210. Feb. 19, 1960 / To Martha Baird Rockefeller   604 211. Dec. 1966 / C. P. Blacker Tribute to Margaret Sanger   212. Nov. ?, 1955 / Burial Instructions   611 Bibliography  613 Index  625

Illustrations follow page 136

607

z Acknowledgments We are grateful to the many people who made the preparation of this fourth and final volume of The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger possible. At New York University’s (NYU) Department of History, the principal sponsor of the project, our deepest appreciation goes to department chairs Robin E. Kelley, Thomas Bender, Michael Gomez, Joanna Waley-Cohen, David Ludden, and Barbara Weinstein as well as administrator Karin Burrell. At the library, our thanks go to Dean Carol Mandel and the director of collections and research services, Michael Stoller, who took on sponsorship of the project in 2014. We are also grateful to Vice Provost Ulrich Baer, Deputy Provost Katherine E. Fleming, and Joseph Juliano for facilitating the move. Special thanks to Richard Louth and Betty Farbman in the Office of Sponsored Programs who helped us acquire and administer the grants that funded the project and to Professor Peter J. Wosh, our former codirector and the director of the History Department’s Program in Archives and Public History. Bobst Library’s talented staff has been essential to our work; we would like to offer particular thanks to the interlibrary loan staff and to librarian for U.S. and world history Dr. Andrew Lee. Our appreciation also goes to NYU’s Information Technology Service’s Gary Shawver and Meredith Randall who have provided invaluable support and advice on computer issues and our website. We are especially grateful to Professor Emeritus Carl E. Prince, former codirector of the project, who could always be counted on for help. Completion of this volume would not have been possible without the generous cooperation of the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College. Many thanks to Sherrill Redmon, the former director of the Sophia Smith Collection, and Elizabeth Myers, the current director of Special Collections; to Amy Hague, •  xv

xvi  •  Acknowledgments

curator of manuscripts; Maida Goodwin, archivist; and the entire staff of the Sophia Smith Collection and College Archives. Thanks also to Smith’s Neilson Library reference staff for pointing us in the right direction so many times. We also owe a debt to Tim Connelly of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission for conducting research for us in the Library of Congress and National Archives. We would also like to thank all the repositories who granted us permission to publish their materials, particularly the Sophia Smith Collection, the Library of Congress, the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, the Houghton Library at Harvard University, the Dartmouth College Library, the International Planned Parenthood Federation, and the History of Medicine Collection at the Wellcome Library. We are deeply indebted to the many archivists and librarians who aided us in our research, in particular Sylwia Kúzma-Markowska of the American Studies Center, University of Warsaw; Marilyn McNitt, reference assistant at the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan; Dawn Lawson, East Asia studies librarian at Bobst Library, New York University; Yosenex Orengo, library assistant at the Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, Hunter College, City University of New York; Gracie Slew Kheng, reference librarian at the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library, Singapore; Judith Ellen Johnson, genealogist for the Connecticut Historical Society; Petrina Jackson at Cornell University Archives; Jessica Murphy at the Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Bart Schmidt, digital projects librarian at Cowles Library, Drake University; S. K. Bhatnagar, head of the library at the National Gandhi Museum in India; Andrew Harrison, material culture archivist at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions; Peter Jones of King’s College Library in England; Jennifer Brathovde, Patrick Kerwin, and Leslie Wyman at the Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division; Angela Schade, reference assistant at McGill University Archives; Olga Erhartová of the Moravian Library (Czech Republic); Martin Gostanian, library supervisor of the Museum of Television and Radio in California; Richard Peuser of the National Archives; Deepa Bhatnagar, research officer at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (India); Arlene Shaner, acting curator and reference librarian at the New York Academy of Medicine; Nicola Hilton at the Oxford University Archives; the staff at the Royal Perth Hospital Public Relations Office; Kaoru Oda, International Department of St. Luke’s International Hospital (Japan); Alison M. Foley, associate archivist of the Archives at St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Maryland; Evan Dawley, historian at the U.S. Department of State; Bertha F. Wilson, reference librarian at the World Bank Archives in Washington, D.C.; Joan Duffy and Martha L. Smalley at the Yale Divinity School Archives; and Diane E. Kaplan at the Yale University Library, Manuscripts and Archives. We are especially grateful for the support and encouragement of Margaret Sanger’s family, who shared their personal knowledge and reflections.

Acknowledgments  •  xvii

Many students have worked side by side with us at our NYU offices. Thanks to our History Department graduate assistants: Zawadi Barskile, Mia Feng, Youn Jong Lee, Claire Payton, Einav Rabinovitch-Fox, Susan Valentine, and Meng Wei. We have been fortunate to have had wonderful NYU student assistants to help with research and organization, including Katie Beers, Stephanie Bennett, Molly Cartwright, Josh Chung, Shanna Guthrie, Sam Magida, Katy Mohrman, Allison Poindexter, Sarah M. Stetson, Rachel Teicher, Stavritsa Terzis, and Angela Wu. The project also would like to thank our interns who dedicated their time to us: Ellen Adams, Leah Aronowsky, Nicolette Calhoun, Ashley Carvagno, Rhonda Chadwick, Alison Channon, Mei‑Ying Chiang (two years), Nafisa Chowdhury, Emelie Coleman, Jennifer Confortini, Victoria Christine Crowell, Katelyn Davis, Susana C. Delgadillo, Carolyn Eberts, Chloe Edwards, Shannon Gaffney, Yvonne Garrett, Molly Goldfarb, Alison C. Goldstein, Jill Grimaldi, Kaitlin Hackbarth, Lauren Halky, Nora Jager, Caroline Kahlenberg, Mackenzie Sheridan Kane, Jessice Kluge, Theresia Kowara, Sydney B. Lakin, Laura Larsell, Latoya Lee, Melinda Lewis, Timothy Lindner, Andrew Lissenden, Sam Magida, Brett Mayfield, Devin McGinley, Madeline Moran, Patricia Nelson, Samantha Pearlman, Sarah Pinnington, Rachel Pitkin (two years), Robin Pokorski, Darcy Rendon, Elizabeth Rieur, Nana Robinette, Jennifer Sands, Sarah Schoengold, Victoria Sciancalepore, Erin Shaw, Lesley Sideck, Tracey Spinato, Elizabeth Stack, Ami E. Stearns, Allie Strickler, Madeleine Strohl, Rachel Tennant, and Erick Zimmerman. We also want to thank the following scholars and others who helped with our research: Polly Bettencourt, Allida Black and the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, Franck DuBois, Karolina Kostalova, Andy Lankester, Ruth Latukefu, Marie-Agnès Lenoir, Sandhya Mehta, Janet Miller, Louise Pine Moore, SungDeuk Oak, Zeeshan Ott, Dr. Evert Peeters, Planned Parenthood of New York City, Shekhar Purandare, Ernesto Cisneros Rivera, Peter Ruhe, Barry Stevens, and Godofredo Stützin. Our special thanks go to Michael Carl Brose, Nicholas Clifford, Angus Crichton, Ryan Dunch, Carolyn Eberts, David Hollinger, Helen Hopper (University of Pittsburgh), Thomas G. Oey, Alison Sinclair (Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Clare College, University of Cambridge), Elise Tipton (University of Sydney), Steve Upton, and Cornelie Usborne (Roehampton University). Securing adequate financial support is one of the most critical tasks of any editorial project. This endeavor would not have been possible without the endorsement and support of two federal agencies: the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and the National Endowment for the Humanities. We are grateful for the assistance and encouragement of their respective staffs, particularly Tim Connelly and Lucy Barber at the NHPRC. In addition, the following private foundations provided essential assistance: the Mary Duke

xviii  •  Acknowledgments

Biddle Foundation, the Clayton Foundation, the Colcom Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Lucius and Eva Eastman Foundation, the Furthermore Program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the Samuel Rubin Foundation, and a number of generous individual donors, in particular Alexander Sanger, Sarah G. Epstein, Patricia G. Holland, Sidney and Ruth Lapidus, Frances Pepper, David and Anna Clark, and Lisa Gitelman. We also depended on the contributions of Lucy Green Adams, Libby Bassett, Joan Bechhofer, Evelyn Berezin, Rose S. Bethe, Bundy H. Boit, Alene Bricken, Diana Brown, Sherman B. Carll, Ellen Chesler, David Chesnutt, Patricia Parsons Christy, Jill Ker Conway, Bettie Minette Cooper, Edith Couturier, Kathleen W. Dorman, Martin Duberman, David Epstein, Lionel C. Epstein, Katherine L. French, Amy S. Gilfenbaum, Amy Goldman, Ann D. Gordon, Dorothy Gordon, Nancy Greenberg, Esley Hamilton, Katharine Houghton, Thomas E. Jeffrey, Julia Gamble Kahrl, Carol Herselle and Robert D. Krinsky, Adriene Lehrer, Jill Livingston, Tamar March, Constance C. and H. Roemer McPhee, Karen Offen, Elaine W. Pascu, Carl E. Prince, Sherrill Redmon, Leslie Rowland, San Louis Obispo County Community Foundation, Felice K. Shea, Barbara Sicherman, Harriet F. Simon, David P. Solomon, Catharine R. Stimpson, Robert W. Venables, Ellen M. Violett, Ellen Walker, Susan Ware, Harriet P. Williams, Diane Wohl, and the hundreds of other individuals whose personal contributions ensured the continuation of our work and impressed both federal and private funders with the extent of their commitment to seeing these papers published. Our heartfelt thanks to all those who have sustained us with their donations, large and small, year after year. We have been fortunate in being able to call upon a distinguished advisory board: Ellen Chesler, Gloria Feldt, Linda Gordon, Margaret Sanger Lampe, Andrew Lee, Sherill Redmon, James Reed, Cecile Richards, Allan Rosenfield, Alexander C. Sanger, Jill Sheffield, and Faye Wattleton. Thanks especially to Alexander C. Sanger and Ellen Chesler for their advice and counsel on raising funds for the project. We are also grateful to our editor at the University of Illinois, Laurie C. Matheson; to Lisa Gitelman for all her generous support and willingness to help us survive the sometimes rough university seas; and to Elaine F. Crane, who started it all. And finally thanks to Nabil and Meg Hajo, Peggy Moran, Kendall Clark, Waverley and Grace Engelman, Sherwin Cooper, Tamar March, and especially Terry Collins, family members who have continued to share their lives with Margaret Sanger.

z Introduction I am the protagonist of the mothers of all countries, whose lives, health and happiness depends on Birth Control. —Margaret Sanger to Kageyas Amano, May 29, 1953 (herein)

“Inevitably, slowly but certainly, step by step, the problem of Birth Control is invading the human mind of this twentieth century,” Margaret Sanger wrote in 1925, on the eve of the Sixth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference, the first international gathering held in the United States.1 Little more than a decade since her free-speech activism sparked the American birth control movement and launched her high-profile career, Margaret Sanger was already looking past the borders of the United States. In that time, birth control, Sanger’s term to denote the conscious control of fertility, had taken on a broader meaning: a key to women’s empowerment, a remedy for disease, an antidote to war, an end to poverty, and a tool for population control, race regeneration, and eugenic improvement. Opponents also extended its definition, equating birth control with abortion, race suicide, promiscuity, and moral corruption. Invested with untold potential to improve the human condition, and blamed for weakening nations and perverting natural law, by 1925 birth control had fully arrived on the international scene. As H. G. Wells put it that year with unaccustomed brevity, “There is no other subject of such importance as Birth Control.”2 With the war over and the League of Nations promising a new internationalism, Sanger was confident that the idea of birth control could not be contained. Nor could she. Efforts to censor Sanger were singularly unsuccessful. The U.S. government as well as state and local governments tried and failed to silence her during •  xix

xx  •  introduction

World War I and well into the 1920s. The Catholic Church lost one public relations battle after another to Sanger in an effort to limit her public speech. Japan proved incapable of keeping her out in 1922. And in England her name recognition was only boosted when one of her publications, Family Limitation, came under the censor’s ban in 1923; meanwhile, her writings circulated throughout the world. Experts on family limitation who preceded Sanger, including Malthusians, eugenicists, and demographers—even those who had significant disagreements with her—found that they could not ignore her. With the world opening up to her, Sanger was poised to build a movement without borders, to become the international exporter of the birth control idea. Sanger’s evolution from a nurse and street activist to a renowned advocate operating on a world stage happened remarkably fast. If this young and unsophisticated radical organizer, wife, and mother of three did not initially set out to build international cooperation on birth control, her thirst for knowledge and willingness to take risks led her to establish relationships with neo-Malthusian leaders as well as an international circle of socialists, sexologists, and writers. In her 1913 travels to Glasgow and Paris, Sanger not only conducted research on contraceptive methods, but also extended her Greenwich Village–based radical ties to European socialists and anarchists. During that first visit abroad, Sanger met with Hindu nationalist Shyamaji Krisnavarma, French socialist leader Jean Jaurès, and the sage of syndicalism, Victor Dave, the Flemish-born anarchist who seemed to know everyone who advocated for birth control. Her unplanned return to Europe during her 1914–15 exile brought her into contact with most of the major names then associated with sex reform, neo-Malthusianism, and eugenics, including sex theorist Havelock Ellis, Charles Drysdale and Alice Vickery of the British Malthusian League, and Aletta Jacobs and Johannes Rutgers of the NieuwMalthusiaansche Bond (Dutch Neo-Malthusian League). She also met British women’s rights activist Marie Stopes, who was then writing Married Love (1919), her book on sex and marriage; socialist Stella Browne; and suffragette Edith HowMartyn, who would become Sanger’s key partner in the international movement. During this intensive, nearly yearlong sojourn, she spent several weeks under the tutelage of Havelock Ellis and studied the history and practice of contraception, population trends and eugenics, and the works of sexologists, such as Auguste Forel, Enoch Kisch, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, and, of course, Ellis himself. While in Europe, Sanger achieved self-sufficiency and a spirited sexual independence. She became liberated, unrooted, and worldly wise. Sanger’s experience in exile prepared her to return to America with more practical knowledge of contraception and with a broadened perspective and stronger intellectual framework for her arguments. She replaced her initial focus on free speech with an emphasis on social responsibility and an appeal to resource needs. She began to gravitate toward the goal of human betterment, a sweeping eugenic concept that, from Sanger’s perspective, stood for a freer and

introduction  •  xxi

stronger human race achieved through women’s reproductive autonomy. Toward this aim, Sanger would embrace aspects of the eugenics and population control movements. However, giving people the right to make their own fertility choices remained her governing rationale; eugenic or demographic arguments were the tools she accepted in her fight for this basic right. This broader rationale could be tackled only on a worldwide scale; the war had made that inevitable. For Sanger, as for so many others, World War I focused her attention on the converging issues of nationalism, population size, resources, and women’s rights.3 “War,” she wrote, “thrust upon us a new internationalism.”4 Even her unwavering commitment to every woman’s right to control her own fertility took on a global dimension. All wars, she firmly believed, were ultimately caused by overpopulation, and women could shut down the mechanism of war by refusing to bear more children: “She will kill war, by the simple process of starving it to death.”5 And women, she asserted, had the power to do even more. If a woman attained basic freedom and equality, Sanger said, she would “not stop at patching up the world; she will remake it.”6 By 1921 Sanger saw birth control as the “pivot of civilization,” and her prescriptions were now aimed at the world at large.7 This documentary account of Sanger’s international activism begins in 1920 with her travels through a defeated and devastated Germany and moves on to her 1922 tour of Japan and China. It was this historic trip that helped Sanger construct an international movement. Unlike her goal-oriented leadership of the American movement (birth control legalization and clinic expansion), Sanger followed a more instinctive approach in international work. Forming a coherent international strategy was complicated by cultural differences, country-specific laws, various degrees of governmental interest and opposition, and the challenge of finding common cause among a wide range of activists and their varied agendas. As no one had done before her, Sanger linked demographic realities with women’s freedom, health, and happiness. Feeling her way as she went along, she created a public dialogue around birth control and built a network of advocates. And she and her associates established international organizations that promoted birth control and advised on population issues. Despite these efforts, none of the organizations succeeded for very long until, at the end of Sanger’s career, she spearheaded the formation of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) in 1952. Focused solely on her international work, this volume details four decades of Sanger’s largely unchallenged leadership of the international birth control movement. While there were other notable birth control advocates with international goals, including Shidzue Katō of Japan, Dhanvanthi Rama Rau of India, and Elise Ottesen-Jensen of Sweden, only Sanger had near-universal name recognition, access to American money, and the ability to build the coalitions necessary to run international congresses and expand birth control to a global scale.

xxii  •  introduction

In building support, she drew from an ideological mix of socialist reformers, conservative academicians, progressive scientists, maverick doctors, and political and diplomatic leaders of all stripes. Each latched on to different rationales for birth control, from eugenic improvement to Malthusian economic stability, as they expressed varying degrees of humanitarian motivation. Some had a genuine desire to liberate women and improve people’s lives; others exhibited a self-interested racial paternalism, intent on lifting the dark-skinned masses into modernity. Sanger accepted all comers, the missionary do-gooders and the reactionary xenophobes, so long as they worked toward increasing women’s access to safe, effective, and inexpensive contraception and to reversing the trend of population growth. To a fault, she was less concerned with intent, ideology, or institutional missions than with how the work was being carried out by local activists, doctors, nurses, and midwives in the field. In a collection that sometimes reads like an explorer’s travelogue and at others like the record of a statesman, it is Sanger’s constant maneuvering to create an identifiable international cause that drives the volume. With whom should she ally herself? How much should she rely on local activists? Would she alienate herself as an outsider if she pressed political leaders and health care bureaucrats too hard? Was the support of influential scientists or eugenicists equal to the burden of defending their objectives? How could she best appeal to governments, humanitarian organizations, and philanthropic concerns without abandoning her principles? These were among the questions she might have asked herself, which others asked of her, and which we try to address. Early on Sanger believed international conferences with a neo-Malthusian focus were the best means to achieve a dialogue on birth control. These conferences, held between 1922 and 1930, established a small coalition of birth control advocates. Sanger worked diligently to broaden that coalition by inviting medical, scientific, and social science experts to participate. She hoped to secure scientific respectability and gain wider medical support while positioning birth control as a catalyst for economic growth and peacetime stability. Sanger’s skill at organizing these large publicity-generating international forums, her ability to secure marquee names among men of science, and her connections with the activists who ran leagues, clinics, and dispensaries were pivotal to the success of these meetings. With the exception of the 1927 World Population Conference in Geneva and its behind-the-scenes clashes, Sanger helped mute the inevitable conflicts between theorists and activists and between professional men and laywomen. Her emphasis was always on common ground and, increasingly, on addressing population issues in global terms. Though the racist constructions of the time informed discussions at these international meetings, impeding efforts to promote a rights-based approach to birth control, Sanger rejected the notion that nonwhite regions of the world would never accept birth control. Speaking at the Fifth International Neo-Mal-

introduction  •  xxiii

thusian and Birth Control Conference in 1922, she declared, “I am quite convinced that the people of China, Japan, Korea and India desire Birth Control knowledge,” so “that they may reduce the numbers of their families, and that they may also give the women health and freedom.”8 Sanger was more responsible than anyone else for opening Asia’s doors to family planning, but along with that distinction came later charges that she and the birth control and population control movements practiced social engineering and engaged in a ruthless biological colonialism. Aware of the friction between East and West over population matters, Sanger tried to defuse these tensions, at least within the international birth control community, by depicting women’s need for reproductive freedom as a universal struggle. These international conferences, at least partially, helped to decouple birth control from its baser associations. In the programs for the 1922, 1925, and 1927 international meetings, the subject of birth control was reframed and positioned to bear on everything from economics to natural resources to immigration. This is what Sanger had wanted to do from the start—fashion birth control as “an approach to the study of humanity” and make it acceptable to discuss in a congress or a classroom, even if she had to sometimes tone down her feminist message.9 The new international movement sometimes downplayed the health benefits of birth control as well. Most of the conferences minimized practical papers on contraceptive methods, sexuality, and women’s reproduction, and women were a small minority of the presenters. This would be Sanger’s constant challenge as she developed networks of physicians, scientists, population experts, and government representatives: how to define and feature birth control as a biological imperative and a women’s right, without subordinating it to eugenic and demographic issues. But Sanger, to whom the ends justified the means, often failed to recognize the extent to which tactics and process colored the outcome. Sanger did take steps to bridge the gap between birth control as a concept and as a practical tool. In 1930 she organized a conference specifically for researchers and clinicians. That same year, she also founded the Birth Control International Information Centre (BCIIC). And in the mid-1930s, she worked with Edith How-Martyn to help set up clinics in India and other Asian nations. As she did in the United States, Sanger pushed to make birth control available through state-sponsored public health programs, especially in Japan and India, two spots she returned to multiple times. Government-based public health approaches to family planning were necessary in regions where private organizations and clinics had trouble surviving on their own. By pitching birth control as a public service, she also refocused attention on mothers, who, when given access to contraception, would make decisions in the best interest of their families’ health and security and, by extension, strengthen their communities, their countries, and the world at large.

xxiv  •  introduction

Sanger’s efforts in Europe and Asia were interrupted by World War II. The war confirmed her worst fears about the pressure of population and justified her earlier cynicism regarding positive eugenics. As did many others, she viewed the Nazis’ genocidal policies as a perversion of eugenics and antithetical to her goals of sexual freedom and empowerment for women. She argued that the “widespread devaluation of human lives” was a result of indiscriminate overpopulation.10 Those hard realities reflected the “lack of population policies and of political foresight as to the value and meaning of dignified human living on this earth.”11 World War II devastated most of the birth control leagues in Europe and undid the fragile network of activists that Sanger had assembled in the interwar years. But it also created a clean slate, having swept away many of the old skirmishes and misunderstandings between neo-Malthusians, leftists, feminists, sexual reformers, and eugenicists. The peace process brought renewed calls for international cooperation and a restructured intergovernmental organization, the United Nations, that seemed, at first glance, to be more interested in population issues and family planning than the League of Nations had been. Even in the midst of excitable pronatalists, anxious to breed back their prewar numbers, there emerged widespread concern over the rapid expansion of population in the Third World, especially in Asia, and new interest in adopting birth control to address the problem. After a period of wartime seclusion and some hesitation about resuming her public advocacy, Sanger accepted the leadership of international birth control efforts. Despite increasingly serious health problems, she exerted significant control over the postwar agenda, funding and orchestrating large international meetings and conferences and again blurring the lines between family planning, human betterment, and population control in order to build a broad coalition. As the movement consolidated and organized around the new IPPF, Sanger confronted a tension that had been building for decades—and for which she was in part responsible: whether the impetus for family planning should or could come from those who sought to regulate population size or fertility rates or from women themselves, who in many regions lacked education, political power, or a voice with which to demand the tools to control their own fertility! In the West, the rage for population control, with its fears of Malthusian catastrophes and Communist domination, encouraged large-scale programs and policy initiatives aimed at reducing populations in developing nations. While Sanger supported some of these efforts, she never abandoned her earliest goal of changing the world one woman at a time. She still sought to increase access to effective and affordable contraception so that every woman could control her own body. She remained dedicated to improving contraceptives and devoted more of her time to fostering research for the birth control pill. But the question of how to reconcile efforts by governments and organizations to control

introduction  •  xxv

populations with the rights and needs of the individual, no matter where she made her home, remained unresolved. Despite leaving a long trail of confirmations and contradictions spread over more than forty years of international activism, in the end Sanger pinned her legacy on the less popular, more controversial argument for women’s sexual liberation through reproductive control. It is a legacy inextricably tied to this singular documentary record of her work—to her own words presented here in the context of her life and times. And it is a legacy that is still being fought over today. Notes 1. MS, Editorial, BCR 9 (Mar. 1925): 68. 2. “Message from H. G. Wells,” BCR 9 (May 1925): 138. 3. Connelly, Fatal Misconception, 51–53. 4. MS, Pivot of Civilization, 124. 5. MS, Woman and the New Race, 167. 6. Ibid., 8. 7. Connelly, Fatal Misconception, 9. 8. Pierpont, Report of the 5INMBCC, 199. 9. MS, Pivot of Civilization, 16. 10. MS, “Lasker Award Address,” PPFA annual meeting, New York, Oct. 25, 1950 (MSM S72:607). 11. MS, “Lasker Award Address,” PPFA annual meeting, New York, Oct. 25, 1950 (MSM S72:607).

z Editorial Method Selection Margaret Sanger left a voluminous archive of more than ninety-five thousand letters, speeches, diaries, organizational, legal, and other records documenting her long and eventful life.1 Our goal in creating this edition has been to highlight Sanger’s distinctive voice and illuminate the multiple narratives of her life and work. Our choices for this volume were governed by our desire to examine critical events, major themes, and central issues of Sanger’s international work. Some 82 percent of the documents selected for this volume are letters, augmented by articles, speeches, and selections from Sanger’s journals. We have focused on documents written by Sanger, generally limiting incoming correspondence to those items that provide indispensable context that cannot be adequately summarized or that offer critical information about Sanger and her agenda, particularly when Sanger’s specific outgoing letters have not been found. All but a few of the vast number of organizational and legal documents have been excluded. All documents have been printed in their entirety unless clearly marked as excerpts. This volume explains Sanger’s international work only and does not feature her leadership of the American birth control movement or chronicle much of her personal life. These areas were covered in volumes 1–3. Short summaries of these subjects are provided when necessary, along with references to the earlier volume(s).

•  xxvii

xxviii  •  editorial method

Establishing Text The majority of source texts used for this edition are unique. When multiple versions of a letter exist, the recipient’s copy is used. In the case of multiple drafts of Sanger’s speeches or articles, we generally chose the one that most closely resembles the final version. Exceptions to these guidelines are noted in headnotes or endnotes. Variant versions of documents are cited in the source notes.

Organization and Format of the Volume Documents in this volume are grouped into chronological chapters. Because this is such a highly selective edition, we have provided narrative and chronological links in brief essays introducing each chapter. Each document is preceded by a header identifying the author, recipient, or title. Headnotes appear above many documents to fill in gaps in the narrative, provide context, or explain issues or events related to their creation. Within each chapter, documents are arranged in chronological order. Documents written on the same day are placed in the order in which they were written if it can be determined; otherwise, they are placed in alphabetical order by author. Documents dated only by month and year are placed at the end of that month. An unnumbered source note at the end of each document provides an abbreviation indicating the provenance, followed by its microfilm location, the physical characteristics of the source text, information on variant versions, notes on enclosures, anything notable about its physical condition (for example, water stains or ink blots), and other identifying information (letterhead, Sanger’s return address, and so on).

Transcription We have endeavored to retain the authorial voice, color, and tone of the original by reproducing the source text as accurately as possible. We have preserved original spelling, punctuation, paragraph division, abbreviations, ampersands, superscript, and other idiosyncrasies, as well as underlining and double underlining for emphasis (text underlined more than twice is rendered as double underline). We have also retained the authors’ use of initial capitals and capitalization as a means of emphasis. When the capitalization could not be determined, we have adopted standard usage. Terminal punctuation rendered as long dashes or periods has also been retained. However, when sentences are terminated by the use of extra space, or when terminal punctuation is missing, we have silently supplied periods.

editorial method  •  xxix

For words or parts of words that are illegible or missing in the source text, we supplied entire words in italics, within square brackets, wherever possible. When the supplied information is conjecture, we have followed that portion with a question mark. If the information cannot be supplied, the missing portion is rendered as [illegible] or [pages missing or torn]. To ensure a more readable text, we have standardized the following elements: the first letter of each sentence is always capitalized, new paragraphs always begin with the first five characters indented, in letters the complimentary closing is run into the last paragraph, and signatures are always placed at the right margin beneath the text. In typed, signed letters, the handwritten signature is indicated by [signed] or [initialed] following the typed name. The place and date lines are always located flush to the right margin; the salutation is flush to the left margin. Document dates and places written or typed by the author are rendered as they appear on the original, though in place lines the street addresses and county names have been omitted. For missing or incomplete dates, we have supplied the missing portion in standardized form. Dates or places added to the documents by the recipient or a third party have been omitted. In letters written by Sanger, the home and hotel addresses have been retained and appear in the source notes. As Sanger often used whatever paper or stationery was at hand, we have determined that letterhead alone is not sufficient to identify the place of origin. In these cases, Sanger’s location has been verified, and the missing place is supplied in standardized form. For all letters not written by Sanger, places of origin derived from letterhead are accepted and rendered without italics and brackets. Places of origin do not generally appear in speeches and published writings; if a place is associated with such a document, it is provided in the source or headnote. Typographical errors and obvious slips of the pen have been silently corrected and closing quotation marks or parentheses silently supplied. Canceled text, interlineations, and other corrections and additions to the text by the author have been retained. Interlineations within the text are rendered within up and down arrows (↑↓); author insertions or intended interlineations that appear elsewhere on the original (in the margins or on the reverse, often with an arrow or other mark directing its intended placement in the text) are placed at the appropriate location in the text. Insertions that can be linked only to a paragraph are placed at the end of that paragraph, with an endnote indicating their location on the original. When an author’s insertion or margin note cannot be linked to a specific point in the document, it is placed below the signature, preceded by an editorial note describing its location on the original. Marginalia written by someone other than the author are described in endnotes if linked to a specific portion of the text; otherwise, they are in the source note. Because the originals are available on microfilm, general routing notes (including stamps,

xxx  •  editorial method

collection names, dates, and the like), as well as marks by archivists, researchers, or others made after the document was created, have been omitted.

Annotation Source notes are followed, when needed, by one or more numbered endnotes that identify persons (and correct or identify partial names, nicknames, initials, and misspelled names); places; organizations; technical, medical, or legal terms; publications (with bibliographic reference); abbreviations; and archaic and foreign words or phrases. They also explain textual complexities in transcription and contextualize events that are not explained elsewhere in the document, chapter essay, or headnote. Notes may also point the reader to related material in the microfilm edition and summarize documents excluded from the volume in order to furnish context. When quotes are used in headnotes and endnotes, we have inserted ellipses to indicate omissions. We have tried to identify every person mentioned in the text, generally at the first mention in a document. Location of the first biographical identification is noted in the index. Editors have not indicated when people or places remain unidentified, though unidentified events and documents are noted. In cases where additional information can be found in volume 1, 2, or 3, we have signaled this in the index.

Treatment of Foreign Names and Phrases We have translated organization names at their first mention in annotation and in the index, but whenever possible we used original language names and abbreviations in notes and abbreviations. For consistency, we have standardized the order of personal names in the Western format (given name first and then surname), a change that primarily affects Japanese names. For Chinese names, because Sanger generally used Wade‑Giles romanization in her writings, we have adopted it in annotation, headnotes, and the index, but have also provided the pinyin version of the name at its first mention.

Treatment of Place-Names In order to maintain consistency between annotation and the document texts, place-names have been rendered as they appeared at the time, both in notes

editorial method  •  xxxi

and in the index. At their first mention in the volume, modern usage has also been provided. Note 1. The full corpus of Sanger documents can be found in the two-series microfilm The Margaret Sanger Papers: Smith College Collections and Collected Documents Series (Bethesda, Md.: University Publications of America, 1996, 1997) and in the Papers of Margaret Sanger Microfilm, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

z Abbreviations General IUD

intrauterine device

MS

Margaret Sanger

TDf TDS TL TLcy TLcyS TLI TLS TRcy TRcyI

Typed Draft Typed Document, Signed Typed Letter Typed Letter Carbon Copy Typed Letter Carbon Copy, Signed Typed Letter Initialed Typed Letter Signed Transcribed Copy Transcribed Copy, Initialed

Document Descriptions AD Autograph Document ADfS Autograph Draft, Signed ADI Autograph Document   Initialed AL Autograph Letter ALI Autograph Letter Initialed ALS Autograph Letter Signed TD Typed Document TDcy Typed Document,   Carbon Copy Microfilm Editions When citing documents in a microfilm edition, the microfilm abbreviation is followed by the reel and frame numbers. When we refer to a Sanger document that appears in this volume, we have noted that the document is “herein.” LCM Margaret Sanger Papers Microfilm, Library of Congress (Washington, D.C., 1977). •  xxxiii

xxxiv  •  abbreviations

MSM  Margaret Sanger Papers Microfilm Edition, edited by Esther Katz, Peter C. Engelman, Cathy Moran Hajo, and Anke Voss-Hubbard (Bethesda, Md., 1996–97). Reels starting with S are from Smith College Collections; those starting with C are from Collected Documents Series. Standard References and Short Titles 1900 U.S. Census U.S. Census Bureau, Twelfth Census of the United States 1920 U.S. Census U.S. Census Bureau, Fourteenth Census of the United States 1930 U.S. Census U.S. Census Bureau, Fifteenth Census of the United States 1940 U.S. Census U.S. Census Bureau, Sixteenth Census of the United States American National Biography ANB AWNPBC Around the World News of Population and Birth Control Birth Control Review BCR DNB Dictionary of National Biography Dictionary of National Biography of India DNBI EB Encyclopedia Britannica JAMA Journal of the American Medical Association JBE The Japan Biographical Encyclopedia and Who’s Who JOC Journal of Contraception National Cyclopedia of American Biography NatCAB Notable American Women NAW OED Oxford English Dictionary SSDI Social Security Death Index Vol. 1 Esther Katz, Cathy Moran Hajo, and Peter C. Engelman, eds., The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, vol. 1, The Woman Rebel, 1900–1928 (2003) Vol. 2 Esther Katz, Peter C. Engelman, Cathy Moran Hajo, and Amy Flanders, eds., The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, vol. 2, Birth Control Comes of Age, 1928–1939 (2006) Vol. 3 Esther Katz, Cathy Moran Hajo, and Peter C. Engelman, eds., The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, vol. 3, The Politics of Planned Parenthood, 1939–1966 (2010) WWW America Who Was Who in America WWAW Who Was Who of American Women

abbreviations  •  xxxv

Manuscript Collections United States

ABCLR American Birth Control League Records, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. AFP Ames Family Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. AMP Adolf Meyer Papers, Allan Mason Chesney Medical Archives, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutes, Baltimore ASP Abraham Stone Papers, Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston CAP Cheri Appel Papers, Margaret Sanger Papers Project, New York CJGP Clarence J. Gamble Papers, Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston DHBP Dorothy Hamilton Brush Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. ERP Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y. FMP Florence Mahoney Papers, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Md. FRP Florence Rose Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. JBRP Juliet Barrett Rublee Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass., and Dartmouth Library, Hanover, N.H. KMP Kitty Marion Papers, New York Public Library, Manuscripts Division, New York LLP Lawrence Lader Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. MLP Mary Lasker Papers, Columbia University, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New York MSP Margaret Sanger Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. (MN-SSC); Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, Washington, D.C. (DLC); and Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. (MH-H) MS Unfilmed Margaret Sanger Papers, Unfilmed Portion, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. NHP Norman E. Himes Papers, Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston PPFAII Records of Planned Parenthood Federation of America II, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.

xxxvi  •  abbreviations

PPFAR Records of Planned Parenthood Federation of America I, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. International

CPBP C. P. Blacker Papers, Wellcome Library, Archives and Manuscripts, London EHMP Edith How-Martyn Papers, Wellcome Library, Archives and Manuscripts, London ESR Eugenics Society Records, Wellcome Library, Archives and Manuscripts, London FMA Miscellaneous Documents Related to the Visits of Foreigners, in Japanese Foreign Ministry Archival Documents, Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Tokyo [Vol. 3.9.4.102-4] IPPFR International Planned Parenthood Records, privately held, London LAFP Lotte A. Fink Papers, privately held, Garran, Australia Starr Private Collection of Martha Jane Starr Repositories (Listed according to Descriptions Based on Library of Congress National Union Catalog) DLC Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, Washington, D.C. DNA National Archives, Washington, D.C. IPPF International Planned Parenthood Federation, London MBCo Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston MdBE History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Md. MdBJ-C Allan Mason Chesney Medical Archives, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutes, Baltimore MH-H Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. MN-SSC Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. MSPP Margaret Sanger Papers Project, New York University, New York NhD Dartmouth College Library, Hanover, N.H. NhPR Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y. NNC Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York WLAM Wellcome Library, Archives and Manuscripts, London

abbreviations  •  xxxvii

Conferences 3ICPP Third International Conference on Planned Parenthood (1952, Bombay) 4ICPP Fourth International Conference on Planned Parenthood (1953, Stockholm) 5ICPP Fifth International Conference on Planned Parenthood (1955, Tokyo) 5INMBCC Fifth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference (1922, London) 5WLSRC Fifth World League for Sexual Reform Congress (1934, Brno, Czechoslovakia) 6ICPP Sixth International Conference on Planned Parenthood (1959, New Delhi) 6INMBCC Sixth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference (1925, New York) 7IBCC Seventh International Birth Control Conference (1930, Zurich) AIWC All-India Women’s Conference ICPWR International Congress on Population and World Resources in Relation to the Family (1948, Cheltenham) ICSR International Congress for Sex Research (1926, Berlin) ISEC International Sex Education Conference (1946, Stockholm) WPC World Population Conference (1927, Geneva) WPCR World Population Conference (1954, Rome) Organizations ABCL American Birth Control League AIVIA All-India Village Industries Association AMA American Medical Association BCCRB Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau, United States BCFA Birth Control Federation of America BCIC Birth Control Investigation Committee, England BCIIC Birth Control International Information Centre, England BCLM Birth Control League of Massachusetts BDÄ Bund Deutscher Ärztinnen (Association of German Medical Women) BES British Eugenics Society BF Brush Foundation, United States BfG Beratungstelle für Gerburtenregelung (Birth Control Clinic), Germany

xxxviii  •  abbreviations

BfMS Bund für Mutterschutz und Sexualreform (League for Protection of Motherhood and Sexual Reform), Germany BSH Bureau of Social Hygiene, United States CISH Chungkuo I-Shih Hsiehhui (Chinese Medical Association) CNESP Comité National d’Études Sociales et Politiques (National Committee of Social and Political Studies), France CRB Clinical Research Bureau, United States DZ Deutsche Zentrumspartei (German Centre Party) FPA-GB Family Planning Association, United Kingdom FPA-HK Family Planning Association of Hong Kong FPA-I Family Planning Association of India FPA-S Family Planning Association of Singapore FSO Foreningen for Seksuel Oplysning (Association for Sexual Enlightenment), Denmark ICPP International Committee on Planned Parenthood, United Kingdom ICW International Council of Women, United States IFNMBCL International Federation of Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Leagues, United States IfS Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science), Germany IPPF International Planned Parenthood Federation, England IPPF-ENEAR International Planned Parenthood Federation, Europe, Near East and Africa Region IPPF-FEAR International Planned Parenthood Federation, Far East and Australasian Region IPPF-IOR International Planned Parenthood Federation, Indian Ocean Region IPPF-WHR International Planned Parenthood Federation, Western Hemisphere Region IUSIPP International Union for the Scientific Investigation of Population Problems, United States JFPL Jamaican Family Planning League JMC Jinkō Mondai Chōskai (Population Problems Research Council), Japan KPD Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Communist Party of Germany) LMPRS Liga Mundial para la Reforma Sexual (World League for Sexual Reform), Spain LN League of Nations MHK Modrehygienekontoret (Mothers’ Hygiene Bureau), Norway ML Malthusian League, United Kingdom

abbreviations  •  xxxix

MSRB Margaret Sanger Research Bureau, United States NBCA National Birth Control Association, United Kingdom NCFLBC National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control, United States NGL New Generation League, United Kingdom NKKK Nihon Kazoku Keikaku Kyōkai (Japan Family Planning Federation) NKZ Narodnyi Komissariat Zdravookhraneniia (People’s Commissariat of Health), Soviet Union NMB Nieuw-Malthusiaansche Bond (Neo-Malthusian League), Netherlands NS Nihon Shakai-tō (Japan Socialist Party) NSCFD Nihon Sanji Chôsetsu Fujin Dômei (Japan Birth Control Women’s Union) NSCK Nihon Sanji Chôsetsu Kenkyûkai (Japan Birth Control Study Society) NSCR Nihon Sanji Chôsetsu Renmei (Japan Birth Control League, 1931–32 and post-1948) NSCR1 Nihon Sanji Chôsetsu Renmei (Birth Control League of Japan, 1921–22) NVSH Nederlandse Vereniging voor Seksuele Hervorming (Dutch Society for Sexual Reform) NWP National Woman’s Party OMM Okhrana Materinstva I Mladenchestva (Institute for the Protection of Mother and Child), Soviet Union OPR Office of Population Research, United States PCHM Peiping Committee on Maternal Health, China PPFA Planned Parenthood Federation of America PRB Population Reference Bureau, United States PUMC Peking University Medical College, China RF Rockefeller Foundation, United States RFSU Riksförbundet för Sexuell Upplysning (National Association for Sexual Enlightenment), Sweden SCAP Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, United States SCBCRP Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress, United Kingdom SCCS Shanghai Chiehyū Chihtao So (Shanghai Birth Control Information Bureau), China SFK Shin Fujin Kyōkai (New Women’s Association), Japan SFRPP Scripps Foundation for Research in Population Problems, United States

xl  •  abbreviations

SHV Sozial-Harmonische Verein (Social Harmony Union), Germany SJL Shanghai Jieyu Lianmeng (Shanghai Birth Control League), China SMK Świadome Macierzyzyństwa Klinika (Conscious Maternity Clinic), Poland SPBCC Society for the Provision of Birth Control Clinics, United Kingdom SPD Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (German Social Democratic Party) SPPRSV Společnost pro Plánování Rodiny a Sexuální Výchovu (Czechoslovakian Birth Control Society), Czechoslovakia SSPFH Society for the Study and Promotion of Family Hygiene, India TPPR Towarzystwo Propogacji Planowania Rodziny (Society for Promotion of Family Planning), Poland UN United Nations UNRRA United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration USPD Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutchsland (Independent Social Democratic Party), Germany VKB Verband der Krankenkassen Berlin (Berlin Health Insurance League), Germany VOKS Vsesoiuznoe Obshchestvo Kulturnoi Sviazi (All-Union Society for Cultural Relations), Soviet Union VPL Voluntary Parenthood League, United States VSÄ Verein Sozialistischer Ärzte (Association of Socialist Physicians), Germany WFEB Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, United States WHO World Health Organization (UN) WLSR World League for Sexual Reform WPEC World Population Emergency Campaign YMCA Young Men’s Christian Association YWCA Young Women’s Christian Association

z Chronology 1879 Sept. Margaret Higgins born 1902 Marries William Sanger 1903 Stuart Sanger born 1905 Grant Sanger born 1910 Peggy Sanger born 1913 Travels to Scotland and France 1914 Mar. Publishes The Woman Rebel; indicted for violating Comstock Act Nov. Publishes Family Limitation; flees to England Dec. Meets Havelock Ellis 1915 Feb. Travels to Amsterdam, trains at Dutch birth control clinic Mar. Travels to France and Spain Oct. Returns to the United States Nov. Peggy Sanger dies 1920 Publishes Woman and the New Race May–Aug. Travels to England, Scotland, and Ireland Aug.–Sept. Tours post–World War I Germany 1921 May–July Visits England Aug.–Sept. Travels to Switzerland Oct. Divorce from William Sanger finalized Nov. Forms the American Birth Control League 1922 Feb.–Apr. Travels to Japan, Korea, and China with J. Noah Slee and Grant Sanger May Tours Hong Kong, Colombo, and Aden June Tours Egypt, Italy, and France •  xli

xlii  •  chronology



July Attends Fifth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference in London Aug. Visits Switzerland Sept. Marries J. Noah Slee in London Publishes Pivot of Civilization Oct. Travels to England to invite conference participants 1925 Mar. Organizes the Sixth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference in New York City; International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control League Federation formed in New York City 1926 Nov. Travels to England and Scotland to organize conference 1927 Jan. Travels through France Feb.–May Stays in Switzerland May–July Returns to the United States July–Sept. Organizes the World Population Conference in Geneva Oct.–Dec. Stays in Switzerland Dec. Funds German birth control clinic through Agnes Smedley 1928 Jan.–Feb. Stays in Switzerland and France Mar. Returns to the United States Dec. Begins working with Edith How-Martyn to organize information on birth control 1929 July–Sept. Travels in England, France, and Germany Oct. Begins funding birth control organizations and clinics in China through Agnes Smedley 1930 June–Aug. In France and Switzerland Sept. Organizes the Seventh International Birth Control Conference in Zurich Forms the Birth Control International Information Centre in London with Edith How-Martyn 1931 Publishes My Fight for Birth Control 1932 July Visits England; takes a rest cure in Marienbad, Czechoslovakia Aug. Travels to Italy 1933 Feb. Travels to the Bahamas Oct. In England 1934 July–Aug. Tours Scandinavia and Soviet Union 1935 Nov. Begins three-month tour of India Dec. Speaks before the All-India Women’s Conference; meets with Mahatma Gandhi 1936 Feb. India tour ends; travels to Burma; cancels remainder of Asian tour

chronology  •  xliii



Nov. Resigns as president of the Birth Control International Information Centre 1937 May Travels to Bermuda July Visits England and France Aug. Cancels planned tour of China after Japanese invasion; tours Japan instead Sept. Stops in Hawaii 1938 June Birth Control International Information Centre merges with the Family Planning Association Aug. Visits England Publishes Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography 1939 Feb. Cruise to the Bahamas; stops in Puerto Rico 1940 Aug. Tours Puerto Rico, Haiti, and Cuba 1941 Feb. Travels to the Bahamas 1943 June Death of J. Noah Slee 1946 Aug. Attends International Sex Education Conference in Stockholm, Sweden Visits England 1947 July 1948 Aug Attends International Congress on Population and World Resources in Relation to the Family, in Cheltenham, England; organizes the International Committee for Planned Parenthood Aug.–Sept. Stays in England and France 1950 Feb. Denied entry to Japan by General Douglas MacArthur 1951 Aug.–Sept. Visits England 1952 Oct.–Nov. Visits Japan, en route to India Nov. Sanger attends Third International Conference on Planned Parenthood held in Bombay, India; elected president of the newly formed International Planned Parenthood Federation Dec. Visits France 1953 Aug. Attends the Fourth International Conference on Planned Parenthood in Stockholm, Sweden Sept. Visits England 1954 Apr. Travels to Japan; becomes first Western woman to speak before the Japanese Diet Aug.–Sept. World Population Conference held in Rome; Sanger does not attend 1955 Oct. Attends Fifth International Conference on Planned Parenthood in Tokyo, Japan 1957 Cancels plans to hold Sixth International Conference in the United States June–July Visits England

xliv  •  chronology

1959 1960 1962 1965 1966

Oct. Attends International Planned Parenthood Federation, Europe, Near East and Africa Region, Conference in Berlin, West Germany Feb. Travels to Sixth International Conference on Planned Parenthood in New Delhi, India; resigns as IPPF president Mar. Attends organizing meeting for World Population Emergency Campaign in Princeton, N.J. May World Tribute to Margaret Sanger held in New York City Jan. Confined to nursing home in Tucson, Arizona May Japan bestows Order of the Precious Crown on Sanger Sept. Dies in Tucson, Arizona

The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger

z volume 4 ’round the world for birth control 1920–1966

z ONE Abroad!

When Margaret Sanger sailed for Europe in the spring of 1920, much had changed since she was last abroad in 1915. World War I increased interest in population issues and eugenics, opening up the discussion of sexuality, venereal disease, and contraceptive use. In this environment, Sanger’s birth control message resonated with a wider audience, and as press coverage of her activities increased, she gained both respect and notoriety. Just a few years old, Sanger’s birth control campaign had been recast and made more relevant by the war. “The world,” she pointed out in 1921, “is searching for a method or a means to settle the problems of population and, during the last five years, Birth Control has gradually become recognized as the most scientific method toward this end. The idea,” she claimed, “has gathered momentum in such a startling way that now it has become the most important question of the day.”1 She added that “whether we like it or not, the consequence of the war has thrust internationalism upon us. Our ‘splendid isolation’ is a myth.”2 Having begun the movement in 1914 with a feminist declaration of women’s rights, including reproductive rights, Sanger had now rolled the cause into a Malthusian argument to contain uncontrolled population growth. “The plan is Birth Control applied to the world,” Sanger wrote, “just as it is applied to families—a limitation of numbers in accordance with our ability to provide.”3 •  1

2  •  Abroad!

The challenge for Sanger and the growing group of like-minded activists, scientists, and intellectuals was how to convince influential leaders and governments of the urgency and necessity of birth control at a time when most of the postwar world was in recovery and seeking to reverse declining economies and population losses. Sanger’s strategy was to expand the rationales for birth control, raising the “program from the plane of the emotional to the plane of the scientific.”4 In her monthly, the Birth Control Review (BCR), launched in 1917, and in her first two books, Woman and the New Race (1920) and especially its follow-up, The Pivot of Civilization (1922), Sanger aimed to persuade scientists, eugenicists, economists, and other professionals to view birth control as the chief mechanism for world change. She tried to balance this approach by also speaking to the needs of the individual and appealing to what she considered the movement’s greatest strength: its universality. Speaking to an international audience in 1922, Sanger declared, “It seems to me that the subject of Birth Control is particularly an individual issue. . . . It makes no difference, whatever may be the race, colour of the skin, economic principles, theories or religious creeds, Birth Control is of interest to every individual, and it seems to me that is the thing we must work upon. Recognizing that, we have in a way an easier avenue of approach than other movements, which are divided by class, creeds, and dogmas.”5 When she surveyed war-torn Germany in 1920, and Asia and the Middle East in 1922, Sanger proceeded with the conviction that there was a basic human inclination to control childbearing and a societal desire to ease the pressures of population and aggressive expansionism. For Sanger, the trips she took in these postwar years reinforced her conviction that “the new internationalism can only come as the out growth of a dynamic, living, functional practice,” which “progressively lessens and obliterates the cause of wars and social catastrophes.”6 In her view, her duty was “to mobilize the forces of intelligence and true statesmanship in all countries, to establish ‘spheres of influence,’ to awaken the consciousness and the conscience of all serious minded people to this great world problem, and to unite with the rapidly growing movements in other lands.”7 By the time Sanger embarked on her trips abroad in the 1920s, she was knowledgeable and confident in her views. She traveled abroad not to seek guidance, as she had in 1914–15, but to propagandize and provide expertise. She was not wedded to a strict itinerary, but was able instead to react to situations she encountered and capitalize on her increasing prominence. The 1920 trip, somewhat hastily arranged, grew out of Sanger’s desire to improve her mental and physical health. A generous check from close friend and benefactor Juliet Barrett Rublee enabled her to book passage to England, an intellectual, social, and sexual retreat for her. But during her stay in England,

Abroad!  •  3

her tour of Germany (where she was trying to track down a new contraceptive), and her short visit to the Netherlands, Sanger was effectively propagandizing for birth control. Her friend syndicalist Milly Rocker noted that shortly after Sanger’s visit to Berlin, its “Syndikalist Women Association” held a birth control meeting attended by more than two thousand men and women. Dutch physician and birth control clinic pioneer Johannes Rutgers detected a new public awareness of birth control and suggested that Sanger’s skills might be better utilized in Europe than in puritanical America. Sanger did briefly consider extending her European trip, but ran out of money.8 Shortly after returning to the United States in the fall of 1920, Sanger hatched plans to hold an international birth control conference in New York. In 1921 she headed back to Europe to recruit speakers and to attend the International Congress on Contraceptives in Amsterdam, where she listened to physicians, neo-Malthusian leaders, and birth control activists discuss contraceptive techniques.9 Back in New York, Sanger oversaw the First American Birth Control Conference, which featured British economist and onetime member of Parliament Harold Cox as the keynote speaker. She strategically scheduled the conference for November 11–13, 1921, to capitalize on the timing of the Second International Congress on Eugenics in New York and the beginning of the Washington Naval Conference in Washington, D.C. This timing helped to draw the attention of the many foreign observers and reporters then encamped on the East Coast. She garnered additional press coverage when a police raid interrupted the final session held at New York’s Town Hall, resulting in Sanger’s arrest and unleashing a wave of publicity that reached overseas. But Sanger’s ideas were circulating abroad even before this. In February 1921, she wrote to her British friend Hugh de Selincourt that “ministers of the governments of Japan, & Mexico” were informing her that her “message is changing the thought of the people of these countries more surely than Darwin changed the thoughts of the centuries.” Mexico, she bragged, issued an invitation to visit, and a Japanese magazine asked her to write a series of articles. The Mexican trip never panned out, but an invitation from Kaizō (Reconstruction), a socialist publication in Japan, set in motion Sanger’s first official world tour.10 From Japanese visitors passing through New York, Sanger had learned of the growing tension in Japan between militarism and movements for individual liberty. Many “young, liberal intellectuals” in Japan had fixed on population control as the only way to prevent Japan from engaging in aggressive imperialist behavior and war. Sanger met several Japanese visitors through her friend and neighbor artist Gertrude Boyle, who was married to Japanese poet Takeshi Kanno. But the most influential of Sanger’s Japanese contacts was Baroness Shidzue Ishimoto, a rising feminist and socialist voice in Japan. The two became

4  •  Abroad!

friends when Ishimoto was in New York in 1919–20. She described for Sanger the complex and changing landscape of modern Japan. Inspired by Sanger’s activism, Ishimoto returned to Japan and in the summer of 1921 formed the first birth control league there.11 She also helped lay the groundwork for Sanger’s first trip to Japan. Both within and outside of Japan, concern had grown over the size of its population, which increased from about forty million people in the 1890s to nearly fifty-seven million in 1922. In the United States, xenophobic fears, which fueled late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Asian immigration restriction, reemerged during and after the war, focused mostly on Japan. The Western press was rife with suspicions about Japan’s ultimate aims and ambitions as the nation grew beyond its means of subsistence. Sanger echoed a common sentiment in 1921 when she told a reporter that the “Japanese average eight to a family. Overpopulation is the root of the ‘yellow peril.’” Yet a flourishing liberal movement in Japan, linking together working-class, labor, and women’s groups, was exerting pressure on the government to consider ways to stem population growth. The pursuit of individual and political rights in Japan drew Sanger’s attention to the fact that it was becoming more receptive to progressive reforms.12 For Sanger, Japan was the next barrier to breach. Notes 1. MS to Hinke Bergegren, Mar. 22, 1921 (MSM C1:652). 2. MS, “Editorial Comment: Birth Control the Key to International Peace and Security,” BCR 5 (Feb. 1921): 3. 3. MS, “Preparing for the World Crisis,” BCR 4 (Apr. 1920): 8 (MSM S70:840). 4. MS, Pivot of Civilization, 26. 5. MS, “Individual and Family Aspects of Birth Control,” in Report of the 5INMBCC, edited by Pierpont, 31 (MSM S70:937). 6. MS to Juliet Rublee, ? 1920 (MSM C1:606). 7. MS, “London Birth Control Meetings,” BCR 4 (Apr. 1920): 7 (MSM C16:144), and “Editorial Comment,” 4. 8. Milly Rocker, “German Report,” BCR 5 (Aug. 1921): 13 (quote); Rutgers to MS, Oct. 1, 1920, herein; MS, Autobiography, 290. 9. MS, “Impressions of the Amsterdam Conference,” BCR 5 (Nov. 1921): 11 (MSM S70:922). 10. MS to de Selincourt, Feb. 24, 1921 (LCM 3:770). 11. MS, Autobiography, 296–97 (quote 296); New York Tribune, June 20, 1920. 12. New York Tribune, Apr. 9, 1921 (quote); Kazutami Ukita, “Liberal Movements in Modern Japan,” Outlook, Dec. 15, 1920, 678.

february 1920  •  5

1. “Light for Mexico and South America” A birth control movement was beginning to emerge in Latin America at this time. In Mexico, coming out of the 1910 revolution, there were signs of growing liberalism, codified in the constitution of 1917, which recognized “the right to choose freely, and in a responsible and informed manner, the number and timing of one’s children.” Sanger’s early correspondence with Mexican and other Latin American activists was not found, leaving the BCR as one of the few sources that document birth control organizational efforts in that region, including the creation of a birth control league in Mexico City in 1918. (Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, Women of the World: Laws and Policies Affecting Their Reproductive Lives— Latin America and the Caribbean [New York: 1997], 151–52; “Birth Control Organizations in Foreign Countries,” BCR 3 [Jan. 1920]: 16.)

Feb. 1920 One of the recent important developments in the Birth Control movement is that which is manifesting itself vigorously in Latin America. Every mail bring us, from some country to the south of us, letters of encouragement.1 These letters give evidence of the fact that independent thinkers have recognized the necessity of woman’s freedom as the first step in solving the problems with which the masses are confronted. One man who has been active in behalf of Birth Control in South America writes from a city in Columbia2 “Every day that passes away I realize more and more what a great help Birth Control is going to be in the near future. Here in this poor country they need more of that help than any other. People of the lower class here live like pigs. They used to have from six to eighteen children and almost all died before being three years old. If you could look at the statistics in this country you would see that the mortality of children under three years old is awfully high. I saw a report stating that the births in one week had been 128 and the infant mortality 122 among the poor people.3 This is terrible, Mrs Sanger, and I wish I could use all my power, money and knowledge to help those poor women of this beloved but unhappy country of mine.” A birth control group in Colombia is also planning to translate THE BIRTH CONTROL REVIEW into Spanish for the benefit of the native populations of all Latin American countries. It is needless to say that all available information concerning contraceptive methods has already been translated and is in circulation.4 A group headed by a North American woman in Buenas Ayres has its branch of the movement well under way. Literature is being distributed and a general interest is being aroused.5 Coming nearer home, there is also a lively movement in Mexico, with headquarters in the capital city of the republic.6 In that country, one of the most familiar sights is that of beggar women, mother of from nine to sixteen children,

6  •  Abroad!

clustered about the doors of the church, to claim the charity of the worshipers and to divide their gains with the church itself. To offset this misery, the Birth Control group have translated the literature of the movement into the native language and have distributed it widely.7 Although the church is opposed to this activity and spares no pains to prohibit it, the present government of Mexico has been liberal enough to refuse to prosecute these workers for humanity.8 The women of Mexico are moving on toward their freedom. One of the important recent events in the City of Mexico was a feminist conference, which was widely attended and attracted general attention. With women asserting their rights, it will not be long until they claim the fundamental right of controlling their own productive functions.9 A new day is dawning for the women of the world and the women of Latin America are claiming their right to the light. Birth Control Review 4 (Feb. 1920): 15 (not filmed).

1. Most of the letters MS received during this period were not preserved. For letters from Latin America written after 1921, see LCM 19:1097–1138. 2. The letter was not found. 3. Estimates for Colombia ranged from a birthrate of 27.5 to 44.6 per 1,000 for 1920–25, with an estimated infant mortality rate of 159. (Mitchell, International Historical Statistics: Americas, 79, 85.) 4. A Spanish-language edition of Family Limitation had been published in Mexico in 1919 by Imp. J. Chávez y Hno. 5. In Argentina mild support for birth control came from the anarchist community and from socialist physicians who formed eugenics societies. (Asunción Lavrín, Women, Feminism, and Social Change in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, 1890–1940 [Lincoln, 1995], 132–33; Stepan, “Hour of Eugenics,” 58.) 6. A Mexican Birth Control League was established in 1918 in Mexico City, headed by radical American communist Linn A. W. Gale (1892–1940), who fled the draft, and his wife, Magdalena Gale (1890–1964). The league appeared briefly in the BCR’s lists of birth control organizations. Gale published Gale’s, a radical monthly, for which the Mexican government deported him back to the United States in 1921. (Boston Globe, Apr. 3, 1921; SSDI; “Birth Control Organizations in Foreign Countries,” BCR 3 [Jan. 1920]: 16; U.S. World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917–18 [DNA].) 7. The Spanish-language edition may have circulated throughout Latin America. (MS, Los Secretos del Domino de la Natalidad [Mexico City, 1919].) 8. After the Mexican Revolution (1910–20), the new socialist government sought to curb the power of the Catholic Church and supported improvements to women’s civil rights. The state of Yucatán hosted two International Congresses of Women (January and November 1916), where women debated birth control, among other issues. (Benjamin Keen and Keith A. Haynes, A History of Latin America: Independence to the Present [Boston, 2009], 327; Francesca Miller, Latin American Women and the Search for Social Justice [Hanover, N.H., 1991], 76–77.)

August 1920  •  7 9. MS likely refers to the Consejo Feminista Mexicana (Mexican Feminist Council), formed in 1919, to “eliminate social and industrial evils and later to make a fight for political equality” and to work with international feminist groups. An affiliate of the Mexican Communist Party, the group held a meeting in January 1920. (Philadelphia Tribune, Jan. 3, 1920 [quote]; S. E. Mitchell and Patience A. Schell, The Women’s Revolution in Mexico, 1910–1953 [Lanham, Md., 2006], 25.)

2. “Women in Germany” On April 24, 1920, Sanger embarked on her first postwar trip abroad, spending three months in England visiting her brother Richard Higgins in Birmingham and friends Havelock Ellis, Hugh de Selincourt, and H. G. Wells in London. She also gave a series of lectures. On August 18, she traveled to the Netherlands, accompanied by pacifist and anarchist Rose Witcop. The two then went to Germany, where Sanger planned to investigate birthrates in the wake of the war. She also wanted to locate a German chemical contraceptive that Ellis had seen advertised before the war. She went first to Neuköln, a working-class section of Berlin, where she visited Witcop’s sister Mildred Witcop and her husband, anarchist Rudolph Rocker, old friends of Sanger’s former lover Spanish anarchist Lorenzo Portet. Sanger kept a diary and published her observations of the defeated nation in the BCR. (Journal [LCM 1:395–420]; MS, Autobiography, 280; see also Vol. 1.)

Berlin, [Germany] August 18, 1920. On the surface of things Germany seems dead, crushed, broken. One who is sensitive to thought feels at once a terrible sadness in this poverty-stricken land. People have forgotten how to smile: millions of children do not know how to laugh or play. There is a grim silence everywhere, for there is little traffic even in a city the size of Berlin.1 When one talks to the men here, the hope for the future seems very dark unless Labor emerges to Power.2 They are optimistic according as they have a philosophy, a religion or a cause. But the women break down all the reserve of one’s emotions. They are the sufferers; they have neither faith, hope, philosophy nor religion; they look out of eyes saddened by suffering, deepened by hunger.3 They are the sufferers in defeated Germany, as they were the sufferers in militaristic Germany.4 They are resigned to poverty and to want, for the rest of their lives. They are resigned: resigned to peace or war, to love or hatred: a living death or a sudden ending. But there is one thing they are NOT resigned to—and that is to continue to be breeders of children for any State, either militaristic or socialist!! They have gone so far in this that there is now pending a bill before the Reichstag entirely removing the penalty for abortion. There is another bill introduced by the Independent Socialists, not quite so radical, but making abortion legal, if done before “quickening.”5 Only the Catholic Party is opposed to these bills,

8  •  Abroad!

and it seems a foregone conclusion that one or the other of these will be carried before this article reaches America.6 The women say quite frankly, in defending abortion, that if it is right for the State to take a child and kill it in wars, after it has been brought into the world, then it is equally just to assert the mother’s right to prevent its coming here.7 The church cannot talk to these mothers about the sin of taking life (in the womb) while it approves of wars, and applauds the wholesale slaughter of men. This may sound cruel and inhuman to many of us in England and America who do not advocate abortions, but no one can refute its logic. It is a noteworthy fact that not one of the women to whom I have spoken so far believes in abortion as a practice; but it is principle for which they are standing. They also believe that the complete abolition of the abortion law will shortly do away with abortions, as nothing else will. They say that women will not desire continued abortions, consequently she will seek the best methods of contraception as the best and safest method of limiting her family. Germany, like England, has been the strongest opponent of the principle of Malthus. The Socialists especially have opposed it, and influenced Labor, both here and abroad, to discount its principle and practice.8 Rosa Luxemburg followed Marx’s footsteps in this line of thought.9 The Syndicates in France, however, have long recognized the population question as one of importance to the working class, and have recently influenced the Syndicate in Germany to recommend its practice.10 This organization has increased from five thousand members before the war, to two hundred thousand today; it has newspapers, (daily and weekly) circulating in every trade and industry. The Syndicaliste is the only Radical and Labor organization in Germany that carries the Birth Control message to workers, and includes it in its propaganda.11 This seems to be the rising Radical group of action here. Thousands of working women have just joined it as a women’s group; even children now take part in its activities. Berlin, [Germany] September 4, 1920. I have just come from a visit to a friend. She took me out to see five hundred children congregated together for their supper. This consisted of white bread (one roll) and cocoa, given to them by the Quakers, made from white flour sent from America. These are only a small part of the five million starving children in Germany. They, like all the children, were and still are kept alive by the splendid work of the American Quakers. Were it not for these workers, who have given so generously of their time and energy and money, it is safe to say there would be few children alive in Germany or Austria today.12

September 1920  •  9

The one conspicuous thing I noticed about the children was the absolute cleanliness of their bodies and clothing. This was later on more appreciated, when I learned the scarcity as well as the price of soap. The clothing is darned and mended and patched until the garments look like the old-fashioned “crazy-work.”13 The next thing one finds is the condition of anaemia in everyone. The bread one eats is almost black, except that given to the children by various societies. At first I rather liked it, but after a few days the results are so apparent on one’s health that I wonder anyone is alive at all.14 I am constantly hungry; nothing satisfies except eggs, and these cost over two marks each. Fruit is plentiful just now, plums especially, but potatoes and other vegetables are both scarce and expensive. Meat is rationed to half a pound a week for each person; milk is obtained only by a doctor’s certificate as Germany’s cows were given over to France.15 There is no doubt that there are two sides of Germany to visitors, the working district life, and the hotel life. I have been for two weeks living in a working-class district; here conditions are miserable. In the down town district, especially in hotels, there is a little meat and vegetables, provided one can pay the high prices for them. The stories the women tell of their privations during the war are unbelievable. They tell of the time when, for months there was practically no food except turnips. They ate turnip soup, turnips raw, turnips mashed, turnip salad, turnip coffee, until the whole system revolted physically against the sight of turnips. The contact of other persons in the trains and carriages, for even a few minutes, became unbearable from the reeking odor of turnips. They tell too of the daily concern of the children’s lives; the torture of watching their children slowly starve to death under their eyes; little faces growing paler, eyes more listless, little heads drooping day by day, until finally they did not even ask for food at all.16 Then the Revolution!17 They were thankful for that, but it has not brought much relief, and the coming winter is dreaded. Men are now working only three days a week, averaging one hundred and fifty marks a week for a family.18 Here too, the women are the sufferers. The best food must be given to the men. Charities and kind societies give the children cocoa and soup, but the mother goes without, or lives on what she can scrape together. Her life is a constant hunt for food; all her days are occupied with the problem of feeding her family. It is a terrible problem! In two weeks I find myself hunting food shops like a hungry animal. I have learned to examine each new article as keenly as any war sufferer. If cheese, or American evaporated milk is on the market (which costs 12 marks, by the way; or 36 cents at today’s exchange) I find myself delighted and interested. I know it is time for me to move on. How can women think of anything but food in this environment? Yet they are thinking and thinking hard. They find time to

10  •  Abroad!

be kind and thoughtful to others too. I did not register at the Police Station, and consequently did not get my ration cards;19 but a neighbor, a mother of three lovely girls, got some bread for me, and gave me her potatoes while she gave her family rice, instead. Naturally I was moved to tears by such thoughtfulness. This is only one of many such experiences, so far. Birth Control Review 4 (Dec. 1920): 8–9 (MSM S70:846–47).

1. Germany faced massive unemployment, rapidly rising inflation, and widespread food shortages. Some reports claimed that German markets were so empty that the people ate dogs and cats to stave off hunger; in other areas, the only food sources were cabbages and turnips. Living standards dropped acutely in 1920 as hunger and disease increased. Yet Berlin’s population doubled after the war to almost four million, making shortages even more severe. (B. Davis, Home Fires Burning, 245; Feldman, Great Disorder, 99–100; New York Times, Mar. 2, 1919; Iain Boyd Whyte and David Frisby, Metropolis Berlin, 1880–1940 [Berkeley, Calif., 2012], 2.) 2. After the war, liberal and radical labor groups dominated German politics and played a significant role in forming the Weimar government in 1919. However, labor’s power fractured when the large Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) (Social Democratic Party) lost more than a third of its seats in 1920 to the newer Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (USPD) (Independent Social Democratic Party) and Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD) (Communist Party of Germany). The mostly Catholic Deutsche Zentrumspartei (DZ) (Centrist Democrats) collapsed, leaving a power vacuum quickly filled by revived right-wing and left-wing splinter groups, which struggled for power in a series of attempted coups, strikes, and other efforts to destabilize the Weimar government. (Dieter Nohlen and Philip Stöver, Elections in Europe: A Data Handbook [Baden-Baden Nomos, 2010], 762; EB; Bookbinder, Weimar Germany, 22–30, 34, 45–56; David W. Morgan, The Socialist Left and German Revolution [Ithaca, N.Y., 1975], 16, 52, 350.) 3. Though German women gained the vote in November 1918 and assumed many wartime jobs, most lost them when the war ended. Approximately five million women became unemployed in the first two months of 1919. Not coincidentally, the maternal mortality rate rose from 21.9 per 1,000 births to 51.5 in 1920. (Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland, 25–27; Feldman, Great Disorder, 100; Loudon, Death in Childbirth, 153.) 4. Germany had a heritage of militarism, reflected in its powerful army and a strong patriarchal society. For women, this meant adherence to laws restricting their rights in marriage, divorce, and reproduction. Women continued to make inordinate sacrifices to house, feed, and clothe their families in a period of serious shortages, low wages, and inflated prices. (Roger Chickering, Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914–1918, 2nd ed. [Cambridge, 2004], 2; Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland, 25.) 5. Paragraph 218 of the German Penal Code prohibited abortions unless they were medically indicated. In 1920 the USPD proposed to legalize abortion, while the SPD proposed legalization only in the first trimester. Neither succeeded. “Quickening” refers to the time when the mother perceives fetal movement, usually between eighteen and twenty weeks. (Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 8; Woycke, Birth Control in Germany, 145.)

September 1920  •  11 6. The centrist Catholic DZ was not a major opponent of the abortion bills; it focused primarily on fighting for the rights of Germany’s minority Catholic population. (F. Tipton, History of Modern Germany, 351; EB.) 7. This was a view commonly held among European Socialists and Communists but usually employed in calls for a birth strike rather than for abortion rights. MS made a similar argument in 1917: “The rulers of Europe are begging, imploring, crying to woman, using every subterfuge to induce her to breed again. . . . To all these entreaties the working woman must answer No! She must deny the right of the State or Kingdom hereafter to make her a victim of unwilling motherhood, and the handmaiden of militarism.” (MS, “Woman and War,” BCR 1 [June 1917]: 5.) 8. Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834), a British economist, argued in his 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population that population growth would exceed the world’s food supply unless action was taken. He suggested controlling population growth through abstinence or delayed marriage. In the early twentieth century, his followers, known as neo-Malthusians, argued for population control through the use of contraceptives. These German and British socialist leaders opposed the economic ideas of the neo-Malthusians, arguing that family limitation was not the solution to economic inequalities. Both the British Malthusian League and the German Sozial-Harmonische Verein (SHV) (Social Harmony Union) focused on the theoretical and economic aspects of limiting population, leaving the practical issue of obtaining birth control to others. However, groups like the Bund für Mutterschutz und Sexualreform (BfMS) (League for the Protection of Motherhood and Social Reform) argued for birth control and abortion rights to empower women and workers. (Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, 257, xii–xiii, 3–4, 89–90; Pamela Graves, introduction to Women and Socialism, edited by Gruber and Graves, 173, 212; Paul Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism [Cambridge, 1999], 248.) 9. Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919), a Polish-born Marxist theorist and German revolutionary who with Karl Liebknecht cofounded the Spartakus Bund, forerunner of the KPD, rejected neo-Malthusianism, arguing that “the social question can never be solved by self-help, but only by mass-help.” (EB; Luxemburg quoted in R. P. Neuman, “Working Class Birth Control in Wilhelmine Germany,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 20 [July 1978]: 414.) 10. In 1892 French anarcho-syndicalists, who coined the term “birth strike” (grève des ventres), argued that fewer children aided workers in their fight against capitalist society. By 1913 some German activists also called for family limitation, but the powerful SPD opposed it for fear it would weaken the party’s voting bloc. While German anarcho-syndicalists may have adopted the concept of the birth strike from the French Confédération Générale du Travail (General Confederation of Labor), ties between the two groups were strained due to the German group’s staunch antiwar stance. (Jütte, Contraception: A History, 169–70; Usborne, Politics of the Body, 124–25; Thorpe, “Keeping the Faith,” 207.) 11. The Freie Vereinigung Deutscher Gewerkschaften (Free Association of German Trade Unions), established in 1897, was a revolutionary syndicalist and trade union organization that sought worker-managed collectivization and advocated direct-action tactics in the political process. Their opposition to the war resulted in rapid growth from

12  •  Abroad! about 6,000 members in 1914 to more than 100,000 in 1918. Renamed the Freie Arbeiter Union Deutschland (Free Workers Union of Germany) in 1919, by 1923 it formed the Verein für Sexualhygiene und Lebensreform (Association for Sexual Hygiene and Life Reform) to provide contraceptive advice to its members. (Erich Muhsam, Liberating Society from the State, and Other Writings: A Political Reader [Oakland, Calif., 2011], 172; Thorpe, “Keeping the Faith,” 195–96, 211–12; Jütte, Contraception: A History, 169–70; Usborne, Politics of the Body, 124–25.) 12. MS visited children at the feeding station on September 2. The Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers, established the American Friends Service Committee in 1917 to aid European civilians. In June 1919, it began distributing aid in Germany. The committee began its child-feeding program in Germany and Austria in February 1920; by July it was providing meals to 632,000 children a day. Mortality among children under five rose from 13.5 to 21.8 per 1,000 for boys and from 12.8 to 22.3 among girls. (1920 Calendar [LCM 1:411]; Richard L. Cary, “Child-Feeding Work in Germany,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 92 [Nov. 1920]: 159, 162; Mitchell, International Historical Statistics: Europe, 123; Howard, “Social and Political Consequences,” 165–69.) 13. MS refers to “crazy quilt” work, a late-nineteenth-century fad of randomly placed fabric pieces inspired by Japanese pottery. (Elise S. Roberts, The Quilt [Minneapolis, 2010], 233.) 14. Anemia, a condition of low red-blood count that causes weakness, fatigue, and a lack of concentration, can be caused by malnutrition or lack of dietary iron. German schwarzbrot, or black bread, was a dark brown bread made of coarsely ground rye flour, stretched out with potato flour. This wartime recipe caused diarrhea and other digestive problems. (EB; “German War Bread,” British Medical Journal 1 [June 12, 1915]: 1015.) 15. Germany was required to replace the one million cows the French lost during the war. When Germany argued that the resulting milk shortage would cause great suffering to its babies, France responded that it too had hungry babies. (Howard, “Social and Political Consequences,” 162; New York Times, Nov. 12, 1919.) 16. The Allied blockade cut the Central Powers’ food supplies in half in 1918 and continued for months after the November 1918 Armistice. By 1919 Germans and Austrians faced starvation, malnutrition-based disease, and death. (Howard, “Social and Political Consequences,” 161–62, 183.) 17. MS refers to the November 9, 1918, demonstrations, riots, and mass revolts led by Germany’s Socialist parties, which resulted in the kaiser’s abdication and the establishment of a republic headed by Friedrich Ebert, head of the SPD. (B. Davis, Home Fires Burning, 9, 232–35.) 18. Unemployment peaked between 6 and 7 percent in 1919 and was inching down by the summer of 1920. The level of unemployment differed significantly depending on gender, location, class, and industrial sector. It was highest in cites, among women, and in white-collar jobs. (Bessel, “Unemployment and Demobilisation in Germany,” 23–33.) 19. During the war, the German government issued ration cards for bread and other foods. This system continued through 1921 due to low agricultural production and reduced imports. In Berlin coupons permitted adults to buy only 1,950 grams of bread or the same amount of flour per week. (“Germany’s Food Problem,” JAMA 75 [Aug. 21,

September 1920  •  13 1920]: 554; Keith Allen, “Food and the German Home Front: Evidence from Berlin,” in Evidence, History, and the Great War: Historians and the Impact of 1914‑18, edited by Gail Braybon [London, 2003], 180.)

3. “Women in Germany” While Sanger was in Berlin, Rudolf Rocker took her to see Magnus Hirschfeld at his Institute für Sexualwissenschaft (IfS) (Institute for Sexual Science). Carrying a letter of introduction from Havelock Ellis, Sanger asked him about the contraceptive formula and manufacturer Ellis had mentioned. Hirschfeld directed her to a firm in Dresden. (1920 Calendar [LCM 1:411–12]; MS, Autobiography, 287.)

Dresden, [Germany] September 7, 1920. The conditions in this city are somewhat better than in Berlin.1 The streets are cleaner, the people less hungry looking; the cars not so crowded. But the working woman is reduced to the function of pack-horse. This morning I saw a young woman, who could not have been over twenty-five years of age carrying a huge basket strapped to her back; [like] horses, carrying produce from country towns to their homes or stores in the cities. They have become drudge animals in the fields. There are four women to one man taking the place of the truck and work horses. They nurse their babies beyond two years, to supply the milk which, in the absence of cows’ milk, they hope will keep life in the children. It was a great pleasure to me to meet that splendid pioneer of the Woman’s Movement in Germany—Marie Stritt, a woman of refinement, culture, with a fine vigorous mind, speaking English with a care and better choice of words then most well educated Americans.2 Marie Stritt was a Pacifist in the war. Thousands of Pacifists were shot.3 She has been the pioneer in the Birth Control Movement in Germany, and organized the International Congress of the Malthusians in Dresden in 1912.4 She is the editor of the foremost official paper for woman’s suffrage here. She thinks it is not necessary to propagate the idea of Birth Control in Germany now;5 she says that the birth rate has fallen so rapidly in the last few years, that there is no need for spreading knowledge, or encouraging the idea.6 The organized movement is almost out of existence, but the knowledge is spreading everywhere.7 One of the most interesting achievements of Germany is Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexual Science.8 It is the only one of its kind in the world. Here is a beautiful dwelling, with palatial and spacious rooms, which at one time belonged to a member of the royal family. Since the Revolution it has been turned over to Dr. Hirschfeld, who has converted it into a College

14  •  Abroad!

where one may study all subjects relative to, or treating of the science of sex. There are various departments, each with specialists in charge, each department equipped with laboratories and X-rays.9 I am delighted to find Dr. Hirschfeld so well informed on the subject of Birth Control. He is a personal friend of Dr. Rutgers of Holland, through whom he has been kept in touch with the work.10 There is also the possibility of the subject of Birth Control taking its place as a department in this Institute. Dr. Hirschfeld was most cordial and hospitable, and kindly extended to me an invitation to address an audience if I would consent to speak in the Institute. As I was leaving Berlin in a few days, it was impossible to do so, and I greatly regret missing this splendid opportunity of getting the message before the physicians of Germany.11 I am now on my way to Munich to get the facts of the birth strike so generally reported in Europe.12 Then, on to Ravensburg to investigate the clinical preventive which is said to be one hundred per cent. perfect in safety and harmlessness, and is also reported as having the government’s official sanction.13 There are few people in Germany who will not acknowledge that country as overpopulated today. Everyone knows that, even though two million lives were sacrificed in the war, this deficiency has been made up by the million and a half inhabitants who were returned to Germany from Alsace-Lorraine.14 Also on the Polish side there was at least the same number returned to the Fatherland,15 while hundreds of thousands of men and women were deported from England, France and Italy, and sent to the land of their birth. Thousands of them hate Germany—Germany is now a foreign and detested place to them.16 With all the facts of over-population before their eyes; with poverty, overcrowding, lack of food, mothers starving, children doomed to die in a few years, yet those in Germany elected to guide the destinies of the millions, will but reluctantly accept the idea of Birth Control for the masses.17 Of course they all accept and practice it themselves—always—but for the working women it is different. I talked to many of the foremost physicians here, gynecologists and baby specialists. Surely, I thought, these men, considering the kind of work they do, must have a better understanding of the actual needs of the country than others. But in this also, I was disappointed. The physicians are content that woman shall breed; no matter what she suffers, no matter what kind of child she may bring forth.18 I found not one physician, even of those in charge of all the appalling misery of Germany, who dared to say that Birth Control should be encouraged. I found several, however, who stood for women’s right to have abortions—but for contraceptive advice, NO. “It is knowledge that is too dangerous,” said one very well known gynecologist to me. He agreed that something

September 1920  •  15

should be done during these years of chaos, and for the next five years to prevent more babies; but abortion seemed better to him than Birth Control knowledge. Why? Because knowledge to prevent conception involved woman’s freedom. “Once they know how to prevent, they will not go back to their old ways again,” said the learned gentleman. That is the ‘rub’ in Germany.19 I went into one home where there were ten children living—the oldest was twelve years of age, and too young to work. The father a locksmith, was out of work; he had been out of work for several weeks. The family lived on one hundred marks which they received every eight days from the Unemployment Insurance.20 This was Saturday; the money was to come on Monday. These children were huddled together in two rooms, all living, cooking, sleeping there. They had had no breakfast; no dinner; there was not one crumb or morsel of food in that house. They were waiting for Monday. The father had gone to the woods to find mushrooms to keep them alive until their money came. Five of these children had been born since the war began!!! Many other families were in similar positions. They were all clean, but poverty and starvation stamped their faces horribly. The Quakers’ food stations—which by the way the children call “America”—are crowded to their fullest capacity.21 Only children who are ill enough, can come for food. Only mothers pregnant over seven months or who are nursing babies under four months, are allowed food. The spectacle of a nursing mother, or a pregnant mother, bringing her two or three wee children (not ill enough to be admitted) to share her food is too sad and horrible to dwell upon. The Quakers have a problem there, they can not put the children out, yet they want that mother to eat the food herself, for the benefit of the unborn child. Birth Control Review 5 (Jan. 1921): 8–9 (MSM S70:850–51). The second part of this article, written in Munich on September 11, 1920, has been omitted.

1. MS and Rose Witcop left Berlin for Dresden on September 7. Dresden, the capital of Saxony, was one of Germany’s economic and cultural centers. Though unscathed by the world war, the city suffered from the same economic and political instability as the rest of Germany. (Anthony Clayton and Alan Russell, Dresden: A City Reborn [Oxford, 2001], 26–28.) 2. Marie Bacon Stritt (1855–1928), a German feminist and radical member of the BfMS, worked for women’s suffrage, education, and birth control. She backed efforts to repeal Germany’s abortion ban. Stritt called on MS on September 8. The next day MS met Stritt and “Frau F.,” organizer of the local Twilight Sleep Movement. (1920 Calendar [LCM 1:412]; Uglow, Northeastern Dictionary of Women’s Biography, 520; Anne Taylor Allen, “Mothers of the New Generation: Adele Schreiber, Helene Stöcker, and the Evolution of a German Idea of Motherhood,” Signs 10 [Spring 1985]: 432.)

16  •  Abroad! 3. German authorities had censored or imprisoned pacifists during the war. MS is probably referring to the Spartacists, left-wing agitators who opposed the war and sought support from the German working class. Many members, including leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, were shot in 1919 by the Freikorps, angry war veterans used by the government to quell opposition. During the war, Stritt, who made a direct connection between pacifism and feminism, supported peace demonstrations in Germany. (Leila J. Rupp, World of Women: The Making of an International Woman’s Movement [Princeton, N.J., 1997], 24; David Welch, Germany, Propaganda and Total War, 1914–1918: The Sins of Omission [New Brunswick, N.J., 2000], 146; Francis L. Carsten, War against War: British and German Radical Movements in the First World War [Berkeley, Calif., 1982], 215–20.) 4. The Fourth International Neo‑Malthusian Conference, held in Dresden in September 1911 in conjunction with the International Hygiene Exhibition, included representatives from thirteen countries. (MS, introduction to International Aspects of Birth Control, viii.) 5. Stritt had edited Frauenfrage (Woman Question), the journal of the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (German Federation of Woman’s Associations), until 1910, when she was ousted by its right wing. (Uglow, Northeastern Dictionary of Women’s Biography, 520.) 6. The German birthrate dropped from 27.5 per 1,000 in 1913 to 14.3 in 1918 and rose only to 20 in 1919. (Mitchell, International Historical Statistics: Europe, 864.) 7. MS refers to the SHV, founded in 1889, which focused on economic arguments on the birthrate, and the BfMS, founded in 1905, which fought for sexual equality and birth control. The work of these organizations was credited with reducing the birthrate and making birth control devices more readily available. (Woycke, Birth Control in Germany, 169; Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, 181–82; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 16.) 8. Magnus Hirschfeld (1868–1935), a physician, pioneer of sexology, and advocate of homosexual emancipation, founded the IfS in 1919. (Hirschfeld, “Bericht über das erste Tätigkeitsjahr,” 54–74.) 9. The IfS sought to “free the individual from physical ailments, psychological afflictions, and social deprivations” through scientific research methods. It offered facilities for research, teaching, healing, and refuge and boasted Germany’s first marriage and sexual counseling programs. The IfS staff advised clients, produced and distributed sex education publications, and offered lectures on problems connected to sexuality. It was housed in a large three-story villa originally built for violinist Joseph Joachim and later owned by the Prussian ambassador to France. (Hirschfeld, “Bericht über das erste Tätigkeitsjahr,” 54–74; New York Herald Tribune, May 16, 1935.) 10. The IfS provided birth control advice and methods to three thousand people in 1919. Hirschfeld was a strong advocate of birth control and also campaigned to decriminalize abortion. Johannes “Jan” Rutgers (1850–1924), a Dutch physician, socialist, and leader of the Nieuw‑Malthusiaansche Bond (NMB) (Dutch Neo-Malthusian League), had established a series of contraceptive clinics staffed by lay working-class women trained by midwives. MS met him in 1915 at The Hague, where he gave her a short course in fitting diaphragms. (Magnus Hirschfeld, “My Views on Birth Control,” BCR 15 [Nov. 1931]: 309–10; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 16; Jütte, Contraception: A History, 171; Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, 178–79; MS, My Fight for Birth Control, 109; see also Vol. 1.)

September 1920  •  17 11. MS’s IfS visit took place on September 1; she left Berlin six days later. (1920 Calendar [LCM 1:411–12].) 12. A source in Dresden advised MS that the contraceptive formula might be found in Munich. She went to Munich on September 10, “to me the most lovely city in Germany,” as well as the most prosperous. The “birth strike” was promoted by Otto Ehinger in 1913 as a tool to break the power of the capitalist class by the workers, whose large families ensured their misery. German women claimed that “the debt saddled on Germany by the entente will make slaves of the entire nation for years to come, and that children should not be brought into the world to face a life of misery.” (1920 Calendar [LCM 1:412–13]; MS, Autobiography, 287 [quote 1]; Louis Quessel, “Economics of the Birth Strike,” in Population and Birth-Control, edited by Paul and Paul, 151; Chicago Daily Tribune, Apr. 27, 1921 [quote 2].) 13. MS headed for Friedrichshafen, a town near Ravensburg in southern Germany on Lake Constance, on September 19. There she found the chemist. “He feared to let me go near his establishment,” she recalled, “suspicious that an American might steal his formula. But he showed me a picture of it and gave me a few sample tubes,” telling her she could obtain more from his sister in New York. There is no record that MS followed up on it. (MS, Autobiography, 289–90 [quote 290]; 1920 Calendar [LCM 1:414].) 14. Germany lost between 1.7 and 2.5 million people during World War I, but only a little more than 300,000 civilians returned to Germany from Alsace and Lorraine between 1918 and 1920. (Colin Nicholson, Longman Companion to the First World War [London, 2001], 248; Laird Boswell, “From Liberation to Purge Trials in the ‘Mythic Provinces,’” French Historical Studies 23, no. 1 [2000]: 140–41.) 15. Only 200,000 to 300,000 Germans had returned to Germany from Poland by 1921. (Richard Planke, Orphans of Versailles: The Germans in Western Poland, 1918–1939 [Lexington, Ky., 1993], 32.) 16. France returned about 450,000 Germans and the United Kingdom more than 275,000, many of them prisoners of war. It is unclear how many Germans returned from Italy. Many of these returnees criticized the German government for the poor economic conditions they faced. Former prisoners of war reported better living conditions in Allied prison camps. (New York Times, July 19, 1919; Manchester Guardian, Feb. 3, 1920; M. B., “German Minorities in Europe,” Bulletin of International News 17 [Mar. 9, 1940]: 281; Los Angeles Times, Nov. 3, 1919.) 17. Germany’s laws on birth control and abortion had not changed since 1900. While the Weimar government introduced many social reforms, it expanded efforts to promote large families. Section 218 of the German Penal Code outlawed abortion save for those strictly medically required, and Section 184.3 banned advertising and promotion of birth control while allowing the manufacture and sale of contraceptives. (Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 8.) 18. Most German doctors adopted the pronatalist outlook of the government and strongly opposed efforts to liberalize German laws on abortion. After the war, a few began to support birth control, but it was not until 1924 that the Verein Sozialistischer Ärzte (VSÄ) (Association of Socialist Doctors) accepted birth control. (Usborne, Politics of the Body, 102, 128, 182.)

18  •  Abroad! 19. Dr. Kurt Bendix, who headed the Verband der Krankenkassen Berlins (VKB) (Berlin Health Insurance League), noted that “while individual doctors, especially the younger ones, are interested in contraception, the official medical organizations are strongly opposed to birth control propaganda, both on moral and professional grounds.” (Bendix, “Birth Control in Berlin,” in Proceedings of the Third World Congress for Sexual Reform, edited by Norman Haire [London, 1930], 659.) 20. Germany formed its unemployment relief system in 1918. By January 1919, it was paying single men between thirty-six and sixty-four marks per week, with a bit more for married men with children. Though these rates went up in July 1920, the amount was insufficient to cover a family’s expenses. (Bessel, “Unemployment and Demobilisation,” 29–30, 48–49.) 21. See MS, “Women in Germany,” Aug. 18, 1920, note 12, herein.

4. From Johannes Rutgers

Lochem: Holland 1/10 20

Dear Mrs. Sanger! What a blessing that you have been able to awake public opinion on the Continent in favor of Birth-control, what before war was quite impossible and was always prohibited as much as possible.1 And when you come back next year I sincerely hope it will be possible to meet you!2 In fact we are living here just like heremits, dead for the world, for the benefit of Mrs Rutgers’s health. She is not worse, but neither better, alas! But I will do for her what I can.3 Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute in Berlin is strict theoretical: but surely he will interest himself in the question, and I will remember him of your martyrdom.4 Why cannot you stay in Europ and give instruction to nurses everywhere? The League in Holland is more active now and more democratic as ever before.5 Is not Mrs. T. de Beer-Meyers in Amsterdam an excellent woman?6 Don’t go in prison in U.S.A. dear one, it is of no use, and we cannot illegible without your initiatives. In London you are more safe, just because the League there was always somewhat more aristocratic and theoretical.7 That is now of the greatest use for the whole world. Let us hope womans selfcontrol over her own body will soon be admitted by law also in U.S.A. with some guarantees against abuses just as in Holland.8 yours faithful: [Dr.] Rutgers [Written along left margin of second page] Many many compliments to Dr. Dunlop and to all our Friends in London and in U.S.A.9 Your address in London is quite near to Dr. Alice Vickery? Is she quite well?10 My best compliments! ALS MSP, DLC (LCM 10:108–9).

october 1920  •  19 1. In the West, only the United States, Canada, and France had strict laws against birth control by 1920. Other European nations imposed conditions, such as in the Netherlands, which restricted the sale of contraceptives; Germany, where contraceptive advertisements were banned when intended for indecent use; and Denmark, where doctors controlled access to contraceptives. (Watson, “Birth Control and Abortion in France,” 261–62; Jütte, Contraception: A History, 138–40; McLaren, History of Contraception, 222.) 2. MS planned to attend the International Conference on Contraceptives held in Amsterdam on August 29–30, 1921, but Rutgers could not. They first met during MS’s European exile in 1914–15. (MS to Rublee, Aug. 25, 1921 [MSM C1:804]; MS, “Impressions of the Amsterdam Conference,” BCR 5 [Nov. 1921]: 11 [MSM S70:922]; see also Vol. 1.) 3. Marie Rutgers-Hoitsema (1847–1934) was a Dutch socialist, feminist, and suffragist who headed the NMB from 1900 to 1912. MS reported that she had been an invalid since 1915, though the nature of her ailment was not found. (Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, 195–97; MS, Autobiography, 145.) 4. For more on Magnus Hirschfeld’s IfS, see MS, “Women in Germany,” Sept. 7, 1920, notes 8–10, herein. Rutgers refers to MS’s federal indictments for obscenity in 1914. (For more on Sanger’s exile, see Vol. 1.) 5. Founded in 1881, the NMB differed from French and British leagues in its dedication to providing practical contraceptive information to the working class by distributing publications and opening free clinics. (Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, 173–80.) 6. Flora de Beer‑Meijers (1857–1943), a Dutch birth control advocate and NMB vice president, escorted MS to several clinics in the Netherlands in 1915. She met with MS in Amsterdam again in August 1920. (Josine Blok, Jaarboek voor vrouwengeschiedenis [Nijmegen, 1980], 1:139; MS, “My Experiences in Holland,” July 1931 [MSM S73:121]; 1920 Calendar [LCM 1:410].) 7. The British Malthusian League, founded in London in 1877, was the first organization to promote contraception. ML members, who came chiefly from the urban middle and upper classes, argued that the poor should use artificial means to limit their family size in relation to their incomes. Socialists opposed the ML, arguing instead for increases in wages. (Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, xiii–xx, 90.) 8. In the United States, the 1873 Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use (commonly known as the Comstock Act) banned the importation and mailing of contraceptives as well as providing information about their distribution. Individual state “little Comstock” laws often went further, banning the selling, giving, or exhibiting of contraceptives. The 1911 Dutch Moral Offenses Act prohibited the advertising, public display, and unsolicited offering of contraceptives and sale of devices to minors. Rutgers approved of these restrictions as a measure against quack providers. (Brodie, Contraception and Abortion, 256–57; Frans van Poppel and Hugo Röling, “Physicians and Fertility Control in the Netherlands,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 34 [Autumn 2003]: 160; Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, 180.) 9. Binnie Dunlop (1874–1946), a Scottish physician and the ML’s secretary, edited its journal, the Malthusian, from 1916 to 1918. (Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian

20  •  Abroad! League, 63, 78; Charles Drysdale, “Dr. Binnie Dunlop,” New Generation 25 [Aug. 1946], 506.) 10. MS was staying at 52 Rotherwick Road, Garden Suburb, N.W., a residential community a few miles outside London, next door to Alice Vickery (1844–1929), a feminist physician, freethinker, and founder and president of the ML. (MS to Hugh de Selincourt, June 15, 1920 [LCM 3:398]; Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, 61, 191; MS, My Fight, 101–3.)

5. To the Government of Japan In the summer of 1921, Sanger signed a contract with Kaizo-sha, the publishing firm that put out the socialist journal Kaizo, to give a series of lectures in Japan in the spring of 1922. But less than a week before Sanger was to set sail, the Japanese consul general denied her visa application on the grounds that she was “likely to disturb the public peace and corrupt public morals.” While the Japanese government had begun to allow democratic institutions more freedom to operate, it remained fearful of social unrest and wary of Western radicalism. Sanger was a government target because of her former association with radicals and anarchists. The visa controversy made headlines on both sides of the Pacific. Sanger told reporters that if Japan did not address its overpopulation by accepting birth control, “I see nothing but a war of aggression that must come inevitably within the next twenty or twenty-five years.” (Kosai Uchida to Shichitaro Yada, Feb. 15, 1922 [FMA]; San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 21, 1922 [quote 1]; New York Times, Feb. 18 [quote 2] and 19, 1922; E. Tipton, “Birth Control and the Population Problem,” 43–45.)

San Francisco, California. February 18th, 1922. In view of my not having the Japanese Vise on my Passport, I hereby agree not to attempt to leave the S.S. “TAIYO MARU,” during the stay of said vessel at any Japanese ports.1 Tickets have been issued to me on this understanding only. [signed] Margaret Sanger TLS MSP, DLC (LCM 18:944).

1. The Taiyo Maru, built in 1921, was the flagship of the Nippon Yusen Kaisha fleet. (New York Times, July 24, 1942.)

6. To Hugh de Selincourt 1 Japanese authorities, still “much alarmed” over the possibility of Sanger lecturing in Japan, continued to deliberate the decision to bar her. A group within the Home Office argued that Sanger did not pose a threat and should be allowed to “let the scholars and educated people of Japan hear what she has to say.” But the home minister held steadfast to his deci-

February 1922  •  21 sion to withhold Sanger’s visa on moral grounds. (Japan Advertiser, Feb. 18 [quotes] and 21, 1922; Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 70.)

En Route to Japan [San Francisco, Calif.]2 Feb 19— [1922]

Dear Hugh: Did I thank you for the ripping tribute to our King? It reads splendidly as I hovered over it last night in the B.C.R.3 Here many persons spoke [of?] its literary quality and Chicago group ordered a bundle of Reviews just to send your article on to people—new ones.4 So you see what you can do for this cause when you set to work at it. I do wish Hugh blessed you would send in now & then some thing, of your very own—a review an essay, an—oh anything you think worth while writing. I simply adore your 1922 Tribute to H. and give you a life job of sending me something each February about him as long as he lives—5 Agreed? So! Here I am blocked again Japanese gov’t from Tokio refuse to let me come to their fairy land & I am sad & unhappy. I am sailing on Tuesday as scheduled Feb 21—and have had to extend my ticket to Shanghi. Trusting the gods will arrange it with the Tokio government in the meantime to change & allow me to step upon their precious Island.6 I shall be greatly upset if I can not do this. I am contracted to give five lectures, but I hear now that Bertram Russell had difficulty also.7 Same government. I am besieged with Japanese reporters who are so polite & kind & bow so nicely over my hand & smile so encouragingly into ones eyes—that I am enchanted already & want to go to Japan!8 I feel like a naughty girl & want to bang on their door & stamp my foot & that failing to open it—to kiss the door and make it open. Anyway Im going and as I believe in gods & fairies I’ll have faith in their power. In the meantime all Japan is excited over this arbitrary ruling against a little woman no body knows much about. Parliament may take a hand so a reporter said today:9 Hugh dear— I cant hear from you for ages— Ill be going to India & around by Italy & France & arrive in London July first unless I stop in Spain to see Havelock. But Im to be at the B.C. [Conference] in London July first.10 So shall see you & you shall see Grant.11 I have him with me & we expect to have such fun together. Perhaps I can leave him at your house with Bridget while I confer at B. Control. yes?12 I shall write you from time to time. love to Janet Harold13 & a big hug to you. ever lovingly Margaret ALS MSP, DLC (LCM 3:763–69). Letterhead of the Hotel St. Francis.

22  •  Abroad! 1. Hugh de Selincourt (1878–1951), a novelist and literary critic, was best known in England for his chronicles of village cricket matches. He met MS in 1920 and immediately entered into a love affair. Even after it ended, he remained one of MS’s closest confidants and most regular correspondents. (Times [London], Jan. 22, 1951; for more on their relationship, see Vols. 1–3.) 2. She secured a visa allowing her entry into China, but only after she signed the statement promising not to leave the ship at any Japanese ports. (MS to the Government of Japan, Feb. 18, 1922, herein.) 3. MS was referring to de Selincourt’s article “Havelock Ellis: A Great Humanist,” BCR 6 (Feb. 1922): 4–6. Ellis (1859–1939), a British physician, psychologist, and sex reformer, was a widely known proponent of post-Victorian modernism. Both de Selincourt and MS deeply loved and admired Ellis, referring to him as “the King.” MS founded the BCR in 1917. It became the monthly journal of MS’s American Birth Control League (ABCL) in 1921. (DNB; Grosskurth, Havelock Ellis, 290; de Selincourt to MS, June 2 and 14, 1920 [LCM 3:373–74]; for more on Ellis, see Vols. 1–2.) 4. MS stopped in Chicago en route to San Francisco and on February 11 attended a tea for members of the Illinois Birth Control League (the “Chicago group”). (“News Notes,” BCR 6 [Mar. 1922]: 29.) 5. Ellis was born on February 2, 1859. Starting in 1919, MS published an annual birthday tribute (save for 1921) to Ellis in the February issue until she gave up her editorship in 1929. This gesture helped to revive his reputation. (Ellis to MS, Feb. 21, 1919, and MS to de Selincourt, Feb. 24, 1921 [LCM 4:531, 3:770]; Grosskurth, Havelock Ellis, 290.) 6. MS planned to lobby the many Japanese officials on the Taiyo Maru who were returning from the Washington Peace Conference. (MS, Autobiography, 317; Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 70.) 7. MS’s contract with Kaizō-sha, the publisher of Kaizō, was for eight to ten lectures on birth control in March and April. A year earlier, well-known British philosopher and writer Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) visited Japan. Russell, a pacifist and Socialist, reported being “dogged by police spies” and hounded by an intrusive press. (Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 22, 68; MS, Autobiography, 316; DNB; Bertrand Russell, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, vol. 2, 1914–1944 [Boston, 1968], 191–94 [quote 192]; New York Times, Apr. 21, 1921.) 8. MS was interviewed by reporters from the Tokyo Asahi Shinbun, the Nichi Nichi Shinbun, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among others. (Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 71; Japan Advertiser, Feb. 18, 21, and 22, 1922; Japan Times & Mail, Feb. 20, 1922; Japan Weekly Chronicle, Feb. 23, 1922, 252; San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 21, 1922.) 9. MS’s planned trip was reported in Japan on January 12, just as its Home and Justice Ministries were drafting a “Law to Control Radical Social Movements” to tighten restrictions on the spread of radical ideas. The Japanese press opposed further restrictions, claiming the government wanted to suppress free speech. MS’s trip took on additional significance, according to the Japan Advertiser, which reported that “movements both in support of and opposing the possible visit of Mrs. Sanger to Japan are now being organized here.” (Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 69, 75–76 [quote 75]; Japan Advertiser, Feb. 22, 1922.)

March 1922  •  23 10. MS had not yet set her itinerary, but needed to be in London for the July 11 start of the Fifth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference (5INMBCC). She also wanted to see Havelock Ellis, who planned to vacation in the Pyrenees in August. (1922 Diary [MSM S70:24]; Grosskurth, Havelock Ellis, 308.) 11. MS refers to her thirteen-year-old son, Grant Sanger (1908–89), who accompanied her on the tour. (MS, Autobiography, 316; 1922 Calendar [MSM S78:509, 513].) 12. Grant Sanger left London on July 18, but it is not clear if he stayed with the de Selincourts. Bridget de Selincourt (Balkwill) (1910–70), then age twelve, was Hugh and Janet de Selincourt’s daughter. (MS to Hugh de Selincourt, July 15, 1922 [LCM 3:407]; 1922 Calendar [MSM S78:509]; Times [London], Nov. 6, 1985.) 13. Pianist Janet Wheeler de Selincourt (1879–1955), wife of Hugh de Selincourt, lived in an open marriage with her husband and her lover Harold Hannyngton Child (1869–1945). Child was a British writer, poet, and drama critic for the Observer (1912–20), who coedited the Times Literary Supplement. (Times [London], Apr. 28, 1955; 1901 British Census; DNB.)

7. To Anne Kennedy 1 Accompanied by wealthy suitor J. Noah Slee and her thirteen-year-old son, Grant, Sanger sailed on the Taiyo Maru on February 21 and was scheduled to land in Yokohama on March 10. In Japan pressure mounted to allow her entry. As one newspaper noted, “The authorities have given Mrs. Sanger the finest advertisement in their power and every newspaper reader in Japan will shortly know more about birth control than he or she would have known if no effort had been made to hush it up.” Prefectural officials in Yokohama could not understand the “fuss over the landing of a mere woman.” Sanger told a reporter that Japanese officials, still debating whether she was too radical, were “under a delusion about me. I have met many Japanese, but none of them have opposed my theories.” While en route, she cabled various officials in Japan, promising not to speak publicly on birth control methods and to confine her remarks to “the necessity of birth control for social improvement.” (1922 Calendar [MSM S78:499]; Japan Advertiser, Mar. 7, 1922 [quotes].)

↑S. S.↓ Taiyo ↑Maru↓, [at sea] March 8—↑aietro↓2 [1922]

Dear Anne Kennedy: We are nearing the end of our trip— My landing is still mysterious, though from the various invitations I am reciving to speak before representative groups, it would seem I must be going to land.3 In order to save my writing the same things to all of you—please pass my letters on to eachother to read. If there is anything personal or private Ill mark it so. But if you & Anna & Clara Louise exchange letters & file them away for my return it will save me a load of repetition and keep you all informed at the same time.4 This Doctors association at Kyoto is said to be very powerful as there is an Imperial University at that place.5 So it may do lots of good to go there, though it is thirteen hours railroad journey from Tokio.

24  •  Abroad!

Grant is enjoying new friends—several college fellows are on board. Young men from Yale & Cornell who have lived in U.S.A. for six & seven years—just going back to Japan & knowing fully that they will not fit in with their home life again.6 Its interesting for Grant all of it. You would rejoice over the kindness the various Japanese on board have shown toward me. Many of those, prominent delegates, have already cabled to Tokio to advise authorities to allow my enterence into Japan.7 Yesterday I addressed a group of fifty second class passengers. One young couple from R.I. were old friends of the cause and Subscribers to B.C.R.8 Today I am to have a private session with about a dozen or more elderly women on board, who are going to Pekin for that International Christian Conference {YMCA YWCA}9 forgot just what it calls itself.10 But John R Mott heads the delegation and Mrs Mott has asked me to speak before the women delegates today.11 Oh dear Anne Kennedy “it moves” “it moves”—12 The enclosed cables show that it will move in Japan also. When I get the idea well going in Japan I want to get a good hold on China. So I may remain longer in China than I first anticipated. There is every reason to believe the movement will get a splendid start in Japan. I await with interest the results of all this publicity— There has been tremendous interest all through Japan & if I address all the people who are asking me I shall be worked thin. I am writing Clara Louise about my Honolulu trip & lecture.13 Be sure to bring to London some of our Reviews & some of our literature, these Principles & Aims are good also “What BC will do” is good & simple—14 I have had a good lazy trip rested fully and am now ready to “eat ’em alive.” I long to hear from you. Shall cable if I land & shall keep you fully informed— Mrs Brandt15 wants to know about my trip. So keep her informed of my letters & read them to her if she wants it. All love to you— ever lovingly Margaret Sanger Am dying to see the Review— I dreamed about it last night rather disturbing dream about a newly published book also. But it means nothing I guess. as always MS [Written at top margin of first page] Show enclosed telegrams to Anna & ask her to tell news the Japanese at 246 W 14. ALS FRP, MN-SSC (MSM S2:125–33). Interlineations by MS were probably added later.

1. Anne Reid Kennedy (1875–1965), an ABCL secretary and BCR associate editor, was a close friend of MS who ran the ABCL offices in MS’s absence. (Los Angeles Times, Jan. 18, 1965; for more on Kennedy, see Vol. 1.)

March 1922  •  25 2. The author of the handwritten interlineation was not identified. This was possibly a spelling of “eito,” an English rendering of the Japanese word for “eight.” 3. Though the invitations were not found, one newspaper reported that MS received a number of telegrams inviting her to address groups such as the New York Society of Nagoya, a business organization, and the Medical Associations of Nagoya and Kyoto. Kaizo had by then arranged four additional public lectures. (Japan Advertiser, Mar. 3, 1922; B. Ono to MS, Mar. 10, 1922, translation of Tokio Nichi Nichi, Mar. 9, 1922, and Kaizō-sha to MS, Mar. 20, 1922 [LCM 18:947, 953, 965].) 4. MS refers to Anna Lifshiz (1895–1974), her personal secretary, and Clara Louise Rowe (McGraw) (1895–1950), an ABCL secretary hired in 1921. (New York Times, July 10, 1974; editors’ telephone conversation with Patricia Ziegler, Feb. 28, 2002; ABCL Board of Directors Minutes, Oct. 2, 1923 [MSM S61:90]; for more on Lifshiz and Rowe, see Vols. 1–2.) 5. The Medical Association of Kyoto sent MS “a radio message of welcome” inviting her to speak “on her favorite subject.” Kyoto Imperial University was Japan’s second national university, founded in 1897, and known for its tradition of academic freedom. (Hunter, Concise Dictionary, 107; Japan Times & Mail, Mar. 7, 1922 [quotes].) 6. The Cornell student may have been Tokisuke Yokogawa (1896–1974), who graduated in 1921 and later headed Yokogawa Electric. Three Japanese men graduated from Yale in 1921—Seijiro Naito, Rev. Hayao Kashiwagi, and Shimeta Yamada—but it is unclear if they were aboard. The students would have had to readjust to Japan’s strong cultural and societal traditions and an authoritarian government. (Cornellian [Ithaca, N.Y., 1921], 178; Alumni Directory of Yale University: Living Graduates and Non‑graduates [New Haven, Conn., 1923], 389, 447, 625; F. Tipton, History of Modern Japan, 88–107.) 7. On February 24, MS spoke to more than one hundred Japanese officials and military personnel on board, including Admiral Baron Tomasaburō Katō (1861–1923) and Masanao Hanihara (1876–1934), the vice minister of foreign affairs. Hanihara telegrammed the government: “She is a well-educated, honest woman, and is recognized internationally. Considering her status and fame, it is difficult to understand why our government decided not to allow Mrs. Sanger to land. I fear that that kind of action may have harmful influences.” Another telegram sent by a group of Japanese passengers asserted that birth control “should be of interest to every loyal & intelligent Japanese.” (1922 Calendar [MSM S78:548]; Japan Weekly Chronicle, Mar. 9, 1922; Japan Times & Mail, Mar. 10, 1922; MS, Autobiography, 318; Masanao Hanihara to Kosai Uchida, Feb. 24, 1922 [FMA] [quote 1]; Renzo Sawada et al. to Government of Japan, Mar. 1922 [quote 2] [MSM S2:139].) 8. MS described the audience as “mostly influential Japanese from Honolulu,” where the ship had stopped on February 27. (1922 Calendar [MSM S78:554].) 9. The word “YWCA” was written below “YMCA” on the same line. 10. MS refers to the International Conference of the World’s Christian Student Federation (WCSF), not the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), an organization that fostered the creation and work of Christian student organizations abroad. The meeting was held in Peking from March 29 to April 12. (Los Angeles Times, Feb. 18, 1922; Guide to the Archive of the World’s Christian Student Federation [Yale Divinity School]; Washington Post, Apr. 11, 1922.) 11. John R. Mott (1865–1955), a missionary activist, was general secretary of the Young Men’s Christian Association International Committee and the founder and former

26  •  Abroad! secretary of the WCSF. His wife, Lelia White Mott (1866–1952), a Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) national council member, often accompanied her husband abroad. MS noted that the twenty-five women were “all in favor & interested.” (ANB; New York Times, Sept. 30, 1952; 1922 Calendar [quote] [MSM S78:554].) 12. MS’s quote is from Genevieve Grandcourt’s poem “And Still It Moves,” a tribute to Galileo and “all those who have the persecution bee in their bonnets,” published in the February 1919 BCR (13). 13. In Honolulu MS spoke on birth control to about five hundred people. The letter was not found. (“News Notes,” BCR 6 [Apr. 1922]: 56; 1922 Calendar [MSM S78:550].) 14. Kennedy was to meet MS in July 1922 in London for the 5INMBCC, where Kennedy would give two reports. The ABCL pamphlets were Principles and Aims of the ABCL (Nov. 1921) (MSM C12:32) and Birth Control—What It Will Do (MS Unfilmed). (5INMBCC Program, July 11–14, 1922 [MSM S67:18].) 15. Zelma Corning Brandt (1891–1990) was a publicist and literary agent with the firm of Brandt & Kirkpatrick, which had represented MS since 1921. (SSDI; Brandt & Kirkpatrick to MS, Aug. 22, 1921 [LCM 135:88].)

8. Journal Entry As the Taiyo Maru entered Yokohama harbor, Sanger’s status was still in question, as public ridicule of the government continued. One newspaper welcomed Sanger “to the Land of the Rising Sun and the Closed Mouth.” Criticism from the press, along with protests from some governmental officials, and the entreaties of dignitaries aboard ship finally persuaded the Home Office to relent, but with the stipulation that Sanger could not “make any address that we judge harmful to public morals.” (Japan Times & Mail, Mar. 9, 1922 [quote 1]; Japan Weekly Chronicle, Mar. 2, 1922, 318, and Mar. 9, 1922, 314; Japan Advertiser, Mar. 11, 1922 [quote 2].)

[Yokohama, Japan] March 10. [1922] Rain cold fog makes the sight of Japan impossible. Sent cable to Consul general Schidmore to arrange for landing.1 As soon as pilot came aboard I was requested to come to smoking room, there officials of Government (Japanese) asked to speak in private to me, we went to cabin an interpreter & stenographer came also.2 I was asked to show my American passport, then to tell the purpose of my visit, who had asked me to come here. How I knew Mr Yamamoto.3 How I knew Baroness Ishimoto.4 There was always a smile on the face of the official as well as upon the countenance of the Interpreter. After much minute questioning it was told me that it would be necessary for me to apply to the American Consul to use his influence for me to land or enter Japan. Also I was to sign a statement that I would not give a public

March 1922  •  27

lecture on Birth Control during my stay here. I wrote this letter & also one to the Governor of Yokohama to that effect.5 In two minutes after the door was closed upon the government officials, I was besieged with reporters. At least twenty-five crowded into my cabin to ask me questions, to sign cards or to make ↑take↓ a picture ↑photograph↓— Baron Ishimoto fortunately was there early to advise me6 & also came Mr Yamamoto & his group from Kaizo. Had to go on deck to be photographed at least by a dozen photographers. Then more interviews—7 Mr Wilson of Embassy was there to pay his respects & do all he could to make landing possible.8 Every reporter expressed his regrets that the government was acting this way & said the people of Japan want me to come here and desire to hear about birth control.9 Baroness Ishimoto came in her native costume, very tall & lovely to look at. Speaking a clear & fine English.10 Mr Coleman also came & obligingly took my case with MS.S. along for safety.11 Mrs [illegible] ↑Kohashi↓ the woman reporter or Editor of Womans Magazine—- ———came & also a delegation of six women representing New Woman Movement in Japan.12 These adorably perfect doll women came in costume, bowing so stately & courteously from the waist to the floor almost, took ones thoughts away from the difficulties of officials & the trials of the day and brought first the perfume of a fairy land with gnomes & delightful wise old ladies to the realization that these little New Women in Japan are the instrument to carry out the real dreams of an emancipated womanhood in Japan. Tea was served to Grant, Baroness Ishimoto & myself while waiting for Police permission. Finally in came a rush of men. Mr Yamamoto, translator Baron Ishimoto & several others to say “all is well” the Chief of Police13 the Governor had given me permission to enter Japan but ↑U.S.↓ Consul General would not be responsible so would not sign necessary papers.14 Thus the delay. We at last were off the boat. Trunks bags etc carried to customs, where they were carefully examined. Most amusing manner of [examinator] looking for B.C. Books. At last discovered Family Limitation and confiscated forty pamphlets. Everything in bags & trunks gone through.15 The crowd around automobile came to get signatures and to say they were with me and birth control is a good idea. The advice from authorities was not to talk to the Press, I sensed a fear of the Press in all official interviews.16 Dinner at Grand Hotel, Yokohama17 with eight Japanese gentlemen. Baroness went home to care for children.18 All friends from Boat Taiyo at dinner at Hotel.

28  •  Abroad!

Raining torrents, no special impression yet, except parasols, jinrichas19 and women with babies on backs, also wooden shoes making queer noise20 especially at Stations where crowds of people come out of trains. While waiting at Station for automobile reporters snapped & flashed light photographs. Then home to Barons house where fires in fireplaces cheered us after a long fatiguing day.21 More flash lights for out of town papers, and Grant & I went to bed in large airy bright room fire burning nicely. Maid prepared hot, oh so hot, bath in which one sits & soaks & gets warm, one washes & scrubs before getting into tub. Anyone else wishing bath gets into the same tub of water. It seems complicated so far, But familiarity eases & simplifies every problem. AD MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S70:31–36). Interlineations by MS.

1. George Hawthorne Scidmore (1854–1922), a career foreign service officer, was the American consul general in Yokohama from 1913 to 1922. MS’s cable was not found. (WWW America.) 2. The Taiyo Maru was surrounded by police launches, mail tenders, and press boats, as health officers and other government authorities boarded. Among them were Chief Yakata of the Kanagawa Prefecture Police and his interpreter, who questioned MS for about a half hour. (Japan Weekly Chronicle, Mar. 16, 1922; Japan Times & Mail, Mar. 11, 1922.) 3. Sanehiko Yamamoto (1885–1952) was a politician who founded the Kaizo-sha publishing company in 1919. Chief Yakata also asked MS who funded her trip, “the implication being,” MS later wrote, “that I might be a secret agent sent by the United States Government to deplete the population of Japan.” (JBE; MS, Autobiography, 320 [quote].) 4. Baroness Shidzue Ishimoto (Katō) (1897–2001), feminist, pacifist, and Socialist organizer, pioneered the birth control movement in Japan. After meeting MS in New York in 1920, she formed the short-lived Nihon Sanji Chôsetsu Renmei (NSCR1) (Birth Control League of Japan). (Times [London], Jan. 1, 2002; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 20–22.) 5. For the letters to George Scidmore and Kanagawa Prefecture governor Inoue Kosai (1870?–1943?), see MS to Scidmore, Mar. 10, 1922, and MS to Kosai, Mar. 10, 1922 (FMA). 6. Baron Keikichi Ishimoto (1887–1951) was a mining engineer, labor reformer, and Christian humanist who, with his wife, Shidzue, hosted MS in Tokyo. His father was made a baron in 1907. MS liked the baron, but noted, “I would not consider him as quick or as alert as the Baroness.” (Ishimoto, Facing Two Ways, 183, 226; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 2, 24; 1922 Diary [quote] [MSM S70:76].) 7. “A dozen regular waterfront reporters” and “an army of star writers from the Tokyo newspapers” as well as several foreign correspondents crammed into MS’s cabin, “crowded the doorway, stood upon the bed and occupied odd corners,” then all moved to the top deck to take photographs. (Japan Times & Mail, Mar. 11, 1922 [quotes 1–2]; Japan Advertiser, Mar. 11, 1922 [quote 3].) 8. Hugh Robert Wilson (1885–1946) was a career diplomat stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo in 1921–22. (New York Times, Dec. 30, 1946.)

March 1922  •  29 9. Newspapers and women’s magazines had begun covering birth control in the late 1910s. The coverage increased dramatically with the news of Sanger’s visa controversy. According to one paper, Japanese who before were “indifferent to birth control but knew practically nothing of it are now asking for books on the subject.” (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 21; Japan Advertiser, Mar. 8, 1922 [quote].) 10. Though only twenty-five years old, Ishimoto was thoroughly modern in her attitudes, but as the daughter of a privileged Samurai family and the wife of an aristocrat, she often dressed in traditional costume. (MS, Autobiography, 296; Times [London], Jan. 1, 2002.) 11. Horace E. Coleman (1873–1932), an American Quaker missionary with the World Sunday School Association, had lived in Japan since 1900. He and his wife, Elizabeth, helped Shidzue Ishimoto organize the NSCR1 in 1921. The manuscript MS refers to was probably a galley copy of MS’s Pivot of Civilization. (Illinois Deaths and Stillbirths Index; Elizabeth Coleman to MS, May 16, 1921 [LCM 18:932]; 1922 Journal [MSM S70:38, 76–77].) 12. Miyoke Kohashi (1883–1922), who had studied at Columbia University’s School of Journalism, became an editor of Shufu no tomo (Housewife’s Friend) in 1922. The Shin Fujin Kyokai (SFK) (New Women’s Association), a leading feminist group founded in 1919, was lobbying for a bill to enable Japanese women to organize and attend political assemblies. Among its leaders were Mumeo Wada Oku and Makoto Takada Sakamoto. Another member, Shina Seki, was one of the six who greeted MS upon her arrival. MS spoke to the SFK on March 18. (Seattle Passenger & Crew Lists, 1882–1957; New York Times, June 9, 1922; Japan Advertiser, Mar. 1, 1922; Hiroko Tomida, Hiratsuka Raicho and Early Japanese Feminism [Boston, 2004], 263, 317, 321; Japan Weekly Chronicle, Mar. 23, 1922; translation of article from Hechi Shinbun, Mar. 11, 1922 [LCM 18:953].) 13. Chief of Police Yuchi (sometimes spelled “Uchi” or “Yuji”) Kōhei (1870–?), a member of the House of Peers, supported birth control for “some people of the lower classes” but feared that the well-to-do would also adopt it. (“Who’s Who in Japan,” Japan Year Book 27 (1931): 28; Japan Advertiser, Mar. 11, 1922 [quote].) 14. Scidmore had forwarded MS’s request to Kosai Inouye, noting that it would be “a favor if you will grant her special permission to land.” He left it to the Japanese “to come to an understanding” on the conditions of her visit. It is unclear why MS believed him obstructive. She later characterized him as “in a ‘blue funk’ all the time I was in Japan—that silent, unhelpful, fearful, ungracious, representative of our democracy!” MS credited Hugh Wilson’s intercession with winning the Japanese government over. (Scidmore to Inouye, Mar. 10, 1922 [quotes 1–2], and Inouye to Takejiro Tokonami et al., Mar. 11, 1922 [FMA]; Japan Advertiser, Mar. 1, 11, 14, 1922; MS, My Fight, 244 [quote 3]; MS, Autobiography, 321.) 15. Family Limitation (1914), MS’s sixteen-page primer on birth control and sexual hygiene, contained explicit information on how to obtain and use pessaries, condoms, and sponges. MS likely brought copies of the eleventh or twelfth edition, published in 1921 and 1922 (MSM S76:966, 978). (For more on Family Limitation, see Vol. 1; for an undated Japanese edition, see MS Unfilmed.) 16. The Japanese press had become increasingly critical of the government and was credited with toppling two recent Taishō-era administrations. The press questioned and ridiculed the government’s response to MS’s trip, saying that the Home Office had

30  •  Abroad! made itself “quite the laughing-stock.” (Gregory Kent Ornatowski, “Press, Politics and Profits: The Asahi Shinbun and the Prewar Japanese Newspaper” [Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1985], 109–22; Japan Weekly Chronicle, Mar. 9, 1922, 314 [quote].) 17. The Grand Hotel, built in 1873, overlooked Yokohama harbor and was frequented by wealthy travelers. (Elaine Derby, Grand Hotels [London, 1998], 213.) 18. The Ishimotos had two young sons, Arata (1917–2005) and Tamio (1918–43). (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 7, 9, 148; Helen Hopper to editors, Sept. 9, 2009.) 19. MS probably misspelled “jinrickshaw,” a light two-wheeled carriage pulled by one or more men, commonly shortened to “rickshaw.” (OED.) 20. A reference to the geta, wooden clogs that were about five centimeters high and held on with two strap-like thongs. Amageta‑geta, even higher platforms, were worn for rain to keep the feet dry and off the ground. (OED.) 21. MS and Grant Sanger stayed at the Ishimotos’ Western-style home in the Akasaka District of Tokyo, while J. Noah Slee remained at the Grand Hotel. (Ishimoto, Facing Two Ways, 207; Japan Times & Mail, Mar. 15, 1922.)

9. From Roberto Haberman 1 In the progressive Mexican state of Yucatán, the governor supported the translation and publication of another edition of Sanger’s Family Limitation (La regulación de la natalidad o la brújula del hogar) in February 1922. When opponents sought to prosecute the publisher, the government refused, charging them with fostering a “narrow-minded and antiquated criteria of morality” and keeping the working class economically dependent through the denial of contraceptive knowledge. (“Birth Control in Mexico,” BCR 6 [May 1922]: 79–80 [quotes]; Lavrín, Latin American Women, 291.)

Merida, Yucatan, Mexico. March 12, 1922.

Dear Comrade: I enclose two very remarkable documents, so much more so as they appear in the Diario Official of the State Government where only official documents are supposed to be printed.2 The occasion for this has been the storm of protest that has been kicked up by the Knights of Columbus, the few remaining capitalists, and the reactionary press.3 The excuse has been given them in the form with the issuing and the free distribution by the Socialist Party of your pamphlet giving the methods of birth control.4 I am not sending you any of the attacks of the enemies because they do not differ from those of the Catholic Church and such others in the U.S.5 The novelty of this whole business consists in the Government’s reply, especially that of the District Attorney6 (Procurador General) who was asked to indict those responsible for the publishing of the pamphlet.

March 1922  •  31

The result of this propaganda has been the popularizing of the pamphlet to such an extent that the first edition of 5,000 has been exhausted the day after its appearance, and the necessity of the printing of another of 10,000 which is going to be distributed to all school teachers, and marrying officials throughout the State. The School of Medicine is being moved into the large hospital that we have here, and as soon as this is completed, a special department for the teaching [illegible] of birth control will be installed.7 When you return from Japan and decide to come this way you can rest assured of a first class reception. Meanwhile you can communicate from time to time with Comrade Felipe Carrillo, Governor.8 I am leaving Yucatan this week. You can always get in touch with me, no matter where I may find myself, by addressing me at Apartado 1855, Mexico City, Mexico. Shall keep you in touch with any other developments, and especially with those that are bound to come up in Mexico City where we have just printed an edition of 100,000.9 Fraternally, Roberto Haberman [signed] [Handwritten] We are also preparing a Special Edition in the language of the Maya Indians. TLS MSP, DLC (LCM 19:253). Letterhead of Liga Central de Resistance. Handwritten corrections by the author.

1. Roberto Haberman (1883–1962), a Romanian-born Socialist lawyer and labor activist, emigrated first to the United States and then to Mexico in 1917, where he was associated with the Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana (Regional Confederation of Mexican Workers). He advised the governments of General Álvaro Obregón Salido and Yucatán governor Felipe Carrillo Puerto on social reform programs. MS may have known Haberman from his work with socialist movements in New York in the 1910s, and he may have helped in translating and distributing the Yucatán edition of Family Limitation in Mexico. (Chicago Daily Tribune, Mar. 25, 1922; New York Times, Mar. 5, 1962; “Birth Control in Mexico,” BCR 6 [May 1922]: 79–80.) 2. The two documents, statements by Yucatán general district attorney Arturo Cisneros Canto, dated March 11 and 14, 1922, were translated and summarized in the BCR. (“Birth Control in Mexico,” 79–80.) 3. The Mexican branch of the Knights of Columbus (Caballeros de Colón) opposed postrevolutionary social reforms. The new Socialist government faced stiff opposition from the Catholic Church and the Liberal Party, which attacked birth control advocates as radicals and Bolshevists. (John W. Sherman, The Mexican Right: The End of Revolutionary Reform, 1929–1940 [Westport, Conn., 1997], 9–10; Carey, Mexican Revolution in Yucatán, 155.)

32  •  Abroad! 4. The Yucatán edition of Family Limitation was published by the Mayab Press and distributed by the Socialist government of Felipe Carrillo Puerto. In addition, Tierra, the Socialist weekly, also published birth control information. (Lavrín, Latin American Women, 291; MS, Family Limitation [1918] [LCM 129:280]; Carey, Mexican Revolution in Yucatán, 155.) 5. The Catholic Church was the birth control movement’s most powerful and persistent opponent, responsible for attempting to shut down the ABCL’s public meeting in New York in November 1921. (See MS to Juliet Rublee, Mar. 27?, 1922 [MSM C2:28]; for more on Catholic views on birth control, see Vols. 1–3.) 6. Arturo Cisneros Canto (1887–1963), Yucatán’s attorney general, refused to prosecute the publisher, claiming that “prosecutions in the name of morality have at all times been the most odious pretext of which religion made use so as to destroy its enemies.” (Arturo Cisneros Canto, “Birth Control in Mexico,” Nation, May 13, 1922, 79 [quote]; editors’ correspondence with Ernesto Cisneros Rivera, Sept. 19, 2012.) 7. Haberman refers to the Escuela de Medicina de Mérida, first founded in 1833 and, in 1922, amalgamated into Governor Carrillo’s newly founded Universidad Nacional del Sureste. By 1923 two birth control clinics were established, one in the Women’s and Children’s Hospital at Mérida and another in the red-light district. (Arturo ErosaBarbachano, “Historia de la Escuela de Medicina de Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico,” Revista Biomédica 8 [1997]: 267; Anna Macias, Against All Odds: The Feminist Movement in Mexico to 1940 [Westport, Conn., 1982], 93.) 8. Felipe Carrillo Puerto (1874–1924), governor of Yucatán Province, was a Socialist and progressive politician known for his support of land reform and the rights of women and indigenous people. He granted women the vote and access to contraceptive information before he was assassinated in 1924. (J. de Jesus Nieto Lopez, Diccionario historico del Mexico contemporaneo [Mexico City, 1986], 36–38.) 9. This may be a typographical error for 10,000. Mexico’s Department of Education helped distribute the pamphlets, leading to an accusation that they had been distributed to grammar school girls. (Haberman, “The Labor Problem in Mexico,” in International Aspects of Birth Control, by MS, 119; Patience A. Schell, “Gender, Class and Anxiety at the Gabriella Mistral Vocational School, Revolutionary Mexico City,” in Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics and Power in Modern Mexico, edited by Jocelyn Olcott et al. [Durham, N.C., 2006], 120–23.)

10. Journal Entry Sanger had little time to recover from her landing, spending her first days responding to callers and newspaper reporters and attending a lecture at the Tokyo Women’s Club as well as teas and dinners held in her honor in Yokohama and Tokyo. On March 13, she secured official consent to hold public meetings after showing the chief of the bureau of libraries the outline of the speech she planned to give the following day. Sanger later recalled that “we all laughed & agreed that the Empire of Japan would not fall after that speech.” The officials clarified that she could discuss birth control only in private meetings. The press reported that her “quiet acceptance of any restrictions placed upon her

March 1922  •  33 . . . has made for her many friends, even among those prejudiced.” (World Trip Journal [MSM S70:37–45, 44 [quote 1]; Japan Weekly Chronicle, Mar. 23, 1922; Japan Times & Mail, Mar. 13, 1922 [quote 2].)

[Tokyo, Japan] March 14. [1922] It is amazing the way one goes ahead doing a work when there is no necessity for it and when each time I speak, I long to die—The terror and [uneasiness?] is upon me today, anticipating my afternoon meeting.1 Morning spent with Stenographer. Doctor came and little cook in household proudly attempted to interpertate for me. Lecture finished Advertiser man waited for it.2 Lecture at 3 P.M. escorted with great ceremony into back room of Y.M.C.A. building where smoke & charcoal stove in center of room filled the atmosphere at least a dozen or twenty camera men flashed photos at me.3 It was very amusing. The interpeter was the Kaizo man who interpeted for Bertram Russell, very literal & poor.4 The hall was fairly well filled considering the short time for advertising tea with Mrs Coleman upstairs.5 Dinner with Kaizo group at the Imperial Hotel (Tokyo) very lovely wine dinner— sherry maderia, champagne, cordial. Very elaborate I should say. Eight in all.6 Then details of lectures made out, not at dinner, but before & after. Home to sit at fireside & talk. Very nice evening. The fact so many speak English helps one to forget that it is a strange country. I have scarcely seen anything of Japan. Grant went to see a Temple today & the Peace Expedition—but I am so busily occupied there is no time for sight-seeing.7 AD MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S70:46–47).

1. MS was extremely nervous before giving public lectures and compared it to an “illness.” (MS, Autobiography, 192, 263 [quote]; see also Vol. 1.) 2. MS may have sought medical attention to calm her nerves. The Japan Advertiser ran an interview with MS and published the speech the next morning. (Japan Advertiser, Mar. 14–15, 1922.) 3. For MS’s speech, see the next document, “Overpopulation as a Cause of War,” Mar. 14, 1922, herein. 4. The translator was Riichirō Hoashi (1881–1963), an American-educated professor of philosophy at the Waseda University. MS misspelled Bertrand Russell’s name. (Japan Weekly Chronicle, Mar. 23, 1922; JBE; David G. Goodman and Masanori Miyazawa, Jews in the Japanese Mind: The History and Uses of a Cultural Stereotype [Lanham, Md., 2000], 91.) 5. Quaker missionary Elizabeth R. Coleman (1875–1932) had met MS through Shidzue Ishimoto. MS described Coleman as a “lovely picture of grace & charm.” (U.S. Passport Applications, 1795–1925, May 23, 1923; Chicago Daily Tribune, Mar. 29, 1932; MS, World Trip Journal, Mar. 11, 1922 [quote] [MSM S70:38].)

34  •  Abroad! 6. The Imperial Hotel, designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, was built in central Tokyo in 1915. (EB.) 7. Grant Sanger and J. Noah Slee visited the Tokyo Peace Exhibition, a four-month industrial exhibition that opened on March 10. (Washington Post, Mar. 11, 1922; Japan Advertiser, Mar. 23, 1922.)

11. “Overpopulation as a Cause of War” “Almost from the time of landing,” Sanger wrote, “I had been deeply conscious that I was in one of the most thickly populated countries of the world. The Ishimoto’s automobile honked, honked, at every turn of the wheels to squeeze through rickshas, pedestrians, and children in the narrow, unpaved streets.” Sanger’s first speech for Kaizō, delivered at Tokyo’s YMCA auditorium, was heard by more than five hundred “prosperous-looking business men, well-groomed women, students, shop girls, coolies, a Buddhist priest or two, a number of foreigners and a battery of camera men.” Women made up about a third of the audience. (MS, Autobiography, 325 [quote 1]; Japan Advertiser, Mar. 15, 1922 [quote 2]; Japan Weekly Chronicle, Mar. 23, 1922.)

[Tokyo, Japan] [March 14, 1922] I regret exceedingly that I am not allowed to speak to you this afternoon upon the subject of birth control. Why this privilege has been denied me I do not know for I have addressed audiences on the subject of birth control in nearly every country in Europe and every large city in the United States.1 However, I am grateful and pleased that I have been able to gain the permission to address you on the subject of War and Population. Inasmuch as I was unprepared to speak upon this subject, I ask your tolerance in allowing me to use my notes in addressing you. For more than a hundred years Europe had about doubled her population while the increase of her food supply was less than 5 percent.2 She had been piling up huge debts for future generations to pay.3 She had piled up such conditions as slums, unemployment, child labor, inertness, inefficiency, dependency, and finally, War. The World War, which started in Europe in 1914, was only a natural result of the manifold conditions which made such a volcanic eruption inevitable. During the past fifty years there was a tendency in every country in Europe to increase her numbers overwhelmingly in one group and to decrease her numbers in another section. The individuals in the latter group were those who did not let nature control their destinies. They had mastered the force of fecundity. In this group, whose numbers increase but slowly, there is among them the most progressive and advanced conditions. The other group, who are at the mercy of the urge of generation, are those who have increased

March 1922  •  35

not only their numbers but have increased their problems beyond the means of the development of the social conscience or the intelligence of the nation. In this group in every country in Europe is found the great problems both social and economic with which the world was confronted in 1914.4 In some countries, as in England, it was possible through colonization to alleviate the conditions in this group somewhat by sending her surplus population to Canada, Australia and other parts of the globe.5 France, on the other hand, had kept her numbers more or less stationary and had aimed to develop quality in her people. It was to France that we turned for culture, for science, for advancement in almost every line of scientific thought.6 Germany, on the other hand, was the central country in Europe who though in some departments far more advanced than any other country in Europe, was by the nature of that particular advancement blocked in her progress—and her conditions at home made more complex and chaotic. Germany had been the first country in Europe to bring into her country the largest sources of alleviation for her population. During the dark and middle ages, Germany had relied upon infant mortality, disease and pestilence to keep her population within bounds. It was quite a natural event for a family during that period to have from 15 to 20 members, but for only one or two or at the most 4 in that group to survive to full maturity.7 This was the course which Nature had taken to lessen the possibility of war and to keep nations somewhat at peace with each other. With the advance of humanitarian thought, scientific and preventive medicine, Germany began to increase her problems. The urge for expansion on the part of the increasing population in any country when brought against geographical barriers acts blindly in the direction of conflict—whether in colonial rivalry or territorial swarming. The opportunities for Germany’s expansion were strictly limited by other powers and the prosperity due to the opening of new countries had long passed its maximum.8 The possibilities for expansion that were open a century ago, were fairly well exhausted and Germany found herself with serious problems on her hands which meant national expansion or ultimate stagnation. We find then a situation in Germany to be a rapidly increasing population, bringing this population largely to full maturity at a great expense to the government, through social service, old age pensions, and maternity benefits.9 The necessities for maintaining this population were out of her reach and made her dependent upon other countries for her population’s subsistence.10 There was a tendency too, toward a surplus of highly trained professional and technical men. The elaborate educational system of Germany was producing more engineers, surveyors, electrical engineers, industrial chemists and experts along

36  •  Abroad!

various lines than the nation’s employers could utilize or absorb. The result was that such men had to be content to remain for a less wage than the unskilled workingmen could procure or to emigrate into foreign lands where [that] skill and inventiveness became the assets of other countries at Germany’s cost.11 While Germany’s birth rate was on the decline, in 1900 it was 36.5 percent, in 1909, 32 percent, and in 1913 29.5 percent—the number of deaths diminished also by such proportion that her survivals became higher, and her population increased in a faster proportion than it did with an increasing birth rate.12 There was an increase of from 700,000 to 800,000 souls a year which amounted to nearly four millions of new individuals every five years.13 It was upon such conditions, briefly and fragmentary as they are related here that Germany based her claim to a place in the sun and the right of livelihood of her surplus population. The Berliner Post in 1913 said: ‘Can a great and rapidly growing nation like Germany always renounce all claims to further development or to the expansion of its political power? The final settlement with France and England, the expansion of our colonial possessions in order to create new German homes for the overflow of our population. . . . these are the problems which must be faced in the near future.’ 14 If one studies the comments of the press during the five years preceding the Great War, it will be found in every instance that the argument upon which the need of the right of any country to prepare for war was based upon her increasing and growing population.15 Germany in 1910 had a population of 70,000,000.16 At the rate she was increasing she was bound to have in a short time double that number. It was the argument of her militarists and others who were seeking greater demands for Germany that she must find an outlet for her people, that Germany was hungry for trade, that she needed colonies, that she could not confine her growing population within her narrow geographical boundaries and in one of the magazines the Kaiser was quoted to have said that in 1950 Germany would possess a population of two hundred millions or something near to it.17 It might have been supposed that councils such as those representing the best ranks of thinking Germans might have been adverse to this condition of things, but extraordinary, as it may seem to all thinking people, the Marxian philosophy had taken a strong hold upon the people of Germany and particularly the working people of Germany during the past 25 years and inculcated the view point that the greater the numbers of the proletariat the higher would be their wages, the higher their demand in the labor market and the larger the numbers in the ranks of their revolutionists.18 So that up to the

March 1922  •  37

time of 1914 there was every tendency on the part of the thinkers of Germany both economic, social and political to increase their numbers and to trust to the gods the results, that might makes right. This, briefly, is the pivotal condition of the cause of the war in Europe in 1914. We all know the results and the consequences, but none of us can foretell the terrific decadent consequence which Germany is yet to feel. Her best fitted manhood was slaughtered in the war, her mothers and children left at home in a condition of physical starvation from which has come the generations of the future. When I was in Germany in 1920 and witnessed more than 10,000 little starving infants, the results of the blockade and the war,19 I felt that it would be far kinder for Germany’s future and for the future peace of the world to humanitarily allow these little victims to pass away rather than to keep them alive upon the charity of the enemy nations. More than 45 percent of the women of Germany were made permanently sterile owing to the lack of food and the proper nourishment for childbearing.20 The present circumstances in Germany are extremely heavy taxes, low value of money, the deficiency of labor in many establishments, with food and the cost of living so dear that the average wage earner lives upon a ration which means partial starvation.21 The conclusions to be drawn from Germany are that a nation will not be the victor in war; that war is no longer the way to settle international disputes, but until all nations recognize that there are fundamental dynamic forces at work which must be controlled, forces such as hunger and propagation, that we cannot solve one without including the other, that until these forces are recognized and acted upon wisely, the idea of international peace will remain a dream and a myth. Japan has problems today increasingly as great as those of Germany in 1910.22 She has a right to have those problems solved in a rational humanitarian way, but until our diplomats and statesmen recognize the causes of war and make the study of the population in all its manifold departments, all our Leagues of Nations, international conferences, agreements and international treaties will become the proverbial ‘scraps of paper.’ Men and women of Japan, I appeal to you to look into this subject thoroughly. The mothers and women in your country are just as desirous of wiping out poverty, misery, suffering and war as the mothers and women of the other nations of the world. I appeal to you to set your motherhood free! To make your women something more than breeding machines such as the women of every nation have been during one period of that nation’s development. The time has come for international brotherhood and international emancipation.

38  •  Abroad!

The advancement of hygiene and sanitation and welfare work in any country only increases its population problem which means invasion through immigration or armed invasion.23 Each nation must control her populations to the point where it will not be necessary to make aggression upon their neighbors. The study of the population problem will reveal to you the initial cause of the suffering of mankind, it will reveal the cause for his struggles and divisions into factions and parties. It will point out the remedy to obviate these differences and to establish a new order of civilization. To the working man it will show that the state of oppression and tyranny can exist only as a result of his ignorance. That the struggle between classes, capital and labor, the war between nations are the inevitable consequences of that ignorance. That the working man has himself been the producer of these conditions through his unlimited procreative powers—unchecked uncontrolled. While he and his brother are the initial sufferers from all the flagrant inequalities found in all nations today. Let us then friends, depart from the old methods of quantity and turn our attention to producing quality in our peoples. It will then be possible for everyone to have independence, personal dignity, motherhood will be glorified—and a nation may well expect to promote to its populations peace, justice, happiness and the International Brotherhood of the World. Japan Times & Mail, Mar. 15, 1922 (not filmed). For a shortened version, see MS, “War and Population,” Birth Control Review 6 (June 1922): 106–7.

1. When MS addressed audiences in the United States and England on various rationales for birth control, she never gave specific contraceptive advice. 2. From 1800 to 1913, the population of Europe grew from 187 million to 468 million. While the food supply may have lagged behind population growth in many parts of Europe, there were significant improvements in food production and distribution, confounding Malthusian expectations about the rate at which the population would outrun resources. (Leslie Page Moch, Moving Europeans: Migration in Western Europe since 1650 [Bloomington, Ind., 2003], 108; Edward A. Ross, “The Growth of Population,” BCR 4 [Mar. 1920]: 6.) 3. MS took her analysis and wording from Uncontrolled Breeding (17), a 1917 work by writer and linguist Charles Kay Ogden (1889–1957), writing as Adelyne More. (DNB; More, Uncontrolled Breeding, 17–18.) 4. Eugenicists and biologists agreed that the phenomenon of differential fertility, whereby wealthier, more educated people were having fewer children and the working class and poor were having more children, was a troubling trend. Some opposed birth control use among the middle and upper classes as dysgenic. (A. M. Carr-Saunders, The Population Problem:

March 1922  •  39 A Study in Human Evolution [Oxford, 1922], 316–17, 379; Leonas Lancelot Burlingame et al., General Biology [New York, 1922], 525; Julian Huxley and David Heron, “Differential Fertility: Discussion,” in Proceedings of the WPC, edited by MS, 191–92.) 5. Between 1815 and 1914, an estimated 16 million emigrants left Great Britain, with 25 percent going to the United States and the rest to British colonies. Most left for economic reasons; in some cases, the government and charitable organizations offered subsidies to encourage the poor to emigrate. (Lawrence James, The Rise and Fall of the British Empire [New York, 1994], 307–9.) 6. France’s population had slowly increased, from 27 million in 1801 to 38 million in 1921 (compared to England’s, which rose from 7.7 million to 36 million). The causes of Britain’s faster growth rate included declining mortality rates as well as increased immigration and contraceptive use. (Mitchell, International Historical Statistics: Europe, 4; McLaren, History of Contraception, 180–81; Spengler, France Faces Depopulation, 22, 65.) 7. MS again paraphrased More’s Uncontrolled Breeding, 24. More recent estimates are that women bore on average five or six, not counting stillbirths and abortions. (Vern Bullough and Cameron Campbell, “Female Longevity and Diet in the Middle Ages,” Speculum 55 [Apr. 1980]: 322.) 8. Germany’s population doubled between 1850 and 1914, to 68 million, and there was a perception both in- and outside Germany that it needed to expand. While imperial Germany had become a powerful colonial force under Bismarck in the 1880s, it lagged in territory behind Britain and France, and few Germans emigrated to its colonies. (H. Smith, Oxford Handbook, 127–28, 311; Matthew P. Fitzpatrick, Liberal Imperialism in Germany: Expansionism and Nationalism, 1848–1884 [New York, 2008], 6–7, 28.) 9. Germany’s expanding industrial economy struggled to provide for its rapidly growing population, especially during periods of crop failure, famine, and disease outbreaks. After 1850, when economic conditions improved, the Bismarck government began enacting modest social insurance programs, including health insurance, old-age pensions, maternity allowances, and widow and orphan insurance. (Kitchen, History of Modern Germany, 74, 150–53; Toni Pierenkemper, “Labour Market, Labour Force and Standard of Living: From Agriculture to Industry,” in Population, Labour and Migration in 19thand 20th-Century Germany, edited by Klaus J. Bade [New York, 1987], 42–43.) 10. Germany imported a third of its wheat and nearly half of its barley, but this had more to do with an emergent globalized trade system rather than an inability to provide its own agricultural products for its people. (H. Smith, Oxford Handbook, 341–46.) 11. This contention has been largely rejected by recent historians. While the number of university students increased, from about 18,000 in 1869 to 79,000 by 1914, labor surpluses were evident only among the unskilled. There is also little evidence to suggest that large numbers of skilled workers emigrated from Germany. (Elmer Roberts, Monarchial Socialism in Germany [New York, 1913], 51; Kitchen, History of Modern Germany, 152–53; Toni Pierenkemper and Richard H. Tilly, The German Economy during the Nineteenth Century [New York, 2004], 94–95, 107.) 12. Germany’s population had increased rapidly, before the birthrate began to decline in the 1870s. More recent and accurate figures show the same rapid drop in the birth- and death rates. (Washington Post, Aug. 23, 1914; Mitchell, International Historical Statistics: Europe, 102.)

40  •  Abroad! 13. Between 1900 and 1910, the population increased an average of 855,900 per year, from 56 million in 1900 to 65 million in 1910. (Mitchell, International Historical Statistics: Europe, 4; New York Times, May 29, 1917.) 14. MS reprinted this quotation from More’s Uncontrolled Breeding, 65. 15. MS also based this argument on More’s Uncontrolled Breeding, which included press editorials and commentary linking overpopulation and militarism. The topic was also discussed in books published in the years 1909–14, including Friedrich von Bernhardi’s Deutschland und der Nächste Kreig (Germany and the next war) (1912), which blamed aggressive German expansionism on overpopulation. (More, Uncontrolled Breeding, 66–67; “Rattling the German Sabre,” Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art, Dec. 7, 1912, 711–12.) 16. The population was almost 65 million, according to the German Census. (Mitchell, International Historical Statistics: Europe, 4.) 17. MS used More’s Uncontrolled Breeding for these figures. He cited a December 1914 Daily Mirror article. (More, Uncontrolled Breeding, 67.) 18. The Marxist SPD, founded in 1890, was the largest party in the Reichstag. Its leaders August Bebel, Clara Zetkin, and Rosa Luxemburg argued that increasing the number of workers would give them a stronger bargaining position and expedite the revolution. (More, Uncontrolled Breeding, 72–75; William J. Robinson, “Socialism and the Limitation of Children,” Medico-Pharmaceutical Critic & Guide 16 [Oct. 1913]: 360–64.) 19. For more on MS’s trip, see MS, “Women in Germany,” Aug. 18 and Sept. 7, 1920, herein. 20. MS based her conclusion in part on research by Dr. F. Kraus, a clinic medical director at the Charité Hospital, Berlin, who referred to the “tragical fate of women, cessation of menses, sterility, inadequate nursing capacity, etc.” due to war-related food shortages. The impact of famine on fertility was only temporary and not as widespread as MS suggested. The German birthrate rebounded after the war, from 14.3 per 1,000 in 1918 to 25.9 by 1920. (F. Kraus, “Address,” in The Starving of Germany: Papers Read at Extraordinary Meeting of United Medical Societies Held at Headquarters of Berlin Medical Society, Dec. 18, 1918 [Berlin, 1919], 8–11 [quote]; John Bongaarts, “Malnutrition and Fecundity,” Studies in Family Planning 11 [Dec. 1980]: 405; Mitchell, International Historical Statistics: Europe, 102.) 21. Germany sought to resolve its huge war deficit by raising taxes, including public utility and income taxes, but its currency continued to depreciate and inflation escalated. (New York Times, Jan. 2, 1922; Wall Street Journal, Dec. 15, 1921; Richard J. Evans and Dick Geary, eds., The German Unemployed [New York, 1987], 23–25.) 22. Japan’s population had increased by 5 million, to 55 million, between 1910 and 1920. Since the 1890s, it pursued expansion and emigration rather than reducing the birthrate. It was also suffering a recession, with rapidly expanding unemployment. (Irene B. Tauber, “Japan’s Increasing People: Facts, Problems and Policies,” Pacific Affairs 23 [Sept. 1950]: 271–93; F. Tipton, History of Modern Japan, 99.) 23. Improved sanitation and hygiene, medical asepsis and immunization, and the growth of social welfare programs were all significant factors in reducing death rates in the developed world, resulting in population increases. (Jacques Vallin, “The End of the Demographic Transition: Relief or Concern?,” Population and Development Review 28 [Mar. 2002]: 110.)

March 1922  •  41

12. Journal Entry Sanger was whisked from one function to another, speaking “freely & frankly on b.c.” at a March 15 luncheon and tea in Yokohama, before attending another tea at the American Embassy in Tokyo. The Ishimotos hosted a dinner party for her that night attended by labor leader Suzuki Bunji, economics professor Isoo Abe, and gynecologist Tokijirō Kaji. “These three men,” Sanger noted in her journal, “agree on principles and have formed nucleus of a good substantial Birth Control League here.” (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 25; MS, World Trip Journal [MSM S70:48–49 [quotes].)

[Tokyo, Japan] March 17. [1922] Early two visitors from China came to call. Then an Indian reporter from Bombay.1 Then a Japanese old friend, subscriber to B.C.R. Chinese friends want me to speak to labor in Shanghai. A queer poet looking person in Japanese costume and Greenwich village countenance. Small “gotee” beard, but very cultured and courteous, rising every time I came in or went out of the room, a terrorist he said he was—leaves a lasting impression because of the fire and gesture he put into the words.2 At noon we went to Dr. Kobe’s or Koji hospital, where he holds a place for patients—-charges 1 yen—70 cen a day for bed all food, medicine and care included— Nurses squat on floor at bedside.3 About twenty of the nurses dressed in white and seven doctors came to welcome me- Then followed us—from room to room. The Equipment is partly german because the Japanese Doctors are trained in Germany.4 Shoes left outside makes the house spotless.5 We went to _____ club for luncheon—a Japanese luncheon on chairs, I asked for a fork—food very delicious— Then after eating so much that one feels ashamed we go upstairs to talk privately and tea & cakes are brought of which we again partake eagerly and hungrily. Dr Koji told of the methods of B.C. he found successful—plain soft Japanese paper folded & inserted against cervix—then as this absorbs the sperm it is removed and a clean piece wet in antiseptic solution and wiped the vagina dry and clean 1000 cases no failures,6 at four thirty we were due at the “Peers Club”7 where Count Kowamori8 invited me to speak before a select group. We spoke very frankly—talked of methods & the art of love—It was very inspiring to hear their questions & to hear their perfect English. Baroness Ishimoto sat throughout the discussion very bravely.9 We went from the Peers Club to have dinner with an Industrial group of twenty five select men. This was very very Japanese. I had to remove my shoes at the door—and put on house slippers to shuffle on to the dining room. Then we had to remove those also & enter the dining room in Stockings. Everyone was present, sitting on the floor on cushions. I was offered a chair, but declined

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it & sat [on] the floor too, but my legs began to weary of the strain so pillows were brought & I sat upon them, comfortably like a chair but still on the floor.10 The dinner with chop sticks was excellent—hot saké wine was also good. Im sorry now we gave away the bottle on the boat to the waiter. It is so charming & artistic the way dinner is served. The plain walls & floors only a screen decorated. I improved with the chop sticks & finished dinner with little trouble. Then began the questions on birth control. These men all had wives, but none of them ever out. Its like Spain & other man countries.11 Intelligent questions of every sort & shade. All agreed birth control a good thing & said they were in accord with my work & not in agreement with the government attitude at all. Though many of these men were government officials.12 Home early—Its wonderful the graceful way they bow when on the floor. Kaizo agrees to pay 2000 yen for four more lectures.13 I must be finished in Japan by April 1st.14 Mr. Warren’s Secretary Embassy phoned he could not get the Japanese government to vize my passport for Korea.15 So I may yet have delays—No womens club here—no power to vote for women.16 Present at the Peers’ Club Count Kawamure, Count Terashima17 Count Sano,18 Viscount Nishio,19 Baron Kanda,20 Marquis Sanaki,21 Marquis Hachisuka,22 Baron and Baroness Ishimoto. AD MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S70:53–58).

1. MS refers to K. R. Sabarwal, special correspondent at the daily Bombay Chronicle, who attended her March 14 YMCA address and interviewed her in advance of her planned visit to India. (K. R. Sabarwal to MS, Mar. 15, 1922 [LCM 18:949].) 2. The Chinese friends were not identified, but this may refer to MS’s April 30 speech at the Shanghai Labor Museum (see MS, Journal Entry, Apr. 30 1922, herein). 3. MS refers to Tokijirō Kaji (also known as Katō) (1858–1930?), a gynecologist who directed the Tokyo Heimin Byōin (Tokyo People’s Hospital), which he founded to treat poor women. Kaji was a member of the NSCR1 and the Nihon Sanji Chôsetsu Kenkyûkai (NSCK) (Japan Birth Control Study Society). (Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 82, 97; Frühstück, Colonizing Sex, 138, 140, 148–49; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 25–26; Kaji, “Methods of Birth Control,” 296–98.) 4. The government sent Kaji, as well as Dr. Kentaro Hayashida, to Germany in 1892 to study treatments for venereal disease, abortion procedures, and contraceptives. He may have returned with supplies and equipment for his hospital. (New York Times, June 11, 1933; Kaji, “Methods of Birth Control,” 297.) 5. Shoes were left outside Japanese homes and gathering places for hygienic reasons and comfort and to separate public and private spaces. (Ernest W. Clement, A Handbook of Modern Japan [Chicago, 1904], 52.)

March 1922  •  43 6. Kaji learned of the paper method by studying prostitutes. He wrote that the “higher class of prostitutes used very soft and tender paper called yoshinogami, and the lower class used rather hard toilet paper called asakusagami. The paper was placed over the mouth of the womb to prevent the entering of the male germ.” However, it was difficult to find an appropriate antiseptic solution, and Kaji found other methods to be more practical, including a boric-acid saltwater douche and “wiping out” semen with gauze soaked in a camphor solution. (Kaji, “Methods of Birth Control,” 296–98.) 7. The Peers Club, a meeting place for members of the nobility, was housed in the Kazoku Kaikan building. (Toshio Watanabe, “Josiah Conder’s Rokumeikan: Architecture and National Representation in Meiji Japan,” Art Journal 55 [Autumn 1996]: 21, 25, 27.) 8. MS likely refers to Count Tetsutarō Kawamura (1870–1945), a nobleman who studied in England. (Koyama, Japanese Students at Cambridge, 95–96.) 9. Japanese woman, including Ishimoto, generally did not attend such gatherings and were expected to be humble and submissive in the presence of men. In contrast, MS easily discussed issues of activism, including gender inequality, sexual double standards, birth control, and the women’s movement, with the male peers. (Ishimoto, Facing Two Ways, 271, 302; MS, Autobiography, 329.) 10. Her hosts were likely representatives of the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce. MS observed that seating “seemed to create an atmosphere conducive to conversation. The questions asked by these men indicated much thought along the lines of population.” (MS, “Margaret Sanger in Japan,” 102 [quote]; Japan Weekly Chronicle, Mar. 23, 1922.) 11. Japanese wives were rarely included in their husbands’ social or business functions, but, according to Ishimoto, they were “allowed to attend wedding ceremonies, memorial services for the dead and celebrations of old age.” When MS toured Spain in 1915, she observed that Spanish men “kept their wives in semi-Oriental seclusion, and even mentally imposed their deep-rooted ideas of the isolation of women on foreigners.” (Iwao, Japanese Woman, 91; Ishimoto, Facing Two Ways, 284 [quote 1]; Cleminson and Amezúa, “Spain,” 177; MS, Autobiography, 157 [quote 2].) 12. The Japanese government, which restricted birth control advertising, associated the movement with women’s rights, socialism, and other potentially “dangerous thoughts.” (Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 78–79, 268; E. Tipton, “Birth Control and the Population Problem,” 43, 48.) 13. Though “intensely disappointed” that MS could not lecture publicly on birth control, the Kaizō group reworked her schedule to add more private venues where MS could openly discuss the subject. New meetings were confirmed in Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe. (MS, Autobiography, 327 [quote], MS, “Margaret Sanger in Japan,” 102; Kaizo-sha to MS, Mar. 20, 1922 [LCM 18:965].) 14. MS postponed her planned departure for Korea on April 1 to make time for additional private meetings in Osaka and Kobe. (MS, Itinerary, Mar.–Apr. 1922 [LCM 18:989].) 15. Charles Beecher Warren (1870–1936), a prominent international lawyer and diplomat, was the American ambassador to Japan. Japan had annexed Korea in 1910 and controlled entry to the reluctant Japanese colony. (NatCAB; Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb. 4, 1936.) 16. The SFK began petitioning for women’s suffrage in 1920. Japanese women did not win the vote until 1945, though the diet, starting in February 1922, permitted women to

44  •  Abroad! attend and organize political meetings and discussions. (Hunter, Concise Dictionary, 244; Miyako Orii and Hioko Tomida, “Shin Fujin Kyōkai (Association of New Women) and the Women Who Aimed to Change Society,” in Japanese Women: Emerging from Subservience, 1868–1945, edited by Hiroko Tomida and Gordon Daniels [Kent, England, 2005], 246.) 17. Probably Count Seiichiro Terashima (1870–1929), an American-educated member of the House of Peers. (“Terashima Seiichiro,” World Biographical Information System.) 18. Count Tsuneha Sano (1871–1956) was a Japanese rear admiral and leader of the Boy Scout movement in Japan. (New York Times, Oct. 10, 1926, and Jan. 27, 1956.) 19. Possibly Viscount T. Nishio, who attended the Pan-Pacific Science Conference in Melbourne, Australia, in 1923. (A. C. Haddon, “The Pan-Pacific Science Congress, Australia, 1923,” Nature 13 [Jan. 5, 1924]: 28–29.) 20. Baron Naibu Kanda (1857–1923) was an American-educated literature professor at Tokyo University and a member of the House of Peers. (New York Times, Dec. 23, 1923.) 21. MS probably meant Marquis Yukitada Sasaki (1893–1975), who was vice president of the House of Peers. (JBE; Motonori Ono and William P. Woodard, Shinto: The Kami Way [Rutland, Vt., 1962], 18.) 22. Masaaki Hachisuka (1871–1932), a Cambridge-educated marquis, held important posts in the imperial household. (Koyama, Japanese Students at Cambridge, 44; Richard Bowring, Fifty Years of Japanese at Cambridge: A Chronicle with Reminiscences [Cambridge, 1998], 89.)

13. Journal Entry On March 18, Sanger toured the Kanegafuchi Spinning Company factory, one of the largest in Japan, to inspect working conditions for men, women, and girls, along with its hospitals, kindergartens, and other examples of welfare capitalist policies. Later that day, she visited a Tokyo slum. (Journal Entry, Mar. 18, 1922 [MSM S70:59]; Kanegafuchi, The Kanegafuchi Spinning Company, 107–8.)

Shin [Fuji] Kyokasai1 [Tokyo, Japan] [March 18, 1922] Meeting at 2 PM at New Womens Group about one hundred radical women present, leader of this group is said to live with husband without marriage Ceremony.2 The Interpeter Mrs [Gaunett] is a Japanese married to an Englishman speaks excellent English.3 Interpeting is an art it seems, and Baroness Ishimoto corrected her for some mistaken views she put into Japanese.4 I was presented with a blue silk komona5 at the end of the meeting when tea & cake was again served tea & lemon in high glasses like the Russians serve it, seems to be popular. Mrs Coleman was present and a most remarkable help in all cases.6

March 1922  •  45

The Barons reception & welcome dinner was due at 6 PM at the Hotel Imperial. About one hundred & fifty Japanese mainly men were there. A most represented group. Home office, welfare department, Physicians, specialists in various departments. Prof Abbe7 was on my left & Baron Ishimoto on my right at dinner, no wines, but citrus cider was served. Proprietor of Hotel gave half proceeds of the dinner to the movement in Japan and a Study group was formed.8 Baron Ishimoto interpeted. It is very trying to stand so long. Many of those present understood English as was shown by marked attention when I spoke & laughter at the right place. Reporters were present. It was a very fine & successful affair. I spoke on morality of B.C & gave an outline of the movement in other countries.9 Its morality that seems to trouble these people they fear B.C. will lower morals of young people, but when I visited Oshiwara after the reception with Mr & Mrs Coleman & Mrs Ishimoto I wonder just what is meant by that fear.10 The [unliscensed] quarters are avenues of small two story houses—small alcoves where behind a window sits the girl with only a slit for her eyes to be seen. There are thousands of these girls in this quarter. The streets were full of men walking up & down occassionally talking to one of the girls some men going into the houses while others were coming out.11 It gave one the horrors— The price of the girl was above the door—per hour—per night. After walking a half hour in this district we crossed the bridge to the Liscensed quarters & there one sees a new world.12 The houses are like large hotels, lanterns or electric lights sending out a soft warm glow. The wide streets are inviting & clean— The houses are built so large & spaciously, they all have courts with flowers or small gardens. There is an entrance like a drive way13 through which the men walk to view the various photographs of the inmates ready for use. In some frames there were no pictures but writing which said “just arrived not time for picture.” This would usually be the girl most in favor & I was told a new girl has nine or ten visitors an evening to the other girls two or three. All of these photographs look young, none of them look like girls over twenty-two or three— Certainly this quarter is the most attractive part of Tokyo. Is it any wonder the girls prefer to live there than in the factory visited this morning14 or at home where there is squalor, & poverty & suppression. There were less men wandering in the streets in this quarter than in the unlicensed, it was after eleven oclock, so perhaps they were inside. It was very depressing, but it makes one think deeply. I felt helpless in my work against that swarming crowd of men. They do not want these conditions made different.15 The women of these quarters

46  •  Abroad!

seem to have no children. It is said that there are hospitals connected with these quarters, where children are born, but I can find no data to substantiate that report.16 AD MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S70:59–65).

1. MS refers to the SFK. 2. MS gave a speech, “Women and Freedom,” at the SFK of Tokyo to approximately sixty women, who were asked not to repeat anything that was said. MS refers to SFK founder Hiratsuka Raichō (1886–1971), a writer and feminist who cohabited with artist Okumura Hiroshi and their two children. Raichō left the SFK in 1921. (Chuzai Sheze Shinbun, Akasaka, Mar. 19, 1922 [LCM 18:963–64]; Rappaport, Encyclopedia of Women Social Reformers, 300–301.) 3. MS refers to Tsuneko Yamada Gauntlett (1873–1953), a Japanese-born Christian feminist and vice president of Japan’s Women’s Christian Temperance Union. She was married to English-born missionary and University of Tokyo professor George Edward Luckman Gauntlett (1869–1956). (Los Angeles Times, Nov. 13, 1953; 1871 England Census.) 4. Ishimoto thought Gauntlett “interjected a puritanical Christian conscience” into her translation and corrected her on several occasions. (Quoted in Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 27.) 5. The SFK thanked MS with a gift of an embroidered kimono. (Yomiuri Shinbun, Mar. 19, 1922 [translation] [LCM 18:963].) 6. MS later recalled that the Colemans “have made a strong impression here.” (MS, World Trip Journal [MSM S70:76–77].) 7. Isoo Abe (1865–1949), an early supporter of birth control in Japan, was a Christian pastor, Socialist labor leader, and professor of political economy at Waseda University who gained fame for introducing baseball to Japan. (New York Times, Feb. 11, 1949; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 25, 37.) 8. At the dinner, Keikichi Ishimoto announced that the NSCK, to be led by Abe and the Ishimotos, would study population problems in Japan. It first met in May. (Japan Advertiser, Mar. 19, 1922; Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 97; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 26.) 9. The speech was probably a combination of MS’s November 18, 1921, speech, “The Morality of Birth Control”; excerpts from chapter 9 of Women and the New Race (“Continence—Is It Practical or Desirable?”); and bits of other writings. (MS, “Morality of Birth Control,” Nov. 18, 1921 [MSM S70:917].) 10. Both opponents and supporters of birth control worried about its impact on sexual morality. As the Chuo Shinbun put it, “There might be some truth to the opposition’s ‘censorious’ remark that birth control would result in ‘the emancipation of the flesh and the decadence of public morals.’” MS refers to Yoshiwara, the district in Northeast Tokyo (founded in 1617) where prostitution was licensed. (“Editorial,” Japan Advertiser, Mar. 1, 1922, translated from an article originally published in Chuo; Frühstück, Colonizing Sex, 131.) 11. MS describes the unlicensed area just outside of Yoshiwara. Japan began licensing prostitutes and supervising brothels in 1900 as a public health and social control measure. Some prostitutes did work illegally outside the licensed district, often in Western-style

March 1922  •  47 establishments. (Garon, “World’s Oldest Debate?,” 712, 714; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 86; Kazurō, “Prostitution,” 256–57.) 12. Yoshiwara was an enclosed twenty-acre grid of cherry tree–lined streets and teahouses that housed between two and three thousand licensed sex workers who generally came from poor families and were indentured to the brothel owners. (Kazuro, “Prostitution,” 256–57; Liza Crichfield, “Yoshiwara,” in Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan [Tokyo, 1983], 349–51; Garon, “World’s Oldest Debate?,” 713–14.) 13. MS drew an illustration of a half circle on a flat line. 14. MS refers to the Kanegafuchi Spinning Company. 15. The regulation of prostitution helped maintain distinct gender roles, encouraging men to separate sexual pleasure from marital procreation. Many officials believed that an effective family system required men to be able to satisfy their sexual lust outside the confines of respectable family life. (Iwao, Japanese Woman, 106; Garon, “World’s Oldest Debate?,” 722.) 16. Special hospitals to treat prostitutes for venereal disease were established in Tokyo and other cities, but most prostitutes in Japan relied on birth control or abortion to avoid pregnancies. Brothels supplied a disinfecting douche solution to prevent pregnancy. (Frühstück, Colonizing Sex, 46; Kaji, “Methods of Birth Control,” 296.)

14. Journal Entry

[Tokyo, Japan] March 19. Sunday. [1922] In bed this morning shaking off a cold in throat, Mrs. Kohashi Mijo 445 Nishi Okubo, Tokyo Fuka, came to interview me on my impressions of Japan.1 After the evening before I am afraid they were not very favorable. I said I was impressed by the advance the men had made in comparison to that made by the women especially in [this] so in costume & also in the desire for knowledge. I believed the women would be liberated not by themselves but thru the men indirectly, the men are ambitious for position, for economic power & will take Birth Control because it will help the men attain some advantages. This will give women time to think & act. Mrs Kohashi then massaged my back & made me feel better. We had a meeting for Doctors at 2:30 in the Hygiene Assn Bldg2 about 100 Doctors present. Many of the most prominent. I had all means with me, but the Interpeter was nervous.3 The awe of the younger men toward the older men is discouraging. No young men spoke, only a few old ones. The usual Doctor attitude lack of interest in anything which will allow women to help themselves. X Ray discussion waxed hot Pro & Con. I was at a great disadvantage in not having an Interpeter who knew the subject better.4 We were, Baroness & I both discouraged at the attitude of these men— The lightness & lack of sincerity so evident among all groups of MDs was here also.5

48  •  Abroad!

Yokohoma for dinner at Oriental Hotel. Mrs Jewett & Mrs Pearse got a group together of about 100 foreigners, mostly English.6 Yokohoma is more English than American. It was a very good sympathetic group—no objections raised as I had eliminated them in the lecture. I was very tired & had to have a cocktail to put me through. Arrived Tokyo at midnight cars gasoline gave out, had to walk home, but sleeping City was very mysterious & quiet not like a City at all, no electric signs or bright lights, just like a nice low ceiling room of old Italian brown stained oak here & there, a light. Very tired beginning to feel the effects of hard work & fatigue one day more & then Nikko.7 AD MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S70:66–68).

1. Miyoke Kohashi was the first to edit a “woman’s page” in a Japanese newspaper. For the interview with MS, see Miyoke Kohashi, “Watashi no nihon inshô ki,” Shofu no tomo (May 1922): 46–48. (“A Japanese Woman Journalist,” Woman Citizen 4 [Sept. 27, 1919]: 429; 1922 World Trip Journal [LCM 70:33].) 2. MS received police permission to lecture on birth control methods to one hundred physicians. (Japan Advertiser, Mar. 19, 1922.) 3. MS described the interpreter as a young doctor who briefly toured the United States whose “command of English was correspondingly slight.” Among other mistakes, he translated “birth control” as “abortion.” Although Shidzue Ishimoto “attempted to correct the erroneous impression he was giving. . . . the meeting was over before she could make it clear.” (MS, Autobiography, 328.) 4. MS refers to the use of X-rays to cause temporary sterility in both men and women. This process was being studied in the United States, although researchers had not found safe and effective dosage and duration, and there was the risk of permanent sterilization. (Donald R. Hooker, “The Effect of the X-ray upon Reproduction in the Rat,” in Report of the 5INMBCC, edited by Pierpont, 236–39; Haire, “Contraceptive Technique,” 278; Robert Latou Dickinson, Control of Conception, 2nd ed. [Baltimore, 1938], 249–50.) 5. MS later wrote that the meeting was “the most painful experience I had in Japan.” (MS, Autobiography, 328.) 6. Elizabeth Rosevear Jewett (1866–1940) was the American wife of silk merchant John Hill Jewett. The other woman may have been Seattle resident Mary Agnes Pearse (1889–?). At around six hundred in 1922, the British outnumbered all other foreign groups in Yokohama. (New York Times, July 28, 1940; “The Jewett Family of America,” in Year Book of 1958 [Rowley, Mass., 1958], 29; Seattle Passenger and Crew Lists, 1882–1957; New York Times, Nov. 14, 1920; Christian Science Monitor, May 3, 1922.) 7. The next day, MS spoke to fifty nurses and doctors at the Tokyo Women’s Medical School, a group she described as “very reactionary & hundred years behind some of the men physicians.” She then met with the director, Yayoi Yoshioka. That evening she was the guest of a “prominent commercial organization” at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, where she gave a speech that was translated by Keikichi Ishimoto. MS considered this event to be “the most important and successful meeting held anywhere.” MS planned to

April 1922  •  49 tour Nikko, about one hundred miles south of Tokyo, on March 21–22. (1922 Calendar [quote 1 on 70] [MSM S70:69–81]; Frühstück, Colonizing Sex, 62; MS, “Margaret Sanger in Japan,” 102 [quotes 2–3].)

15. Journal Entry Sanger returned to Yokohama from Nikko on March 23 and remained for five days with a respiratory ailment. She then traveled to Nagoya, Kyoto, Kobe, and the Port of Shimonoseki, where, on April 6, she was ferried to Fusan, Korea. Sanger then spent three days in Seoul, the Korean capital, determined to see as much as she could. On April 8, she had tea at the home of the French consul and then took the train to Mukden in Manchuria. (1922 Journal [MSM S70:69–96]; Frühstück, Colonizing Sex, 62; MS, “Margaret Sanger in Japan,” 102; Japan Weekly Chronicle, Apr. 6, 1922.)

Suoel, Korea April 7 [1922]. Mr Owens called early, came up to room, wanted to arrange about the luncheon to be held at Bankers Club at 12:30.1 One or two newspaper men came also one from Souel Press Mr Kim who had lived in U.S.A. twenty years was a Korean & could speak very little of his native tongue.2 Luncheon consisted of about one hundred foreigners, & some Japanese officials & a few Koreans.3 Mayor of Souel attended.4 Missionaries are in charge of most Social Events in Korea & Japan & the American missionaries are said by others to live luxuriously well, servants, good houses, automobiles other fine things.5 There was discussion after the meeting, but I hope I left them something new to think about. In the afternoon we went to a silk factory & saw the little girl fingers taking the silk from the cocoon in boiling hot water.6 This factory seemed clean & well lighted but the children seemed like babies, their delecate fingers & bent backs so crunched up all day. I wonder what sacrifices are to be made in humanity, before we realize the value of human life. Later at 4:30 we went to tea at consul generals Mr Miller’s.7 He was entertaining Mr & Mrs Burgher en route to Jap China on S.S. Albany, there was a dance given in honor of the passengers on the Albany. Many Japanese men officials & Japanese Baroness & ladies present at the tea.8 Like all teas rather formal, but finally Mrs Miller got the men & women dancing and when I left the punch, not an American one either, was helping considerately in mixing the nationalities.9 The young Japanese girls were beautifully gowned in native Costume and to see them dance the one step—& fox trot with native shoes was a marvel.10 They take to dancing very naturally I am told and like it too.

50  •  Abroad!

Went to see a Korean desk & chest. The antique chests are lovely. The modern ones are not such fine wood ‘tho more convenient.11 AD MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S70:103–6).

1. Herbert T. Owens (1882–1958), a Canadian-born Presbyterian missionary, worked as assistant to the president of the Severance Union Medical College and Chosen Christian College. The luncheon was held at the Korean Federation of Banks (later the Kyongsong Bankers’ Club). (“Herbert T. Owens,” Land & Liberty [Feb. 1959]: 32; 1922 Calendar [MSM S78:502]; Ottawa Citizen, Jan. 11, 1932; Dae‑yeol Ku, Korea under Colonialism: The March First Movement and Anglo‑Japanese Relations [Seoul, 1985], 171–72.) 2. Of the three Korean newspapers, the Seoul Press was the only one published in English. Its editor Isoh Yamagata (1869–1959) may have attended the luncheon. Mr. Kim may be Kim Tong-Sōng (1890–1969), a Korean journalist for the popular Dong’a Ilbo (East Asia Daily). (Bong Gi Kim, Brief History of the Korean Press [Seoul, 1965], 112; New York Times, Feb. 23, 1921; Isoh Yamagata, “Journalism in Korea,” and D. S. Kim, “The Dong-A Daily, Seoul Korea,” in The Press Congress of the World in Hawaii, edited by Walter Williams [Columbia, Mo., 1922], 456–60; Honolulu Hawaii Passenger and Crew Lists, 1900–1969; Los Angeles Times, June 1, 1951.) 3. The audience was composed of about eighty members of the Bankers or Luncheon Club of Seoul, a group of English-speaking Japanese, Koreans, and foreigners. (Japan Weekly Chronicle, Apr. 13, 1922.) 4. Seoul (Gyeongseong, also known as Keijō or Keijōfu under Japanese rule) was the center of Japan’s administration of Korea. 5. There were close to five hundred American missionaries in Korea in 1922, most living in the upscale Legation District of West Seoul. (Edward Alexander Powell, Asia at the Crossroads: Japan, Korea, China, Philippine Islands [New York, 1922], 173–74; Timothy S. Lee, “A Political Factor in the Rise of Protestantism in Korea: Protestantism and the 1919 March First Movement,” Church History 69 [Mar. 2000]: 118.) 6. MS was describing filature, the process whereby silk was removed from cocoons and peeled by “basin workers,” women and children who attended bowls of cocoons, which were boiled or kept hot. (D. K. Lieu, The Silk Reeling Industry in Shanghai [Shanghai, 1933], 74–78; Stewart Lone and Gavan McCormack, Korea since 1850 [Melbourne, 1993], 66.) 7. Ransford S. Miller (1869–1932) was the American consul general who was in Korea from 1919 to 1930. (New York Times, April 27, 1932; editors’ correspondence with Evan Dawley, Apr. 30, 2008.) 8. The tea was held in honor of Dr. Jacob Gould Schurman, the American minister to China, who left Seoul on April 5, and may have included his daughter, Barbara Schurman; P. R. Josselyn, assistant secretary of the legation; officers of the S.S. Albany; and some Japanese women. (Japan Advertiser, Apr. 7, 1922; North-China Herald, Apr. 1, 1922.) 9. The consul general’s wife was Lily Murray Miller (1864–?). (U.S. Passport Applications, 1795–1925; New York Times, Apr. 27, 1932.) 10. A popular ballroom dance, the fox-trot was introduced about 1914. The one-step is a fox-trot for faster music. (EB.)

April 1922  •  51 11. The most common Korean chest was the bandaji, which had a door that extended across the front on hinges and opened downward. (Edward Wright and Man Sil Pai, Korean Furniture [New York, 1984], 143.)

16. Journal Entry Sanger and her party took a train to Mukden, Manchuria, where they spent two nights before leaving for Peking, arriving on April 11. (MS, World Trip Journal [MSM S70:106–21].)

Peking. [China] April 11 [1922] It is impossible to compare Peking with any other city in the world. So far I do not like it. Dust, dust, dust! and walls within walls.1 The thousands of coolies one sees here is astounding & depressing.2 The Pekin Grand Hotel is very elegant, but the boys who come to serve in the rooms are not by any means friendly in their hearts to foreigners. I don’t see why they should be, but it is a different feeling than the “boy” in a Japanese Hotel gives you. We are arranging for a sight seeing tour in real American fashion.3 I know I shall die before it is over but Mr Wong our guide speaks English well & that may make seven days of it endurable. AD MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S70:122).

1. Peking, also known as Peiping (Beîjing), was a fortified city with towers and walls thirty to fifty feet wide at their bases. Divided into sections, the Forbidden City, Imperial City, Inner City, and Outer City were all separated by walls and gates. (Lin Yutang, Imperial Peking: Seven Centuries of China [New York, 1961], 26, 80; Perkins, Encyclopedia of China, 106.) 2. “Coolie,” derived from the Hindu word kuli, was a pejorative term used by the British for unskilled Chinese laborers. Many worked the waterfronts, pulled rickshaws, and undertook other menial tasks. (Perkins, Encyclopedia of China, 106.) 3. As MS had no lectures or appearances scheduled, she decided to tour the area and meet with people interested in birth control. Her guide was T. P. Wong. (MS, Journal Entries, Apr. 11–12, 1922 [MSM S70:122–32]; MS, Autobiography, 267–68; “News Notes,” BCR 6 [Oct. 1922]: 195.)

17. Journal Entry China had been embroiled in a civil war since 1916 as it sought to throw off the yoke of monarchy. As warlords battled for control of the new Republican government, more than six hundred thousand Chinese died, and widespread economic havoc, crop destruction,

52  •  Abroad! and oppressive taxation followed. Sanger began her tour of Peking on April 12, visiting the Temple of Heaven. (MS, Journal Entries, Apr. 12–13, 1922 [MSM S70:123–24]; Schoppa, Columbia Guide, 60–62.)

Peking [China] April 13 [1922] The rumor is about that Chang Tso Ling has moved his troops a few miles from this city, but no one seems to care.1 Shangtung has been given back to China by the Japanese & they are removing their soldiers, but no one seems to care.2 Left today for Ming tomb at Nankow,3 a queer little hotel in which to spend the night, clean but queer. Then four coolies take one in a Sedan Chair for miles & miles through an arid dusty land, ten miles there & nine to return. These poor thin creatures walking all the way. I feel despondent & horrid, I keep wondering what is the good of being an old Civilization if this is what it gives its inhabitants at the end of two thousand years or more! Peking [China] Good Friday April 14. [1922] From Nankow we got away at eight a.m. on a special train to see the Great wall.4 More than an hours ride through this treeless mountain country I never saw so few trees. Not one on the mountain tops ever.5 But the wall was a thrilling sight. Miles & miles of that splendid structure, so rythmetic! There is everything modern about that wall, but it is fast going to pieces.6 We walked on top of it for a mile to one of its highest peaks. Beggars everywhere, dirty & ragged too. Luncheon a la picnic & back to Peking to bathe & bathe & try to get the dust out of your eyes & throat & nose. AD MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S70:124–25).

1. Chang Tso-lin (Zuòlin Zhāng) (1875–1928), the warlord of Manchuria, sent seventy thousand troops into central China, seizing Tientsin (Tiānjīn) and threatening Peking. He was loosely allied with General Sun Yat-Sen (Sun Yixian) in southern China. (Schoppa, Columbia Guide, 200–201; Chicago Daily Tribune, Apr. 17–22, 1922.) 2. One of the results of the 1922 Washington Naval Arms Conference was Japan’s agreement to withdraw its troops from Shantung (Shândōng) by May 4. In return, China was forced to pay more than one million dollars for improvements Japan had made to the province. (Christian Science Monitor, Apr. 12, 1922; Washington Post, Apr. 24, 1922.)

April 1922  •  53 3. MS visited the burial site of thirteen Ming-dynasty emperors at Nankow, a mountain pass between China and Mongolia, about thirty miles north of Peking, near the Great Wall. (MS, Journal Entry, Apr. 13, 1922 [MSM S70:124].) 4. MS likely took the Peking-Suiyuan Railway through the Nankow Pass, probably stopping at the Ching-Lung-Ch’iao (Purple Dragon Gate), about a mile from the Great Wall, and Badaling, a popular tourist stop on the wall. (Julean Herbert Arnold, Commercial Handbook of China [Washington, D.C., 1919], 306; William Lindesay, The Great Wall Revisited: From the Jade Gate to Old Dragon’s Head [Beijing, 2007], 183.) 5. Other travelers had also commented on the lack of trees, attributing it to arid conditions and the rapid colonization of the area. (Wilson, China, 51; Harry Alverson Franck, Wandering in North China [New York, 1923], 239.) 6. The Great Wall was made of earth and granite masonry with mortar of limestone and sand, and the top was paved with brick. It was in various states of disrepair in the early 1920s but in better condition in the Nankow Pass area. (Wilson, China, 219–20.)

18. To Juliet Barrett Rublee 1 While in Peking, Sanger toured several palaces and began making connections with Chinese interested in birth control. (Journal Entry [MSM S70:124–26].)

[Peking, China] April 16 1922

Dearest Juliet: So you went to Bermuda! I was so happy to receive your dear letter and to know you & Mrs K. were resting there.2 Even for a week. It was dear of you to cable me to Yokohama I answered to the office because of the cable address which saves several words.3 You are always so thoughtful & adorable. I was worn out in Japan you have no idea how difficult it is to speak before an audiance so strange and to have to wait while what you said is being interpeted. It takes two times as long to say in Japanese what I say in English which meant an hours lecture lasted three hours. I was standing first on one foot & then on the other nearly fainting at times when the speaker would suddenly stop and I had to begin again. Often it was difficult to remember so quickly where you had left off & what you had said. Then too visitors were calling constantly and while I loved their quaint [ways] it was trying to have no time to myself to rest at all. It was New York all over again only harder. Well darling I did not have tea with the Mikado, and in as much as he is said to be suffering from Softening of the Brain no one ever sees him.4 But good work was done in Japan nevertheless. Now for China.

54  •  Abroad!

I am to speak at the National University Wednesday of this week and am invited to dine with the Chancellor that evening.5 There is a wide spread interest here but of course there is no publicity.6 The Missionaries all have huge families out here & live like queens—so they resent my being here.7 The Rockefeller people are very fine— Met Dr Houghton & Dr Burgess at Dr Howards home yesterday where Grant & I went for tea.8 We leave on Thursday for Shanghai where I am asked to speak for an labor organization— Don’t know yet just what kind—9 Six months here with you Mrs K— Miss Rowe, Anna & Kitty and we would revolutionize China!10 All that you say of Mrs K I would add to it double. She is one of the dearest of women. I can not believe she will leave us before we accomplish something.11 We must get all our work done before 1925. for my horiscope tells me I must begin then to do spiritual work & lie low with public causes.12 Some say it will be the year of Catholic supremacy in U.S.A. to last a few years only.13 However dearest if we all do our best now thats all we can do and surely you all do that ten times over. Grant is having a wonderful time. I am adoring him more & more each day. I pushed him out to school when he was only five years old and it is fun to learn to know him again.14 More later dearest but now my love & devotion. Happiness & health to you. Ever lovingly Margaret. ALS JBRP, NhD (MSM C2:30–33). Letterhead of the Grand Hotel de Pékin.

1. Juliet Barrett Rublee (1875–1966), a wealthy and eccentric socialite, had become MS’s closest friend and an important birth control activist and supporter, serving as the ABCL’s vice president. She had taken a short trip to Bermuda with Anne Kennedy in late March or early April. (JBRP Finding Aid; ABCL Board of Directors Minutes, Jan. 12, 1922; MS to Anne Kennedy, Apr. 29, 1922 [LCM 24:408A]; for more on Rublee and Kennedy, see Vol. 1.) 2. “Mrs. K.” is Anne Kennedy. The letter was not found. 3. The cables have not been found. MS’s cable address was “Sangatrol.” 4. “Mikado” is an archaic term for the Japanese emperor. MS is referring to Taishō Tennō (Yoshihito) (1879–1926), the 123rd ruling descendant of the Japanese imperial family and Japan’s emperor from 1912 to 1926. He suffered a stroke in 1921 that left him mentally impaired. (New York Times, Dec. 25, 1926; EB.) 5. MS spoke to twenty-five hundred men at Guóli Beijing Dàxué (National Peking University) on April 19, then dined with Tsai Yuan-Pei (Cài Yuánpéi) (1867–1940), its chancellor and president and a leader of China’s academic liberals. Hu Shih translated for her. (MS, Autobiography, 258; Journal Entry [MSM S70:129–30]; New York Times, Mar. 6, 1940.)

April 1922  •  55 6. Methods of birth control, including abortion and infanticide, were known in China and had long been legal, but in 1910 a new imperial law, modeled on Western laws, banned abortion. MS secured immediate support from Chinese feminists and Communist women, but many Communist men believed that unequal distribution of wealth, not overpopulation, was the cause of economic inequity and refused to advocate birth control or abortion. (Kane, “Family Planning in China,” 426–27; Gilmartin, Engendering the Chinese Revolution, 55–57.) 7. MS had only limited contact with missionaries in China and may have picked up these negative associations from educated and liberal Chinese, many of whom were staunchly anti-Christian. MS displayed skepticism about American missionaries in Seoul, noting they “are said by others to live luxuriously well.” After leaving China, she noted that the Chinese “really ‘hate’ the foreigner. . . . [B]ack in the Chinese heart there lies the knowledge of the foreigners = invasion into his land. . . . [H]e sees the Missionaries & others invading not only their cities but the homes & hearts of their people.” (Paul A. Cohen, China and Christianity [Cambridge, 1963], 3, 268–69; MS, Journal Entry, Apr. 7 [quote 1] and May 12 [quote 2], 1922 [MSM S70:104, 159].) 8. The Peking University Medical College (PUMC), funded by the Rockefeller Foundation (RF), was the only teaching hospital in Asia. Henry Spencer Houghton (1880–1975), an American-born physician and tropical-disease expert, directed the college. John Stewart Burgess (1883–1949) was an American missionary, sociologist, and secretary of the YMCA in China. He headed the Sociology Department at Yenching (Yânjīng) University in Peking. Harvey J. Howard (1880–1956) was the American-born head of ophthalmology at PUMC. (ANB; New York Times, Aug. 19, 1949, and Nov. 7, 1956; Yung‑chen Chiang, Social Engineering and the Social Sciences in China, 1919‑1949 [Cambridge, 2001], 26, 33, 42–45; David C. Lindberg and Theodore M. Porter, eds., Cambridge History of Science, vol. 7, The Modern Social Sciences [Cambridge, 2003], 503–4; Los Angeles Times, Aug. 27, 1925; MS, World Trip Journal, Apr. 16, 1922 [MSM S70:126].) 9. MS left Peking on Apr. 22, traveling by train to Hankōw (Hànkou) and then by ship to Nanking (Nánjīng), before reaching Shanghai (Shànghãi) on the twenty-fifth. (MS, Journal Entries, Apr. 22–24, 1922 [MSM S70:138–39].) 10. MS refers to Anne Kennedy, Clara Louise Rowe (McGraw), Anna Lifshiz, and Kitty Marion (Katherina Maria Schafer) (1871–1944), a German-born actress and militant suffragette who relocated to New York and hawked the BCR on its streets from 1917 to 1929. (New York Times, Oct. 10, 1944; content note for the Papers of Kitty Marion, Women’s Library, London; Jared L. Manley, “Crusader,” New Yorker, July 4, 1936, 22–24.) 11. Kennedy was essential to keeping the ABCL operating in MS’s absence. She remained at the ABCL until 1927. 12. MS commissioned horoscopes from New York astrologer Elizabeth Aldrich (1875– 1948) as early as 1917. These readings encouraged her to base actions on the alignment of the planets. She believed the birth control movement was aligned with Neptune. (New York Times, Apr. 30, 1948; Aldrich to MS, Feb. 6, 1922 [MSM S83:739].) 13. MS may be responding to reports of the significant growth of the Catholic Church in the United States, which established more than two hundred new parishes between 1920 and 1922. (New York Times, Apr. 14, 1922.)

56  •  Abroad! 14. Grant Sanger began boarding school when he was seven. MS later wrote about him on this trip: “He had studied the Baedekers, planned our trips when we were coming into a new city or country, looked into their histories and, although he was only thirteen, shown a highly awake and intelligent attitude towards everything we had seen.” (William Sanger to MS, Jan. 21, 1915 [MSM S1:401]; MS, Autobiography, 353 [quote].)

19. Journal Entry In her last days in Peking, Sanger stirred up interest in birth control by speaking at National Peking University and meeting with staff at the PUMC. With Professor Hu Shih, she also spoke to individuals interested in starting birth control clinics and leagues in China and Korea. (MS, Autobiography, 258; MS, Journal Entries, Apr. 16–24, 1922 [MSM S70:126–39].)

Shanghai [China] April 25 [1922]

Arrive on boat Nanking then train to Shanghai. Arrived here about 7:30 PM. almost a foreign or European City with a few Chinamen walking about.1 Astor Hotel old fashioned with no flush toilets.2 The Room boys here are very intelligent & keen—also kindness itself. It makes me creep to have the rickshaw men pull me about. I am stronger & more able to walk than many of them are to pull me.3 It is a degrading spectacle to see these human creatures pulling great fat healthy men about in these vehicles. AD MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S70:140).

1. Shanghai, on the eastern coast, was China’s wealthiest and most influential city, with a large and powerful community of foreigners (mostly British, French, and Japanese, but an increasing number of Americans). (Clifford, Spoilt Children of Empire, 7–9.) 2. The prestigious Astor House Hotel in Shanghai was the center of foreign social activities. (Clifford, Spoilt Children of Empire, 62.) 3. Imported from Japan in the 1860s, the rickshaw enabled poor men to earn a meager living; at the same time, it symbolized the exploitation of the Chinese by wealthy foreigners. (Strand, Rickshaw Beijing, 20–29.)

20. Journal Entry Sanger spent her first few days in Shanghai meeting with newspaper editors and visiting factories to publicize the need for birth control. She later wrote, “The commercial Press of Shanghai was most generous in its propaganda. For one whole week they brought out

April 1922  •  57 scientific articles,” and “the Chinese Press was aflame with the subject of Birth Control.” (MS, My Fight, 267–68; MS, “Public Meeting—Large Kingsway Hall,” in Report of the 5INMBCC, edited by Pierpont, 206 [quotes].)

Shanghai [China] Sunday, April 30 [1922] Am to speak at 2:30 today.1 Was called for by automobile and drove to West Gate. Labor section to Labor museum, where the Family Reformation Association were holding their third anniversary meeting.2 The hall held about 800 people and was filled. Advertising the B.C. meeting had brought more than usual.3 The rules of the association are no smoking, no drinking, no gambling. Consequently their membership is very small. A good looking audience of men women & children filled the hall. The woman seemed to attend for some reason but not for the B.C. message.4 A young woman interpreted the address in paragraphs, she had lately returned from America and was considered very good. But one had only to listen a few minutes to recognize she was not the expert that an American prestage gave her. When I asked the chairman if I was to give the theory or practice of B.C. to the audience he said “both.” But when I came to speak on the practical side my translators courage took flight. She could not go on. She turned to me & said “I will get a Doctor to say that.”5 But the only doctor available had been talking to someone & had not heard the practical side. I suggested having a pamphlet and giving the Family Reformation a good supply so they could give it to their members.6 This was announced to the audience & all were satisfied. The lecture took 40 minutes & I was thanked elaborately by the Chairman, escorted to the car & driven back to the Hotel. The China Times devoted a whole department of its paper today to the subject of B.C.7 The Ladies Review devotes a whole issue of its May number to the questions and all together the Chinese Press is doing very well.8 The day before Mr. Chen Hai Chang took me to one of the Cotton spinning mills on the Yangste a few miles out. We went on a trolley, the first I have seen in China so far. There is a first & second class like those in England.9 We went into some of the homes of the workers first and found at home some of the women on night shift. They were living in one story shacks with two rooms several children & grown ups occupied the “shack.” Cook & wash in streets. We then went into the mill, one of the largest in China.10 Over five thousand women & girls employed here. It was a shock to see such little children at work. Thousands of little girls who could not possibly be over eight or nine years of age.

58  •  Abroad!

They did not seem however to be “speeded up” as in Japan or U.S.A.11 They were leisurely at work & took off time to romp about & look after the stranger. A “Foreigner” seems to attract much attention.12 I am told these little ones get ten cents a day (mex)13 for ten & twelve hours’ work. The mothers bring their babies to work, nurse them & put them to sleep in baskets beside their machines.14 It is all very dreary. The air is full of lint or cotton dust and while there is light there is no air. China comes into the fold of industrialization and shall have equal consequences with the Western Nations who abuse womanhood & girlhood for this machine labor. AD MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S70:142–46).

1. In MS’s talk “The Importance of Birth Control and Its Methods,” later translated and published in Funu Zhazhi (Ladies Journal), she discussed the benefits of small families in the United States, the global population problem, the circumstances she believed should preclude having children, and contraceptive methods. (MS, “Shengyu jiezhi de zhongyao he fangfa,” Funu Zhazhi 8 [June 1, 1922]: 132–34.) 2. This meeting was organized by the Kiangsu Educational Association, the National Association of Vocational Education in China, and the Jiating Rixin Hui (JRH) (Association of Family Reformation of China). What MS called the “Labor Museum” was the Shanghai Zhigong Jiaoyu Guan (Hall of Shanghai Vocational Education). The West Gate refers to the area that once housed one of nine fortified gates around the Old City of Shanghai. (Hunag Yen Pei to MS, Apr. 24, 1922 [LCM 12:506]; Ke Shi, “Madame Sanger’s Observation in China,” Funu Zhazhi 8 [Oct. 10, 1922]: 46; Li Yingming, “Shange furen de jieyu sixiang zaihua fanxiang zhi zai yanjiu” [Rethinking on the repercussion of Ms. Sanger’s birth control idea in China], thesis, Zhongshan University, 2007.) 3. A translation of MS’s speech was published in the June issue of Funu Zhazhi. Based on her “Women and Birth Control” speech (1916), which she also delivered at Peking University, she added a summary of her trip to Japan and emphasized her conviction that China needed to adopt scientific birth control to free its women and improve the race. (Zhang Zisheng, trans., “Madame Sanger at Shanghai Family Reformation Association,” Funu Zhazhi 8 [June 1922]: 132–34; MS, “Women and Birth Control,” 1916 [LCM 129:12].) 4. The women’s rights movement in China, still in its infancy, was associated with the Communist Party, so the conservative JRH women may not have anticipated MS’s subject. (Gilmartin, Engendering the Chinese Revolution, 34, 41, 55.) 5. The interpreter was Qingtang Yu (1897–1949), a Chinese professor of education at Daxia University, who had recently received her doctorate from Columbia University. A student of John Dewey, Yu became a leading activist for mass education and founded the Chinese Society of Social Education. (Wang, Women in the Chinese Enlightenment, 272n11; Xu, Minguo Renwu Dacidian, 611.)

April 1922  •  59 6. Most likely, MS suggested using Family Limitation, which university students had translated into Chinese. About five thousand copies had been printed. (MS, Autobiography, 341–42.) 7. The China Times published a special supplement on April 29, which included ten articles on birth control, including MS’s handwritten greetings to Chinese readers and a translation of her 1921 BCR article “Birth Control—Past, Present and Future,” as well as review essays discussing MS’s other works and essays by Zhou Jianren, Lady Lingfen, and Ziyao. (“Xuedeng Fukan,” China Times, Apr. 29, 1922.) 8. MS likely meant the Funu Zhazhi, which published a special birth control issue in June 1922. The journal included a welcome statement and interview with MS, along with reprints of a number of MS’s BCR and other articles, including “Birth Control and China,” “The Power of Women and Birth Control,” and the “Social Meaning of Birth Control,” as well as articles by other Western authors, translated by Zhou Jiaren. (Funu Zhazhi 8 [June 1922]: 2–144.) 9. Chen Hai Cheng (Hai-Chang Chen) (1892–1972) was a Chinese translator who worked for the China Times. Cheng contacted MS for permission to translate Woman and the New Race and volunteered to “put my personal service at your disposal and arrange for you interviews with the best men down there.” Cheng wrote about MS for Xue Deng (Lights of Learning) and Chenbao Fujuan (Supplement to the Morning Newspaper). Shanghai was one of only two cities in China that had electric trolleys; about two-thirds of all transportation was by cart or rickshaw. MS likely took the Shanghai Electric Construction Company trolley, a British-run line. (Xu, Minguo Renwu Dachidian, 1048; Chen to MS, Apr. 15, 1922 [LCM 12:497]; R. A. Lundquist, Electrical Goods in China, Japan, and Vladivostok [Washington, D.C., 1918], 61–62; Christian Science Monitor, June 28, 1922.) 10. Cotton spinning and weaving, China’s largest industry, was dominated in the 1920s by Japanese, British, American, German, and Russian firms. The mill may have been the Chinese-controlled Shanghai Cotton Mill, established in 1897. (Stella Dong, Shanghai: The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City [New York, 2000], 71–72; Betty Wei, Shanghai: Crucible of Modern China [New York, 1987], 155–56.) 11. “Speeding up” refers to the practice of increasing the pace of work and adding extra duties without increasing pay. While both China and Japan had modernized their silk industries, Japan had more fully adopted Western industrial practices to increase both output and quality. (Alice H. Amsden, The Rise of “the Rest”: Challenges to the West from Late-Industrializing Economies [New York, 2003], 64–65.) 12. Westerners held most of the political and economic power in China, and most Chinese resented their privileged status, giving rise to nationalist movements that were strongly anti-Western and anti-Japanese. However, many of the Western women in China were associated with missions, and MS’s independent status may have attracted their curiosity. (Hyman Kublin, China [Boston, 1972], 157–88, 152–63, 52.) 13. “Mex” refers to silver-dollar coins, minted in Mexico and reused in China. The coin was often debased by replacing silver with lead. (Dennis L. Noble, ed., Gunboat on the Yangtze: The Diary of Captain Glenn F. Howell of the U.S.S. Palos, 1920–1921 [Jefferson, N.C., 2002], 77n35.) 14. Women and children made up about 70 percent of the industrial workforce in Shanghai. Although most workers were in their twenties, a significant number were

60  •  Abroad! teenagers and girls as young as seven. (Jean Chesneaux, The Chinese Labor Movement, 1919–1927, translated by H. M. Wright [Stanford, Calif., 1969], 73–76.)

21. Journal Entry Civil war broke out in China in April as the forces of Manchurian warlord Chang Tso-Lin captured Peking. Combatants seized roads and railroads, hampering travel. (New York Times, Apr. 22, 1922.)

Shanghai [China] May 1 [1922] The war is still on with rumors of Wu Pi Fu’s winning one day & Chang tso lyn the next day.1 The Japanese womens club asked me to speak today and we had tea at a very elegant home where both Japanese men & women were invited. We spoke very frankly and all details of B.C. were discussed.2 It was an unusually intelligent group. I never knew the Japanese women to talk so openly & freely to the men present. It seems to me that they are more advanced when away from their own land.3 The Women’s Club presented me with a gift as usual (a purse) and drove me back to the Hotel. They are a charming people. I do like them & their ways. I like them especially out of their own Country where they are not afraid to do as they desire. The Japanese who had been an engineer & had lived for several years in China’s interior was present. He claims the Chinese are more cruel & brutal & savage than the natives of Formosa.4 He is a fine type of Japanese, not much English but a fine face & head. I had an appointment with the missionary Mr. Blackstone who invited me to go through some of the districts where Chinese life was real.5 We went to foreign “red light” district. The women could be seen through the open doorways. They were gowned in bright colors & were rouged & looked very bright. It was a strange impression one gets to see your “own” women huddled into these districts. Then the streets soon began to be filled with sailors. British or American or both. They seemed to prefer the Foreign quarter.6 Certainly they are brighter in color than the Chinese districts which are very dark & gloomy. It is a sight to pass through and to see the baby faces looking at of the open windows. Each girl takes her turn to sit upon a high stool & watches out upon the streets to see if she can attract some man’s attention.

May 1922  •  61

We went into one place where six girls, very very young ones, from ten to 18 were sitting on hard benches in a room about 6x9. Some of these were Eurasians & were asleep on the benches. What dreary dens these holes are. We talked to one girl who said she was 19 years old. Had been in this house 7 years.7 She did not want to have a baby, had never had one. But hoped she would never have one. She was a most pathetic little figure, old as the ages in experience but a baby in body. When she said “me no want baby” it was said with a thousand years of tragic sorrow behind it. We saw the rooms upstairs, clean but poor & dreary she carried a lamp so we would not trip & fall. We paid her a few dollars for her trouble & went away. She seemed surprised at our leaving when her invitation to stay had been so urgent & kind. We took in the Japanese section also, which was very clean & decorative, soft low lights, plain but neat interiors, very elegant some of them. The girls in costume were brightly dressed & music was in the air in these quarters.8 There are thousands & thousands of so-called sing song girls in China. The Missionary said there are 100,000 in Shanghai alone. Some of them are sold as babies & brought up for this occupation. They belong body & soul to the keeper & never return to their homes. Some Americans or foreign men often buy one & has it ↑her↓ for his “squaw” while he resides in China.9 There were all grades & classes of districts from the low grade where the men pay the girl fifty cents or a dollar, & “bargain” with her at that, to the high class district where one must appear in Evening clothes for dinner or after ten o’clock.10 We roamed about in to Chinese theatres where one sees the most gorgeous & elegant costumes on the central figures or actors and at the same time a stage hand with horrid ordinary clothes helps him to do his act.11 It is the most incongruous thing. Then we heard the story teller on the stage. It is said it is this way most of the people of China get their knowledge as most of them do not read.12 We finally found our way to the docks where I was to take the boat to Hong Kong. When we arrived, it was impossible to find the boat & finally found it so small and a freighter at that, that we took our bags & went back to the Hotel. The next day we moved over to the Burlington Hotel on Bubbling Well Road & waited for the Silver State.13 One day at Foochow was delightful. The streets were so narrow only one could pass at a time. We were carried on Sedan Chairs through these many stepped streets.14 Everyone is at work. Men, women & children. The smells in each city differ. But there is a distinct smell of China cant say what it is, but it comes & goes in various places.

62  •  Abroad!

Saw an old Chinese garden in Soochow15 Grant rode a donkey, the guide also rode one, while two coolies carried the chair on long bamboo poles. The third coolie walked beside us & took his turn at the poles. Shanghai is a city for foreigners. The Chinese live in horrible quarters while the French & English own the best of the place.16 The missionaries dominate the Educated Chinese, for it is through the Church that they get their education. The missionaries have large families of eight & ten children. The Church pays a bonus for each extra child.17 AD MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S70:147–52).

1. Wu Peifu (Wú Pèifú) (1874–1939) was another Chinese warlord whose Zhili clique dominated central China. He allied with President Hsu Chi Chang against Chang TsoLin. (Schoppa, Columbia Guide, 61–62, 199–200.) 2. It is likely MS spoke to the wives of wealthy Japanese bankers and businessmen who lived in the International Settlement. Relative newcomers to Shanghai, these women had little to do with the majority of Japanese women there, who worked in clothing factories or as prostitutes. Japanese women’s clubs, in tandem with British and American women’s clubs, focused on charitable and social reform work. (Elizabeth Littell‑Lamb, “Caught in the Crossfire: Women’s Internationalism and the YWCA Child Labor Campaign in Shanghai, 1921–1925,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 32, no. 3 [2011]: 141; Christian Henriot, “‘Little Japan,’” in New Frontiers: Imperialism’s New Communities in East Asia, 1842‑1952, edited by Robert Bickers and Christian Henriot [Manchester, 2000], 147, 152.) 3. The tremendous social pressure on Japanese women to remain subordinate to men and silent in their company eased once they were abroad. Shidzue Ishimoto noted that after living outside of Japan, she began to conduct herself “as a person and not as exploited family property.” (Ishimoto, Facing Two Ways, 241 [quote]; Frühstück, Colonizing Sex, 75.) 4. After their victory in the first Sino-Japanese War (1895), many Japanese viewed the Chinese with disdain, depicting them as inferior and even savage. The Japanese, who controlled Formosa (Taiwan) in 1895, also believed that the Taiwanese were an inferior population whose violent resistance had to be crushed. (Edward I-te Chen, “Formosan Political Movements under Japanese Colonial Rule, 1914–1937,” Journal of Asian Studies 31 [May 1972]: 477, 496; John W. Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War [New York, 1986], 46, 285–86.) 5. James Henry Blackstone (1879–1965) was an American Methodist missionary serving in Shanghai and Nanking. (Missionary Application, Sept. 20, 1905, United Methodist Church Archives, Madison, N.J.; California Death Index; “Gleanings from Correspondence and Exchange,” Chinese Recorder 54 [1923]: 368.) 6. Shanghai was divided into three administrative regions: the International Settlement, the French Concession, and the Chinese Municipality. Prostitution was centered in the French and International regions, with Western prostitutes, often Euro-Asian or Russian, clustered in the northern part of the International Settlement. (Henriot, Prostitution and Sexuality in Shanghai, 84, 116, 209, 211; Hershatter, Dangerous Pleasures, 31.) 7. It was illegal to house prostitutes under the age of fifteen, though this rule was widely violated. (Henriot, Prostitution and Sexuality in Shanghai, 122.)

May 1922  •  63 8. The Japanese in Shanghai lived in the Hongku District of the International Settlement. There, prostitutes, usually Korean, were housed in Japanese restaurants and brothels. (Henriot, Prostitution and Sexuality in Shanghai, 219.) 9. “Sing-song girls” is a Western name for Chinese courtesans, made popular by the 1892 novel of the same name by Han Pang-ch’ing. In the French Concession and International Settlement, there were about ten to fifteen thousand registered prostitutes in 1920. No figures were recorded for the Chinese Municipality. Because of its divided political administration and lax policing, Shanghai was the center of sex trafficking in China. It was not uncommon for women to be kidnapped or sold into prostitution by their families to clear debts. (Henriot, Prostitution and Sexuality in Shanghai, 116–17, 168–87.) 10. There were rigid castes of prostitutes in Shanghai, ranging from high-level courtesans to impoverished streetwalkers. The “golden circle,” a band of three districts in the International Settlement, housed the most elite prostitutes, those with more education who came from particular geographical districts. (Henriot, Prostitution and Sexuality in Shanghai, 115–20; Hershatter, Dangerous Pleasures, 54.) 11. Chinese theater, including the Peking and Shaohing operas and T’an-Huang plays, was in a period of transition. Increasingly, it borrowed from Western traditions to integrate social and political issues of the day. Shanghai was the center of this new trend, marked not only by updated subject matter but also by simpler, more modern costumes. (Colin Mackerras, The Chinese Theatre in Modern Times: From 1840 to the Present Day [Amherst, Mass., 1995], 65–66, 109–20.) 12. Traditional Chinese storytellers, often accompanied by an instrument, spoke or sang complex stories about historical events and everyday life. Literacy rates in Chinese villages ranged from 2 to 10 percent for women and 30 to 40 percent for men. (Perkins, Encyclopedia of China, 490; Hayford, To the People, 6, 71.) 13. The Burlington was a fashionable hotel on one of the city’s major thoroughfares. The Silver State was a steamship that carried passengers between Seattle and Manila, stopping at Yokohama, Kobe, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. In June 1922, it was sold and renamed the President Jackson. (New York Times, July 13, 1923; Japan Advertiser, Apr. 19, 1922; Christian Science Monitor, Apr. 19, 1922.) 14. Foochow (Fuzhou), on the bank of the Min River, is surrounded by mountains and known for its hot springs, shipyards, and historic temples. (Perkins, Encyclopedia of China, 173–74.) 15. Soochow (Suzhou), on the lower Yangtze River, was known for its almost two hundred classical Ming- and Qing-dynasty gardens. (Perkins, Encyclopedia of China, 179.) 16. Shanghai’s wealthier areas, which China had been forced to cede after the Boxer Rebellion, housed more than a million people and engaged in more commerce and industry than other areas. (Clifford, Spoilt Children of Empire, 6–7.) 17. Although there were some large missionary families in China, most numbered between three and four children, as they did in their home countries. (Editors’ correspondence with Thomas G. Oey, Nov. 11, 2010; Wayne Flynt and Gerald W. Berkeley, Taking Christianity to China: Alabama Missionaries in the Middle Kingdom, 1850–1950 [Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1997], 108–14.)

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22. Journal Entry After Sanger left Shanghai on May 6, she spent the remainder of her trip sightseeing. She went to Hong Kong on May 7, then sailed for Egypt on the S.S. Plassy, stopping in Singapore, Port Suettenham, Penang, Colombo, and Aden, before arriving in Port Said on June 6. She then traveled to Cairo, where she toured the major sights. (MS, World Trip Journal [MSM S70:147–96].)

[Cairo, Egypt] June 10 [1922] The Prince of Wales is here today. No excitement, no great welcome—no flags out, just like any other individual.1 We are feeling the aches of ↑caused by↓ the various vehicles yesterday.2 But it was a day to remember. Today a ring was given me, the stone a blue oblong seal is said to have belonged to Queen Hetsoo 1600 B.C.3 Its very beautiful in its color anyway. All resting today. Toward evening Grant was taken ill a temperature of 102 rose at 10 Pm to 104.4 Called a Doctor, a fine old German who had resided here for the past twenty years. I was anxious most of the night and the Doctor called early in the morning. AD MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S70:192–93).

1. Prince Edward of Wales (1894–1972), later Edward VIII of England, arrived in Cairo on June 9, the last leg of his third tour of the English colonies. (Times [London], June 10, 12–21, 1922.) 2. On June 9, MS made the sixteen-mile trip to Memphis in a camel-drawn vehicle, visiting the Giza Plateau, statues of Ramses II, and the Nile. (MS, World Trip Journal [MSM S70:180–96].) 3. MS may refer to Queen Hatshepsut (1508–1458 B.C.), who ruled as regent for her nephew Thutmose III and then in her own right (ca. 1502–1482 B.C.). Though most likely a reproduction, the described ring resembles one obtained by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1926. (Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt [New York, 2005]; Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession 26.7.764, http://www.metmueseum.org.) 4. Grant Sanger came down with dysentery. His fever lasted for four days before he began to recover. (MS, Autobiography, 352.)

z TWO Putting Birth Control on the Map

At the end of her 1922 world tour, Sanger was convinced that “the people of the world are ready and eager for the practice of Birth Control.”1 She intended to continue working on international advocacy efforts, even though the American birth control movement remained her first commitment. Despite her shaky health, Sanger’s life was frenetic. Moreover, her secret marriage to the wealthy J. Noah Slee on September 18, 1922, enabled her to keep the movement financially solvent and help her two sons through their secondary and college educations. But it brought new domestic claims on her time. Through the early part of this very turbulent decade, Sanger remained committed to international agitation, helping to build a loose network of organizations and activists in Europe, Asia, Mexico, and Puerto Rico, and to keeping the international lines of communication open. The Birth Control Review served as the journal of record for this work, as Sanger solicited articles from foreign activists, reported on her international travels, and published news of international activities alongside happenings in the United States. Most issues contained at least one article on population or eugenic concerns somewhere in the world. The ABCL sent information and publications to activists abroad and shared the names of birth control contacts and contraceptive firms. By 1922 the ABCL had contacted thirty-two countries, and in 1924 Sanger’s Clinical Research Bureau •  65

66  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map

(CRB) began giving foreign birth control advocates lessons in clinic procedures and the most up-to-date contraceptive information.2 Sanger believed not only that she needed to secure scientific justification for birth control, but that neo-Malthusian concerns with population growth could not be resolved without addressing the issues of sex and reproduction.3 As she noted in 1922, activists needed “to work on the two fundamental urges of humanity—sex and hunger. They must go hand in hand if we are to bring about the great international goal of peace.”4 To prove that scientific and demographic studies demonstrated the need for birth control, she appealed for physician support, designing a program to legally put contraception in the hands of doctors in the United States. Sanger understood that the professional conference, a format well understood and liked by physicians and scientists, offered the best way to make this connection. She organized the First American Birth Control Conference in New York in 1921 and the Middle Western States Birth Control Conference in Chicago in 1923 and attended the 5INMBCC in London in 1922. “My intention,” she later wrote, “was to make people stand in public for what they believed in private.”5 More than any other form of outreach of public promotion, scientific conferences legitimized the discussion of birth control and developed an intellectual foundation for its consideration as a social and moral imperative. Sanger believed having scientists and recognized figures from the academy take up the issue of birth control in a public forum could help to distance the movement from its radical activist beginnings. This form of validation also attracted new sources of support, particularly from those philanthropists who did not want to be publicly associated with clinics or contraceptives but could back an earnest scientific exchange of ideas. Conferences also generated considerable press coverage at a time when there were fewer sensational news events surrounding birth control. The drawback to these gatherings was that the scientists and other dignified professionals who attended loathed any nuts-and-bolts discussion of sexuality and contraception, finding such talk better suited to the doctor’s office. As a result, these early conferences failed to advance a better understanding of the physiological issues related to birth control, thereby doing little to expedite research or address some of the more practical, real-world needs and challenges of the movement. In early 1924, Sanger investigated the possibility of hosting the next international birth control conference in New York. “Internationalism was in the air,” she later wrote, “and I wanted that outlook brought into the movement in the United States.”6 In the spring, she began inviting advocates, physicians, and scientists from around the world, and in October she returned to England to drum up interest and secure support for the conference from H. G. Wells, John Maynard Keynes, Havelock Ellis, George Bernard Shaw, and others. She faced more difficulty in getting scientists and physicians to actually participate.

Putting Birth Control on the Map  •  67

Many academics and medical men, even if they agreed with Sanger’s views, were wary of the movement’s still strong ties to radical and feminist communities. But Sanger was persistent and used her formidable connections, including Lord Bertrand Dawson of Penn, then physician to the royal family, to assemble an impressive delegate list. The Sixth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference (6INMBCC) was held in New York, in March 1925. It was Sanger’s first successful effort at building a global network of professionals who supported birth control. Delegates from nearly twenty countries discussed medical, religious, and ethical issues, and eugenics was a dominant theme throughout. As Sanger wrote in a public letter to President Calvin Coolidge at the conclusion of the conference, the event had “aroused world-wide interest in the complex problems of national and racial health” and “emphasized the biological and economic waste . . . involved in the segregation and maintenance at public expenses of the delinquent, defective and criminally unfit classes of our population.”7 Eugenics offered conference delegates some common ground at a time when disagreements over abortion, sexual education, socialism, and the women’s movement, as well as lingering skepticism about the value of birth control, could have splintered the still fragile coalition. But they agreed on issues of differential fertility, racial health, and the need for population control, even if there was no consensus on who should make contraceptive decisions or why. Indeed, Sanger, committed to women’s autonomy in matters of reproduction, distanced herself from some of the eugenicists at the conference when they passed a resolution affirming that “persons whose progeny give promise of being of decided value to the community should be encouraged to bear as large families, properly spaced, as they feel they feasibly can.” Though she opposed this positive eugenics resolution, she supported other resolutions, including one that asked the League of Nations (LN) to study birth control as a way to prevent future wars. In the end, the conference succeeded in placing Sanger and birth control in the news and secured her place as a major international player.8 It also sparked efforts to create an international federation of birth control leagues. The 6INMBCC, wide-ranging and democratic in spirit, was a sharp contrast to the 1927 World Population Conference (WPC), which Sanger began working on almost immediately after the 1925 conference ended. Her goal was not only to promote birth control as a legitimate scientific and social reform, but also to persuade international bodies, especially the LN, to recognize birth control’s pivotal role in population policy and peace. Working with a committee of eugenicists, Sanger decided that the next meeting, to be held in Geneva in September 1927, would be a scientific gathering focused on population issues that, in the words of program committee member Raymond Pearl, would “soft pedal birth control.”9 By keeping the WPC program devoid of controversy and propaganda, Sanger hoped to more easily secure the participation of many of

68  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map

Europe’s most distinguished economists, demographers, sociologists, and biologists. Sanger did not foresee that the WPC would turn into an exclusively male club and officially snub her contributions. In the end, it had no impact on the LN.10 As she later pointed out, only the British, Scandinavians, and Americans openly accepted the need for population control. Other nations were less forthright in their support, particularly the Slavs and the Italians.11 When the conference ended, Sanger recognized that it had not achieved what she had hoped. As the participants departed, it was Sanger who was left holding the bills and the job of cleaning up and publishing the proceedings. Sanger also pursued other avenues for international work. She hired Agnes Smedley, an American journalist working in Germany, to help build the German birth control movement out of various constituencies and push for clinics. Shortly after the WPC, in December 1927, Sanger returned to Germany, speaking to lay and medical organizations and working with German women’s groups to open clinics.12 Sanger considered going to India, where birth control organization was starting to gain some traction, but canceled tentative plans for health reasons. Having to give up so much of her personal time to the conference, Sanger and Slee spent the winter of 1928 vacationing in the Swiss Alps, “to play, to skate, to ski” in “that glorious altitude,” while she worked on the Proceedings of the WPC.13 But she could not escape interest in her cause, noting that “almost wherever I am, the subject of birth control comes up sooner or later.”14 In St. Moritz, when the pragmatic but feisty Lady Nancy Astor, the first woman to sit in the British Parliament, expressed to Sanger her religious opposition to birth control, Sanger pounced, knowing “she could be reached” and persuaded to support the movement. With an almost evangelical ardor, Sanger believed that she could and should convert each and every person she encountered.15 Notes 1. MS, “World Aspects of Birth Control,” BCR 6 (Feb. 1922): 256. 2. MS, ABCL Newsletter [July 1923] (MSM C12:539); “Japan,” BCR 8 (Apr. 1924): 122. 3. Esther Katz, “Margaret Sanger and the International Birth Control Movement,” Women and Social Movements: International (Alexandria, Va., October 2012), http://wasi. alexanderstreet.com/help/view/margaret_sanger_and_the_international_birth_control_movement. 4. MS, “Individual and Family Aspects of Birth Control,” Proceedings of the 5INMBCC, edited by Pierpont, 31. 5. MS, Autobiography, 370. 6. MS, Autobiography, 369. 7. MS to Calvin Coolidge, Mar. 29, 1925 (MSM S2:952). 8. MS, Autobiography, 374.

April 1923  •  69 9. Raymond Pearl to MS, May 8, 1928 (LCM 122:588). 10. Symonds and Carder, United Nations and Population Question, 12–15; MS to Edith How-Martyn, Feb. 1, 1928 (MSM C4:564). 11. MS, Autobiography, 387. 12. MS to How-Martyn, Apr. 11, 1926 (LCM 14:785). 13. MS, Autobiography, 390. 14. MS, Autobiography, 391. 15. MS to How-Martyn, Feb. 1, 1928 (MSM C4:564).

23. From Shidzue Ishimoto 1 Amid the challenges of keeping the ABCL financed and opening the CRB in January 1923, Sanger continued to advocate for birth control in Asia at every opportunity. On October 30, 1922, she spoke to an audience of more than two thousand in Carnegie Hall, in a speech titled “Birth Control in China and Japan,” and in a March 7, 1923, address in Harlem she compared women in Asia and America. She also kept in touch with many of the activists she met abroad, sending contraceptive supplies to Shidzue Ishimoto, who, along with Isoo Abe and others, kept Sanger apprised of progress in Japan. (New York Tribune, Oct. 11 and Nov. 4, 1922; New York Amsterdam News, Mar. 7, 1923; Anne Kennedy to Ishimoto, Aug. 19, 1922 [LCM 18:980]; Isoo Abe, “Birth Control in Japan,” BCR 7 [Jan. 1923]: 9, 17.)

Akasaka, Tokyo, Japan April 5, 1923

Dear Mrs. Sanger: Thank you for your letter of February 22.2 Your most charming photograph also reached me sometime ago, and we are much delighted in having it, and I want to express my appreciation of your thought of me.3 Your magazine comes very regularly, and it always brings us much good news about your splendid work and success.4 I am glad to give you the interesting news that I received an invitation from the Japanese Miners’ Association to address their meeting at Ashio Copper Mines. The Ashio Mine is located near Nikko and an eight hours trip from Tokyo. The laborers of that mine have decreased from 6000 to about 4000 men, but since their big strike won four years ago, they are supposed to be the most progressive laborers in Japan.5 Two large meetings were held on the evening of the 31, and the after noon of the 1 of April at the theatres of Ashio town. Both meetings were attended by 1200 to 1300 miners and their wives. I gave the address on the subject of Birth Control, and even though I was interrupted several times by the authority of the policemen, I succeeded in delivering the thought which I wanted to propagate.6 This was really my first experience for a real public speech and it attracted much attention of the Japanese public. The audience were radical laborers and I was called the “Japanese Sanger.”

70  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map

Some of the papers have reported that there was another Birth Control movement at Osaka by the Association of Factory Workers.7 And also an anti-Birth Control Association was organized by the mid-wives of Siga City.8 But I have not heard any details of either of them. I hope you kindly inquired of Mrs. Kennedy about the pessaries which I asked to be sent last August and for which money was already forwarded a long time ago, but I have not yet received them.9 There are some suppositories named “Sangerm,” or condoms produced by the Company named “Sanger & Co.” which are seen in the Japanese market, and that is a wise way to advertize without telling the purpose.10 I am sending you a dozen pamphlets of our League, and also inclosing the newspaper cut in which you will see my picture on the stage addressing the Ashio miners and Mrs. Coleman chaperoning me.11 My husband joins me in sending our best regards to you and Grant.12 Affectionately yours, Shidzue Ishimoto [signed] TLS MSP, DLC (LCM 18:995–96).

1. After MS left Japan in 1922, Ishimoto continued to agitate for birth control education. She hosted the first meeting of the newly formed NSCK in May 1922. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 26–30; Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 98.) 2. MS wished Ishimoto luck with the NSCK, noting that two men from Japan’s embassy in Paris had recently stopped by the CRB for a Japanese translation of one of MS’s pamphlets. (MS to Ishimoto, Feb. 22, 1923 [LCM 18:994].) 3. The photograph, possibly of MS and Shidzue Ishimoto, was not found. 4. Ishimoto refers to the BCR. 5. The Zen Nihon Kōfu Sōrengō Kai (ZNKSK) (All-Japan General Mine Workers’ Federation) was formed during World War I in response to the government’s repression of the labor movement. The Ashio Copper Mine, located in the Tochigi Prefecture, produced more than 40 percent of Japan’s copper. The March 1921 strike succeeded in defeating an exploitative labor-boss system that tightly controlled workers’ wages and living conditions. (Kazuo Okochi, Labor in Modern Japan [Tokyo, 1958], 42, 49; Hunter, Concise Dictionary, 13; Tanaka Akira, “Ashio Copper Mine Labor Dispute,” in Encyclopedia of Japan, 102.) 6. Ishimoto, accompanied by Elizabeth Coleman, addressed more than one thousand ZNKSK miners, sharing her experiences of living in the Miike Coal Mine area in Kyushu, when her husband supervised the miners. She then discussed the fledgling birth control movement, emphasizing its connection to women’s rights and its importance as a tool against abortion, infanticide, and poverty. The second meeting was held about five miles away and was “packed with miners and their women, curious but enthusiastic.” (Ishimoto, Facing Two Ways, 234–36 [quote 236]; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 32.) 7. Senji Yamamoto’s Osaka Birth Limitation Research Society (Ōsaka Sanji Seigen Kenkyūkai) was founded on January 5, 1923, and distributed Yamamoto’s translation

January 1925  •  71 of MS’s Family Limitation to labor leaders in Osaka and Kobe. (Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 107–13; Osaka Asahi, Jan. 3, 1923; Osaka Mainichi, Mar. 13, 1923.) 8. This organization was probably in Saga City, the capital of Saga Prefecture, the southernmost of the Japanese islands. MS commented that opposition could be good, “for it shows the strength of the movement.” (MS to Ishimoto, May 11, 1923 [LCM 18:998].) 9. Ishimoto ordered two dozen Mizpah pessaries from Anne Kennedy at the ABCL in July, paying for them in November. MS admitted to shipping problems and offered to send them directly to Ishimoto through a dealer. (Kennedy to Ishimoto, Aug. 19 and Nov. 29, 1922, and MS to Ishimoto, May 11, 1923 [LCM 18:980, 995, 998].) 10. Vaginal suppositories and condoms were widely available in Japan in the early 1920s. Some Japanese manufacturers co-opted MS’s name without permission to take advantage of her fame. (Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 67–68; Chesler, Woman of Valor, 365; Ishimoto to MS, Nov. 30, 1931 [LCM 18:1087].) 11. The newspaper photo is probably the same one reproduced in Ishimoto’s Fight for Women’s Happiness, 59. The pamphlets and clipping were not found. Quaker missionaries Elizabeth and Horace Coleman left Japan for England in September 1923 but returned often. (Elizabeth Coleman to MS, June 23, 1923 [MSM S2:342]; Washington Post, Mar. 30 and Apr. 11, 1932.) 12. Keikichi Ishimoto, a founding member of the NSCK, gave a paper titled “The Population Problem in Japan” at the 5INMBCC. (Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 97–98; Pierpoint, Report of the 5INMBCC, 75–78.)

24. To Lord Bertrand Dawson 1 In 1924 Sanger began making plans to host the 6INMBCC in New York, the first time the meeting would convene in the United States. Her goal was to discuss birth control in relation to population, eugenics, biology, economies and politics, and public health. Sanger again sought prominent experts in those fields because, as she later noted, success “depended first upon the concept animating it, and second . . . on the presence of an eminent figure to ornament the assemblage.” But when she invited Britain’s notable physician Lord Bertrand Dawson of Penn to be the main speaker, he declined, noting, “I must stand before the world for what I am, namely a physician, and avoid being labeled everywhere as belonging to the Birth Control movement.” (BCR 9 [Feb. 1925]: 36; 6INMBC, “Preliminary Announcement,” BCR 9 [Mar. 1925]: 80; MS, Autobiography, 370 [quote 1]; Soloway, Demography and Degeneration, 266; Dawson to MS, Dec. 20, 1924 [quote 2] [LCM 14:592].)

[New York, N.Y.]2 January 10, 1925

My dear Lord Dawson: By this time I sincerely hope that you have received H. H. Laughlin’s “Eugenical Sterilization in the United States,” which was sent to you last week. This is the best treatise of its kind that has been published in this country, and I trust it will be of interest to you.3

72  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map

Now about the Conference: I think I fully understand your position in regard to the Conference. Since my return to America I have avoided giving hope that you might attend. At the same time, I got to work among the influential members of our group, who in turn, have worked among their friends in the medical profession. Everyone understands fully, and all are eager to do exactly what you desire.4 Dr. Llwellys Barker of John Hopkins has told Professor Pearl that an invitation has been sent to you to be present at the Clinical Congress to be held in Washington.5 You have also heard from Rev. Wm. H. Garth concerning the McGill University invitation, and through Dr. Stewart of the invitation from the New York Academy of Medicine.6 I trust that one or more of these invitations may be acceptable to you. If so, I understand perfectly that your attendance at the Conference will be casual, and would, in no way, be given any publicity by us. Nevertheless, I trust you understand that we would be not only delighted but honored to have you attend any of the sessions of the Conference. May I say that there can be no danger of your being labeled as belonging to the Birth Control movement; nor can Professor Pearl, nor Dr. Pusey, President of the American Medical Association,7 nor Professor E. M. East of Harvard,8 nor Dean Inge,9 nor many of the other distinguished economists, biologists and surgeons who have come out openly for the principle of Birth Control, be looked upon in the same light, for instance, as I am, as a propagandist. Nevertheless, every pronouncement by distinguished medical men, like yourself, helps to put the Birth Control movement on a firmer and more scientific basis,—clearing away the necessity for propaganda, and bringing the medical profession, as a whole, into the ranks to guide the movement. I believe that is as it should be, and, through the Conference, with proper medical and scientific cooperation, we hope to make this possible. I really appreciate the difficulties of the press, and I assure you that there shall be no publicity or statements from us concerning your visit to this country, should we be so fortunate as to have you with us during the Conference.10 I hope you will not mind our sending you reports from time to time of the progress of plans for the Conference. Cordially, TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 14:601–2).

1. Viscount Bertrand Dawson of Penn (1864–1945) was physician to three kings and held many other government and hospital appointments in England. His public support of birth control starting in 1921 helped the movement in England gain acceptance. MS went to England in October 1924 to discuss her preliminary plans with Dawson but failed to persuade him to attend the conference. (Times [London], Mar. 8, 1945; MS, Autobiography, 371.)

January 1925  •  73 2. MS, who returned from England on November 1, gave several speeches in the Northeast before falling ill. On December 15, she checked into Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York, where she underwent surgery for an undisclosed illness. She was released on December 22. (1924 Calendar [MSM S78:584–85; “News Notes,” BCR 9 [Feb. 1925]: 56.) 3. Harry Hamilton Laughlin (1880–1943), an American cytologist and eugenicist who directed the Eugenics Record Office, was a leading advocate of immigration restriction and the sterilization of the “unfit.” In his 1922 book, Laughlin furnished a state-by-state guide to sterilization laws and suggested model legislation for sterilizing so-called defective persons. MS’s secretary sent the book to Dawson in December. (ANB; Laughlin, Eugenical Sterilization in the United States [Chicago, 1922], 339; Secretary to Dawson, Dec. 16, 1924 [LCM 14:591].) 4. MS hoped that if other American medical institutions invited Dawson to speak, she could persuade him to attend her conference. Her “group” was the 6INMBC conference committee, which included Leon Cole, Edward East, Clarence Little, Adolf Meyer, William Ogburn, and Raymond Pearl. She claimed that John Maynard Keynes, Havelock Ellis, Harold Cox, and J. O. P. Bland had agreed to give papers. (MS, International Aspects of Birth Control, 220; MS to Raymond Pearl, Apr. 2, 1924, Pearl to MS, May 3, July 30, and Dec. 9, 1924, and MS to Clarence C. Little, Dec. 16, 1924 [MSM C3:139, 155, 168, 283, 299].) 5. Lewellys Franklin Barker (1867–1943), a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, was a member of the Voluntary Parenthood League (VPL). Raymond Pearl (1879–1940), a biologist and statistician at Johns Hopkins University, specialized in population and genetics. He and Barker invited Dawson to attend the American Congress on Clinical Medicine in Washington, D.C., and meetings at the New York Academy of Medicine and the Mayo Clinic. Pearl then suggested sending Dawson another formal 6INMBC invitation. (NatCAB; ANB; MS to Barker, Dec. 9, 1924, and Pearl to MS, Dec. 4, 1924, and Jan. 9, 1925 [MSM C3:281, 276, 324]; Washington Post, Mar. 8, 1925.) 6. Rev. William Henry Garth (1868–1955), a Canadian-born Episcopal minister and the rector at St. Marks Episcopal Church in Islip, New York, was the manager of the Central Islip State Hospital for the Insane and an ABCL director. He arranged for Dawson to receive an honorary degree from McGill University in October. George David Stewart (1862–1933), a Canadian-born surgeon associated with Bellevue Hospital in New York, was president of the New York Academy of Medicine (1918–25). Stewart’s letter to Dawson was not found. (U.S. Passport Applications, 1795–1925; New York Times, Dec. 26, 1955; MS, International Aspects of Birth Control, 234; “Lord Dawson,” British Medical Journal 2, no. 3384 [1925]: 860; New York Times, Mar. 10, 1933.) 7. William Allen Pusey (1865–1940), a dermatologist, exhorted the American Medical Association (AMA) to adopt voluntary birth control as the only answer to overpopulation and poverty. (ANB; Chicago Daily Tribune, June 11, 1924.) 8. Edward Murray East (1879–1938), a biologist and geneticist at Harvard University’s Bussey Institute for Applied Biology, was a leading eugenicist who published Mankind at the Crossroads (1923) on the dangers of overpopulation. A strong birth control advocate, East argued that the quality of the population would improve with greater access to contraception. (ANB; for more on East, see Vols. 1–2.)

74  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map 9. Rev. William Ralph Inge (1860–1954), the dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, was a leading British eugenicist and ardent birth control supporter. MS, who met him in 1921, described him as “full of mischief. In his late fifties, tall, thin as an exclamation point, quite deaf, he reminded me of a Dickens character.” (DNB; MS, Autobiography, 377–78 [quote]; for more on Inge, see Vols. 1–2.) 10. Dawson had complained that “the methods of conducting the modern Press add greatly to the difficulties of a professional man, one is so quickly blazoned forth in one character alone, and I am more than anxious to avoid such a thing happening in my case.” (Dawson to MS, Dec. 20, 1924 [LCM 14:592].)

25. “The Sixth International Birth Control Conference” The 6INMBCC was held at the Hotel McAlpin on March 25–31, 1925. Despite attacks in the press from statistician Dr. Louis I. Dublin, who asserted he was “in determined opposition to the aims of the conference,” the meeting was a great success. The New York Times reprinted several speeches, including those of Havelock Ellis and George Bernard Shaw (who, though unable to attend, had their contributions read aloud), as well as Raymond Pearl and Edward East. The meeting was also notable for the breadth of topics and regions discussed. Delegates shared stories of pioneering work in Japan, Austria, Mexico, and India, among other countries. They heard papers on religion and birth control, the legal situations in individual nations, and the morality of nonprocreative sex. A physicians-only forum reviewed the efficacy of various methods and contraceptives and introduced Sanger’s CRB to doctors and clinicians from around the world. (New York Times, Mar. 27 [quote], 28, 29, and Apr. 1, 1925.)

[New York, N.Y.] [March 31, 1925] Birth Control League No less than twelve nations of the Orient and Occident were represented at the Sixth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference, recently brought to a successful close in New York.1 The Conference was held under the auspices of the American Birth Control League and was the first gathering of its kind, made up of delegates from every civilized country of the globe, ever held in the United States to discuss problems of population and racial health.2 Perhaps the most important achievement of the conference was to place the movement for a OPTIMUM [population in?] all countries, as opposed to [MAXIMUM] population, on a soundly [international?] basis. On its scientific, philosophical and humanitarian basis, the conference emphasized the remarkable unanimity of opinion and harmony of thought among the delegates from all countries. This unity of thought has led to the organization of an international league, and plans were made [mature] to convene in Geneva,

March 1925  •  75

Switzerland in August, 1926, immediately before the session of the Assembly of the League of Nations.3 The first Neo Malthusian League was organized in England some fifty years ago. Its activities were based on the celebrated Malthusian theory, and were mainly economic in character.4 While not discarding the Malthusian law that “everywhere the pressure of population presses against the means of subsistence,” the Sixth international conference put greater stress on the problem of contraception (or as it is popularly known Birth Control) in its medical, scientific, eugenic, psychological and ethical aspects.5 Ten years ago, when I inaugurated my campaign for conscious and voluntary motherhood among the poor women of America, I was denounced and persecuted. Fours years ago, a mass meeting was broken up by the police of New York.6 The International Conference triumphantly vindicates my campaign, and indicates a remarkable progress in American thought. Not only were all the sessions accurately and fairly reported in the daily press, but the Birth Control movement has enlisted the support of the most eminent authorities in all fields- not only economists, statisticians, biologists, geneticists, physicians and psychologists, but also many pastors of the various Protestant churches. This achievement is the greater in view of the federal and state laws in the United States which forbid, even to doctors, the dissemination of contraceptive information.7 France, which was once the nation in which Birth Control was most universally practiced, has since the war, begun an active propaganda for large families. Yet delegates from that country pointed out that the real menace is not a lowering birth rate, but a high infantile mortality rate, and that France was backward in any effort to lower the death rate of the children born, and that the practice of Birth Control continued despite all efforts to encourage larger families.8 One of the most interesting features of the conference was the sessions, on methods of contraception, for physicians only, held without interference despite the rigorous statutes of the State against even the discussion of contraception. More than one thousand physicians attended these sessions, held simultaneously in the ball rooms of two great New York hotels.9 The Sixth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference marks the initiation of a new era of international thought and the beginning of a closely coordinated movement toward world-peace. [Unidentified newspaper] MSP, DLC (MSM C16:254).

Portions of the text were obliterated by hole punches. The article was preceded by an editorial note: “Throughout the world wherever birth control is advocated or considered, Mrs. Sanger is known as the outstanding leader of the Birth Control movement in America

76  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map and as an indefatigable and fearless advocate in her writings and lectures of conscious and voluntary motherland.” 1. In addition to the United States, delegates came from Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, and Sweden. (MS, International Aspects of Birth Control, 233–40.) 2. This was the ABCL’s third organized birth control conference, but its first on international work. (ABCL Annual Meeting Minutes, Jan. 12, 1922 [MSM S61:46]; for more on the ABCL, see Vols. 1–2.) 3. MS refers to the International Federation of Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Leagues (IFNMBCL). The LN was formed after the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference to promote peace and security and settle international disputes. It was dramatically undermined when the United States refused to join. Its seventh assembly was scheduled for September 6–25, 1926. (EB; New York Times, Sept. 26, 1926.) 4. MS refers to the Malthusian League (ML), which was renamed the New Generation League (NGL) in 1923. (See Rutgers to MS, Oct. 1, 1920, note 7, herein.) 5. The neo-Malthusians began holding international meetings in 1900 when la Ligue de la Régénération Humaine (LRH) (League for Human Regeneration) hosted a small gathering in Paris. The 1905 meeting was held in Liège and dominated by debates between Marxist and Malthusian theorists. The third meeting, held at The Hague in 1910, established a link between high birth- and death rates, a topic expanded in the fourth meeting in Dresden in 1911. It was not until the 1922 5INMBCC that the phrase “birth control” was included in the title and program. (MS, introduction to International Aspects of Birth Control, vi–vii; Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, 193–94.) 6. MS marked the launch of her campaign with the 1914 publication of the Woman Rebel. The police raid of the Town Hall meeting took place on November 13, 1921. (For more on the Woman Rebel and the Town Hall raid, see Vol. 1.) 7. The decision of John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s Bureau of Social Hygiene (BSH) to fund the conference was one more significant sign of the growing acceptance of birth control. However, many professional organizations, including eugenics groups and the AMA, still refused to officially endorse birth control. (Katharine Bement Davis to MS, Oct. 7, 1925 [LCM 22:3B]; see also Vol. 1, 430.) 8. MS summarizes the paper delivered by Gabriel Giroud (under the name G. Hardy), which detailed the July 1920 law banning birth control propaganda in France on the grounds that it led to declining population. Hardy credited the declining birthrate to France’s increased life expectancy, low unemployment rates, and readily available housing. Moreover, he argued, France’s pronatalist campaigns were ineffective, as the birthrate continued to fall. (Hardy, “The Situation in France,” in International Aspects of Birth Control, edited by MS, 33–40.) 9. Section 1142 of New York State’s criminal law prohibited both mailing contraceptive information and giving “information orally, stating when, where, how, of whom, or by what means such an instrument, article, recipe, drug or medicine can be purchased or obtained or who manufactures any such instrument, article, recipe, drug or medicine.” Physicians were excluded from the law if the information was medically indicated. (Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau [BCCRB], Laws Relating to Birth Control in the United States [New York, 1938], 21 [LCM 59:550].)

March 1925  •  77

26. International Federation of Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Leagues Minutes The International Federation of Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Leagues was formed at the close of the 6INMBCC. Its immediate charge was to organize the next international birth control conference, tentatively planned for August 1926 in either Copenhagen or Geneva, where the LN would be in session. (Little, “International Federation of Birth Control Leagues,” 253.)

New York [N.Y.] March 31, 1925 This meeting was called to discuss plans for the International Federation of Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Leagues. Those present were: Herr and Frau Johann Ferch — Austria1 Dr. Norman Haire — England •2 Dr. C. V. Drysdale — England •3 Dr. G. Hardy — France4 Dr. Aletta Jacobs — Holland5 Dr. Helene Stocker — Germany6 Dr. Ferdinand Goldstein — Germany7 Mme. Rosika Schwimmer — Hungary8 Dr. James F. Cooper — America9 Toscan Bennett — America10 Mararet Sanger — America •11 Anne Kennedy — America12 The Meeting was called to order by Margaret Sanger as Chairman. The following objects were passed and approved by the Committee: Objects: 1. To impress on the peoples and governments of all nations the dangers of overpopulation.13 2. To diminish and eliminate overpopulation by extending the knowledge of hygienic contraceptive methods as distinct from abortion.14 3. To oppose all repressive legislation against the proper provision of hygienic contraceptive instruction.15 4. To recommend to the medical profession the importance of giving such information and especially to urge its provision at all public hospitals, asylums, welfare centres, etc., for the treatment or prevention of disease.16 5. To promote race improvement primarily by enabling parents to restrict their families to those children that they can bear and rear in justice to their own health and economic circumstances, and by enabling them to abstain from parenthood in all cases where hereditary disease or defect

78  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map

might render their offspring unlikely to become healthy and self-supporting citizens.17 6. To promote sexual responsibility and diminish the spread of venereal disease by making it known that young people can marry early without regard to their economic position or the fear of having children they cannot support, and to encourage instruction in sex questions.18 7. To promote international harmony by urging all governments to assist in regulation the birth rates in their respective countries so as to avoid overpopulation which is recognized as one of the chief causes of war.19 It was moved, second and passed that Dr. Alice Drysdale Vickery be elected President d’honneur.20 It was moved, seconded and passed that Mrs. Margaret Sanger be elected President. It was moved, seconded and passed that all vice-presidents be appointed as Honorary Vice-Presidents.21 It was moved, seconded and passed that the Executive Council consist of the representatives from countries where leagues existed. The following were elected: Dr. Aletta Jacobs — Holland Dr. Charlotte Steinberger — Hungary22 Baroness Ishimoto — Japan23 Dr. C. V. Drysdale — England • Dr. Norman Haire — England • Fru Thit Jensen — Denmark24 Knut Wicksel — Sweden25 Dr. G. Hardy — France26 Margaret Sanger — America • Dr. James F. Cooper —America Dr. O. C. Withrow —Canada27 It was moved, seconded and passed that any organization advocating abortion should not be eligible for affiliation with this organization. The meeting adjourned, to meet again on Saturday, April 4th, at 8 o’clock, at the residence of the President, Margaret Sanger.28 TD MSP, DLC (LCM 122:349B).

1. Johann Ferch (1880–1954) was a Viennese-born neo-Malthusian and socialist writer and printer, who with his wife, Betti Barbara Ferch (1883–?), organized twenty-two Mother’s Clinics in Austria. (New York Passenger Lists, 1820‑1957; Cornelie Usborne, “Rhetoric and Resistance: Rationalization of Reproduction in Weimar Germany,” Social Politics 4 [Spring 1997]: 75; MS, An Autobiography, 373.) 2. Norman Haire (1892–1952), an Australian-born gynecologist and self-styled sex reformer, operated both a lucrative medical practice and a charity birth control clinic

March 1925  •  79 in London. He was the former medical director of the ML’s Walworth Women’s Welfare Centre. (Times [London], Sept. 13, 1952.) 3. Charles Vickery Drysdale (1874–1961), an electrical engineer and the son of neoMalthusian pioneers Charles Robert Drysdale and Alice Vickery, was president of the ML and NGL (1921–27). Under his leadership, the NGL provided birth control at the Walworth Women’s Welfare Clinic. Drysdale was the honorary president of the 6INMBCC. (Soloway, Birth Control and the Population Question, 87–88, 174; Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, 57–58; for more on Drysdale, see Vol. 1.) 4. Gabriel Giroud (1870–1945) was a leading French birth control advocate who wrote under the pseudonym G. Hardy. Associated with the LRH, Giroud kept in touch with other European and American activists, even after the French movement was suppressed in 1920. (Finding Aid to the Eugène Humbert and Henriette Jeanne Humbert‑Rigaudin Papers, Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Amsterdam; Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, 187–88.) 5. Aletta H. Jacobs (1854–1929), a suffragist, peace activist, and the first woman physician in the Netherlands, founded the NMB. In 1882 she began prescribing contraceptives for women in her Amsterdam clinic, in effect starting the world’s first birth control clinic. (Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, 177–80; Aletta Jacobs, Memories [New York, 1996], 142–43.) 6. Helene Stöcker (1869–1943), the German-born leader of the BfMS, fought for maternal health programs, the rights of illegitimate children, and birth control. (Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 16; Stöcker, “The Need for Birth Control in Germany,” in International Aspects of Birth Control, edited by MS, 124–33.) 7. Ferdinand Goldstein (1865?–1935?) was a German physician and population expert. (New York Passenger Ship Lists, 1820–1957; MS, Autobiography, 373; New York Times, Aug. 15, 1935.) 8. Rosika Schwimmer (1877–1948) was a Hungarian-born pacifist, feminist, and international activist who emigrated to the United States in 1921. A vocal birth control supporter, she had attended both the 5INMBCC and the 6INMBCC. (EB; MS, My Fight, 272, 291; 6INMBCC, Program, Mar. 25–31, 1925 [MSM S63:70].) 9. James Freyer Cooper (1880–1931), an English-born physician, was the ABCL’s medical director, who lectured to and educated medical and professional groups across the country. (New York Times, Mar. 28, 1931; Reed, Birth Control Movement, 116; for more on Cooper, see Vol. 1.) 10. M. Toscan Bennett (1874–1940), a Hartford lawyer active in the American Labor Party, knew MS through his wife, ABCL worker Josephine Bennett. He served on the 6INMBCC Resolutions Committee. (New York Times, Feb. 4, 1921, and Dec. 17, 1940; MS, Problems of Overpopulation, 202.) 11. MS chaired the meeting and accepted the presidency, but only on a temporary basis. She wanted a scientist to lead the federation and transferred the office to Clarence Cook Little later that year. (“Second Meeting of International Committee,” Apr. 4, 1925 [LCM 122:352B]; Little, “International Federation of Birth Control Leagues,” 253.) 12. Kennedy, who became the ABCL executive secretary in 1925, was an experienced lecturer on birth control and presented a report on the ABCL’s work to the 6INMBCC. (ABCL, “Summary of Events, 1924” [MSM C12:466]; Kennedy, “Report of the American Birth Control League,” in International Aspects of Birth Control, edited by MS, 136.)

80  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map 13. Three conference sessions dealt with overpopulation, as did at least five papers, and delegates disagreed about its importance. Statistician Louis Dublin refuted the assumptions about overpopulation, and a recent Washington Post editorial opined that throughout history, “the most densely populated countries have not been aggressors and invaders, but have themselves been the object of invasion by the peoples of more sparsely settled regions.” (MS, Problems of Overpopulation, i–iii; Youth’s Companion, Sept. 25, 1924; New York Times, Mar. 27, 1925; Washington Post, Sept. 4, 1924 [quote].) 14. Most birth control activists made sharp distinctions between contraception and abortion, though many of the women who sought their help did not. Abortion was illegal in most countries except under specific medical situations, and birth control activists argued that ready access to contraceptives reduced the need for abortion. (Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 15; Sheila Rowbotham, Hidden from History [London, 1977], 152; Leslie J. Reagan, When Abortion Was a Crime [Berkeley, Calif., 1997], 140.) 15. For details on prohibitions on contraceptives, see Rutgers to MS, Oct. 1, 1920, note 1, herein. 16. MS had noticed a “changed attitude concerning contraception” among some physicians in the three years since the 5INMBCC, but the medical profession as a whole continued to exhibit lack of interest or opposition to birth control due to religious pressure, legal prohibitions, ignorance of the subject, and the stigma of indecency. (MS, introduction to International Aspects of Birth Control, edited by MS, x [quote]; Morris H. Kahn, “Contraceptive Advice and the Medical Profession,” in Medical and Eugenic Aspects of Birth Control, edited by MS, 111–13.) 17. By the mid-1920s, the promotion of race improvement through negative eugenics—limiting reproduction among the disabled and disadvantaged—was a generally accepted component of most birth control programs. (Wendy Kline, Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom [Berkeley, Calif., 2001], 64.) 18. Sex education efforts in Europe increased after World War I with growing concern about the spread of venereal disease, but reformers and educators often instilled fear rather than enlightenment. American sex education publications, highly moralistic in tone, were generally aimed at the working class. MS’s early writings offered clear, accurate, and nonmoralistic sex education information. (MS, What Every Girl Should Know and What Every Mother Should Know; or, How Six Little Children Were Taught the Truth [New York, 1921]; McLaren, Twentieth-Century Sexuality, 39–42; Manchester Guardian and the Observer, Dec. 19, 1921; see also Vol. 1.) 19. Most governments equated high birthrates with national strength, and few made contraceptives available. Exceptions included the Soviet Union, which disseminated contraceptive information and subsidized abortions, and Mexico’s Yucatán government, which distributed information, including MS’s Family Limitation. In England the NGL lobbied the Ministry of Health to sanction birth control instruction in municipal health centers. In the Netherlands, which had the longest history of organized birth control services, families received tax breaks and other incentives for having more than two children. (Connelly, Fatal Misconception, 47–48; Charles V. Drysdale, “Report from Great Britain,” and Aletta Jacobs, “A Generation of Birth Control in Holland,” in International Aspects of Birth Control, edited by MS, 44–45, 90–91; Lavrín, Latin American Women, 291.)

March 1925  •  81 20. Alice Vickery had resigned as president of the NGL in 1923, after dedicating forty years to neo-Malthusian and feminist causes. (Benn, Predicaments of Love, 221.) 21. The IFNMBCL did not name its vice presidents until 1926. (“Agenda Submitted to Program Committee of WPC,” June 18, 1926 [MSM C14:447].) 22. Sarolta (Charlotte) Steinberger (1875–1966), the first woman physician to graduate from a Hungarian university, was a member of the Feministák Egyesülete (Feminist Association), a women’s rights organization established in 1904 that supported birth control. (De Haan, Daskalova, and Loutfi, Biographical Dictionary of Women’s Movements, 331, 334, 485.) 23. Shidzue Ishimoto traveled to the United States in 1924 to meet with MS and others and helped organize two birth control clinics in Japan. Though the NSCK disbanded following the Great Kantō earthquake in September 1923, its members continued birth control advocacy work. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 34–35; Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 103–5, 121–22.) 24. Thit (Maria Kristine Dorothea) Jensen (1876–1957), a Danish feminist and novelist, published Voluntary Motherhood, an abridged version of Woman and the New Race in 1924. That same year, she helped found the Foreningen for Seksuel Oplysning (FSO) (Association for Sexual Enlightenment). (Thit Jensen, “Pioneering in Scandinavia,” in International Aspects of Birth Control, edited by MS, 65–66; Paal Bjørby, “Thit Jensen,” Dictionary of Literary Biography: 214 Twentieth Century Danish Writers, edited by Steven Serafin [Detroit, 2005], 229–37.) 25. Knut Wicksell (1851–1926) was a Swedish economist who believed a lower birthrate would increase the prosperity of the working class. He was a founder of the Nymalthusianska Sällskapet (Swedish Neo-Malthusian Society). (EB; Linder, Crusader for Sex Education, 61, 72.) 26. La Ligue de la Régénération Humaine, which Georges Hardy (Gabriel Giroud) helped found in 1896, was in disarray by 1920 when the French government outlawed the sale of contraceptive materials and information and jailed several of its leaders. (Accampo, Blessed Motherhood, Bitter Fruit, 220; Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, 188.) 27. Oswald Charles Joseph Withrow (1878–1946) was a Toronto-based obstetrician/ gynecologist, birth control advocate, and abortionist. He and others formed the Ontario Birth Control League on March 9, 1925, which he served as executive chairman and secretary. (Finding Aid to the Dr. Oswald Charles Joseph Withrow fonds, Archives of Ontario, http://www.ao.minisisinc.com; “News Notes: Canada,” BCR 9 [Aug. 1925]: 236.) 28. The group discussed possible locations for its next conference and appointed Clarence Cook Little as president and MS as secretary. (IFNMBCL, “Second Meeting of International Committee,” Apr. 4, 1925 [LCM 122:352B].)

27. From Agnes Smedley Agnes Smedley (1892–1950), a radical journalist best known for her support of Indian nationalism and Chinese communism, met Sanger in 1916 and from 1918 to 1919 worked as the manager of the BCR. In 1920 Smedley and her lover Indian nationalist Virendra-

82  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map nath Chattopadhyaya moved to Berlin, where she worked as a freelance journalist, took graduate courses in Asian studies, and taught English at the University of Berlin. (NAW; Smedley to MS, Sept. 5, 1925 [LCM 10:319].)

[Berlin, Germany?] [April or May 1925]1

Dear Margaret— Dr. Karve2 is putting up a hard-hitting fight for birth control in India.3 I enclose some more clippings and have already sent you some.4 Really, Karve doesn’t wear gloves when he fights! If you but knew the Indian mentality, you would know how he “hits them where they live.”5 The good thing about him is that he gives no quarter; he doesn’t get into arguments. He just says a spade is a spade & doesn’t say “if.” And his methods are putting must opponents to flight. He has flabbergasted Gandhi and others, and then keep on advancing.6 I hope you’re in touch with him. Do you get his b.c. magazine?7 Agnes

ALS MSP, DLC (LCM 18:724–25). Handwritten note by MS on top of the first page reads: “Anna, are we in touch with Karve? He certainly says things. Mary Boyd might take his reply to Gandhi instead of mine which may never be written.”8 Handwritten note at top of first page by Anna Lifshiz reads: Yes. He gets the magazine.”

1. Smedley was in Berlin for the first half of 1925. This letter was likely written before she left for Czechoslovakia and Denmark in June. (MacKinnon and MacKinnon, Agnes Smedley, 102–6.) 2. Raghunath Dhondo Karve (1882–1953) was an Indian mathematician and birth control activist who established the first birth control clinic in India. (DNBI.) 3. Birth control in India was in its infancy in 1925. Organizations such as the Indian Eugenics Society, founded in 1921, and the Indian Birth Control Society, founded in 1922, remained small and academic, focused on publishing papers. Limited access to contraceptives and lack of public discussion about the topic made it difficult for the average Indian to adopt birth control practices. (Ahluwalia, Reproductive Restraints, 28; Masumi Manna, “Approach towards Birth Control: Indian Women in the Early Twentieth Century,” Indian Economic Social History Review 35, no. 1 [1998]: 40.) 4. A vigorous opponent of Gandhi’s advocacy of abstinence and rejection of artificial birth control, Karve published an attack in the Indian Social Reformer, calling Gandhi’s position impractical and unscientific. Smedley sent the article to MS. (Karve, “SelfControl and Birth-Control,” 505; Roy, “Diamond Men and Men of Flesh,” 250; other clippings were not found.) 5. Karve argued that “self control” had been tried for thousands of years and that people should use their intelligence to solve problems, asserting, “It is quite justifiable to seek pleasure if it does not involve doing harm to anybody.” (Karve, “Self-Control and Birth-Control,” 505.) 6. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948), India’s most influential spiritual leader and the head of its Independence Movement, was sentenced to six years in

July 1925  •  83 prison for sedition in 1922, but had been released early for health reasons in February 1924. Gandhi characterized himself as a “convinced opponent” of artificial birth control, asserting that abstinence was the only satisfactory means of fertility control. (Louis Fisher, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi [New York, 1950], 226; Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi [New Delhi, 1958], 26:279 [quote]; Times of India, Sept. 25, 1924.) 7. Karve’s magazine was not found. This may refer to plans for Samaj Swasthya, a monthly on social hygiene written in the Marathi language that he published from 1927 to 1953. (DNBI.) 8. Mary Sumner Boyd (1876–1950), suffragist, author, and magazine editor, served as managing editor of the BCR from 1924 to 1929. Boyd published an article by Indian journalist Basanta Koomar Roy in response to Gandhi’s birth control statement in the April 2 issue of Young India. MS’s response, “Mahatma Gandhi and Birth Control in India,” herein, was published in September 1925. (WWW America, vol. 5; Florida Death Index; Parker & Garrison to MS, Jan. 22, 1929 [LCM 7:1174]; Roy, “Diamond Men and Men of Flesh,” 250, 269–70.)

28. From Mohandas K. Gandhi 1

[Bankura, India]2 July 8, 1925.

Dear Friend: I appreciate your letter,3 but in spite of keeping an open mind, I do not feel impressed by the arguments advanced by you.4 Somehow or other it appears to me that the advocates of contraceptives seek to improve the form and miss the substance. Multiplication of hordes does not terrify me so much as misconception as to the function of union of sexes.5 I must confess to you that I have not read the literature on the subject. And it may be that my ignorance makes me condemn a reform which is sound and necessary. You may help me if you will.6 Yours, M. K. Gandhi TRcy MSP, DLC (LCM 17:227).

1. Gandhi, who was touring India to promote Muslim-Hindu cooperation in the cause of independence, emphasized the creation of an indigenous textile industry and called for the abolition of the laws on untouchables. (Christian Science Monitor, May 4, 1925; Dalal, Gandhi, 1915–1948, 54–57.) 2. Bankura is in the West Bengal state. Gandhi gave two speeches, one directed toward women. (Dalal, Gandhi, 1915–1948, 57.) 3. Sanger’s first letter to Gandhi, likely written in response to his March 12 Young India article condemning birth control, was not found. Gandhi published a number of opposition letters on April 2, but did not include the one by MS. 4. See MS, “Mahatma Gandhi and Birth Control,” Sept. 1925, herein.

84  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map 5. Gandhi believed that the problem of overpopulation could be solved “by a proper land system, better agriculture and a supplementary industry,” rather than by birth control. He viewed nonprocreative sex, even within marriage, as sinful. (Gandhi, “The Law of Life,” Young India 7 [Apr. 2, 1925], reprinted in Gandhi, Conquest of Self, edited by R. K. Prabu and U. R. Rao [Bombay, 1946], 87.) 6. MS’s response was not found.

29. From H. G. Wells 1 In the spring and summer of 1925, Sanger’s focus was on managing the CRB and coordinating the lecture tours of the ABCL’s new medical director, James Cooper, though she was still sorting out ways to interest the Geneva-based LN in birth control.

[London, England] 20 VIII. 25

Dear Margaret Sanger Your Dr. Cooper has called & we have talked—in spite of the constant interruptions of a little man called [Norten] who came with him.2 I don’t think you have a ghost of a chance of getting Czecho Slovakia to raise B.C at Geneva3 because (I) there is a strong Catholic vote4 & (II) there is a strong patriotic statistical [strafe?] against the Germans.5 Denmark or Holland is much more hopeful.6 But it is clear that B.C ought to have a fine respectable office in Geneva with a reading room & a capable [polyglot] secretary. Why not a woman? [This] ought to be strong personal [attack?] in the Secretariat.7 Warmest good wishes H. G ALI MSP, DLC (LCM 11:44–45).

1. H. G. Wells (1866–1946), renowned British author and social thinker, began a love affair with MS in 1920 that lasted, on and off, into the 1930s. They had last seen each other in London in October 1924. Wells was among the most high-profile advocates of birth control and an outspoken supporter of MS. In 1921 he wrote, “I am convinced that Birth Control is a fundamental necessity if mankind is to go on to any better social or international order.” Wells was an early LN proponent, but became disillusioned after attending several assembly sessions in September 1924. Nevertheless, he was knowledgeable about how the LN functioned. (DNB; MS, Autobiography, 268, 371; David C. Smith, H. G. Wells: Desperately Mortal [New Haven, Conn., 1988], 314, 341–43, 365; Wells to MS, Nov. 1921 [quote] [MSM S2:63].) 2. Elliott S. Norton (1878–1933), a businessman and banker, managed the ABCL Speakers Bureau and scheduled Cooper’s lectures. At the time, Cooper and Norton were in Europe trying to interest the LN and European notables in birth control. (Norton to J. Walter Hough, May 4, 1925 [ABCLR]; 1900 and 1920 U.S. Censuses; New York Times,

August 1925  •  85 Jan. 1, 1933; MS to James Cooper, July 20, 1925, and Cooper to MS, Aug. 25, 1925 [LCM 31:571, 576].) 3. During this time, Sanger apparently asked Wells’s advice on how to get birth control on the LN agenda, suggesting that Czechoslovakia might raise the subject in its assembly. 4. Although there was a strong streak of anti-Catholic sentiment among the Bohemian Czechs, Slovaks and Moravians were largely pro-Catholic. (Paul Froese, “Secular Czechs and Devout Slovaks: Explaining Religious Differences,” Review of Religious Research 46 [Mar. 2005]: 276–77; New York Times, Sept. 14, 1937.) 5. Czech and Slovak antagonism toward Germans intensified at the end of World War I. The newly created republic of Czechoslovakia incorporated more than three million Germans, leading to ethnic tension. (Arnold Suppan, “Austrians, Czechs, and Sudeten Germans as a Community of Conflict in the Twentieth Century,” Working Paper 06-1, Center for Austrian Studies, Oct. 2006, 9–10.) 6. By 1925 birth control was legal in Denmark and accessible through the FSO and in the Netherlands through the NMB. The NMB, founded in 1881, was the first league to provide contraceptive information, both in pamphlets and via clinics, despite significant religious and moral opposition. Some Dutch birth controllers were vehemently antiabortion, which might have helped overcome impediments at the LN. (Brandhorst, “From Neo-Malthusianism to Sexual Reform,” 41–43; Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, 173–81; MS, International Aspects of Birth Control, 66–68.) 7. The LN Secretariat was responsible for preparing the agendas, publishing reports of the meetings, and other administrative and financial work. Eric Drummond was secretary-general from 1919 to 1932. (League of Nations Secretariat, 1919–1946 Finding Aid [UN Office at Geneva Library].)

30. To H. G. Wells

[New York?, N.Y.] [August ?, 1925]

Dear H. G. It was good of you to see Dr Cooper & better & best of you to write me what you think of the League ↑of Nations↓ proposition. From information now gathered it seems you have judge correctly about the Catholic Element— especially does it hold true in Geneva I am told! One of the person connected with the League writes “It will be almost impossible for you to get a hearing for several years yet—on account of the majority members of the League being R.C. They vote on every subject which is presented.”1 Naturally such a Statement simply makes me want the hearing more than ever— No news yet of Checko Slovakia but we simply took a chance because that [very disgusting] little man ↑called [Norton]↓ who interrupted you thought he might get Masyrack interested.2

86  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map

The idea of an office & reading room in Geneva is worth thinking seriously about. I’ll see if some one of here won’t want to make it possible. I am in touch with Rachel Crowdy who is Secty general of the Social Section. She is interested in B. C.3 Also Dr N. White of the Health Organization.4 Mrs Stanley McCormick is in Geneva working with that ↑International↓ Students group. She ↑too↓ is one of our best friends.5 Mrs We may ↑are↓ not particular which country helps us but it would be something if we could get the League of Nations ↑to↓ discuss [illegible] ↑the population↓ problem.6 How can we attack the Secretariat?? Tongues, Pens, or Bricks? Mrs Rublee sails Saturday for Naples, she expects to explore the bottom of the ocean by going down in a cylinder at least twelve thousand feet.7 It seems to me such an idea was prophysied by you years & years ago.8 She is just as enthusiastic about that as she was about [Orage] & Gurdjieff—bless her.9 Will it bother you if I keep you informed on the Geneva proposition? You need not reply to our letters unless you wish to, but I’d like to keep ↑have↓ you aware of matters as they progress. I’m glad—very glad to learn that you are so well. So am I now. Thank you again. Cordially Margaret Sanger ADfS MSP, DLC (LCM 11:46–50). Note by MS at the top of the first page reads: “A L have typed.”10

1. Many LN Assembly and Council delegates were Catholic, including members of the auxiliary committees and commissions and Secretary-General Eric Drummond. (Wilfrid Parsons, “Catholics and the League of Nations,” America [Mar. 9, 1929]: 523–24; New York Times, Mar. 9, 1927.) 2. Elliott Norton knew Czechoslovakian president Tomáš Masaryk from his 1918 work as executive secretary of the Mid-European Union. (New York Tribune, Dec. 2, 1918; New York Times, Oct. 10, 1928.) 3. Dame Rachel Crowdy (1884–1964), a British social reformer and civil servant, headed the LN’s Social Questions and Opium Traffic Section (1919–31). She suggested opening a birth control office to distribute literature and secure contacts, but Crowdy thought LN members were too “reactionary” to take action on birth control. (Times [London], Oct. 12, 1964; Rachel Crowdy to MS, Oct. 20 [quote] and Sept. 25, 1925 [LCM 20:234, 229].) 4. Franklin Norman White (1877–1964), a British doctor and expert on epidemic diseases, worked for the Indian Medical Service before becoming the LN’s chief medical epidemic commissioner in 1920. (“Obituary Notices: F. N. White,” British Medical Journal 1, no. 5397 [1964]: 1572–73.) 5. Katharine Dexter McCormick (1875–1967), a social activist, feminist, and philanthropist, met MS in 1917 and quickly became a birth control advocate. MS refers to McCormick’s association with the Committee of Representatives of International Student Organizations, which met at the LN Secretariat. McCormick owned Chateau Prangins

September 1925  •  87 in Nyon, near Geneva. (ANB; NAW; William David Angel, ed., The International Law of Youth Rights: Source Documents and Commentary [Norwell, Conn., 1995], 73; for more on McCormick, see Vols. 2–3.) 6. The LN did not formally discuss population issues until 1927. (Connelly, Fatal Misconception, 124.) 7. Juliet Rublee funded an underwater treasure-hunting expedition. It turned out to be a scam, and she was kidnapped and briefly held for ransom. (Rublee to MS, Aug. 19, 1925 [MSM S3:158]; “Horace Rublee,” interview by Paul Marashio, Apr. 19, 1980, Juliet Rublee Collection, Dartmouth College Library, Hanover, N.H., transcript, 9; for more on Rublee, see Vol. 1.) 8. MS probably confused Wells with writer Jules Verne, known for his underwater adventure Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1869–70). Though Wells forecast many technological advances, he thought underwater exploration and travel were implausible. (Jeffrey A. Bell, Industrialization and Imperialism: A Biographical Dictionary, 1800–1914 [Westport, Conn., 2002], 384.) 9. MS and Rublee shared an interest in the occult and spiritualism, including the teachings of Russian spiritual teacher George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1872–1949) and his student Alfred Richard Orage (1873–1934). Orage, an English writer and social thinker, edited the literary magazine the New Age (1907–22). (MS to Rublee, July 13, 1925 [MSM C3:561]; EB.) 10. MS refers to her secretary Anna Lifshiz.

31. “Mahatma Gandhi and Birth Control in India” Gandhi’s article “Birth Control,” published on March 12 in his journal Young India, was his first specific discussion of the question. He called brahmacharya, loosely translated as “self-control,” the only moral means of controlling family size, claiming that artificial methods “are like putting a premium on vice. They make men and women reckless. . . . Adoption of artificial methods must result in imbecility and nervous prostration.” Gandhi’s pronouncement was influential in India, though it did not go unchallenged. Three opposition letters appeared in the April 2 issue of Young India, which questioned whether self-control was feasible for most Indians and whether birth control actually damaged health. What follows is Sanger’s response to Gandhi, probably distributed to press outlets in India, and also published in the September 1925 issue of the Calcutta monthly Welfare. (Gandhi, “Birth Control,” 88; “Some Arguments Considered,” Young India 7 [Apr. 2, 1925]: 117–20; MS, “Mahatma Gandhi and Birth Control in India,” Welfare 3 [Sept. 1925]: 573–74.)

[September 1925] Mahatma Gandhi and Birth Control in India. A Message to the People of India1 Mahatma Gandhi, the great leader of India, has recently given public utterance, in the columns of Young India, to his opinion concerning “artificial”

88  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map

methods of Birth Control. “There can be no two opinions about the necessity for Birth Control,” writes Mahatmaji, “but the only method handed down from ages past is self control or ‘Brahmacharya.’ It is an infallible sovereign remedy doing good to those who practise it. And medical men will earn the gratitude of mankind, if instead of advising artificial means of Birth Control they will find out the means of self control. The union is not meant for pleasure but for bringing forth progeny. And union is a crime when the desire for progeny is absent.” Self control, austere unrelenting asceticism, is in brief, in the ethics of Mahatma Gandhi “the only noble and straight method of Birth Control.”2 Coming as it does from the great spiritual leader of India, this expression of opinion is a welcome one. It has stimulated the liveliest discussion in the Indian press; and has brought forth a number of emphatic and clearly expressed refutations of the ascetic philosophy of life embodied in Gandhi’s brief expression, as well as some spirited defences of contraception.3 The most vigorous opponent of Gandhi’s views has been Professor R. D. Karve, who contributed three letters to the Indian Social Reformer of Bombay.4 Professor Karve says, in part: “. . . Thousands of years people have been preaching the Mahatma’s remedy: Self Control. Only, it is impracticable for ordinary human beings such as found outside the Mahatma’s Utopia. And it is with these we have to deal every day.”5

Another splendid refutation of Gandhi’s advocacy of abstinence as the only “noble and straight” method of Birth Control is found in Welfare, a monthly magazine published in Calcutta. The conclusion is well worth quoting: “Knowledge should not of necessity turn men into animals. We know that all doctors could be poisoners, chemists murderers, sanyasis6 scoundrels, if they so desired. But human desires are so trained that few men love to be criminals or sinners. The ideals of married life are various and if all people were taught to think in the right way, there should be no apprehension of their leading a purely animal life, just because they could do so without having children . . . Mahatma Gandhi does not show much faith in human nature by his fears.”7 These comments by Mahatma Gandhi’s ↑compatriots↓8 indicate the vitality of the idea of Birth Control in the Orient and presage the advent of a new era of enlightenment in that prostrate domain. We are happy indeed that, despite his hesitation and extreme reluctance, Mahatma Gandhi was induced to express publicly his disapproval of artificial methods of contraception9— although we might not impertinently ask if any method is more artificial, more contrary to the laws of human nature than a self-imposed “self control” which instead of leading one through the threshold of life onward toward

September 1925  •  89

an understanding of its meaning and beauty, would prevent the exponent of abstinence from ever understanding its deeper rhythm, and condemn him to endless torment, in discord with the cosmic rhythm and in eternal conflict with the surge of his deepest desires.10 This thoughtless utterance—profoundly thoughtless, we are sorry to say— of India’s great leader places him in the category of those traditional dogmatists and reactionary moralists for whom this world is irremediably a vale of tears and whose irresponsible “idealism” has indeed made it one. To Western minds, the influence of such leaders must be forever dysgenic. We are happy that our friends in India are so vigorously combatting it. Life, we challenge these opponents, is neither an evil, a malady, nor a disease to be avoided. Life is the supreme experience, into which we must unreservedly and joyfully plunge. Sexual expression is one of the most profoundly spiritual of all the avenues of human experience, and Birth Control, the supreme moral instrument by which, without injury to others nor to the future destinies of mankind on this earth, each individual is enabled to progress on the road of self-development and self-realization. Human salvation is not to be attained by a steady diet of the bitter fruit of renunciation. We are all seeking for “life more abundant,”11 . . . Despite his worldwide renown, Gandhi’s recent utterance seems to lack spiritual profundity or vision. Yet, we must express our thanks, since he has stimulated his young compatriots and ourselves as well, to a new crystallization of our spiritual values. TDf ABCLR, MH-H (MSM C16:275–77). The following appears at the top of the first page, preceding the statement: “To the Editor: Mahatma Gandhi has opened a lively discussion in India on Birth Control. So the Oriental Press is proud to send you for free publication the following article by Margaret Sanger, the greatest authority on the subject in America. She is also the author of ‘The Pivot of Civilization,’ ‘Woman and the New Race’ etc., etc. We shall appreciate a clipping of this article as published by you.” A slightly different version, which does not include this paragraph, appeared in MS, “Editorials.”

1. This subtitle does not appear in the BCR version. 2. These quotes are taken from Gandhi, “Birth Control.” 3. Opponents of Gandhi’s call for continence included R. D. Karve, Amritalal H. Patel, and Basanta Koomar Roy, who argued that Gandhi was holding ordinary men and women to impossibly high standards. For a summary of published opposition, see Roy, “Diamond Men and Men of Flesh,” 230, 269. 4. Karve argued that “scientific knowledge is now too far advanced for people to martyrize themselves for religious dogmas like that of self control.” In the BCR version, this paragraph ended: “whose protest is quoted by Mr. Roy, together with the able replies of other friends of Birth Control, on another page of the Review.” (Roy, “Diamond Men and Men of Flesh,” 250 [quote 1]; MS, “Editorials,” 243 [quote 2].) 5. The quote comes from Karve’s April 11, 1925, letter to the editor of the Indian Social Reformer, entitled “Self-Control and Birth Control.”

90  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map 6. A sanyasi is a Hindu holy man who renounces all possessions and adheres to a celibate lifestyle. 7. This summary is not included in the BCR version. The quote is from Roy, “Diamond Men and Men of Flesh,” 250, 269. 8. In the BCR version, this paragraph begins: “There is little to add to these comments by Gandhi’s compatriots. They are marked by brilliant, lucid reasoning.” (MS, “Editorials,” 243.) 9. The sentence ends here in the BCR. The next sentence begins, “But we might not impertinently ask . . .” (MS, “Editorials,” 243.) 10. Gandhi affirmed that “sexual enjoyment is not only not necessary for, but is positively injurious to health. All the strength of body and mind that has taken long to acquire is lost all at once by a single dissipation of vital energy.” (Gandhi, Self-Restraint vs. Self-Indulgence [Ahmedabad, India, 1969], 54.) 11. MS paraphrases John 10:10, in which Christ says, “I am come that they might have a life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”

32. From R abindranath Tagore On August 12, Sanger wrote to Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), the Nobel Prize–winning Indian poet and philosopher known for his iconoclastic views on India’s political problems, to request a statement on birth control for the BCR. Tagore was one of the few prominent Indians to object to Gandhi’s authoritative role in the nationalist movement, though he too opposed British rule in India. (New York Times, Aug. 8, 1941; MS to Tagore, Aug. 12, 1925 [MSM C3:610]; Dutta and Robinson, Rabindranath Tagore, 269, 285.)

Santiniketan [India]1 September 30, 1925.

Dear Margaret Sanger: I am of opinion that the Birth Control movement is a great movement not only because it will save women from enforced and undesirable maternity, but because it will help the cause of peace by lessening the number of surplus population of a country, scrambling for food and space outside its own rightful limits. In a hunger stricken country like India2 it is a cruel crime thoughtlessly to bring more children to existence than could properly be taken care of, causing endless suffering3 to them and imposing a degrading condition upon the whole family. It is evident that the utter helplessness of a growing poverty very rarely acts as a check controlling the burden of over-population. It proves that in this case nature’s urging gets the better of the severe warning that comes from the providence of civilized social life. Therefore, I believe, that to wait till the moral sense of man becomes a great deal more powerful than it is now and till then to allow countless generations of children to suffer privations and untimely death for no fault

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of their own is a great social injustice which should not be tolerated. I feel grateful for the cause you have made your own and for which you have suffered. I am eagerly awaiting4 the literature that has been sent to me according to your letter, and I have asked our Secretary to send you our Visabharati5 Journal in exchange for your Birth Control Review. Sincerely yours, RABINDRANATH TAGORE TRcy MSP, DLC (LCM 17:236). This statement was published, along with a photograph of Tagore, in BCR 9 (Dec. 1925): 341 and the Sept. 30, 1925, issue of New Generation (MSM C3:640).

1. Santiniketan (“Adobe of Peace”) was a small rural town in West Bengal, where Tagore had established an experimental school to blend Indian and Western traditions. (Wendy Doniger, ed., Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of World Religions [Springfield, Mass., 1999], 1052.) 2. Famines occurred about every nine years under the British Raj, a significant increase from the rate of one every fifty years before the British took over. In 1918 Indian political scientist Sudhindra Bose blamed the increase incidence of famine on British manipulation of the economy. (Bose, Some Aspects of British Rule in India [Iowa City, 1918], 82, 83; Bimal Kanti Paul, “Indian Famines, 1707–1943,” in Food and Famine in the 21st Century, vol. 2, Classic Famines [Santa Barbara, Calif., 2012], 39, 52–56.) 3. The word was “sufferings” in the New Generation version. 4. The word “for” was added in the New Generation version. 5. The journal name was properly spelled as “Visvabharati” in the New Generation version. Tagore sent MS a subscription to the literary journal published by his VisvaBharati University. (Dutta and Robinson, Rabindranath Tagore, 220–23.)

33. To R abindranath Tagore

[New York, N.Y.] November 11, 1925.

Dear Mr. Tagore: Your letter of September 30th was indeed a great inspiration to us, and I thank you for your frank and free opinion of the value of Birth Control to the individual and the race.1 After Ghandi’s statement2 your letter is especially welcome and I think you have stated the case for all of us when you say, “that to wait till the moral sense of man becomes a great deal more powerful than it is now and till then to allow countless generations of children to suffer privation and untimely death for no fault of their own is a great social injustice which should not be tolerated.” This is certainly the practical reply to those who claim that self control is the only proper means of Birth Control.

92  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map

It is my intention to visit India next winter (1926) and it is one of my fondest dreams to be able to meet you at that time.3 I thank you for the Journal you are sending us and I sincerely trust that the literature sent you has by this time been received. Sincerely yours, AMERICAN BIRTH CONTROL LEAGUE, Inc. President. TLcy ABCLR, MH-H (MSM C3:704).

1. See Tagore to MS, Sept. 30, 1925, herein. 2. MS refers to Gandhi’s March 1925 Young India article “Birth Control.” 3. MS began planning this trip in July 1924, “to acquaint the people of India with the Aims and Principles of the Birth Control movement.” She sent letters to a dozen prominent Indians, hoping to get their help to coordinate a two-month tour, but the trip did not materialize. (MS to Maliniabai Sukthanker, July 16, 1924, and MS to P. D. Shastri, July 10, 1925 [LCM 17:207, 220].)

34. To Adolfo Bernabé Adolfo Bernabé (1894–1976), a Puerto Rican physician practicing in San Juan, wrote Sanger that he was starting a birth control campaign in the Puerto Rican press. He asked her for information about “injections that sterilize people for some time,” explaining that Puerto Rico was desperate for help because it was “the most thickly populated country in the whole world and I dare to say the poorest.” (SSDI; Bernabé to MS, Oct. 21, 1925 [LCM 19:833].)

[New York, N.Y.] November 23, 1925.

Dear Doctor Bernabe: Thank you very much for your kind letter of October 21st. We are pleased to know that you have started a campaign for birth control, for surely this knowledge is needed in Porto Rico.1 We receive most discouraging reports from people who visit your part of the country of the poverty and misery that is prevailing there, and the total ignorance that the overburdened mothers are kept in.2 It would be splendid if something could be done in a practical way to answer the immediate need of those mothers. Perhaps a Clinic can be established, something like the one we are running here in New York, where our doctor is able to instruct different cases individually in a scientific way.3 I am sending you herewith Dr. Stone’s pamphlet with our compliments.4 About the first of the year, Dr. Stone will issue a detailed report on her work and in a short time Dr. Cooper’s book will be off the press when we shall be glad to notify you.5

November 1925  •  93

In reply to your question regarding injections to sterilize people—so far there is not much data on this. A good deal of experimentation has been done on rats and guinea pigs.6 I would suggest that you write to Dr. Robt. L. Dickinson, 438 W. 116th St. New York City, for his pamphlet which discusses sterilization.7 Thanking you for your letter and your interest in our Cause, I remain Sincerely yours, AMERICAN BIRTH CONTROL LEAGUE. Inc. Director Clinical Research Department. TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 19:835).

1. Bernabé was involved with the Liga para el Control de Natalidad de Puerto Rico (LPCNPR) (Birth Control League of Puerto Rico), founded by José Lanauze Rolón in Ponce earlier that month. Prior to this, the Socialist Party had endorsed birth control in 1920, leading to unsuccessful legislative efforts to decriminalize the promotion of contraception. (Bernabé to MS, Oct. 21, 1925 [LCM 19:833]; Ramirez de Arellano and Seipp, Colonialism, Catholicism, and Contraception, 20, 29; Briggs, Reproducing Empire, 90–92.) 2. The BCR published an article about a U.S. Children’s Bureau report on Puerto Rico, and the press regularly commented on the island’s high rates of maternal and infant mortality and epidemics. (“News Notes: Porto Rico,” BCR 8 [Mar. 1924]: 71–72; New York Times, Aug. 2 and Nov. 28, 1925.) 3. No clinics were opened in Puerto Rico until 1932. MS refers to the CRB, which offered examinations and contraceptive fittings for women at low or no cost and gathered statistics on the efficacy of various methods. (Tietze, “Human Fertility in Puerto Rico,” 38; Anna Lifshiz, “Report of the Clinical Research Bureau, July 1, 1925 to July 1, 1926,” Nov. 1, 1926 [LCM 34:184B].) 4. Hannah Mayer Stone (1893–1941), a doctor and pharmacist, was the CRB’s medical and clinical director. Her fifteen-page pamphlet summarized available methods and made recommendations based on clinical data. (ANB; Stone, Contraceptive Methods: A Clinical Survey from the Clinical Research Department of the American Birth Control League [New York, 1925].) 5. Stone’s “Report of the Clinical Research Department of the American Birth Control League” (New York, 1925) described the organization’s structure and services and provided patient statistics, including religious affiliation and social and economic status. Cooper’s study of contraceptive methods, Technique of Contraception: The Principles and Practice of Anti-Conceptional Methods (1928), was based on CRB research and field observations and aimed at physicians. (Cooper, Technique of Contraception, xi.) 6. Scientists injected testicular extracts, the serum of pregnant animals, or pituitary gland extracts into female rats and guinea pigs and initially found temporary infertility, but they were not sure why. (J. H. Landman, Human Sterilization: The History of the Sexual Sterilization Movement [New York, 1932], 216–17; see also MS to George Andreytchine, Mar. 8, 1935, note 9, herein.)

94  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map 7. Robert Latou Dickinson (1861–1950), a retired obstetrician and gynecologist, was a leading advocate of birth control and sterilization. He wrote numerous books and articles on contraception, abortion, sterilization, and sex counseling. MS probably refers to Dickinson’s Contraception, a Medical Review of the Situation: First Report of the Committee on Maternal Health of New York (St. Louis, 1924), which covered contraceptives and sterilization using irradiation, surgery, and injections of semen. A handwritten margin note by an unidentified author at the left of this paragraph reads “sent.” (ANB; Adele Clarke, Disciplining Reproduction: Modernity, American Life Sciences, and “the Problems of Sex” [Berkeley, Calif., 1998], 176; Dickinson, Contraception, 16, 21–22.)

35. To Clarence Cook Little 1 At the start of 1926, Sanger and the IFNMBCL moved ahead with plans to hold the Seventh International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference, later renamed the World Population Conference, in Geneva that August. In February 1926, the committee invited several notable population experts to participate, but by late March it became clear that the session chairs, including Raymond Pearl, Edward East, Adolf Meyer, and Little, had made little additional progress and could not even agree on whom to invite. (MS to HowMartyn, Jan. 17, 1926, MS to Keynes, Feb. 14, 1926, and MS to Little, Mar. 25, 1926 [MSM C4:26, 45, 96]; How-Martyn to Little, Mar. 22, 1926 [LCM 122:547].)

[Truro, Mass.]2 March 30, 1926.

Dear Dr. Little: My day letter to you will have told you the horrid but alas! almost the inevitable news of the postponement of the Conference.3 My visits and talks to Dr. Pearl, Dr. Meyer and Dr. East,4 a conference with Dr. East, Mrs. Rublee and Mr. Price showed me very plainly—5 1. that the Geneva situation and its consequent reaction in the various European countries most nearly concerned would make it very difficult to get anyone of importance to pay attention to our Conference—6 2. that our program is not sufficiently advanced to enable us to get the speakers of international reputation, the money and the publicity to make the Conference a great success. To have only a small success after our Conference last year would not be in the best interests of the world movement—7 3. that as both Dr. East and Dr. Pearl mentioned the Genetics Conference at Berlin, September 1927, as having an opportunity to get the right people easily and at much less expense.8 If the League of Nations affairs still makes holding a Conference at Geneva a doubtful benefit next year, Berlin would suit us as well as any place outside Geneva.— 4. that even the sixteen months we now have would not be too long to ensure a big success. We should lay down some plans right now, discuss them

March 1926  •  95

thoroughly with Mrs. How-Martyn so that she may return to Europe well informed of what we have in mind for the Conference and well able to tell the speakers we hope to get all the details they will naturally want to know to arouse and retain their interest.9 You may be disappointed at the turn affairs have taken and so was I at first but considering the above points and many minor ones, I am now convinced that the efforts required to make the Conference a success this year would be out of all proportion greater than the efforts for next year. Sincerely yours, AMERICAN BIRTH CONTROL LEAGUE, Inc. President. TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 122:553–554A).

1. Clarence Cook Little (1888–1971), a zoologist specializing in mammalian genetics, was the president of the University of Michigan (1923–28) and a member of the American Eugenics Society, the ABCL Advisory Board, and the CRB medical advisory board. He had participated in the 6INMBCC and now headed the IFNMBCL. (ANB; MS, ed., Religious and Ethical Aspects of Birth Control [New York, 1926], 169–74.) 2. MS was in Truro, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, probably visiting her ailing father, Michael Higgins. (1926 Calendar [LCM 2:592]; for more on Truro and Michael Higgins, see Vol. 1.) 3. MS postponed the conference due to the slow progress in developing a preliminary program that was needed for fund-raising. The committee was also divided, with Adolf Meyer and Raymond Pearl rejecting many of the participants proposed by Little. Neither Pearl nor Edward East thought there was sufficient time to plan the conference, and Pearl threatened to withdraw, so MS rescheduled it for August 1927. (Little, “World Scientists Plan Birth Control Meeting in Geneva,” Feb. 11, 1926, MS to Little, Mar. 25, 1926, Pearl to MS, Mar. 26, 1926, and MS to Pearl, Mar. 29, 1926 [MSM C14:413, 4:96, 99, 101].) 4. Raymond Pearl was one of the few scientists willing to work with MS, advising her on CRB procedures and guiding her dealings with the scientific and medical community. Though generally supportive of birth control, Pearl sought to distance himself from birth control propaganda. He advised MS to downplay activist rhetoric when dealing with scientists. Adolf Meyer (1866–1950), a Swiss-born psychiatrist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and director of the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic, was a member of the CRB Medical Advisory Board. MS sought to add Edward Murray East to the conference committee after hearing his 6INMBCC paper on overpopulation. (ANB; East, Mankind at the Crossroads [London, 1923]; East, “Fecundity and Civilization,” in Problems of Overpopulation, edited by MS, 11–18; East to MS, Jan. 15, 1926, MS to East, Jan. 19, 1926, MS to Little, Mar. 25, 1926, and Pearl to MS, Mar. 27, 1926 [MSM S3:406, 413, C4:96, 99].) 5. The conference advisory committee worked on the program and publicity. Edward East served as the chair and was empowered to invite other scientists to the committee.

96  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map Other members included committee treasurer Juliet Rublee, who had pushed to hold the meeting in Geneva, and Burr Price (1888–1952), a New York Herald journalist and former LN publicist, who Little hoped would secure the interest of its members. MS met with Pearl and Meyer on March 24 in New York and with East in Boston on March 26. The date of the meeting with Rublee, Price, and East was not found. (New York Times, Mar. 19, 1952; WPC, “Second Meeting on International Committee,” Apr. 4, 1925, and Little to MS, Mar. 25, 1926 [LCM 122:352, 550]; MS to East, Jan. 19, 1926 [MSM C3:659, S3:413].) 6. MS refers to several crises facing the LN over the postponement of a disarmament conference, a conflict over whether to admit Germany, and power struggles on the council and among European members. (Washington Post, Mar. 17, 1926; New York Times, Mar. 25 and 28, 1926; Christian Science Monitor, Mar. 21 and 29, 1926.) 7. Planning had not moved very far past the early division of the program into four sessions: biological, medical, economic and social, and political and philosophical, with four discussion groups for each session. MS estimated it would take six weeks to complete a preliminary program. (MS to Little, Mar. 24 and 25, 1926 [MSM C4:94, 96]; Little to MS, Mar. 25, 1926 [LCM 122:550].) 8. East and Pearl were planning to go to the Fifth International Congress of Genetics in Berlin on September 11‑17, 1927. With many of the world’s leading scientists there, the hope was that they could attend both meetings for little additional cost. (Donald F. Jones, “Edward Murray East, 1879–1938,” National Academy of Science, Biographical Memoirs [Washington, D.C.] 23 [1944]: 231; “Fifth International Genetics Congress,” 210.) 9. Edith How-Martyn (1875–1954), a British suffragist, feminist, and social reformer, helped MS promote birth control internationally. In January 1926, MS hired How-Martyn to organize the WPC and create the English conference committee, which identified about thirty scientists from the United States, England, Germany, Japan, Australia, France, Italy, Sweden, India, and the Netherlands to invite to the meeting. Very few had been contacted before MS postponed the conference. (Times [London], Feb. 4, 1954, and Oct. 11, 1924; MS, My Fight, 378–79; MS to How-Martyn, Jan. 17 and May 10, 1926, and WPC, “International Memoranda,” Jan. 2, 1926 [MSM C4:26, 155, 14:412]; MS to Little, Nov. 30, 1925 [LCM 122:535].)

36. From José A. Lanauze Rolón José A. Lanauze Rolón (1893–1951), an Afro–Puerto Rican, Howard University–trained physician, socialist writer, and activist, founded the LPCNPR in November 1925 and had sought Sanger’s advice. The new league wanted to overturn Article 268 of the Puerto Rican Penal Code, which criminalized the publication and distribution of contraceptive information. (Fay Fowlie-Flores, ed., Index to Puerto Rican Collective Biography [Westport, Conn., 1987], 97; Briggs, Reproducing Empire, 91; Rolón to MS, Feb. 23, 1926 [LCM 19:836]; Tietze, “Human Fertility in Puerto Rico,” 38; Ramirez de Arellano and Seipp, Colonialism, Catholicism, and Contraception, 19–20.)

March 1926  •  97

Ponce, P.R. March 31, 1926.

Dear Madam: I want to express my sincerest appreciation for your letter of the 9th inst.1 I had it translated into Spanish and published into three of the biggest dailies of the island.2 With its publication we started a new propaganda campaign which will lead to our incorporation to the National League. The island is in the grip of the Catholic Church, and ours will be a harder fight than in the States. But they can’t scare us.3 I must thank you specially for Dr. Hannah M. Stone’s pamphlet.4 But kindly tell me, how do you do it? How do you dare open clinics, and send that information thru the U.S. mail if that is obviously illegal, and any quidam5 can put you under the inconvenience of the law?6 I worked out a formula after patient laboratory study which I and my friends have been using with success.7 I may talk the whole thing over with you soon, for I illegible ↑may↓ drop in New York City this winter in my way to Paris, where I am planning to take advance work in medicine and surgery.8 Enclosed please find your yellow slip and $3.00 money order. I want to enroll as a member of the National League, and subscribe to the magazine, starting with the January number of this year.9 Hoping that you will kindly send us any more literature which will be help to us in our new campaign, we are. Yours fraternally in the Cause, Dr. José A. Lanauze Rolón [signed] Dr. José A Lanauze Rolón TLS MSP, DLC (LCM 19:839). Handwritten interlineation by José Rolón.

1. MS congratulated Rolón on his new office and invited the LPCNPR to join the ABCL. She also sent him literature and information regarding contraceptive supplies from the Holland-Rantos Company. (MS to José Lanauze Rolón, Mar. 9, 1926 [LCM 19:837].) 2. The letter was published in the daily El Mundo, on March 22, 1926. The other two newspapers were not identified. (Rolón to MS, Aug. 4, 1926 [LCM 19:843].) 3. Rolón was engaged in a public debate over birth control. Puerto Rico was predominantly Catholic, and the Catholic Church mounted a fierce press campaign, including in its weekly El Piloto, claiming that birth control led to race suicide and severe health problems. They offered idealized images of fertile Puerto Rican mothers and their large families as a counter to birth control propaganda. (New York Times, Feb. 10, 1926; Briggs, Reproducing Empire, 79; Rolón, “The Problem of Too Many Children,” BCR 10 [Nov. 1926]: 348–49.) 4. Rolón likely refers to Hannah Stone’s Contraceptive Methods: A Clinical Survey.

98  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map 5. Quidam is a Latin word used in French law to represent an unknown person, or one who cannot be named. 6. MS ran afoul of the U.S. Comstock law with articles published in the New York Call (1912), the Woman Rebel (1914), and Family Limitation (1914). She was also prosecuted for violating New York State’s “little Comstock” law by opening the Brownsville birth control clinic (1916). While MS worked to repeal both the federal and the state laws, she regularly broke the law by mailing pamphlets, information about the location of birth control clinics, as well as the names of physicians willing to provide birth control services and materials. (Tone, Devices and Desires, 125; Hajo, Birth Control on Main Street, 156–57; for more on MS’s tactics, see Vol. 1.) 7. As the LPCNPR did not operate a clinic, Rolón may have prescribed contraceptives to his private patients. (Tietze, “Human Fertility in Puerto Rico,” 38.) 8. Rolón visited the CRB in December 1926 before visiting clinics in England and the Netherlands. (“News Notes,” BCR 11 [Jan. 1927]: 28.) 9. Rolón refers to joining the ABCL and to the BCR. By 1926 the ABCL had thirtyseven thousand members. (Ruth C. Engs, The Progressive Era’s Health Reform Movement [Westport, Conn., 2003], 7–8.)

37. To Edith How-Martyn Minimal progress had been made on planning for the WPC since it was postponed to the summer of 1927. In April Raymond Pearl proposed that instead of continuing the International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control meetings, the conference should serve as a springboard for creating a permanent international population organization, with neither birth control nor neo-Malthusianism being dominant. Instead, Sanger and the rest of the committee agreed to emphasize scientific discussion and keep birth control in the background. (Pearl to MS, Apr. 19, 1926 [MSM C4:134]; MS to Raymond Pearl, May 6, 1926, “Notes of a Conference,” June 9, 1926 [MSM C4:149, 14:416].)

[Fishkill, N.Y.?] Sunday ↑6:30↓ a.m. July 4th [1926]

Dearest Edith: All of your letters have made me realize more & more what a perfect dear you are, and how wonderful it is to have you taking hold with me.1 A meeting was held with Pearl, East & Fairchild at Mrs Rublees.2 We had things prepared for final decisions & a great deal of ground was covered a copy of report is being sent you. Name: “World Population Conference” August ↑31↓ & Sept 1, 2, 3.3 The one thing Pearl objected to was the list of Vice Presidents I had already asked to be V.P’s. His point was that the V.P’s should be the best Scientists in the world & Scientists only to serve as V.P’s.4 He suggested Patrons & Patronesses as the proper title for the other important people we wished to

July 1926  •  99

ask. He also considered the large number of English names to be as much an error as too many American ones.5 I did not think so at all, considering the fact that these two countries have carried & shall have to carry on the work for some time to come. I am sending you Happiness in Marriage with my love.6 Also sending Miss Green both books thank you for the suggestion.7 Mr Chance will I trust take the Treasureship for Europe.8 He will be a pillar of strength to us all. Dr Pearl wants us to have a lot of social activities. He says Scientists are easily bored with discussion but if we give ↑make↓ the social side attractive, they will be happier & we can get closer to their hearts. Dr Pearl asked about you & if you are to be in London in early Sept. I questioned it thinking you would be in Geneva at that time. He does not plan to go to Geneva. You could perhaps arrange to see him and I shall send you his London address when I get it. (Brown Shipley Co I believe or something like that.) East & Little are to ask some Scientists to be V.P’s and to work on the programme until October when a full meeting will be called.9 Miss Johnson sailed for Europe10 & will see you I hope. Mrs Kennedy will be in Philadelphia for the best part of six months.11 I received the Int Suffrage Programme also Time & Tide12 & thank you dear for sending them. Things here will be in fairly good shape when I leave in January. I have already arranged for the clearing, by the possible promise of a substantial fund to start us off. Can’t say how where (but not the Squire).13 The weather has been cold & windy only the last two days are warm enough to don thin clothing. The lake is lovely. Grant has his friends here & they are lovely too.14 My studies get neglected but they interest me & I shall get a lot out of Psychology. We miss you all the time!! You have a way of winning all hearts and its really dangerous! It’s a good thing you did not go very far west, or you would find that the 100% Westerner would hold you here or invade England to capture you.15 (Thats that so beware). I love the notes you send & the interesting reports & every thing you do is just like I like it done. We must have ruled a world together once Edith. I agree about the Congress of Women our suffragists were capable but iron clad & still are I guess.16 Your contacts with women from various countries will be invaluable. I may spend next year, after the Conference, going about & hope that the scientific flavor of our work will perhaps help to make the idea more acceptable to Statesmen. Very helpful to have your notes on Dr [Meinard]. Certainly

100  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map

such people should not be at the Conference. They simply keep alive ideas that should have been beheaded with the French Revolution.17 Now that you are back in London you will see Mr & Mrs Chance & others.18 I want someone to attend that Conference in Berlin on Sex Psychology. Dr Moll wrote me a very nice letter urging me to attend or at least to send a representative. He said he does not agree with my point of view but all the more reason why I should be present to meet the challenge of the majority attending the Conference. He also said that there will be attempts to legislate against all that my idea stands for & begs me to come & say what I can have to say.19 He also said that legislation was easier passed than repealed & if anti legislation was accomplished it would be a quarter of a century perhaps before the question would come up again. It was a fine letter that of Albert Molls & I am going to ask you for suggestions. Do you speak German well enough to go over & defend B.C? If so then don’t look further but plan to go. If not then what about asking Dr Haire?20 It would be better of course to have a Doctor for this Conference where all participating will be Scientists or M.D’s. If he will attend I will tell Dr Moll & get him my place on the programme. If you think well of this suggestion will you cable me. Sangatrol. Haire. Yes. Especially if Dr Haire says he will attend. I would rather have him than any of the German Doctors I know because of his clearness & stand on contraception viz abortion.21 That will need to be his clearing remarks. I can see from Molls letter that there is confusion in his mind. I will gladly pay Dr Haires R.R. fare to and from Berlin if you think it wise to suggest that. It will be a very good thing for him & his standing I wish he would take it. If not who next? Please suggest. This is a long rambling letter Edith darling. I am going away on a motor trip with the boys to be gone two weeks the end of July.22 We will just go as we wish & stop where it suits us. Tell me about Ellis23 & all the dearest people in the world & husband24 & Miss Thompson25 & my lovely Edith when you write. Devotedly ever Margaret ALS EHMP, MSPP (MSM C4:177–84).

1. How-Martyn went to France with birth control activist Sue Green to persuade scientists and physicians to attend the conference, but found little support. Child welfare expert Dr. Louis Meinard maintained that “patriotic healthy French people should have children,” while economist Charles Gide thought the “fit should have 5 or 6 children.” How-Martyn updated MS on her meetings with Binnie Dunlop and Emily Rieder in

July 1926  •  101 London as well as her plans to meet with Janet and Clinton Chance. (How-Martyn to MS, June 13–19, 1926 [LCM 13:289].) 2. The program committee met on June 18, 1926, and now included Henry Pratt Fairchild (1880–1956), professor of sociology at New York University and author of books on population, immigration, and eugenics, including The Melting Pot Mistake (1926). Fairchild, who also encouraged a purely scientific program, was slated to be a conference vice president. Rublee’s apartment was at 242 East Forty-Ninth Street. (New York Times, Oct. 3, 1956; MS to Pearl, Apr. 16 and May 6, 1926, and WPC, “Agenda Submitted to Program Committee,” June 18, 1926 [MSM C4:132, 149, 14:447].) 3. Only half of the program committee members (MS, East, Pearl, and Fairchild) attended the meeting, which set the WPC’s name, dates, and location; outlined its program schedule; and drafted a list of prospective vice presidents and patrons. MS was delegated to invite additional representatives from birth control groups but cautioned that “any educational or propaganda features were to be organized separately from the Conference.” (WPC, “Agenda Submitted to Program Committee,” June 18, 1926 [MSM C14:447].) 4. Those invited to be vice presidents were Americans: Adolf Meyer, Edward M. East, Raymond Pearl, Wesley C. Mitchell, Henry P. Fairchild, Franklin H. Giddings, J. Whitridge Williams, Katharine Bement Davis, Warren Thompson, Julia Lathrop, and “A. E. Conklin” (probably Edwin G. Conklin). All save Mitchell, Davis, Lathrop, and MS were physical scientists. (WPC, “Agenda Submitted to Program Committee,” June 18, 1926 [MSM C14:447].) 5. The committee suggested eight patrons, including eugenicist Henry Fairfield Osborn Sr., businessman and agricultural relief expert Herbert Hoover, and educator Nicholas Murray Butler. (WPC, “Agenda Submitted to Program Committee,” June 18, 1926 [MSM C14:447].) 6. Happiness in Marriage, MS’s 1926 marriage manual, emphasized the importance of sexual fulfillment in marriage and the key role played by birth control. (New York Times, July 4, 1926.) 7. Susanna Green (1855–1937), a British-born educator living in France, had recently met How-Martyn and Emily Rieder and become a birth control activist. She was one of a small cadre of women helping MS organize the WPC. She requested books on contraception to distribute to French public health officials who were uninformed about contraception. The two books were likely Happiness in Marriage (1926) and The Pivot of Civilization (1922). Heretofore, she had been relying on BCR articles. (1861 England Census; How-Martyn, “Susanna Green”; How-Martyn to MS, June 13–19, 1926 [LCM 13:289].) 8. Clinton Franklin Chance (1883–1953), a wealthy British stockbroker and ML member, met MS in 1920 and became an enthusiastic financial supporter and funder of her work. (DNB; “Clinton Frederick Chance,” Eugenics Review 45 [Oct. 1953]: 174–76; MS, Autobiography, 379; for more on Chance, see Vols. 1–3.) 9. On June 9, Little met with Chance and MS at the latter’s home in Fishkill, New York, to plan the next steps. When Little was named president of the University of Michigan on July 2, he no longer had much time for WPC work. (Boston Daily Globe, July 3, 1925; MS to Katharine Bement Davis, Oct. 11, 1926, and MS to Raymond Pearl, Nov. 10, 1926 [MSM C4:221, 253].)

102  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map 10. Beatrice W. Johnson (Little) (1899–1973), an ABCL executive secretary (1925–26), was expected to arrive in England on June 30. (SSDI; Chicago Daily Tribune, Sept. 4, 1930; Johnson to James Cooper, Apr. 9, 1926 [MSM C4:126]; How-Martyn, Report, June 13–19, 1926 [LCM 13:289].) 11. Anne Kennedy was managing the ABCL’s lobbying efforts in Washington, D.C., and then traveled to the Midwest in the second half of the year to establish new leagues and clinics. (“News Notes,” BCR 10 [Dec. 1926]: 6; Kennedy, “Condensed Report of Organizational Work for the Establishment of Birth Control Clinics, American Fund for Public Service” [1926–27] [MSM C12:512].) 12. Time and Tide was a weekly British newsmagazine. MS probably refers to either the June 4 or the June 11 issue covering the Tenth Congress of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA), which met in Paris on May 28 to June 6, 1926. How-Martyn’s letter was not found. (“My Week in Paris” and “Feminists and Social Reformers,” Time and Tide 7 [June 4, 1926]: 507, 528.) 13. MS wanted the WPC Program Committee to apply to the Rockefeller-funded BSH for funds. BSH general secretary Katharine Bement Davis may have indicated they would consider supporting the WPC. The “Squire” was a reference to J. Noah Slee (1860–1943), MS’s second husband, a South African–born businessman who emigrated to the United States in 1873 and founded the successful household oil manufacturer Three-in-One Oil Company. Slee accompanied MS on her 1922 world trip, keeping a low profile even after their September 1922 marriage in London. (MS to Davis, Apr. 19, 1926, and Davis to MS, Oct. 6, 1926 [LCM 22:11, 12]; MS to Davis, Oct. 11, 1926 [MSM C4:221]; New York Times, June 23, 1943; Chesler, Woman of Valor, 243–44; 1922 Calendar [MSM S78:549]; for more on Slee, see Vols. 1–3.) 14. Grant Sanger, who was just about to turn eighteen, graduated from the Westminster School in Simsbury, Connecticut, in June. (1926 Calendar [LCM 2:596].) 15. How-Martyn visited MS at her Fishkill home from March 18 to early May 1926. She then toured Quebec and returned to England on May 19, 1926. (New York Passenger Lists, 1820–1957, and U.K. Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878–1960.) 16. MS refers to a dispute at the IWSA Congress that denied membership to the American National Woman’s Party because it supported full equality for women in the workplace. (Karen Offen, “Women’s Suffrage,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences [Elsinor, Denmark, 2001], 16536; “Feminists and Social Reformers,” 528.) 17. See note 1. How-Martyn added, “It is for you and Dr. Little to consider if people like these can be useful at the Conference.” (How-Martyn to MS, June 13–19, 1926 [LCM 13:289].) 18. MS refers to Clinton Chance and his wife, Janet Whyte Chance (1885–1953), a British feminist and founder of a sex education center for working-class women. After returning from Paris on June 17, How-Martyn waited to see Clinton Chance to “discuss the best plan for helping the Conference.” (Banks, Biographical Dictionary of British Feminists, 42–45; “Notes of the Quarter: Mrs. Janet Chance,” Eugenics Review 46 [Apr. 1954]: 13–15; How-Martyn to MS, July 16–19, 1926 [quote] [LCM 13:289]; How-Martyn to MS, Sept. 28, 1926 [MSM S3:561].) 19. Albert Moll’s Internationale Gesellschaft für Sexualforschung (INGESE) (International Sexological Society) sponsored the International Congress for Sex Research

July 1926  •  103 (ICSR), held in Berlin on October 10–16. Unlike the World League for Sexual Reform (WLSR), INGESE took a purely theoretical scientific approach to sexuality and opposed the practical applications of eugenics. Moll (1862–1939), a German Jewish physician with conservative views on sex, invited MS to the ICSR, but warned her that many attendees held “a traditional point of view.” Though Moll was a member of the BfMS and supported abortion rights, he too opposed sex radicalism. (Ralf Dose and Pamela Eve Selwyn, “The World League for Sexual Reform: Some Possible Approaches,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 12 [Jan. 2003]: 10; Ursula Ferdinand, Das Malthusische Erbe [Muenster, 1999], 215; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 243; Moll to MS, July 26, 1926 [quote] [LCM 13:593].) 20. Norman Haire attended the ICSR and gave a paper, later reprinted as a pamphlet, that compared contraceptives. (Haire, The Comparative Value of Current Contraceptive Methods [London, 1928].) 21. In Germany there was more activism for abortion rights than birth control. After years of agitation, Paragraph 218 of the Penal Code was revised on May 25, 1926, lessening the penalties on abortion, though demands for a complete repeal continued. Many German sexual reform activists demanded the right to abortion as critical to women’s equality, and thus more important than the provision of contraception, which was legal in Germany. Norman Haire condemned abortion as dangerous and damaging to health, claiming it was performed by incompetents. (Woycke, Birth Control in Germany, 145–49; Haire, Hymen; or, The Future of Marriage [London, 1927], 89–90.) 22. MS and her sons visited her ailing father, Michael Higgins, on Cape Cod in Truro. She and Grant also went to Cornish, New Hampshire, to visit Juliet Rublee at the end of July. (Chesler, Woman of Valor, 253; MS to Juliet Rublee, July 29, 1926 [MSM C4:192].) 23. Ellis continued to write, mostly essays. He met How-Martyn for the first time on August 12, 1926. (Grosskurth, Havelock Ellis, 299, 238–339, 341–48; Ellis to MS, Aug. 13, 1926 [LCM 4:1139].) 24. Edith How-Martyn was married to George Herbert Martyn (1874–1954), a physicist and science instructor who shared his wife’s commitment to labor politics, neoMalthusianism, and birth control. (England and Wales Birth Index, 1837–1883; DNB; Soloway, Birth Control and the Population Question, 154; Times [London], Feb. 4, 1954.) 25. Louise M. Thompson was a British suffragist associated with the Women’s Freedom League who worked closely with How-Martyn. She first met MS in 1915. (MS, My Fight, 103; Benn, Predicaments of Love, 222.)

38. To Edith How-Martyn 1 Sanger was growing increasingly frustrated over the lack of progress on WPC planning, as Clarence Little kept delaying decisions on fund-raising, the conference site, and the program. By early October, he agreed that Sanger should form a committee of scientists in England to take over the organizational work. After some debate over whether to hold the conference in London in June, they finally settled on Geneva. (MS to Little, Sept. 30, 1926, Little to MS, Oct. 7, 1926, MS to How-Martyn, Nov. 5, 1926, and WPC, “Agenda Submitted to Program Committee,” June 18, 1926 [MSM C4:216, 220, 242, 14:447].)

104  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map

[Fishkill, N.Y.] Oct 23. [1926]

Edith dearest: Yes I saw Dr Pearl and he was shocked that he had heard nothing about Littles new suggestions only from me.2 He too deplored the lack of concrete plan & suggested that I get off to London as early as possible & try to get a group who would carry out the Conference in Geneva or London or any place decided upon. He said he would do anything to help me put it over & thinks we have all been “let down.” Dr [Little]3 will be in New York this week Friday the 29th.4 I shall see him then & get final actions. I’ve almost asked him to resign.5 Im sick of indecision & promises. Pearl thinks Cox would be the best man to head the conference as he is a Population man & known for that in B.C.6 The others Huxley et al could be on programme & co operate.7 My trouble at present is getting money—[Little] never wrote the letter he was requested to write for a nice big sum & so here I am.8 I’ll get it all settled soon & will sail for Europe the end of November.9 Will you please go to see Mr Cox. Do not of course say we want him to take the lead, but ask him what he thinks of continuing the plans for Geneva. If he thinks London better etc.10 It’s the place now that has to be settled on. If we continue to plan on Geneva then our folders will do until definite changes are made.11 Pearl thinks Geneva the best place. Even if an English group initiate the conference. People returning here say there is a good interest in Geneva & that is the place. Others say we are hated everywhere & better stay home.12 I want to get money pledged before I sail then I don’t care where or when or how. So glad you liked Clinton & Janet.13 They [written along right margin of last page] are darlings— love from Squire14 Margaret ALS EHMP, MSPP (MSM C4:229–34). Letterhead of Willowlake.

1. How-Martyn continued searching for funders and French and British scientists for the WPC program. She also attended the ICSR in Berlin on October 10–16, 1926. (How-Martyn to MS, Sept. 28, 1926 [MSM S3:561]; How-Martyn to MS, Oct. 10–16, 1926 [LCM:13:601].) 2. Pearl continued plans to use the WPC to found an International Union of Population, but remained reluctant to take the lead in conference planning. Little’s new suggestions included increasing the budget for a secretary and reducing the publicity budget, due to the scientific nature of the meeting. (Pearl to MS, May 1, 8, and Oct. 21, 1926, and Little to MS, Aug. 10, 1926 [MSM C4:145, 152, 226, 197].)

october 1926  •  105 3. Clarence Little’s name was obliterated here by Eileen Palmer, How-Martyn’s secretary in the 1930s. She often did this for people MS mentioned in a negative context. 4. The meeting was held at Juliet Rublee’s New York City town house. (MS to Raymond Pearl, Nov. 1, 1926 [MSM C4:236].) 5. MS complained about Little’s inability to accomplish anything, noting, “I urged him to do many things but know he will forget them as soon as he returns to Michigan.” (MS to How-Martyn, Nov. 5, 1926 [MSM C4:242].) 6. Harold Cox (1859–1936), an economist, journalist, and former member of Parliament (1906–9), was the editor of the Edinburgh Review until 1929. In his book The Problem of Population (1922), he argued that the differential fertility rates among nations would cause a major world crisis. (DNB; MS, Proceedings of the WPC, 11; Cox to MS, Nov. 4, 1926 [MSM S3:613].) 7. Sir Julian Sorell Huxley (1887–1975) was a renowned British zoologist, philosopher, and pioneer in the study of genetics, evolution, and animal behavior. The WPC Program Committee invited him to serve on an advisory council and to attend the conference. (DNB; “Notes of a Conference between Dr. C. C. Little, Margaret Sanger and C. F. Chance,” June 9, 1926, and MS to Arthur Lyon Bowley, Dec. 22, 1926 [MSM C14:416, 4:277].) 8. Little was supposed to write to the BSH requesting funding for the WPC, but did not do so until December. (MS to Katharine Bement Davis, Oct. 11, 1926; MS to Raymond Pearl, Nov. 1, 1926; Davis to MS, Dec. 28, 1926 [MSM C4:221, 236, 280].) 9. MS sailed from New York on November 26, arriving in London on December 4. (1926 Calendar [LCM 2:609].) 10. While MS hoped that Cox “would take the lead and invite others to come in,” Cox responded that “you wd be wise to drop the idea of an international conference.” (MS to How-Martyn, Nov. 5, 1926 [quote 1], and Cox to MS, Nov. 4, 1926 [quote 2] [MSM C4:242, S3:613].) 11. “Folders” probably refers to preliminary materials drafted for the WPC, such as letterhead and draft agendas with Geneva as the conference site. 12. MS is referring to increased anti-American sentiment in Europe, culminating in public protests in France that summer over American demands for repayment of war debts and its perceived encroachment into European affairs. How-Martyn thought there would be less resentment toward “American management” of the WPC if it was held in Geneva. (New York Times, Jan. 1, July 27, and Oct. 10, 1926; How-Martyn to MS, Sept. 28, 1926 [MSM S3:565].) 13. The Chances met with How-Martyn in Southampton at the end of September and promised to provide her with an office and secretary. Clinton Chance preferred holding the conference in England. (Chance to MS, Mar. 8 and Oct. 1, 1926, and How-Martyn to MS, Sept. 28, 1926 [MSM C14:679, S3:575, 561].) 14. J. Noah Slee had become increasingly involved with the financial management of the ABCL, becoming assistant treasurer in 1924. (For more on Slee, see Vols. 1–2.)

106  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map

39. From John Maynard Keynes 1 Sanger went to London in December to enlist an English committee to help organize the WPC. British sociologist Alexander Carr-Saunders agreed to take over the major organizational duties and act as honorary secretary. Julian Huxley, Havelock Ellis, Sir Humphry Rolleston, and John Maynard Keynes also agreed to form a conference council. On December 23, Sanger learned that the BSH would contribute ten thousand dollars to cover conference expenses. Sanger then went with Slee on holiday to the South of France, staying in a rented villa in Cap d’Ail. On February 1, after learning that Carr-Saunders had backed out of the WPC, citing other obligations, Sanger returned to London, met with other council members, and approached Sir Bernard Mallet, the former registrar-general of England, asking him to take over. (1926 and 1927 Calendars [LCM 2:609, 637–39]; MS to Slee, Dec. 5, 1926, MS to Arthur Bowley, Dec. 22, 1926, Katharine Bement Davis to MS, Dec. 28, 1926, MS to Raymond Pearl, Jan. 30, 1927, and MS to Adolf Meyer, Feb. 1, 1927 [MSM S3:628, C4:277, 280, 290, 294].)

Cambridge, [England] 4.2.27

Dear Mrs Sanger, I am sorry to say that I cannot be in London tomorrow.2 However I saw Sir Bernard Mallet yesterday and urged him to take on the Secretaryship.3 It would fill a gap in the programme as sketched out if you could have a paper on the actual progress of contraceptive methods.4 How widely are they in fact employed? Have they already affected the birth rate to such an extent that in certain countries the battle is already won, only time being now need to demonstrate the full consequences whether for good or for evil? Yours sincerely JM Keynes ALS MSP, DLC (LCM 122:639–40). Letterhead of King’s College. Ink blots.

1. Economist John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) was an ML member and vice president of Marie Stopes’s Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress (SCBCRP). He met MS during the 1922 5INMBCC in London and was a foreign vice president of the 6INMBCC, though he did not attend. He agreed to join the WPC Committee so long as “most of the others you are inviting are able to accept” and if Carr-Saunders would be the secretary. Keynes did not plan to attend or submit a paper. (DNB; Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, 95, 241–42; 6INMBCC Program [MSM S67:43]; Keynes to MS, Jan. 6, 1927 [quote] [LCM 122:640].) 2. MS tried to arrange meetings with several of the British WPC Council members to discuss Carr-Saunders’s replacement. (MS to Slee, Feb. 2, 1927 [MSM S3:713].) 3. Sir Bernard Mallet (1859–1932) was a respected British civil servant and retired registrar-general, whose wife had been maid of honor to Queen Victoria. Though not a scientist, he was a good administrator with excellent connections on the Continent and in the LN. MS noted that, although he was “very English, he was not too conservative.”

April 1927  •  107 (Times [London], Oct. 29, 1932; New York Times, Oct. 28, 1932; MS, Autobiography, 379 [quote].) 4. Keynes did not seem to know that the WPC Committee had decided to exclude any papers or discussion of birth control. (MS to Raymond Pearl, May 6, 1926 [MSM C4:149], and MS to Pearl, Feb. 7, 1927 [LCM 122:591].)

40. To Juliet Barrett Rublee 1 In mid-February, Sir Bernard Mallet took over the WPC chairmanship and, with the British WPC Council, arranged the program and sent out invitations. Sanger continued to coordinate planning between the British and American contingents, but focused more of her time on logistics and fund-raising. (MS, “Meeting,” Mar. 16, 1927 [MSM C14:422].)

[Paris, France] here until 18th then Geneva. (Hotel Les Bergies)2 April 8th [1927]

Darling: Last evening I dictated a letter to you, but now I want to add a few things more.3 You must be in a hot-bed of discord with L.— & P—4. The whole trouble lies in the fact that Pearl is better acquainted with the situation here than are the others. He knows we must not have too many Americans taking part in the conference.5 It will be fatal to the consequences which we hope will accrue. The English group are constantly cutting down on those whose names are good & whose presence would lend prestage to the conference, because they do not want it to be overwhelming Anglo Saxon.6 As Sir Bernard has charge of the Conference it will put his back up to have any of us issuing invitations without his leave. Besides there is all Europe to draw from & at 1/10th less the cost than one from U.S.A. I have tried to get the names of those attending the Gentics Conference, but so far we cannot hear from those in charge.7 We keep on trying just the same. The Religious side was considered & rejected as not Scientific.8 We could of course have that side given at a dinner on Saturday night. Karl Reiland is to be in Europe then & would prepare to attend if invited.9 I’ll take this up again with Sir Bernard. As to the Catholic side that too would need to be an outside viewpoint. I’m not for it at this time. By this time Anne has replied to your questions concerning the Conservatoire etc.10 It is not wise for any individual to distribute the fares, except the Treasurer. All checks should go through Mr Chance’s books & be paid by him to the individuals in a business like manner. The work of this is minor compared to the mix up of getting accts straight if it is not done. I wrote this to Dr Little.11

108  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map

If money is not pledged I shall have to return to N.Y & see what I can do.12 When can Anne come over? I’d like her to be in Geneva by May 1st for the Economic Conference. I go down to Geneva on the 18th to open headquarters there. If Anne can come over I will then be free to meet people & book them up for the audiance.13 The programme & discussion is going nicely, I have Judge Rollet of the Childrens Court here with us14 & René Sand of the Red Cross.15 I hope to see Dr Gunn of the Rockefeller Fndt.16 Then Warren Thompson17 & Prof Ogburn are here18 & I think we can get a splendid Conference if we have money enough. I may have to go to Germany to look over the situation there.19 We are having an Advisory Council also a General Council where names like Buckmasters & Dawsons can be added as backers of the Conference.20 Buckmaster has been very ill but said I could use his name at my discretion.21 What a day I had when I spoke at Col Gerard Leigh’s home.22 Dawson was in the Chair. Marie Stopes who had not been invited got cards somehow & upon the arm of her husband swept into the drawing room to attend the meeting.23 Lord Dawson then changed the programme & decided there should be no discussion only questions. Marie arose with book in hand & announced that Mary Ware Dennett had written a book on the Laws in U.S.A. & she hoped they would all buy it & understand the situation in U.S.A.!24 Juliet darling! the book that book. Isn’t she a fiend? Don’t buy it or read it or look at it. Its devilish & cruel. I wrote at once to Havelock (who has the book) & asked his opinion of it. He was good enough to read it at once & wrote me that it was uninteresting, too full of details & obviously trying to hurt me & belittle the work I have done. He said it’s the old trick of Politicians digging up peoples past ideas & using them as a weapon. He urged me not to discuss it & it would never live unless my friends gave it life by buying & reading it.25 Darling of him was it not? When are you to come over—adorable one. love ever Margaret. ALS JBRP, NhD (MSM C4:338–43). Letterhead of the Hôtel Vouillemont.

1. Rublee helped MS with WPC invitations, fund-raising, and other organizational details while MS was in Europe. (MS to Anne Kennedy, Feb. 17, 1927, and MS to Raymond Pearl, Apr. 8, 1927 [MSM C4:307, 337].) 2. MS vacationed with Slee in Paris April 4–16, then returned to Switzerland, staying at the Hôtel des Bergues, a luxury hotel on Lake Geneva. (1927 Calendar [LCM 2:643–44].) 3. The dictated letter was not found. MS may have sent this one instead.

April 1927  •  109 4. MS refers to Clarence Little and Raymond Pearl. Pearl missed a WPC Committee meeting on March 20, at which Little invited Judge Harry Olson and psychologist Henry H. Goddard to serve as delegates. Pearl objected to Olson, a eugenicist who believed that heredity was the primary component in determining criminality, referring to him as “a person with whom I do not care to be associated in any enterprise of a scientific character.” MS agreed, noting, “I heard Olson speak in Chicago and consider him a washout.” Goddard’s research into intelligence testing and categorization was extremely influential, but Pearl thought it unscientific. Neither Olson nor Goddard attended the WPC. (Pearl to MS, Apr. 1, 1927 [quote 1], and MS to Pearl, Apr. 8, 1927 [quote 2] [MSM C4:332, 337]; Garland E. Allen, “The Role of Experts in Scientific Community,” in Scientific Controversies, edited by H. Tristam Engelhardt Jr. and Arthur J. Caplan [New York, 1987], 179–81.) 5. Pearl wanted to invite a broad range of nationalities to help launch the International Union for Population. He wanted to forestall the notion that it would be dominated by the Americans and British. (MS to Pearl, Mar. 31, 1927, and Pearl to MS, Apr. 13, 1927 [MSM C4:328, 345].) 6. The British group consisted of Sir Bernard Mallet, Alexander Carr-Saunders, F. A. E. Crew, Havelock Ellis, Julian Huxley, John Maynard Keynes, Sir Humphrey Rolleston, Lord Dawson of Penn, and Sir Thomas Horder. They proposed limiting the two nations to three papers and four delegates each. They also invited scientists from Italy, Germany, and France. (WPC, “Preliminary Advisory Council and Draft Programme,” Mar. 20, 1927, MS to Adolf Meyer, Apr. 2, 1927, MS to Pearl, Apr. 26, 1927, and MS, “Meeting,” Mar. 16, 1927 [MSM C14:451, 4:334, 356, 14:422]; MS to Pearl, Feb. 26, 1927 [LCM 122:594].) 7. The Fifth International Congress of Genetics, held in Berlin, September 11–17, 1927, brought together more than nine hundred geneticists, eugenicists, biologists, zoologists, and medical researchers from thirty-five countries. It was organized by Berlin’s Institut für Vererbungsforschung (Institute of Heredity Research). MS’s letters to the organizers were not found. (Nikolai Krementsov, International Science between the World Wars: The Case of Genetics [New York, 2005], 29; “The Fifth International Genetics Congress,” Science 66, no. 1705 [1927]: 210; MS, “Meeting,” Mar. 16, 1927 [MSM C14:422].) 8. The British WPC Council members concurred with the decision to keep the conference scientific, despite pressure from groups opposed to birth control such as the British League of National Life. (WPC, “Preliminary Advisory Council and Draft Programme,” Mar. 20, 1927 [MSM C14:451]; Halliday Sutherland to Sir Bernard Mallet, July 8, 1927 [LCM 123:109].) 9. MS planned to close the WPC with a dinner on Friday, September 2, but considered leaving Saturday open for papers and discussions that did not fit into the program. In the end, they held an organizational meeting. Rev. Karl Reiland (1871–1964), J. Noah Slee’s pastor at New York’s St. George’s Episcopal Church, did not attend the WPC. (MS, “Meeting,” Mar. 16, 1927 [MSM C14:422]; MS, Proceedings of the WPC, 361; New York Times, Aug. 29, 1927, and Sept. 13, 1964.) 10. Rublee’s letters were not found. Rooms for the WPC were originally reserved at the Conservatoire de Musique. Anne Kennedy, who was helping MS from New York, was in a tenuous position at the ABCL because acting president Eleanor Jones was displeased with her fieldwork. Her letter to Rublee was not found. (“Agenda Submitted

110  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map to Program Committee of WPC,” June 18, 1926 [MSM C14:447]; MS, Proceedings of the WPC, 3; Kennedy to MS, May 5, 1927 [LCM 8:1311.) 11. MS’s letter to Little was not found. 12. Aside from the contributions of the BSH ($10,000) and Clinton Chance, the WPC had received few donations toward an estimated budget of $28,430. As of June 1927, Corliss Lamont gave $500, Mary Winsor gave $25, and two Britons donated £10 each. In addition, Slee had loaned the conference $5,000. MS planned to return to New York in mid-May. (Chance to MS, June 17, 1927, WPC, “Budget,” n.d., and 1927 Calendar [LCM 123:6A, 198, 2:643]; MS to Pearl, May 3, 1927 [MSM C4:360].) 13. Kennedy arrived in Europe in mid-May to help with the WPC organization. The LN-sponsored World Economic Conference was held in Geneva on May 4–23. MS, who was in Geneva from April 19 to May 15, attended several sessions. (EB; New York Times, May 4, 1927; MS to Havelock Ellis, May 22, 1927 [MSM S3:805]; 1927 Calendar [LCM 2:644–46].) 14. Henri Rollet (1860–1934), the French presiding judge in the Seine Children’s Court, was known for his work in juvenile correction. MS met him for tea at her Paris hotel on February 8. He later joined the WPC General Council. (New York Times, Feb. 7, 1927, and Dec. 28, 1934; MS, Proceedings of the WPC, 12; 1927 Calendar [LCM 2:639].) 15. René Sand (1877–1953), a Belgian-born physician and author of books on health and social work and a technical adviser to the League of Red Cross Societies from 1921 to 1936, had recently joined the WPC Advisory Council. (New York Times, Aug. 26, 1953; MS, Proceedings of the WPC, 11.) 16. Selskar Michael Gunn (1883–1944), a British-born public health professor, secretary of the American Public Health Association (1912–18), and editor of its journal, had worked on health commissions and national health institutes in France and Czechoslovakia. He headed the Paris office of the Rockefeller Foundation (1922–32) and became a vice president in 1927. (American Journal of Public Health 34 [Oct. 1944]: 1097; Litsios, “Selskar Gunn and China.”) 17. Warren Simpson Thompson (1887–1973), an American sociologist and demographer, helped establish and direct the Scripps Foundation for Research in Population Problems (SFRPP) (1922–53). He was a member of the WPC Council and participated in the discussion “Food and Population.” (Hodgson, “Warren S. Thompson,” 939–40; MS, Proceedings of the WPC, 12, 100–101.) 18. William Fielding Ogburn (1886–1959) was an American sociologist, statistician, and writer, employed at Columbia University and in 1927 at the University of Chicago. He served on the ABCL National Council, but did not participate in the WPC. (ANB.) 19. The WPC had not yet selected any German delegates and sought a good contact there to suggest names. MS did not go to Germany before the conference. (F. A. E. Crew to MS, Feb. 7, 1927 [MSM C4:298].) 20. In March the WPC Council was divided into the Advisory Council, made up of notables who planned to attend the WPC, and the General Council, composed of those who could not attend but wanted to support it. Viscount Stanley Owen Buckmaster (1861–1934) was a liberal member of Parliament, former lord chancellor of England, and an appellate judge in the House of Lords. A member of the ML, he met MS through Janet and Clinton Chance in 1924, the same year he helped found the North Kensington

May 1927  •  111 birth control clinic. Lord Dawson of Penn was on the WPC General Council, but did not attend. (DNB; MS to Pearl, Mar. 31, 1927, MS Journal Entry, Oct. 6, 1924, and MS, “Meeting,” Mar. 16, 1927 [MSM C4:328, S70:204, C14:422]; Soloway, Birth Control and the Population Question, 291; MS, Proceedings of the WPC, 11; see also Vol. 1.) 21. Buckmaster wrote MS, “This cause you are so nobly fighting for is one of the most important in human history.” (Buckmaster to MS, Apr. 4, 1927 [quote] [LCM 14:725]; Irish Times, Oct. 30, 1926; Manchester Guardian, Oct. 29, 1926; Times [London], Nov. 2, 1926.) 22. Lieutenant Colonel John Cecil Gerard Leigh (1889–1965), a member of London’s County Council (1922–25), lived in Grosvenor Square in the exclusive Mayfair district. MS spoke there on March 30 to support the Society for the Provision of Birth Control Clinics (SPBCC). Between 150 and 200 people attended the meeting, presided over by Lord Dawson of Penn. (Peter Townsend, Burke’s Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry, 18th ed. [London, 1965–72], 1:444; “News Notes: England,” BCR 11 [May 1927]: 153; 1927 Calendar [LCM 2:643]; MS to Slee, Mar. 30, 1927 [MSM S3:777].) 23. Marie Carmichael Stopes (1880–1958) was a Scottish-born botanist, best known as the author of a best-selling sex education book, Married Love, and a birth control activist. Stopes headed the SCBCRP and opened the first English birth control clinic in 1921. She and MS had a serious falling-out in 1921. Stopes’s second husband, Humphrey Verdon Roe (1878–1949), was a pioneering aircraft manufacturer who, after marrying Stopes in 1918, worked closely with the SCBCRP. (Times [London], Oct. 3, 1958, and July 27, 1949; see also Vol. 1.) 24. Mary Ware Dennett (1872–1947), MS’s chief rival in the American birth control movement, headed the VPL, which called for a complete repeal of the Comstock Act rather than excepting physicians from prosecution. Stopes was touting Dennett’s 1926 Birth Control Laws: Shall We Keep Them or Abolish Them? (NAW; see also Vol. 1.) 25. MS’s letter to Ellis was not found. Ellis responded that Dennett’s book “is in many ways quite good & useful, but not of interest to the general public being too full of unimportant details.” He added, “I can’t see that you need be troubled about the book, though it can hardly be called friendly to you, it is a criticism rather than an attack.” (Ellis to MS, Mar. 31, 1927 [LCM 4:1213].)

41. To Hugh de Selincourt After setting up the WPC headquarters in Geneva, Sanger returned to New York for a few weeks, sailing from France on May 18. Sanger and de Selincourt had rekindled their intimate friendship, meeting in the South of France in January and at de Selincourt’s home in England in April. (1927 Calendar [LCM 2:637, 643, 646].)

[S.S. Olympic, at sea] May 22. [1927]

Hugh—old thing & darling— Here I am on the deep blue sea—sailing back to the “biggest” “largest” “greatest” “first” & “foremost” in the “worrrrold.” Just because I do not write

112  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map

to you does never mean that I do not think of you—but it usually does mean that I am waiting to talk to you long & fully & longing to do it all properly. Geneva was glorious. I was kept busy all the time getting headquarters open—which means telephones, cables, typewriters, translators stenographers, etc innumerable.1 That is done & we have a lovely headquarters. Then we had to change our place of meeting, because a nasty woman Mrs Zimmern was not consulted in the Conference plans she stood out on a blanket contract she had with the manager of the Conservatoire & it was up to me to be “ugly” with the manager insisting on my rights or eating “apple sauce” with Mrs Z—. I decided to get another hall & did so.2 That meant a lot of changes as the Conservatoire was a long way off from Central Geneva & hotels & plans had been made accordingly. Now all goes well—Mrs Kennedy is there & I have had my hand kissed by every nation of Europe & Asia except Italy (whose ambitions are not ordinary).3 I got close contacts, with Moussalini, and have now decided never to live in U.S.A. longer than I can help it.4 I adore Geneva!! Its international. One grows & expands there & lives but does not grow fat. We had to return to U.S.A. for the boys lawsuits contracts ABCL & Willowlake.5 But we ship again early in July—6 I’ll be in London through Sept & perhaps sail for India in October but that trip depends on my “hunch”— So far the desire to go is all in my head. I can not go unless it comes from inside. So far it hangs waiting.7 I think of Cap d’Ail so often & love to remember you there—8 Its all like a dream— You old Hugh darling are so inspiring & adorable that life without you would not be life at all—your “Lucrecia”9 doubtless is faithful & true to your ideals of her. I hope so. Anyway you will enjoy her these glorious spring days. I did not see Midge when in Paris as Mrs Kennedy & Mrs How Martyn devoured my time. Virginia is home & will perhaps meet me in N.Y.10 Nan is in London.11 American Express will reach her. Why not ask her to come down to Sand Pit for the night.12 (↓Miss↑ A. E. Higgins). She would love to I know if this does not get to you too late. The Squire J. N. is well & talks of the “Poet” very often & misses it when you do not write to me!!!13 Wonders why!! So do I—when everyone knows I love you— Oh Hugh— dear no cocktails on the continent are like ours—Sand Pit & Bachlyks— Give a hug to Janet—14and my dearest love to Hugh—the darling of my heart—

May 1927  •  113



Hows the book going?15 Will you attend the conference?16 Ever my love—adoration

Margaret

Willowlake until July 9— 10 Rue de le Bourse Geneva—↑until↓ Sept 5.17 ALS MSP, DLC (LCM 3:579–84). Letterhead of the S.S. Olympic.

1. The WPC headquarters opened in late April at 10, rue de la Bourse, Geneva. (MS to Havelock Ellis, Apr. 24, 1927 [MSM S3:796]; 1927 Calendar [LCM 2:644].) 2. French-born Lady Lucie Olympe Barbier Zimmern (1875–1963), the wife of British historian and LN consultant Sir Alfred E. Zimmern, director of the Institute of International Cooperation in Geneva, helped with WPC planning. “Applesauce” is a slang term for nonsense or pretentious talk. Zimmern evidently wanted to control things, asserting that a better name for the WPC was the World Conference on Problems of Population and even choosing a room at the Conservatoire. But MS opted for rooms at the Salle Centrale, about a mile and a half from the Conservatoire. (New York Times, Oct. 19, 1963, and Nov. 25, 1957; DNB; OED; How-Martyn, Report, June 13–19, 1926 [LCM 13:289].) 3. MS had been publicly critical of Italy’s pronatalist policies, which included the prohibition of contraceptive information. Italy selected Corrado Gini (1884–1965), a demographer, statistician, and professor of political economy at the University of Rome, as its WPC delegate instead of the representatives MS had requested. Anne Kennedy met MS and Edith How-Martyn in Paris on May 16, then went on to Geneva to take charge of the conference correspondence. (EB; MS, “The Incident at Williamstown,” BCR 9 [Sept. 1925]: 246–47; MS, Autobiography, 385; 1927 Calendar [LCM 2:646]; MS, Proceedings of the WPC, 12.) 4. MS is probably referring to Gini, who was an adviser to Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (1883–1945), the Italian Fascist dictator and prime minister (1922–43). (Bernard Mallet to Gini, Mar. 2 and Apr. 9, 1927, and Gini to MS, Oct. 7, 1927 [LCM 122:466A, 469, 520B]; Giovanni Favero, “Corrado Gini and Italian Statistics under Fascism,” Il Pensiero Economico Italiano 12, no. 1 [2002]: 51.) 5. MS had been out of the United States for about six months. Her sons, Stuart and Grant Sanger, were returning home from school (Yale and Hun Preparatory, respectively) for their summer vacations. J. Noah Slee was suing the Internal Revenue Service about the deductibility of his donations to the ABCL. MS refers to the conflict between the ABCL and the sponsors of the Parents’ Exhibition in New York, which had canceled the ABCL’s exhibition space under pressure from the superintendent of education. Willowlake was MS’s country house in Fishkill, New York (Chesler, Woman of Valor, 316–17; MS, Autobiography, 392; see also Vol. 1.) 6. MS and Slee left New York to return to France on July 8, arriving on July 15. (1927 Calendar [LCM 2:650].) 7. MS planned to attend the ML jubilee dinner in London in late July. Her decision to tour India was dependent on her health. (MS to Ellis, May 22 and Aug. 16, 1927 [MSM S3:805, 848].)

114  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map 8. De Selincourt stayed briefly with MS and Slee at Villa Bachlyk in Cap d’Ail, in southern France, beginning January 6. (1927 Calendar [LCM 2:637].) 9. Laetitia, not Lucretia, was probably a dog. (De Selincourt to MS, June 1, 1927 [MSM S3:812].) 10. Emily (Midge) Zimmerer (Chambers) (1903–81) was a Vassar College friend of Virginia Field Reiland (Cobb Watson) (1903–91), the daughter of Slee’s close friend Rev. Karl Reiland. Zimmerer accompanied Reiland for part of her January stay at Cap d’Ail and later showed MS around Paris. (Vassar College Alumnae Association Records; MS to Slee, Dec. 16, 1926, and Feb. 4, 1927 [MSM S3:677, 723]; SSDI; New York Times, July 26, 1981.) 11. MS’s older sister, Anna (Nan) E. Higgins (1874–1944), who had cared for their father until his death in 1926, was then touring Europe. She stayed with MS and Slee at Villa Bachlyk earlier in the year. (MS to Slee, Feb. 23, 1927, and MS to Anna Higgins, July 15, 1927 [MSM S3:758, 827].) 12. Sand Pit was the de Selincourts’ home. (De Selincourt to MS, Nov. 20, 1921 [LCM 3:1010].) 13. During his stay in Europe, Slee was based at Cap d’Ail, often on his own. MS’s circle of English friends revolved around Ellis (“the King”) and de Selincourt (“the Poet”). (MS to Slee, Feb. 2, 1927, and MS to Ellis, May 22, 1927 [MSM S3:713, 805].) 14. MS refers to Hugh’s wife, Janet de Selincourt. 15. De Selincourt was writing a new book, tentatively titled “Growing Up.” (De Selincourt to MS, Apr. 1, 1927 [MSM S3:788].) 16. De Selincourt did not attend. (De Selincourt to MS, June 1, 1927 [MSM S3:812].) 17. MS returned to Geneva on July 21 and remained there until early September. (1927 Calendar [LCM 2:651–53].)

42. From Edith How-Martyn 1 Two days before the WPC opened, Sir Bernard Mallet, the chairman, removed Sanger’s name and the names of the women workers from the program, on the grounds that workers’ names should not be part of a scientific conference. Apparently, the decision had been made weeks earlier when Mallet heard that some European delegates might not attend a conference organized by women and linked to the birth control movement. Edith HowMartyn, Marjorie Martin, Wilhelmina (Mary) Breed, and Anne Kennedy angrily decided to resign in protest. Although Sanger admitted to feeling let down by her closest allies among the scientists, she was able to convince all of them to remain except for How-Martyn. (MS, Autobiography, 385; Martin, Breed, and Kennedy to MS, Aug. 27, 1927 [LCM 122:719A, 719B, 720A].)

Hotel du Lac, Genève. [Switzerland] 27. August. 1927.

My dear Mrs. Sanger, At your request I undertook to be Secretary of the World Population Conference and it has been a privilege to cooperate with you.2

August 1927  •  115

As I know the idea of the Conference originated with you, that you have carried the chief responsibility for its organisation, and that the detailed plans are very largely the expression of your ideas, I now learn with something more than astonishment that your name is not even to appear as attending the Conference. Surely the first duty a Scientific Conference owes the public is a regard for truth and there is no reason or justice in withholding from the public the fact that you and a group of women together with the Treasurers and a few members of the Advisory Council have done all the spade work in connection with this Conference.3 At least I need not connive at this dishonest reservation and I ask you to accept my immediate resignation as Secretary so that I may be free to make the truth public. You know well my admiration of your work and of your personality but in this matter I cannot agree with you and even at the risk of breaking a friendship of many years’ standing I feel I must make this protest. Yours cordially, Edith How-Martin. ALS MSP, DLC (LCM 122:720–21B).

1. In June 1927, while preparing for the WPC in Geneva, How-Martyn was hospitalized with scarlet fever. She recuperated in a London nursing home and was unable to return to Geneva until August. (How-Martyn to MS, July 10 and July 19, 1927 [LCM 122:699B, 701B]; MS to How-Martyn, July 16, 1927 [MSM C4:404].) 2. How-Martyn, who became WPC secretary in January 1926, unhappily wrote MS, “I hope it is the last secretarial job I shall ever do.” (MS to How-Martyn, Jan. 17, 1926, and How-Martyn to MS, June 16, 1927 [quote] [MSM C4:26, S3:818].) 3. The other women to which How-Martyn refers are Marjorie Martin, Anne Kennedy, and Anita Comstock, who edited the daily conference newspaper, and secretaries Sue Green, Mary Breed, and Cora Hodson. Clinton Chance and Slee were the treasurers. The Advisory Council members she refers to were probably Clarence Little, Raymond Pearl, and Edward East. (MS, Proceedings of the WPC, 12–14.)

43. To Edith How-Martyn More than 120 scientists, economists, academics, and population experts from thirty-five countries attended the WPC, held from August 29 to September 3. The conference featured twenty-five papers spread across six sessions dealing with biological aspects of population growth, population size and the food supply, differential fertility rates, issues related to fertility and sterility, and eugenic aspects of the population problem. Despite the restriction on any overt discussion of birth control, Sanger noted, “The fact remains that B.C. was so clearly associated with the population question that it has had a boost.” She confidently

116  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map added that “there will be more courage now to talk of the whole subject than ever before. . . . The fear is out of the word & that is a step in the right way.” (MS, Proceedings of the WPC, 7–10, 361–68; MS to Rublee, Oct. 31, 1927 [quotes] [MSM C4:460].)

[Geneva, Switzerland] Tuesday Oct 4, [1927]

Edith dearest: It has been heavenly! Just the thing I needed.1 Too bad I did not come to such a place the Monday after the conference & supervised the work of Comstock & Breed. I should have saved myself weeks of work.2 Anyway, at last the Proceedings are being “moulded” into shape & if [Huxley, Crew?] & [C Saunders] do not feel it necessary to “interfere.” I shall soon have the material ready for the Publisher & my job done.3 Now for us. Some light has begun to Come through on the whole situation. Were I to remain here a month I feel certain that the sub conscious would get its chance to talk & lay down rules for me to live by, but alas I must meet the Squire in Paris Thursday4 & shall have to trust to your co-operation to pull the rest of this out of me. The first thing that seems to me to be necessary is to prove if possible that our position on bc is tenable by facts. This is necessary for future work & the facts if attained by one unbiased will certainly hold for future guidance. Now what I should like to see done, is to have you ascertain (as far as one could) as to how far the practice of contraception is controlling the birth rate in England also does this practice tend to raise the standards in the home.5 I should like to see you get in touch with Anne Martin of Rotherlythe, tell her what we want to do, ask for her help & start to work on fifty families or women in that district.6 a Find first the women past (perhaps) child bearing age with two or three or four children. b The same aged women with large families compare conditions—as to children’s education childrens work—husbands health—employment wages—womans health—civic outlook ↑of↓ parents. Then take fifty women still in the child bearing age—(perhaps the same district) with children two to four over ten years—Half—& the other 25 with small or younger children showing that she is still fertile & perhaps just getting the information (Walworth would be good).7 This study could cover 100 women and if well done could be a powerful argument for us in the labor circles everywhere.8 If it was not difficult to get the information you needed we could take more women. But if you (or someone) always preferably you to me, could take the next six months at this to find out the conditions we could then review the work in the spring & make new plans for the next six months.9 Now the way I feel is this—

october 1927  •  117

I’d like terribly to do this & to have you do it but I don’t see how it could be done on half time. Such a study needs the single eyed attention of who ever is doing it. I would not want to begin it & know that some other pressing job had the claim on the interviewer after a certain hour, when she may have been on the track of a good piece of information. I know what “case work” means & this would be “case work” essentially. Also—while I am willing to take the money for it I do not feel I could pay for full time at the price you suggested for half. I am limited in my ability to do many things I’d adore doing. Also I know there will be obligations as well as temptations in India which I shall have to ask the Squire to do for b.c.10 So I want to take this job on myself. I know too that your services & time & training & devotion are in no way compensated by a paltry check. Never do I feel that you are more than paid for your “expenses” in this BC. work. So I can not ask you to consider this for less, but it occured to me you might want to do it & would think it over. Again a glorious idea has come about a laboratory, but it is not “hatched” yet so I’ll let it alone—11 I am not so keen about getting out literature on laws—But I think it would be very worth while to send to Dr Dickinson for his map & survey of laws in Europe so as to have it & see where it could be improved upon.12 The more we emphasize laws & their importance the more likely we are to put fear into peoples minds—and to put power into the hands of governments. “I’m agin it.” So thats that Edith dear & Now let this rest in your mind a few days. See what the other position holds out for you and let me know what you think. I’ll meet the Squire in Paris Thursday & shall wire you today (if you are in Paris) to stay to see me & I’ll come up tomorrow if you are there.13 If not there then write me Bankers Trust Paris & I’ll get it while I am there. I shall have to return to Geneva next week but I’d prefer to keep this idea in the background for a little while & not have headquarters get it.14 It has been a lovely pleasant work doing this conference with your Edith darling. I am only sorry that through your loyalty & devotion to me (as well as your honesty of mind) you had to terminate your relations with the conference in the way it ended. However I am certain the men will respect you for it, as they grow older. Certainly those younger women should remember it always. I have learned much. Not particularly in technique. Nothing new in that, but of men & human nature. I have learned too that I must play the part—not just “be,” but show the “world” that “I am.” This sounds deep, but its not really. Its thinking out loud That all.15 I seem to have begun a new cycle in my thinking & pray God I shall be able to continue it in action! India is still in the air— One Dr here says my blood pressure is normal— That all I need is proper intestinal stimulation,

118  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map

massage etc. But I am feeling fit & would love to stop here & sit in the sunshine & sleep out of doors (as I do) for a month & then go to India. Well if luck is with us I shall see you in Paris Tomorrow. love Margaret ALS EHMP, MSPP (MSM C4:440–45). Letterhead of the WPC. Words obliterated by Eileen Palmer.

1. MS had experienced depression, anxiety, and a lack of energy after the WPC ended. After being diagnosed with low blood pressure, she sought treatment at the Clinique Genève, between September 26 and October 4. Experts at the clinic explained that her large colon had “fallen out of its place,” a condition that could lead to constipation and affect the nerves. Doctors prescribed daily colon massages, rest, and a special diet. (1927 Calendar [LCM 2:18, 654–55]; MS to Slee, Sept. 25 [quote] and Oct. 3, 1937 [MSM S3:923, 4:31].) 2. MS was in Lucerne on September 8–15. Alzada (Anita) Peckham Comstock (1888– 1960), an economist and Mount Holyoke professor who edited the daily conference journal, and Wilhelmina (Mary) Breed (1901–76), a British translator (of Italian), who worked as a WPC secretary and assisted MS with translations, helped prepare the conference proceedings. (New York Times, Jan. 16, 1960; Register, Alzada Comstock Papers, 1912–1969, Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections, South Hadley, Mass.; Drysdale, “First World Population Conference,” 256; England and Wales Death Index, 1916–2007; MS to Slee, Sept. 21, 1927 [MSM S3:883]; 1927 Calendar and Breed to MS, Dec. 9 and 14, 1927 [LCM 2:653–54, 122:740, 743A].) 3. MS refers to Sir Alexander Carr-Saunders (1886–1966), a British biologist, eugenicist, and population expert who had originally been selected to run the WPC (he stepped down but remained on its advisory committee); Julian Huxley; and Francis Albert Eley Crew (1886–1973), a Scottish animal geneticist and eugenicist. The three were to review the manuscript before MS sent it to London publisher Edward Arnold & Co. (DNB; Times [London], Oct. 8, 1966; MS to Raymond Pearl, Sept. 26, 1927, MS to Richard Goldschmidt, Oct. 29, 1927, and MS to How-Martyn, Nov. 9, 1927 [MSM C4:433, 452, 482].) 4. MS arrived in Paris on Wednesday, October 5, and met Slee, arriving from London the next day. (1927 Calendar [LCM 2:655].) 5. How-Martyn and MS had been considering doing a study to ascertain the effectiveness of birth control on the rate of population growth, or, as How-Martyn put it, “that the message of sex freedom the basis of all freedoms for women shall be carried to the women who need it most all the world.” The two planned a survey and form letter to collect information on contraceptive use that How-Martyn would supervise. (HowMartyn to MS, Sept. 26, Oct. 22, and Nov. ?, 1927 [MSM S3:933, 4:67, 176].) 6. Anna Martin (1858–1937) was an Irish-born feminist and settlement worker at the Bermondsey Settlement in the London district of Rotherhithe. (Ellen Ross, Slum Travelers: Ladies and London Poverty, 1860–1920 [Berkeley, Calif., 2007], 148–49.) 7. Walworth, a poor district of London’s Southwark Borough, was home to the Walworth Women’s Welfare Centre, founded in 1921 by the ML and affiliated with the SPBCC. (Leathard, Fight for Family Planning, 15–17, 31, 39.)

october 1927  •  119 8. For variations on the survey questions to be asked, see How-Martyn, “Suggested Form,” Nov. ?, 1937, and MS to How-Martyn, Jan. 21, 1928 (MSM S4:178, C4:543); and How-Martyn, “Notes Taken at Hotel Vouillemont,” ca. Oct. or Nov. 1927 (EHMP). 9. How-Martyn met clients of the Rotherhithe clinic, but stopped working on the survey in January when she learned of similar studies under way that would possibly provide the evidence they required. (How-Martyn to MS, ca. Nov. 1927 and Jan. 2, 1928, and MS to How-Martyn, Jan. 7, 1928 [MSM S4:176, 232, C4:527]; for the two studies, see Charles Gibbs, Medical Aspects of Contraception [London, 1927] and Norman E. Himes and Vera C. Himes, “Birth Control for the British Working Classes: A Study of the First Thousand Cases to Visit an English Birth Control Clinic,” Hospital Social Service 19 [1929]: 578–617.) 10. MS had a limited income from book royalties and lectures but depended on Slee’s money for most of her personal and organizational expenses. She tried to use his donations judiciously, but between 1921 and 1926 he contributed more than fifty thousand dollars to the ABCL. MS and Slee planned to travel to India by sea, departing from Venice on October 29. (MS to Grant Sanger, Oct. 7, 1927 [MSM S4:43]; MS to Frances Ackermann, Aug. 1, 1928 [LCM 11:634].) 11. MS might refer to F. A. E. Crew’s plans to establish a new section in his Animal Breeding Research Department for the study of human fertility and contraception. In December he asked MS for help in raising money for this research. (MS to ABCL Board, June 8, 1928 [MSM S4:494]; Crew to MS, Dec. 5, 1927 [LCM 19:980].) 12. Robert L. Dickinson’s map and survey were not found. 13. MS lunched with How-Martyn and Sue Green in Paris on October 9; she met How-Martyn for lunch again the next day. The telegram was not found. (1927 Calendar [LCM 2:656].) 14. MS returned to Geneva from Paris on October 11. (1927 Calendar [LCM 2:656].) 15. How-Martyn had written that “when Pearl comes in & any other of these persons except Sir B. let a merry, mocking little devil look out of your eyes. It is all as clear as day to me now—keep your name off every bit of printed trash but keep yourself in every thing—wear all your prettiest frocks—let your brilliant organising ideas have free play behave as though Pearl & Co were kissing your hands instead of stabbing in you in the back, smile and charm everyone as though you and Sir B. were Joint Presidents and by God you surely shall not wait for Heaven for your reward.” (How-Martyn to MS, Sept. ?, 1927 [MSM S3:979].)

44. To Penelope B. Parker Huse 1

Geneva [Switzerland] Oct 13 [1927]

Dear Mrs Huse: That was a lovely letter of yours—all about everyone & just the things Mrs K. Mr Slee & I “ate up.”2 Mrs Martin is a dear. I knew you would all like her. I found her to be not only a good friend, but a most excellent worker with judgement & dependability. She was my “crutch” in Geneva.3

120  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map

Well today I decided not to go to India! It was the most difficult decision I ever made. Mr Slee telegraphed me from London that he had bought passage to Bombay. We were to sail from Venice Oct 29th. I went to Paris to meet him & was in tears with the “blues” & depression—4 I wrote Anna & everyone that we were sailing & made all arrangements to go.5 But I kept getting such a sick & depressed feeling every time I thought of it. I finally told Mr Slee I was really homesick & said I’d like a few days to think it over. He was a perfect darling & said not to mind if it took a week to decide, but on no account to go unless I wanted to. We came back to Geneva on Tuesday & I finally realized it is an old inside lack of vitality that caused the depression. I had it for nearly two years after the 1925 Conference & only last winter got rid of it. When I realized this, I knew it would be foolish to try to go to India where I would have to lecture & cover a big field as well. So I gave up the idea & decided to finish here within a week or two,6 go to a “cure” again for blood pressure—stay there two or three weeks,7 then go into Germany, visit the clinics & finally Dec 15th go to San Moritz at a good high altitude where we have now engaged a room with a terrace where I can lie out in the sun shine (snow all about) & get up pep & health.8 Then I shall hope to complete both the mother book & the genius book.9 That will be a good winters work & will enable us to return to New York in March. These are our plans now & I hope there need be no changes. Mr Slee is very well & happy providing I am close at hand. Mrs Kennedy leaves for England & expects to be in New York Dec 1st. I hope the Board will give her Federal work again & get her to try for the Womens Organizations.10 Its shameful to carry on our work without their backing. I was glad to have the BCR give the Alice Paul group a dig.11 Well as to the Conference & all the inside fuss. It was sort of a knock-out for a few days. But it was Catholic hypnotism! pure & simple. We all fell under it & were put to sleep. Actually I never experienced anything like it!!12 Certainly Pearl & Little can not be very proud of themselves. But East & Fairchild had nothing to do about it all.13 All the harm was done before the others came, but C. C. L was a tiresome meddler ↑medler↓, who did nothing constructive but set up barriers all the way along & such logical barriers always!! He actually prostitutes his mind. Certainly I was not intending to have a B.C. Conference, but I did expect that some of the Scientists would have to bring it up as one of the Solutions of the Pop. Question. But British Diplomacy got at work through Sir Eric Drummond of the League a Roman Catholic married to a Norfolk Catholic14 ↑who↓ was instrumental in scaring Sir B—into fits.15 Then the anti-femine spirit got going. The men began to get the Superiority 100% male feeling & they strutted about the place condecending to look our way if we pulled at their coat tails.16 (only). Mrs K. did a magnificent piece of work.17 Never did

october 1927  •  121

better. Everything went like well oiled machinery & the League of Nations people were aghast at the things we put through successfully. I got far too much praise & personal credit for the organizing. Every one of the Staff was devoted & worked all hours & endlessly to the end.18 What the new League will now do I can not say.19 We had enough money to pay everything & to get the Proceedings out. It is not out yet but will be soon.20 I am cutting out some precious contributions(?) especially the Italians who are a nuisance.21 By the way speaking of Italians will you please ask Anna to look up the Correspondence between me & Gini of Rome. He was at this Conference & complained that he sent me an article for the N.Y. Conference & never got it back. He insists that I shall publish it in the last volume of the Proceedings of 1925. He claims the last volume is not published yet.22 I remember having received an article from an Italian. I thot it was Livi, but Gini (who seems to know more of what went on than I do) says no, that Livi was invited to attend the Conference but sent no paper & did not attend.23 I also remember having some Italian paper translated. I think Anna had someone do it for us, but it was very poor & I think we sent it back to the author. Now what I want to know is who was the Author? If you look into the Proceedings you will see if Gini’s paper is there. I asked Anna to please send Gini a full set. They are a lot of humbugs & its best to have little to do with them. I am hoping the B.C.Rs will arrive soon so we can send them from here.24 One package of letters came yesterday I hope all comes through. Thank you for getting the Genius names. I hope I can make something out of them. My love to all. Keep up the mother letters in the Review & keep on working to get B.C. recognized.25 love ever Margaret Sanger ALS PPFAR, MN-SSC (MSM S4:52–57).

1. Penelope B. Parker Huse (1873–1950) had been the ABCL’s executive secretary since 1926. The wife of a railroad executive, she had also worked for the woman suffrage movement. (Plainfield [N.J.] Courier News, July 8, 1950.) 2. Huse’s letter was not found. “Mrs. K.” is a reference to Anne Kennedy, who remained in Geneva until November 4. (Charlotte Delafield to MS, Nov. 3, 1927, and 1927 Calendar [LCM 8:169, 2:657].) 3. Alice Marjorie Spain Martin (1893–1976) was a British-born resident of Geneva who had assisted with the WPC organization. (Percival William Martin pension file, International Labour Organization [ILO] Archives, Geneva; Martin to MS, Aug. 27, 1927 [LCM 122:719A].) 4. Slee had been traveling the continent with Karl Reiland and met MS in Paris on October 6. The telegram was not found. (1927 Calendar [LCM 2:655].)

122  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map 5. MS’s letter to Anna Lifshiz was not found. She had written to her younger son about her plans for India. (MS to Grant Sanger, Oct. 7, 1927 [MSM S4:43].) 6. MS refers to the Proceedings of the WPC. 7. See MS to How-Martyn, Oct. 4, 1927, note 1, herein. 8. MS and Slee stayed in St. Moritz, Switzerland, from December 15, 1927, to February 15, 1928. (MS to Grant Sanger, Oct. 23, 1927, and Feb. 12, 1928 [MSM S4:71, 315]. 9. BCR managing editor Mary Sumner Boyd and MS had selected approximately four hundred client letters to be released into a book entitled Motherhood in Bondage, with an introduction and chapter openings by MS. It was published by Brentano’s in the fall of 1928. MS was also planning a short book about geniuses and great figures in history, to provide evidence that they were more likely to be born early in the birth order or in smaller families (or both). This theory countered a prevalent Catholic argument that birth control reduced the quality of the population by cutting off potential geniuses born late into large families. Writer and journalist James Waldo Fawcett had compiled data for MS. She never published the study, but she used the data during congressional hearings on birth control legislation in the 1930s. (MS, Autobiography, 362; Fawcett to MS, Nov. 9, 1924, June 14 and July 7, 1928 [LCM 8:484, 497, 499]; MS to How-Martyn, Jan. 7, 1928 [MSM C4:527]; for notes and draft material on the genius study, see MS Unfilmed; see also Vol. 2.) 10. Anne Kennedy headed the ABCL’s large-scale federal lobbying campaign in 1925– 26 and hoped the ABCL Board would increase her responsibility. However, the board was unhappy with Kennedy’s work, claiming she answered only to MS. (“News Notes,” BCR 10 [Apr. 1926]: 137; Huse to MS, Nov. 3, 1927, and Delafield to MS, Nov. 29, 1927 [LCM 8:1150, 173]; for more on Kennedy’s problems, see Vol. 1.) 11. Women’s rights leader Alice Paul (1885–1977) founded the National Woman’s Party in 1916. After the Nineteenth Amendment enfranchised women in 1920, Paul convinced the NWP to focus solely on an equal rights amendment rather than supporting a broad platform of women’s issues, including birth control. An August 1927 BCR editorial criticized the decision, arguing that until it supported birth control, the NWP “will not be in a real sense a feminist party.” (ANB; “Editorial,” BCR 11 [Aug. 1927]: 219 [quote].) 12. MS refers to the WPC’s decision to remove workers’ names and the informal directive from Mallet to avoid any mention of birth control, which she blamed on “Catholic influence,” remarking that “the scientists were not very courageous.” (See How-Martyn to MS, Aug. 27, 1927, herein; MS to de Selincourt, Sept. 22, 1927 [quotes] [MSM C4:429]; MS, Autobiography, 386–87.) 13. Raymond Pearl had disappointed MS, as he and Little had both agreed to the omission of MS’s contributions from the program. MS later recalled, “I was not surprised at the Europeans; but it was difficult to comprehend the American attitude at this point. Perhaps Professor Pearl and Little . . . had not realized the unfairness of that action.” MS also heard a rumor that the removal of her name was a condition of a grant of ten thousand dollars made by the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial. When pressed about it, Pearl, who had secured the grant, was dismissive. “The Conference,” he said, “is over; the money . . . irretrievably spent; . . . the Conference was a great success; you are covered with glory because of what you did to make it so. Is it not wise to let it go at that?” (MS, Autobiography, 386; How-Martyn to the WPC Council, Aug. ?, 1927, MS to Pearl, Oct. 27, 1927, and Pearl to MS, Nov. 10, 1927 [quote] [LCM 122:616, 613, 614].)

october 1927  •  123 14. Sir James Eric Drummond (1876–1951), later the sixteenth Earl of Perth, was the LN secretary-general from 1919 to 1933. He had converted to Catholicism when he married Angela Constable-Maxwell (1877–1965), who descended from a prominent Scottish Catholic family. (Times [London], Dec. 17, 1951, and Feb. 16, 1904; DNB; EB.) 15. Drummond declined the WPC invitation and hoped that LN members would not attend. According to MS, he “had warned Sir Bernard that these distinguished scientists would be the laughing stock of all Europe if it were known that a woman had brought them together.” (MS, Proceedings of the WPC, 14, 17; Symonds and Carder, The UN and the Population Question, 13; MS, Autobiography, 386 [quote].) 16. MS noted, “Only our young English friends had held out for the recognition of the women.” MS probably refers to F. A. E. Crew and Julian Huxley. (MS, Autobiography, 386.) 17. Kennedy arranged a series of luncheons, as well as dinners, dancing, and steamship rides, to encourage the participants to become better acquainted. (Drysdale, “First World Population Conference,” 256.) 18. For a listing of the main staff members, see How-Martyn to MS, Aug. 27, 1927, note 3, herein. 19. MS refers to the provisional committee set up at the end of the WPC to create a permanent population union. In July 1928, the provisional committee formed the International Union for the Scientific Investigation of Population Problems (IUSIPP). (MS, Proceedings of the WPC, 361–62; MS to Richard Goldschmidt, Oct. 29, 1927 [MSM C4:452]; Washington Post, Dec. 26, 1948.) 20. The Proceedings of the WPC were published in January 1928. 21. MS cut Gini’s “Fertility of Women” from the Proceedings, one of three papers given by him. All the other major conference papers were printed, though MS shortened some. (Alexander Carr-Saunders to MS, Oct. 15, 1927, MS to Carr-Saunders, Oct. ?, 1927, and MS to Cora Hodson, Dec. 21, 1927 [LCM 122:726A, 726B, 734].) 22. MS called Gini “highly egotistical . . . the perfect mirror of Mussolini’s sentiments . . . a most tiresome speaker and a general nuisance.” His complaint was incorrect; his 6INMBCC paper, “On Birth Control,” was published in Medical and Eugenic Aspects of Birth Control, 37–44. (MS, Autobiography, 385 [quote]; Gini to MS, Oct. 7, 1927 [LCM 122:520B].) 23. Livio Livi (1891–1969), an Italian demographer, economist, and statistician at the University of Rome, gave a paper at the WPC but did not participate in the 6INMBCC. Gini surmised that MS confused Livi with Ettore Levi, the Italian child welfare expert, who sent a message of support to the 6INMBCC. (G. Parenti, “Livio Livi, 1891–1969,” Review of the International Statistical Institute 38, no. 1 [1970]: 190–91; 6INMBCC Program, Mar. 24–31, 1925, and Gini to MS, Oct. 7, 1927 [LCM 122:404, 520B].) 24. The October 1927 BCR issue included short pieces on the WPC by Charles V. Drysdale and Charlotte Haldane and a summary of Raymond Pearl’s paper “The Biology of Population Growth.” (BCR 11 [Oct. 1927]: 235–79.) 25. The October issue of the BCR included more than a dozen excerpts from letters from people seeking birth control advice that had been incorporated by Edward Alsworth Ross in his book Standing Room Only (1927). The BCR had regularly included these letters since its founding in 1917. (Ross, “Grim Realities of Involuntary Motherhood,” BCR 11 [Oct. 1927]: 264–65.)

124  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map

45. From Otto Lous Mohr Sanger contacted Otto Lous Mohr (1886–1967), a Norwegian geneticist and professor of anatomy at Oslo’s University of Norway, about the WPC. He suggested some names on the assumption that “people were wanted who really had taken active personal interest in the birth control movement.” When he found out that birth control would not to be featured but “masked . . . to give the conference a scientific more than a propaganda character,” he declined to attend. “To me,” he explained, “the birth control movement is not a scientific movement, it is primarily a social one. . . . I don’t see any reason why one should hide the real issue at Geneva.” (Norsk Biografisk Leksikon [Oslo, 2003], 6:334; Mohr to Huxley, Mar. 12, 1927 [quote] [LCM 122:675].)

Oslo, [Norway] 8/11 1927:

My dear Mrs. Sanger, I beg you to excuse that I have not yet answered your kind letter.1 I have been so very bussy lately. You ask whether I am still interested in the birth control subject. Surely, I am. The other day both Mrs. Katti Anker Moller2 and I had to meet as witnesses in a legal suit against a dealer who had advertised contraceptives. The charge was that he had offended the old § 377 of our criminal law, that forbids the advertisement of “articles that in view of ↑their↓ destination violate the feeling of decency.”3 The paragraph was at the time formed directly against the contraceptives, and it was the “Society for the advancement of morality” that ↑now↓ had forced the public prosecutor to act.4 We had the great satisfaction that the jury pleaded not guilty, which means that the said paragraph is from now dead. The advertisement of contraceptives does in other words not hurt the feeling of decency. I mention this because I think it will interest you. We have two “Mothers hygiene offices,” one in Oslo, one in Stavanger.5 They may now carry on their work undisturbed. I am very much interested in what you write about the population conference. From what you write and from what I heard from Dr. East, Dr. Dunn, Huxley and others in Berlin, the conference was a success.6 I am very glad to know that. I hope that it may also ultimately turn out a success for the birth control movement as such. I feel it very difficult to write to you about this subject. Through your splendid work you know the different aspects of the question much better than I do. But let me nevertheless speak frankly: I fear, the so-called “objective” scientist, when they are dealing with problems that are not strictly scientific. The birth control movement is to me primarily a political cause, I mean in the broad sense of the word, its goal is the enfranchisment of the women and the embetterment of living conditions in general. Now, in such questions the scientist are very frequently sadly reactionary. And—broadly speaking—I

november 1927  •  125

think that their general↓ attitude towards the birth control movement ↑so far,↓ justifies a certain scepticism. I still think that what we need is more the ↑continued↓ work along propaganda lines than along the lines of research. But, of course, the fact that first rate scientists like East and others join the movement is extremely important, because it lends a support to the propaganda, that can hardly be overestimated. From what I have said you will understand that I am very glad to know from your letter that you fully realize the necessity of keeping alive the educational side of birth control. In my opinion this side is the most important. When you ask for my ideas for the international work I’ll restrict myself to the following points. So far as I can see an established fact is always the best propaganda. Applied to our case I think that the opening of [early?] ↑a↓ new mothers hygiene station is always the best form of education. Quite a few ↑such centers↓ are now doing splendid work in the different countries of Europe.7 But so far they have had difficulties ↑especially at the start,↓ because they had depend largely upon themselves only. I think that an International Headquarter would here be of very much help. Such a Head Quarter would bring the different centers in contact. They might exchange their experience, obtain advise regarding the best and most effective methods, a fundamental point, where many ardent workers have had difficulties from lack of proper knowledge.8 Such a Headquarter might obtain information from the different centers concerning their results with the methods used, a material that ought to be critically examined and eventually published. Well, I think it is quite superfluous to go into details, the different lines of work for such a center are obvious. By the way, do you never intend to visit our country? Every time when I write I wish I could talk instead. It is so much easier. Please, include Oslo in your travelling plans if possible, we would be so glad of ↑to↓ having an opportunity of meeting you. Yours very sincerely Otto Louis Mohr ALS MSP, DLC (LCM 19:581–85). Letterhead of the Anatomisk Institutt. Margin note by MS at the top of the first page reads: “Anna please file. B.C.R. may wish to use news.”

1. The letter was not found. 2. Katti Anker Møller (1868–1945) was a Norwegian socialist feminist and birth control advocate who helped establish Norway’s first birth control clinic, the Modrehygienekontoret (MHK) (Mothers’ Hygiene Bureau) in Oslo in 1924. (Ida Blom, “Voluntary Motherhood, 1900–1930: Theories and Politics of a Norwegian Feminist in Historical Perspective,” in Maternity and Gender Policies, edited by Bock and Thane, 21–38.) 3. The Norwegian Penal Code prohibited anyone from exhibiting or displaying objects “offensive to modesty because of their purpose,” or anyone “who by publication or by

126  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map door-to-door sale offers such objects to the public, or who publicly urges or counsels the use thereof.” (G. Mueller and Johs Andenaes, The Norwegian Penal Code, American Series of Foreign Penal Codes [South Hackensack, N.J., 1961], 3 [quotes]; Glass, Population Policies and Movements, 321; MS, Oslo Journal, July 7–8, 1934 [LCM 19:603–8].) 4. The Moralvernforeningener (Moral Protection Associations) was a federation of conservative groups, many led by women, that opposed birth control. (Bock and Thane, Maternity and Gender Policies, 32.) 5. A second MHK opened in 1927 in Stavenger, one of Norway’s largest industrial cities. (Gruber and Graves, Women and Socialism, 459.) 6. Leslie Clarence Dunn (1893–1974) was an American research geneticist at the Agricultural Experiment Station in Storrs, Connecticut (1920–28). He did not attend the WPC. Julian Huxley was on the WPC Advisory Council and chaired the session on differential birth rates. Mohr met East, Dunn, and Huxley at the Fifth International Congress of Genetics, held in Berlin in September, shortly after the WPC ended. East’s letter to Mohr was not found. (New York Times, Mar. 20, 1974; MS, Proceedings of the WPC, 11, 191; “Fifth International Genetics Congress,” 210.) 7. There were around forty other birth control clinics in operation: Germany (sixteen), Great Britain (fourteen), Austria (eight), and the Soviet Union (one). (C. Robinson, Seventy Birth Control Clinics, 9–14.) 8. There was as yet no international forum or organization for exchanging contraceptive information. A meeting of women attendees, held at the close of the WPC, proposed the creation of an international bureau for information sharing. (MS, Autobiography, 301; Anne Kennedy to Mary Boyd, Sept. 7, 1927 [LCM 122:724].)

46. To Edith How-Martyn Sanger remained at the Clinique Valmont until November 17, making several day trips into Geneva to work on the Proceedings of the WPC. She traveled to Paris on November 17 and to London on the nineteenth, where she stayed with Clinton and Janet Chance until November 29, when she left for Berlin to visit German clinics. (1927 Calendar [LCM 2:656–59].)

[Berlin, Germany] 6 am, Dec 11, [1927]

Dearest Edith: We are leaving this morning for Frankfort.1 I have not had Miss Greens letter & have not her address. So please jot a line off to her & say go ahead & make any date early in March.2 I shall leave St Moritz Feb 20th or 25th for Paris.3 So if she can set the date early I can make it. I have loved Berlin!! Did not stop at Amsterdam at all but came through. I have been busy every minute here,4 meeting so many important & splendid women. Kaetie Kolwitz, the famous artist is going to illustrate the new book. She is a lovely creature & a glorious artist.5 Helené Lange I also met6 and as for women breeders!!!

december 1927  •  127

Certainly these women are made for the purpose.7 I had three meetings. One at the Town Hall on the 6th—very good, well attended. Women Doctors got it up. Representative people from government, profession Drs etc attending about (300).8 Then I had a practical meeting on methods for the women Drs. here at the Hotel one evening & that was worth while—9 Then the 9th—an international students meeting Chinese, Indian Russians attending.10 The question of abortion is in the air, but contraception seems not to have got under way at all—until Now.11 All of a sudden they see it “like the lightening” as the Japanese woman said— The women in politics are always afraid of everything— They fear for the Party—the Republic—etc etc. Adele Schreiber came to dinner last night. She gave a tea for me Friday afternoon at her home. I met many splendid women there.12 The marriage centers must be unique. That is not the proper meaning of the term but anyway when they give or allow to be given contraceptive instruction the thing will go big.13 Now the fight will be on this line—for yesterday at a tea given me by Dr Hamburgers home, several social workers came & said out of 400 women who came to the marriage center 270 came asking for B.C. [information] which is not given.!!!14 The Catholic Church again on the job.15 The thing my visit here has done is to crystalize the idea & to give confidence to those who needed it. Old Grotjan who presented the paper at the W.P.C. on german b. rate attended my lecture & opposed bc.16 The women went at him hard.17 Then Harmsen who also attended W.P.C. sat on the fence & said the poor were not having any more than the rich—at which the house roared.18 The Socialist women were for b.c.19 but the Pres of the Midwives Assn. was the limit— She wayed ↑weighed↓ at least 250 lbs. a giant of a female— decked out in blue nurses garb, large cross ↑hanging↓ from neck. She arose & attacked me.20 It was great! More later. love ever Margaret ALS EHMP, WLAM (MSM C4:499–504). Letterhead of the Hotel Adlon.

1. MS was on her way back to Zurich and arrived in Frankfurt on December 11. (1927 Calendar [LCM 2:633].) 2. Sue Green was negotiating with the Comité National d’Études Sociales et Politiques (CNESP) (National Committee of Social and Political Studies) to host a lecture by MS. Her letter discussed holding a seance eugenique to “an audience of the best thinkers in Paris: deputés, sénateurs, generals, professeurs. You couldn’t wish for a better introduction to Paris. Mme Avril de St. Croix will be the chairman and you are asked to fix any

128  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map Monday in February.” How-Martyn’s letter was not found, but MS finally received a letter from Green a few days later. (Green to MS, Nov. 18, 29, and Dec. 14, 1927 [LCM 13:298, 302, 306].) 3. MS left St. Moritz for Zurich on February 15 and went back to Paris on February 18. On MS’s stay in St. Moritz, see MS to Huse, Oct. 13, 1927, note 8, herein. [1928 Calendar [LCM 2:660–74].) 4. MS, who was in Berlin from November 30 to December 11, was “besieged from morning until night by callers, letters from men and women physicians and scientists, by telephone calls, by dinners or teas given in their honor where the subject of Birth Control was discussed with great frankness and seriousness.” Among those she met were Dr. Hermine Edenhuizen, president of the Bund Deutscher Ärztinnen (BDÄ) (Association of German Medical Women); Adele Schreiber; and other activists working at the Marriage Advice Centers. (Smedley, “Margaret Sanger Comes to Berlin,” 50–51, 54, 66 [quote 50].) 5. Käthe Schmidt Kollwitz (1867–1945), a painter and sculptor best known for her lithographs depicting the working class, was to illustrate the German edition of Motherhood in Bondage. (John Canaday, Mainstreams in Modern Art [New York, 1959], 440; EB; MS to Kollwitz, Oct. 29, 1928 [LCM 13:758].) 6. Helene Lange (1848–1930), a German feminist leader who worked to secure educational opportunities for women, met MS on December 7. (Chicago Daily Tribune, May 14, 1930; 1927 Calendar [LCM 2:660].) 7. MS echoed the popular notion that German women were stout, wide hipped, strong, and, therefore, well suited to childbearing. Many moderate German feminists, including Lange, focused on women’s maternal nature. (Stuart Oliver Henry, Villa Elsa: A Story of German Family Life [New York, 1920]; Diane Collard, “‘Sharpening the Wooden Sword’ in Imperial Germany: Marital Status and Education in the Work of Helene Lange,” Women’s History Review 13, no. 3 [2004]: 447–66.) 8. This meeting, held at the Charlottenburg Town Hall on December 6 at the invitation of the BDÄ, touched off a heated debate on abortion rights. (Association of German Medical Women, “Invitation” [LCM 142:393]; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 51.) 9. Agnes Smedley arranged a follow-up meeting with about twenty of the women doctors who attended the December 6 Town Hall lecture on December 8. MS offered to provide a monthly fifty-dollar stipend to fund the opening of a clinic. (Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 51; 1927 Calendar [LCM 2:632].) 10. On the evening of December 9, 1927, MS spoke to a joint meeting of the Hindustani Association of Central Europe and the Chinese Students Association. (Smedley, “Margaret Sanger Comes to Berlin,” 53.) 11. Communist women doctors offered the most consistent support for birth control in Germany, which may have discouraged support from more conservative physicians. The BDÄ was reluctant to back public birth control services, though it was outspoken in support of abortion law reform. (Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 35–36, 51.) 12. Adele Schreiber (1872–1957), an Austrian-born journalist active in the women’s movement, wrote for the Frankfurt Times. She supported the sexual reform movement and formed the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Mutter‑und-Kindesrecht (German Society for the Rights of Mothers and Children) in 1910 to work for the repeal of Germany’s

December 1927  •  129 antiabortion laws. Schreiber’s tea was held on December 9. (Rappaport, Encyclopedia of Women Social Reformers; 1927 Calendar [LCM 2:660, 632].) 13. The municipal marriage and sex advice clinics in Berlin did not offer birth control advice. This confused potential patients, as it was offered in cities like Frankfurt and Breslau. Berlin-based privately run VKB clinics did offer contraceptives and sex advice to the masses. (Ruben-Wolf, “German Birth Control Committee”; Kirchhoff, “German League,” 234–39, 231–33; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 47.) 14. Carl Hamburger (1870–1944), a Berlin ophthalmologist who studied child mortality, had a deep interest in hygiene and birth control. His wife (d. 1942), the sister of biographer Emil Ludwig, was connected to one of the municipal Marriage Advice Centers. (Smedley, “Margaret Sanger Comes to Berlin,” 54; Harry Friedenwald, “Carl Hamburger,” Archives of Ophthalmology 31 [June 1944]: 557; 1927 Calendar [LCM 2:660].) 15. In February 1926, the DZ, which controlled the Prussian Ministry of Social Welfare, convinced the ministry to establish state-run marriage counseling centers that would offer premarital advice to women about choosing eugenically fit partners. This was an alternative to the nongovernment centers that offered birth control advice and information. (Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 9, 50–51.) 16. Alfred Grotjahn (1869–1931), a conservative professor of social hygiene at the University of Berlin, spoke on the “differential birth rate in Germany” at the WPC. At MS’s December 6 meeting, Grotjahn, who supported birth control only if used to improve the population without reducing the birthrate, evidently shouted out, “Every woman ought to have three children before she be allowed contraceptive information.” He then got into an angry debate with Martha Ruben-Wolf over access to abortion, which he opposed. (Bea Joseph and Charlotte Warren Squires, eds., Biography Index, vol. 1, January, 1946–July, 1949 [New York, 1949], 384; MS, Proceedings of the WPC, 149–57; MS, Autobiography, 388–89 [quote 389]; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 51.) 17. Smedley reported angry responses from two women doctors, one who “answered him, giving figure for figure and fact for fact, basing her statement not only on the right of a woman to be other than a breeding machine for the church or state, but also upon her experience as a practicing physician in Berlin.” The other claimed that male physicians, when they refused contraceptive aid to their patients, offered comments such as “A big, strong woman like you should have a lot of children!” (Smedley, “Margaret Sanger Comes to Berlin,” 51.) 18. Hans Harmsen (1899–1988) was a German physician, eugenicist, and demographer who directed the Innere Mission (Inner Mission), the German Lutheran Church’s social welfare organization. He advocated medical contraception and sterilization, but believed that Germany’s problem was underpopulation. (Maria Diedrich and Jürgen Heinrichs, eds., From Black to Schwarz: Cultural Crossovers between African America and Germany [East Lansing, Mich., 2010], 97; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 14, 43, 73, 76; MS, Proceedings of the WPC, 197–98.) 19. Most contraceptive services provided before 1928 were offered at lay leagues sponsored by contraceptive manufacturers who appealed to working-class women with limited access to private physicians. These leagues, such as the Bund der Tätigen (Federation of the Active), often worked with Socialist and Communist physicians, specifically with the VSÄ. (Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 17–19.)

130  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map 20. Emma Rauschenbach (1870–1946), the president of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Hebammenverband (German Midwives Association) from 1922 to 1933, was staunchly pronatalist. She later joined the National Socialists’ efforts to increase the birthrate. (Wiebke Lisner, “Hüterinnen der Nation”: Hebammen im Nationalsozialismus, Geschichte und Geschlechter [Frankfurt, 2006], 69; Fariba Sauer-Forooghi, “Emma Rauschenbach (1870–1946) Ein Leben im Dienste des deutschen Hebammenwesens” [Ph.D. diss., Aachen University (Rhenish-Westphalian Technical University), 2004], vi.)

47. To Edith How-Martyn 1

[St. Moritz, Switzerland]2 Sunday. Dec 18 [1927]

Edith darling: Now we are getting settled down in our new apartments I want to tell you about my trip in Berlin— It was glorious! Agnes Smedley3 had arranged for me to meet many of the most important women Doctors, who in turn helped me to meet others. My time was taken up every hour & it was as bad as U.S.A. Fortunately I had that rest at Janets4 & was ready for anything poor Agnes fell ill the last day with “flu”5 but I had the constitution of an ox for the time being and continued my engagements. The meeting at the Town Hall was well attended. Our Conference friends were there Grotjan—Harmsen “Platzeich”—not properly spelled but pronounced that way (I found) who called on me with a bouquet of Chrysanthemums (oh for a steno!)6 also attended the meeting. Harmsen is a practicing M.D. who is using a queer interuterine pessary.7 There are several cervical pessaries not inter uterine being tried out by individual women Doctors but really the situation there is not good. No organized attempt to try various articles no get together groups no plan to keep statistics—8 Now I have supplied them all (the women Doctors) with cards of our clinic & articles in German of the way to run a B.C. Clinic etc. I do hope something will come of it.9 The women are splendid creatures! Vital, I am sure Gini would approve of their “fecundability.”10 At Frankfurt I spent the day with Dr Reese to my great help. She & her husband are jews, but full of feeling & right ideas—a most simple meal dinner consisted of soup made from cauliflower with thickened soup rye bread—apples— They live simply, no meat, one vegetable so they can give some time to humanity—11 Their two children hurried from their half eaten apple to take their music lessons!!12

December 1927  •  131

Its simply wonderful really. Mrs Furth came in for tea but she is filled with her 18 volumes of Statistics.13 It was a treat to know such a specimen of human energy. She has had eight children & plead with me to help crown her last days with the victory of this effort. She has no money & must work—so she wants me to get $5000 (dollars) to cover three years work—which will keep her from working and provide her with a full time secretary who can type & do her writing I would like to help her & will see what I can do.14 Were it not for J. N. I’d be tempted to live on a vegetable & an apple a day to provide her with the funds for her work. Its time a woman interpreted statistics for the world! Also at the clinic of Hertha Reisse the women were being advised to be sterilized—15 Fifteen of them came pleading for this operation within one hour. Then two returned who had been sterilized and they came tripping jauntingly past the row of wretched women who were waiting for the Doctors verdict.16 They looked so happy, with heads up, light of foot, and young. One was already a mother of five— & now looked 22 years old. The other the mother of three also happy & contented looking. I hope the Catholics do not stop her good work—17 I got your letter in Berlin, & am so happy about Miss Greens news.18 I wired her from St Moritz to go ahead (had packed her address in trunk). I may be able to leave here the 20th Feb.19 Poor A. K. did get in hot water in N.Y cables requesting me to back up the Board of Directors dismissal! Its horrid the whole mess.20 The boys Grant & Stuart go to the West Indies for Christmas.21 We have installed a cable code here (Sangatrol St Moritz) to save on repeated cables from Paris. Will you get some flowers & send to the Pryors22 for Christmas? I should send the children some books but don’t know their line. So perhaps two dozen roses will take the place.23 That will be dear of you to do that. All the love in the world. devotedly Margaret ALS EHMP, MSPP (MSM C4:505–12). Letterhead of Suvretta House.

1. How-Martyn worked to improve access to birth control in England by lobbying the government to allow health and welfare centers to give out birth control information. (How-Martyn to MS, Dec. 9, 1927 [MSM S4:192].) 2. MS arrived in St. Moritz on December 15. (1927 Calendar [LCM 2:663].) 3. In addition to part-time organizing for birth control, Smedley was working on her autobiographical novel, Daughter of Earth (1929), and writing controversial articles

132  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map about the Soviet Union, China, and India. (MacKinnon and MacKinnon, Agnes Smedley, 126–28.) 4. MS stayed at the London home of Clinton and Janet Chance during the week of November 20. (1927 Calendar [LCM 2:630–31].) 5. Smedley suffered from frequent flus, stomach problems, and unspecified psychological ailments. (MacKinnon and MacKinnon, Agnes Smedley, 94–97, 116–17, 129.) 6. Siegfried Placzek (1866–1946), a Berlin-based neurologist and sexologist, was a pioneer in the study of the psychological effects of high altitudes. (New York Times, Mar. 9, 1946.) 7. Harmsen may have been using an intrauterine stem pessary lined with silk strands, created by German physician Walter Pust. By 1930 Harmsen had determined that the design was unreliable and instead recommended the Mensinga diaphragm. (MS and Stone, Practice of Contraception, 61–62, 153; Woycke, Birth Control in Germany, 114.) 8. A 1913 survey of doctors indicated that intrauterine stem pessaries were popular in northern and central Germany, but by the 1920s an increasing number of physicians raised concerns about their safety. The contraceptive industry in Germany was booming, producing condoms, spermicidal tablets and jellies, cervical caps, and diaphragms, but because the many lay leagues were closely linked with manufacturers, sharing and pooling data on contraceptive effectiveness were not priorities. (Woycke, Birth Control in Germany, 3, 42.) 9. MS likely refers to the CRB’s case-history cards used to record information on the patient’s age, nationality, occupation, religion, details of her reproductive history, and notes on examinations and treatments. The German articles were not found. (For sample cards, see MSM C3:218 and LCM 32:57.) 10. MS joked about Gini’s propensity for using the word “fecundation” in his paper “Fertility of Women,” the one she rejected for the Proceedings of the WPC. (MS to Gini, Sept. 24, 1927 [LCM 122:520A].) 11. Hertha Pataky Riese (1892–1981) was a German physician who operated the BfMS birth control and marriage counseling clinic in Frankfurt. Her husband, Walther Riese (1890–1976), was a neurologist. (WWAW; George Mora, “Walther Riese, 1890–1976,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 32 [July 1977]: 323.) 12. The Rieses had two daughters, Renée Riese Hubert (1916–2005) and Beatrice Riese Vincent (1917–2004). (New York Times, Apr. 11, 2004; WWAW.) 13. Henriette Fürth (1861–1938), who had attended the WPC, was a sociologist, socialist reformer, and a founding member of the BfMS. She wrote articles and books on factory work, marriage, and maternity insurance. She probably discussed research on birth statistics for her book Die Regelung der Nachkommenschaft als eugenisches Problem (The regulation of the offspring as a eugenic problem) (Stuttgart, 1929). (Kathleen Canning, Languages of Labor and Gender: Female Factory Work in Germany, 1850–1914 [Ithaca, N.Y., 1996], 158–60, 206–7; Maya Fassman, “Henriette Fürth,” in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, Jewish Women’s Archive, http://jwa.org/encyclopedia.) 14. MS did provide some funds to Fürth. (Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 233n34; Martha Ruben-Wolf to MS, Aug. 9, 1930 [LCM 13:1033].)

December 1927  •  133 15. Riese’s BfMS not only offered birth control advice, but also referred women who could not easily attend the clinic or could not use contraceptives consistently to local hospitals for voluntary sterilization. (Woycke, Birth Control in Germany, 55–56, 123; Hertha Riese, “Sterilization,” in Practice of Contraception, edited by MS and Stone, 118–19.) 16. Sterilization was illegal under Paragraph 224 of the German Penal Code unless there was a strong medical reason to protect the woman’s health. Despite this many physicians performed the procedure on women for social, economic, or eugenic reasons. (Woycke, Birth Control in Germany, 150; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 73.) 17. By 1930 the Frankfurt clinic had referred more than four hundred women for sterilizations, often for a combination of reasons. The DZ opposed any attempt to pass eugenic birth control, abortion, or sterilization laws. (Lotte Fink, “Birth Control by Sterilization,” in Practice of Contraception, edited by MS and Stone, 123, 128; F. Tipton, History of Modern Germany, 351.) 18. The letter from How-Martyn was not found, but probably referred to Sue Green’s success in securing an invitation for MS to speak to the CNESP on either February 27 or March 6. (Green to MS, Nov. 29 and Dec. 14, 1927 [LCM 13:302, 306].) 19. MS’s telegram was not found. MS left St. Moritz on February 15, 1928. (1928 Calendar [LCM 2:660–73].) 20. On November 3, the ABCL Board voted that “no present prospect exists of opening in office or in field” for Anne Kennedy. On December 5, Kennedy returned to the ABCL offices, seeking a hearing. But after she accessed ABCL records to help in her defense, the board accused her of stealing the names of donors and reaffirmed its decision to fire her. Both sides looked to MS for support. (See Delafield to MS, Nov. 3, 1927, Kennedy to MS, Dec. 6 and Dec. 16, 1927, and MS to Kennedy, Dec. 22, 1927 [LCM 8:169, 1279, 1306, 1292]; for more on this event, see Vol. 1.) 21. Stuart Sanger (1903–95), MS’s eldest son, was a senior at Yale University. Grant Sanger had entered Princeton (class of 1931) in September 1927. The brothers spent the holidays on the S.S. Reliance, sailing in the West Indies from December 17 to January 3. (Grant Sanger to MS, Nov. 13, and Stuart Sanger to MS, Dec. 6, 1927 [MSM S4:110, 190].) 22. The Pryors was the home of Clinton and Janet Chance. 23. MS likely refers to the Chances’ three children, Michael Robin Alexander Chance (1915–2001), Rachel Valerie Chance (Conrad) (1917–68), and Averill Clinton Chance (Levvy) (1922–?). (England and Wales Birth Index, 1916‑2005, and England and Wales Death Index, 1916–2006.)

48. From Susanna Green Sanger’s lecture to the CNESP was scheduled for March 5, 1928, in the Cours de Cassation, at the Palais de Justice in Paris. (International Institute of Intellectual Co-operation, comp., Handbook of Reference Centres for International Affairs [Paris, 1931], 26; Green to MS, Nov. 29 and Dec. 31, 1927 [LCM 13:302, 312].)

134  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map

Paris. [France] 9.1.28.

Dearest Margaret Will you be as grieved and as furious, as I am? For the obstacle has appeared—not the church, this time, but the LAW! I told you that the meetings were held in the Cour de Cassation, but I did not know on what footing. The CN is, I learn the guest, since its origin of les Conseillers de la cour crimenelle, to which the C de C belongs.1 Some conseillers belong to the CN and are as ignorant, as M Voise himself, of what you stand for.2 But others are more awake and this is what they say. We don’t care what ideas you discuss, but we cannot allow you to invite, as your guest, chez nous, a writer, whose books, if they appeared in French, we should have to condemn, as contrary to the law of the land.3 Go elsewhere, if you want to invite Mrs Sanger. Voise would have been ready to go elsewhere, but the committee of administration voted against this so he proposes a compromise.4 He hopes you will write what you were going to say and allow me to deliver it to the CN. No one is afraid of hearing your ideas, in fact they are [very] keen, but the dignitaries of the Law are afraid of your name. To have [invited] you to speak, might get them into difficulties, but if an unknown woman says unlawful things, they can always say they had no notion of what the person in question was going to say—and their face is saved. Voise begs me to assure you that this is a surprise and a great trouble to him. The Commite was unanimous in its invitation to you and (not realizing what you stand for) he never expected any objection from the court. My subconscient self is not astonished, for though I chortled for joy, at the thought of YOU speaking in the Cour de Cassation, it seemed too topsy-turvey to happen, except in dreams. Voise hopes you will be present, as an auditor.5 I can’t tell you how eagerly I am hoping you will think it worth while to put down what you think best worth saying and how anxious I am, you should come in person to hear yourself, in a French dress—your ideas, that is, not your words, for as I speak much better than I read, if I have to be the vehicle, I shall have full notes and speak the words that come. If you come, you might make an impression that will be useful and help to strengthen that made by the ideas, or to attenuate it, if the ↑audience↓ are all ↑mentally↓ holding up their hands in horror. Do come, if only that we may remember the occasion together, so [↑although↓] it falls so far short of what I hoped for. And the pleasures of memory are great, as I felt, when the proceedings arrived. I ↑went↓ first, not to any of the speeches that I mean to read or reread, but to the dinner evening. Thank you, so much for having it sent to me.6 They can’t change the date.7 Will you, I wonder, decide to leave earlier, under changed conditions. I hope not. Anyhow, you must see Voise and Ap-

january 1928  •  135

pert.8 Would the French Eugenics Soc. be afraid to ask you to speak?9 In spite of my intense disappointment, I believe all this fuss and fear is of use. The law can’t prevent the spread of ideas, though it may prevent a special person uttering them. I feel so humbled: I was so proud to think that I had helped to present you to a Paris audience. It seemed to me the piece of work, best worth doing, since I stopped nursing.10 If you can, let me have a word, by Monday next, so that I may tell Voise your decision.11 Good-bye dear dangerous woman. Your deeply disappointed Sue [signed] TLS MSP, DLC (LCM 13:314). Handwritten interlineations by Sue Green.

1. The Cour de Cassation, France’s court of appeals, was charged with ensuring that laws were applied consistently throughout the country. Green had learned that the Cour de Cassation’s lawyers objected to MS’s appearance due to the French law of July 31, 1920, that banned abortions and the advertisement and sale of contraceptives. (EB; William C. Schneider, Quality and Quantity: The Quest for Biological Regeneration in TwentiethCentury France [New York, 1990], 120; Green to MS, Jan. 16, 1928 [LCM 13:317].) 2. The CNESP secretary-general, French author Raymond Voize (1889–1979), had invited MS. At the time, Green indicated that Voize “did not know anything about you,” but wanted to know about the topic. Green also noted that he did not care who delivered the speech. Because some CNESP members were troubled by the topic of eugenics, they voted to “strengthen the speakers on the dangers” and considered inviting Sir Bernard Mallet to oppose MS. (Franck duBois, interview with Voize, Aug. 12, 2008; Green to MS, Dec. 14, 1927, Jan. 16 [quote 1] and Jan. 1, 1928 [quote 2] [LCM 13:306, 316, 317]; Henry J. Abraham, The Judicial Process [New York, 1968], 262.) 3. France’s ban on birth control and abortion was a reaction to fears of post–World War I depopulation and its effect on military strength. (Melanie Latham, Regulating Reproduction: A Century of Conflict in Britain and France [Manchester, 2002], 84.) 4. In an earlier letter, Green explained, “To meet in the C de C gives the society a certain distinction and Voise told me that the Committee fear the objecting lawyers, if you appear on the list of speakers.” (Green to MS, Jan. 1, 1928 [LCM 13:316].) 5. MS later told Edith How-Martyn, “You know the Paris meeting is off as far as my addition goes.” (MS to How-Martyn, Feb. 22, 1928 [MSM C4:570].) 6. Green refers to the published Proceedings of the WPC. 7. MS’s letters to Green were not found, but it appears that she asked Green to see if the meeting could be moved up to February 27. (Green to MS, Dec. 31, 1927 [LCM 13:312].) 8. Eugène Apert (1868–1940), a French pediatrician specializing in genetic diseases, was a founder and president of the Société Française d’Eugénique (SFE) (French Society for Eugenics). (Charles Steffen, “The Man behind the Eponym: Eugène Apert (1869–1940),” American Journal of Dermatopathology 6, no. 3 [1984]: 223–34.)

136  •  Putting Birth Control on the Map 9. The SFE, founded in 1912, differed from its American and British counterparts in its emphasis on “positive eugenics,” the encouragement of increasing the population of desirable elements of society, rather than “negative eugenics,” which sought to reduce some segments of the population through birth control and other means. (William Schneider, “Toward the Improvement of the Human Race: The History of Eugenics in France,” Journal of Modern History 53 [June 1982]: 275–78.) 10. Green served as a French Red Cross nurse during World War I. (How-Martyn, “Susanna Green,” 127.) 11. On February 10, Voize wrote to Green that the CNESP had “given up the idea of the discussion on eugenics for the coming months at least.” (Voize to Green, as translated by Green, Feb. 10, 1928 [LCM 13:321].)

Margaret Sanger’s passport, 1922. (Margaret Sanger Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.)

Margaret Sanger, aboard the Taiyo Maru, February 1922. (Margaret Sanger Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.)

Grant and Margaret Sanger, aboard the Taiyo Maru, February 1922. (Bain Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs, LC-B2-5742-8.)

Margaret Sanger in rickshaw, with J. Noah H. Slee, Yokohama, Japan, March 1922. (Margaret Sanger Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.)

Shidzue Ishimoto, Margaret Sanger, and Grant Sanger, Tokyo, March 1922. (New York Daily News/Getty Images.)

J. Noah Slee (far left), Grant Sanger (center), and Margaret Sanger (far right), at the Great Sphinx of Giza, June 1922. (Margaret Sanger Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.)

At the Sixth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference: Georges Vacher deLapogue, Norman Haire, Thit Jensen, Charles Vickery Drysdale, Margaret Sanger, Juliet Barrett Rublee, and Gabriel Giroud (G. Hardy), New York, March 1925. (© Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis.)

Staff of the World Population Conference, Geneva, August 1927. First three unidentified, fourth from left: Mrs. E. C. Tait, Edith How-Martyn, Anne Kennedy, Margaret Sanger, Sue Green, Marjorie Martin, Mary Breed, Alzada Comstock, unidentified, and Sheila Kennedy. (Photographer: F. H. Jullien. Margaret Sanger Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.)

Delegates to the World Population Conference, Geneva, August 1927. From left to right: Lucien March, F. A. E. Crew, Clarence Cook Little, E. F. Zinn, Henry Pratt Fairchild, Corrado Gini, Sir Bernard Mallet, Julian Huxley, Raymond Pearl, Alexander Carr-Saunders, Binnie Dunlop, and James Glover. (Photographer F. H. Jullien. Margaret Sanger Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.)

J. Noah H. Slee and Margaret Sanger in the Alps, 1927. (Margaret Sanger Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.)

Agnes Smedley in Russia, ca. 1928. (Agnes Smedley Photographs, University Archives, Arizona State University Libraries.)

Margaret Sanger and Charles Vickery Drysdale with the staff of the Seventh International Conference on Birth Control, Geneva, September 1930. From left: Sanger, Drysdale, Marjorie Martin, Edith How-Martyn, Sue Green, Gerda Guy, Mary Breed, Grace M. Bruce, Elsbeth Seagmann, and Annie H. Eppler. (Wellcome Library, London.)

Margaret Sanger, returning from her European trip on the S.S. Majestic, September 1932. (Margaret Sanger Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.)

Margaret Sanger (center, in white) with tour group at the Hermitage, Leningrad (St. Petersburg), July 1934. (Margaret Sanger Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.)

Mohandas K. Gandhi and Margaret Sanger in Wardha, December 1935. (GandhiServe Foundation.)

Shidzue Ishimoto and Margaret Sanger in Tokyo, March 1936. (Margaret Sanger Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.)

Margaret Sanger on her return from the 1935–36 tour of India and Asia, Los Angeles, April 1936. (Wide World Photos/ New York Times.)

C. P. Blacker, ca. 1940. (Library of the London School of Economics & Political Science, LSE/IMAGELIBRARY/1043.)

Margaret Pyke, Anne-Marie Durand-Wever, Margaret Sanger, Elise Ottesen-Jensen, Ilse Lederer, and Helena Wright, London, August–September 1951. (Margaret Sanger Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.)

Ellen Watumull, Margaret Sanger, and Gobindram Watumull in Honolulu, October 15, 1952. (Margaret Sanger Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.)

Shidzue Ishimoto Katō, Margaret Sanger, and Dorothy Brush with geisha hosts at Tokyo restaurant, November 1952. (Margaret Sanger Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.)

Lewis C. Walmsley, Dorothy Brush, Dhanvanthi Rama Rau, Margaret Sanger, and Abraham Stone at the Third International Conference on Planned Parenthood, Bombay, November 1952. (Margaret Sanger Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.)

Audience at the Fourth International Conference on Planned Parenthood, Stockholm, August 1953. Clarence Gamble seated on right, second row, wearing an earpiece. (Sarah Merry Bradley Gamble Papers, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute.)

Margaret Sanger greeted by Shidzue Katō on arrival in Tokyo, Japan, April 1954. (Margaret Sanger Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.)

Margaret Sanger, Abraham Stone, and William Vogt at the Fifth International Conference on Planned Parenthood, Tokyo, October 1955. (Sarah Merry Bradley Gamble Papers, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute.)

Margaret Sanger addressing the Fifth International Conference on Planned Parenthood, Tokyo, October 1955. (Margaret Sanger Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.)

Margaret Sanger at the Fifth International Conference on Planned Parenthood, Tokyo, October 1955. (Margaret Sanger Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.)

Margaret Sanger, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Dhanvanthi Rama Rau at the Sixth International Conference on Planned Parenthood, New Delhi, February 1959. (Margaret Sanger Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.)

z THREE Zurich

The WPC, Sanger acknowledged in a conference announcement, was “the first preliminary step” toward confronting overpopulation on a global scale.1 The conference did provide the first forum in which to frame population issues in global terms, and it sparked a new dialogue. But the WPC could not claim any practical results. The delegates were not able to make any inroads with the LN, and the organization they formed at the end, the IUSIPP, never grew beyond a small subsection of the scientific community Sanger was relieved to move on from the WPC and made little effort to stay in contact with the delegates; in fact, she distanced herself from those she believed conspired to suppress her work at the conference, notably Raymond Pearl, Clarence Little, and Sir Bernard Mallet. She learned from the experience to never again cede control over conferences or organizations or allow birth control to be hidden or downplayed. While she did not abandon her advocacy of population control, she refocused her energies on building grassroots birth control activism, fostering contraceptive research, and developing advocacy organizations. Working with activists, medical workers, and reformers, Sanger believed that birth control could be the common thread linking population issues, eugenic improvement, sexual freedom, and women’s autonomy. Sanger still believed that international conferences were the most effective way to build global connections. But rather than reassembling the moribund •  137

138  •  Zurich

IFNMBCL, she organized a symposium that focused on the practical, medical, and scientific aspects of birth control and the work being done in individual nations. She removed the term “neo-Malthusian” from the conference title and agenda, claiming “all theories, all propaganda, all moral and ethical aspects of the subject were left in abeyance.”2 The resulting Seventh International Birth Control Conference (7IBCC), held in Zurich in 1930, brought together clinic organizers, birth control practitioners, and scientists to discuss clinical procedures and the current state of birth control methods.3 For the first time, women clinicians and researchers took a central place on the program. For Sanger, it was a stark contrast to the infighting at the WPC and the “disagreements of the League of Nations at Geneva.” At the 7IBCC, she saw the productive give-and-take as an example of “the true spirit of internationalism, the fundamental brotherhood of man.”4 Following the 7IBCC, Sanger together with British suffragette and feminist activist Edith How-Martyn created an international information center, a formalization of the birth control office they established in London in 1928. There How-Martyn fielded inquiries from Europe and Asia, strengthened international contacts, and lobbied for birth control interests in Britain. But both she and Sanger sought something bigger, “a world organisation,” according to How-Martyn, “to supply energy and knowledge, direction and inspiration to the workers in all countries and by Conference and headquarters opportunities to exchange views.”5 After the 7IBCC, the two formally established this office as the Birth Control International Information Centre, with Sanger as president and How-Martyn as director. Its aim was to cultivate a global network of birth control activists and to serve as a clearinghouse for materials. In its early years, the BCIIC published pamphlets, newsletters, and booklets; organized a conference on Asia; and sponsored a series of speaking tours. As part of her efforts to spread grassroots work, Sanger also funded writer and activist Agnes Smedley, who helped establish a birth control committee and clinic in Germany, then took on organizational work in Moscow, Peking, Nanking, Shanghai, and Manila, offering contraceptive instruction to poor and working women. Other contacts, like Sue Green in France and Shidzue Ishimoto in Japan, served as “correspondents” with the BCIIC. Having resigned as ABCL president in June 1928 and stepped down from the BCR and the ABCL Board of Directors several months later, Sanger thought she would have more time to devote to the BCIIC and various international projects. She supervised Smedley’s work and followed the debates over birth control and abortion in Germany, supported the founding of new organizations in Japan and China, and expanded the network of activists in Europe and the Middle East. But the BCIIC’s international work depended a great deal on financial support from Sanger’s husband, J. Noah Slee. When the 1929 stock market crash and ensuing Depression decimated his fortune, he reduced

March 1928  •  139

his birth control support drastically. What money Sanger could round up also had to be split with her new domestic endeavor, the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control (NCFLBC), which was lobbying Congress to change the American laws on birth control. Despite her departure from the ABCL, Sanger was not ready to cede power in the American movement, and before long the battle over birth control legislation in Washington consumed most of her attention.6 With limited funds and less time, Sanger reluctantly put the international work on hold. Yet as she reflected on her life story in 1931, she acknowledged that after ten years of international organization and conferences, touring, and promotion, she had “reached a height from which I could survey, as it were, the international landscape” and “discern the harvest of the seeds I had sown.” In a triumphant spirit, she wrote, “Not only in my own country, in the Far East and in Europe, the tide of public opinion and of religious thought was inevitably turning so that eventually it would sweep away prejudice and opposition.”7 Notes

1. MS, Proceedings of the WPC, i. 2. MS and Stone, Practice of Contraception, xiii. 3. MS to Keynes, Jan. 15, 1929 (LCM 14:876). 4. MS and Stone, Practice of Contraception, xviii. 5. How-Martyn to MS, Jan. 31, 1929 (MSM S4:952). 6. See Vol. 2 for more on the work of the NCFLBC. 7. MS, My Fight, 336.

49. To Agnes Smedley On December 8, 1927, Sanger agreed to fund a private birth control clinic in Berlin, under the direction of Agnes Smedley, who regularly updated Sanger on her work in Germany. (1928 Calendar [LCM 2:673–80].)

[New York, N.Y.?] March 30, 1928.

Dear Agnes: I am delighted to have your letter of the 18th and also a letter from Jo Bennett, saying that you are out of the hospital and recovering.1 It is always slow recovery with a temperament like yours, I know, because I am much the same. It was nice of you to express so appreciatively the little that Mr. Slee has done. I hope it will help you to get on your feet again and to stay well.2

140  •  Zurich

I do wish that your clinic could be open at least for a half day. Two hours is very little—even as a start.3 1. I am sending you a draft for $300.00 for three months. If you wish to use $100.00 of that for equipment and then to start the first of May, it will be perfectly agreeable to me. I think $100.00 a month is a good deal for only two hours a day. We get our doctors for $5.00 a half day, and you know we pay good prices in America.4 2. Now as to Hirschfeld, I like him all right and believe that he can do a certain amount of good, but I am absolutely with you as to connecting his name with Birth Control.5 I would not go on his International Committee for the same reason, and it was very difficult to refuse him, because I think he does good work in his own field. Your judgement is an accord with my own on that ground, so I think you can stand as firm as your two feet will let you.6 3. I am sending you, under separate cover, three copies of all the cards and printed material that we use in the Clinic.7 4. I do not like “Margaret Sanger Ambulatorium.” Put Birth Control in it, if you can. If you cannot say clinic, then call it center or any word that is understood in the German language.8 I am very anxious to have Dr. Schmienke report or get in touch with me, especially if he reads or writes English.9 If not, I shall have to trouble you each time I correspond. By all means go to Frankfurt and get all the information you can on the Advice Bureaus.10 As soon as Kaethe Kollwitz is through with the chapters, will you please return them by registered mail so I can go ahead on the book. Also let me know when you send the drawings, so I can be on the lookout for them.11 I am so glad that you like Dr. Wiesner.12 I think he is a rare find. I am afraid, however, that I will be unable to do anything on the moving picture.13 If we get the clinic started in Germany and get support for a year, that will be as much as Mr. Slee and I can do at the present time. All best wishes to you and my thanks to Jo for her newsy letter. With much love, TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 10:360–61).

1. Smedley had been suffering from appendicitis since December 1927 and had asked MS to help pay for her surgery. After receiving the funds, she underwent an appendectomy and uterine surgery on March 2. In the letter, Smedley described her eighteenday hospital stay and other medical problems. Josephine Beach Day Bennett (Brooks) (1880–1961), a leading Hartford suffragist, founder of the Connecticut Birth Control League, and an active ABCL supporter, was one of Smedley’s closest friends. Bennett helped her organize the Berlin clinic, while also nursing Smedley, describing her as

March 1928  •  141 “terribly weak and spending most of the time in bed,” but “psychically . . . better than I have ever seen her.” (Polly Bettencourt to editor, July 7, 2008; Hartford Courant, Dec. 31, 1930; David J. Garrow, Liberty & Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of “Roe V. Wade” [New York, 1994], 14, 16; MacKinnon and MacKinnon, Agnes Smedley, 128–29, 323; Anne Kennedy to Josephine Bennett, Oct. 27, 1922 [MSM C2:136]; 1919 Calendar, Bennett to MS, Mar. 18, 1928 [quotes], and Smedley to MS, Mar. 18, 1928 [LCM 1:100–101, 7:894, 10:345].) 2. Smedley thanked MS and Slee for the funds, which she said would allow her to rest until recovered. (Smedley to MS, Mar. 18, 1928 [LCM 10:345].) 3. Smedley’s clinic, Beratungstelle für Gerburtenregelung (BfG) (Birth Control Clinic), was to open in May in Neukölln, a working-class area of Berlin. She planned to open it twice a week for a total of four hours and anticipated that it would be “not more than a month before the Clinic will have its hands full.” (Smedley, “Berlin Birth Control Clinic,” 179 [quote]; Smedley to MS, Feb. 14, 1928 [LCM 10:336].) 4. Smedley had chosen Dr. Mathilde Winternitz (1901–89?), a Czech-born gynecologist with Communist leanings, to head the clinic. (Smedley, “Berlin Birth Control Clinic,” 179; England and Wales Death Index, 1916–2006; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 52.) 5. Smedley wanted to distance the clinic from the work of Magnus Hirschfeld because, as she explained to MS, “he is so widely known as a homosexual and as a student of homosexuality that it is not good for B.C. to have him in the clinic” and because she thought it would further alienate Catholics. (Smedley to MS, Mar. 18, 1928 [LCM 10:345].) 6. MS refers to the committee that organized the July 1928 international sexual reform congress in Copenhagen, where Hirschfeld founded the WLSR. MS was wary of joining the WLSR because she feared its association with homosexual rights, abortion, and communism would detract from her birth control agenda. (Dose and Selwyn, “World League for Sexual Reform,” 242.) 7. The enclosures were not found. MS likely refers to the BCCRB’s case-history card, along with other promotional materials. 8. Smedley had wanted to name the clinic for MS, but agreed to call it the BfG. (Smedley, “Berlin Birth Control Clinic,” 179.) 9. Richard Schmincke (1875–1939), a German physician, city councilman, KPD member, and health commissioner, helped the BfG group and was trying to open a clinic in Saxony. No correspondence between MS and Schmincke was found. (Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 51–53, 264n89; Joachim Krüger, “Die KPD und China (1921–1927),” in Rethinking China in the 1950s, edited by Mechthild Leutner [Berlin, 2007], 112; MacKinnon and MacKinnon, Agnes Smedley, 128.) 10. In 1925 the BfMS opened a Marriage and Advice Center in Frankfurt to provide information on marriage, sex, contraception, and sterilization. Unlike the other BfMS clinics, these offices referred patients to willing doctors and hospital clinics. The Frankfurt center saw more than three thousand women, about a third for contraception and 10 percent for sterilization. (Kirchhoff, “German League,” 232.) 11. MS had asked Kollwitz to illustrate Motherhood in Bondage (New York, 1928), but her work arrived too late to be used. (MS to Kollwitz, Oct. 29, 1928 [LCM 13:758].) 12. Berthold Paul Wiesner (1901–72) was an Austrian physiologist who was working on a method of pregnancy testing. In 1928 he joined F. A. E. Crew at Edinburgh University to

142  •  Zurich work on contraceptive research. Smedley described him as “a fine person” and said that it was a “great loss” he was leaving Germany. (Crew to MS, Dec. 5 1927, MS to Wiesner, Apr. 20, 1928, and Smedley to MS, Mar. 18, 1928 [quotes] [LCM 19:980, 998, 10:345]; editors’ correspondence with Barry Stevens, Jan. 20, 2005.) 13. Wiesner had discussed making a birth control moving picture with Jo Bennett, who asked MS to donate two thousand dollars for it. Wiesner believed that the film could attract a worldwide audience and make back the funds invested in it. Bennett believed his concept was too vague and that he underestimated the amount of work it would entail. (Bennett to MS, Mar. 18, 1929 [LCM 7:894].)

50. To K atharina Lipinski Stützin Sanger met Katharina Lipinski Stützin (1890–1980), a German nurse and conservative birth control advocate, at the WPC. Stützin, who wanted to foster a German birth control movement that avoided abortion reform, was helping Sanger with preliminary plans to hold the 7IBCC in Germany. (Godofredo Stützin to the editors, Feb. 6, 2003; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 43, 76–77; Stützin to MS, Dec. 1, 1929 [LCM 13:787].)

[New York, N.Y.] January 3, 1929.

Dear Frau Stutzin: Your kind letter of December 1st followed me to California and back again where I now take pleasure in replying to it.1 First, let me extend to you my cordial wishes for a Happy New Year and the hope that we may work together for the conference in 1930. I agree absolutely that there must be no politics in the conference; that we must aim to have women of all parties as well as in all professions who are interested and want to help us.2 You may know that I have been helping to finance a clinic in Berlin through an American girl who lived there, Miss Agnes Smedley. She is now in China.3 I believe that the clinic (which is at Schonstadtstrasse 13) is still going and going well, and I think that the Socialists or perhaps the Communists are directing it, but that does not matter4 I consider it a good piece of work, for this group is instrumental in helping the working mothers to get Birth Control information and then, too, I found that the Socialists were not afraid of the Catholic influence in Germany, which was a great help to me in starting the clinic.5 That work can well go on by itself and does not have in any way to be connected with the conference, except that we may be able to have a special session on contraceptive methods, and it would be well and advisable, of course, to ask the head physician there to give us a report of the clinic.6 That will come later. There need be no question about it now.

January 1929  •  143

The main thing is to keep the conference independent and non-partisan. We must try to interest university men and women, as well as sociologists and economists. If you can begin to arouse interest quietly and get some names of prominent people who would be willing to help, you may send them to Mrs. Edith How-Martyn, 38 Hogarth Hill, Hampstead Garden Suburb, London, N.W.11, England.7 We can begin to form our committees during the next year. I do not want too large a committee. There should be a small executive committee and then a larger advisory committee, and on the advisory committee can go prominent sociologists, biologists and physicians of all countries. Mrs. How-Martyn can take care of England and I will get a committee to take care of America and one in France, and if you will organize a committee in Germany, that will do for the present.8 When we get those committees, we can then bring out some stationary and perhaps the latter part of the year we will send out our first announcement. I am sending a copy of this letter to Mrs. Green in Paris9 and to Mrs. HowMartyn in England. As I will be away lecturing through the country much of this season,10 it would be well to communicate with Mrs. How Martyn as often as you can, so that Germany, France and England can be working together in close cooperation and doing some of the preliminary work right away. With cordial good wishes to you and yours for the New Year, Very sincerely yours, TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 13:812–13).

1. MS had been on a speaking tour of California from November 20 to December 24, when she returned to New York. (Stützin to MS, Dec. 1, 1928, and 1928 Calendar [LCM 13:787, 2:740–48].) 2. Stützin had written, “There is one chief thing which must be strictly observed if the Congress shall be a success—: no politics! . . . everything can be spoilt again if politics are mixed in.” (Stützin to MS, Dec. 1, 1929 [LCM 13:787].) 3. Smedley moved to China in December 1928 after a stop in Moscow, as a reporter for the Chinese Information Bureau, to cover the weakening efforts of the Soviet-supported Chinese Communist Party to resist Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Zhongzheng) and his Nationalist Party. During this time she agreed to spy for the Comintern in China, directing propaganda, sending secret communications to the Soviet Union, and serving as a courier for money and individuals. (Price, Lives of Agnes Smedley, 156–78.) 4. At least half of the BfG’s founding members were Communists; the rest were Socialists or sex reform activists. The first Neukölln clinic, founded in association with the VKB, was so popular that six more opened. In November 1928, the BfG opened its first clinic in Reinickendorf, headed by Max Hodann. (Ruben-Wolf, “German Birth Control Committee,” 236–37; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 52.) 5. During the Weimar years, the SPD emerged as the majority moderate party, while the KPD drew more radical Socialists as well as Communists. The KPD and SPD

144  •  Zurich sought to include birth control in all marriage and sex counseling centers. Moderate and conservative groups, including the Catholic Church, fought to restrict birth control with the 1927 “Law for the Prevention of Venereal Disease,” which made it a felony for a layperson to examine or treat reproductive organs. (Bookbinder, Weimar Germany, 48–54.) 6. Three clinicians, Lotte Fink, Max Hodann, and Martha Ruben-Wolf, reported on the work of the German BfG clinics at the 7IBCC. (MS and Stone, Practice of Contraception, 234–44.) 7. How-Martyn was working on plans for the 7IBCC and had made birth control an issue during Parliament’s 1928 general elections. She had cut back her activities since the spring of 1926 due to her eighty-six-year-old mother’s illness. (How-Martyn to MS, June 17 and July 30, 1928, and Jan. 1, 1929 [MSM S4:500, 563, 919].) 8. Stützin eventually decided that Anne-Marie Durand-Wever should select the German committee. 9. Sue Green was assisting MS with conference preparations and reporting on birth control news in France. (How-Martyn, “Susanna Green,” 127.) 10. MS plan’s for a lecture tour and a conference in Philadelphia on February 27 had to be canceled when she came down with the flu. She recuperated in Hot Springs, Arkansas, from January 31 to February 19 and again from March 29 to April 9. (1929 Calendar [MSM S78:590–618].)

51. To John Maynard Keynes Sanger and Edith How-Martyn began sending out word of the 7IBCC, asking for feedback and volunteers. How-Martyn focused on securing support and participation from European women’s groups, while Sanger addressed the need for a new base for international activity to replace the ML and the IFNMBCL. (How-Martyn to Friends, Jan. 1929 [LCM 14:888]; for a summary of responses to How-Martyn’s letter, see LCM 124:112.)

[New York, N.Y.] January 15, 1929.

Dear Mr. Keynes: Would you be good enough to give me your opinion on the following matter? A few of us working in the Birth Control Movement desire to call an International Conference in Berlin in September 1930. We desire to have stressed the economic, sociological and women’s side rather than the biological.1 In your opinion would it be better to organize a new group for this purpose or shall we continue with the old Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Leagues?2 I have recently been made president of the International NeoMalthusian and Birth Control Leagues,3 but knowing the opposition to the Neo-Malthusian principles on the Continent and the opposition of labor to

January 1929  •  145

Drysdale,4 I am wondering if it would not be better for the advance of the movement if we could bring together an entirely new group disassociated with the old Malthusian Leagues.5 This would give us an opportunity to discuss as fully as we wished the Malthusian side of the question. I would very much value your opinion as well as your help in whichever way we decide to go.6 With best wishes to you for the New Year, Very sincerely yours, TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 14:876). Similar letters were sent to Alexander Carr-Saunders;7 variant versions were sent to Clinton Chance (Jan. 15, 1929) and Charles Vickery Drysdale (Jan. 16, 1929), among others. (LCM 14:877–79.)

1. The 7IBCC was planned as an invitation-only gathering focusing on birth control methods, clinics, and workers, with women as the driving force. (MS, Proceedings of the WPC, 7–10, 361–68; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 41.) 2. The IFNMBCL had not met since April 1925, and some members believed it had ceased functioning. (MS to Charles V. Drysdale, Jan. 16, 1929 [LCM 14:879]; IFNMBCL, “Second Meeting of the International Committee,” Apr. 4, 1925 [LCM 122:352B]; Clarence Little, “The International Federation of Birth Control Leagues,” BCR 9 [Sept. 1925]: 253.) 3. Clarence Cook Little resigned the presidency of the IFNMBCL on January 5, 1929, nominating MS to replace him in the hope that she would revive the organization. (Little to MS, Jan. 5, 1929 [LCM 61:188B]; MS to How-Martyn, Jan. 10–14, 1929 [MSM C4:869].) 4. The British ML’s leaders supported laissez-faire capitalism. Charles V. Drysdale had alienated labor with his call for birth control as one means to reduce the economic demands on poor families instead of increasing wages. He saw economic success as a measure of fitness to reproduce and believed that those unable to support their families in “a state of free economic competition” were “unfit.” The ML was unable to form a group in Germany because of the popularity of socialism there, while in France the government opposed Malthusianism, seeking to increase the birthrate. (Soloway, Birth Control and the Population Question, 87–88, 189 [quotes]; Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, 181–82, 218.) 5. Of the national Malthusian leagues, only the NMB was still in operation. (MS, introduction to International Aspects of Birth Control, edited by MS, vi; Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, 181–89, 193, 237.) 6. Keynes replied that he was “not at all in touch with the internal politics of the various Population groups” and therefore did not feel competent to advise MS, though he added that “of course it is always a nuisance to organize a new ad hoc Group.” (Keynes to MS, Jan. 24, 1929 [LCM 124:221A].) 7. Carr-Saunders advised MS to form a new group to organize the 7IBCC, arguing that existing neo-Malthusian groups were not “sufficiently well-placed to take the lead, and they would not cooperate in a common group.” He also suggested inviting individuals rather than representatives of organizations. (Carr-Saunders to MS, Jan. 25, 1929 [LCM 124:221B].)

146  •  Zurich

52. “Motherhood Enslaved in Italy” Starting in 1926, Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini instigated pronatalist policies that outlawed the dissemination of contraceptive information, instituted government control over the use of contraceptives and abortifacient devices, levied a tax on bachelors, and offered tax exemptions for large families. Italy’s government also encouraged internal migration and colony settlement rather than emigration. In a May 1927 speech, Mussolini called on Italy to increase its population from forty to sixty million in the next twenty-five years to achieve a position of authority in Europe. By 1929, when domestic opposition to his Fascist programs had been largely eliminated, Mussolini pushed legislation that imposed stronger pronatalist policies. Sanger drafted this article (never published) after reading a January 21, 1929, Time article about Italy’s newest attack on population control. (New York Times, Dec. 7, 1926, and May 29, 1927; Carl Ipsen, “The Organization of Demographic Totalitarianism: Early Population Policy in Fascist Italy,” Social Science History 17 [Spring 1993]: 85, 89, 90–91, 99; D. Smith, Mussolini, 159–61; “Italy, Thin Ladies Flayed,” 20–22.)

[Late January or February 1929?] The conscription of motherhood appears to be the inevitable next step in the Fascist policy of Mussolini. Benito’s Napoleonic complex and folie de grandeur1 have not as yet reached the point at which he compels by force every Italian woman to undergo the ordeal of periodic pregnancy, but he is not lacking sycophants ready and willing to give expression to expressed thoughts that lurk uncrystallized behind his noble brow. Signor Mario Carli, editor of L’Impero, is the favorite spokesman of Il Duce, and the editorial mouthpiece of Mussolini’s secret ambitions.2 According to Time (January 21, 1929) Mario Carli has been making a passionate demand for the immediate conscription of Italian motherhood.3 He is directly quoted by Time: “Every Italian woman must give to her country at least one son every two years. A refusal on this point will be equivalent to pushing men on the road to polygamy—-which, however, is contrary to Fascist principles. Flight in the face of maternity—-that divine maternity which together with some brief physical suffering, gives the loftiest and deepest joys of life (sic!)—-is as culpable as the desertion of soldiers in the face of the enemy, as the attempt of the taxpayer to escape the payment of taxes. . . .” Furthermore: “Voluntary barrenness and reducing cures to rid her miserable body of superfluous fat are the greatest crimes a woman can commit under the Fascist regime.”4 This tyrannical threat is scarcely veiled. It indicates the extent to which the impudent dictatorship of Mussolini has gone in Italy. Indifferent or easygoing people in this country may retort that this idea is not to be taken seriously. We wish that such were the case. But history of the world demonstrates that conscription of womanhood has been enforced innumerable times in the past, and that it is not outside the bounds of possibility that it can be enforced in the future. Every ambitious militarist in the history of the world has

February 1929  •  147

called upon women to undertake the rapid multiplication of cannon-fodder. History from the forgotten potentates of the East to Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte to the rulers who brought about the Great War, is crowded with such instances.5 The conscription of motherhood, and the advocacy of “cradle competition,” is a policy which every dictator ambitious for his own glory, almost automatically advocated.6 Thus he attempts to assert his own godlike superiority over the rest of humanity. Thus he makes of all men soldiers and of all women slaves and breeding-machines. Even if there is no immediate danger of Mussolini’s enforcing the dictum already expressed by his editorial sycophant, the very expression of this idea, and the reiterated call for an ever higher birth-rate in Italy, become of the most sinister significance in European politics.7 Mussolini is demanding of his subjects a greater and greater over-population. He is aiming at the production in the Italian peninsula of an expanding and therefore an explosive population. Increased population-pressure, and eventually over-population, bring with them a lowered standard of living, and also a search for new territories, inevitably to be acquired by conquest, and therefore by war.8 Mussolini and his cohorts are therefore progressively undermining the instability of Europe and the entire Mediterranean zone. The alternatives appear to be: either Birth Control or War. Only a decade has passed since the signing of the Armistice9 and all of us are still paying, in one way or another, for the last international debauch of blood. Seemingly remote as we may be from the scene of Benito Mussolini’s strutting theatricals, all of us are thus involved in this last insult cast in the face of Occidental civilization. While the material prosperity of Italy continues—-a prosperity dependent to no slight extent upon the millions of dollars annually expended in Italy by American travelers and visitors—the Fascist regime will continue to take credit for the country’s good fortune.10 The insult to Italian womanhood uttered by Mario Carli is an insult to all womankind. American women to whom the ancient glories of Italy have made an esthetic appeal, would do well to consider these implications. If they would courageously decide to postpone all travel in Italy until that country again demonstrates its right to a place in Occidental civilization, an invaluable lesson in discipline and international courtesy would not be long in demonstrating its value. Those who respect women will stay out of Italy until the last act of her present tragedy has been played. M.S. Margaret Sanger [signed] TDS MSP, DLC (LCM 130:166–68). Handwritten margin note by MS at the top of the first page reads: “Either title may be used. Motherhood Enslaved in Italy. Mussolini’s insult to Womankind.”

148  •  Zurich 1. Some have surmised that Mussolini, like French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821), overcompensated for his short stature by becoming a ruthless dictator. The French phrase folie de grandeur means “delusion of grandeur or greatness.” (D. Smith, Mussolini, 188–89.) 2. Mario Carli (1889–1935), Italian futurist writer, proprietor, and coeditor, with Emilio Settimelli, of the Fascist daily L’Impero (Empire), was a leader of the extreme right wing of the Fascist Party. (Walter Adamson, Avant Garde Florence: From Modernism to Fascism [Boston, 1993], 227, 332; New York Times, Feb. 19 and July 22, 1928, and Jan. 6, 1929.) 3. Time called Carli’s editorial a “slashing indictment of barren thin ladies,” which “set a relentless quota” to be met by Italian women. (“Italy, Thin Ladies Flayed,” 20.) 4. MS omitted the word “moral” at the end of Carli’s second sentence: “is contrary to Fascist moral principles.” She replaced the word “that” with the word “which.” The phrase, as printed, was “that divine maternity that together with some brief physical suffering.” (“Italy, Thin Ladies Flayed,” 20.) 5. Roman emperor Julius Caesar (100–44 B.C.E.) doled out land to fathers of three or more children. According to MS, Napoleon virtually reduced women to breeding machines for the state. For more on this, see chapter 13 of Woman in the New Race in which she asserted that militaristic rulers “have constantly called upon the people to breed, breed, breed!” (Geoffrey Gilbert, World Population [Santa Barbara, Calif., 2005], 20–21; McLaren, History of Contraception, 42; MS, Woman and the New Race, 151–53 [quote], 163–64.) 6. MS used the term “cradle competition” when denouncing positive eugenics, arguing that encouraging more children from the “better” classes would not improve the population. (MS, Pivot of Civilization, 25; MS, “Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda,” BCR 5 [Oct. 1921]: 5; “Woman of the Future,” Sept. 3, 1933 [MSM S70:913].) 7. Mussolini’s pronatalist policies had not yet had an impact; both the marital rate and the birthrate in Italy had steadily declined since the early 1920s. (Salvemini, “Do Italian Women Obey Mussolini?” 64–65; Ipsen, Dictating Demography, 74, 183.) 8. Before World War I, most considered high fertility rates and increasing population as a sign of national vitality and health. After the war, neo-Malthusians blamed the nations with high birthrates and poverty (Germany, Austria, Serbia, and Russia) for starting the war. (Paul and Paul, Population and Birth-Control, 195–97; Connelly, Fatal Misconception, 56–57.) 9. The Armistice ending World War I was signed on November 11, 1918. 10. Though an economic revival had begun in Italy before Mussolini took power, he took the credit for erasing much of Italy’s debt and improving its monetary system. Italy, a poor country with few natural resources and an unfavorable trade imbalance, required a larger population to build the extensive and cheap labor force needed to industrialize. Other key sources of income were colonial expansion, the money emigrants sent home, and tourism. (D. Smith, Mussolini, 118, 123; New York Times, Apr. 1, 1928; Maria Sophia Quine, Population Politics in Twentieth Century Europe [London, 1996], 33.)

February 1929  •  149

53. To Edith How-Martyn

[Hot Springs, Ark.] Feb 15 1929

Dearest beloved Edith: It makes my heart ache to have you not well.1 You simply must take sunshine baths or come to U.S.A. & live. Your letter of Jan 31st was forwarded to me here, where the Squire & I have been for the past two weeks. (Emma is here also.)2 We plan to return next week & on the 26th a dinner is being planned at which I must chair3 & then I go to Phila. for a public meeting on the 29th4 & after that I devote my entire time to the clinic & to this International Conference.5 I have given up lectures for the Season & the Squire has paid me for all I give up!!!6 Now as to you—-Edith dear it makes me ache to have you not in good form, & that you should have squabbles in ↑the↓ family is also maddening, but not so bad as health.7 I can not consider a Conference without your help and I think the best way out is to let things stand a bit, until we see how your health improves.8 Perhaps you could come over here for a visit in March or April— I would of course be glad to cover your expenses. It might be the best way out, especially if you could plan to stay a month. Or if not during March or April perhaps later in August & Miss Green9 might come along too. Willowlake will be open & jolly then.10 I know you will not want to leave London while your mother is unwell, so don’t rush your answer, just let it stay awhile. If you could not do this at all, then I may run over for a few weeks later on, can’t say when. But one conference seems necessary before we get going. I have sent you Clinton’s nice personal letter & ask you to destroy it please.11 Dr Drysdale would like the revival of the old Mal Leagues, but I could not undertake the job of dragging them about Europe.12 It is fine that [Miss] Breed is with you. Please tell her that I owe her a letter of thanks for the darling pillow she sent for Christmas.13 I was so upset after Christmas that all letters were left unanswered, but I love her thot of me & I love the gift too. Ellis will not be at the conference I don’t know how they got his name but they got mine because of him.14 The idea of the conference I had was to be Sociological by men & women, but to have the subjects discussed by women & about women more than about general things. It will be better not to make it strictly a womans conference, (as at first suggested) but to have it as Scientific as Sociology lends itself to be with women much in the lead.15 Berlin still worries me but I’d rather have three birth control clinics going there even by the Socialists than to have none.16 There are other cities to consider in Germany. J. M. Keynes & C. Saunders both wrote against the N. Mal & B.C. Leagues—Both agreed that new groups would be better, tho Keynes hopes Mr Cox group will come in.17

150  •  Zurich

Now as to local situation. The B.C. League is in the throes of petty politics— I have resigned as Editor in Chief of the Review & as Director of the League.18 Mrs Rublee, Mrs Timme, Mrs. [Ackermann] have also resigned & the Squire has withdrawn his $300 a month. So Heaven knows what will happen.19 It was inevitable, trying to be efficient & business like at the cost of spiritual harmony & ↑disregard↓ for old devoted friends. These women have all come with me on the Clinic & will help on the Int. Conference. But the wrangle has given me a jolt & made me nearly sick— [Mrs Hodson was a guest of Mrs Jones who “pumped” her about Geneva & the failure of any organization etc.]20 Dear Edith it is a wonderful experience to let go a thing you have breathed your life into. But I can not fight friends who have been loyal & true in years past. It’s a horrid weakness perhaps but I must recognize I have it. I was rather glad to have Dr Vickery pass on— She must have longed for it too.21 The same lack of recognition through petty jelousy. But a big soul like that did not care.22 All goes well with us here, I am longing to be back home & for Willowlake again in April. Take care of your precious self Edith & give my regards to Miss Thompson,23 Miss Breed & my love to Edith. ever devotedly Margaret. ALS EHMP, MSPP (MSM C4:900–907). Letterhead of the Arlington Hotel. Sentence obliterated on last page.

1. How-Martyn had written that she seemed to be experiencing a resurgence of her scarlet fever, noting “a little white hospital bed seemed very attractive.” (How-Martyn to MS, Jan. 31, 1929 [MSM S4:952].) 2. MS was still recuperating from the flu at Hot Springs National Park. Emma Hackins Kitzweger (1901–76), the Slees’ German-born housekeeper and nurse, had been recommended by How-Martyn. (How-Martyn to MS, Jan. 31, 1929 [MSM S4:952]; SSDI; MS to Whom It May Concern, Nov. 21, 1934 [LCM 6:362].) 3. MS left the resort on February 19 to moderate a BCCRB fund-raising dinner at New York’s Plaza Hotel on February 26, which netted more than seven thousand dollars. (New York Times, Feb. 24 and 27, 1929.) 4. MS was the featured speaker at the Pennsylvania Birth Control Federation and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Birth Control League meeting at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel. (“News Notes,” BCR 13 [Feb. 1929]: 59.) 5. When MS left the ABCL, she took the CRB with her, renaming it the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau and maintaining it as a stand-alone clinic. (MS, Autobiography, 395; MS to Robert L. Dickinson, Oct. 10, 1929 [LCM 32:152].) 6. When Slee complained about MS’s long absences in 1928, she responded that it was “foolish for a woman who can earn money, not to do it.” Frustrated by their most

February 1929  •  151 recent separations, Slee increased her allowance in exchange for more time together. (MS to Slee, Nov. 26, 1928 [MSM S4:755].) 7. How-Martyn had written that she was caught up in “family bothers—quarrels, threats of legal proceedings, my mother seriously ill again.” (How-Martyn to MS, Jan. 31, 1929 [MSM S4:952].) 8. How-Martyn had suggested that her domestic problems made working on the 7IBCC too difficult and that “it is much easier for you to replace me now than much later on.” (How-Martyn to MS, Jan. 31, 1929 [MSM S4:952].) 9. MS refers to Sue Green. 10. Willowlake was the English manor-style house that Slee built in 1923 in Fishkill, New York, sixty miles north of New York City, where he and MS often lived in the warmer months. For more, see Vol. 1. 11. The letter from Clinton Chance was not found. 12. Though the ML officially dissolved in 1927, Charles V. Drysdale still called himself its president. Drysdale and neo-Malthusianism had been bypassed by the more practical and less political British birth control movement led by Marie Stopes’s SCBCRP and the SPBCC. (Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, 58.) 13. After finishing work on the Proceedings of the WPC, Mary Breed was employed by the International Migration Service in Geneva until the end of 1928, when she returned to England and began working with How-Martyn on the BCIIC. (How-Martyn to MS, Jan. 31, 1929 [MSM S4:952]; Breed to MS, June 12 and Aug. 14, 1928 [LCM 7:1196, 1200].) 14. MS refers to Norman Haire and Dora Black Russell, who were organizing the third WLSR Congress. They wanted to mute the radical elements of the WLSR to make it more palatable to the British public, an approach that dismayed Havelock Ellis, who criticized the plans as an “All-Haire Conference, which maybe good for Haire, but perhaps not good for the cause.” (Crozier, “‘All the World’s a Stage,’” 16–20; Ellis to MS, Dec. 31, 1928 [quote] [LCM 5:99].) 15. After the WPC fiasco, MS wanted the 7IBCC to focus on the sociological and economic aspects of birth control. She planned to invite both male and female birth control leaders and “to hear from women & what they have to say & where they stand on this important question.” (MS to How-Martyn, Jan. 10 and Mar. 26 [quote], 1929 [MSM C4:869].) 16. MS likely refers to the VKB clinics overseen by Socialist Dr. Kurt Bendix, the smaller Berlin-Reichendorf clinic headed by Dr. Max Hodann, and the two clinics operated by BfMS in Berlin, which she helped fund. (Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 50–56, 40–41; MS to Leunbach, Mar. 5, 1929, MS to How-Martyn, Mar. 1, 1929, and Lida Gustave Heymann to MS, Mar. 3, 1929 [LCM 13:29, 14:924, 925]; MS to How-Martyn, Mar. 26, 1929 [MSM C4:940].) 17. Keynes wrote that he “felt most in sympathy” with the Eugenics Society and the SPBCC, “with which Mr. Harold Cox is connected.” Cox, now the retired editor of the Edinburgh Review, chaired the lay committee of the SPBCC, which supported the Walworth Women’s Welfare Centre and other British clinics. For Carr-Saunders’s advice, see MS to Keynes, Jan. 15, 1929, note 7, herein. (Keynes to MS, Jan. 24, 1929 [quotes] [LCM 124:221A].)

152  •  Zurich 18. Tensions flared between MS and the ABCL board after MS returned from Europe in June 1928, leading MS to resign the ABCL presidency and the editorship of the BCR. For more on MS’s stormy relationship with the ABCL, see Vols. 1–2. (MS to the ABCL Board of Directors, June 8, 1928, and MS to Penelope Huse, Jan. 31, 1929 [MSM S4:494, 957].) 19. MS’s close friend Juliet Rublee resigned as ABCL vice president in solidarity with MS in June and resigned from the ABCL board completely on February 11, 1929. Frances Brooks Ackermann (1875–1935), ABCL treasurer and board member, also resigned in June. Ida Haar Timme (1875–1940), a suffragist and another of MS’s friends, resigned from the ABCL board on February 8. Slee resigned as treasurer in early December 1928, discontinuing his financial support of the ABCL. (MS to Rublee, June 1, 1928, Slee to MS, Dec. 10, 1928, and Eleanor Dwight Jones to Slee, Feb. 5, 1929 [MSM C4:662, S4:850, 966]; Rublee to ABCL, Feb. 11, 1929, Timme to Jones, Feb. 8, 1929, and ABCL Board of Directors Minutes, June 12, 1928 [LCM 28:190, 185, 11]; New York Herald Tribune, Feb. 9, 1940; New York Times, Aug. 11, 1935; see also Vols. 1–2.) 20. Cora B. S. Hodson (1875–1953), an Oxford-educated physiologist, was the secretary of the British Eugenics Society (BES) from 1920 and an honorary WPC secretary. In the United States for a lecture tour, she probably stayed with Eleanor Dwight Jones (1880–1965). Jones was elected ABCL president at the June 12, 1928, board meeting, serving until 1934. (“Notes of the Quarter,” Eugenics Review 45 [July 1953]: 78–79; Los Angeles Times, Dec. 6, 1928; New York Times, July 31, 1965; Hodson to MS, Aug. 11 and Sept. 7, 1928, and ABCL Minutes, June 12, 1928 [LCM 14:819, 833, 28:11]; for more on Jones and MS, see Vols. 1–2.) 21. Alice Vickery, who remained an active feminist and practicing physician into her eighties, died on January 12, 1929. According to her son Charles V. Drysdale, she was “a troublesome and rebellious patient” who pleaded, “I don’t want to live any more.” (Benn, Predicaments of Love, 222.) 22. MS later wrote, “For over forty years Dr. Alice Vickery and other brave women fought valiantly and consistently to inculcate the idea of family limitation into the minds of a generation of English people.” (MS, My Fight, 105.) 23. How-Martyn’s assistant was Louise M. Thompson.

54. From Agnes Smedley In the late fall of 1928, Smedley left Germany, by way of Moscow, for China, arriving late in December. She was ostensibly there as a reporter for the Manchester Guardian and China Weekly Review. (MacKinnon and MacKinnon, Agnes Smedley, 130–31, 138; Smedley to MS, Oct. 26, 1928 [LCM 10:408].)

Tientsin. [China] Feb. 22, 1929

Dearest Margaret: I’ve come from Manchuria where I’ve been for nearly 10 weeks, worked to death under constant watch by at least two secret services.1 That is a hell hole up there. Never in all my life have I suffered so much from external pressure.

February 1929  •  153

Then I fell suddenly and desperately ill in Moukden.2 Expensive—-lord, it is worse than America. I’m going on to Peking in a couple of days; then to Nanking where I hope to interest the Ministry of Health in B.C. as a State measure.3 But I may not succeed. There is more than sufficient need for it here. But now I’m tired to death, nervous and half ill. Here before me lies a letter from Frau Dr. Wolf from Berlin. They are doing good work.4 But I see by her letter that she did not read my report from Russia to our Committee there.5 This is because my report was a sharp attack on the “silk worm” (inter-uterine affair) that she advocates.6 The Russian experiments were violently opposed to the “silk-worm.”7 I gave a full report on their experiences. Now she writes me that “German science is far more advanced in this respect than Russia.” German science hell! She means her own experiments. She is a dear friend of mine and a very valuable woman, but I don’t like the silk worm affair and I don’t like her method of holding up my report because it is opposed to her experience. I am writing her this.8 And I am writing to you a personal letter, merely letting off my anger. I see by the Japanese press that B.C. is a great issue in Japan—-becoming even a national issue.9 I have some clippings some place but cannot find them this minute. I’ll send them to you when I find them.10 I’m worked to death trying to write enough articles to make a living and so can think of little else.11 It seems the Birth Control Courses in Berlin were a great success, attended by 200 physicians, and that they are starting others in February,—-this month.12 Mrs. Durant, who was your translator at your lecture, criticised the work, saying it had a political tendency.13 But Frau Dr. Wolf answered correctly in saying that we had first tried to interest the Medical Women’s Assn. in starting B.C., and they were too respectable to touch it; but that we were still willing to work with them if they would come in.14 The fact is that upper-class physicians in Germany are afraid of losing their patients by the clinical work now being done in Berlin; and they bring in politics as an excuse.15 Anyway, the work in Germany is now an accomplished fact. I am glad you have given the laboratorium assurances of help for another six months.16 I think then the Dept. of Health should make it a national affair, and I hope if you go to Germany in the spring you talk with the Committee to induce them to make it such.17 Perhaps you can meet the Minister of Health also.18 Make that the key-stone of your lectures in Germany. This time your lectures will be on a large scale. Your name will draw huge crowds this time, and not just the Medical Women’s Assn. that so carefully decided who should be present.19 Love to you Margaret. Agnes [signed] P.S. I never go near the Americans out here. After the American Consulate report secret report against me, I keep clear of them.20 As soon as I can

154  •  Zurich

hear from Mr. Roe I shall perhaps adopt other ↑tactics↓.21 But first I want a protest sent to the American Embassy, or Legation, or whatever it is, in Peking.22 [Handwritten] Send me a copy of your new book23 this was sent months ago to China. Agnes TLS MSP, DLC (LCM 10:487–88).

1. Smedley, who arrived in drought- and famine-stricken Harbin, Manchuria, at the end of December, met with Chinese and Japanese Communists and wrote reports for the Comintern on the political and economic situation there. The British had her under surveillance for her support of Indian nationalism, while American intelligence suspected that she was a Soviet agent. (Price, Lives of Agnes Smedley, 175–78.) 2. Smedley had suffered a nervous breakdown in Mukden (Shenyeng), Manchuria. (MacKinnon and MacKinnon, Agnes Smedley, 135.) 3. China established a Ministry of Health in October 1928 to improve public health by supervising medical professionals and hospitals, sanitation work, and local health policies. Following MS’s 1922 trip to China, birth control leagues were organized in Peking and Shanghai, but were not very active. Smedley also went to Peking in March and met with the education minister to discuss a plan to incorporate birth control into their program. (S. M. Hillier and J. A. Jewell, eds., Health Care and Traditional Medicine in China, 1800–1982 [Boston, 1983], 53–54; Smedley to MS, Mar. 21, 1929, and T. P. Wong to Ruth Albert, July 31, 1922 [LCM 10:580, 12:520]; Strand, Rickshaw Beijing, 171.) 4. Martha Ruben-Wolf (1887–1939), a German Communist physician active in the abortion reform movement, took over leadership of the BfG when Smedley left Germany. The letter was not found. (Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 50.) 5. Smedley’s report of her Moscow trip in December 1928 was not found. Although not sponsored by the KPD, several in the BfG were Communist Party members. 6. This intrauterine device (IUD), popularized by German doctor Ernst Gräfenberg, was made of silkworm gut stretched and tied with fine silver thread into the shape of a ring. It was inserted and removed by a physician, usually under anesthesia. It could be left in place for a year or longer, but there was a risk of pelvic inflammatory disease or accidental expulsion. Gräfenberg reported success rates of almost 97 percent. (M. Theiry, “Pioneers of the Intrauterine Device,” European Journal of Contraception and Reproductive Health Care 2 [Mar. 1997]: 15–16; Gräfenberg, “Intrauterine Contraceptive Method.”) 7. In 1926 Ruben-Wolf, who had close ties with the Soviet Union, tried to introduce the silkworm IUD in Moscow, but the risk of inflammation led the Health Department to reject it. Shortly afterward, Gräfenberg abandoned the silkworm IUD in favor of one made of silver or gold, which had fewer complications. (Gräfenberg, “Intrauterine Contraceptive Method,” 34–35; Martha Ruben-Wolf, “Birth Control in Soviet Russia,” in Practice of Contraception, edited by MS and Stone, 261.) 8. This letter was not found. 9. By the late 1920s, concerns about overpopulation prompted Japan’s government to allow the organization of more clinics and greater access to contraception and birth

February 1929  •  155 control information. In 1928 the government formed a population committee to study birth control and eugenics. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 41–42; Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 138–50.) 10. The clippings were not found. 11. Though Smedley was still officially associated with the Frankfurter Zeitung, most of her time was spent working for the Comintern. (MacKinnon and MacKinnon, Agnes Smedley, 135; Price, Lives of Agnes Smedley, 188.) 12. The German Birth Control Committee held a three-day medical lecture series in Berlin at the end of December 1928. Despite opposition and threats from organized medical societies, the meetings attracted some two hundred physicians to debate and discuss methods and practices. (Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 55; Ruben-Wolf, “German Birth Control Committee,” 237–38.) 13. Anne-Marie Durand-Wever (1889–1970), a German physician and sex reform activist associated with the BDÄ, ran a sex and marriage counseling center in Berlin. Durand-Wever was wary of associating birth control with politics. (Bernd-Rainer Barth, Wer War Wer in DDR [Frankfurt, 1995], 151; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 41, 159, 192; Quack, Between Sorrow and Strength, 225.) 14. The BDÄ had a broad representation of women physicians, including Catholics and political conservatives. League members Durand-Wever and Annie Friedlander worked at the BDÄ’s “Confidential Counseling Center for Married and Engaged Couples,” but birth control was not included. (Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 51, 57.) 15. Physicians’ opposition to birth control clinics was based not wholly on moral or medical objections to contraception, but also on the fear that expanded public health care would hurt their practices. Catholic and conservative physicians also shunned birth control due to its association with Communists and Socialists. (Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 59–60.) 16. MS gave the committee’s Berlin clinic twelve hundred dollars between June 1927 and May 1928. She hoped that the Germans would then take over the support of the clinic, freeing her to support work in China. (Ruben-Wolf to MS, Aug. 9, 1930, and MS to Smedley, Mar. 23, 1929 [LCM 13:1033, 10:490].) 17. MS did not return to Germany until August. The economic crisis in Weimar Germany sharpened debate over the expansion of public welfare programs and the inclusion of birth control, but there were no serious efforts to nationalize birth control. (1929 Calendar [LCM 2:782]; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 57–59.) 18. Germany’s Department of Health (Reichsgesundheitsrat) was headed by Carl Hamel (1870–1949). (Bettina Blessing, Pathways of Homoeopathic Medicine [Heidelburg, 2011], 75.) 19. For the details of MS’s BDÄ meetings on December 6, 1927, see MS to How-Martyn, Dec. 11, 1927, notes 8–9, herein. 20. The British Secret Service had challenged Smedley’s American citizenship, claiming that she had married Indian nationalist Virendranath Chattopadhyaya. Under the 1922 Cable Act, any American woman who married a foreign national lost her American citizenship. Smedley feared that the British Secret Service was attempting to “declare me an Indian subject, which makes me liable to arrest as a political offender. . . . I feel they are quite capable of manufacturing a marriage certificate and presenting it to the

156  •  Zurich American authorities, to get the ‘legal’ right of declaring me a British subject.” (Price, Lives of Agnes Smedley, 182–83; Smedley to MS, May 12, 1929 [quote] [LCM 10:492].) 21. Gilbert E. Roe (1865–1929), a well-known free-speech attorney, had been representing Smedley since 1918. (New York Times, Dec. 23, 1929. For more on Roe and the Sangers in 1915, see Vol. 1.) 22. Roe advised Smedley to confront the American consul about the inaccurate reports, but she dropped her complaint, possibly unwilling to have her activities scrutinized too closely. (Price, Lives of Agnes Smedley, 182–83.) 23. This is a reference to Motherhood in Bondage, published in the fall of 1928.

55. To K atharina Lipinski Stützin With Agnes Smedley in China, Sanger began to cast her net more widely in seeking allies in the German birth control movement, taking care that birth control not be viewed as solely a Communist or Socialist cause and focusing more on birth control, rather than including support for abortion or general family services. (Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 51.)

[New York, N.Y.] March 4, 1929.

Dear Mrs. Stutzin: It was very comforting to me to have your letter of February 13th—and to realize that you will help Dr. Weaver encourages me greatly.1 I agree absolutely with you about Politics.2 Birth Control is above nationality and race and any group of Politicians. Certainly in the past it has been violently opposed by the Socialists in Germany and England.3 So to find a group of Socialists actually working on the clinics sounds to us like a miracle has happened.4 It is as if the Pope promised his blessing on the cause! (almost).5 Now I can promise you and everyone else that no group shall dominate the conference— except Women and Scientists. We shall be most careful as to whom to choose on our committee and you and Dr. Weaver should be able to recommend the best people from Germany. We can assure you that the representatives from U.S.A.,6 England7 and the Scandinavian countries8 will be independent of politics and you can keep an eye on Germany,9 Austria,10 Hungary.11 However if you both12 are on the committee all names will come before you and you will be able to help us decide. In this way you will help us keep Politics out and put Birth Control in— I hope Mrs. How Martyn may soon be well enough to go over to Berlin to see you. I am asking her to do this very soon.13 Please communicate with her and arrange when she can see you both. Thanking you for your letters. Sincerely yours, TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 13:834).

March 1929  •  157 1. Stützin suggested that Anne-Marie Durand-Wever organize the BfG because a woman physician with an official title could better handle the politics, but she offered to help unofficially. (Stützin to MS, Feb. 13, 1929 [LCM 13:831].) 2. Stützin noted that she understood MS’s loyalty to the Socialists and Communists who “first gave you the possibility to realize your ideas in Germany . . . at a time where all the others were still handicapped.” But, she warned, “this first group can’t be allowed to identify the idea of B.C. with their political ideas, for B.C. must be for everybody.” (Stützin to MS, Feb. 13, 1929 [LCM 13:831].) 3. For British and German Socialists’ views, see MS, “Women in Germany,” Aug. 18, 1920, note 8, herein. 4. MS refers to the early and steady support for birth control from organizations such as the VSÄ and the VKB as well as individuals, including Helene Stöcker, Kurt Bendix, and Max Hodann. (Usborne, Politics of the Body, 128; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 52.) 5. Pope Pius XI (1857–1939), the Italian-born Achille Ratti, was the pontiff from 1922 to 1939. He upheld Catholic teaching against contraception, but had not specifically addressed the issue. (EB; Noonan, Contraception, 415–24.) 6. American delegates included clinic nurse Anna K. Daniels; statistician Marie Kopp; physicians Nadina Kavinoky, Abraham and Hannah Stone, and Rachelle Yarros; and social worker Morris Waldman. (MS and Stone, Practice of Contraception, 315–16.) 7. Delegates from the United Kingdom included scientists John R. Baker, Oliver Bird, C. P. Blacker, Cecil I. B. Voge, and B. P. Wiesner; physicians Lily Butler, Norman Haire, Joan Malleson, C. Killick Millard, A. Walton, and Helena Wright; social worker Gladys Cox; and activists Flora Blumberg, C. V. Drysdale, Elizabeth S. Daniels, Lelia Secor Florence, Evelyn Fuller, Gerda S. Guy, Edith How-Martyn, Margaret Maze, Margery Moodie, L. L. Robson, and Marie Stopes. Janet Chance was one of the two secretaries. (MS and Stone, Practice of Contraception, 315–16.) 8. The Scandinavian countries were represented by J. H. Leunbach of Denmark and Elise Ottesen-Jensen for Sweden. (MS and Stone, Practice of Contraception, 315–16.) 9. The German committee consisted of physicians Kurt Bendix, Anne Marie-DurandWever, Ernst Gräfenberg, Max Hodann, Martha Ruben-Wolf, Richard Schmincke, Helene Stöcker, Mathilde Winternitz, and Lothar Wolf. Other German delegates included Rudolf Elkan, Lotte Fink, Hans Harmsen, Hans Lehfeldt, Ludwig Levy-Lenz, Hertha Riese, and Charlotte Wolff. (MS and Stone, Practice of Contraception, 236–38, 315–16; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 41.) 10. Betty Ferch, Johann Ferch, and Wilhelm Reich represented Austria. (MS and Stone, Practice of Contraception, 268–71, 307.) 11. Hungary was not represented at the 7IBCC. 12. MS refers to Stützin and her husband, Joachim (Johann) Stützin. 13. How-Martyn was recovering from a bout of scarlet fever. (How-Martyn to MS, Jan. 31 and Feb. 14, 1929 [MSM S4:952 and LCM 14:911].)

158  •  Zurich

56. To Edith How-Martyn Still grappling with poor health, How-Martyn felt too weak to organize the 7IBCC. She further declared, “I do not, after the experience of 1927, feel at all sure that I am the kind of person to run such a Conference. My uncompromising feminist and democratic views are far too pronounced . . . [and] it is as well to avoid as far as possible working with folk with whom there have been differences of opinion. Nearly all the men connected with the last Conference come into that category!!” (How-Martyn to MS, Mar. 15, 1929 [LCM:14:928].)

[Hot Springs, Va.] April 4/29

Edith dearest: Today the copies of letters came.1 Yes we do seem to have struck friends of H. Stöcker.2 She has had a new lease of life in her work by associating herself with the clinic committee in Berlin.3 But nevertheless Edith I do not want to tie up with that group at all.4 Birth Control is beyond them in many ways— Usually I find the radicals take b.c. only to raise themselves or their cause a notch or two. Never will they agree that bc is as big & important as I feel & believe it to be.5 Then too B.C. must stand alone & bring to its fold the sociologists & Social workers & others who can vision its importance in the scheme of a new generation. The more I think of having the Conference in Berlin the more I am afraid of it— Unless Dr Durand and Frau Stutzen would organize a special German Committee of standing it would be useless to try it.6 I do not want H. S’s crowd just now.7 We have them already. No converting them & their names will not add a new person to the Conference. Did you write to Dr. Hirsch I think that is his name. He is not the biologist but the Economist & one of standing. He said he would help us in the future—providing he was asked before the plans were already made—— You met him but we never could hear from him for Geneva, yet he came & I had a long talk with him there. He was hurt because he was not consulted as to names in Germany first.8 So please write him & ask to see him when you go there & tell him ↑about↓ the situation. Of course we could go again to Geneva, or we could go to Munich or Buda Pest or to Copenhagen. The date is not yet settled of course, but I do agree that the last week in August has its advantages. All these plans however fall to pieces when I think that you are not well enough to take the reigns in England for me— Marjorie Martin & Mrs Tait will be good helpers I know9 but they are not Edith— I am waiting for you to go to Berlin before deciding definitely. If you think it necessary for me to come over to Europe do write me frankly. I could go over for a month in July or Aug. Grant has been here with us for a few

April 1929  •  159

days. Now he is back at Princeton.10 We return next week & then I settle into reorganizing the clinic so I may have money enough to start another one in the colored Section of Harlem.11 The League goes on with its new President, we seldom see each other and I am so relieved to be free that I am surprised to realize the burden the Review really was all those years.12 So you are about to run on a BC ticket so the N.G. says—are you well enough Edith dear?13 That means hard work over here. I am gathering facts for a book. I intend to write a history of the B.C. Movement.14 If among your papers or memory you find notes on events of interest please collect some for me so I can get as full a story as possible. I have not begun to feel out the Economists here yet, but I shall do so when you size up the Berlin situation. The points to consider are on another page. I am well. So is the Squire. Emma is at Willowlake preparing the house for our return.15 love ever dearest Edith. devotedly Margaret ENCLOSURE Berlin: Can a Conference be held there, without including [the old groups of Mr Moll, Stocker & others?]16 Can it be held without a riot or rumpus on the part of the Communists who are now organizing b.c. clinics. [Dr Wolf?] & others. Can a conference be held in Berlin without either of these forces? Can it be held with their combined interest but not their domination? Is this possible? Will Professional & Scientific persons of Standing unite with either group in a conference? Is Berlin the best city in Germany to hold a Conference on BC? How about Dresden—? Munich? Get suggestions from Dr Hirsch as to persons names— Will Dr Hirsch help? Will he be Chairman of a Committee?17 Get names of those attending Geneva conference & ask opinion (Germany & Austria).18 ALS EHMP, MSPP (MSM C4:954–61). Letterhead of the Homestead. Portions of the enclosure were obliterated by Eileen Palmer.

1. How-Martyn’s translations of letters by German women’s rights activist Lida Gustava Heyman and Katharina Stützin were not found. (How-Martyn to MS, Mar. 22, 1929 [LCM 14:1929].) 2. How-Martyn wrote that many Germans referred them to Dr. Helene Stöcker, noting that “it will be difficult to decide between Mme. Durand and Frau Stutzin and the Helen

160  •  Zurich Stöcker group, as it is quite evident that they will not work together.” (How-Martyn to MS, Mar. 22, 1929 [LCM 14:934].) 3. The sixty-year-old Stöcker joined Smedley’s BfG in April 1928. (Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 52.) 4. Stöcker’s BfMS included free-love advocates, radicals, and Communists and thus alienated other activists. A month earlier, MS told How-Martyn, “I do not want to depend upon the advice of the old radical group, like Helen Stocker, because that is just the influence that the new group many refuse to cooperate with.” (Amy Hackett, “Helene Stöcker: Left-Wing Intellectual and Sex Reformer,” in When Biology Became Destiny [New York, 1984], 109–10; MS to How-Martyn, Mar. 1, 1929 [quote] [LCM 14:924].) 5. MS later acknowledged that “the radicals alone had had the vision and the courage to support me in the early days,” but accused some of advocating birth control “not to further it but strategically to utilize in their own program of anarchism.” (MS, Autobiography, 394 [quote 1], 207 [quote 2].) 6. Durand-Wever faced difficulties organizing a birth control conference because of factional politics in the German movement. The BfG, for example, included members of the KPD, SPD, VSÄ, and the BfMS, but excluded members of the BDÅ and Stützin’s Arbeitszentrale für Geburtenregelung (Center for Birth Control). She and Stützin hoped to form a committee of Germans with practical or clinical experience with contraception, excluding those who were solely activists. (Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 40; DurandWever to MS, May 10, 1929, and Stützin to MS, May 11, 1929 [LCM 124:225B, 222B].) 7. “H. S.” refers to Helene Stöcker and the BfMS. 8. Max Hirsch (1877–1948), a German Jewish eugenicist and gynecologist and a prominent member of the Berlin Gesellschaft der Ärzte und Eugenik (Berlin Society of Physicians and Eugenics), helped found the Archiv für Frauenheilkunde und Eugenik (Archive for Gynecology and Eugenics). He attended the WPC as a representative of the Rassenbiologie‑Institut der Kaiser‑Wilhelm‑Institut (Race Biology Institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute) in Berlin. MS may have confused him with Liebmann Hersch, a Polish demographer. (E. S., “Max Hirsch, M.D.,” British Medical Journal 1, no. 4564 [1948]: 1263; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 163; MS, Proceedings of the WPC, 365; HansWalter Schmuhl, The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics [Dordrecht, Netherlands, 2008], 18–19, 106, 462.) 9. MS asked Marjorie Martin, who lived in Switzerland and had helped MS on the WPC, to help organize the 7IBCC. Florence Arnold Tait (1881–1948), the wife of International Labour Organization official Duncan Christie Tait, lived in Geneva from 1921. (Times [London], Dec. 3, 1948; England and Wales Marriage Index, 1916–2005.) 10. Grant Sanger was then a sophomore at Princeton. (Grant Sanger to MS, Jan. 15, 1929 [MSM S4:936].) 11. MS and Slee were relaxing at a high-end resort in the Allegheny Mountains from March 30 to April 9. She had been working with social workers, doctors, and nurses to open a birth control clinic in Harlem to serve both African American and white patients. She had applied to the Julius Rosenwald Fund for support, promising that the BCCRB would run the clinic, which opened in February 1930, with the help of an advisory committee of African American leaders. (1931 Calendar [MSM S78:610]; Edwin R. Embree to MS, Apr. 1, 1929 [LCM 31:162]; Jessie May Rodrique, “The Afro-American Community

September 1929  •  161 and the Birth Control Movement, 1918–1942,” [Ph.D. diss., University of Massachusetts, 1991], 46–48.) 12. MS refers to Eleanor Dwight Jones. MS had edited the BCR from 1917 to 1929. (MS to Huse, Jan. 31, 1929 [MSM S4:957]; see also Vol. 2.) 13. Early in 1929, How-Martyn worked for a joint committee of British women’s groups, investigating the position of parliamentary candidates on birth control. She briefly considered running for Parliament, but rejected the idea due to the cost and her mother’s illness and her own lingering weakness. “N.G.” stands for the New Generation, the new name of the ML’s journal. The March issue noted that How-Martyn would run if five hundred pounds could be raised and a constituency found near London. (How-Martyn to MS, Jan. 31, 1929 [MSM S4:952]; Vera Houghton, “International Planned Parenthood Federation, Part 1,” Eugenics Review 53 [Oct. 1961]: 151; “Passing Comments,” New Generation 8 [Mar. 1929]: 1.) 14. MS’s proposed history eventually became her first autobiography, My Fight for Birth Control (1931). (MS to Françoise Cyon Lafitte, Apr. 3, 1929 [MSM S5:15].) 15. MS refers to Emma Hackins Kitzweger. 16. MS hoped to end her association with the sex reform movement, particularly Albert Moll’s INGESE, Helene Stöcker’s BfMS, and Magnus Hirschfeld’s IfS, because it distracted her attention from birth control. 17. A reference to Max Hirsch; see note 8. 18. The Germans who attended the WPC were biologist Edwin Baur, statistician Robert Engelsmann, anatomy professor Eugene Fisher, social scientist Henriette Fürth, biologist Richard Goldschmidt, foreign affairs scholar Hugo Grothe, social hygiene professor Alfred Grotjahn, eugenicist Hans Harmsen, gynecologist Max Hirsch, economist Robert Kuczynski, physician and writer Hertha Riese, and economist Karl C. Thalheim. The Austrians were economist Rudolph Goldscheid and public health leader Julius Tandler. (MS, Proceedings of the WPC, 363–68.)

57. To Clinton F. Chance 1 Sanger and her son Grant sailed to England on July 22, where she visited friends, including spending a weekend on the Chances’ yacht, Polaris. She left for Paris on August 11 and arrived in Berlin on August 14, where she met with Martha Ruben-Wolf and Katharina Stützin. She returned to Paris on August 18 and sailed home on August 24. (1929 Calendar [LCM 2:781, 783]; New York Times, Aug. 9, 1929; for more on this trip, see Vol. 2.)

[Fishkill?, N.Y.]2 September 7, 1929.

Dear Clinton: Now that I am home again with a secretary3 to help, I want to get this letter off to you. I do not know how much money is in the International Fund. Will you please have your secretary drop me a line to say if a check came from Arnold

162  •  Zurich

for £104–3–6 last March. I requested that they send it [promptly] to you for that Fund.4 I should like, if possible, to draw on the Fund for the next year, to send [£20?] a month to Dr. Martha Ruben-Wolf, (Berlin, [Niederschoneweide], Berlinerstr. 129, Germany) in Berlin. This is to go for the two clinics in Berlin that need financial assistance.5 If you would rather have this paid quarterly, you can depend upon Dr. Wolf using it properly. She is Treasurer for the Committee there who supervise the work of the Clinics, meet, consult and check up on the work done. It is a very good Committee of doctors.6 I met almost all of them and you may meet some of them at the Conference in London.7 They are, of course, radical and semi-radical, but the point is they are doing [hard?] work and are reaching the working people. I have promised to support their work for the next year. 1. I requested that a demonstration clinic be started where doctors from all over Germany could come and learn the technique of contraception. This the Committee is going to consider and I think that can be accomplished. I should like to have the Medical Committee of Berlin keep in touch with the Medical Committee of London.8 In this way contacts will be kept alive, which I think are very important for clinical work. 2. Your letter regarding Haire is O.K. with me.9 He will take up his suggestion with you and ask for financial help. I told him that it will depend entirely upon your opinion. 3. I pointed out to E. H. M. that the work she is doing is already covered by Dr. Dickinson’s Committee on Maternal Health in New York,10 and much of it by Dr. Blacker, as you already stated.11 4. As to China—certainly that is the biggest job to [tackle]. Already from the little that I did when I was in Shanghai there has been a great nucleus there.12 Only a few days ago I read that the missionaries are willing to cooperate in assisting some organization to help the Chinese limit their numbers.13 Now that Berlin is out of the way, Zurich seems the next logical place.14 (Mr. Ferch of Austria has invited us to hold the Conference in Vienna)15 I think Zurich is more preferable and more central. After the Conference in September, it is quite likely that J. N. and I will take a trip to the East, covering India, China and Japan.16 If Janet could come along on that world tour, it would be my heart’s delight.17 Something to think of and to plan for. I do not think, however, that we can avoid pulling the threads together in Europe and in U.S.A. Europe will lead, especially with the medical profession, and if we can get Germany, Austria, Hungary and Russia to carry contraceptive advice in their family and public health work, the idea will gradually permeate into the Orient; but before that time, some work must be done in the Orient, too. Thanks for the dates of publications in China. I may be able to get some

September 1929  •  163

of them. I know the Outlook and the Critic and had a long conversation with the editors of these papers when in China.18 If I can use Janet’s name at either the Pryors or 199 Picadilly, it will be most helpful in the Conference work.19 Janet may not want to be secretary, but if she can be secretary pro-tem, it would be a most helpful thing. The work will not be too difficult, because most of it will be done here. Nevertheless, it is important to have someone in London with whom people in Europe can get in touch.20 In a few weeks I shall get out the first call to the Conference and outline a program and begin to prepare for that event.21 I hope it will not be too expensive and I think it need not be. I am trying to get Mrs. Nohowel who lives in Lucerne to form a Hospitality Committee right away. She knows everyone. She is an American woman living there and has ample means to help us without involving any expense.22 Perhaps you met her in Geneva. I found things in Germany remarkably good. Birth Control is carried on efficiently. The only drawback is lack of funds; but they are doing magnificent work—by far better than any of the clinics that I have seen elsewhere.23 If you have time in your next letter, tell me what you think of the idea of carrying three or four pages in the Spanish medical magazine that I told you about in my last letter.24 I have not seen Dr. Dickinson yet, but I expect to as soon as he returns from his holiday.25 My love to you all and best regards from J. N. and Grant. Affectionately, (over)[additional page(s) missing] TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 124:60). Carbon smears.

1. Clinton Chance continued to support the international movement, working with C. P. Blacker on the British Birth Control Investigation Committee (BCIC). (MS to How-Martyn, Aug. 9, 1929 [MSM C4:1044].) 2. MS, who arrived home from Europe on August 29, was dividing her time between Willowlake and New York City. (1929 Calendar [LCM 2:784]; 1929 Calendar [MSM 78:629].) 3. MS refers to Anna Lifshiz. 4. Chance had opened the Birth Control Development Fund (BCDF) into which he deposited royalties from the Proceedings of the WPC, published by Edward A. Arnold (1857–1942), to support the next conference. The fund balance was £842. (E. M. Clay to MS, Sept. 20, 1929, and MS to Crew, Dec. 23, 1927 [LCM 124:61A, 19:981]; Chance to MS, June 20, 1928 [MSM S4:507]; Times [London], Nov. 9, 1942.) 5. MS was funding Ruben-Wolf ’s clinics at £20 per month, which she estimated as about $100 for a year. (MS to Ruben-Wolf, Sept. 7, 1929, Ruben-Wolf to MS, Aug. 19, 1929, and Clay to MS, Sept. 20, 1929 [LCM 13:898, 887, 124:61A].) 6. MS refers to BfG members Max Hodann, Richard Schmincke, Helene Stöcker, Martha Ruben Wolf, and Mathilde Winternitz in April 1928. (Ruben-Wolf, “German Birth Control Committee,” 236.)

164  •  Zurich 7. MS refers to the WLSR Congress to be held on September 8–14, 1929. (See MS to Jonathan Leunbach, Jan. 8 and Mar. 5, 1929 [LCM 13:27, 29].) 8. MS refers to the BCIC formed in February 1927 by a group of British physicians who aimed to publish impartial medical data on birth control in order to foster its acceptance among the medical community. (Leathard, History of the Malthusian League, 39.) 9. Norman Haire, a WLSR vice president, organized the London congress. Chance’s letter was not found. (Crozier, “Becoming a Sexologist,” 299–300.) 10. Robert Latou Dickinson’s Committee on Maternal Health reviewed medical literature on contraceptives, inspected clinics, developed medical indications for dispensing birth control, and initiated research on sterility and fertility. MS had written that there might be “overlapping along certain lines.” (Dickinson, “Contraception: A Medical Review of the Situation,” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 8 [Nov. 1924]: 3; MS to How-Martyn, Aug. 9, 1929 [quote] [MSM C4:1044].) 11. Chance referred to the BCIC. C. P. (Carlos Paton) Blacker (1895–1975) was a British psychiatrist who specialized in eugenics and population issues and was honorary secretary of the Population Investigation Committee. (MS to How-Martyn, Aug. 22, 1929 [MSM C4:1059]; Times [London], Apr. 25, 1975; Soloway, Demography and Degeneration, 187.) 12. The workers in China likely included Maxwell Stewart in Peking, James Yen in Ding Xian, and a group of prominent physicians and social workers, including ChuanHua Lowe, J. W. Nipps, and Dr. Zok T. Wang, who formed the Shanghai Jieyu Lianmeng (SJL) (Shanghai Birth Control League) in 1930. Chance’s letter regarding China was not found. (C. H. Lowe, “Record of Two Meetings of the Preparatory Committee on Birth Control Organizations in Shanghai,” Apr. 1930 [LCM 12:557].) 13. MS refers to Maxwell Stewart’s call “for the missionary movement to take up actively the problem of birth-control in China.” (Stewart, “Missions and Population Control,” 783 [quote]; Stewart to the Chinese Recorder [June 1929]: 393–94.) 14. While some of the British, such as Edith How-Martyn and Norman Haire, wanted the 7IBCC to be held in Germany, a number of Germans, including Harmsen, DurandWever, Grotjahn, and others, decided on May 28, 1929, that 1930 was not the best time to hold a conference there. (Stützin to MS, May 28, 1929, How-Martyn to MS, June 12, 1929, and MS to Johann and Betty Ferch, Sept. 6, 1929 [LCM 124:226, 14:951, 124:237]; How-Martyn to MS, Aug. 22, 1929, and MS to How-Martyn, Aug. 10, 1929 [MSM S5:189, C4:1044]; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 40.) 15. Johann Ferch had opened seven consultation centers for the Vienna BfG and four others elsewhere. He and his wife, Betty, suggested Vienna because “Austria is . . . principally with regard to freedom of speech and propaganda opportunity, the freest country in Europe.” (Johann and Betty Ferch to MS June 12, 1928, and July 30, 1929 [quote], [LCM 11:961, 124:242B]; Ruth Amberg, “The Ferch Clinic in Vienna,” BCR 13 [Sept. 1929]: 260–61.) 16. Before joining MS in Europe in August, Slee arranged for the sale of his Three-inOne Oil Company for an estimated six million dollars in stock. MS postponed her plans for an extended trip to the Far East, explaining that “my husband has not been very well, and the economic conditions in the U.S.A. put any plans for travel out of the immediate future.” (New York Times, Aug. 9, 1929; Rublee to MS, Sept. 28, 1929 [MSM S5:223]; MS to Nipps, Sept. 30, 1930 [quote] [LCM 12:583]; see Vol. 2 for more on Slee’s finances.)

november 1929  •  165 17. MS refers to Janet Chance, a member of the Workers’ Birth Control Group, founded in 1924 to lobby for greater birth control access. Chance also opened a marriage advice center for working residents in London’s East End in February 1929. (DNB; Haire, Proceedings of the Third WLSR Congress, 37–39.) 18. The China Critic, an English-language weekly that covered current issues, was edited by Kwei Chungshu (Gui Zhongshu) in Shanghai from May 1928. The China Outlook, an English-language monthly published in Peking from 1927 to 1928, was edited by Maxwell Stewart and Thomas Brisson. (John Zou, “English Idiom and Republican China,” World Englishes 21 [Jan. 10 2003]: 296; Earl Browder, “Review of Enemies and Friends,” Political Science Quarterly 83 [Dec. 1968]: 661.) 19. The Pryors was the Chances’ home in Hampstead, England; the Piccadilly address was Clinton Chance’s brokerage office in London. (Keith Hindell and Madeleine Simms, Abortion Law Reformed [London, 1971], 57.) 20. Janet Chance served as the 7IBCC European secretary until Marjorie Martin took over in April 1930. (Chance to MS, Apr. 21, 1930 [LCM 124:117].) 21. For the 7IBCC announcement and preliminary program, see MSM S67:168–70. 22. Margaret Dressler Nohowel (1888–1969), a German-born painter and the ex-wife of Long Island judge Frank Nohowel, moved to Switzerland after her divorce. (SSDI.) 23. German women could obtain contraceptive advice from municipal marriage and sex advice clinics, private clinics sponsored by birth control groups, and VKB clinics. (C. Robinson, Seventy Birth Control Clinics, 35; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 50.) 24. MS refers to Vox Medica, a Spanish-language medical journal, edited in Berlin by Katharina Stützin’s husband, Joaquin (Johann) Stützin (1878–1949), a Lithuanian-born sexologist and urologist who worked at the Kaiserlin-Auguste-Viktoria hospital in Berlin after practicing in Chile. After Chance discussed it with Blacker, he asked for a copy of the magazine so he could “see its possibilities.” (Godofredo Stützin to editors, Feb. 2, 2003; Stützin to MS, Apr. 26, 1933, Chance to MS, Oct. 11, 1929, and MS to Chance, Oct. 21, 1929 [quote] [LCM 14:105, 124:62B, 64].) 25. MS was negotiating with Robert Dickinson for medical support for the BCCRB. For more on this endeavor, see Vol. 2.

58. Excerpt from Agnes Smedley 1 The last four paragraphs of this four-page single-spaced, typed letter were omitted from the edition because of space limitations.

Shanghai, China Nov. 21. 1929

Dearest Margaret: I wish to tell you a few things about B.C. We have decided to have a Birth Control conference in Peiping (Peking) in December, and I am leaving here and going up to Peking for that purpose.2 Two of us are going from here, although a third may ↑also↓ go at the time.

166  •  Zurich

The head of the Peiping group is Maxwell Stewart, who is doing considerable work there and has organized a temporary committee including both foreigners and Chinese,3 among the foreigners being an American, Dr. Grant, of the Peking Union Medical College (Rockefeller Foundation).4 In the meantime James Yen, head of the mass education movement is coming to Shanghai on December 1st to see me about this.5 James Yen is head of the Ding-hsien experimental district, a district peasant district of 62 villages south of Peiping by eight hours. This is a very large district where the mass education movement is strongest, taken by them as a model center for carrying on their work, such as reading, writing, etc., sanitation in the home, modern agricultural methods, etc., etc.6 It was with these men that I spoke last winter when I was in Peking, and they were vitally interested; but a steady worker, lack of money, and lack of trained women nurses or physicians to carry out the work held up all such work. Maxwell Stewart and I have had a rather long correspondence on making Dinghsien an experimental center for Birth Control work.7 James Yen, the head of the work, is in favour of it, and on our way to Peking in December we are going to stop off in Dinghsien and see the work being done there and what is possible. In Peking we will draw up the plan you suggested.8 I am no good at plans, but am indeed rather strong on practical work. But so far as things stand now, I am in favour of making Ding-hsien the first base of the work, instead of a clinic in Peiping or Shanghai. There are reasons for this. which I shall tell later.9 I am using the check of $50 which you sent me a few weeks ago, to pay my way to Peiping, to the B.C. Conference.10 I have not used it here and do not feel justified in doing so. For my newspaper work is so pressing, so heavy, that it leaves me absolutely no time to do the work that should be done for B.C. My newspaper work binds me, by contract, to deliver a certain number of articles. This work is very heavy. Apart from that I am new to China and have to do much actual investigation work, such as factories, villages, etc.,— -things that take much time. And then I have to find some time for reading, for I am not thorough in my knowledge of Chinese history or conditions. Furthermore, to know Chinese conditions or life in these days of suppression, time must be set aside for personal contacts, which take loads of time if one would learn things—-which I do not. I have not even been doing the work required of me by the Frankfurter Zeitung, and they have complained.11 Apart from their work, I am expected to write for the Indian press.12 I have found time to do this only sporadically; it is unfortunately a secondary interest now, although I came with the intention of making it the prime interest and the Frankfurter Zeitung only my economic base. Ill health, the new conditions, political pressure due to espionage, etc., have all borne heavily upon me.13 I have not done my duty and I could not do it. Just think: my contract with

november 1929  •  167

the Frankfurter Zeitung calls for at least one political article a month, two cultural or literary articles (short stories, etc.) a month, one economic article a week, news notes each week, a two-page illustrated article (I take pictures) for their illustrated weekly once a month, and one illustrated article a month for their bi-monthly woman’s magazine. Now, I am expected to be politician, artist, woman, photographer, economist and news gatherer. And, being a fool in so far as business goes, I came under the most impossible contract you can imagine in so far as money goes. I am trying to alter this now, but I have up to date received no reply. If my demands are met, I shall hire a secretary to take much of the burden off my shoulders in so far as news articles are concerned, and in so far as investigation work for economic articles go. Up to the present time I am shot to pieces. This is the chief reason I have done nothing about B.C. in Shanghai. I had one conference with the Chinese Y.W.C.A. on this question, but I found those women were interested in using B.C. as nothing but a means of approaching Chinese women for their Christian propaganda.14 They are willing to start a clinic, alright. But with every pessary, a woman is to be given a dose of Christianity. And, being anti-Christian, I have refused to go further than this. Nor do I think you would want such a thing done. The man I have worked most with on this here in Shanghai tried to induce the hospital in the industrial factory district to give us rooms at night.15 The director is a Christian and he said though he was himself not opposed to B.C., he could not officially lend himself or his institution to this.16 The Christians out here shout about overpopulation, but when it comes to a show-down they drag in God and Jesus as an excuse for their reaction. Then other things have made me hesitate: In my investigation of factory and village conditions, I have been confronted with a depth of poverty that simply passes all comprehension. The people are so poor that they cannot buy the water to wash their own faces once a day—so how in the deuce can we find water to douche.17 Outside of the Settlements in Shanghai there are no water works and the poor have to buy it (even in some parts of the settlement also) by the bucketful. It cost a few coppers. When there is a whole family to serve from this water—cooking, washing, tea making, etc.,—it is difficult to talk of using it for douching.18 In the villages the people do not even wash their faces and they do not know what a germ or a sperm is and would regard you as a crazy person if you told them there were such things. There is a depth of destitution in China that has reduced human beings to conditions lower than animals. The workers in Shanghai live 14 and 15 in a room, the whole family sleeping on long boards for a bed. The earth is the floor and straw is the roof of their huts. A pessary, or chemicals for them—-no it is impossible.19 The thing is fantastic. They do not even have money for food and they are perpetually in debt. I am more

168  •  Zurich

and more convinced that, in so far as the vast masses of China is concerned, no B.C. work is possible until there is a national revolution that will wipe out the whole capitalist class, the land-owner class, and the foreign imperialists. The poverty is deeper and deeper. Birth Control, until that time, will be confined to the lower middle class and the middle class, not to mention the higher classes. Any clinics will be confined to such people. For B.C. requires a certain elementary knowledge and a certain elementary standard of personal hygiene. It is for this reason that I think Ding-hsien can be used as a center. It is a peasant district, to be sure. But for a number of years the mass education movement has been carrying on work there and has done as much in improvement as can be done under in the framework of the present society in China. The people there can read and write and women have carried on social work in the homes, such as teaching them about hygienic methods in preparing food, how to wash their hands and face, etc. This district is on a slightly higher level, economically, than most other places in China. There is a depth of destitution in China beneath which we cannot go in B.C., for it is absolutely no use [illegible] in wasting efforts there. If we use Ding-hsien, we have the whole apparatus of the mass education movement as the machinery for our work. In Peiping the movement prepares its only text books for educational work, and B.C. information can be prepared as lessons for the women. There they also have an artist division, with men and women painting and drawing up series of charts, with pictures and texts, from which the peasants are taught various things. These run in sets of 12 to 24, covering various subjects. We could have sets for explaining the human body, with special emphasis upon the generative organs and B.C. Then there are the women social workers. It may be that we will have to train two or three just for the work in Ding-hsien. The chief problem out here is not the theory—-of that most people are already convinced—-but trained women physicians or [illegible] to do this work nurses just to do this work.20 I hope to see what can be done in Peiping in December, just in this matter. Ding-hsien is important for another reason: there we would learn just what psychological and other obstacles would have to be overcome in our work in other places. I wonder if you have any contact with the Chinese Students Association in New York.21 If not, try to make them and try to talk to them, and then try to get hold of the women students who are physicians or social workers. And then try to induce them to come to your Clinic for special training just in B.C. methods.22 They must be given the actual training in the [illegible] examination of women, the fitting of pessaries, etc. There is a Chinese student’s union in Columbia, I am certain.23 This thing is very important, and unless men and women are trained there, we cannot do much. Many people here

november 1929  •  169

have asked me to instruct them in this. I cannot for I myself am not trained in this. If you are indeed going to turn your attention to China in 1931, then try and start right there in New York City now and train medical men and women. There is also a “Chinese Student’s Monthly” in America, edited from Ann Arbor, Michigan.24 Can’t you write an article on this subject and send it to them, and [illegible] ask Chinese students interested in this to get in touch with you.25 You can then refer students in various parts of the country to the nearest clinics for training. Really, Margaret, you cannot know how important this phase of the work is in China. Everyone knows B.C. is necessary here, but few have the training. Most Chinese women I know solve the problem by simply freezing up and refusing to live sexually with their husbands.26 The poor simply have children and let them die.27 All the problems built around this problem, which affect western women, affect Chinese women. I must also admit that when I go north to Peiping I cannot afford to go just for B.C., and I am using the occasion chiefly to gather new news material for my newspaper. I shall study Ding-hsien also from this viewpoint. [The next sixty-two lines, dealing with Smedley’s views on political conditions in China, the behavior of Americans in China, her health, and British surveillance of her, were omitted.] My love to you, Margaret. This volume closes. Agnes [signed] TLS MSP, DLC (LCM 10:449–502). Handwritten interlineations by Agnes Smedley.

1. While still working as a journalist, Smedley continued spying for the Comintern, arousing the suspicion of the British Secret Service, local Chinese authorities, and the Americans. Smedley characterized the surveillance of her as anti-Communist persecution. MS, who may not have been aware of these activities, told the Chinese ambassador to the United States in 1935 that Smedley “is in no sense of the word a Communist, nor is she receiving money from Moscow, nor from any other source but thru her own efforts.” (Price, Lives of Agnes Smedley, 187, 205; MS to Sao-Ke Alfred Sze, Feb. 16, 1935 [quote] [LCM 10:551].) 2. Smedley’s “conference” was a small meeting to form the Peiping (Peking) Committee on Maternal Health (PCMH). It was founded in February 1930 under the guidance of Maxwell Stewart, physician Marion Yang (Yang Chongrui), educator James Yen, PUMC’s social services chief Ida Pruitt, and Yenching University sociologists Leonard S. Hsu (Hsu Shih‑lien), H. C. Chang (Zhang), and L. C. Chou (Zhou). (Yang, “Birth Control in Peiping,” 786–91; Chung, Struggle for National Survival, 167.) 3. Maxwell Slutz Stewart (1900–1990) was an American-born editor and economist who taught at the Yenjing University and wrote articles supporting birth control. Smedley remarked that the Chinese intellectuals viewed him as a “goody goody,” yet she found him “a man most tenaciously insistent in his ideas, and one of them is B.C.” Based on Smedley’s belief that MS would help get American support, Stewart lined up a group of

170  •  Zurich people, including Dr. John Black Grant, James Yen, and Marian Yang, willing to back a clinic. (New York Times, Mar. 31, 1990; Stewart, “Missions and Population Control,” 778–83, and “Building towards a New China,” China Tomorrow, Nov. 29, 1929, 9–10; Agnes Smedley to MS, Mar. 12, 1929 [quotes] [MSM S4:1002]; Agnes Smedley to MS, Oct. 12, 1929, and Stewart to MS, Sept. 19 and Oct. 19, 1929 [LCM 10:588, 12:456, 548].) 4. Born in China to Canadian missionaries, public health physician John Black Grant (1890–1962) was an associate professor of public health at the RF-funded PUMC. He established close relations with Chinese physicians and medical administrators and was an adviser to China’s Mass Education Movement. (New York Times, Oct. 18, 1962; Litsios, “Selskar Gunn and China,” 298–300.) 5. Yang-chu “James” Yen (1893–1990) (Yan Yangchu), a Yale-educated Chinese teacher, was a founder of the Chung-Hua Ping Min Chiao-yii Ts’u-chin Hui Tsung-hui (National Association of Mass Education Movements). (New York Times, Jan. 16, 1990; Hayford, To the People, 132.) 6. Smedley refers to Ting Hsien, a rural county south of Peking, where in 1926 the Chung-Hua Ping Min Chiao-yii Ts’u-chin Hui Tsung-hu (CHPMCTT) (National Association of Mass Education Movements) fostered a reconstruction project, launching programs in education, literacy, health, and agriculture. Yen secured funding from the Milbank Memorial Fund to include a health program to reduce infant and maternal mortality through education in midwifery. Although there was some interest in birth control at Ding Xian, the initial focus was on reducing the death rate. (Hayford, To the People, 132, 139–40.) 7. The correspondence between Smedley, Yen, and Stewart was not found. In March 1929, Smedley argued, “The mass ed. movement has the money and the organization to carry out any plan it accepts. . . . Bear this in mind—the organization is there. Nothing else, however.” (Smedley to MS, Mar. 21, 1929 [LCM 10:580].) 8. MS’s instructions to Smedley were not found, but she promised that once a Peking group was launched, she would supply “enough money to help it maintain itself.” MS likely requested a written plan of action before committing any funds. (MS to Stewart, Nov. 29, 1929 [LCM 12:551].) 9. Smedley had noted earlier that “China is filled with good plans and no one is more capable of drawing up a nation-wide, grandiose plan than are the Chinese intellectuals. But I’d like to see . . . two or three clinics at work, doing actual demonstrative work.” (Smedley to MS, Oct. 12, 1929 [LCM 10:588].) 10. MS sent funds to jump-start birth control activities in China, which Smedley planned to hire a woman physician and a medical student to start clinics in Shanghai and Peking. She explained that while she would hold on to the money, she wouldn’t “use a penny for myself—that you know. But I know conditions out here.” (Smedley to MS, Oct. 12, 1929 [LCM 10:588].) 11. Smedley published a series of articles on the position of women in China, including a thirty-two-part series entitled “Eine Frau Allein” (A woman alone) between November 6 and December 12 for the Frankfurter Zeitung. (MacKinnon and MacKinnon, Agnes Smedley, 135, 393.) 12. Smedley headed the Chinese branch of the League against Imperialism, a Comintern front, and also wrote articles on Indian revolutionaries and about China for the

november 1929  •  171 Indian nationalist publication the People. (MacKinnon and MacKinnon, Agnes Smedley, 117, 123, 392; Price, Lives of Agnes Smedley, 152, 190–91.) 13. Smedley complained that “my stomach has been completely ruined,” in part from the strain of being under constant surveillance and the stress of her clandestine work. (Price, Lives of Agnes Smedley, 193; Smedley to MS, May 12, 1929 [quote] [LCM 10:492].) 14. Smedley may have met with Frances Willard Liu-Wang, a birth control advocate who helped form the SJL in May 1930. She also worked with the Shanghai YWCA and the Chinese Women’s Christian Temperance Union. (C. H. Lowe, “Record of the Two Meetings of the Preparatory Committee on Birth Control Organization in Shanghai,” Apr. 1930, and Agnes Smedley to MS, Mar. 20, 1931 [LCM 12:557, 589].) 15. Smedley may refer to Fu-ching Yen (Yan Fuging) (1882–1970), a physician associated with the Shanghai Medical College and PUMC. (World Scientific Publishing Company, 30 Years’ Review, 296.) 16. The refusal of the hospital director was not unusual, given a Chinese repugnance to discussing sex in public. The nationalist Kuomintang Party opposed birth control and wanted to increase China’s population. As Smedley reported to MS, “If our work is known publicly through the press, it will be stopped. The people want this information, but the Government does not.” (Durham S. F. Chen, “Possibilities of Birth Control in China,” in International Aspects of Birth Control, edited by MS, 83–84; Smedley to MS, Oct. 12, 1929 [quote] [LCM 10:558].) 17. Port cities like Shanghai built modern waterworks systems, but they were often unsanitary. Outside the cities, people drew water from contaminated rivers. (Sun Yatsen, The International Development of China [New York, 1922], 128; New York Times, July 9, 1929.) 18. The contraceptive douche worked by flushing the vaginal tract with a solution of water, usually mixed with salt, vinegar, lemon juice, or soap. Popular in the United States because it was inexpensive and did not require a doctor visit, douching was less effective than other methods and sometimes caused vaginal irritation or infections. (Himes and Stone, Practical Birth Control Methods, 113–19.) 19. The use of the pessary required access to clean water to wash the device, as well as a level of privacy. It was a more expensive method, with prices ranging from one to two and a half dollars, plus the cost of a medical visit for proper fitting. Exporting them to China would have driven prices up further. Most chemical contraceptives, including jellies, pastes, and douches, required an applicator that also needed to be washed and stored and were less effective when used without a diaphragm. Suppositories did not keep well in warm climates and, though relatively cheap, were still too expensive for the very poor. (Tone, Devices and Desires, 30, 44, 123; Himes and Stone, Practical Birth Control Methods, 49, 65; Robert L. Dickinson and Woodbridge E. Morris, Techniques of Conception Control (Baltimore, 1941), 23–24, 33.) 20. China suffered from a severe shortage of physicians and trained medical personnel, especially in rural areas, where people were forced to rely on untrained family members or midwives. The CHPMCTT expected it would take generations to address the shortage in educated medical practitioners; in the interim, they had to make do with minimally trained health workers. (Hayford, To the People, 134–40.)

172  •  Zurich 21. Smedley likely refers to the Chinese Students’ Alliance (CSA), which networked clubs of Chinese students in a number of American colleges and universities. There were three main branches of the group: the Pacific Coast CSA, the CSA of the Midwest, and the largest group, the CSA of the Eastern United States, headquartered in New York. (Christian Science Monitor, June 26, 1909, and Aug. 20, 1912.) 22. The BCCRB trained doctors and nurses in contraceptive techniques not offered in most medical schools. Most students were from the United States, but the clinic trained foreign doctors as well. (MS, “Policy,” June 1932 [MSM S61:263].) 23. Smedley may refer to the Chinese Education Research Association, established in 1915 at Teachers’ College, Columbia University. A number of its members became leading educational and cultural reformers in China. (Zhou Hongyu, “Teachers College and Chinese Education: A College and a Country‑Teachers College, Columbia University and Modern Chinese Education,” Columbia University, Center on Chinese Education, https://www.tc.columbia.edu/coce/about-us/feature-article-teachers-collegeand-chinese-education/, May 31, 2001.) 24. It was the New York chapter of the CSA, not the Midwest branch, that published the Chinese Students’ Monthly, an English-language journal that covered student life and current events (1906–31). (The “Chinese Students’ Monthly,” 1906–1931: A Grand Table of Contents [Washington, D.C., 1974].) 25. MS did not write such an article. Her response was not found. 26. The Chinese had practiced contraception since ancient times, relying primarily on continence, coitus interruptus, or coitus reservatus. They also resorted to abortifacients when necessary. Chinese medical tradition supported the practice of continence, which, it was believed, helped nourish the body. (Charlotte Furth, A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History, 960–1665 [Berkeley, Calif., 1999], 168–69; Himes, Medical History of Contraception, 106.) 27. China’s infant mortality and infanticide rates are spotty due to underreported deaths, but the best estimates are between two and three hundred per one thousand births. (Poston and Yaukey, Population of Modern China, 167.)

59. To Clinton F. Chance With the 7IBCC scheduled for Zurich, September 1–3, 1930, Sanger (the conference president) and vice presidents Marjorie Martin and Janet Chance were busy lining up funds, inviting participants, and setting the program. Clinton Chance wrote to Sanger, asserting that he was unconvinced of the value of the conference, because “B.C. in its present form is disgenic. . . . No method is ‘safe’ & most not 50% so. Before the problem can be solved there are endless problems to be examined & there are plenty of research workers waiting & anxious to do the work. Only lack of money holds them back.” (MS to Chance, Apr. 3, 1930, and Chance to MS, Apr. 20, 1930 [quote] [LCM 124:76, 80]; 7IBCC Preliminary Programme, Sept. 1–5, 1930 [MSM S67:168–70].)

May 1930  •  173

[New York, N.Y.?] May 9, 1930.

Dear Clinton: Your letter of April 20th came a few days ago, also one from Janet on the 21st.1 Your letter is just about what I expected from what Mrs. Rublee told me and also from the conversation that you and I had.2 I think, however, that if you and I were to have a good hour’s talk, you would see the facts as I see them—after four years experience and close contact with clinical work. I agree with you a hundred percent on the need for further research. I agree with you on the need of money for research; I agree that we are not satisfied with the present methods of contraception; but I do not agree with you that Birth Control in its present form is dysgenic. I think it is a theory that is not based on facts. The only facts to be obtained are those yet to come out of reports from the various clinics. Our report of ten thousand cases will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is not true.3 I will agree with you that Birth Control in the past has been dysgenic, but since we can give contraceptive instruction to those who most need it,—the unskilled, the diseased and the very poor, this will offset its dysgenic trend. We have been working in conjunction with social agencies, and even with the present knowledge of Birth Control, we have been able to tremendously offset the dysgenic tendencies that would have occurred had information been kept from certain cases.4 This work could be tremendously expanded along these lines under proper organization. Your second point that “there is no known means of Birth Control that even begins to meet the needs of the average human being to which the practice is most urgently desirable.”5 Our records do not prove this to be true and, after all, you will have to be convinced by actual facts. Won’t you? I know you want to be. Again you say no method is safe and at most, not 50% so. Unless you are entirely off, and this is where I begin to talk, and because of your statement which, doubtless, is true in certain clinics and where certain doctors are giving contraceptive advice, but for the general movement the percentage for safety is far higher.6 Now, Clinton, this is why we need a Birth Control Conference of entirely clinicians. There is such a difference in the training of physicians who are in the clinics—not only in this country but in England and in Germany. From my experience they are all going higgledy-piggledy. They have not standardized their technique; they do not instruct intelligently—even from the medical standpoint.7 You may not be aware that it is generally known that the physicians in the Clinics of England, especially in London, do not use a speculum, which horrifies our big gynecologists and obstetricians, and, doubtless, would horrify yours, if they knew about it.8 We can expect

174  •  Zurich

to get anything—like 50% safety—when the doctors themselves do not use more intelligence in a technical job. I have come to the conclusion that it is not the patient that needs so much direction as the doctor, not only the clinician, but the instructor, and I have also come to the conclusion that these are essentially two different jobs.9 I am, of course, talking entirely about the pessary. I do not care which form it is.10 The physicians who are instructing in the form of these need to be instructed themselves.11 It is this side of the question that I want discussed fully in Zurich,12 and I fully believe that if I can get the directors and the workers of the clinics together for a full, free discussion of these issues, you will find a great change in the results of the clinics in future. I can still agree with you that even when this is done, it will not be good enough; we will still want research and better methods of contraception; but the point is that lives are being saved. Women are able to prevent conception and a very much greater number could be helped even with the methods that are today known if the physicians knew their jobs better. I do not believe that you would agree that this work should be abandoned for an uncertain certain method which may be discovered far in the future.13 You say there are plenty of research workers waiting and anxious to do the work. Doubtless, this is true, but let us not forget that there are few new ideas of research workers waiting to do the work. As a matter of fact, most of the research problems are being worked on—not only in this country, but in Europe as well.14 It may be that you know of new ideas, but I do not, and if you do know of new projects that are now being taken care of in various laboratories, I should be glad to put these people in touch with available money for just this kind of work. In my opinion research work is going on as fast as it can be undertaken. It is slow—very slow, and, in the meantime, I believe it is our duty to complete the job and to make available the present knowledge in its best form. I am not proposing to organize a conference to talk about the unknown.15 On the contrary, I am proposing to organize a conference of clinicians where they will discuss the actual facts of their work. I am enclosing for your perusal the questionnaire which is to go out to all the clinics throughout the world where work has been in progress at least a year.16 I believe there are some 200 such clinics, and it is my desire to bring as many of these directors together to discuss the facts of their work and to go forward on new lines and with new ideas.17 I firmly believe that 1000 pounds spent on a fact-finding conference in Zurich is going to produce 5000 pounds of preparation and material for research, and if it falls short of that within the year, I shall be willing to join you in any campaign that you wish to put through for speeding up research. I do

May 1930  •  175

not think that 1000 pounds spent on research now would amount to a row of pins. After all, you have got to have any new contraceptive come from a desire to have a new contraceptive on the part of those who are doing the work as well as from the people. I know how you feel about the “talkers,” but this conference in Zurich is not to be a theoretical conference, such as that held by Dr. Haire in London, or by Moll in Germany.18 It is to be the first of its kind, which will bring in the facts of the various clinics, and without such a conference I do not believe that we shall be able to control the Birth Control movement and to offset what you claim it is, and what I claim it has had a dysgenic trend. I note that you say “let the talkers face the facts and talk about that which does exist—the impossibility with our present limited knowledge of Birth Control.”19 That is exactly what this conference in Zurich is going to do. I am sure if I could talk with you and tell you of the inside difficulties to be overcome, that you would agree to help financially, physically and every other way on a conference to bring these people together and convince them of these difficulties. This is the best that I can write about at present, and as I must go directly from U.S.A. to Zurich via Germany, I shall not have an opportunity to talk with you en route.20 Thanks very much for the statement regarding the development fund. I note the balance which is a little over $3000, after deducting the four months for the work in Germany. I hope you will agree to the use of this balance for the Zurich Conference which is International work, and if after this conference at any time that you desire to do or to forward a special piece of research, I shall help you with at least half of this amount.21 I suppose I shall need a good deal of money to pay part of the expenses for certain people who are giving in good reports of their work. I shall not be able to tell until I get these reports—about the first of July.22 I hope you are having a lovely time on the yacht and that you are all thoroughly enjoying the good weather. As ever, P.S. You will be glad to know that J. N. is doing nicely, but has to go very cautiously for several months.23 Owing to this and to the lateness of getting return passage, I may not be able to go to England at all, but will have to hurry back from Zurich early in September. Tell Janet I thank her for her invitation. I will let her know a little later— depending upon what accommodations I can get on return.24 Also please tell Janet that the American Social Hygiene Association is an organization mainly supported by John D. Rockefeller.25 Dr. William Snow is its director; very conservative, very influential, but good.26 Anna

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Garland Spencer and Valeria Parker work along the same lines. Parker is especially interested in venereal disease or rather the prevention of same. Spencer is interested in the economic side. Yes, they would all be keen on statistics, everyone in this country is.27 M. S. Dictated but not d. TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 124:77–79B).

1. The Chances sent separate letters to MS. In her letter, Janet Chance discussed the details of the 7IBCC and turning over her secretarial responsibilities to Marjorie Martin. (Clinton Chance to MS, Apr. 20, 1930, and Janet Chance to MS, Apr. 21, 1930 [LCM 124:80A, 117].) 2. In her April 3 letter to the Chances, MS remarked that Juliet Rublee informed her that the couple “rather strongly disapproved of the meeting in Zurich, saying that we were out of date.” (MS to Clinton and Janet Chance, Apr. 3, 1930 [LCM 124:76].) 3. In 1928, with a grant from the BSH, MS commissioned statistician Marie E. Kopp to compile data on the first ten thousand BCCRB case histories. The report, Birth Control in Practice, was published in 1933. (Marie E. Kopp, “Review of My Relations with the BCCRB,” Jan. 30, 1930, and BCCRB, “Memorandum Covering the Initiation and Progress of the Statistical Study of 10,000 Case Histories,” ca. Jan. 5, 1933 [LCM 35:438A, 451A].) 4. Many clinics worked with social agencies to refer clients who could benefit from contraceptives. Twelve percent of the BCCRB’s patients came via social welfare referrals. (Hajo, Birth Control on Main Street, 110; Kopp, Birth Control in Practice, 37.) 5. Chance actually wrote: “There is no known means of B.C. that even begins to meet the needs of the average human being & [none] that is practicable for that type of human being to which the practise is most urgently desirable.” (Chance to MS, Apr. 20, 1930 [LCM 124:80].) 6. In using the word “safety,” MS and Chance are addressing contraceptive effectiveness and the health of patients. Calculating an accurate effectiveness rate was difficult, as most of the failures came from women who did not use the product regularly or as instructed. When the pessary and jelly method was used properly, the BCCRB reported a 93.3 percent success rate and when not used correctly only a 49.2 percent success rate. The combined average was 85 percent. (Kopp, Birth Control in Practice, 176–77.) 7. Although medical schools expanded contraceptive instruction in the interwar years, there were no standardized programs or medical standards for contraceptive products. In a 1930 survey of American medical colleges, only 20 percent provided any instruction in contraception, while 44 percent covered it only in passing. There was no contraceptive training in England and Germany, and the subject was omitted from textbooks. (Tone, Devices and Desires, 135; Himes, Medical History of Contraception, 306; McLaren, History of Contraception, 233; Ruben-Wolf, “German Birth Control Committee,” 237.) 8. Though in mid-nineteenth-century England the use of the speculum for gynecological examinations was hotly debated, by 1930 it was commonly used there. American physicians had always accepted the device. (Ornella Moscucci, The Science of Women

May 1930  •  177 [Cambridge, 1990], 112–16, 126; MS and Stone, Practice of Contraception, 6; Nathan Stormer, Articulating Life’s Memory [New York, 2002], 11, 104.) 9. MS refers to teaching medical personnel to fit cervical caps and diaphragms. At the BCCRB, a physician fitted the diaphragm and provided initial instructions, and the nurse then practiced with the patient. “We have found that there are many details that the nurse can explain,” MS noted, “which need not take up the time of the physician.” (MS, BCCRB Annual Report, Dec. 1, 1929 to Nov. 1, 1930 [MSM S61:450].) 10. “Pessary” was a catchall term that encompassed several types of rubber diaphragms. MS likely refers to occlusive pessaries and cervical caps that are inserted in the vagina and cover the opening of the cervix. She did not recommend IUDs (stem pessary or wishbone pessary), which are inserted by a physician and usually made of gold, silver, or hard plastic. (Cooper, Technique of Contraception, 171–73.) 11. Few physicians who graduated by 1920 had received training in prescribing and fitting pessaries. In 1930 most physicians had to consult birth control clinics directly or books such as Cooper’s Technique of Contraception. By 1935 almost 75 percent of American doctors had received some instruction. (Tone, Devices and Desires, 135–36.) 12. MS’s goals for the 7IBCC were “1. To call together the people of the International Leagues” and “2. To discuss the facts of contraception; possible to standardize the same and to bring a resolution of those in charge that more research is needed.” (MS to Chance, Apr. 3, 1930 [quotes] [LCM: 124:76]; [MS, introduction to Practice of Contraception, edited by MS and Stone, xviii.) 13. Chance asserted that finding an effective birth control method would require “years of work & masses of patient laboratory work.” (Chance to MS, Apr. 20, 1930 [LCM 124:80].) 14. Apart from tinkering with the diaphragm, German contraceptive research centered on IUDs, such as Ernst Gräfenberg’s ring. In Great Britain, scientists at Oxford and Edinburgh investigated chemical contraceptives. In Japan and Austria, research focused on the safe period or rhythm method. In the Soviet Union and the United States, research centered on spermatoxins. The only new idea, the hormonal control of ovulation, was just beginning to be explored at the University of Edinburgh. (MS and Stone, Practice of Contraception, 98–104, 110–15, 293–95.) 15. Chance charged that MS was “proposing to organize a conference to talk about that which is not known — & spend £1000 in doing so.” (Chance to MS, Apr. 20, 1930 [LCM 124:80].) 16. The survey form included questions on the reasons for accepting patients; whether nurses, midwives, or physicians prescribed contraception or gave instruction; the methods prescribed; as well as questions about checkups, follow-up work, and other clinic work. Although many replies to the questionnaire, sent out a few months before the 7IBCC, were received, only fifty-five (from the United States, England, and Germany) were complete enough to be tabulated. (For a copy of the questionnaire in German, see LCM 124:356; for the results, see Hannah Stone, “Summary,” in Practice of Contraception, edited by MS and Stone, 298–300.) 17. The exact number of clinics worldwide is unclear, especially as definitions varied. Caroline Robinson found seventy clinics that could provide statistics for her 1930 study, thirty-nine in Europe and the Soviet Union and thirty-one in the United States.

178  •  Zurich She acknowledged hearing of “some two hundred and fifty other centers . . . for which statistics were not available.” Another study identified sixty clinics in operation in the United States in 1930. (Robinson, Seventy Birth Control Clinics, 8–19, 3; Hajo, Birth Control on Main Street, 24.) 18. MS referred to Norman Haire and the 1929 WLSR Congress and Albert Moll’s 1926 ICSR. How-Martyn criticized Moll’s conference for offering “too many papers to consider any subject thoroughly.” (How-Martyn to MS, ca. Oct. 1926 [quote] [LCM 13:601]; Crozier, “‘All the World’s a Stage,’” 23, 27, 30.) 19. Chance wrote that the “curse of the B.C. movement today . . . is the talkers—all talking about that which does not & which without years of work & masses of patient laboratory work—cannot exist—namely real B.C. Let the talkers face the facts & talk about that which does exist—the impossibility with our present limited knowledge of real B.C. & then perhaps we shall begin to get a real attack on the problem begun. But for heavens sake don’t let the talkers lead to the diversion of the one thing needed— MONEY—to enable research workers to work.” (Chance to MS, Apr. 20, 1930 [LCM 124:80].) 20. Chance wanted MS to use the BCDF he had created for research, but MS wanted to use it to cover “the expenses of the important scientific men who will come” to the 7IBCC. The final statement was not found. MS sailed on July 23, 1930, arriving in England on July 29, where she spent a few days visiting friends. She left for Zurich on August 8, with stops in Berlin and Stuttgart. (Chance to MS, June 4, 1930, and MS to Chance, Apr. 3, 1930 [quote] [LCM 124:85B, 76]; 1930 Calendar [MSM S78:728–51].) 21. After failing to convince MS to abandon the 7IBCC, Chance capitulated, writing, “I feel that you in the end must decide how this money should be spent. . . . I unhesitatingly accept your decision.” (Chance to MS, Apr. 30 and June 4 [quote], 1929 [LCM 124:80, 86].) 22. About fifteen activists reported on the work of birth control clinics at the 7IBCC, with five submitting written reports. Delegates covered work done in Austria, China, England, Germany, India, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States. No details have been found on payments to these delegates. (MS and Stone, Practice of Contraception, 307.) 23. Slee was recovering from hernia surgery. (MS to Havelock Ellis, Apr. 3, 1930 [MSM S5:644].) 24. Janet Chance hoped MS would spend some time with them on the yacht, after the conference. (Janet Chance to MS, Apr. 21, 1930 [LCM 124:117].) 25. Janet Chance had asked MS about the American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA), founded in 1913 with initial support from John D. Rockefeller Jr. to fight venereal disease and prostitution through educational campaigns and research. Rockefeller (1874–1960), the only son of the famous oil magnate, oversaw the family’s philanthropies. (Janet Chance to MS, Mar. 28, 1930 [LCM 124:116]; Finding Aid, ASHA Records, 1905‑1990, University of Minnesota Social Welfare History Archives, Minneapolis; ANB.) 26. William Freeman Snow (1874–1950), an ophthalmologist and the ASHA director (1914–38), served on several government public health committees. He was credited with reducing rates of venereal disease. (ANB; New York Times, June 13, 1950.) 27. Janet Chance wrote that Parker and Spencer had contacted her and were “desperately keen on statistics.” Valeria Hopkins Parker (1879–1959) was a Connecticut-based

July 1930  •  179 suffragist and physician who served on the ASHA executive staff and was its head field lecturer. Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931), an ordained minister, suffragist, educator, and author, headed the ASHA Division of Family Relations. (Janet Chance to MS, Mar. 28, 1930 [quote] [LCM 125:116]; New York Times, Oct. 27, 1959, Apr. 13, 1930, and Feb. 13, 1931; Valeria Parker, “Social Hygiene and the Child,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 121 [Sept. 1925]: 46–52.)

60. From Client While women wrote most of the client letters Sanger received, men also asked for advice.

NANDED (Hyderabad,1 India,) 1st, July, 1930.

Sir, I have read in some of the books, a great praise of the purposes and aims of your League.2 Particularly, Judge Lindsay has highly recommended the hygienic and most successful method of birth control contrived by your sciencetists and doctors.3 I am sure, that the members of your league will not withhold the information from the far off people of other countries. I give below a brief sketch of our life and request that you will be so good as to give me some advice to come over our difficulties. I am a married man, and my own age is 39 years, and that of my wife is 27 yrs. We have four sons and have lost two.4 I have an average health and body and my wife is physically strong and well-built. If we don’t interrupt the course of nature, hardly six months may pass between a childbirth and a fresh pregnancy. It becomes so hard to the mother to get an addition when the former one is still in its infancy and requires a regular attention. With the conviction that your advice is free and your help is genral to every common human being, I am submitting our personal case for your sympathetic treatment and I hope, you will give it your due attention and oblige. Yours truly [name omitted] District Judge, Nanded. TLS MSP, DLC (LCM 17:373). In the interest of privacy, the editors have omitted the author’s name.

1. Nanded is both a city and a district in the Maharashtra state of India. Hyderabad is the capital of the neighboring Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. 2. A reference to the ABCL. The author was likely unaware that MS had resigned from the league in 1928. 3. Benjamin Barr Lindsey (1869–1943) was a former judge known for his work in family law, especially his support for divorce reform. In his book Companionate Marriage

180  •  Zurich (1927), he claimed that the contraceptive methods developed by MS and the ABCL “are practically one hundred per cent safe.” (New York Times, Mar. 27, 1943, and June 9, 1928; Lindsey, Companionate Marriage [New York, 1927; reprinted 1972], 237.) 4. The Indian infant mortality rate was 181 per 1,000 born, more than triple that of the United States. The main causes were poor sanitary conditions and diseases such as influenza, cholera, and plague. (Tim Dyson, “Infant Mortality in the Indian Subcontinent,” in Infant and Child Mortality in the Past, edited by Alain Bideau, Bertrand Desjardins, and Héctor Pérez Brignoli [Oxford, 1997], 115, 132–33.)

61. “President’s Opening Address, Seventh International Birth Control Conference” Registration for the 7IBCC in Zurich was followed by an opening banquet and address by Sanger. (Stone, “The 7th Int’l Birth Control Conference,” BCR 14 [Nov. 1930]: 317.)

[Zurich, Switzerland] [September 1, 1930] Ladies and Gentlemen, Honoured guests and Members of the Conference: I have the honor to welcome you to the Seventh International Birth Control Conference. It is indeed an honour and a privilege which I cherish and appreciate not only because of the attendance of so many distinguished guests who have come from vast distances to attend this Conference,1 but also because of the important place the idea of birth control is taking in the social programme of all civilized peoples. When one considers the world wide problems of the population question, we seem in a way like a small group, a mere handful of people battling for so mighty a cause. But while you who come here because you are in the front ranks of the birth control army seem to be small in numbers we know that the millions of men and women in all countries are looking to you to unshackle them from the tyrannical laws of their own reproductivity. You have become the protagonists of the millions of poor, hopeless, enslaved souls caught in the trap of their own fecundity, and as such you voice their wrongs and battle for their emancipation. The last or Sixth International Conference was held in New York City in March, 1925. Since that time we have lost through death three of our oldest workers, Dr. Aletta Jacobs, Dr. Rutgers and Dr. Vickery, the beloved mother of our Honorary President.2 These three noble souls carried high the ideals of this cause through those years when it severely tested courage and vision, and they never wavered but proved themselves tried and true. May their work live and may we carry their dreams into practical realization.

September 1930  •  181

In 1925 there were outside of Holland only four birth control clinics in the world, modelled mostly on the ideas I had obtained from my visit to the Hague in 1915, where I took a course of contraception from Dr. Rutgers and outlined the organization of separate birth control clinics.3 Today we know of over 100 birth control clinics or centres where contraceptive information is being given by qualified members of the medical profession. We know of another fifty centres or departments of health or welfare work, where birth control advice is part of general health and welfare service, so that it is safe to say that there are today about 200 recognized centres where information on birth control is officially recognized and imparted.4 Besides these we know of several thousand doctors who have begun to give advice in their private practice, and it seems predestined that with this start already made nothing can prevent its permeation to all corners of the earth, within the lifetime of those in this room.5 There may be some who wonder why we came to Zurich to hold this conference, and I’d like to explain why—First ↑Secondly↓, because we knew of no organizations already here upon whose toes we might tread. Secondly ↑First↓, because of the world wide reputation of the charms of Switzerland and its hospitality. Thirdly because of its geographical location which made it convenient for so many of our friends from Germany. We had no idea of or desire to invade the precincts of this delightful country, nor to spread ↑broadcast↓ our ideas among ↑to↓ the general population. We have already been justified in our selection, for we have met with great kindness and helpfulness on all sides, and I am proud to say that we have been honoured tonight by the presence of such distinguished men, representing the Zurich Department of Health (Gesundheitamt), and the Zurich Department of Social Welfare (Wohlfahrtsamt), as Councillor (Stadtrat) Dr. Häberlin and Councillor (Stadrat) Herr Gschwend.6 We had no idea or desire to invade the precincts of this delightful country, The object of this Seventh International Conference is to discuss freely among the workers all questions relating to the methods and technique of contraception to present facts based upon past experience and to suggest plans and programmes for research. We cannot know what we need unless we know what we already have. This is in essence to be a fact-finding conference, and we shall not be concerned with nor attempt to express our opinions on birth control in conjunction with politics, religion or morals. We take it as an accepted fact that the workers in this field are already convinced of its importance. Therefore we do not need to be further converted. I ask you therefore, during the sessions beginning tomorrow and ending Friday noon

182  •  Zurich

to leave aside all controversial issues except those based on the experience of medical and scientific study and fact.7 [handwritten] In this way ↑only↓ we can take an accurate inventory of our work & be guided accordingly for progress in the future. Now again I extend to you a hearty & cordial welcome to this Conference.8 TDf MSP, DLC (LCM 130:572–73). Handwritten interlineations and corrections by MS. This address was not included in the published proceedings.

1. The 7IBCC proceedings did not include a list of all attendees, but those mentioned on the program came from ten different countries, including India, China, and Japan, as well as a large delegation from the United States. (MS and Stone, Practice of Contraception, 305–12.) 2. Aletta Jacobs died on August 10, 1929, at the age of seventy-five. Johannes Rutgers died in 1924 at seventy-four, and Alice Vickery died in 1929. Honorary president Charles V. Drysdale also gave an address at the opening dinner, offering a brief history of the birth control movement. (MS and Stone, Practice of Contraception, 306, 312.) 3. There were five birth control clinics in the United States at the start of 1925, including MS’s BCCRB in New York (1923); clinics at the New York Infirmary for Women and Children (1923) and Brooklyn Hospital Gynecology Department (1923), both operated in New York by the Committee on Maternal Health; the Illinois Birth Control League’s Medical Center #1 (1923); and the Jewish Social Service Bureau Clinic (1924) in Chicago. Four other clinics opened in 1925. England hosted the SCBCRP’s Mother’s Clinic (1921), the SPBCC’s Walworth Women’s Welfare Centre (1921), and North Kensington Women’s Welfare Centre (1924), all in London. In Germany, Berlin had the IfS (1919). There were other clinics associated with hospitals and marriage and sex advice centers in the United States and Germany where birth control advice was offered as one of many services. (Hajo, Birth Control on Main Street, appx.; C. Robinson, Seventy Birth Control Clinics, 8–19.) 4. MS’s estimates seem inflated. There were some sixty birth control clinics open in the United States in 1930. Figures for Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa are more difficult to obtain. Caroline Robinson identified a total of thirty-nine clinics in Austria, Germany, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom, but contemporary lists also include clinics in Japan, India, and possibly other countries. From 35 to 50 percent of these clinics were located in public health and hospital settings. (Hajo, Birth Control on Main Street, 24; Robinson, Seventy Birth Control Clinics, 8–13; BCCRB, “Birth Control Clinics in Europe,” Oct. 29. 1931, and “Birth Control Clinics and Organizations,” n.d. [LCM 43:522, 525].) 5. MS may have arrived at this estimate by counting the number of doctors who attended meetings and conferences on contraception, about three thousand in the United States alone by 1925. (James F. Cooper, “Status of Birth Control with Reference to Doctors,” in Medical and Eugenic Aspects of Birth Control, edited by MS, 55.) 6. Hermann Häberlin (1862–1938) was a gynecologist and city council member. Jakob Gschwend (1882–1952), the Zurich district attorney, served as a Zurich city councilor

November 1930  •  183 from 1922 to 1942. (Thomas Huonker, Diagnose: “Moralisch Defekt” [Zurich, 2003], 42, 170; Willi Gautschi, Dokumente zum Landesstreik, 1918 [Zurich, 1988], 68.) 7. The 7IBCC featured scientific papers that discussed varieties of contraceptive methods (mechanical occlusive, intrauterine, chemical, biological, sterilization, and behavioral), abortion, the need for research, and reports from clinics around the world. All these presentations, save the clinic reports, were given exclusively by physicians. (MS and Stone, Practice of Contraception, vii–x.) 8. The addresses by MS and Drysdale were followed by speeches from “pioneers of the movement”: Julian Marcuse (Germany) and Fernand Mascaux (Belgium). The banquet ended with a greeting from the mayor of Zurich and messages from other countries. Conference sessions began the following day and ended on Friday, September 5. (MS and Stone, Practice of Contraception, 306.)

62. To Juan Monforte 1 Sanger left Zurich on September 6. After stops in Stuttgart, Berlin, and London, she returned to the United States on September 22. (1930 Calendar [MSM S78:749].)

[New York, N.Y.] November 17, 1930.

Dear Mr. Montforte: We have the names of several doctors in Madrid, but I am not at all certain as to what their attitude would be towards taking referred cases, or just how able they are to give the advice at present. The best and safest methods depend on the skill of a doctor as what is used must be used by the woman and properly fitted. This is a diaphragm pessary or cervical cap used in conjunction with a contraceptive jelly, which makes a double protection put in place beforehand.2 The woman is taught to use this herself and it is the same as any other part of her personal hygiene. You will see by this that to tell you about methods will not solve your problem unless the doctors will help. Are there any laws in Spain against the giving of contraceptive advice? I know that condoms and certain other things are generally sold in Spain, but I wonder if there is any actual mention of the matter in the Criminal Code?3 Would you please report back to me the attitude of the doctors whose name I am giving you towards this subject, and their ability to help you? They have both expressed an interest, and been sent descriptive material. Dr. Ernest Kocherthaler, Sorrano 87, Madrid.4 Prof. Alberto Cavanna Eguiluz, Madrid, Pontejos.5 Sincerely yours, Margaret Sanger. TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 19:1231).

184  •  Zurich 1. Juan Monforte (1896–1959), a Spanish businessman who learned about MS and the ABCL from Benjamin Lindsey’s Companionate Marriage, wrote to MS requesting “serious and scientifical information” on birth control and the name of a doctor in Spain “well instructed by you on this specialty.” (New York Passenger Lists, 1820‑1957; Reports of Deaths of American Citizens Abroad, 1835–1974; SSDI; Monforte to MS, Nov. 4, 1930 [LCM 19:1230].) 2. Though diaphragms and cervical caps were highly effective on their own, MS and most birth control activists suggested that they be backed up with spermicides, which raised success rates by 10 percent. (Himes and Stone, Practical Birth-Control Methods, 63–64.) 3. The 1928 Spanish Penal Code specifically prohibited the publication of birth control information or advice as well as the sale of contraceptives. Birth control was practiced secretively, with increased use of condoms, especially after World War I. The law was repealed in April 1931 and contraception decriminalized. (Henry G. Alsberg, “News Notes, Spain,” BCR 16 [Oct. 1932]: 251; Cleminson and Amezúa, “Spain,” 178; McLaren, History of Contraception, 235.) 4. MS may refer to Ernesto Kocherthaler (1894–1966), a Spanish Jewish businessman who represented the interests of major oil companies in Madrid. Educated in Berlin in law and economics, he probably had a doctorate rather than a medical degree. (Lucas Delattre, A Spy at the Heart of the Third Reich [New York, 2004], 241, 292.) 5. Alberto Cavanna Eguiluz (d. 1940), a professor of political economy in Madrid, was not a physician. (ABC Madrid, Jan. 27, 1940, 2.)

63. From Shidzue Ishimoto 1 Birth control advocates in Japan had won greater political and popular acceptance and had opened clinics in Tokyo and other cities. But in 1930, the Home Ministry banned the advertisement and sale of certain contraceptives thought to be harmful, including intrauterine devices. As the government’s pronatalist inclinations intensified, birth control leaders organized the Nihon Sanji Chôsetsu Renmei (NSCR) (Birth Control League of Japan) on January 17, 1931, which aimed to “instruct workers in birth control with one strong and definite spirit, and to train them the most scientifical methods.” Shidzue Ishimoto was named president, with Isoo Abe as honorary president and Kan Majima as chairman. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 43; Norgren, Abortion before Birth Control, 28–29; E. Tipton, “Birth Control and the Population Problem,” 54; Ishimoto to MS, Jan. 28, 1931 [quote] [LCM 18:1050].)

Tokyo, Japan March 8, 1931

Dear Mrs. Sanger: Your unfailing activities in Washington to abolish the antiquated law which prohibit the mailing of information regarding the contraceptive knowledge, and which has been the stumbling block to the movement to release poor mothers from onerous unwelcome motherhood, has been prominetly reported in many of our local papers here.2 I sincerely hope that you

March 1931  •  185

and your co-workers would successfully carry out this important work at the earliest opportunity. Since I have started my actual work here, I am specially aiming on three points, the first is the educational work to promote the movement with right understandings.3 The second is to bring out the work of Birth Control in Japan not as a solitary independent movement but in co-operation with other countries as an international movement for the common cause.4 Dr. Majima and myself are eagerly wishing to open the next international conference in Tokyo, and I expect to write you about this plan before long.5 The third work is to directly help the poor mothers or would be mothers from pressing need for the contraceptive method. That is the work now to help the suffering women who wanted no more children, or those women who are really wished to know the contraceptive method. Perhaps you would have understood by the reports which I have sent to you last summer, what are the so called clinical work here in Japan.6 The seriousness of this question can be understood even reference to the countless advertisements of the quock remedy for abortion under the name of “birth control” in daily papers, as well as in the magazines, or shamelessly displayed in big sign board along the congested suburban rail way lines.7 I really had ↑a↓ shock when I discovered in one of these advertisements named “Sanger” stating that this remedy is prescribed by well known Mrs. Sanger of the United States so on.8 I am quite sure that they have no permission from you to use your name on such an abortive medicine. I feel that this is my responsibility to stop such abuses.9 As a contraceptive method, the Dutch pessary is widely advocated in Japan by Dr. Majima and others; but the real effect of it is not as great as it should be as there are not sufficient number of clinic to reach the suffering women of the lower or lowest social strata. To relieve the Japanese suffering women from prolificness in the most effective way, I believe, is to provide them with some sort of medicine like “Semori” but in much lower price to adopt to their poor living condition.10 I am of a firm opinion that if you could give me a some sort of effective prescription for such contraceptive medicine and prepare them in Japan there some pharmaceutical firm, it is not only help the millions of suffering women in Japan but also it will be a good business undertaking. About this matter I have consulted with a certain business man who is connected with manufacture of drugs, and he said to me that he will be glad to co-operate with us provided that you furnish the prescription. I understood that the effectiveness of “Semori” as a contraceptive medicine is about 58%, but the Japanese business man of that line told me to the effect that no medicine is effective for 100 percent for every body. He said that if any drugs is effective for 60% it is classed as a very good drugs.11

186  •  Zurich

I sincerely wish that you would give this matter a serious thought and give me a favorable reply at your earliest opportunity. If you furnish the prescription I should take care the Japanese side with responsibility. I should like this business proposition stricktly personal affair between you and I. Most affectionately yours, Shidzué Ishimoto [signed] TLS MSP, DLC (LCM 18:1056–57). A copy was sent to Edith How-Martyn. For TRcy, see MSM S6:109–10. Handwritten margin note by MS at the bottom of the letter reads: “Send luccurol & Marvosan.”

1. Shidzue Ishimoto suspended most of her birth control work between 1925 and 1929 to focus on her family. Her husband lost his bid for a seat in the Parliament and then abandoned her and the children, leaving them in financial distress. The troubled marriage ended in early 1931. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 36–41, 46; Ishimoto to MS, Oct. 12, 1929 [LCM 18:1024].) 2. The Asahi newspapers often reported on MS’s American efforts. A decade after her 1922 trip, MS’s name remained familiar to the Japanese, even in rural villages. (Ishimoto, Report, Oct. 12, 1929 [LCM 18:1025]; E. Tipton, “Birth Control and the Population Problem,” 47.) 3. Ishimoto and the NSCR promoted medically approved birth control as safe and effective. They hoped to convince the government to ban the many establishments pushing dangerous or ineffective methods. Only two of more than sixty establishments in Tokyo ran under medical auspices. In 1931 the NSCR also formed a medical investigation committee to evaluate contraceptives. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 42–3; Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 168.) 4. To this end, Kan Majima attended the 7IBCC, and Ishimoto continued her correspondence with MS and others. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 43; Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 158–59.) 5. Kan Majima (1893–1969), who met MS as the 7IBCC, was among the first physicians in Japan to take up the cause of birth control. He launched the Sanji Chosetsu Hyoron (Birth Control Review) in 1925 with Senji Yamamoto and Isoo Abe. He headed the NSCK and in 1930 opened birth clinics in Tokyo and Osaka. For more on the proposed conference, see Ishimoto to MS, Nov. 20, 1931, note 9, herein. (Kodansha Encyclopedia; Kan Maijima, “Clinic Reports, India, China and Japan: Aiji Joseikiokai” [Maternity and Child Welfare Centre, Tokyo], in The Practice of Contraception, edited by Sanger and Stone, 284–87; Majima, Gekidō o ikita otoko: Ikō Majima Kan jiden [The man who went through turbulent times: Autobiography of Kan Majima] [Tokyo, 1971]; MS to Ishimoto, Jan. 30, 1952 [MSM S36:383].) 6. Ishimoto had returned completed questionnaires sent to her by MS for six Tokyo clinics. While all dispensed some forms of contraceptives—pessaries, suppositories, condoms, sponges, and douching syringes—they lacked inexpensive, easy-to-use methods suitable for poor women. (See Ishimoto to MS, Aug. 15, 1930, with enclosed reports from Tokyo clinics [MSM S5:817–28].) 7. In 1927 newspapers were running advertisements for birth control, particularly condoms, but there was little effort made to vet the methods for quality. When Ishimoto

April 1931  •  187 returned to birth control work, she started cracking down on quack remedies that endangered women’s health. (Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 142, 275–77; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 43.) 8. This abortifacient was manufactured by a Kyoto pharmacy, Shinsei En, which falsely suggested that MS had given the remedy to their company. (See MS to the NSCR, June 29, 1931, herein; Ishimoto to MS, June 5, 1931 [LCM 18:1064].) 9. A handwritten margin note by MS below this paragraph reads: “Certainly do stop such abuse of a name.” Ishimoto planned to take the matter to the police and asked MS for a formal letter denying her association with the company, which MS wrote on June 29. (Ishimoto to MS, June 5, 1931; MS to NSCR, June 29, 1931 [LCM 18:1064, 1078]; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 43.) 10. Semori was a spermicidal foaming tablet manufactured by Luitpold Werk-Chemisch in Munich, Germany. It consisted of dioxyquinolin sulfate, potassium borotartrate, sodium bicarbonate, and tartaric acid. It was more effective than chemical tablets and cocoa-butter suppositories, but was not recommended as a stand-alone method because it required vaginal secretion sufficient to produce the foaming action. The cost of Semori was comparable to condoms, but was still too expensive for the very poor. (John R. Baker, “The Spermicidal Powers of Chemical Contraceptives: III. Pessaries,” Journal of Hygiene 31 [July 1931]: 310, 319; Consumers Union of United States, “Analysis of Contraceptive Materials,” 1937 [MS Unfilmed], 7–8; Cecil I. B. Voge, “Future Research upon Sterilization and Contraception,” in Practice of Contraception, edited by MS and Stone, 86.) 11. The BCCRB found that chemical contraceptives, such as spermicidal jelly or suppositories, when used alone were reliable in about 60 to 85 percent of cases, depending on the formulas. MS did not consider these acceptable rates and encouraged the use of the pessary in combination with spermicides. (Himes and Stone, Practical Birth Control Methods, 96.)

64. To Shidzue Ishimoto

[New York, N.Y.] April 7, 1931

Dear Baroness Ishimoto: It is splendid news to have all contained in your letter of March 8th.1 Certainly it will be of great interest to us all if we can hold the next International Conference in your country. It would be a tremendous force for international peace and good-will. You do know that I never allow my name to be used or connected with any methods or articles for commercial purposes.2 Constantly I have to employ a lawyer to register my protest against such abuse of my name. I authorize you or your husband to contradict such statements and to deny my connection with them. It is true that the pessaries are all expensive and difficult of adjustment,3 but if only women physicians and nurses could teach a larger number of women

188  •  Zurich

things would go better. “Semori” is also expensive. There are different jellies which are very effective in thousands of cases. I’ll send you both kinds which you can have analyzed by chemists in your country and compound one like it.4 “Lucorol” in the original was a German prescription. “Marvosan” is something in the same line.5 I may be able to get the prescription if you wish to have it. We are making good progress with the sponge, cut and shaped like the Dutch pessary. We put the hollow cup side with Marvosan “about a teaspoonful” and insert the sponge with the jelly next to the womb.6 It can remain there twenty hours if necessary. Then boil the sponge and use again when needed. Try this on some of the poor women. The sponge to be the size and shape of the Dutch pessary. You know that I am deeply interested and concerned in all that you are doing. Please call on me whenever you think that I can be of help to you in your problems. Sincerely yours, TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 18:1060).

1. See Ishimoto to MS, Mar. 8, 1931, herein. 2. For details on the Japanese abortifacient called “Sanger,” see Ishimoto to MS, Mar 8, 1931, herein. 3. Pessaries cost between one and two and a half dollars, plus the costs of spermicidal jelly. They lasted about a year if kept clean and stored properly. (Tone, Devices and Desires, 30, 44; Himes and Stone, Practical Birth Control Methods, 49, 65.) 4. Spermicidal jellies were usually made of either acids (lactic, acetic, boric, maleic, or tartaric) or bases (paraformaldehyde, oxyquinoline sulfate, or quinine bisulfate). (Himes and Stone, Practical Birth Control Methods, 91.) 5. Both Lucorol and Marvosan relied on chinosol, a base with antiseptic and fungistatic properties, but used different acids. (Himes and Stone, Practical Birth Control Methods, 92, 236.) 6. Sponges were often used as barrier contraceptives because they were inexpensive and did not require precise fitting. It was critical to treat the sponge with a spermicide, either a contraceptive jelly like Marvosan or a household product such as vinegar. The contraceptive sponges with which MS was familiar were about three inches in diameter, but Ishimoto found that Japanese women required smaller sizes. (Marshall Cavendish, Sex and Society [London, 2009], 1:98; Ishimoto to MS, Nov. 20, 1931, herein.)

65. To Agnes Smedley 1 In the Philippines for a short visit, Smedley wrote Sanger in February about her birth control work there, calling it “excellent ground” for encouraging the creation of an organized movement. Smedley instructed Communist women in contraceptive use and fitted them with French pessaries. She claimed “no doctor or nurse knows anything of birth control, or will do nothing about it if they know. If the rich Catholics know, they are careful to hide it

April 1931  •  189 lest it get to the workers.” She claimed that Filipinos, though ignorant, were “eager.” “Their standard of life,” she wrote, “is that they can afford to buy the things essential for this.” (Smedley to MS, Feb. 13, 1931 [MSM S6:79].)

[New York, N.Y.] April 8, 1931

Dearest Agnes: What a girl you are: first in Berlin, then Shanghai and now Manilla! Well blessings on you dearest of women. Certainly I shall send Mrs. Gonzales and Mrs. Paciencia pamphlets and books and other articles.2 I am no longer editor of the Birth Control Review so I can not send that, but I can send enough to help out.3 I am sorry to have you still tired and sick Agnes dear and only wish you could get well and strong.4 It is simply wonderful that you are teaching the women methods of birth control. Don’t forget that the sponge can be scooped out and shaped like a pessary, dipped into any solution that is cheap (quinine water, soap suds, vinegar water, or anything like that). Or vaseline, glycerine dipped or smeared into the hollow before insertion.5 This can be very useful and cheap. It must be big enough to cover the cervix—about three inches in diameter usually. Try that sometime. I am sending you a report of our Senate Hearing—the pros and cons.6 The Catholic Church was against us in force, called us Bolsheviks, etc; said we were catspaws of Russia, etc.7 Please write me about the Birth Control movement in Shanghai and Peking and more about your dear self.8 Lovingly P.S. I am sending have sent to each woman in Manilla 12 copies F.L.9 Motherhood in Bondage10 Woman and the New Race11 What Every Girl Should Know12 Dr. Stone’s book (Dr. Bocker’s out of print)13 TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S6:144).

1. Smedley fled Shanghai when Nationalist forces raided the city. In the Philippines, she attended the founding congress of the Partido Kommunista ng Pillipanas (Communist Party of the Philippines). Though she claimed to have gone to the islands to rest, while there she met with American Communist Party head Earl Browder and spread news of the persecutions in China. (Price, Lives of Agnes Smedley, 216.) 2. Fermina Gonzales was the sister of Communist leader and party founder Chrisanto Evangelist and a schoolteacher whom Smedley described as “made of the material of a fighter.” She was tried for sedition in 1931 after holding an antigovernment demonstration and distributing some birth control readings. “She will make a peach of a worker,” Smedley

190  •  Zurich wrote. “I am going to try to train her before I leave so she can actually fit women herself.” Josefa Paciencia was also a married schoolteacher with children. Smedley noted, “They face the power of the church, but are willing to go their own way despite it.” She tried to enlist MS’s support, noting that “you were a Catholic also.” MS crossed this out and wrote “Not true” in the margin. (Smedley to MS, Feb. 13, 1931 [quotes] [MSM S6:79]; Alfredo B. Saulo, Communism in the Philippines: An Introduction [Manila, 1990], 10; New York Times, Oct. 27, 1932.) 3. MS sent copies of Family Limitation, Motherhood in Bondage, Woman and the New Race, What Every Girl Should Know, and Practice of Contraception. (MS to Smedley, Apr. 8, 1931 [MSM S6:144].) 4. Smedley was drained and exhausted from the stress of conditions in China, telling MS, “I was near to insanity and could not work.” (Smedley to MS, Feb. 13, 1931 [MSM S6:79].) 5. Sponges worked by blocking the sperm’s entry to the cervix long enough for the spermicide to act. Acids, astringents, antiseptics, and alkaloids in spermicides killed sperm. Barrier substances such as oils, Vaseline, and glycerine blocked the sperm’s progress. (Cooper, Technique of Contraception, 73.) 6. MS likely enclosed “Should Legal Barriers against Birth Control Be Removed?—Pro and Con,” Congressional Digest 10 (Apr. 1931): 102–16 (LCM 46:164). 7. H. Ralph Burton, head of the anticommunist National Patriotic League, testified that the VPL and ABCL “have been used as a cat’s paw by communistic agents either in their own ranks or through influence brought to bear from the outside.” He also claimed that MS’s birth control bill would open a flood of “vile and dangerous literature and commit Congress to a force that is an enemy of God, the flag and the home.” (U.S. Senate, Birth Control Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary, Feb. 13–14, 1931 [Washington, D.C., 1931], 27.) 8. Smedley reported that the SJL needed funding for a nurse and that the PFYPCH had opened a weekly clinic in late 1929 but closed it in 1931, because, in part, one of its leaders, Maxwell Stewart, had left the country. (Smedley to MS, Mar. 20, 1931 [LCM 12:589]; Yang, “Birth Control in Peiping,” 789.) 9. MS probably refers to the eighteenth edition of Family Limitation, in English, circa 1931 (LCM 129:267). 10. J. Noah Slee bought the publisher’s remainders of Motherhood in Bondage so MS and the BCCRB could distribute them. (Anna Lifshiz to Slee, Nov. 12, 1929 [LCM 134:247A].) 11. MS’s Woman and the New Race (1920) offered arguments for birth control but no practical information. See Vol. 1 for more on the book. 12. What Every Girl Should Know was a compilation of a series of sex education articles MS first published in the New York Call in 1912 and then issued as a booklet. In 1927 MS revised and reissued it as What Every Boy and Girl Should Know, but many continued to use the older editions. (MS, What Every Girl Should Know, x; see also Vols. 1–2.) 13. MS probably enclosed Hannah Stone’s Contraceptive Methods (1925), which offered evaluations of common methods. Dorothy Bocker’s Birth Control Methods (1924), published by the ABCL, was a report on contraceptives used in the first two years of the CRB. Bocker (b. 1878?) was the CRB’s first medical director (1923–24). (1920 U.S. Census.)

May 1931  •  191

66. From Agnes Smedley When Smedley returned to Shanghai, she reported on the White Terror, the repression of Communists by the Nationalist government and the executions of left-wing leaders. (Price, Lives of Agnes Smedley, 217.)

Shanghai, China May 4. [1931]

Dearest Margaret: I have had a row with the Shanghai Birth Control League.1 They learned of the grant of $25 a month for birth control and wanted it instead of it being used for the purpose I wrote you.2 They already have $50 of yours, given by Maxwell Stewart last year, but not a damn thing have they done.3 They say they will have one nurse now one day a week for general clinical work and for birth control going from four different hospitals in Shanghai, and they want to pay her that $25 as salary, thus eliminating themselves from any responsibility.4 The Shanghai League is composed of very rich and respectable physicians. I talked with the chief one, a woman named Dr. Wang.5 Within two seconds we had a row. She said that birth control information should not be known to physicians, even, except to a carefully selected lot. Women who come for birth control information should first be questioned to see if they have children and how many, if married or not. If they have no children or only one or two, they cannot get birth control information; if unmarried, they cannot have it.6 A birth control nurse in the workers section such as I want, she says, should first go to the homes of workers and investigate their home condition before birth control information is given; if they have no children, they get no information. On this we rowed. I told her her League, which I was informed share her ideas completely, is a moral policeman on women, and her nurse going into homes for such a purpose is a moralist spy. She, rich, well dressed, sitting in elegantly furnished offices, said birth control knowledge for everyone would be conducive to immorality.7 I told her it was the business of doctors to attend to the needs of women and not to constitute themselves moral policemen and interfere in the private lives of hard-working women; and that the question was one of voluntary motherhood, whereas she was for forced breeding. She said she was a Chinese and this was a Chinese viewpoint. I told her she had the same ideas as the Pope, who was an Italian,8 and that you had gone to prison to fight just such ideas as hers and I was not going to give your money for ideas that you went to prison to fight.9 I have agreed to give the money for a nurse, exclusively for birth control, exclusively in a factory district. This nurse will use the offices, fully equipped, of a general clinic established in an industrial center by the Chinese Y.M.C.A. here in Shanghai.10 The nurse will be under the guidance of Mr. C. H. Lowe,

192  •  Zurich

head of the Industrial Section of the Y.M.C.A., and of myself. She will give information if women wish it, and go to their homes to help them use it.11 Now our problem is this: working women in China are desperately poor. They can never buy a pessary which costs $3 and $3.50 out here.12 If they cost $1, we could ask them to buy. They receive only $20 to $30 a month, and $3 is a fortune for them. The other methods are not safe.13 [rest of paragraph handwritten] $ = Shanghai dollar. $1 American = $4 Shanghai. Now we want you to make another donation to us: we want you to donate to us 500 rubber pessaries, free, chiefly the smaller sizes, for Chinese women are smaller than we are. I found that almost all Filipino women take the smallest size rubber French pessary. The Chinese women will do the same.14 In a few days I’ll send you the name of a physician, and would ask you to try to make us the first donation of 500 rubber pessaries. They must be sent to the address, and labelled “Medical Supplies,” which means they will be free of duty. Can you inform us also at what price we could get such supplies regularly. We will have to test these out in the heat out here. It is going to be a hard row to how—-for working women have no means of douching15 and they live in one room with a dozen kids and a husband, everything piled high. Do you know of any means by which they would not have to douche? Please try and meet this problem by giving us advice. Have you any charts of the body of a woman to use in our office to instruct women? They do not know how their own bodies are formed and they are afraid a pessary will be lost somewhere in there.16 We have to teach them. We have no charts. Love Agnes [signed] TLS MSP, DLC (LCM 10:514–15). For handwritten draft response by MS written at the bottom of the last page, see LCM 10:515.

1. In July 1930, just two months after its founding, the PFYPCH’s Maxwell Stewart claimed that Smedley had refused to cooperate with the SJL “because they are Christians,” a charge she refuted. (Chuan-Hua Lowe, “Record of the Two Meetings of the Preparatory Committee on Birth Control Organization in Shanghai,” Apr. 4 and 11, 1930, and Stewart to MS, July 14, 1930 [quote] [LCM 12:557, 576].) 2. When the SJL discovered that MS was contributing to the PFYPCH, they requested a grant of $25 per month to support salaries of nurses for the birth control clinic. (Smedley to MS, Mar. 20, 1931 [LCM 12:589].) 3. On June 11, 1930, in response to his request for funding for a new clinic in Peking, MS erroneously sent Stewart $250, for “the Birth Control Clinic in Shanghai,” not Peking. Smedley encouraged MS to support the PFYPCH over the SJL, which she saw as “luxuriously rich.” Stewart was confused by MS’s error and gave the SJL $50 of the donation. The SJL did not report on its use of the funds. (Smedley to MS, July 3, 1930,

May 1931  •  193 Stewart to MS, Apr. 23 and July 14, 1930, and MS to Stewart, June 11, 1930 [LCM 10:570, 12:566, 576, 574].) 4. Smedley laid out details of this plan in her March 20 letter to MS, indicating that the SJL had not yet opened a clinic. The new plan was to hire a nurse who would visit families in the neighborhoods and keep statistics. (Smedley to MS, Mar. 20, 1930 [LCM 12:589].) 5. Most of the SJL officers and directors were American-educated physicians and social workers associated with missions or American-funded hospitals. They included chairman Dr. Fu-Chun Yen (Yan Fuqing) (1882–1970), the head of the Central University Medical Center, and vice chairman Liming “Frances Willard” Wang Liu (1897–1975), the head of the Chinese Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Executive committee members included sociologist and eugenicist Dr. Quentin Pan (Pan Guangdan) (1899–1967); Chuan-Hua Lowe (1902–96), the Chinese-born secretary of the YMCA Industrial Relations Department; Eula Eno (1894–1969), an American-born medical missionary; and physician Joseph Robson Bromwell Branch (1883–1975), of the Yalein-China medical program. Dr. Zok T. Wang (Shuzen Wang) (1899–1991), a Chinese Episcopalian, was the chief of the Gynecology Department at the Margaret Williamson Hospital and SJL treasurer. (World Scientific Publishing Company, 30 Years’ Review, 296; Wang, Women in the Chinese Enlightenment, 135–43; Hartford [Conn.] Courant, Nov. 20, 1916; Christian Science Monitor, July 24, 1928; Los Angeles Times, Oct. 27, 1928; SSDI; Lowe, Facing Adversity with a Smile, 61; Washington Post, Feb. 9, 1927; Linfang Wang, Zhongguo Kexue Jishujuan (China science and technology) [Beijing, 2005]; Leon Antonio Rocha, “Quentin Pain in the China Critic,” Chinese Heritage Quarterly [June–Sept. 2012]; Shanghai Birth Control Information Bureau to MS, Jul. 25, 1930 [LCM 12:0582].) 6. Many conservative eugenicists and some birth controllers wanted to exert control over who received contraceptives. They hoped that “rational selection” would even out differential birthrates between rich and poor, or the fit and the unfit. MS preferred putting women in charge of decisions about family size and limitation. (Soloway, Demography and Degeneration, 86, 185; Connelly, Fatal Misconception, 53.) 7. Dr. Wang worked with the Women’s Union Missionary Society of America, which might have influenced her views on morality. The idea that birth control would foster immoral behavior, specifically promiscuity and underage or out-of-wedlock sexuality, had long fueled opposition efforts and led providers to limit access. (Hajo, Birth Control on Main Street, 191–92.) 8. On December 31, 1930, Pope Pius XI issued the Casti connubii (Encyclical on Christian marriage), which affirmed the sinfulness of contraception and called on Christian parents to fulfill the biblical imperative to propagate the human race. (Noonan, Contraception, 424–26; see Vol. 2.) 9. MS was jailed twice on birth control–related charges: overnight in Portland, Oregon (1916), and a second time for thirty days following her conviction for opening the Brownsville Clinic in Brooklyn (1917). (See Vol. 1.) 10. The Chinese YWCA was founded in 1890, with its national headquarters in Shanghai. A branch of the international association, it operated hostels, settlement houses, and shelters for homeless young women. (Xianwen Zhang et al. Zhonghua Minguo Shi Dacidian [A dictionary about Republican China’s history] [Nanjing Shi, 2001], 297.)

194  •  Zurich 11. Chuan-Hua Lowe reported that they had hired the nurse, a Mrs. Tsao, and had her working with the two hundred families already associated with the YWCA center; she would next reach out to workers at nearby factories. (Lowe to MS, June 1, 1930 [LCM 12:600].) 12. The poor in China did not have easy access to manufactured contraceptives. Even in urban areas, most of the clients were middle- and upper-class Chinese women. They reported trying a variety of chemical and barrier methods and abortifacient preparations. Rural women had to rely on folk remedies, such as drinking cold water after sex or coughing and sneezing to avoid pregnancy. Activists suggested a more effective and inexpensive method was to use cotton plugs soaked in a vinegar solution. (Chung, Struggle for National Survival, 118–19; Michael Fielding, “The Practical Problem of Contraception in the East,” in Birth Control in Asia, edited by Fielding, 81; Ru-Chiang Chu, “Birth Control in China” [Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1946], 131–33.) 13. Other traditional methods of contraception included herbal remedies, swallowing silkworm eggs, paper condoms or caps, and various efforts to induce abortion. These homemade methods were not only ineffective but sometimes toxic. (Kane, “Family Planning in China,” 426.) 14. Pessaries ranged in size, with the largest sizes usually reserved for women who had borne multiple children or suffered lacerations in childbirth. The American-made Ramses pessary ranged from fifty to ninety millimeters in diameter, while others came in small, medium, or large. If the pessary was too small, it would not effectively block semen; if it was too large, it could cause abdominal pain and urinary tract infections or slip and become ineffective. (See Smedley to MS, Feb. 13, 1931, for her experiences fitting Filipino women with pessaries [MSM S6:79]; Stopes, Contraception, 143; Cooper, Technique of Contraception, 56, 137; Tone, Devices and Desires, 74.) 15. The douche was not very reliable when used under the best conditions, and less so when there was a lack of clean, warm water or if it was not used immediately after sex. It was more effective when combined with a spermicidal solution. (Himes and Stone, Practical Birth Control Methods, 115–19.) 16. Despite the publication of sex education books, such as Cheng Hao’s 1925 Jiezhi shengyu wenti (Questions about birth control), village women, many of them illiterate, had no access to this information. (Frank Dikötter, Sex, Culture and Modernity in China: Medical Science and the Construction of Sexual Identities in the Early Republican Period [Honolulu, 1995], 67–78.)

67. To the Nihon Sanji Chôsetsu R enmei 1

[New York, N.Y.] June 29, 1931.

Gentlemen: I have recently been shocked and horrified to learn that my name— Sanger—is being used in conjunction with an abortive drug in your country.2 The druggist putting this out is Shinsai En of Kyoto, and they claim that this is a prescription given by me for this purpose.3

June 1931  •  195

I authorize your Committee to deny absolutely, my association in any way with any drug or any medicine used for abortive purposes. I have spent many years in trying to educate the public to draw a sharp line between contraception and abortion and I would deeply appreciate it if your League would help to clear up this fact in the minds of the Japanese people.4 Sincerely yours, Margaret Sanger. TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 18:1078). Addressed to the attention of Baroness Ishimoto. For duplicate, see MSM S6:233.

1. The NSCR held a meeting with doctors in late May 1931 and won the endorsement of a number of Tokyo physicians. It held its first general meeting in June. (Ishimoto to MS, June 5, 1931 [LCM 18:1064]; Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 167–69.) 2. This letter was written in response to Ishimoto to MS, Mar. 8, 1931, herein. 3. The pharmacist’s name was spelled Shinsei En. MS vowed that if she had more “facts,” she would file a complaint with the American consulate in Tokyo or Kyoto, but there is no indication that she followed up. See Ishimoto to MS, Mar. 8, 1931, notes 8–9, herein. (MS to Ishimoto, June 29, 1932 [LCM 18:1077].) 4. MS’s public stance on abortion had long been that it was dangerous and unnecessary in a society where birth control was available. There is evidence she acknowledged that abortion, at times, was a necessary choice for some. In her 1914 pamphlet Family Limitation, MS advised: “If you are going to have an abortion, make up your mind to it in the first stages and have it done. . . . It is for each woman to determine this for herself, but act at once, whichever way you decide.” She removed this admonition in later versions, turned away pregnant women seeking abortion from the CRB and BCCRB, and refused to include abortion in her campaigns to overturn the Comstock laws. But in the few documented instances when she was alerted to clinic staff referring patients to doctors who performed abortions, she did not condemn them. (MS to Marjorie Prevost, Mar. 8, 1932 [LCM 32:234]; Penelope Huse, “Confidential Report to Executive Committee, Dec. 1929 [PPFAR]. See Vol. 1 for MS, “A Nurse’s Advice to Women,” Family Limitation [quote]; and “Birth Control or Abortion?” BCR 2 [Dec. 1918]: 3–4 [MSM S70:809].)

z FOUR “The World Needs You!”

Coming into the 1930s, Sanger had grown weary and distrustful of formal organizations, preferring to operate with a looser affiliation and to act unilaterally. Preoccupied with her legislative lobbying efforts in Washington, Sanger did not expect to give the BCIIC her full attention. With its headquarters in London, she was not involved in the day-to-day BCIIC operations or fundraising. Nor was she the principal face of the organization; that fell to HowMartyn. Yet Sanger directed certain BCIIC activities, advised How-Martyn, and directed her travel. And Sanger continued to correspond with key activists around the world, including Shidzue Ishimoto in Japan, Agnes Smedley in China, Hildegart Rodríguez Carballeira in Spain, Herman Rubinraut in Poland, and Karla Popprová-Molínková in Czechoslovakia.1 Despite serving as BCIIC president, Sanger worked largely on her own to inspire global activism and then had the BCIIC follow up on her work. Under Edith How-Martyn’s direction, the BCIIC evolved into a small but structured organization, with an advisory council of medical experts and activists and a growing roster of “correspondents”—representatives from various cities in Europe, Asia, and the United States. It also served as a news outlet for the international movement, linking a growing network of activists, and held events, most prominently the 1933 Conference on Birth Control in Asia, in London. 196  •

“The World Needs You!”  •  197

The BCIIC made its most significant contribution by sponsoring a series of speaking and organizing tours for How-Martyn and Sanger between 1932 and 1936, including How-Martyn’s historic trips to Scandinavia and the Soviet Union in 1932, the Middle East in 1933–34, India in 1934, and her tour with Sanger of India, Hong Kong, and China in 1935–36. How-Martyn’s observations and the contacts she made helped boost the BCIIC’s global profile. Her reports prepared Sanger for her own tour of Scandinavia and the Soviet Union in the summer of 1934, after the official American recognition of the Soviet Union in 1933 opened the way for American tourists. Politically, a trip to the Communist nation could have jeopardized Sanger’s lobbying efforts in Washington, and it would have been more prudent for her to wait for red-baiting in the United States to die down. But for Sanger, the Soviet Union held mysteries and marvels. She had learned at the 7IBCC about Russian advancements in sterilization research that pointed to the tantalizing potential of a “magic pill.”2 She had also read reports from the Stones, Frederick J. Taussig, and others about the spike in abortions. Sanger wanted to see firsthand how legalized abortion worked in the Soviet Union, especially the emergence of abortion centers.3 She was also eager to explore the claims that the Soviet Union had enlightened attitudes toward women’s roles in a workers’ society. As a reformer and onetime Socialist, she wanted “to see for myself what was happening in the greatest social experiment of our age. With keen anticipation I looked forward to discovering whether the Marxian philosophy, dramatized and realized and based on an economic ideology, did not have to accept some of the philosophy of Malthus.”4 Sanger was cognizant of the inherent contradictions and the curbs on basic freedoms under the fifteen-year-old Communist regime, yet she was also enticed by Soviet idealism. She regarded the Soviet Union as a social laboratory in which to study reproductive control devoid of religious objection and legal restriction. Here, she hoped, was an example, however extreme, of how contraceptive services could be folded into public health and how birth control could be accepted “on the grounds of health and human right.”5 Sanger returned home in the fall of 1934 to reboot NCFLBC work; care for her oldest son, Stuart, after his surgery; and take up a busy lecture schedule. Overwhelmed by her duties at home, she offered to resign the BCIIC presidency in favor of someone in London who could be more engaged. But BCIIC chairman Harry Guy quickly put the idea to rest. “Our claim to be an International Centre,” he wrote, “is largely based on your presidency. Without your name and work I do not think we would care to assume the title and responsibility conveyed by it.”6 Sanger had expected this response, knowing her name remained the BCIIC’s primary asset. With How-Martyn blazing a trail for her in India, Sanger was already planning her own tour of Asia in the fall of 1935.7

198  •  “The World Needs You!”

Notes

1. MS to How-Martyn, Oct. 20, 1932 (LCM 15:343). 2. MS to How-Martyn, Jan. 10, 1932, herein. 3. MS, Autobiography, 434; Taussig, Abortion, Spontaneous and Induced, 405–20. 4. MS, Autobiography, 433. 5. MS, “Birth Control in Soviet Russia.” 6. John Henry Guy to MS, Oct. 24, 1934 (LCM 15:757). 7. MS to How-Martyn, Oct. 16, 1934 (MSM C5:806).

68. To Edith How-Martyn 1 The depression of the 1930s resulted in the most serious crisis in the world’s economy since the last century, challenging the BCIIC’s solvency almost from the start. By August 1931, its financial problems had reached a crisis point. How-Martyn informed Sanger that Gerda and John Guy were facing some serious “financial misfortunes” and would have to reduce their contributions. She added that she did not want to cause alarm, “but in case the office had to be closed I did not want it to come as too much of a shock.” (How-Martyn to MS, Jan. 19 and Aug. 24, 1931 [quotes] [LCM 15:5, 75].)

[New York, N.Y.] September 18, 1931.

Dear Edith: Needless to say I was very much distressed to have yours of August 24th and to learn of a possibility of closing the International Center. It seems utterly ridiculous when there never was a year and a time when Birth Control was so needed in the world as it is today! The trouble is, when one starts anything on an international scale, you cannot do it on a shoe-string. As soon as one opens a Center there are appeals for funds. Not everyone is so fortunate as Marjorie Martin who can do her own stenographic work and carry on an independent Center.2 Any active Center should have a budget and should have secretarial help and a main Center in London should of course have sufficient funds to keep these other Centers going. As I see it, it is a pretty big job to do in the right way and I do not know how it can be financed. I am perfectly willing to write a letter as you suggest asking for funds if I know to whom the list is to go.3 I have a terrific job on hand here with my own obligation this winter but I think I am training in a good woman and a good staff who may be able next year to release me and then I want to move on for China and India again.4 I cannot do it unless the work here is faithfully carried out and I am trying to make this year one of release. There is no doubt that, on such a journey, I should be able to meet many people and perhaps raise funds here and there to help us on an international scale—but this is far away and what is needed now is immediate help.

September 1931  •  199

I sent $100.00 to Frau Stutzin to help with her Conference in Germany and this is just about all I can do until the first of January.5 If you can give me an idea of the list of the people in England to whom we should appeal for funds, I will certainly be happy to do it. Just give me an idea. A dozen names will be enough. Also mention the points that such a letter should cover. I note that you have two fine helpers, Olive Johnson6 and Louise Thompson. I think it is splendid of her to send you the $10.00.7 Love to you ever. Sincerely yours, Margaret Sanger TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 15:83–84). Enclosure not found.

1. How-Martyn spent 1929–30 writing The Birth Control Movement in England (London, 1930) with Mary Breed and lobbying the British Ministry of Health to support birth control. (How-Martyn to MS, Nov. 10, 1929, and Aug. 24, 1931 [MSM S5:318 and LCM 15:75].) 2. Marjorie Martin, the BCIIC’s Geneva correspondent, also ran a stenographic service out of her Geneva office. 3. How-Martyn suggested that a personal letter from MS “to some of the people over here” would be a more effective approach. (How-Martyn to MS, Aug. 24, 1931 [LCM 15:75].) 4. The NCFLBC was reconvening its legislative campaign and establishing an office in Washington, D.C. MS was training Hazel Black Moore (1894–1948), the NCFLBC’s new legislative secretary and chief Washington lobbyist. (MS, Eighth News Letter of the NCFLBC, Dec. 1931, and MS to J. Noah Slee, Feb. 22 and 27, 1936 [MSM S64:792, 11:82]; Washington Post, Jan. 22, 1948.) 5. Katharina Stützin had established the Deutschen Arbeitszentrale für Geburtenregelung (Worker’s Centre for Birth Control) and organized small meetings in her home. MS sent Stützin a total of five hundred dollars for the costs of setting up the group. (MS to Stützin, Aug. 24, 1931 [LCM 13:1184].) 6. Olive M. Johnson (1880–1958), the former ML general secretary, did administrative work for the BCIIC and MS’s international conferences. (Benn, Predicaments of Love, 194, 200, 225; Charles Vickery Drysdale to MS, Dec. 15, 1959 [MSM S56:183]; Johnson to MS, Jan. 5, 1932 [LCM 15:161].) 7. How-Martyn added in a postscript that “a few hours ago Louise Thompson has just given me £10 hurrah! Tho’ how she afforded it I do not know.” (How-Martyn to MS, Aug. 24, 1931 [LCM 15:75].)

69. From Hildegart Rodríguez Carballeira Spanish prodigy and sex reformer Hildegart Rodríguez (Carballeira) (1914–33), known as the “red virgin,” had gotten a law degree; published works on Marxism, sexology, eugenics, and birth control; and established herself as a Socialist organizer and lecturer, all by the age

200  •  “The World Needs You!” of sixteen. An emerging voice in Spain’s sexual reform movement, she sought information and international contacts from Havelock Ellis, who wrote to Sanger that “she seems a miracle” and “writes in so simple, natural, matter-of-fact way that I am quite inclined to take her seriously.” Her first letter to Sanger (below) was also sent to Ellis and Ellen Key. (Ellis, “Red Virgin,” 175–79; Ellis to MS, Nov. 13, 1931 (quote) [LCM 5:304]; Sinclair, Sex and Society, appx. 1, 163–67.)

MADRID. SPAIN. 23-10-1931

Miss. Margaret Sanger. First of all I must do to the first woman which in U.S.A. began to expose the new ideas over sexual problem, a small history. And as I know that you read with special interest all letters of youths, though this be perhaps a little longer than others you receive, I beg of you most sincerely to lend it a bit of your attention, for I am a girl, my age is sixteen years and I am spanish, three things which I expose first as my only raecommandation to you. Though my age is not great, I have finished my lawyer proffesion on September of this year, and I am studying Philosophy and Medicine.1 [I] cannot notwithestanding, work as a lawyer because I have not legal age, and until I have ↑am↓ twenty one years old, law does not allow me to work in public, but I intend to profit these years in learning specially in these three proffessions which I have selected and in visiting other nations, so as to know their laws and habitudes. Nearly a year ago, I began to read in Spain the works of our pionneers in sexual problems, Marañon, Jimenez Asua, Vital Aza,2 etc. I became interested by this question. The studies which I have received were the sufficient in Physiologie and Anatomie, to make me understand easily all the problems of humane generation. I have entered in Socialist Partie since I am fourteen years old,3 and thinking of their great families which they create in their inconscience, I began a work of divulgation, writhing three pamphlets, the first of them untitled: “Eugenic problem,” the second: “Birth Control” and the third “Sexual Education.”4 I intend to do inmediately the second edition of these three works that have been very diffused among workmen as was my desire.5 After this, I began to give some conferences over this same problem that have moved special attention of people, and which I intend to continue among us in the next month.6 After this, Mr. Javier Morata,7 which with Aguilar8 in one of whose books untitled “The Sex in Humane Civilisation” appears one of your extraordinary works9 are the best editors which preoccupy themselves over sexual problems, begged of me a book where I exposed my points of view over love, marriage and familie. And I wrote: “The Sexual Problem studied by a Spanish woman,” a large book, whose [prize] is a dollar, which was put on sale on August, and is finishing itself.10 To day, Mr.

october 1931  •  201

Morata publishes another book of mine particularly endowed to new generation, titled: “Sexual Revolt of Youth,” a bit dearer, than the other.11 I have read with special interest your book works, and I find that your assurances are all true, though in Spain we think that situation here is different from that in America. I find that all the men of past generation, as Marañon, Jimenez de Asua, etc—observe before this problem a reactionary attitude, and I think that it is own to the horrible weight of twenty centuries of christianisme, that have made their consciences a grudge, and that force them to maintain the old attitudes as the natural correspondence with their marriages and families constitued following the canonical law which has maintained so many inmoral purchases.12 My position is thus here a revolutionary one. They find that I am very valiant, they admire themselves to find that a girl has much more courage to enterprise a mouvement in that sense than they, and I find so accomplished that the points of view of old and new generation are fully opposed.13 Thanks be given that they observe a comprensive attitude for our desires, and don’t oppose to them the critic which always accompany our work. Besides that, I have published two other books, all in this year, one untitled: “Sex and Love” and other: “Sexual Revolution.”14 I cannot send you one of each, for as they are published by a editor, I have very small number of books, and I cannot dispose of them. One of these days will appear another, that is titled: “Profilaxia Anticoncepcional. Voluntary Parenthood” in which I try, founded in the silence of actual laws over this point, and the natural liberalite of republican gouvernment to make a divulgation of most used contraconceptives.15 I remember the tragical cases which you expose in your book of Smith’s family which would be exemplar for Humane kind if she had a little more sense.16 You see what my work is. I am reading a great quantity of books over sexual things. Havelock Ellis,17 Lindsey,18 Forel,19 Bloch,20 Van de Velde,21 Ellen Key,22 Marie Stopes,23 Kollontay,24 Renate Kehl,25 and a lot of several others. But the special motive of my writing to you is to beg your help for me in the work which I have enterprised. I would desire to know the laws, the propositions, the ideas and the books which are given to publicity in all countries but specially in United States of America where you can so well know the developpment of people in this interesting object. I that admire you so profoundly, by the great work which you have developped, and of whom I speak in all my 3 works, saving that you merit so well the name of the first diffusor of these ideas between people in U.S.A. hope that you will give me the notices which you can over this point so as to maintain my books following the universal mouvements. I hope to be so your pupil though at a great distance. Perhaps on next year, I will go to U.S.A. and in this case I will inmediately try to visit you.

202  •  “The World Needs You!”

Young people are here interested by this problem. After several years pass you will be astonished to find Spanish Revolt. Hurra for you that so well understand our wishes. And hoping to receive soon your answers, I remain yours sincerely true friend and pupil Hildegart [signed] TLS MSP, DLC (LCM 19:1233–35).

1. Rodríguez received an intensive early education before enrolling in a secondary institute at age ten. She entered the Universidad Complutense de Madrid when she was thirteen, studying philosophy and literature before pursuing law. (Ellis, “Red Virgin,” 176; Sinclair, Sex and Society, 1, 41, 71.) 2. Gregorio Marañón (1887–1960), a Spanish endocrinologist and a sex reform leader, published many books on sexuality and eugenics and contributed an essay to the BCR. Luis Jiménez de Asúa (1889–1970) was a Spanish lawyer, writer, and criminologist who addressed legal aspects of sexuality, abortion, eugenics, and venereal disease. Vital Aza (Díaz) (1890–1961), a Spanish gynecologist and sterility expert, wrote and lectured widely on women and sexuality. His most influential book, Feminismo y sexo [Feminism and sex], was published in 1928. (Glick, “Sexual Reform,” 95, 83; Sinclair, Sex and Society, 59, 217, 222, 224; Marañón, “Sex and Religion in Spain,” BCR 13 [June 1929]: 157–59.) 3. In 1929 Rodríguez joined the Unión General de Trabajadores (General Workers Union), wrote for El Socialista, and spoke at socialist meetings, including the 1930 Congreso de las Juventudes Socialistas (Conference of Socialist Youth). (Sinclair, Sex and Society, 43, 71–72.) 4. El problema eugénico: Punto de vista de una mujer moderna (The eugenic problem: Point of view of a modern woman), a fifty-seven-page pamphlet published in 1930, explained eugenics and made a case for birth control. “Birth Control” is Rodríguez’s La limitación de la prole: Un deber del proletariado consciente (Limiting offspring: A duty of the conscientious proletariat), a seventy-two-page theoretical tract published in 1930. Educación sexual (Sexual education) (1931) was a propaganda piece on sex education along eugenic lines. (Sinclair, Sex and Society, 37, 68.) 5. These pamphlets, published by Madrid’s Gráfica Socialista, lacked practical contraceptive advice, something Rodríguez hoped to learn from MS. (Sinclair, Sex and Society, 68; Rodríguez to MS, Jan. ?, 1932 (LCM 19:1265].) 6. Rodríguez gave lectures on a physiological approach to interpreting Jesus Christ as well as on “sexual problems and birth control movement.” (Sinclair, Sex and Society, 74–75; Rodríguez to MS, Mar. 30, 1932 [quote] [LCM 19:122].) 7. Javier Morata Pedreño (d. 1966), a Spanish publisher and editor, worked with the leading sex reformers in Spain. He was involved with the Liga Mundial Para la Reforma Sexual (LMPRS), the Spanish chapter of the WLSR. (ABC Madrid, Mar. 17, 1966; Sinclair, Sex and Society, 225.) 8. Manuel Aguilar Muñoz (1888–1965), an editor and noted publisher of books on sex reform, was the Spanish contact for H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw. (S. Olives Canals and Stephen S. Taylor, eds., Who’s Who in Spain [Barcelona, 1963]; Sinclair, Sex and Society, 217.)

october 1931  •  203 9. V. F. Calverton and Samuel D. Schmalhausen, eds., Sex in Civilization (Garden City, N.Y., 1929), surveyed how sex affected Western civilization, with essays from thirty-two experts. The Spanish translation was published in 1930 as El sexo en la civilización by J. Pueyo, one of Morata’s imprints. MS’s contribution, “The Civilizing Force of Birth Control,” argued that birth control “is making men and women face a new responsibility, and forcing their intelligence to the solution of problems they had for ages deliberately avoided.” (MS, “The Civilizing Force of Birth Control,” 530.) 10. A reference to El problema eugénico. 11. La rebeldía sexual de la juventud (The sexual revolt of youth), an exhortation to take up eugenics and sex reform, was one of Rodríguez’s best-known books. (Ellis, “Red Virgin,” 177, 179; Sinclair, Sex and Society, 69.) 12. The Spanish sex reform movement was circumscribed by Catholic tradition and informed by a strong belief in biological determinism. The leading proponents, mostly male, advocated a more gradual approach to sexual reform than Rodríguez. They did not want to alter traditional gender roles, and they encouraged a pronatalist approach. (Glick, “Sexual Reform,” 68, 77–81; Cleminson and Amezúa, “Spain,” 186.) 13. Though Rodríguez won some admiration from old-guard sexual reformers, many thought she was trying to push too rapidly for working-class access to birth control. (Sinclair, Sex and Society, 2 96; Rodríguez to MS, Jan. ?, 1932 [LCM 19:1265].) 14. Sexo y amor (Sex and love) and La revolución sexual (The sexual revolution) were pamphlets geared toward Socialists and the working classes, published by Cuadernos de Cultura. (Sinclair, Sex and Society, 69.) 15. Profilaxis anticoncepional: Paternidad voluntaria (Contraceptive prophylaxia: Voluntary fatherhood), a survey of the popular contraceptives, was published later that year. (Sinclair, Sex and Society, 69.) 16. Rodríguez may be referring to the Sadie Sachs story that MS recounted in My Fight for Birth Control (51–57), in which the death of a woman from a botched abortion emerged as the pivotal moment when Sanger committed her life to the birth control cause. (See Vol. 1.) 17. Rodríguez likely refers to Ellis’s More Essays of Love and Virtue (London, 1931), which included essays on love and family, motherhood, eugenics, taboos, obscenity, and population control. 18. In addition to Companionate Marriage (1927), Benjamin Barr Lindsey wrote books on sexual ethics and youth, including Revolt of Youth (1925). 19. Auguste Forel (1848–1931), a Swiss physician, entomologist, and neurologist who specialized in psychiatry, wrote Die Sexuelle Frage (The Sexual Question) (1905) and Sexuelle Ethik (Sexual Ethics) (1906). (Dictionary of Scientific Biography.) 20. Iwan Bloch (1872–1922) was a German physician and sexologist who wrote widely on venereal diseases, prostitution, and homosexuality. Rodríguez was probably reading Sexual Life of Our Time (1908), his best-known work. (Vern L. Bullough, “Iwan Bloch,” in Human Sexuality: An Encyclopedia, edited by Bullough [New York, 1994], 65.) 21. Theodore H. Van de Velde (1873–1937) was a Dutch gynecologist who wrote the best-selling guide to marital sex Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique (1926), first published in Spain in 1931. (Sinclair, Sex and Society, 230.)

204  •  “The World Needs You!” 22. Ellen Karolina Sofia Key (1849–1926), a Swedish feminist, wrote on marriage, motherhood, and female sexual fulfillment, linking eroticism to mental and physical well-being. Rodríguez likely read Love and Marriage (1910), which influenced a generation of American feminists and radicals, including MS. (EB; Nancy F. Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism [New Haven, Conn., 1987], 46.) 23. Stopes was best known for Married Love (1918) and its follow-up, Wise Parenthood (1919), in which she described idealized marriage based on mutual respect and sexually fulfilling relations. (Times [London], Oct. 3, 1958.) 24. Aleksandra Mikhailovna Domontovich Kollontai (1872–1952) was a Russian feminist, revolutionary free-love advocate, and the first woman minister in the Bolshevik government. She wrote The Social Basis of the Woman Question (1909) and Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926). (Martin McCauley, Who’s Who in Russia since 1900 [London, 1997], 117–18; Karen Offen, European Feminisms [Stanford, Calif., 2000], xxv, 211–12, 267.) 25. Renato Ferraz Kehl (1889–1974), a physician and pharmacist, founded the Brazilian eugenics movement. Rodríguez probably read his Eugenia e medicina social: Problemas da vida (Eugenics and Social Medicine: Problems of Life) (1923). (Sinclair, Sex and Society, 210, 223; Stepan, “Hour of Eugenics,” 47, 49.)

70. From Shidzue Ishimoto 1 In August 1930, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Board announced that it would “strictly control birth and pregnancy control in Tokyo,” leading to increased police surveillance of clinics and consultation centers. Police closed down centers for serving prostitutes, lack of medical oversight, and distributing contraceptives that were considered harmful, including the intrauterine pin and certain douching devices. (Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 160–64 [quote 161]; Frühstück, Colonizing Sex, 147; E. Tipton, Japanese Police State, 65.)

Tokyo, Japan November 20, 1931

Dear Mrs. Sanger: As I have been away from the town for lecturing trip, I feel sorry I had been unable to write you sooner.2 First of all, I must thank you for your kindness in sending me the samples of sponge pessaries.3 I have sent them to some of the clinics, and they thought they are very interesting except that there should be some changes in the size to make them suitable for our women. In the second, I must tell you that our League has made a protest against the sale of the abortive medicine.4 We have issued a statement with regard to our attitude towards abortion, and five members of our committee including myself, called on the Municipal Police Station in Tokyo, and handed it to them.5 It was reported in the local paper in the following day so we feel that our action has been successful to some extent. One of our committee who

November 1931  •  205

lived in Osaka called on the Kyoto Police Station Bureau to make a formal protest against abuse use of your name by the druggist. Prior to the issue of the statement, we have consulted of the above incident with a lawyer. However, we were told that according to the Japanese law it is free for anyone to use one’s name without any permission.6 But we could protest against the false advertisement such as a prescription has been given by you. At the Police station, we were told that there are special section in the Police department which attend exclusively the regulation of the contraceptive and birth control clinics or so-called clinics. The officials of the section are always tracing after those people who advertize in the paper or magazines about the so-called birth control, and as soon as they discovered any illegal dealers, they said that they are punishing them.7 Recently, “Ogawa” was sentenced to jail, as he is not a specialist but he has handled many hundreds cases of abortion.8 The recent committee meeting of our League moved for the resolution, that we will welcome to hold the next International Birth Control Conference in Tokyo, some time in 1932–33.9 We sincerely hope that you and your members of the International Birth Control Conference will take up this matter and let us know the details of how to open the Conference. The political situation is very serious here in Japan over the Manchurian problem, and the reactional movements are getting powerful,10 but in any way, we will firmly stand for Birth Control principle and will endeavor to promote the movement. With ever success to your work. Very sincerely yours, Shidzue Ishimoto [signed] I have enclosed herewith a clip of the local paper on the “Moratorium of Birth declared by Mrs. Sanger.”11 TLS MSP, DLC (LCM 18:1087–88).

1. Shidzue Ishimoto had recently begun an affair with labor activist and longtime family friend Kanjū Katō. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 47.) 2. In the fall of 1931, Ishimoto and other members of the NSCR traveled to the Kansai region, visiting Kyoto and Osaka to promote birth control. She had last written MS in June. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 45–47; Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 168; Ishimoto to MS, June 5, 1931 [LCM 18:1064].) 3. See MS to Ishimoto, Apr. 7, 1931, herein. 4. Ishimoto is referring to the abortifacient sold under the name “Sanger” and manufactured by a Kyoto pharmacy. (See MS to NSCR, June 29, 1931, herein.) 5. While the NSCR protested unregulated and unsafe abortion drugs and devices, it supported the legalization of physician-controlled abortion. In July 1931, the NSCR’s

206  •  “The World Needs You!” honorary president, Isoo Abe, helped found the Datai Hô Kaisei Kisei Kai (Group Resolved to Bring about a Revision of the Abortion Law), which Ishimoto endorsed in 1932. (Frühstück, Colonizing Sex, 150–51; Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 178–79, 181; Norgren, Abortion before Birth Control, 28.) 6. Complicating the matter was the fact that the name Sanger had become nearly synonymous with birth control in Japan; many there referred to the movement as “Sangerism” and jokingly referred to MS as “Sangai,” which could mean “destructive to production.” (Christopher Heath, “Trade Mark Laws,” in History of Law in Japan since 1868, edited by Wilhelm Rohl [Boston, 2005], 467; Ishimoto, Facing Two Ways, 224; Japan Times & Mail, Mar. 9, 1922.) 7. The police had considerable discretion in interpreting and enforcing the law. Antiabortion laws, first passed in 1868, were added to the Criminal Code in 1907. The state strictly controlled the use of “harmful” drugs and devices for abortion and regularly prosecuted purveyors of abortifacients. (Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 182–83; Frühstück, Colonizing Sex, 120–21 [quote]; Norgren, Abortion before Birth Control, 28.) 8. Birth control activist Ryūshiro Ogawa, who ran a clinic in Tokyo, was arrested in June 1931 under Japan’s abortion law, but received a suspended sentence. (Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 182.) 9. While the NSCR wanted to host the next international conference, Ishimoto canceled the proposal because she was planning an extended American lecture tour. (Ishimoto to MS, June 5 and Nov. 20, 1931 [LCM 18:1064, 1089].) 10. On September 18, 1931, Japanese military forces invaded southern Manchuria, a region of China with strong strategic and economic interests. The Japanese occupation of Manchuria was the catalyst for the Second Sino-Japanese War, which destabilized Japan’s Wakatsuki administration. A new government was formed in December. (E. Tipton, Modern Japan, 108, 121; New York Times, Nov. 22, 1931.) 11. The clipping was not found. In September 1931, wire services had reported MS’s proposed two-year moratorium on babies as a cost-cutting measure. (Chicago Daily Tribune, Sept. 19, 1931.)

71. To Edith How-Martyn 1 Sanger moved to Washington, D.C., in December 1931 to focus on birth control legislation, unleashing an aggressive publicity campaign that began with the publication of her first autobiography, My Fight for Birth Control. (MS, Eighth News Letter of the NCFLBC [Dec. 1931] and Ninth Newsletter [Apr. 1932] [MSM S64:792 and LCM 46:524].)

[Washington, D.C.] Jan 10./32

Beloved Edith! May this year bring us all nearer to our hearts desire! We are down here for the winter & have a fairly comfortable house where I can have my Secty2 come & work which saves me a lot of running about. I

january 1932  •  207

wanted to spend one season down here to get acquainted with the situation & to prove to myself if its worth while going on with this legislation. Of course to me any bad law should be removed but Americans have a habit of breaking bad laws but never repealing any. It may be the Same with this, but I want to make sure first. Its an expensive piece of work, but its educational, & splendidly so. The Catholic situation is serious. They terrify by threats & make Senators know their intentions.3 Any way Edith aside from this kind of thing we are winning all along the line. Everywhere the attitude is changing.4 The Zurich Proceedings are going very well considering that $4 these days equals $10 a year ago. It is a good victory to have been able to get a Medical Publishing House behind it & thats one of the reasons we had to keep the book on medical & scientific lines & keep out general propoganda speeches of the Conference.5 When I read them over there was very little in any of them & to put them in the book would cause friction with the Publisher & raise the price of the book to $5. I hope Dr C. V. D will not object because his last speech was not included.6 I long to see you Edith dear. I want to go to Russia in July to attend a Research Conference. I believe we must look to Russia for the “pill” the magic “pill”—7 Until that is found we will have to fight on & on. I trust you are keeping fit & your husband also.8 Emma is still with us & loves to see your handwriting on the letters as they come.9 The Squire has bad days now & then, but is really very wonderful.10 You can have more books Edith dear as you need them.11 You should see the adorable pessaries sent me from Japan, blue, red, orange, yellow all colors, delicately blended & esthetically made.12 They want us to have the next Int Conference in Tokio in 1933. Its worth considering, but Manchuria! This latest butchering of China makes us all hesitate to buy even good pessaries from Japan.13 Edith dearest I hope you are cheerful— Its not very easy to find cheer in anything these days. We have not had one days sunshine in 1932, ten days which for us is depressing & unusual. Snow covers the roofs of houses all about me. I am setting up in bed writing to you. Ill stay here for the day & rest. I go back to N.Y. next week to give a weeks lectures I travel to Rochester & Buffalo & then return & I wont go up again before March.14 The Stutzins are doing good work.15 I wish I could afford to send you & Kate Stutzin to Athens to the Int meeting there.16 She wants very much to go, but I always want you to

208  •  “The World Needs You!”

represent the Int movement until you feel certain that the newer ones can hold their own. Kate Stützin is remarkable & with you to steer her would be a leader. Heres hoping we may meet this year to celebrate another Victory. lovingly ever Margaret ALS EHMP, MSPP (MSM C5:314–21). Return address: 2424 Wyoming Avenue.

1. How-Martyn had written to encourage MS to come to England and organize another conference or public event. She was unable to do it herself because her mother was very ill. (How-Martyn to MS, Jan. 12, 1932 [LCM 15:164].) 2. Hazel Moore was the NCFLBC’s legislative secretary and chief Washington lobbyist. 3. Even congressmen sympathetic to MS admitted that Catholic populations were “too active” to allow them to back a birth control bill. (Robert S. Allen, “Congress and Birth Control,” Nation 134, no. 3473 [1932]: 104–5 [quote]; MS to Mary Van Beuren King, Dec. 14, 1931 [LCM 46:652]; for examples of church-backed anticontraception letters, see Vol. 2.) 4. Since MS founded the NCFLBC in 1929, it had received more than a hundred endorsements from national and state organizations. (NCFLBC, New Day Dawns, 17–18.) 5. The Practice of Contraception: An International Symposium and Survey, edited by MS and Hannah Stone, was published in 1931 by Williams & Wilkins, a Baltimore-based medical publisher. It contained many of the 7IBCC papers and reports, but only portions of discussions and speeches. 6. MS refers to Drysdale’s paper “International Peace and Population Growth,” which he gave on September 5. For a copy of the speech, see LCM 124:130. (MS and Stone, Practice of Contraception, 306, 312.) 7. MS wanted to learn more about the spermatoxin research described at the 7IBCC. She believed the Soviet Union held great potential because of its state support for contraceptive research. She hoped to hold small conferences in the Soviet Union, because it “would be cheaper and more far-reaching than a central one.” (Thomas, “International Intercourse,” 67, 189; Daniels, “Comparative Study of Birth Control Methods,” 104–11, 255–67; MS to How-Martyn, Feb. 24, 1932 [quote] [LCM 15:203]; MS to How-Martyn, July 31, 1932 [MSM C5:416].) 8. George Herbert Martyn had also been in poor health. (How-Martyn to MS, Mar. 15, 1929 [LCM 14:928].) 9. See MS to How-Martyn, Feb. 15, 1929, note 2, herein. 10. Slee suffered from an intestinal growth. He was also depressed over the state of his finances, which had been significantly reduced by the stock market crash, back taxes, and legal fees. (MS to Françoise Cyon Lafitte, Jan. 13, 1932 [MSM S6:687]; Slee to James Slee, Jan. 21, 1931 [MS Unfilmed]; see also Vol. 2.) 11. How-Martyn wanted copies of MS’s My Fight to send to Herman Rubinraut in Poland, Karla Popprová-Molínková in Czechoslovakia, and others. (How-Martyn to MS, Dec. 1, 1931, and MS’s secretary to How-Martyn, Dec. 4, 1931 [LCM 15:117, 122].) 12. Sakae Koyama sent MS samples of the Koyama Suction Pessary, which was softer than similar products, conically shaped, with a valve at one end to trap semen. These

february 1932  •  209 were the same pessaries that U.S. Customs seized in January 1933, leading to the historic One Package case that allowed physicians to send and receive contraceptives and contraceptive information for medical reasons. (Koyama to MS, Oct. 17, 1931, MS to Koyama, Apr. 30, 1932 [LCM 18:1083, 1116]; see also Vol. 2.) 13. In the months following the September 1931 invasion, Japanese troops spread throughout southern Manchuria, forcing Chinese troops to retreat behind the Great Wall. Tsuyoshi Inukai formed a new government that sanctioned Japan’s conquest of Manchuria, further alienating Japan from the international community. (E. Tipton, Modern Japan, 108, 121; New York Times, Jan. 10, 1932; Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 4, 1932.) 14. MS spoke in Rochester, New York, on January 20 and Buffalo the next day. She also spoke in Albany, Boston, and New Haven. (Rochester Times‑Union, Jan. 20 and 21, 1932; 1932 Calendar [MSM S78:866, 874]; for more on this tour, see Vol. 2.) 15. Katharina Stützin continued to run the Deutschen Arbeitszentrale für Geburtenregelung (Worker’s Centre for Birth Control) in Berlin and was working on a bill to force insurance companies to pay for contraceptives. She surveyed prominent German gynecologists on the medical value of birth control and lobbied to set up universitybased clinics. Stützin sought to expand her work to Austria, eastern Europe, and Persia, while her husband, Joachim Stützin, focused on Spain and South America. (Katharina Stützin to MS, Jan. 29, Mar. 14, Apr. 20, and Nov. 15, 1931, and Joachim Stützin to MS, Nov. 10 and Dec. 12, 1931 [LCM 13:1105, 1127, 1142, 1274, 19:1139, 13:1306].) 16. The Twelfth Congress of the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship (IAWSEC), planned for Athens in April 1932, was postponed because of the economic crisis. (IAWSEC, Call to the Twelfth Congress, Istanbul, Apr. 18–25, 1935 [International Alliance of Women Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College].)

72. From Herman Rubinraut 1 Poland, with its large Roman Catholic population, banned abortion in 1918, making it punishable by up to ten years’ hard labor. After Polish intellectuals agitated for women’s reproductive rights, the law was revised in September 1932 to allow abortion in cases of rape or incest or when two doctors found medical indications. The penalty for breaking the law was three years’ imprisonment for the woman and five years for the abortionist. (Lemkin and McDermott, Polish Penal Law, 9; David and Skilogianis, From Abortion to Contraception, 170; Hanna Jankowska, “The Reproductive Rights Campaign in Poland,” Women’s Studies International Forum 16 [May–June 1993]: 291–96.)

[Warsaw, Poland] Febr. 3, 1932.

Dear Madam, I am hastening to send you the text of the new legislation in extenso. I do my best to translate it but as I don’t trust my English I send you as well the Polish original, hoping that you will find a better translator than me.2

210  •  “The World Needs You!”

Alas it is very doubtful ↑uncertain↓ whether the canceling ↑modification↓ of the paragraph relating to punishment for induced abortion will pass through the sejm (national assembly). The government seems to be inclined to make great concessions to the clericals, and the clericals have started a regular war with the new code.3 Even our B.C. Clinic although protected through the unexistance of a law condemning propaganda of contraceptives,—is in danger. The great argument of the priests and clericals repeated in a interpellation to the Senat by the Senator Thulie (A med. Doctor!)4 is always the same: They mix up prevention and abortion and WONT give it up.5 We may explain and write articles and paint pictures—nothing can change the wording of their attacks and our Clinic will be ↑in their papers↓ always called “the murderous Clinic from Leszno street.”6 The moment is very difficult if not tragic, and we are on the brim of black mediaevalism. On the other hand a great part of the educated public opinion is with us. For instance in the famous place for tuberculous people called ZAKOPANE, after my propaganda lecture all the doctors declared themselves to be adherents of the B.C. movement.7 They published a letter to the spiritual father of the B.C. Movement in Poland Dr. Boy Zelenksi, in which they emphasise his activity and the fact of the opening of the first B.C. Clinic in Poland.8 I am relating you this fact because I never heard before about such an unanimity of the medical attitude towards the B.C. movement. I think that it is specially important in an big centre of phisiologes.9 My next propaganda lecture will be in LODZ (our Polish Manchester, the nest of unemployment.) I shall try to get from the doctors of that workwomen’s hell an enunciation in favour of the B.C. Movement.10 We must try to organise the enlightened opinion not only for B.C.’s sake but for all the causes and consequences of the existence of this Idea: Pacifism, lay education, protection of mother and child, new matrimonial Code, reform of prisons etc. That is why we decided with dr. Boy Zelenksi to found a weekly and ↑try↓ to get for it the best foreign and Polish pens.11 Dr. Hodan from Berlin has promised us his articles and some of his friends too.12 Could we hope to get some lines from you? It would be the most noble Porte-Bonheur for our entreprise.13 At the present moment the only journal which hospitably gives us the possibility to defend our cause is a big literary Weekly called “Wiadomosci Literackie” (Literary News).14 It happens chiefly because Dr. Boy-Zelenski our leading writer and the support of the Literary News is the initiator and pioneer of the B.C. movement in Poland. If we overcome all the difficulties and succeed in founding the Journal which will be called “To day and to morrow”15 Poland will get a strong ventilator, which it needs badly.

february 1932  •  211

Dear Madam, after I read “My fights for Birth Control” I feel very shy, writing to you.16 In fact I feel like a match facing a light house. I am afraid it makes shiver my shaky english. I hope in spite of it you will find in those badly written sentences all the admiration and love which I feel for the noble, brave and charming Lady: Margaret Sanger; Yours very truly Dr. [Herman Rubinraut] [signed] P.S. I take the liberty to send you a translation of my article which will appear in [one of the illegible] the Literary News.”17 TLS MSP, DLC (LCM 19:781–82). Torn second page. Handwritten and typed interlineations by Rubinraut. Handwritten margin note by MS at the top of the first page reads: “What can I say? Its too lovely for comment. MS”

1. Herman (Henryk) Rubinraut (1894–1989), a Polish Jewish obstetrician and gynecologist, was a Socialist birth control organizer who hoped to make connections with the international birth control movement. He wrote to MS in September of 1931 to announce the opening of the Birth Control Section of the Socialist Party Worker’s Society for Social Services, Poland’s first clinic. It was headed by Socialist feminist physician Justyna Budzińska-Tylicka, with Rubinraut serving as general secretary. (Gawin, “Sex Reform Movement,” 183; Rubinraut to MS, Aug. 11, 1931, Feb. 3, Aug. 5, and Dec. 2, 1932 [LCM 19:775, 781, 786, 797].) 2. For translation enclosed in Rubinraut’s letter, see “Legalizing Abortion in Poland,” Jan. 16, 1932 (LCM 19:780); see also Lemkin and McDermott, Polish Penal Code, 18, 69–70. 3. The Roman Catholic Church, which played a key role in helping to preserve Polish identity during its occupation by Austria-Hungary (1795–1918), attacked groups like the Towarzystwo Świadome Macierzyństwo (Society for Conscious Motherhood) and the Liga Reformy Obyczajów (League for Moral Reform) that sought to decriminalize abortion and disseminate birth control and was able to block the decriminalization of abortion. (M. Kozakiewicz, “Country Case Studies: Poland,” in Planned Parenthood in Europe: A Human Rights Perspective, edited by Philip Meredith and Lyn Thomas [London, 1986)], 197–209.) 4. In 1932 the Towarzystwo Propagacji Planowania Rodziny (TPPR) (Society for Promotion of Family Planning) opened in Krakow, moving the center of the birth control movement out of Warsaw. A reference to Maximilian Ritter von Thullié (1852–1940), an engineering professor at Lwów Polytechnic and leader of Poland’s right-wing Polskie Stronnictwo Chrześcijańskiej Demokracji (Christian Democratic Party). (Gawin, “Sex Reform Movement,” 184; Ficowski, Regions of the Great Heresy, 52; Alfred Pauser, Eisenbeton, 1850–1950 [Manz, 1994], 163.) 5. The Catholic Church attacked the Świadome Macierzyństwo Klinika (SMK) (Conscious Maternity Clinic) in pastoral letters read in churches, while politicians such as Maximilian Thullié demanded that the clinic be closed because it was “clear, that the prevention of pregnancy is just a euphemism for abortion.” (Joanna Tańska, “Be a Mother Deliberately,” Wiadomośc, Oct. 26, 2006 [quote]; Ficowski, Regions of the Great Heresy, 52.)

212  •  “The World Needs You!” 6. The SMK was located at 53 Leszno Street in the heart of Warsaw’s working-class district. 7. Zakopane is a spa and ski resort in the Western Tatra Mountains of Poland. Its clear mountain air was believed to be salutary to those suffering from tuberculosis. (Patrice M. Dabrowski, “‘Discovering’ the Galician Borderlands: The Case of the Eastern Carpathians,” Slavic Review 64 [Summer 2005]: 380–402.) 8. Tadeusz Kamil Marcjan Żeleński (known as Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński) (1874–1941), a Polish gynecologist, social reformer, and journalist, led the Polish sexual revolution and moral campaign for birth control. It was Boy-Żeleński who coined the term “Zycie swiadome” (conscious life) to represent the new morality. The letter from the Zakopane doctors was not found. (Gawin, “Sex Reform Movement,” 183; Tracy Chevalier, Encyclopedia of the Essay [London, 1997], 99–100; Plach, Clash of Moral Nations, 134.) 9. “Phtysiologs” is an obsolete term for tuberculosis specialists. (Stedman’s Medical Dictionary [New York, 2006].) 10. Lódz was a center for textile production and other industries with a largely Jewish population of more than a half million in 1925. (David Turnock, ed., Foreign Direct Investment and Regional Development in East Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union [Burlington, Vt., 2005], 50–51.) 11. Żeleński and Rubinraut were founding members of Conscious Life, sometimes translated as Waking Life or Planned Life (Lycie Świadome), a controversial journal established in 1932 that promoted birth control, abortion, free love, and eugenics. (Gawin, “Sex Reform Movement,” 183; Plach, Clash of Moral Nations, 134.) 12. Max Hodann (1894–1946) was a German socialist, sex educator, and an IfS physician, who ran two birth control clinics in Berlin. (Wolf, Max Hodann 9; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 34.) 13. Rubinraut suggested that a contribution from MS would be a lucky charm. MS agreed and sent an article (not found) in January 1933, suggesting that “you are privileged to cut it up into two or three smaller articles if it is more convenient for you to use it in that way.” (MS to Rubinraut, Mar. 24, 1932, and Jan. 19, 1933 [quote] [LCM 19:783, 799]; correspondence between Sylwia Kužma-Markowska and the editors, June, 29, 2009.) 14. Wiadomości Literackie was a Polish liberal cultural weekly that reflected the avantgarde, cosmopolitan views of the pre–World War II Polish independence movement. (Shore, Caviar and Ashes, xviii.) 15. Rubinraut refers to Lycie Świadome. 16. How-Martyn had sent Rubinraut both Motherhood in Bondage and My Fight for Birth Control. (Rubinraut to MS, Nov. 21, 1931 [LCM 19:779].) 17. Herman Rubinraut, “Dzieje Margaret Sanger” (History of Margaret Sanger), Wiadomości Literackie 8, no. 437 [1932]: 8. The translation was not found. (Editors’ correspondence with Sylwia Kužma-Markowska, July 28, 2009; Shore, Caviar and Ashes, xviii, 23, 266.)

February 1932  •  213

73. To Hildegart Rodríguez Carballeira 1

[Washington, D.C.] February 19, 1932.

Dear Senora Hildegart: Yes Havelock Ellis has written of your great interest in this subject and I am delighted to have your recent letter.2 I spent three months in Barcelona in 1915, and had a most fascinating time studying conditions there.3 My friend (now dead) was Lorenzo Portet, a very splendid man, thinker and linguist, who taught Spanish in the Liverpool University. However, as he was a follower of Ferrer’s he was not liked by the Spanish Government.4 I spoke very often at working men’s meetings with Portet to translate, but being an old fashioned gentleman (though very radical on economic subjects) he was a hundred years behind on sex subjects. I doubt if he presented my views correctly. Your marvelous accomplishment is splendid; now that you have a new Government,5 you should have Birth Control Clinics all over Spain. They should be established and all instruction to working women and mothers given by women doctors (if possible). I will send you two books with my compliments.6 I wish you would become a part of our international work and form a center of information in Spain. Please write to Mrs. Edith How-Martyn,7 Birth Control-International Centre, Parliament Mansions, Westminster, London, S.W.1, England and Frau Kate STÜTZIN, Berlin W.15 Kurfurstendamm 44, Germany. Frau STÜTZIN reads and speaks Spanish and her husband knows the doctors in your country who are interested.8 I think the Birth Control book written by M. Hardy in Paris would be very adaptable to translation in your language and to the people of Barcelona.9 I will send you a guide to clinics as soon as it is printed.10 With all regards and congratulations and best wishes for success. Sincerely yours, National Chairman

TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 19:1242). Handwritten margin note by unidentified author at the top of the first page reads: “She autographed copies of books sent to MS.”

1. Rodríguez had been organizing the LMPRS, which first met in March 1932. (Sinclair, Sex and Society, 87.) 2. Ellis requested that MS send Rodríguez birth control literature. MS advised Rodríguez to contact the BCIIC. Rodríguez responded: “Havelock Ellis has spoken a great deal to me over your interesting work, but I did not think it to be so great.” (Ellis to MS, Nov. 13 and Dec. 11, 1931, MS to Rodríguez, Dec. 2, 1931, and Rodríguez to MS, Jan. ?, 1932 [quote] [LCM 5:304, 312, 19:1236, 1265].)

214  •  “The World Needs You!” 3. MS spent seven weeks with Lorenzo Portet in Barcelona in 1915, learning Spanish and exploring the city and surrounding country. (1915 Calendar [LCM 1:24–29]; MS, Autobiography, 153–68; see also Vol. 1.) 4. Lorenzo Portet (1870–1917) was a Spanish anarchist and educator. He was closely associated with Francisco Ferrer y Guardia (1859–1909), the founder of the Escuela Moderna (Modern School) in Barcelona who was executed by the Spanish government. In 1914, when Portet met MS, he was teaching Spanish at the Commercial College in Liverpool, and the two became lovers. (See MS’s “Portet and Ferrer” series, “Part I,” Modern School 3, nos. 6–7 [1916]: 136–41, “Part II” 3 [Jan. 1917]: 157–60, and “Concluded” 3 [Feb. 1917]: 184–87 [MSM C16:93, 100, 104]; Avrich, Modern School Movement, 3–4, 31–31; see also Vol. 1.) 5. Spain’s Second Republic, controlled by leftist Republicans and Socialists, took power in October 1931. It attempted to build a more modern democracy, opening the way for a freer discussion of sex. (EB; Cleminson and Amezúa, “Spain,” 186–87.) 6. MS probably sent My Fight and possibly Motherhood in Bondage (1928), an edited compilation of client letters. 7. As BCIIC director, How-Martyn was making contacts with Indian and Burmese birth control advocates in advance of her planned tour. (How-Martyn to MS, Feb. 9 and 13, 1932 [LCM 15:194, 196].) 8. Lithuanian-born Joaquin Stützin, a sexologist and urologist, had practiced in Chile between 1908 and 1911, before settling in Germany. Fluent in Spanish, he published Vox Medica, a Spanish-language medical journal. (Editors’ correspondence with Godofredo Stützin, Feb. 6, 2003; Joaquin Stützin to MS, Mar. 10 and May 3, 1932, and Apr. 26, 1933 [LCM 14:38, 66, 105]; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 43, 243n56, 154–55.) 9. Under the pseudonym Georges Hardy, Gabriel Giroud wrote books on birth control and population issues, but MS likely refers to his popular practical pamphlet Moyens d’évitar la grossesse (Means to Avoid Pregnancy) (1909). (Accampo, Blessed Motherhood, Bitter Fruit, 146.) 10. The BCCRB produced a pamphlet, Suggestions for the Establishment of a Clinic (1932), that provided advice about creating advisory boards, securing contraceptives, and keeping records. (LCM 29:285).

74. To Herman Rubinraut

Washington, D.C. March 24, 1932.

Dear Dr. Rubinraut: I do not know how to begin to thank you for your charming letter of February 3rd and for the enclosures that came with it. It is just too nice to spoil by any comment of mine, and you must just accept my heart-felt thanks for your interest and for the sympathetic way in which you have presented the story of my life.1 You, yourself, are doing a wonderful piece of work in your country, and from all sides I hear praise of your efforts. I know the way is a difficult one, but I am sure that you will persevere until you achieve what you are after.

April 1932  •  215

I think it is splendid that Dr. Zelenksi2 is working so closely with you, and I wish you every success for you proposed journal. Indeed I will be glad to cooperate with you in any possible way. I will try to send an article along to you very soon and hope it will prove suitable for your purposes.3 With every good wish to you in your noble efforts, and with assurances of my deep interest, I am, Sincerely yours, Margaret Sanger. TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 19:783). Return address: 2424 Wyoming Avenue, N.W., Washington headquarters of the NCFLBC.

1. MS refers to Rubinraut’s biographical article “Dzieje Margaret Sanger.” 2. MS refers to Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński. 3. Handwritten margin note by Mary Compton Johnson reads: “No article ever sent on this.” MS did send Rubinraut something in January 1933, as he wrote it would “envelop my booklet in these warm exciting winds of your Spirit.” (Rubinraut to MS, Nov. 14, 1933 [LCM 19:808].)

75. To Inés Lassise y Sierra de Marin 1 Since control of Puerto Rico shifted from Spain to the United States in 1901, almost half of its land was converted to American-owned sugar plantations. Though the Puerto Rican economy plummeted in 1930, its birthrate continued to rise. As a result, incoming governor James Beverly openly called for birth control when he took office in 1932. (Truman R. Clark, Puerto Rico and the United States, 1917–1933 [Pittsburgh, 1975], 149–51.)

Washington, D.C. April 1, 1932

Dear Mrs. de Marin: My attention has been called to an article in “Puerto Rico Ilustrado” which is devoted to Birth Control.2 The article is dedicated to you. I have been told of your splendid work as head of the Red Cross in your country and that all worthwhile civic movements are strengthened by your support.3 Some months ago I received a letter from the Porto Rico Child Feeding Committee stating that 40,000 children in Porto Rico were starving.4 This is a matter of concern to every thinking person and it is imperative that these children be given the necessary nourishment to prevent their growing into manhood and womanhood with impoverished physiques and all its attendant evils. But, it seems to me even more important that immediate steps be taken to prevent another 40,000 children from coming into the world next year under

216  •  “The World Needs You!”

even more distressing conditions, and so—on, and on, and on, each succeeding year. Would it not be wiser to establish Birth Control Clinics in Porto Rico to enable these poor mothers to control the size of their families, until there is a reasonable assurance that the newborn child will have at least a fair chance of survival?5 I am taking the liberty of sending you, with my compliments, a copy of “Motherhood in Bondage.” You will no doubt find many of the stories contained therein all too familiar. I am hoping that with the help of a few courageous and progressive women in Porto Rico Birth Control will be recognized as an important part of the public health program, and that the movement will take root there and grow rapidly.6 I shall be glad to be of any possible assistance at any time and hope I may have the pleasure of hearing from you. Sincerely yours, Director TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 19:865–66). Letterhead of the NCFLBC. Return address: 2421 Wyoming Avenue. Copies sent to Adelaide Pearson Cook and Manuel Guzmán Rodríguez Jr.7

1. Inés Luisa Lassise y Sierra de Marin (1889–1943) was a Red Cross official connected to her family pharmacy, Manuel Marin and Co., in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. (1920 U.S. Census; Turnier Family History, http://www.turniertome.com/familyhistory/doc/totalfamily; Manuel Guzmán Rodríguez Jr. to MS, Feb. 15, 1932 [LCM 19:857].) 2. See Manuel Guzmán Rodríguez Jr., “Impresiones de Viaje: Margaret Sanger,” (Impressions of a trip: Margaret Sanger) (Puerto Rico Ilustrado 23, no. 1145 [1932]: 16–17 [LCM 143:573].) 3. MS learned about de Marin from physician Manuel Guzmán Rodríguez Jr. (ca. 1892–1971), who was then trying to organize a birth control clinic in Mayagüez. He asked MS to encourage de Marin to support his efforts. (Rodríguez to MS, Feb. 15, 1932 [LCM 19:857]; SSDI.) 4. The actual statement was that the Porto Rico Child Feeding Committee, a New York–based organization founded in 1930, had fed 42,000 seriously undernourished schoolchildren and estimated that the total number of underfed children there was 225,000. (Darwin R. James, Porto Rico Child Feeding Committee to MS, Apr. 14, 1931; Porto Rico Child Feeding Committee, brochure, 1933 [LCM 70:67, 86].) 5. Puerto Rico prohibited the teaching and distribution of contraception. (Ramirez de Arellano and Seipp, Colonialism, Catholicism, and Contraception, 28–29.) 6. The first LPCNPR disbanded around 1928 due to a lack of public support and intense opposition from the Catholic Church. A new group, Liga para el control de la Natalidad de Puerto Rico (LPCNPR-2) (Birth Control League of Puerto Rico), was formed in San Juan in the fall of 1932. (Ramirez de Arellano and Seipp, Colonialism, Catholicism, and Contraception, 28–29; Briggs, Reproducing Empire, 94.) 7. Adelaide Pearson (Cook) (1891–1968) was an NCFLBC field-worker and administrator. (SSDI; New York Times, Mar. 7, 1968.)

June 1932  •  217

76. From Edith How-Martyn After the death of her mother in April, How-Martyn went back to work for the BCIIC, expanding her contacts and on June 3 launched a three-week tour of the Soviet Union. (How-Martyn to MS, Jan. 22 and June 3, 1932 [LCM 15:181, 264].)

On Baltic Sea. 23rd. June 1932.

My dearest Margaret, Without exaggeration I can say Russia is most interesting, probably the most interesting country in the world today. Communism as Lenin interpreted it is to bring deliverance to the oppressed, and woman being “the oppressed of the oppressed,” Lenin laid great stress on her release from oppression.1 The revolution gave her political equality and the right to economic equality. To make her economic equality a reality she must be a worker on equal terms and receive equal wages.2 For freedom as human beings, marriage must be by mutual consent, and divorce must be granted to either party to prevent oppression of one by the other.3 Maternity, as a service to the community, is under the care of the State and is carried out by institutions, chief of them being Points of Consultation, or clinics where general advice is given to pregnant women and to women on general sex matters;4 Institutes for the Protection of Mothers and Children, where there are many departments, ante-natal, birth control, young mothers and babies, hostels for babies when mothers are ill, hospitals for sick children, gardens where they can sleep day or night, maternity wards where babies are born and so on;5 Clinics and Nurseries at big Railway Stations, where parents can leave children when coming into big towns to shop and do business;6 Privileges, pregnant women are given a card which entitles the holder to a seat in car, ‘bus or train, and to go to the head of a queue. They are entitled to two months holiday on full pay at a sanatorium before and after the birth of a child. Returning to work, a mother must be given time to suckle her child without loss of pay.7 There are Museums of Protection of Mothers and Children, used to teach children about sex and to show by models and pictures what motherhood is and how it should be treated to get the best results in healthy children.8 All the resources of scientific knowledge are used in the work. Birth Control and Abortion are taken for granted and need no general discussion. Dr. Reuben Wolf of Berlin happened to be in Moscow and came with me to interpret.9 They are using the pessary, in most cases the Dumas or Ramses, with a contraceptive jelly, the condom to some extent, and a preparation of the Bacillus Bulgarious in sour milk, but as this preparation only keeps about 14 days, it is not practical.10 I am taking back a specimen for Dr. Voge to analyse.11 As they

218  •  “The World Needs You!”

have abortion to fall back on, I thought they might not be so keen on finding the perfect contraceptive, but, yes, they are, as a woman is entitled to ten days holiday on full pay for an abortion, and they want to prevent such a waste, and also because repeated abortions do damage to a woman’s health.12 I gather that a Conference which would be friendly to all this work and anxious to see what is being done would be welcomed by the Soviet Government, and indeed helped by them. Do you think it would help the world movement to have a Conference in Moscow, possibly with Stalin as the Honorary President,13 while you were Acting President, on Birth Control and the Welfare of Mothers and Children, or simply on Welfare of Mothers and Children, treating birth control, abortion and increases of population as sections? There would be reports from as many countries as possible, published beforehand, with a special report on Russia, which I think the Government would supply and pay for. There would be important people in b.c. work from as many countries as possible—mornings to be devoted to discussion of papers already printed, afternoons and evenings to visits to Institutions, after four or five days in Moscow longer trips to be arranged, to Volga district, to Leningrad, possibly to Tiflis, to see how widely the work has been spread. If you think anything of this for 1933, could you not come to England early in September, then to Brno for the World Sexual Reform Conference,14 then to Moscow to make preliminary arrangements, taking Gerda Guy,15 Marjorie Martin, Freda Laski (a Socialist)16 and myself with you, and possibly a medical person like Hannah Stone or her husband?17 When I hear from you, I will write officially to the Department of Public Health in Moscow.18 Love to you dearest Margaret, from Edith. TRcy MSP, DLC (LCM 15:270–71).

1. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, born Ulyanov (1870–1924), the revolutionary founder of the Russian Communist Party and head of the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1924, asserted that “the aim of the Soviet Republic is to abolish, in the first place, all restrictions on the rights of women.” He likened women’s position in society to that of slavery. (EB; Lenin, speech at the First All-Russian Congress of Women Workers, Nov. 19, 1918 [quote], and Lenin, “A Great Beginning,” June 28, 1919, in Women and Communism: Selections from the Writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin [reprint, Westport, Conn., 1973], 42, 44, 45.) 2. Despite women’s winning the suffrage in 1917 and equality in education and pay in 1918, sexual divisions of labor persisted, especially in rural areas. Most women were underpaid and relegated to home work; they still constituted only about 30 percent of the industrial workforce in 1933. (Goldman, Women, the State & Revolution, 1–3, 11–12, 310–12; Suny, Cambridge History of Russia, 471–79, 487; Dorothy Atkinson et al., eds., Women in Russia [Stanford, Calif., 1977], 195.)

June 1932  •  219 3. The 1918 Code on Marriage, the Family, and Guardianship secularized marriage and allowed men and women to marry and separate easily and without restriction. Divorce was granted at the request of either party and without legal cause. A revamped 1926 Family Code recognized unregistered unions, granted additional protections to women, and further simplified divorce. (Suny, Cambridge History of Russia, 473, 476; Goldman, Women, the State & Revolution, 3, 101–3.) 4. The Soviet state had opened several hundred konsul‘tatsii (consultation clinics) under the medical section of the Okhrana Materinstva i Mladenchestva (OMM) (Institute for the Protection of Mother and Child). These local health centers, staffed by gynecologists, obstetricians, midwives, nurses, and “patrons,” dealt with every facet of women’s reproductive health, including contraceptive instruction. The clinics also furnished information on sex hygiene, premarital counseling, and abortion. (Field, Protection of Women, 28, 45–46; Thomas, “International Intercourse,” 68–69 [quote].) 5. The OMM was established in 1918 as a department of the Narodnyi Komissariat Zdravookhraneniia (NKZ) (People’s Commissariat of Health). Through its network of consultation centers and special gynecological clinics, it offered pediatric services and hostels for poor mothers and children, along with thousands of creches or nurseries for prekindergarten-age children. The OMM opened special maternity hospitals, centers for maternal and children’s diseases, and institutions for prostitutes and other women and children suffering from venereal diseases. (Field, Protection of Women, 45–6, 48–49, 104, 107–9, 183, 191; Thomas, “International Intercourse,” 68–69; Semashko, Health Protection in the U.S.S.R., 77.) 6. These special railway-station creches, operating day and night, were staffed by physicians, nurses, and teachers. Children were examined and washed, their clothes laundered and disinfected. They were assigned to nurseries for meals, rest, playtime, and instruction. Children could be left for a few hours or several days. (Sigerist, Socialized Medicine, 261; How-Martyn, “Mother Care in Russia.”) 7. The card, furnished at consultation clinics upon verification of pregnancy, also gave expectant mothers access to supplementary food rations and entitled them to “lighter” work. (Newsholme and Kingsbury, Red Medicine, 177 [quote]; Field, Protection of Women, 103.) 8. These educational centers, located in the larger cities, instructed pregnant women “on the anatomy, physiology, and hygiene of childbirth,” as well as on infant care. The museums also held educational sessions for husbands and children. (Sigerist, Socialized Medicine, 246 [quote]; Field, Protection of Women, 103.) 9. Martha Ruben-Wolf had fled Germany for the Soviet Union due to government crackdowns on Communists and birth control activists. (Gruber and Graves, Women and Socialism, 159; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 37, 41, 52.) 10. The Dumas-brand cervical cap was “made of heavy white rubber and shaped like a watch crystal,” whereas the Ramses was a popular American-made modification of the Mensinga pessary, made of amber-colored translucent rubber with a coiled-steel wire spring in the rim. Bacillus (or Lactobacillus) Bulgaricus, a lactic acid–producing bacteria used for producing various dairy products, had been adapted by Soviet scientists into a contraceptive paste that, according to How-Martyn, “is apparently giving very good results.” (Himes and Stone, Practical Birth Control Methods, 86 [quote 1]; How-Martyn,

220  •  “The World Needs You!” “Mother Care in Russia” [quote 2]; “Medicine: Bacillus Acidophilus,” Time, Mar. 23, 1925, 15; Thomas S. Blair, Botanic Drugs: Their Materia Medica, Pharmacology and Therapeutics [Cincinnati, 1917], 98–99.) 11. In 1929 Cecil I. B. Voge (1898–1978), a Scottish-born chemist and immunologist, began to study commercially available chemical contraceptives, under the direction of Dr. F. A. E. Crew at the Institute of Animal Genetics at the University of Edinburgh. Voge’s Chemistry and Physics of Contraceptives (1933) concluded that there was no perfect chemical contraceptive. (Who Was Who among English and American Authors, 1931–1949; Merriley Borrell, “Biologists and Birth Control Research,” Journal of the History of Biology 20 [Spring 1987]: 71–73; see also Vol. 2.) 12. Abortion was made legal in the Soviet Union on November 18, 1920, to improve women’s health and economic standing. Abortions had to be performed in hospitals by registered physicians in the first ten weeks of the pregnancy and were not permitted for first-time pregnancies unless the woman’s life was in danger. As the number of abortions increased, health officials made contraceptives more available, hoping this would stabilize the falling birthrate and stem health problems related to abortion. By the 1930s, the Soviet government began a propaganda and education campaign to discourage abortion and increase contraceptive research. (Taussig, Abortion, Spontaneous and Induced, 123–44, 405–8; Newsholme and Kingsbury, Red Medicine, 189–90; Goldman, Women, the State & Revolution, 255, 259, 288.) 13. Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (1879–1953), né Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili in Georgia, was a Soviet political leader and the general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (1922–53). After Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin consolidated his power and became a ruthless dictator. (EB.) 14. MS did not attend the Fifth WLSR Congress (5WLSRC) in Brno, Czechoslovakia, in September, having returned home. (1932 Calendar [MSM S78:906]; Dose and Selwyn, “World League for Sexual Reform,” 1.) 15. Gerda Sebbelov Guy (1885–1962), a Danish-born British suffragist and anthropologist who had helped MS organize the 7IBCC in 1930, served as treasurer of the BCIIC. (Passport Applications, 1906–1925 [National Archives]; Times [London], May 3, 1962; New York Times, Aug. 22, 1913; MS and Stone, Practice of Contraception, 305.) 16. Frida Kerry Laski (1884–1977) was a British socialist, feminist, and radical suffragist as well as a trained physiotherapist. An ardent eugenicist, Laski was active in the British birth control movement. (Times [London], Aug. 10, 1977; DNB; Banks, Biographical Dictionary of British Feminists, 123.) 17. Hannah Stone managed the BCCRB and published reports in birth control publications and medical journals. Her husband, Abraham Stone (1890–1959), was a Russianborn urologist who specialized in marriage counseling and infertility treatments. (ANB; Stone to MS, Nov. 29, 1930, and Florence Rose to Stone, July 28, 1931 [LCM 32:340, 32:330A].) 18. How-Martyn is referring to the NKZ. MS directed How-Martyn to postpone plans for MS’s Russia trip because of her precarious health and the fear that linking birth control with Soviet communism would damage the NCFLBC lobbying campaign. (Semashko, Health Protection in the U.S.S.R., 17; MS to How-Martyn, July 31, 1932 [MSM C5:416].)

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77. To Edith How-Martyn 1 Suffering from severe fatigue and diagnosed with liver trouble and a glandular disturbance, Sanger traveled to Marienbad, Czechoslovakia, on July 13 to take a six-week cure at its famous spa. (MS to J. Noah Slee, July 13 and 15, 1932, and MS to Grant Sanger, July 19, 1932 [MSM S7:230, 235, 247].)

Goethe Haus Marienbad [Czechoslovakia] July 31-1932.

Dearest Edith: Your letters came, the one from Russia is facinating & I know your impressions must be even more so.2 Now as to me & London. I am taking this cure. It is to take six weeks, & it means quiet, rest & no reading, no talking— no visitors, nothing! People ask for me every day or so, but the Drs orders are “no” & so it is. He wants me to take four months away from work & refuses to consider that I go to the Sex conference in Sept.3 I am sure too, & alas that he is right. I shall be leaving here about Aug 20 for a higher altitude Somewhere wherever he sends me.4 That is for two weeks I suppose. I was to Sail Sept 9. That was the plan when I came, now that I am improving so rapidly & gaining pounds he may be more lenient & let me go to London for an after cure. If he does not then I shall try to arrange to postpone my sailing a week & spend that week in London after all. Mary Macaulay has invited me to share her place with her & it sounds simple & rugged enough for my finances,5 which are to be most carefully considered— J. N. lost his money—his entire fortune his Seat on the Stock Exchange etc etc.6 For a time I tho’t he could not survive the shock but now that he sees that I can live simply & plainly & manage on nothing he feels more contented & just lives in hopes. He could not come over with me, but borrowed money that I should come.7 Thats the story of our financial stand, which I hate to talk about, but you must know. The Conference in Russia would not be so good for us in USA.8 unless we get our law passed this Dec to March— Then it could be done but the opposition has tried desperately to tie our Bc work up with Russia & has asked for a Congressional Investigation next Dec by the US Senate.9 I do not know if it will be granted, but there are always tools who will do anything for the Church.10 Because of this I would not like to hold our Conference in Russia just yet. I’d rather get one going in Germany as we talked of once before, now that we know the German situation we could handle it better, tho it would not be at all easy. That to me could & would be the next step for 1933.

222  •  “The World Needs You!”

It could be held in Sept 1–4—or any early date such as end of August for American professors to participate. As I can not ask J N. for money these days I’d just have to talk over the financial possibilities with you & Gerda11 & see what we can raise toward this project each month & put it aside for that Conference. If this went over well we could then plan for 1935 in Russia for if the laws in USA are not changed by that time Ill be ready to live in Europe somewhere & let USA go to the dogs in her Puritanical ways.12 Perhaps Gerda will let us go out to her place13 for a couple of days & just talk & talk & plan without interruptions of phone calls & visitors such as Im bound to have in London. Im longing to see you Im dying to see you! Im afraid to get too thrilled over all the things I can plan for because I know how much health means these days to good constructive planning. Now dearest Edith there must be the way for me to come & I will start arranging for my visit & can soon let you know the date. It will be like Paradise to see London again. Ever my love to hubby & Olive14 & Mary Breed15 & all. devotedly Margaret. ALS EHMP, MSPP (MSM C5:416–23).

1. How-Martyn had returned from her trip to the Soviet Union at the end of June. 2. For How-Martyn’s June 23 letter from the Soviet Union, see herein. For her letters of July 26 and 27, see LCM 15:307, 311. 3. MS was under the care of Max Porges (1866–1947), an internationally known physician who had also treated some of her friends. The “sex conference” was the 5WLSRC, scheduled for Brno. (New York Times, Jan. 9, 1947; MS to Louise Gallatin Gay, Aug. 18, 1932, and 1932 Calendar [MSM S78:906, C5:425]; see also Vol. 2.) 4. MS went to Munich and Venice before going on to spend two weeks in Cortina d’Apezzo in the Dolomites. (1932 Calendar [MSM S78:894–900]; How Martyn to Hugh de Selincourt, Sept. 12, 1932 [LCM 15:319].) 5. Mary Hope Macaulay (1902–71) was a Canadian-born lecturer on personal psychology, a social worker, and the BCCRB’s assistant director from 1929 to 1931. (Martin Israel, The Quest for Wholeness [London, 1989], 128; biographical sheet, n.d. [MS Unfilmed].) 6. Slee’s stock investments plummeted in value after the 1929 stock market crash. To pay his debts, he sold his seat on the New York Stock Exchange at a significant loss. (See Vol. 2.) 7. Despite the crash, the Slees were still comparatively wealthy, though cash poor. (Slee to MS, Feb. 7, 1933 [MSM S7:730]; “Statement of Securities Held by Bank of New York & Trust Co., Custodian for Margaret Sanger Slee,” June 30, 1936 [MS Unfilmed].) 8. See How-Martyn to MS, June 23, 1932, herein. 9. Hearings on NCFLBC bills H.R. 11082 and S. 4436 were held in May 1932. The House bill was defeated, but the Senate vote was postponed until after the summer recess. (MS,

September 1932  •  223 “Special Information Bulletin,” May 31, 1932 [MSM S64:626]; for more on the NCFLBC’s lobbying and these bills, see Vol. 2.) 10. Faced with growing public acceptance of birth control, some American Catholic leaders sought to tarnish the movement by linking it to communism. In the hearing on S. 4436, Ralph Burton, a lawyer representing the National Patriotic League, claimed that the Soviets could use the law to “flood the United States with literature designed to promulgate the communist doctrine of free love.” Jesuit priest Ignatius W. Cox, a well-known radio preacher, wrote, “Contraception is a perversion of nature, as communism in another sense is a perversion.” (U.S. Senate, Birth Control Hearings Before a Subcommittee on the Committee of the Judiciary [Washington, D.C., 1932], 63 [quote 1]; Tentler, Catholics and Contraception, 123; New York Times, Aug. 20, 1933 [quote 2].) 11. Gerda and Harry Guy donated £92 in 1932, about a third of the BCIIC’s income (£323.15) that year. (BCIIC, “List of Subscriptions for the Year 1932” [LCM 15:388].) 12. The NCFLBC had been lobbying Congress since 1930, and while MS was pleased with the progress made in obtaining bill sponsors and securing support, she was less optimistic about an expeditious passage. (For more on the lobbying effort, see Vol. 2.) 13. The Guys owned the Grange, a farming estate in Beaconsfield, about twenty-five miles west of London. (Times [London], July 5, 1955.) 14. Olive Johnson continued to work at the BCIIC, keeping MS abreast of funding developments and news from Europe. (Johnson to MS, Jan. 5, Apr. 15, and June 3, 1932 [LCM 15:16, 245, 265].) 15. Mary Breed worked with How-Martyn at the BCIIC, coauthoring the pamphlet The Birth Control Movement in England (London, 1930) with her. She also assisted HowMartyn in getting a birth control platform included in the 1929 general election. (HowMartyn to MS, Jan. 31 and Nov. 10, 1929 [MSM S4:952, S5:318].)

78. From K arla Popprová-Molínková 1 After independence in 1918, the nation of Czechoslovakia emerged as the most modern and democratic of the new eastern European nations, with a constitution guaranteeing women’s equal rights. But birth control, which was not included in these rights, was expensive and difficult to obtain in the interwar years. Abortion was prohibited, with the exception of specific and narrowly defined medical situations. (Hana Havelková, “Abstract Citizenship? Women and Power in the Czech Republic,” International Studies in Gender, State & Society 3, nos. 2–3 [1996]: 255; Vladimir Wynnyczuk and Radim Uzel, “Czech Republic and Slovak Republic,” in From Abortion to Contraception, edited by David and Skilogianis, 108.)

[Česká] Ťrebová, [Czechoslovakia]2 September 15th 1932.

Dear Mrs. Sanger, Now I think you will be already in London and therefore I permit myself to write to you. First of all I would tell you that we should be intensly happy and grateful if you would help the publishing of Family Limitation with the generous support

224  •  “The World Needs You!”

you have so kindly offered us.3 We have spoken the matter over and over but there is no hope we could publish it before at least 3–4 months and this would be a great loss of time. Later on we want to address several rich jewesses at Brno, but as you, Dear Mrs. Sanger, have conceded, it would not be wise from the very beginning, for it would make the movement unpopular. I see now with the congress for sexual reform that most people object to the participation of so many Jews.4 I even heard in serious circles that mostly Jews are concerned with Sexual reform because they have not so strong principles in morals.5 If you could really send us the contribution we should publish the booklet immediately. The printer would deliver us for the amount 2000 copies, as he asks for the second thousand just a minim fee, even so for further thousands. We expect that some other organisations for workers welfare would order further thousands at their own account, so that we could have spread 4–5000. There is only one difficulty. We are bound by our statutes to publish only information recommended by physicians.6 We of course hope that Dr. Weisskopf would write a few words as introduction.7 Another point of importance is, if you, Dear Mrs. Sanger would not mind in changing the title in Protection from conception. At further editions we could add the English title in brackets. As the situation is now, it would be impossible to spread the booklet under the title Family limitation, as there is already a panic fear that we are going to depopulate the country.8 We can only carry on our work in stressing incessantly the protection of women’s health so greatly in danger now. Our society was established on September 7th, the meeting was very well attended, there were several addresses that congratulated us and agreed fully with our aims.9 There was also a little catholic opposition but it was soon silenced.10 Now we have send the protocol of the meeting to the authority and have to wait until our society will get the legal right to work. I am asked from several sides if it is true that Mrs. Sanger has been invited by the Czechoslovakian communists to speak before them.11 Will you please let me know what there is true about, because they expect to get authentic information from me. I have published an interview with you in one of the first Czech papers. After the congress I shall send the translation.12 I hope you will not object to its contents. People only now begin to realize the importance of your work and there are more and more regrets that you have not come once more to Praha in September.13 Just now I got the letter of one member of the National Council of Women who is returning from her summer—resort and asks me if you would not come any more for she is exceedingly interested in the question. Our society is preparing a memorandum to the minister of health Mrs. Vaňková and I shall present it personally.14 We are asking endorsments and have got a great many already, only the most important Moravian organisation of “advanced” women which promised the signature first had held a

September 1932  •  225

meeting now and the majority voted for refusing the signature. We shall do without them as well! [Handwritten] With the publisher at Praha I shall speak to-morrow. [Typed] Looking forward to your kind resolution concerning the publishing of Family Limitation. I remain, Dear Madam, yours most respectfully, K. Popprová [signed] TLS MSP, DLC (LCM 12:1264–65). Handwritten margin note by How-Martyn at the top of the first page reads: “Arrived at London office after you left—so now ford EHM—”15 Handwritten margin note by MS at the top of the first page reads: “sent $25 Oct 4 for FM.”16

1. Karla Popprová-Molínková, a Czech birth control advocate, contacted MS in October 1930 about organizing for birth control there. In August 1932, How-Martyn encouraged MS to invite Herman Rubinraut and Molínková to serve as BCIIC correspondents. (Molínková to MS, Oct. 4, 1930, Aug. 3 and 27 and Oct. 22, 1932, and MS to PopprováMolínková, Oct. 7, 1932 [LCM 12:1223, 1246, 1271, 1270, 15:311].) 2. Česká Ťrebová is a town in the Pardubice region of Czechoslovakia, a large Germanspeaking enclave in Bohemia and Moravia. 3. MS offered to fund the translation of Family Limitation, sending a check for twentyfive dollars. For a copy of the pamphlet, published in December 1933, see LCM 12:1299. (Popprová-Molínková to MS, Aug. 27, 1932, and Dec. 19, 1933, and MS to PopprováMolínková, Oct. 7, 1932 [LCM 12:1260, 1309, 1270].) 4. The 5WLSRC opened in Brno, Czechoslovakia, on September 20. The meeting received negative publicity, in part, because of rising anti-Semitism and more conservative views on sexuality. Both its president, Magnus Hirschfeld, and its vice president, Norman Haire, were Jewish homosexuals. In Germany Hirschfeld was targeted as a “morally corruptive Jew,” whose work was associated with a “Jewish conspiracy” to seduce the innocent into immorality. (“From Stigmatization to Enemy Incarnate,” in The Institute for Sexual Science (1919–1933), online exhibit, http://www.hirschfeld.inberlin.de/institut/en/ifsframe.html?exil/exi1_01.html; Erwin J. Haeberle, “The Jewish Contribution to the Development of Sexology,” Journal of Sex Research 18 (Nov. 1982): 306; Crozier, “Becoming a Sexologist,” 300.) 5. Fewer Jews lived in Czechoslovakia than other eastern European nations, but antiSemitism still persisted in agrarian areas and among Roman Catholics and fascists, who rejected women’s emancipation, birth control, and abortion. Opposition to modernity may have unified and emboldened anti-Semites. (Blanka Soukupová, “Modern AntiSemitism in Czech Lands between the Years 1895–1989,” Lidé města [Urban people], Feb. 13, 2011, http://lidemesta.cz/assets/media/files/13‑2011‑2/Soukupova211.pdf.) 6. Doctor-dispensed birth control remained in effect in Czechoslovakia despite efforts to liberalize the law so that contraceptive materials could be distributed more freely. (Karla Huebner, “The Whole World Revolves around It: Sex Education and Sex Reform in First Republic Czech Print Media,” Aspasia 4, no. 1 [2010]: 36.) 7. Joseph Weisskopf (1904–77) was a Jewish Czech physician and sexologist who organized the 5WLSRC. (SSDI; New York Passenger Lists, 1820–1957; Brandhorst, “From Neo‑Malthusianism to Sexual Reform,” 49.)

226  •  “The World Needs You!” 8. MS suggested substituting the words “Space” or “Control,” as in Spacing the Birth of Babies or Controlling the Birth Rate or even Control the Size of Your Families. The pamphlet was finally published as Margaret Sanger-ová, Ochrana Pred Poetím (Contraceptive protection), in Brno in 1933. The Czechoslovakian birthrate had been falling rapidly, while mortality rates dropped more slowly. The decrease in population alarmed demographers, social scientists, and politicians. (MS to Popprová-Molínková, Nov. 7, 1932 [LCM 12:1277]; for a copy of the Czech version, see LCM 12:1299; Vladimir Srb, “Population Development and Population Policy in Czechoslovakia,” Population Studies 16 [Nov. 1962]: 147, 152.) 9. The Společnost pro Plánování Rodiny a Sexuální Výchovu (SPPRSV) (Czechoslovakian Birth Control Society) was established in Brno by Popprová-Molínková and Betty Karpíšková (1884–1942), editor of Ženské noviny: Listy en socialní demokratických (Women’s News: Paper of Social Democratic Women) and deputy chair of the Social Democratic Party. (BCIIC Newsletter, No. 1 [June 1934] [MSM C12:1041]; PopprováMolínková to MS, Mar. 2 and Oct. 22, 1932 [LCM 12:1238, 1271]; Dagmar Kotlandova Koenig, “Moderate and Sensible: Higher Education and the Czech Women’s Rights Movement,” master’s thesis [University of Washington, 1997].) 10. The Catholic Church’s influence increased during the 1920s and 1930s, as it offered a counterweight to communism and played a key role in defending Czechoslovakia’s antiabortion law. (Melissa Feinberg, Elusive Equality: Gender, Citizenship, and the Limits of Democracy in Czechoslovakia, 1918–1950 [Pittsburgh, 2006], 153–54.) 11. Popprová-Molínková assumed that MS would attend the 5WLSRC and hoped she would speak to the SPPRSV. (Popprová-Molínková to MS, Aug. 19, 1932 [LCM 12:1252].) 12. The interview was not found. Popprová-Molínková sent MS an abbreviated translation of “Vu˙dkyné amerických matek” (Leader of American Mothers), an article on MS published on September 11, 1931, in Nárdoní Listy, a leading Czech newspaper (LCM 12:1227). (Editors’ correspondence with Karolina Kostalova, Czech National Library; for a copy of the paper, see http://kramerius.nkp.cz/kramerius/handle/ABA001/5064519.) 13. MS responded that she was “very sorry” that she could not come to Prague. (MS to Popprová-Molínková, Oct. 7, 1932 [LCM 12:1270].) 14. The Czechoslovakian minister of health from 1929 to 1935 was Franz Spina (1868– 1938), a right-wing Austrian-born politician. Mrs. Vaňková (or Vaňcová) headed a Marriage Advice Centre, which offered birth control information. (BCIIC Newsletter, No. 1 [June 1934] [MSM C12:1041]; Popprová-Molínková, “Notes on the Conferences of the World League for Sexual Reform, Brno, Sept. 20–26, 1932 [LCM 12:1266]; Elisabeth Bakke, “Doomed to Failure? The Czechoslovak Nation Project and the Slovak Autonomist Reaction, 1918–38” [Ph.D. diss., University of Oslo, 1999], appx. B1, “Czechoslovak Ministers, 1918–1938,” http://folk.uio.no/stveb1/Doomed_Appendixes_A_D.pdf.) 15. MS returned to New York on September 15, 1932. (United Kingdom Outward Passenger Lists, 1890–1960.) 16. FM was a reference to Family Limitation; see note 3 above.

October 1932  •  227

79. From Edith How-Martyn 1 With the BCIIC still in a financial crisis, How-Martyn and Gerda Guy managed to keep the offices open with “next to nothing to run on.” (Louise Stevens Bryant to MS, Mar. 7, 1932 [LCM 63:642].)

London, [England] 4th. October 1932. REPORT TO MARGARET SANGER. LONDON COUNCIL of the B.C.I.I.C. We are forming the London Council,2 as agreed by you, and it meets at the Guys’ on Sunday, November 6th, so if you have anything you would like to put before it, please let me have it— even a few words of greeting would be appreciated.3 GENEVA Progress is being made at Geneva, but, as Marjorie Martin says she is writing you, I need not repeat it. She mentions 6,000 francs a year, about £350 or $2,000, which seems very reasonable, and as soon as our London Council meets an appeal will be considered.4 WARSAW Neither Frida Laski nor Gerda could manage to go to Warsaw to make preliminary enquiries about holding a Conference. But I wrote to ask Marjorie Martin whether she and her husband would be going there, as she would really be the best person to find out the possibilities.5 She has just replied that they cannot go this year, but that Mme. Fuss,6 a Polish medical woman living in Geneva, whom she has interested in the birth control question, will be paying a visit to Poland towards the end of this year, and has offered to see Mme. (Dr.) Budzynska-Tylicka, the chief organiser of the Warsaw Clinic, and see what facilities there are for an international conference in Warsaw. I have asked Marjorie Martin to get her to do so, and I have also written Dr. Budzynska-Tylicka to enquire the likelihood of local support, the probable attitude of the Government and so on.7 SPAIN What do you think of the suggestion to have a Birth Control Conference in Spain?8 It would be a triumph to have a Conference with the help of the Government in a country which was so recently priest-ridden.9 It would annoy the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church and not please France that a Latin country was taking up birth control.10 Spain is so delightful anyway that we should get a good attendance and at present living is very cheap there. BRNO CONFERENCE * W.L.S.R.

228  •  “The World Needs You!”

Enclosed is a brief report of the Brno Conference, compiled from Mme. Popprova’s letters.11 Your decision to keep out of it is sound and very wise.12 “PRACTICE OF BIRTH CONTROL”. What do you think of Enid Charles’s “Practice of Birth Control”?13 I have just finished reading her husband, Professor Hogben’s book, “Genetic Principles,” published last year.14 It is most interesting and if you have not seen it, I will send you a copy, for I think you will agree that he ought to be secured for the next Conference. He shares your distrust of the Eugenists.15 I have written him a friendly letter.16 VISITORS FROM NEW YORK Dr. Levinson called, had lunch and met Gerda, and Olive Johnson took her to East London Clinic.17 Mrs. Clyde and Dr. Proctor called,18 but had little time to spare. It was a great pleasure to meet them and I hope they will come to the next Conference. Edith How-Martyn TL MSP, DLC (LCM 15:327–28). Letterhead of BCIIC.

1. How-Martyn chose not to attend the 5WLSRC and instead planned to visit MS in New York or London. (How-Martyn to MS, Aug. 3 and 24 and Sept. 14, 1932 [LCM 15:312, 315, 324].) 2. While MS was in England in September, the BCIIC formed a London Council to raise funds and support. The members were Gerda and Harry Guy, S. Jeffrey Samuel, D. A. Crow, Edith Summerskill, Maurice Newfield, Frida Laski, and How-Martyn. (HowMartyn to MS, Aug. 3, 1932, and How-Martyn to de Selincourt, Sept. 12, 1932 [LCM 15:312, 319].) 3. For MS’s greeting, see MS to How-Martyn, Oct. 20, 1932, herein. 4. Marjorie Martin wanted to establish a BCIIC birth control clinic in Geneva. When MS told her she could not fund it, Martin suggested that the clinic could be sponsored by the Cartel d’Hygiène de la Suisse Romande (Moral and Social Hygiene Union for Western Switzerland). (Martin to MS, Aug. 24 and Sept. 21, 1932 [LCM 20:68, 124:205B].) 5. How-Martyn’s correspondence with Martin was not found. Martin’s husband, Percival William Martin (1893–1972), was a British economist working at the ILO, an LN bureau on international labor relations. He may have had connections with the Polish labor movement. (Percival William Martin pension file, ILO Archives; “Paper Abstracts,” History of Economics Review 15 [Winter 1991]: 85.) 6. Madame Fuss was a Polish-born physician and likely the wife of Henri Fuss-Amore, the Belgian-born chief of the ILO’s Unemployment, Employment, and Migration Section. (Marjorie Martin to MS, Aug. 24 and Sept 21, 1932 [MSM S20:68, LCM 124:205B]; Carl Strikwerda, A House Divided: Catholics, Socialists, and Flemish Nationalists in NineteenthCentury Belgium [Baltimore, 1997], 396.) 7. Justyna Budzinska-Tylicka (1876–1936), a Polish physician, feminist, and social activist, advocated birth control in medical and workers’ organizations and operated

October 1932  •  229 a clinic in Warsaw. How-Martyn’s letters to her were not found. (De Haan, Daskalova, and Loutfi, Biographical Dictionary of Women’s Movements, 80–81].) 8. Hildegart Rodríguez, then secretary of the LMPRS, wanted to hold a eugenics conference in Madrid in the spring of 1933 and sought BCIIC funding. (Sinclair, Sex and Society, 184–85.) 9. The Catholic Church’s power in Spain had been greatly curtailed during the anticlerical Second Republic, making it feasible to consider such a conference. (Cleminson and Amezúa, “Spain,” 186–87.) 10. France’s Third Republic was hostile to birth control, instituting policies, supported by Catholics, socialists, and politicians on both ends of the political spectrum, that encouraged large families. (Richard Sonn, “‘Your Body Is Yours’: Anarchism, Birth Control and Eugenics in Interwar France,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 14 [Oct. 2005]: 415.) 11. Popprová-Molínková reported dissension over everything from whether it was necessary to seek out poor patients to the usefulness of the Gräfenberg ring. (Molínková, “Notes on the Conference of the World League for Sexual Reform, Brno, Sept. 20–26, 1932” [LCM 12:1266].) 12. MS had resigned from the WLSR in 1929, wary of aligning herself too closely with an organization many associated with homosexuality and because it did not focus on birth control. Moreover, many believed it was too male dominated. (Norman Haire to MS, Oct. 4, 1929 [LCM 124:266]; Peter Gellatly, Sex Magazines in the Library Collection: A Scholarly Study of Sex in Serials and Periodicals [New York, 1981], 77; Dose, “World League for Sexual Reform,” 6.) 13. Enid Charles (1894–1972), a British statistician, published The Practice of Birth Control (London, 1932), a statistical analysis of the birth control experiences of nine hundred British women. (Who Was Who, Oxford online ed., http://www.ukwhoswho. com/view/article/oupww/whowaswho/U153118, Apr. 2014.) 14. Lancelot Hogben (1895–1975), a British zoologist, geneticist, and professor of social biology at the London School of Economics, wrote popular science books, including Genetic Principles in Medicine and Social Science (1932), an analysis of the social implications of genetics and eugenics. (New York Times, Aug. 23, 1975, and Sept. 25, 1932; Wallis Taylor, “Lancelot Hogben, F.R.S. (1895–1975),” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 140, no. 2 (1977): 261–62.) 15. Hogben asserted that it was too dangerous to impose “our own valuation upon future generations.” Like MS, he believed that eugenicists overemphasized the importance of heredity and underestimated the influence of the environment. They both detected a middle-class bias in eugenic assumptions about who should reproduce. (Lancelot Hogben, Genetic Principles in Medicine and Social Science [London, 1932], 209, 210, 213 [quote]; MS, Pivot of Civilization, 178–81, 188.) 16. Handwritten note by MS beneath this sentence reads “yes.” How-Martyn’s letter was not found. 17. Marie Pichel Levinson (Warner) (ca. 1896–1979), an obstetrician-gynecologist, and the BCCRB’s assistant director, visited England in late September 1932. The East London Women’s Welfare Centre was a birth control clinic founded in 1926 by the SPBCC. (Jimmy Meyer, “Marie Pichel Levinson Warner,” Jewish Women’s Archive,

230  •  “The World Needs You!” http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/warner-marie-pichel-levinson; New York Passenger Ship Lists, 1820–1957; Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, 233.) 18. Ethel Clyde (1879–1978), daughter of the head of the Clyde Steamship Company, was a socialist philanthropist who was active in the birth control movement. Clyde, accompanied by Bellevue Hospital surgeon Edward Ross Proctor (1897–1969), visited How-Martyn in London in mid-August at MS’s suggestion. (New York Times, Apr. 15, 1978, and Aug. 12, 1932; Los Angeles Times, May 3, 1969; Secretary to Ethel Clyde, Aug. 10, 1932, and Clyde to MS, Aug. 17, 1932 [LCM 45:565, 566]; for more on Clyde, see Vols. 2–3.)

80. To Edith How-Martyn Sanger sent this letter to be read at the first meeting of the BCIIC London Council on November 6.

[New York, N.Y.] October 20th, 1932.

Dear Edith: Greetings to all on November 6th! Since my return I find that interest and excitement over Election has been keeping people from getting down to hard facts.1 Consequently, I have been unable to see any of the big guns regarding money for the International work. I will do this, however, as soon as possible. I have been giving considerable thought to the International situation and have quite decided that I am going to so tie things up in Washington that the work may go on independently without me, in order that after 1934 my attention may be given to International work almost exclusively for several years.2 There are so many angles of the work and so many proposals to consider. One is that another real Birth Control Conference in Geneva might be worthwhile, leaving behind us International Headquarters in that City. After that a gradual push into the East and Far East with the prospect of an International Conference in Japan perhaps in 1935 or 1936. For the immediate work, if money can be secured to bring about an International Conference in 1933, there is the question whether it would be a wise expenditure of money to break into the Catholic countries such as Poland, with a Conference at Warsaw, or Spain, with a Conference at Barcelona? I would like very much to have the opinions of the group when they meet on November 6th, and to perhaps use these opinions for furthering our line of activity over here. It will be very helpful to have all of the facts considered by such charming and enlightened personalities as constitute your group there.3 I want to tell you that I found the Squire looking very handsome and more radiant than ever, which encourages me to leave him next year for an even longer period of time!4

december 1932  •  231

I think it is time for us to make some public statement or to get out a leaflet concerning the attitude of the Pope and the attempt of the Catholic groups to dictate to the League of Nations.5 It is enough to make one see red when the health of the world must be curtailed and limited because of opinions which belong in the Dark Ages. This is just a hurried word. Love to you, dear Edith, As ever, TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 15:343–44).

1. MS refers to the presidential election between Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover and Democratic challenger Franklin Delano Roosevelt, scheduled for November 8, 1932. (For MS’s election views, see Vol. 2.) 2. Most of MS’s congressional support came from Republicans, making the election critical to the NCFLBC’s prospects. (For more on the lobbying efforts, see Vol. 2.) 3. The council discussed fund-raising priorities, determined conference sites (India and Spain instead of Poland or Geneva), and identified China, Japan, and India as the regions most needing help. (BCIIC Council Meeting, Nov. 6, 1932 [LCM 15:353].) 4. Slee disliked MS’s long absences and was often sulky and depressed when she returned home. (See Vols. 1–2.) 5. Catholic LN members, medical groups, and other organizations, as well as L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, condemned an LN Health Organization committee report that recommended contraceptive advice be given to women whose health might be endangered by pregnancy. Though the report was reworded and published, it was never approved by the LN Assembly. (Symonds and Carder, United Nations and the Population Question, 25–26; How-Martyn to MS, Oct. 6, 1932, and BCIIC Council Minutes, Dec. 4, 1932 [LCM 15:332, 377].)

81. From Gerda Sebbelov Guy At the November 6 meeting, the London Council reorganized the BCIIC, with Sanger remaining as president, Gerda Guy as treasurer, and Edith How-Martyn as director. After the NCFLBC’s 1932 defeat in Congress and the Democratic victory in the presidential election, How-Martyn urged Sanger: “Shake the dust of America from your feet make your headquarters Geneva and direct a worldwide B.C. campaign from there.” (BCIIC Council Meeting, Nov. 6, 1932, and How-Martyn to MS, June 3, 1932 [LCM 15:353, 263].)

[London?, England] Dec 3d 1932

My dearest Margaret. I am sending you the enclosed hoping it will arouse in you as it has in me a vigorous feeling of the need of an international magazine scientific and dignified, which will put Dr Marie Stopes in her proper perspective.1 I am sick of her self agrandisement and her arrogant self assertions. Last month she thoroughly

232  •  “The World Needs You!”

slandered Dr Newfield accusing him as she always does of being in league with the commercial concerns and scoffing at his little book “Parenthood,”2 which we regard as the best we have, on this side the ocean, for the average individual. My dear, it is high time that we had a recognized international leader, and you are normally and naturally it, but you are too far away. It may seem ridiculous to say “retire from your arduous labours and as a rest cure take on the world!,” but we will help you, I feel sure we would all help you, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, England, Germany, Checko, Slovakia, Poland, Spain, South Africa, Australia, India, I am sure we would all feel more united, if you sat in Geneva let us say 1/2 the year and presided over us with Marjorie Martin as your right hand;3 and I think to our other plans of a library, a training centre, a reading ↑lecture↓ room4 we should add an organ of some kind which gave the international news; and which put Marie Stopes in her proper perspective. The world needs you! Make your plans soon! Love Gerda

The “International Council” meets for the 2nd time here to-morrow.5 This letter is entirely private.

ALS MSP, DLC (LCM 15:373–75).

1. Guy likely enclosed an issue of Marie Stopes’s monthly, Birth Control News. Though Stopes joined the National Birth Control Council in 1930, she was a divisive presence, demanding deference from other activists and arguing over methods and tactics. On December 4, the BCIIC London Council discussed issuing a “news bulletin or Quarterly Journal,” sending MS a suggested budget. (Evans, Freedom to Choose, 144; Hall, Passionate Crusader, 267; BCIIC Council Minutes, Dec. 4, 1932 [LCM 15:377].) 2. Maurice Newfield (1893–1949) was a British physician, editor of medical journals, and a BCIIC Council member. Under the pseudonym Michael Fielding, he authored Parenthood: Design or Accident—a Manual for Birth-Control (1928). In Stopes’s review of the British Social Hygiene Council’s Preparation for Marriage, she objected to the council’s recommendation of Fielding’s book, saying it led readers “towards moneymaking concerns or intricate medical methods of birth control, the outcome of which may even be physically disastrous both to mother and child.” Stopes noted that her offer to edit the birth control chapter before publication was rejected. She was also annoyed that the book did not mention her writings or clinics. (Times [London], Sept. 2, 1949; Marie Stopes, “Some Books,” Birth Control News 11 [Nov. 1932]: 117–18.) 3. Marjorie Martin was organizing a BCIIC office and birth control clinic in Geneva and still seeking an LN endorsement for the BCIIC. (Martin to MS, Sept. 21 and Nov. 12, 1932 [LCM 124:205B, 207B].) 4. At the December 4 meeting, the BCIIC Council learned that a Geneva headquarters would be too expensive to pursue. (BCIIC, London Council Minutes, Dec. 4, 1932 [LCM 15:377].)

December 1932  •  233 5. The meeting, once again hosted by the Guys, was chaired by Dr. S. Jefferey Samuel. Others present were Marjorie Martin, Frida Laski, Maurice Newfield, Dr. D. A. Crow, Mary Crow, and Edith Summerskill. (BCIIC Council Minutes, Dec. 4. 1932 [LCM 15:377].)

82. To K arla Popprová-Molínková 1 Popprová-Molínková reported that public interest in Czechoslovakia in the safe-period method and abortion-law reform had made birth control a topic of national discussion, agitating the Catholic Church. She planned to investigate the effectiveness of the rhythm method and then “ask the Roman Catholic Church whether it considers [it] morally unobjectionable to recommend unreliable Birth Control methods as safe.” (Popprová-Molínková to MS, Nov. 19, 1932 [LCM 12:1280].)

[Washington, D.C.] December 12, 1932.

Dear Madam Popprová: I have your letter of November 19th and can understand the difficulties that have come up. Nevertheless, I think that this is the right time—the psychological time—to get the pamphlet printed.2 Do not delay doing so, I beg of you! If you wait for the other things to go through, it will take years to overcome the difficulties that will be raised, and I urge you to strike out immediately if you possibly can. Our opponents do not work according to logic, you will find, and it is just a waste of precious effort to hope to win them over through reason. Sincerely yours, Margaret Sanger TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 12:1283). Carbon copy sent to Edith How-Martyn.

1. Popprová-Molínková had recently organized a meeting of all the major women’s organizations in Czechoslovakia to secure their support for birth control. She told MS that for the first time, “we can really speak of a national movement.” (Popprová-Molínková to MS, Oct. 22, 1932 [LCM 12:1271].) 2. Efforts to reform the law banning abortion, according to Popprová-Molínková, had led to increased calls for banning all artificial means of birth control, “condemning them as unmoral and unnatural . . . whereas the safe period is declared the only moral unobjectionable way of Birth Control.” The pamphlet is the Czech translation of Family Limitation. Molínková advised postponing publication until “the question of the safe period is entirely settled.” (See Molínková to MS, Sept. 15, 1932, note 7, herein, and Nov. 19, 1932 [quotes] [LCM 12:1280].)

234  •  “The World Needs You!”

83. To Adolf Meyer 1 On December 1, 1932, the socialist Mexican state of Veracruz established a Health Department Section on Eugenics and Mental Hygiene, which provided birth control information and free services for those “suffering from diseases which the Section considers to be hereditary, or a cause of biological degeneration or mental deficiency in their offspring.” Sterilization was also provided for those with “incurable or hereditary insanity, idiocy, or feeble-mindedness.” The Veracruz government also planned to appoint a committee to discuss with Sanger the best ways to apply the new law. Sanger sent the following letter to prominent physicians and birth control supporters to build support for Veracruz’s efforts. (For English translations of a draft and the final version of the law, see Veracruz Health Department, “Regulations on Eugenics and Mental Hygiene,” July 6, 1932, and “Eugenic and Mental Health Regulations,” Dec. 14, 1932 [quotes] [LCM 19:357, 391]; New York Times, Oct. 20, 1932.)

[New York, N.Y.] January 4, 1933.

Dear Dr. Meyer: During the last few weeks I have been able to familiarize myself with the circumstances that led to the recent creation of a Department of Eugenics and Mental Hygiene in Vera Cruz.2 The newspaper reports as to the powers and duties of this department have been considerably garbled, but I am glad to enclose for your information a correct English translation of these regulations dealing with the question of Birth Control and Sterilization.3 Wonderful as it is to have these progressive measures instituted under government supervision, it is even more important to have this forward looking program actually carried out. The term of office of Governor Tejeda under whose administration the regulations were issued expired December 1st, and the new Governor is Lie. Gonzalo Vasquez Vela, Governor of the State, Jalapa, Ver, (Mexico).4 I think it is most important that Governor Vela and other prominent individuals in Mexico realize that the eyes of the world are upon them in this courageous effort at social pioneering, and I am sure it would be tremendously encouraging and helpful were they to receive letters or other evidences of interest from such outstanding people in this country as yourself. There is a good likelihood that soon after the program goes into effect in Vera Cruz, the idea may be taken up by other Mexican states and perhaps even by the Central Government of Mexico. I am enclosing the names of several people who are in a position to do much in this direction if their interest can be stimulated and maintained. I know how busy you are but I am hoping your time will permit you to write at least a few of these men giving them the benefit of your own ideas on this subject.5 As you will note from my comments regarding the different men,

January 1933  •  235

some of them have no connection in Vera Cruz but would be key people to promote similar measures in connection with their own duties in other states or at Mexico City, the Capital. Again my heartfelt thanks to you for your good help, and I am hoping the New Year will be a happy and successful one for you in every way. Sincerely yours, Margaret Sanger [signed] Margaret Sanger. TLS AMP, MdBJ-C (MSM C5:455–56). Letterhead of the NCFLBC. MS sent similar letters to Arkansas activist Hilda Kahlert Cornish, St. Louis health commissioner Paul Zentay, eugenicist Leon F. Whitney, Illinois Birth Control League physician Rachelle Yarros, Los Angeles Mother’s Health Clinic member John Randolph Haynes, tuberculosis expert S. Adolphus Knopf, public health leader John Kingsbury, Baltimore rabbi Edward Israel, educator Elizabeth Cutter Morrow, University of Chicago sociologist William Ogburn, University of Minnesota sociologist Edward A. Ross, attorney and diplomat George Rublee, University of Pennsylvania venereal disease expert John Stokes, Ohio State University physician John Upham, and others (LCM 19:397–425).

1. Psychiatrist Adolf Meyer was a member of the BCCRB Medical Advisory Council and had testified at NCFLBC hearings. (Meyer to MS, Sept. 17, 1929 [MSM C4:1081].) 2. Veracruz was an anomaly, according to Margarita Robles de Mendoza, a Mexican activist, who wrote that “it has been a very lucky State, both socially and economically has many possibilities. It has oil, lumber, fruit and many mills, therefore many working people live here and there—it is a very wide field for experimentation in all the walks of life.” (De Mendoza to MS, May 31, 1932 [LCM 19:352].) 3. The New York Times reported that Veracruz parents wanting children would have to first be examined by a board, which would investigate the number of children and the family’s economic and physical health. According to the Times, “The measure would prohibit children to extremely poor, incompetent or defective parents.” In fact, the law established free birth control clinics, not just for the poor or those with large families, but for anyone with a hereditary disease or other transmissible condition. Its sterilization provisions established medical committees to determine when sterilization was indicated. (New York Times, Oct. 30, 1932 [quote]; for translation of the law, see Veracruz, “Eugenic and Mental Health Regulations,” Dec. 14, 1932 [LCM 19:391].) 4. Adalberto Tejeda Olivares (1883–1960), governor of Veracruz, was known for his anticlericalism and his efforts to secure working-class rights. His successor, Gonzalo Vázquez Vela (1893–1963), a lawyer and protégé of Tejada, assumed office on January 1, 1933, and was more moderate in his religious outlook; he quickly repealed several of the anticlerical laws. (Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, Latin American Lives [New York, 1998], 985–86; Decanato Instituto Politécnico Nacional [Mexico, 1988], http:// www.decanato.ipn.mx/central8b12.htm; Roderic Ai Camp, Mexican Political Biographies, 1935–1975 [Tucson, Ariz., 1976], 310; New York Times, Dec. 27, 1932, and June 18, 1935.) 5. Meyer congratulated MS on the Veracruz developments, but there is no indication that he wrote as she asked. The enclosed list was not found. (Meyer to MS, Jan. 16, 1933 [MSM C5:484].)

236  •  “The World Needs You!”

84. To Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1 In October 1932, James Ramsey Beverly (1894–1967), the governor of Puerto Rico, publicly associated the island’s low living standards with uncontrolled population, a statement viewed by many as an endorsement of birth control. In response, the editors of the Baltimore Catholic Review published an open letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt castigating Beverly for his “eagerness . . . to have put through that which strikes straight at the heart of every true Catholic.” Though a bill to establish birth control clinics failed in the Puerto Rican legislature, a new LPCNPR2 was established in San Juan, where it opened a clinic in the Santurce neighborhood on November 21, 1932. (SSDI; Beverly to MS, May 25, 1933, LCM 19:911]; “Porto Rico,” BCR 17 [July 1933]: 182–83; Ramirez and Seipp, Colonialism, Catholicism, and Contraception, 29; Briggs, Reproducing Empire, 94; “Message to President Roosevelt,” 8 [quote].)

[Fishkill, N.Y.] April 29, 1933.

Sir: In a message publicly addressed to you, the Catholic Review of Baltimore denounces the Governor of Puerto Rico for his impartial attitude concerning proposed Birth Control Legislation on that tragic island, and hints that you, Mr. President, should reprimand or remove this American official for lending his sympathy to such measures.2 Otherwise, you are informed, “the Catholic editors of the country will mobilize the 120,000,000 (sic) Catholic people of the United States in vehement protest.”3 I know full well that you will not be intimidated by such irresponsible and impudent browbeating. Nevertheless, I want to assure you that more than 200 National and State organizations, representing a bloc of loyal and enlightened citizens as large as, if not larger than that boasted by our Catholic adversaries, stand behind you and Governor Beverly in hoping for an effective, swift, and prompt solution to the distress of Puerto Rico.4 No less than 225,000 hungry children are being fed there through the efforts of the Porto Rico Child Feeding Committee, and directly, therefore, by the American public through their contributions.5 Is it not time that we stopped being sentimental and used our intelligence to apply the facts of science toward stopping the inevitable yearly increase in this already overwhelming number? The Catholics are crying for a higher birth-rate which must result in a higher infant death-rate and in an immeasurably lower standard of living,6 in a country where already something like 465 natives per square mile are starving trying to scratch a meagre living out of a stingy soil.7 We are asked to accept this program of social tragedy affecting fellow citizens living less than 1400 miles from New York, as an example of Christian morality. “I have seen a thin, draggled mother with a skeleton baby in her arms. She told me her milk had given out because she was unable to get sufficient food and

April 1933  •  237 that she had been trying to feed her two or three months’ old baby by chewing a few beans in her mouth and getting the baby to swallow some.”

This, Mr. President, is the testimony of ex-Governor Theodore Roosevelt, describing conditions in Puerto Rico.8 Confronted with this grim tragedy, Governor Beverly has wisely pointed out “that further net additions to population in the Island must inevitably result in greater distress and poverty and ultimately in a rising death-rate.”9 Birth Control has come to be recognized by all civilized people as a scientific and effective means of racial salvation in the solution of such problems. We respectfully urge you, Mr. President, to stand back of Governor Beverly, and of all enlightened legislators of Puerto Rico in their courageous efforts to meet a desperate problem in a humane, compassionate, and eminently practicable manner. In the interest of economic salvation and to assure Puerto Rico an early return to healthy social and economic life, let us guarantee loyal and efficient public servants the liberty to carry out their work, unhampered by medieval prejudices and partisan threats, and by arrogant meddling, so blusteringly typified by the message which the Catholic Review has addressed to you.10 I have the honor to remain, Respectfully yours, President, National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control. TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 19:907–9).

1. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) took office as president on March 4, 1933, and quickly initiated a progressive transformation of the federal government under the New Deal. MS had supported Hoover in the election, concerned that the Democratic Party’s large Catholic membership would threaten her birth control bills. (ANB; for more on MS’s political views, see Vol. 2.) 2. “How can the Government of the United States,” the Catholic Review asked, “hold up high ideals . . . when its official representative lends his support to that which every true Catholic holds to be the lowest form of degradation?” However, the editorial did not call for Beverly’s removal. (“Message to President Roosevelt,” 8.) 3. The Catholic Review threatened this action in case Beverly felt he could “ignore the sentiments of the people over which he has been placed.” (“Message to President Roosevelt,” 8.) 4. A reference to the NCFLBC, which by the end of 1933 had secured endorsements from fifty thousand individuals and 287 organizations, including the New York Academy of Medicine, the American Neurological Association, and the General Council of the Congregational and Christian Churches. (NCFLBC Press Release, Mar. 1, 1934 [LCM 51:424]; MS, “Eighth News Letter of the NCFLBC,” Dec. 1931 [MSM S64:792].)

238  •  “The World Needs You!” 5. The committee raised ninety-seven thousand dollars in 1932 from individual contributions for its program. MS incorrectly stated the number of children being fed; the committee estimated that it fed around 42,000 of the 225,000 total hungry children. (Porto Rico Child-Feeding Committee, brochure, 1933 [LCM 70:86].) 6. In the 1920s, Catholic officials in Puerto Rico advocated higher birthrates to fend off race suicide. By the early 1930s, facing growing concern about overpopulation, church leaders such as Bishop A. J. Willinger of Ponce and Edwin V. Byrne of San Juan focused on the illegality and immorality of birth control. MS may also be referring to American Catholic leaders who advocated for larger families to reverse a falling birthrate. (Ramirez and Seipp, Colonialism, Catholicism, and Contraception, 28; Briggs, Reproducing Empire, 79; New York Times, Oct. 7, 1932, and Mar. 30, 1933; Tentler, Catholics and Contraception, 75, 77.) 7. The governor’s annual report for 1932 estimated that Puerto Rico had 465.5 persons per square mile. Soil conditions varied on the island, but owing to the mountainous terrain, only about half of the land was arable. (New York Times, Oct. 14, 1932; Tietze, “Human Fertility in Puerto Rico,” 37.) 8. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (1887–1944), the son of the former president, was governor of Puerto Rico from 1929 to 1932. This excerpt from Roosevelt’s testimony came from a 1933 Porto Rico Child-Feeding Committee brochure. He described living conditions in Puerto Rico in a similar manner in his article “Children of Famine,” New York Herald Tribune, Dec. 8, 1929. (ANB; Porto Rico Child-Feeding Committee, brochure, 1933 [LCM 70:86].) 9. Beverly’s report claimed that Puerto Rico’s population was too large for its agrarian economy. The solution would come through an “increase in industries and employment, emigration in large numbers, or a decrease in the birth rate.” He did not specifically mention birth control. (For a typescript of the Sept. 1, 1932, report, see Manuscript Records of the Governors of Puerto Rico, 1909–1931, DNA, Record Group 350, 1–2.) 10. Beverly resigned the governorship on June 30, 1933, and returned to his private legal practice in New York. He was replaced by Robert H. Gore. (New York Times, July 19, 1933.)

85. To Havelock Ellis

[Nantucket, Mass.]1 July 4, [1933]

Havelock darling: Your letter about Hildegarde came at the same time as two other letters, giving the same horrible & sad news.2 Dr STÜTZIN who is an exile from Germany now in Madrid wrote that her mother killed her “because she had a friend.”3 Edith How Martyn who is now visiting me at Willowlake said that Sue Green ↑Mme Reider↓ a friend of ours had been in Spain & knew both mother & daughter & said on her return, to Edith, that Hildegard

July 1933  •  239

would not & could not develop very far until she got rid of her dominating mother. That her mother was insanely jealous of her every independent thought. Mme. Rieder had been in an accident in Spain & they both came & took her to the Hospital & saw that she had good care & visited her & heaped every kindness on her. But she saw a difficult & trying ending & said so at the time.4 Your article the Red Virgin5 was interesting, you should [last page(s) missing] AL MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S7:926–27). Letterhead of Beach House.

1. MS and Slee were vacationing on Nantucket, an island south of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, from June 30 to July 6, 1933. MS wanted a “salt swim & no responsibility for a week.” (MS to Juliet Rublee, June 27, 1933 [quote], 1933 Calendar, and MS to How-Martyn, July 4, 1933 [MSM C5:550, S78:1034, C5:556].) 2. Ellis reported that Rodríguez, age eighteen, had been shot to death by her mother, Aurora Rodríguez Carballiero, on June 9. He thought the motive was “fear of being separated from her. Mother & daughter were devoted to each other, & the mother constantly sent affectionate messages in the letters that have been coming regularly from Hildegart. She was, (as I had supposed) an illegitimate child & the father is said to be a Dane.” (Ellis to MS, June, 13, 1933 [quote], and BCIIC, “Recent Events,” May 2, 1933 [LCM 5:375, 15:470]; Ellis to MS, July 4, 1933 [MSM S7:926]; Times [London], May 28, 1934.) 3. MS refers to Joaquin Stützin, who wrote regarding the murder, “It is a real Freudcomplex. The mother killed her daughter because she had a—friend.” The Glasgow Herald reported that “always behind Hildegart was the mother, mysterious, enigmatic, controlling,” and in an effort to get Hildegart away from her mother, friends introduced the girl to a young man with whom she quickly fell in love. (Stützin to MS, June 13, 1933 [quote 1] [LCM 14:114]; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 154–55; Glasgow Herald, June 8, 1933 [quote 2].) 4. Emily Faber Rieder (1863–1935) was an American women’s rights activist and pacifist who lectured in Europe, America, and the Middle East. She married Andre Rieder, a Frenchman, and lived in London, where she sometimes worked with How-Martyn at the BCIIC. She visited Spain frequently and had met Rodríguez in Madrid in 1932. (Times [London], Jan. 30, 1935; Rieder to MS, Jan. 4 and 14, 1932, and Rodríguez to MS, Mar. 30, 1932 [LCM 19:1222, 15:159, 14:1116].) 5. Ellis documented Rodríguez’s emergence as a prodigy from age two and described her mother as “remarkable,” noting she was “thirty-one at her child’s birth, . . . still strong and youthful in spirit, her daughter’s excellent councellor, and able to accompany her everywhere.” (Ellis, “Red Virgin,” 175‑79.)

240  •  “The World Needs You!”

86. To Herman Rubinraut 1

[Washington, D.C.] [November 14], 1933.

Dear Dr. Rubinraut: Your letters are always a delight and I trust you will continue to use your English, as your phraseology is good and your ability to express your meaning is excellent.2 You are indeed to be congratulated on your progress in making headway with the Birth Control program in your country.3 The use of lemon juice as a douche has been known in Spain but discouraged and substituted in later years for vinegar.4 Were it found to be a harmless contraceptive, we should send emissaries to Italy as Prophets of Peace. Il Duce would have a hard time to keep the birth rate up when that news gets around.5 Here in the U.S.A., we are still “marking time” financially but we are more excited over the Nazis’ ruthless Dictatorship than we are worried over our own affairs.6 The Catholic press is holding forth pro and con on the subject of the “Safe Period”—especially since I replied to the theory as expressed in the book, “THE RHYTHM,” which was published with ecclesiastical approbation.7 I publicly offered the Catholics the use of our Clinical Research Bureau to test out scientifically their theories and urged them to do this in fairness to the women whose health and lives are likely to suffer by such advice.8 Of course, there was a comeback and one section of the Catholic press has been urging caution while others exploit the book offering it free with subscriptions to the paper.9 It’s a “racket” already. We are hoping to hear the good news from London that their Malthusian Ball was a financial success so we may go into the International field and have a Congress this year.10 We still have a big fight on our hands over here in Washington, D.C. I shall never feel our work is finished while that Law is on the statue books.11 I shall always be glad to have you use any of my writings to advance the movement in your country. Please use the article mentioned for your pamphlet and be assured I am pleased and honored to have you consider it worth translating and publishing.12 I have sent you another booklet under separate cover that may interest you.13 I trust your book will have a wide circulation and meet with success. Always wishing you good health, I am, Cordially yours, Margaret Sanger. TLS MSP, DLC (LCM 19:801–2). For ADI, see LCM 19:803.

1. At the 5WLSRC, Rubinraut lectured on birth control–clinic usage. He was disappointed with the congress because it was “not scientific enough” and did little for

November 1933  •  241 propaganda. According to Popprová-Molínková, he also complained “of the difficulty in reaching the poorest patients, and suggested that probably many pregnancies give women a sense of importance.” (Rubinraut to MS, Aug. 5 and Dec. 2, 1932 [quote 1], and Popprová-Molínková to MS, Oct. 1932 [quote 2] [LCM 19:786, 797, 12:1266]. 2. Rubinraut asked for MS’s indulgence for “the patchiness of my letter,” explaining that “to make that funny english of mine as intelligible as possible encourages me to send it patchy.” (Rubinraut to MS, Nov. 14, 1933 [LCM 19:808].) 3. Rubinraut noted that with the rise of the pronatalist National Socialist Party in Germany, his 1933 pamphlet Skuteczna nieszkodliwe środki zapobiegające ciaży (The Effective and Harmless Means of Preventing Pregnancy, with an introduction by MS, was too dangerous to publish in Poland. Instead, he focused on opening birth control clinics for Jewish women; he opened two and sought government support for two mobile clinics. (Rubinraut to MS, Nov. 4, 1933 [LCM 19:807].) 4. Rubinraut included simple contraceptive methods in his pamphlet, including cotton wool “soaked with slightly acid water before the intercourse, and immediately after a slice of lemon left to the next morning.” A lemon, he asserted, “has quite a particular value as a contraceptive,” though it could fail if used alone. (Rubinraut to MS, Nov. 14, 1933 [LCM 19:808].) 5. Rubinraut had written, “Think what a blow for Mussolini! Italy is the fatherland of lemons. . . . Birth Control would pass triumphantly through the land of the imperialistic fascism.” Despite Mussolini’s pronatalist campaign, the Italian birthrate continued to drop, from 27.7 per 1,000 in 1926 to 23.8 in 1933. (Rubinraut to MS, Nov. 14, 1933 [LCM 19:808]; Salvemini, “Do Italian Women Obey Mussolini?,” 64, 66; Ipsen, Dictating Demography, 74, 183.) 6. President Paul von Hindenberg appointed National Social Democratic (Nazi) Party leader Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Hitler quickly suspended basic civil liberties, and, on March 24, Germany passed the Enabling Act, suspending the Weimar constitution and giving Hitler full dictatorial power, which he used immediately to destroy opposition parties and purge opponents from the civil service. He also began a violent campaign of persecution of Jews. (Roderick Stackelberg, The Routledge Companion to Nazi Germany [New York, 2007], 11, 118; New York Times, Apr. 1, 9, 1933.) 7. Leo J. Latz’s 1932 book, The Rhythm of Sterility and Fertility in Women, advanced the “rhythm” or “safe period” method, which had official church approval after Pope Pius XI’s 1930 encyclical on Christian marriage. “Ecclesiastical approbation” refers to Chicago cardinal George Mundelein’s imprimatur and other Catholic endorsements. A vocal contingent of Catholic critics opposed even the rhythm method, fearing an increase in adultery and fornication and a decline in the Catholic population. MS dismissed the method as one “based on folklore” and lacking scientific support. (Latz, The Rhythm of Sterility and Fertility in Women [Chicago, 1934], 1, 92, 94; New York Times, Feb. 7, 1933 [quote]; Tentler, Catholics and Contraception, 106, 108, 111–12.) 8. MS made this offer in the New York Herald Tribune (Feb. 6, 1933) and directly to Leo Latz. (MS to Latz, Feb. 5, 1933 [LCM 75:248A].) 9. Many Catholic periodicals advertised the Latz book, but MS refers to the Western Catholic, a Quincy, Illinois, paper that on February 17, 1933, offered to send new

242  •  “The World Needs You!” subscribers a free copy of The Rhythm. (Tentler, Catholics and Contraception, 108; “Moral Birth Control,” Western Catholic [Feb. 17, 1933].) 10. The BCIIC’s “Malthusian Ball,” held in London on March 22, 1933, was sponsored by Princess Alice, the wife of the Duke of Gloucester, to help fund How-Martyn’s trip to India and other expenses. It raised £450. (Connelly, Fatal Misconceptions, 98; Times [London], Mar. 22, 1933.) 11. MS and the NCFLBC were still actively lobbying to exempt physicians and pharmacists from the prohibition on mailing contraceptives and contraceptive information. (For more on the lobbying efforts, see Vol. 2.) 12. Rubinraut asked MS for permission to use her article as the introduction to his pamphlet. (Rubinraut to MS, Nov. 14, 1933 [LCM 19:808].) 13. She also enclosed some clippings about the BCCRB. The booklet was not found.

87. From Edith How-Martyn After organizing the BCIIC’s Conference on Birth Control in Asia, in November 1933, How-Martyn took a working vacation in Egypt. Arriving on January 6, 1934, she met with physicians in Cairo and Luxor, visited child welfare clinics, and attended the seventh annual conference of the Egyptian Medical Association. How-Martyn concluded that birth control would not come to Egypt without the support of male physicians, as women had no power there. She then traveled to Jerusalem, Palestine, and Beirut, where she was told that “birth control propaganda would not be tolerated,” even though Syrian women came to maternity and child welfare centers asking for it. (Times [London], Sept. 28, 1944; How-Martyn to MS, Dec. 14 and 19, 1933, and reports from How-Martyn, Jan. 10–20, 1934 [LCM 15:628, 634, 13:95]; Kitty Marion to Olive Johnson, Feb. 2, 1934 [KMP].)

Beirut, Syria1 14 Feb. 1934.

My dearest Margaret, The time in Palestine from a B.C. point of view has been well worth while and I will sum it up briefly. The political & social conditions in Palestine are seething with racial hatreds, political animosities, religious fanaticism & all sections combine to press, kick or flatter the British government to favour its point of view.2 Jews, Christians & Arabs coalesce very little. The Jews through Hadassah are doing magnificent work for maternity & Child Welfare & I have established some very useful contacts.3 Dr. Levy in charge of the work4 was very glad to hear everything I could tell him about B.C. tho’ anything he does will have to be strictly on medical grounds & with no publicity otherwise the Rabbis will be down on them!!5 In Tel Aviv Dr. Ginsburg who wrote to us in London has only been in the country 3 months but has had 10 years experience in Chicago largely in B.C. clinics.6 This is fortunate. I hope she will go to Jerusalem & show Dr. Levy & train some midwives for him. I have already

february 1934  •  243

found her a patient in Jerusalem a well-to-do Englishwoman. I tell Dr. G. that there is a great work for her to do in Palestine. On her way here she visited your clinic & I wish she had had a talk with you. The British govt. is also doing admirable work mainly among Arabs & the Dr. in charge is anxious to know as mothers are beginning to ask for B.C.7 I also made good contacts with Superintendent of midwives, Medical Head & Matron of Govt. Hosp. the Govt. Welfare Inspector & others. All will have to avoid publicity or religious opposition will be roused.8 Here in Syria it is a different story. Under French rule B.C. is illegal9 but there is the large American University & American Hospital which have a very fine situation & look very flourishing.10 I have made contacts with several of the Professors and among them Dr. Moore who is making a reputation for himself for his skill in treating babies & children.11 He wd. like to introduce B.C. & I am sending him some suitable literature when I get back. If you would like to communicate with him the address is—Dr Moore American University, Beirut, Syria. I am hoping to have another talk with him. The Prof. of Surgery12 says there is no care for maternity & no work being done by the French Govt. & he does not think much can be done about it under French rule & anyhow “it keeps down the population.”13 If the French got wind that anything serious in the way of contraception was being done in the Am. School of Medicine they wd be quite capable of closing the school on some pretext or other. In the case of the newspapers an article criticising the govt. causes the suspension of the paper, the editor is put in prison without trial & stays there during the pleasure of the authorities!14 Still it was worth while coming for we now have first hand knowledge & a few good contacts. Palestine & Egypt are far more enlightened15 & much more worth our efforts. We are going to Tel Aviv so that I may have a few days with Dr. Ginsburg before leaving Port Said on Feb 26th reaching London on March 8th.16 When shall we see you in England or Europe? Are you satisfied with the results of the Washington Conference?17 Has Matrix got any nearer being born?18 Lots of love from Edith. ALS MSP, DLC (LCM 20:396–99).

1. After World War I, Syria became a French mandate, part of greater Lebanon. Beirut was then capital of one of Syria’s vilayets, or provinces. (EB.) 2. Palestine, an area in the eastern Mediterranean region, had for centuries been the subject of religious and political clashes. After World War I, it became a British mandate, with a promise that the British would eventually establish a Jewish homeland there. Palestinian Arabs and Jews, as well as European Zionists, all realized their futures in Palestine would be determined by population size and landownership. As Jewish immigration and

244  •  “The World Needs You!” land purchases in Palestine increased, so did Arab opposition and hostility. Violence broke out between Arabs, Jews, and the British in 1933 and 1935. (EB.) 3. Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, was founded in 1912 to promote Jewish social and religious values in the United States, aid the Jewish community in Palestine, and strengthen ties between American and Palestinian Jewish communities. With support from the British, Hadassah established several hospitals and a network of pre- and postnatal care centers, providing midwifery services, health and hygiene education, medical support, and visiting nurses for Arab and Jewish women and children. (Liat Kozma, “Sexology in the Yishuv: The Rise and Decline of Sexual Consultation in Tel Aviv, 1930–39,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 42 [May 2010]: 237; Shifra Shvarts, “The Development of Mother and Infant Welfare Centers in Israel, 1854–1954,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 55 [Oct. 2000]: 406–10.) 4. Probably Dr. Abraham J. Levy, the Chicago-born, Yale-educated director of health education at the Hadassah’s Straus Medical Centre in Jerusalem. (Hadassah Newsletter 11 [July–Aug. 1931]: 4; Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Jan. 13, 1932.) 5. Under Jewish law, the biblical exhortation to “be fruitful and multiply” was encouraged and abstinence in marriage discouraged. In Mandate Palestine, birth control was viewed as antithetical to the Zionist goals of increasing the Jewish population in Israel. Condoms were allowed for the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. Contraceptive use was acceptable only for married women when medically indicated, for very young women, and for couples who already had a child of each gender, but it was prohibited for single women. (J. G. Schenker, “Women’s Reproductive Health: Monotheistic Religious Perspectives,” International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics 70 [2000]: 83–86; Dov Friedlander, “Family Planning in Israel: Irrationality and Ignorance,” Journal of Marriage and Family 35 [Feb. 1973]: 117.) 6. Olga Ginsburg (Alman) (1908?–50?) was a Russian-born gynecologist and a founder of the Women’s International Zionist Organization. She had been on the staff of the Illinois Birth Control League since 1924 and moved to Palestine in September 1933. (Ginsburg to MS, 1933 [LCM 15:647]; New York Passenger Lists, 1820–1957; BCIIC, List of Foreign Contacts, Palestine [LCM 19:650]; Fay Grove‑Pollak, The Saga of a Movement: WIZO, 1920‑1970 [Tel Aviv, 1970], 79; Rosemarie Holz, “Birth Control Clinic in America: Life Within, Life Without, 1923–1972” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, 2002), 50, 55.) 7. Most poor Arab Muslim women could not afford private medical services, had no access to sexual education, and were forbidden to be examined by a male physician. During the 1920s, the British government recruited and trained Arabic-speaking nurses to serve as midwives in the Arab sector, where they also trained and licensed practicing Arab midwives and supervised antenatal and infant welfare work in Arab villages and neighborhoods. (Marcella Simoni, “At the Roots of Division: A New Perspective on Arabs and Jews, 1930–39,” Middle Eastern Studies 36 [July 2000]: 64; Naomi Shepard, Ploughing Sand: British Rule in Palestine, 1917–1948 [New Brunswick, N.J., 2000], 141–42.) 8. Vena Rogers (1894–1981) was the British government’s superintendent of midwives. Dame Margaret Nixon was the government’s welfare inspector. Colonel George W. Heron (1880–1963) was its director of medical services. (England and Wales Death Index, 1916–2005; Times [London], July 24, 1963; Marcella Simoni, “A Dangerous Legacy: Welfare in British Palestine, 1930–1939,” Jewish History 13 [Fall 1999]: 81–88.)

february 1934  •  245 9. Under the French mandate, both contraception and abortion were banned in Syria, as they were in France. (Courbage, “Fertility Transition in Syria,” 142.) 10. The American University of Beirut, chartered in 1863 by the state of New York, was founded by the American Protestant Mission to Lebanon as a private, coeducational international university. (EB.) 11. Leonard Moore (1898–1973) was a Beirut-born physician of American parents who, after training at Princeton and Columbia Universities, returned to the American University Medical Center in 1931 and founded its Pediatrics Department. (SSDI; New York Times, May 13, 1973; Atlantic Ports Passenger Lists, 1893–1959.) 12. Sami Ibrahim Haddad (1890–1957), a Palestinian-born physician, educated in Jerusalem and Beirut and trained at Johns Hopkins University, joined the surgery faculty at the American University in 1920, specializing in urology. (Lawrence I. Conrad, “Illustrations from the Wellcome Institute Library: The Sami Haddad Collection of Arabic Medical Manuscripts,” Medical History 31 [1987]: 354–55.) 13. With the loss of so much territory after partition, Syria focused on increasing its population through natural means. But while Syrian birthrates rose, so did maternal and infant mortality rates. How-Martyn claimed that Syrian women wanted birth control, but “women have no votes in any of these countries and their status is low. Marriage is little better than slavery in many cases.” (Courbage, “Fertility Transition in Syria,” 142; Edith How-Martyn, “Birth Control in the Near East,” New Generation [Apr. 1934]: 42 [quote].) 14. The French imposed their own values and beliefs on Syria, despite violent opposition from Syrian nationalists. In 1925 al-Muqtabas, Damascus’s largest daily, was closed down and its editor, Najib al-Rayyis, jailed. By the early 1930s, tensions between the French and Syrian nationalists led to the suspension of the Damascus newspapers al‑Ayyam and al‑Qabas. (Michael Provence, The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism [Austin, Tex., 2005], 24; “France: New High Commissioner,” Time, Sept. 6, 1926.) 15. Egypt operated several maternal welfare clinics under its Department of Public Health’s Child Welfare Section. The private Société Internationale pour la Protection de l’Enfance (International Society for the Protection of Children) also opened clinics and educated rural and impoverished women on infant care. (Omina S. El Shakry, The Great Social Laboratory: Subjects of Knowledge in Colonial and Post-colonial Egypt [Stanford, Calif., 2007], 174–80.) 16. How-Martyn arrived in Tel Aviv on February 22, left for Port Said on February 25, and then returned to England. (How-Martyn to MS, Feb. 21, 1934 [LCM 20:400].) 17. How-Martyn refers to the NCFLBC-sponsored American Conference for Birth Control and National Recovery that MS organized on January 15–17 in Washington, D.C. MS touted it as “a very big success and a happy one too,” though not much money was raised. (MS to How-Martyn, Mar. 18, 1934 [quote] [MSM C5:726]; New York Times, Jan. 7, 1934; see also Vol. 2.) 18. Matrix was the name of a short-lived journal that MS and Edith How-Martyn tried to launch in 1933, aimed at women around the globe who had the “the desire to control the consequences of their normal sex-lives.” No copies of Matrix have been found. (How-Martyn to MS, Oct. 10 [quote] and Oct. 13, 1933 [LCM 15:583, 585]; for How-Martyn’s draft editorial, see LCM 15:586.)

246  •  “The World Needs You!”

88. From Shidzue Ishimoto Following infighting and criticism from the rival Musansha Sanji Seigen Dômei (Proletarian Birth Limitation Union), which was formed in June 1931 as a worker alternative, the NSCR disbanded in March 1932. In May Ishimoto and other women activists founded the Nihon Sanji Chôsetsu Fujin Dômei (NSCFD) (Japan Birth Control Women’s Union). Using materials Ishimoto brought back from the United States, the NSCFD established hospital information bureaus in four rural villages and opened a new clinic in Tokyo on March 1, 1934. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 44, 49, 53–57; Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 168–69, 172, 177–78.)

Tokyo, Japan April 12, 1934

Dear Mrs. Sanger: Will you forgive my long silence since I returned home.1 It has been very hard for me to adjust myself again to this conservative and reactionary country after spending the most delightful months in democratic country mingling among the most progressive people. I had to encounter many difficult and unpleasant problems in promoting my work here.2 It is only recent that the relation between the U.S. and Japan is turning to the bright side since we have new minister in foreign office,3 and Mr. Saito in Washington,4 still the war between Soviet and Japan is much talked about and nationalists declare that we need more population!5 However, the first birth control clinic supported by group of women was established in Tokyo since March 1st.6 Margaret Sanger’s spirit is living in this clinic, and Dr. Stone’s technique is leading medical side of the work. It is just like 17 West 16 Street clinic, although it is started with small scale.7 The clinic is located in the densely populated quarter in Tokyo, placed in a doctor’s office. It is only five weeks old but we had already asked for cooporation with social center of City Bureau and from other local offices.8 It was said that once the assistant Mayer of Tokyo was encouraged birth control for needy class of people here, however, it ended with mere propaganda9 and now it shall follow with actual work carried by women’s efforts. I have answered about one thousands letter of mothers personally since this work was announced,10 and started a fight against ignorance. It is another fighting against fake doctors and deelers who put advertisment in the paper without any scientific standard.11 Freedom of birth control propaganda encounters different kind of problem to be settled. I am sending you a copy of Women’s Review under the separate cover, in which you will find your short biography written by me. This magazine you remember, has a largest circulation among women, and you once gave your story while you were here.12 They selected “Twelve great women of the world today” and the pleasure was given to me to write about you among other

April 1934  •  247

pionier women such as Madame Kolonty(?) of Soviet Russia, Margaret Bondfield of England, Jane Adams, and etc.13 In another magazine “Asahai Weekly” please find your charming picture telling us how you are continuing your fight with uncivilized law against birth control in your country.14 I shall not repeat this long silence again and let you know all the progress we expect to make in the future in the work. With best regards to all the members of your family and my love and all good wishes to you, Very sincerely yours, Shidzue Ishimoto [signed] TLS MSP, DLC (LCM 18:1187). Handwritten notes by MS at the top of the first page read: “send newsletter & cards. AP or FR letter to go to her [soon].”15

1. Ishimoto toured North America from October 1932 to July 1933, spending the final three months training at the BCCRB. Her lectures covered the Japanese birth control and women’s movements, the “Japanese Aesthetic Sense,” and Japan’s military presence in China. Ishimoto returned to Japan in August 1933. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 48–49, 53–54.) 2. The Japanese government was increasing pressure on leftist groups critical of its expansionist policies in Manchuria. “Progressive movements are having hard time, on account of the reactionary tendency here,” Ishimoto wrote on April 13. The government used its broad powers to suppress ideas harmful to the public peace. While birth control propaganda was not generally suppressed, the government was more aggressive in upholding antiabortion laws, arresting and imprisoning perpetrators. (Ishimoto to Rose, Apr. 13, 1934 [quote] [MSM S8:648]; Ishimoto to Rose, Nov. 4, 1934 [FRP]; Jesse F. Steiner, “Japanese Population Policies,” American Journal of Sociology 43 [Mar. 1938]: 720–21.) 3. Kōki Hirota (1878–1948) became Japan’s foreign minister in September 1933 and prime minister in 1936. Despite his reputation as a nationalist, Hirota sought to end Japan’s isolationism and give it a stronger international voice. (JBE; New York Times, Jan. 7, 1934.) 4. Hiroshi Saitō (1886–1939), Japan’s ambassador to the United States (1934–38), created a frank and open dialogue with Washington despite increased anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States. (New York Times, Feb. 27, 1939.) 5. The dispute between Japan and the Soviet Union in the 1930s centered on the boundary line separating Russia and Manchukuo. Following the Japanese takeover of Manchuria in 1932, Japan rejected a Soviet request for a nonaggression pact. By 1934 Japanese leaders viewed the Soviet Union as its chief enemy and used the threat of Soviet aggression to justify a large military budget and increased population. (Joseph P. Ferguson, Japanese‑Russian Relations, 1907‑2007 [New York, 2008], 25–26; New Journal and Guide [Dec. 29, 1934].) 6. The NSCFD’s clinic was opened in Tokyo’s Shinagawa Ward, where Ishimoto instructed small groups of mothers and took down case histories before a physician fitted the women with contraceptives. The clinic operated only two days a week. Ishimoto thought the main problem was “convincing the poor mothers-at-large that Buddha

248  •  “The World Needs You!” would not punish them for entering our clinic.” (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 57; Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 172; Ishimoto to Rose, Apr. 13, 1934 [MSM S8:648]; Ishimoto, Facing Two Ways, 373 [quote].) 7. Hannah Stone and the staff physicians at the BCCRB pioneered the “clinic method” of contraception, a combination of a spermicidal jelly and a pessary. Stone kept detailed records of each patient’s reproductive history and tracked the success ratio of specific contraceptives. The BCCRB moved to West Sixteenth Street in 1931. (Reed, Birth Control Movement and American Society, 115; Hajo, Birth Control on Main Street, 66–69; MS, BCCRB Annual Report, Dec. 1, 1929, to Nov. 1, 1930 [MSM S61:450].) 8. Members of the NSCFD included a diet member and several municipal assemblymen, and Ishimoto did get police clearance before it opened. (Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 169–70; Ishimoto, Facing Two Ways, 373.) 9. In 1929 Yukichi Shirakami, the deputy mayor of Tokyo, proposed a plan to establish municipal birth control clinics to reduce infant mortality in the most impoverished neighborhoods. Though the Home Ministry rejected the idea, Shirakami’s endorsement helped promote the organization of private birth control clinics. (Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 146; New York Times, Apr. 12, 1934; see also Smedley to MS, Feb. 22, 1929, note 9, herein.) 10. Most of the letters were in response to an article in the Tokyo Yomiuri, by feminist and birth control activist Natsuko Kawasaki, that directed women to contact the NSCFD for contraceptive advice. Other letters were prompted by Ishimoto’s articles in other Japanese newspapers and magazines. (Ishimoto to Stella Hanau, Nov. 1, 1934 [LCM 18:1196]; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 56.) 11. See Ishimoto to MS, Mar. 8, 1931, note 6, herein. 12. Ishimoto’s biographical article on MS was not found. For the earlier “history,” see MS, “Ji jo den” (Autobiography), Fujin kôron (Women’s Review) 7 (Apr. 1922): 145–49. 13. Ishimoto refers to Russian feminist Aleksandra Kollantai; British union leader Margaret Bondfield (1873–1953), the first woman cabinet minister there; and American reformer and peace activist Jane Addams (1860–1935), the founder of Hull House, the influential American settlement house, and president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. (New York Times, June 18, 1953; ANB.) 14. The clipping with MS’s picture was not found. 15. MS probably refers to the Fourteenth NCFLBC Newsletter, printed in April 1934, and BCCRB patient intake cards. “F. R.” was MS’s secretary Florence Rose (1903–69), who responded to Ishimoto on September 4. “A. P.” was Adelaide Pearson (Cook). (Rose to Ishimoto, Sept. 4, 1934 [FRP]; NCFLBC, Newsletter [Apr. 1934] [MSM S64:807].)

89. To Gerda Sebbelov Guy and Edith How-Martyn In July 1934, Sanger embarked on a tour of Scandinavia and the Soviet Union, accompanied by her son Grant and her friend philanthropist Ethel Clyde. They arrived in England on July 4, 1934, then went on to Denmark on July 6 and Norway on July 7, where Sanger toured the local MHK and met with local physicians. (U.K. Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878–1960; MS, Oslo Journal, July 7–8, 1934 [LCM 19:603–8].)

July 1934  •  249

Oslo, Norway. July 7, 1934.

Dear Gerda and Edith: The trip over to Esbjerg was not bad. Copenhagen is one of the loveliest places I have ever seen—gorgeous sunshine—my only regret is that I could not stay longer.1 [Rose] was waiting in Copenhagen and had everything arranged nicely.2 I spent sometime with Dr. Leunbach and got the facts of his case.3 I could not get in touch with Thit Jensen4 altho we telephoned long distance and tried in every conceivable way to reach her, but failed. Dr. Vincent Naeser was most hospitable and took us around the city in the morning.5 At noon we had luncheon with him and his wife, Dr. Johanne Naeser, at the Tivoli Gardens.6 Dr. Agnete Heise came for coffee, but unfortunately Dr. Diderding had an operation to perform unexpectedly and was compelled to cancel the appointment, to join us all at lunch.7 I went into the question of their policies, beliefs, previous contacts, reading, judgment, etc. etc., and without their knowing it put them thru the b.c. test. I learned that Dr. Diderding was much in favor of Marie Stopes, adheres to her principles, and wants midwives and lay persons to teach contraception, believes more in the small cervical pessary than the diaphragm, and was a very poor technician at either.8 Because I could not go into these matters with her myself, and would not have another occasion to discuss them, I came to the conclusion that we must have someone representing us, and I asked Dr. Johanne Naeser to be our international correspondent, and she accepted.9 I think she is a very fine person, has a good command of English (which both Dr. Diderding and Dr. Heise lack), and together with her husband and their newspaper, the Berlingske Tidendes, we really have an excellent centre in Copenhagen.10 She will represent the whole country of Denmark for the time being. Please put her on our list of Correspondents, and give her the [complete] set up for Denmark. Send her the names of the other doctors who are going to the Stockholm Medical Women’s International Conference.11 We will urge her to go and to push as hard as possible on the medical women to get a Resolution thru on the principles and the medical practice of B.C.12 Dr. Agnete Heise was deeply interested, and pledged herself to resolutely stand behind Dr. Naeser in asking a Resolution, and in the event that Dr. Naeser is for any reason prevented from attending, she will act for her. Grand publicity in all of the papers and excellent interviews.13 Dr. Johanne Naeser was present at several of them, and helped with the translations, and I think got a liberal birth control education during the hour that she was present! We arrived at Oslo this morning, and there has been equally good publicity here.14 Unfortunately Dr. Tove Mohr left Oslo just a few days ago, but I have an appointment to visit the Clinic here tomorrow morning, as one of

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the doctors has been good enough to give up her Sunday morning for this purpose.15 More about this later.16 It was such a joy to see you all—you are both wonder-workers to have arranged so much in such little time.17 As ever, TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 15:721–22). Return address: Bristol Hotel.

1. Esbjerg is a seaport on the Jutland peninsula in southwestern Denmark. While in Copenhagen, MS participated in six interviews and meetings, toured the city, and visited its hospital. “Everywhere,” she wrote, “one felt the influence of progressive ideas.” (MS to Slee, July 7, 1934 [MSM S8:977]; MS, Copenhagen Journal, July 6, 1934 [LCM 13:63] [quote].) 2. Florence Rose, traveling ahead of MS, arrived in England on June 22. (U.K. Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878–1960.) 3. Jonathan Høegh Leunbach (1884–1955), a Danish physician and prominent sexual reformer, ran a birth control clinic in Copenhagen and manufactured his own contraceptives. He also offered abortions to working-class women. Leunbach had been charged with violating Danish law prohibiting abortion, but was eventually acquitted. (Who Was Who among English and European Authors, 1931‑1949 [Detroit, 1978]; Mogens Klitgaard, There’s a Man Sitting on a Trolley, edited and translated by Marc Linder [Iowa City, 2001], 211–12n96.) 4. In addition to her work with the FSO, Jensen began writing popular historical novels in the late 1920s. (Jan Sjâvik, Historical Dictionary of Scandinavian Literature and Theatre [Lanham, Md., 2006].) 5. (Carl Frederick) Vincent Naeser (1888–1968), a Danish physician and president of the Danish Students International University, was a eugenics advocate whom MS met at the WPC. (Dansk Kvindbiografisk Leksikon; MS, Proceedings of the WPC, 245, 366.) 6. Johanne Kirstine Naeser (1887–1974), a Danish physician, was a sexual reform activist and cofounder of the FSO. MS also met her at the WPC. The Tivoli Gardens is a famous amusement park, opened in 1843. (Dansk Kvindbiografisk Leksikon.) 7. (Engel Regina) Agnete Heise (1888–1973) was a Danish radiologist. Dida Dagmar Dederding (1889–1955), a Danish physician and audiologist, also cofounded the FSO and worked on sex education and sexual reform. (Dansk Kvindebiografisk Leksikon; Oliver Sterkers, Meniere’s Disease 1999: Update [The Hague, 2000], 25.) 8. Stopes believed that women related better to nurses and midwives than doctors; in her clinics, midwives conducted the examinations and fitted the diaphragms and pessaries. The clinic’s physician was called only for problems. (Leathard, Fight for Family Planning, 13; Stopes, Contraception, 387.) 9. Correspondents reported on birth control activities in their nations. (BCIIC Newsletter, No. 1 [June 1934]: 1 [MSM C12:1041].) 10. Vincent Naeser was a part owner of Berlingske Tidende, which published four major newspapers. (Martin Anderson, “The Danish Press,” International Communication Gazette 9, no. 2 [1963]: 78, 81.) 11. The Medical Women’s International Association (MWIA) was founded in 1919 to enable women doctors to share information and knowledge. The 1934 congress was

July 1934  •  251 held in Stockholm from August 7 to 12, with Helena Wright representing the BCIIC. (“Reports of Societies,” 568; BCIIC Newsletter, No. 2 [Oct. 1934]: 1–2 [MSM C12:1044].) 12. The 1934 MWIA Congress focused on birth control, and the discussion was “pursued in the true spirit of scientific inquiry,” but did not produce a general resolution. (“Reports of Societies,” 568 [quote]; Evalyn Partymiller, “The Medical Women’s International Association, Special Report,” Medical Woman’s Journal 12 [Nov. 1934]: 301.) 13. MS spoke with reporters of at least three Danish newspapers, including the Berlingske Tidende, Politiken, and Ekstrabladet. See LCM 13:61–66 for clippings. (MS, Copenhagen Journal, July 6, 1934 [LCM 13:63].) 14. According to MS, reporters began to arrive at her door almost as soon as she did, and there was no time to get someone to accurately translate her statements into Norwegian. Among the papers that carried her remarks were Dagbladet and Arbeiderbladet, both on July 7, 1934. (MS, Oslo Journal, July 7–8, 1934 [LCM 19:603–8]; Dagbladet reporter to MS, July 6, 1934 [LCM 19:602]; Dagbladet, July 7, 1934.) 15. Tove Kathrine Mohr (1891–1981), a Norwegian physician, birth control proponent, and social reformer, was the wife of geneticist Otto Lous Mohr and daughter of birth control advocate Katti Anker Møller. She arranged for MS’s tour of the MHK by Dr. Ellinor Jamvold (1890–1978), the surgeon in charge, and Gerda Moe Evang (1905–85), feminist, clinic physician, and the wife of Karl Evang. (Norsk Biografisk Leksikon [Oslo, 2003], 6:334; Bock and Thane, Maternity and Gender Policies, 38; MS, Oslo Journal, July 7–8, 1934 [LCM 19:603–8]; Norway Burial Index, 1700–2010.) 16. For MS’s notes on the MHK, see Oslo Journal (LCM 19:603–9). 17. MS met the Guys and How-Martyn in June 1934 and obtained letters of introduction from them. (See How-Martyn to MS, Mar. 8, July 19, 1934 [LCM 15:672, 730].)

90. To J. Noah Slee 1 Slee, still struggling with his finances, had quarreled with Sanger over money and her long absences. (MS to Slee, June 28 and July 1, 1934 [MSM S8:918, 951].)

[Stockholm, Sweden] July 12 [1934]

Dearest One: One more letter before we leave for Helsinkfors today. Your cable came yesterday saying my cables were not clear. Perhaps it was because I said no gifts in last cable, meaning no messages cables or letters anywhere since I left the boat. In reality I’ve only had one ↑two↓ cables from you and I have to read & reread your letters of the past to know I have a husband at all.2 The days go fast & we are having a most interesting time each day. Last night I had a regular Sweedish dinner with the American minister & the Director of the Nobel Institute. Peace prizes given to peace advocates.3 Both

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Grant4 & I picked up a germ & while I gargled faithfully with Zonite5 I fear its got its hold anyway. A luncheon given me yesterday by Prof Edin,6 a dinner last evening in an old Sweedish Restaurant by Prof Anderson,7 this noon a luncheon by women & I see the Bc Clinic this morning & pack for the journey after tea at the American legation.8 Its hard going all right, night sleepers & strange beds. We can not get private baths always & I have to go thru Mrs Clydes room for a bath & for my clothing.9 But my room is very palatial & elegant on the corner. Mary Lawton was on the [Aquitania] with me First Class but did not know I was there until she got in London.10 Now all the news is here dearest one, & I may not get time to send another word in a few days so remember Im thinking of you & loving you always, always & knowing that we shall soon be together. All love & devotion to my darling as Ever Margy ALS MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S8:1002–4). Letterhead of the Grand Hotel. The right margin is cut off.

1. MS and her party left Norway for Sweden on July 9. 2. They left Helsingfors (Helsinki), Finland, on July 12 and stayed until July 17. Slee sent cables (not found) to MS at Göteborg and Stockholm. (MS to How-Martyn, July 16, 1934 [LCM 15:728]; Slee to MS, July 5, 8, 11, and 16, 1934 [MSM S8:972, 983, 994, 1013].) 3. Statistician Dr. Thor Andersson hosted the dinner attended by the American minister to Sweden (1933–37) Laurence A. Steinhardt (1892–1950) and Nobel Institute scientist and mathematician Lars Edvard Phragmén (1863–1937), whom MS called “the foremost scientist in Sweden and the first man in the Nobel Institute.” Ragnvald Moe (1873–1965), the director of the Nobel Institute (1910–46), and Dr. Kramer, secretary of the Nobel Peace Prize awards committee, also attended. MS called the dinner “one of the most perfect that I have spent.” (New York Times, May 5, 1933, and Mar. 29, 1950; MS, Report on Stockholm, Sweden, July 10–12, 1934 [quote 1], and MS to Andersson, July 12, 1934 [quote 2] [LCM 20:173, 176]; editors’ correspondence with the Nobel Institute, Sept. 25, 2008.) 4. MS’s son Grant Sanger, age twenty-six, graduated from Princeton in 1931 and was attending Cornell University Medical School. He was, according to MS, “eager to investigate the progress of medicine in the Soviet Union, and made up his mind to come along.” (MS to How-Martyn, June 27, 1931 [LCM 15:52]; MS, Autobiography, 433 [quote].) 5. Zonite was a popular liquid antiseptic. (New York Times, Feb. 23, 1956.) 6. On July 11, social scientist and statistician Dr. Karl Edin (1880–1937) hosted a luncheon for MS at Skansens, which was also attended by Dr. Alma Sundquist, Edward A. Ross, and Florence Rose. (MS, Report on Stockholm, Sweden, July 10–12, 1934, and “Birth Control Advances Peace,” Social-Demokraten, July 10, 1934 [LCM 20:173, 167]; E. P. Hutchinson and D. S. Thomas, “Obituary Notices: Karl Arvid Edin,” American Sociological Review 3 [Aug. 1938]: 573–75.) 7. Thor Andersson (1869–1935), a Norwegian statistician, first met MS at the WPC. At the dinner, MS recalled that she tried to emphasize the connection “between birth

July 1934  •  253 control, population control, and world peace,” hoping a Nobel Prize might someday go “for work done along population lines, in the interests of peace.” (Vem Ar Det? Svensk Biografisk Handbok [Stockholm, 1935]; MS, “Stockholm, Sweden,” July 10–12, 1934 [quotes], and MS to Andersson, July 12, 1934 [LCM 20:173, 176].) 8. On July 12, at the suggestion of physician and feminist writer Anna Lenah Elgström (1884–1968), the Women’s Club of Stockholm gave a farewell luncheon for MS at the Moseback restaurant, attended by more than fifty of Sweden’s women professionals, including Dulcie Hofmann Steinhardt (1895–1974), wife of the American minister to Sweden, and Alma Sundquist (1880–1940), president of the MWIA. MS was unable to visit the municipal birth clinic run by Dr. Gerda Kjellberg (1881–1972) and left for Finland that evening. (MS, Stockholm, Sweden, Journal, July 10–12, 1934 [LCM 20:173]; Stockholms Tidningen, July 12, 1934; Social-Demokraten, July 10, 1934; The History of Nordic Women’s Literature, http://nordicwomensliterature.net; U.S. Find a Grave Index; Marilyn B. Ogilvie and Joy D. Harvey, eds. Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science [New York, 2000], 1252.) 9. Ethel Clyde returned to New York on August 31, a few weeks earlier than MS. (N.Y. Incoming Passenger Lists, 1820–1957.) 10. Mary Lawton (1870–1945) was an American biographer who had met MS in London in 1924. (New York Times, Jan. 23, 1945; MS, London Diary, Oct. 6, 1924 [MSM S70:204].)

91. Excerpts from R eport on Leningrad Sanger stayed in Helsinki from July 13 to 16, attending meetings, touring the municipal hospital and abortion ward, and attending a luncheon of nurses and social workers. She then left for Leningrad, to see the Soviet Union’s abortaria, contraceptive services, and innovative contraceptive research and to witness “what was happening in the greatest social experiment of our age.” Sanger had to travel with a tour group under “official guidance” but was able to set up private interviews and visits to medical and research facilities. In an article written a year later, Sanger explained, “To understand the Russian birth control situation, and the abortion situation . . . one must keep in mind the attitude of Soviet Russia toward its women. This would delight the heart of the staunchest feminist. Equal rights are a settled and accepted fact. Woman is equal to man in every occupation, in sports, in the arts, in marriage . . . in all activities. When pregnancy begins this equality ceases.” (MS, “Helsingfors, Finland,” July 14–15, 1934 [LCM 13:174]; MS, Autobiography, 433–34 [quotes 1–2]; MS, “Birth Control in Soviet Russia,” 3 [quote 3]; New York Times, July 8, 1934.)

[Leningrad, U.S.S.R.] [July 17–19, 1934] At the border of ↑at↓ Beliostrov(?)1 we were met by the customs officials, interpreters, etc. The amount of our money had to be declared for which we were given a receipt, typewriters, cameras etc. had to be declared, and after a four hour wait we finally started again for Leningrad, arriving at six P.M. instead of 12 Noon, as originally scheduled. The streets were swarming

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with human beings and millions of children, seemingly between the ages of two and twelve. Kerchiefs over the heads of the women, men mostly wearing white blouses. Broad streets laid out in marvelous architectural form, and altho shabby and showing the lack of paint and care, the beauty of the houses could not be hidden. One is highly impressed with the cleanliness of the people. White is white, and a clean white. Faces, bodies, necks, all display a cleanliness that is simply marvelous when one realizes the conditions and difficulties to be overcome in securing and supplying soap, water, and other materials for sanitation.2 We arrived at the Astoria Hotel in Leningrad (Vorovsky’s Square) across from St. Isaac’s Cathedral, now the Anti-Religious Museum3 at 7 O’Clock, and had our “lunch” immediately upon arrival, and then took a drive around the city. The Astoria Hotel, as all good hotels in Russia, has ↑been↓ taken over by Intourist, and particularly at this time for American Tourists.4 Everything under the direction of Intourist must be paid for in valuta (foreign currency), which makes everything most expensive.5 [July 18, 1934] First Day: In addition to visiting the famous Hermitage and the Smolny Institute,6 the greater part of the afternoon was spent at the Institute for the Protection of Motherhood and Childhood.7 VOKS (the all Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries) was good enough to provide a special interpreter for us, Lucy Krivoborskaia.8 This institution is the model demonstration center of its kind in Russia. There experiments are made, results tabulated, and from the reports other institutions of the same kind are established in other cities, and direction given to health agencies and individuals doing similar types of work, it is however, the function of the institute only to advise, not to concern itself with demonstrative functions which come under the Commisariat of Public Health.9 Ethel Clyde, Grant, F. R.10 and myself were all first shown into the Director’s room at the main building,11 where much conversation took place, especially by the Head Assistant of the Chair of Social Hygiene of the Institute, Dr. Wolfson.12 Dr. W. explained to us the principles of the Soviet system.13 After this we were placed under the guidance of another woman physician, Dr. F. A. Bachmutskaia, Consultation manager of the Institute,14 who devoted the rest of the afternoon to us. Dr. B. is an excellent type, not only one of the finest I have ever seen, but with a splendid grasp of the possibilities of her work. We were taken to the Department of Contraceptive Instruction,15 and in a case on the wall were the usual paraphernalia—various kinds of pessaries, Prekonsol, and one other jelly, both of which are said to be entirely out of date as they are unable to make them with any success.16 The pessaries were hard and practically useless.17 If these examples are an indication of

July 1934  •  255

what is used, I get the feeling that contraceptive practice is not as general in practice as in theory.18 While posters are on the walls of all the Institutions for the Protection of Motherhood and Childhood, I am of the opinion that only a few of the enthusiastic doctors pay much attention to this side of preventive care.19 TD MSP, DLC (LCM 20:746–47). Handwritten interlineations probably by Hazel Moore. The editors omitted a short section describing MS’s arrival in Beloostrov and running into another tour group run by writer and YMCA missionary Sherwood Eddy.

1. MS and her party reached Beloostrov, a town bordering Finland and the Soviet Union on July 17. (New York Times, Oct. 12, 1939; MS, “Leningrad Report,” [LCM 20:746].) 2. While there were food shortages and rationing in parts of the Soviet Union, the major cities had sufficient food and necessities. Soap was available but expensive. Under its first Five-Year Plan (1928–32), the government sought to improve sanitation and hygiene and to reduce rates of diseases, such as typhoid, which were higher than in the West. (Newsholme and Kingsbury, Red Medicine, 15, 203–4; New York Times, Mar. 31, 1933, and Aug. 26, 1934; Semashko, Health Protection in the U.S.S.R., 42–44.) 3. St. Isaac’s Russian Orthodox Cathedral is one of the largest domed buildings in the world. The cathedral became the Museum of Atheism in 1924. Vorovsky’s Square (renamed St. Issac’s Square in 1944), linked the cathedral with the Marinsky Palace. (Paul Gabel, And God Created Lenin: Marxism v. Religion in Russia, 1917–1929 [Amherst, N.Y., 2005], 357; New York Times, July 4, 1924.) 4. The Astoria Hotel, built in 1912, was operated by Intourist, the Soviet state tourist agency formed in 1929, which controlled nearly every facet of travel in the Soviet Union. (American-Russian Chamber of Commerce, Handbook of the Soviet Union, 500–501.) 5. Tourists used valuta in the expensive Torgsin (State Corporation for Trade with Foreigners) stores, so that the Soviet Union could acquire foreign currency with which to import machinery and other goods at favorable rates. This double currency system ended in 1935. (“Foreign News: Sklar’s Stores,” Time, Nov. 9, 1931, 23; New York Times, Dec. 25, 1932, and Nov. 20, 1935.) 6. The Hermitage, opened in 1852, is one of the foremost art museums in the world. The nearby Smolny Institute, formerly an institute for well-born girls, became Bolshevik headquarters during the October Revolution. It then became a monument, museum, and government office building. (EB; Joseph L. Wieczynski, The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History [Gulf Breeze, Fla., 1983], 33:61.) 7. In another diary, MS indicated that this visit occurred on July 19, her second day in Leningrad. The OMM in Leningrad, founded in 1925, operated experimental research facilities, maternity centers, creches, milk stations, women’s consultation clinics and obstetrical and gynecological clinics, and model clinics for demonstration and teaching. MS and her companions visited the clinic for sick children. (“The Leningrad Institute for the Study of Mother and Infant Protection,” 1934 [LCM 143:734]; Rose to Everybody, July 20, 1934 [FRP]; G. Sanger, Russia Diary, 7–9.) 8. VOKS, the Vsesoiuznoe Obshchestvo Kulturnoi Sviazi (All-Union Society for Cultural Relations), supervised the exchange of cultural and scientific information with

256  •  “The World Needs You!” other countries, organized tours, and assisted foreigners coming to the Soviet Union for research or study. (American-Russian Chamber of Commerce, Handbook of the Soviet Union, 480; Rose to Lucy Krivoborskaia, May 20, 1935 [LCM 20:661].) 9. Later in the journal, MS tried to explain further that “the Institute is a demonstration center, and not an administration center—the administration work being carried on under the Commissariat of People’s Health Department.” It did not set policy, but demonstrated how to carry out procedures. (MS, Journal Entry, July 19, 1934 [LCM 20:748]; Thomas, “International Intercourse,” 68.) 10. Rose, who took care of MS’s correspondence and scheduling, called the OMM tour “most inspiring.” (G. Sanger, Russia Diary; Rose to Everybody, July 20, 1934 [quote] [FRP].) 11. Yulia Aronovna Mendeleeva headed Leningrad’s OMM from 1925 to 1949. (“Saint Petersburg State Pediatric Medical University,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg_State_Pediatric_Medical_University.) 12. According to MS’s diary, Dr. Wolfson answered most of her questions regarding the ideal number of children per family (four), state interest in population increase (it is “welcomed by the state”), child spacing (“three years is recognized as the ideal”), contraception (“prevention is not our aim”), and abortion (“they are not encouraging abortions but trying to educate against them.”) (MS, Journal Entry, July 19, 1934 [LCM 20:748–51].) 13. Though women’s equality was decreed by the Soviet Union, a powerful patriarchal system remained strong in the countryside, and women made little gains in employment under the first Five-Year Plan. By the mid-1930s, the Stalinist government began to reverse these official commitments to individual freedom and women’s equality. (How-Martyn to MS, June 23, 1932, note 2, herein; Suny, Cambridge History of Russia, 473–76; Goldman, Women, the State & Revolution, 3, 103, 154–55, 317, 337.) 14. MS described Dr. F. A. Bachmutskaia as “a charming, ideal person for the position, who carefully explained the work of the Consultation Clinic.” (MS, Journal Entry, July 19, 1934 [LCM 20:751].) 15. The Department of Contraceptive Instruction, a clinic within the larger Consultation Center, offered free contraceptives and instruction. Though imported diaphragms and cervical caps were scarce, the OMM could fit women for them and provide them with spermicidal jellies, suppositories, or pastes such as Prekonsol or a cocoa-butter or gelatin-based Soviet-manufactured suppository called Kontraktseptin. MS found that physicians throughout the Soviet Union were familiar with American birth control methods and devices, but were unwilling or unable to import them. MS offered to send back samples when she returned home. (MS, Journal Entry, July 19, 1934 [LCM 20:750–53]; G. Sanger, Russia Diary, 8–9; Thomas, “International Intercourse,” 68–69, 86–89.) 16. Prekonsol was a spermicidal jelly made of chinosol and boric acid. (Cecil Voge, Chemistry and Physics of Contraception [London, 1933], 180–81.) 17. Most pessaries were constructed of soft and pliable rubber, making them easy to insert and providing a more flexible shield against sperm. They usually lasted about a year before they hardened and needed to be replaced. (Cooper, Technique of Contraception, 133.)

July 1934  •  257 18. While birth control was legal in the Soviet Union, access to contraceptives was limited. Soviet physicians also used an intrauterine douche or swab that directed a chemical into the uterus. It was sometimes used as an abortifacient. (Thomas, “International Intercourse,” 82–92, 150, 154; Goldman, Women, the State & Revolution, 258–60.) 19. MS found that while most OMM physicians tended to prescribe contraception only after an abortion or for a particular health problem, the government showed considerable interest in developing more effective contraceptives to reduce the abortion rate. (MS, Journal Entry, July 19, 1934 [LCM 20:750]; Goldman, Women, the State & Revolution, 257; Thomas, “International Intercourse,” 67.)

92. Excerpts from Journal Entry With contraceptives difficult to obtain in the Soviet Union, the most popular birth control methods were withdrawal and abortion. By 1930 one of every four Soviet women admitted to having an abortion, legally or illegally. (Goldman, Women, the State & Revolution, 259.)

LENINGRAD, [U.S.S.R.] July 20, 1934. ABORTION CLINIC. Arrangements were made to go to a large private Abortorium in Leningrad, operated under the auspices of the Red Cross.1 (The large publicly operated abortorium was closed because of repairs). We were met at the door of an old palatial residence by a delegation of the men of the medical profession; flanked at the lower part of the step were at least 5 nurses. The Director of this Institute is a Georgian, also a member of the Communistic Party.2 We understand that Stalin is doing his utmost to place Georgians in charge of the various divisions in the Soviet Regime.3 We were taken thru the various wards where 157 women were at the present time. No chloroform or no anaesthetic unless for an unusual case.4 The rule is to remain 3 days and then 7 days at home. Abortions are charged for at this particular institution, as there are a dozen other places where women can go without charge. The average fee for an abortion is from 200 to 300 rubles.5 The place was spotlessly clean as far as we can see, and I believe unusually care is given here under private auspices, and direction. 37 mothers were also here and 37 babies in the room, the creche, where we were allowed to enter and see them. Flies were everywhere, and nurses were about chasing the flies out of the babies eyes. Grant was rather horrified to see flypaper hanging from the chandeliers in the open room, but these are incidentals and the fact that there was any flypaper at all is considered advanced sanitation.6 We were asked to remain to have a cup of tea (tchai) and altho in a great hurry to get to a large hospital that we wished to see, we felt it would be discourteous not to accept their hospitality, so we were ushered into a large dining room, which was like a banquet hall with a table simply groaning with

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fruits, cakes, meats, salads, candies, chocolates, and other confections of all kinds. Numerous centerpieces of at least 6 varieties of living plants in pots were spread over the table and these upon our departure were carried down by the nurses and presented to us, and we in turn presented them to the hospital which we later visited.7 Our interpreter this time was a Miss Light, a nurse at the Doctors Hospital in New York, a charming person who speaks a beautiful Russian,8 whom we met at the hotel, and she and Grant were left to visit the hospital while we returned to the hotel to meet Dr. Tushnov.9 TD MSP, DLC (LCM 20:754). For complete journal entry, see LCM 20:755–58.

1. Abortaria were established in the larger cities in the mid-1920s to alleviate hospital overcrowding and cut down on illegal abortions. The Red Cross and Red Crescent had been integrated into the Soviet medical system and, by 1935, controlled 168 hospitals, including some abortaria. The private abortarium MS visited held more than 30 maternity beds, plus 120 beds for abortions, and a creche for infants. (Taussig, Abortion, Spontaneous and Induced, 406–7; Sigerist, Socialized Medicine, 154–56; G. Sanger, Russia Diary, 10.) 2. The director was not identified. MS later corresponded with Dr. Poremski, chief of the lying-in section, whom she met later that day. (Rose to Poremski, Nov. 14, 1934 [LCM 20:615].) 3. Stalin appointed a number of his Caucasian countrymen to positions of power. By the mid-1920s, they constituted a large proportion of the Politburo, and by the early 1930s they filled the security and secret police forces and headed several important people’s commissariats. (Miklos Kun, Stalin: An Unknown Portrait [New York, 2003], 288–89; Christian Science Monitor, June 7, 1934; Sarah Rosemary Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia: Terror, Propaganda and Dissent, 1934–1941 [New York, 1997], 88.) 4. Anesthesia was employed in less than 1 percent of maternity patients and generally given only to women who were experiencing their first childbirth. In these cases, ethyl chloride was administered during dilation of the cervix, prior to surgery. (Taussig, Abortion, Spontaneous and Induced, 417; National Committee on Maternal Health, “Round Table Meeting,” 2.) 5. Public abortaria were free for all workers under the social insurance system; others, according to Grant Sanger, had to pay a small fee based on monthly income (between twenty and fifty rubles). Some women, especially the uninsured, opted for private facilities to bypass bureaucratic delays at the public abortaria, which prioritized the insured. (Field, Protection of Women, 79; Taussig, Abortion, Spontaneous and Induced, 407; Goldman, Women, the State & Revolution, 261–62; G. Sanger, Russia Diary, 10.) 6. Grant Sanger noted that the facility was “quite clean in spite of its age,” but the kitchen “full of flies.” Other Western observers reported inconsistencies in hygienic practices. (G. Sanger, Russia Diary, 10 [quotes]; National Committee on Maternal Health, “Round Table Meeting,” 2; Taussig, Abortion, Spontaneous and Induced, 416.) 7. This was the Metchnikoff Hospital, a large research hospital on the outskirts of Leningrad, named after Ukrainian microbiologist Élie Metchnikoff (1845–1916), who was a Pasteur Institute researcher and a Nobel Prize winner. Grant Sanger found it “a very impressive place,” but noted a lack of staff and activity when he toured in the afternoon.

July 1934  •  259 (Sir James Purves-Stewart, A Physician’s Tour in Soviet Russia [New York, 1933], 43; EB; G. Sanger, Russia Diary, 11.) 8. This may have been Ann Light (ca. 1910–1989?), a 1932 graduate of Mount Sinai Hospital’s nursing program, whose father was Russian born. (1930 U.S. Census; SSDI; New York Times, Feb. 4, 1932.) 9. Mikhail Pavlovich Tushnov (1879–1935) was a microbiologist and medical researcher at the Kazan Veterinary Institute and the Leningrad Institute for Experimental Medicine, who had conducted pioneering research on spermatoxins since 1908. He told MS that twenty-two out of thirty women in his study had been made temporarily immune to sperm for four to five months. But the Soviet government forced him to abandon his research for more “utilitarian tasks.” He was unable to publish his findings internationally without first publishing them in the Soviet Union. MS hoped to bring him to the United States. (Heinrich E. Schultz et al., eds., Who Was Who in the U.S.S.R [Metuchen, N.J., 1972], 556–57; Stone, “Notes on the Use of Spermatoxins in Russia,” 18; MS, Autobiography, 442 [quote]; MS to Tushnov, July 24, 1934 [LCM 20:545].)

93. Excerpts from Journal Entry Sanger arrived in Moscow on July 21 and met with commissioner of health Grigor Kaminsky, attended a luncheon hosted by American ambassador William Bullet, and saw her old radical friend George Andreytchine. (G. Sanger, Russia Diary, 8; MS to Slee, July 22, 1934 [MSM S8:1023].)

[Moscow, U.S.S.R] July 24, [1934]

MOSCOW ARBORTORIUM— Visited Dr. Alexander Madjuginski’s Clinic for Abortions, said to be the largest in the city.1 F. R., Grant, Norman,2 our interpreter, Dr. Genss,3 Dr. Scher—a physician from Chicago4—and Miss Weltman, a Red Cross official from Chicago,5 were in the group. It is stated that at this Abortorium over 100,000 operations were done in 1933. All free of charge. They remain 3 days at the Clinic and as a rule 7 days at home after the abortion, before going back to work.6 It is the policy of Soviet medical men to discourage abortions; they try to explain to the woman particularly who has not had a child of the effect the abortion might have on her and the possible injury to further childbearing, and the general dangers of interference. If, however, the woman insists, it is done. They also claim that women are not permitted to have second abortions in less than six months after the first.7 They further claim that they send the woman to get contraception information, but no contraceptive information is given at the Clinic. Two abortions took place within 7 minutes. No anaesthetic was given. Clever technique was employed by Dr. Madjuginski’s assistant.8 I did not have

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time to look into the aseptic conditions and methods, but if their claim is true that they have 1 death in many thousands, no complaint can be issued! Various figures have been given me from 1 death in 2,000 cases, to 1 death in 20,000 abortions to one death in 100,000 abortions, and even 1 death in a million! These figures have been given me [presumably] by responsible people in various cities. I have not the faintest idea what the actual figures are.9 The lying-in quarters of the women were like the average dormitory of a rooming-house. I asked what special post-operative care was given but was informed that there was none. Simply external washing, but a laxative is given the night before the abortion, and the women are required to come a day before the abortion for this. If there is any temperature or infection of any kind the operation does not take place, and the woman remains there or at home until she is in perfect condition before the abortion is performed.10 [The editors have omitted a long quote from Dr. Madzhuginskii taken from an interview with MS that repeats much of the above.] TD MSP, DLC (LCM 20:754–5). For complete journal entry, see LCM 20:755–58.

1. Alexander S. Madzhuginskii, a gynecologist with the Moscow Province Department of the OMM, ran a 250-bed abortarium, one of two such public facilities of this size in Moscow, in a dingy, three-story building. Abraham Stone had visited it in 1933 and recommended it to MS. (Solomon, “Soviet Legalization of Abortion,” 468; Taussig, Abortion, Spontaneous and Induced, 406, 415–17; MS to Madzhuginskii, July 17, 1934 [LCM 20:543].) 2. Miss Norman was a translator for VOKS in Moscow. (MS to Dr. Bieder, VOKS, July 31, 1934 [LCM 20:553].) 3. Dr. Abram B. Genss, a statistician and assistant director of the Division for the Protection of Maternity and Infancy of the NKZ in Moscow, was a spokesman for the Soviet approach to birth control and the leading Russian proponent of legalized abortion. Author of a 1926 study titled Der Abort auf dem Lande (Abortion in the Country), Genss argued that legal abortion was safer than illegal backroom abortions. Agnes Smedley, who visited Russia in 1928, had suggested to MS that she meet Genss because “he is through and through birth control man and is the Scientific Secretary for the Central Scientific Commission of Research in Contraceptive Methods. He immediately asked about you and your work and knew all about you.” (Newsholme and Kingsbury, Red Medicine, 19–21; Solomon, “Soviet Legalization of Abortion,” 462; Smedley to MS, Nov. 19, 1928 [quote] [LCM 10:412].) 4. This may have been Jack J. Scher (b. 1900), a Chicago dentist, who studied at the Moscow Summer School. (Chicago Daily Tribune, Apr, 7, 1929; MS, “Leningrad and Moscow,” July, 1934 [LCM 20:755]; 1930 U.S. Census.) 5. Estelle Weltman (Blatt) (ca. 1890–1955) was a nurse and director of home nursing for the Chicago Red Cross. (Chicago Daily Tribune, July 14, 1955; 1920 U.S. Census.) 6. The figure refers to the total number of abortions performed at the two large abortaria in Moscow. There were 154,584 total reported abortions in Moscow in 1934, approximately 700,000 recorded abortions in all of the Soviet Union. Abortion rates,

July 1934  •  261 which had been climbing, stabilized in the early 1930s. MS noted that only 5 percent of patients paid a fee based on income. (Norman Haire, “Russian Experiences with Legalized Abortion,” JAMA 101 [July 29, 1933]: 386–87; Lorimer, Population of the Soviet Union, 127; Alexandre Avdeev, Alain Blum, and Irina Troitskaya, “The History of Abortion Statistics in Russia and the USSR from 1900 to 1991,” Population: An English Selection 7 [1995]: 55; MS, Journal Entry, July 24, 1934 [LCM 20:755].) 7. In an effort to combat the increase in abortions, the law was amended several times starting in 1926, making abortion illegal if performed earlier than six months following a preceding one, after the first three months of pregnancy, and for first pregnancies. (Taussig, Abortion, Spontaneous and Induced, 407; Andrej A. Popov, “The USSR,” in Abortion in the New Europe: A Comprehensive Handbook, edited by Bill Rolston and Anna Eggert [Westport, Conn., 1994], 275.) 8. The clever technique might refer to the assistant’s efficient use of the curette. These procedures took on average ten minutes from the operating table to the recovery room. (Taussig, Abortion, Spontaneous and Induced, 416–17.) 9. Madzhuginskii reported that his abortarium had experienced 9 deaths out of 175,000 abortions, or roughly 5 per 100,000 (1 per 20,000). This compared to 30 deaths per 100,000 abortions performed outside of hospitals. However, these statistics were unofficial, limited to urban areas, and questioned by visiting physicians, such as Eric Matsner, because they revealed an extremely low morbidity rate compared to other countries. (Goldman, Women, the State & Revolution, 263; Taussig, Abortion, Spontaneous and Induced, 413; National Committee on Maternal Health, “Round Table Meeting,” 2.) 10. Preoperative patients, admitted the day before, were shaved and given a bath and enema as well as a urine test and cervical examination for evidence of venereal disease. (Taussig, Abortion, Spontaneous and Induced, 416.)

94. To Isaak Leont’evich Braude 1 On July 23, Sanger met with H. G. Wells, who was in Moscow to meet with Stalin. She observed a Health Day parade in Red Square on July 24, toured the Kremlin on July 25, and left Moscow on July 26, taking a steamer down the Volga from July 27 to 30. (G. Sanger, Russia Diary, 17–18; MS, Autobiography, 440, 444–45, 451; J. R. Hammond, An H. G. Wells Chronology (New York, 1999), 111.)

En route Stalingrad,2 Via the Volga, [U.S.S.R.] July 29, 1934.

Personal. Dear Prof. Braudy: It was a very great pleasure for me to have the opportunity of meeting you in person and I wish to express to you my thanks for your Chairmanship at the meeting at VOKS on the afternoon of the 25th.3 I deeply regret that the two packages sent to the Institute for the Protection of Mother and Child did not arrive before I left Moscow,4 but I left a

262  •  “The World Needs You!”

letter with Dr. Cheri Appel, one of the doctors on my staff in New York, whom you met at the meeting, and who explained briefly the use of our contraceptives. She has the order to deliver one of these packages, which was addressed to me at the New Moscow Hotel, to your Institute.5 The other package goes directly to the Institute by special arrangements with Ambassador Troyanovsky at Washington.6 I regret that some charges may be made for transporting the shipment from Leningrad to Moscow, but I have asked Dr. Appel to see what these charges may be and to pay for them, or perhaps the Institute or your Committee will arrange about it.7 I wish to say to you again that I greatly appreciate the splendid work that your Institute is doing and I only wish that Soviet Russia would lead in scientific research for contraception. You have no priests, nor a Pope, to thwart your progress, and I know that the world is looking towards Soviet Russia to give us the key to this problem of contraception.8 Sometime in the near future I wish you would give some consideration to the question of holding an International Conference in Moscow under your auspices. If this could be done I think that many of the delegates of our International Center would be happy to avail themselves of an opportunity of coming to Moscow and they would bring with them the results of their research in biological, chemical, bio-chemical, and physiological fields. In the package addressed to your Institute, is a large roll of lambs’ wool, which I thought would provide an interesting experiment in the form of a plug, especially if it is used with a jelly or an oily substance. It does not clog together as the ordinary absorbent cotton does nor does it cost much. It is used in the rural districts of America by some of the women and advised by country doctors with a certain amount of success.9 The woman is taught how to use this. It is of course removed after intercourse and thrown away and a fresh one used when needed. I included it only for experimental purposes. You might try it on two or three trusted patients who would have the understanding and interest to report results to you. If your Committee should in the near future be interested in obtaining the services of an excellent man to further research along chemical and mechanical lines I should like to recommend a Dr. P. LeMon Clark, who has received his Medical Degree from Chicago University, interned in Evanston Illinois General Hospital, and has made a very special study not only of the composition of rubber going into the pessaries, but also of the mechanical questions involved, and of the chemical composition of the jellies and suppositories now so widely used in England and America. Dr. Clark is a young man, under thirty-five years, has a family of two children, has had a good scientific economic training in Cornell University, was Assistant-Professor at this institution with Prof. Willcox for sometime,

July 1934  •  263

a position from which he resigned to study medicine in Chicago University.10 I feel that Dr. Clark would be invaluable in any country where there are no limitations or restrictions upon his scientific activities, and I know of no other country but Soviet Russia where these conditions exist. I spoke to Dr. Genss about Dr. Clark, and told him that while Dr. Clark could not offer his services to the Institute for the Protection of Mother and Child, I felt that he might be available if your Committee agreed that his services would be of assistance in the development of any studies you might desire along chemical and mechanical lines.11 I should be glad to communicate with Dr. Clark if so requested, and if you will let me know further regarding this, either at our London office, or at our New York office, 17 West 16 St., I will greatly appreciate it. With all good wishes for your continued progress, I am Cordially yours, Margaret Sanger, President. TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 20:550–51). Letterhead of the Hotel Savoy. A copy was sent to Cheri Appel.

1. Isaak Leont’evich Braude (1882–1960), a German Jew who fled to the Soviet Union, was the head of the Research Committee on Scientific Contraception at the OMM. He was among those increasingly unhappy over the growing use of abortion. (MS to Andreytchine, July 28, 1934 [LCM 20:547]; Janet Evans, “The Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Women’s Question,” Journal of Contemporary History 16 [Oct. 1981]: 762.) 2. Volgograd was known as Stalingrad from 1925 to 1966. 3. VOKS had arranged for a meeting between MS and OMM officials, including Drs. Genss, Braude, Madzhuginskii, former director Vera Lebedeva, and fifty other physicians, followed by tea. After a brief talk by BCCRB physician Cheri Appel, MS summarized the history of the movement. (Appel to Benjamin Segal, July 27, 1934 [CAP]; MS to Genss, July 29, and to VOKS, July 31, 1934, and MS, Journal Entry, July 25, 1934 [LCM 20:549, 553, 45:317].) 4. A package of diaphragms, contraceptive jellies, and books sent from the BCCRB on June 27 had arrived in Leningrad, but had not made it to Moscow. The second package, probably containing two gynaplaques, had not yet arrived. (G. Sanger, Russia Diary, 16; MS to Andreytchine, July 28, 1934, and MS to Genss, Sept. 22, 1934 [LCM 20:547, 570].) 5. Cheri Appel (Segal) (1901–2003) spent six weeks in Moscow dispensing contraceptive information. Though she communicated with MS during the trip, the two did not travel together. Appel reported that MS, who gave “her usual historical outline of her activities, future plans, etc.,” told the audience that Appel would offer several demonstration clinics. (New York Times, June 10, 2003; Rose to Appel, July 30, 1934 [LCM 20:552]; Appel to Segal, July 27, 1934 [CAP].)

264  •  “The World Needs You!” 6. Alexander Antonovich Troyanovsky (1882–1955), a foreign trade expert, was the first Soviet ambassador to the United States (1934–39). MS had asked for his assistance in waiving customs fees and facilitating the shipment of contraceptive materials. (New York Times, June 24, 1955; MS to Troyanovsky, June 4, 1934 [LCM 20:513].) 7. MS feared that the shipments could fall into “private hands.” Braude received both packages in September. (MS to Braude, Sept. 22, 1934, and MS to Andreytchine, July 28, 1934 [MSM S20:566, 547].) 8. In the Soviet Union, an atheist state, religious faith was considered incompatible with allegiance to the Communist Party. The openly religious were frequently persecuted, and many faithful either fled the country or went underground. (EB.) 9. Tampons made of silk, cotton, wool, or jute were used with oils, creams, and other solutions to kill sperm or block its entry to the cervix. These were commonly used by rural women who did not always have access to doctors or sophisticated contraceptives. (Cooper, Technique of Contraception, 64–65; Himes and Stone, Practical Birth Control Methods, 106.) 10. Percival LeMon Clark Jr. (1897–1985) was a gynecologist, sex researcher, and ordained minister, who also taught sociology and economics. He had a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from Cornell University and a medical degree from Rush Medical College in Chicago. Employed by the Holland-Rantos Company in the late 1920s, he developed a new rubber process for manufacturing diaphragms, which reduced cost and increased durability. In 1929 he started the Clinic Supply Company in Chicago, which manufactured diaphragms, contraceptive jellies, and gynaplaques. Walter Francis Willcox (1861–1964) was a Cornell University statistician and a member of the ABCL National Council. (“Obituaries,” JAMA 254 [July 19, 1985]: 437; 1930 U.S. Census; Clark to MS, Oct. 24, 1929 [LCM 30:288]; “The Accident of Birth,” 112; NatCAB.) 11. Genss noted that the Soviet Central Scientific Commission had published references on birth control and was manufacturing its own contraceptives, but that the birth control “initiative . . . should be taken exclusively by women, except in the cases of medical necessity.” According to Appel, Genss was “an aggressive, conniving fellow . . . attempting to create a name and place for himself by inviting foreign physicians to use him as their liaison man.” (Abram B. Genss, “The Demand for Abortion in Russia,” in Proceedings of the 1929 London Conference of the World League for Sexual Reform, edited by Norman Haire [London, 1930], 154–55 [quotes]; Appel to Segal, July 27, 1934 [CAP].)

95. From Herman Rubinraut 1 Sanger and her party sailed down the Volga, stopping in Gorki and Stalingrad, where she visited the “impressive new hospital” but again found few contraceptive supplies. They then went on to Rosti, Kislovodski, Tblisi, and the Black Sea ports of Sukhumi and Yalta, visiting hospitals and medical facilities, before arriving in Odessa on July 30. Sanger sailed to Naples, where she was reunited with J. Noah Slee and vacationed at Cortina d’Ampezzo. (Herbert Stooks to MS, July 4, 1934, and Andreytchine to MS, Jan. 23, 1935 [LCM 20:529, 637]; MS, Autobiography, 455–60.)

November 1934  •  265

Warsaw, Poland [November 8, 1934]

Dear Madam, I was permanently waiting the arrival of your son and I did hope, that we shall write you a letter together. I expected him to bring a little of that atmosphere in which you live and work and write—it was a great disappointment not to see him.2 It may be interesting to you to hear how much Hitler has affected our B.C. work. His disastrous influence is twofold; his enemies (socialists etc.) reasoning is if hitlerian population is going to increase we can not restrict ours. And his admirers follow blindly the genial populativ program which he traced, and reprint the german demagogical arguments against B.C.3 In that state of affairs I made up my mind to direct the greatest effort of propaganda towards the Jews.4 There every circumstance favorises us. Hitler no less than utmost poverty and need of emigration.5 To the Jews one can write every thing the plain truth, without compromise, without fear to hurt swollen national ambitions, without risking to be a soldiers extirpator.6 On the other hand is there better propaganda for there whole proletary of the country, than to state, that families who control their numerosity are getting on better, are healthier etc.?7 We never had neither governmental, comunal nor filantropic money to develop a large propaganda and I am not certain And is ↑since↓ large propaganda is not possible, the best we know is women’s gossiping. Thus I hope, that the action which I begun among the Jews will bring good results for all our women. I made translate into jewish my booklet, too audacious (at the present moment) to be printed in polish.8 I hope that booklet will enable the poorest woman, who can not afford a voyage to the Clinic, to get the B.C. informations and preventives, without the direct help of the doctor. It took a lot of time to find the right people, for running an office for correspondency, without which the booklet could not work. Finally I hope to begin that work in 2,3 month. Our Warsaw B.C. Clinic is going on, but the number of patients is rather small ( ↑about↓ 10 a day) which proves, that B.C. is not (as it was repeated by various moralists) making life ”too easy.”9 B.C. is for people who understand what planning is, and want planning. To the careless, miserable and thoughtless B.C. has to be imposed, I mean demagogical arguments have to be used (it comes to the same does it not?) Because ↑real, deep↓ ENLIGHTENMENT ↑of masses↓ takes years if not centuries. As soon as my booklet is ready, I shall send you a copy of it. I am jealously keeping your forward for the Polish edition, which waits a propicious moment to appear.10

266  •  “The World Needs You!”

I am most curious what impressions you brought from Russia? The Moscow correspondent of the “Gazeta Polska” told us about your visit, but he did not know much.11 I am craving to get you’re the articles you wrote after your return. Will it be too audacious to ask you for a copy of the papers where they have been printed?12 I wonder often shall I be lucky enough to see you? Will you come once more near enough to be in the reach of my [illegible] travelling posibilities, or will you come to Warsaw? Your very devoted [handwritten] Cordially Dr H Rubinraut TLS MSP, DLC (LCM 19:812–13). Handwritten interlineations by Herman Rubinraut.

1. Herman Rubinraut continued trying to keep the Polish birth control movement going, despite expanding legal restrictions, Catholic opposition, and a newfound desire among the “better” classes for a higher birthrate. (Rubinraut to MS, Nov. 4, 1933 [LCM 19:807]; Plach, Clash of Moral Nations, 134.) 2. Grant Sanger split from the party at Odessa, going to Interlaken and Paris before sailing home in late August. He had planned to stop in Warsaw, but instead accompanied Ethel Clyde to Paris. (G. Sanger, Russia Diary, 18–28.) 3. The Polish right-wing radical Stronuictwo Nadoda Demokratyczne (National Democratic Party), led by Roman Dmowski, was vociferously anti-Semitic and adopted Hitlerian pronatalism by seeking to restrict population growth among so-called inferior races. Adolf Hitler, who came to power in 1933, immediately worked toward the annexation of Poland, signing the 1934 German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact, which allowed him time to rearm Germany. (Hagen, “Before the ‘Final Solution,’” 368; McLaren, Twentieth-Century Sexuality, 136.) 4. Rubinraut opened four birth control clinics for Jewish women (two of them mobile clinics). (Rubinraut to MS, Nov. 4 and 14, 1933 [LCM 19:807, 808]; editors’ correspondence with Sylwia Kužma-Markowska, July 28, 2009). 5. Yiddish-speaking Jews made up approximately 9 percent of Poland’s population. Most of them were crowded into ghettos and clustered at both the top and the bottom ends of the economic scale. Poor Jews received little assistance from the government, which prioritized programs for ethnic Poles. (Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland [New York, 2005], 2:299–310.) 6. Rubinraut refers to the fear that a reduced birthrate would weaken Poland and encourage outside aggression. 7. By 1933 Polish eugenicists allied themselves with reformers such as Rubinraut and Boy-Zelenski, forming the TPPR. (Gawin, “Sex Reform Movement,” 183–84.) 8. The Yiddish translation was Ziehere un umsedliehe mitlencu fa (Wake up, jewess! How to prevent unwanted pregnancy), which emphasized the special need for Jewish women to limit the number of children they had, even without their husbands’ knowledge. (Editors’ correspondence with Sylwia Kuźma-Markowska, July 28, 2009.)

February 1935  •  267 9. The SMK opened in 1931. See Rubinraut to MS, Feb. 3, 1932, herein. 10. See MS to Rubinraut, Mar. 24, 1932, note 3, herein. 11. The Gazeta Polska (Polish Gazette), edited by intelligence officer Boguslaw Miedzínski, was a semiofficial weekly representing Poland’s conservative Marshal Józef Pisudski’s Sanacja regime. (Edward D. Wynot Jr., “‘A Necessary Cruelty’: The Emergence of Official Anti-Semitism in Poland, 1936–39,” American Historical Review 76 [Oct. 1971]: 1039; B. E. W. Johnson, “Poland Plays a Dangerous Game,” North American Review 238 [Sept. 1934]: 269.) 12. Except for an interview with the Arizona Daily Star (Tucson), Nov. 11, 1934, MS did not publish her reflections on the Russia trip until 1935. (MS, “Birth Control in Soviet Russia.”)

96. To Anna Ngan Chang Chou 1 In the fall of 1934, Anna Chou, director of the Shanghai Chiehyü Chihtao So (SCCS) (Shanghai Birth Control Information Bureau), contacted the BCCRB for advice on starting a birth control clinic and marriage advice bureau in Shanghai. She reported that although the SJL had been established for several years, it was doing little work, and thus she had formed the SCCS, in association with the Women’s Christian Temperance Union of China. It provided information and referrals to doctors, but lacked its own clinic. (Chou to Willa Murray, Sept. 22, 1934, and Chou to MS, Dec. 19, 1934 [LCM 12:668, 672].)

[Washington, D.C.] February 2, 1935

Dear Mrs. Chou: Your letter of December 19th has only now come to my attention because I have been away from Washington and New York and only returned a few weeks ago.2 I am always glad to have news of the Birth Control work in China. I wonder if you know that I helped to support the Shanghai Birth Control League when it was first organized.3 I think Miss Agnes Smedley was at that time interested and was one of those who helped to establish it.4 It was thru Mrs. Smedley that my information came and I withdrew my support because I understood that the money that I sent was being used for other purposes of health work.5 I do not believe that Birth Control is still a delicate subject.6 I think that it can be discussed with delicacy in a humanitarian and scientific way that will arouse interest and will receive the response of many millions who are thinking the same way. The need for educational work is everywhere, not because people are not thinking or wanting birth control information, but because they are inarticulate and do not know how to express their idea. I believe that Dr. Grant and Dr. Gunn from the Rockefeller Institute are now in China studying birth control.7 You can doubtless find them thru the

268  •  “The World Needs You!”

Rockefeller Hospital in Peiping.8 Why not get in touch with them and see what they can do. I know they are very much interested in birth control work in China. I will be glad to hear from you as to results. Sincerely yours, Margaret Sanger TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 12:673).

1. Anna Ngan Chang Chou (b. 1897) was born in Hawaii and moved to Shanghai when she married Ming Hang Chou, a Chinese national. (California Passenger Lists, Nov. 21, 1939; Anna Chou to Willa Murray, Sept. 22, 1934 [LCM 12:668].) 2. MS had been lecturing on December 6–17, 1934, in Arizona, Texas, and Louisiana. She and Slee vacationed in Miami and Palm Beach through early January 1935. (Katie Ripley to J. Noah Slee [two letters], Dec. 6, 1934, and Ethel Sims to MS, Dec. 12, 1934 [LCM 106:175, 173, 582]; 1934 Calendar [MSM S79:178].) 3. See Smedley to MS, May 4, 1931, herein. 4. Smedley had ceased her birth control work in China, but continued working for the Comintern in Shanghai and was serving as a war correspondent when the Japanese attacked the city in 1932. She left for the Soviet Union and the United States, but returned to Shanghai in October 1934. (MacKinnon and MacKinnon, Agnes Smedley, 159–64; Price, Lives of Agnes Smedley, 219.) 5. MS sent fifty dollars per month to Smedley from June 1931 to April 1932 to support the SJL’s birth control work. Smedley discovered that they were using the funds to support a Social Service Center, “a general clinic to attract workers to this rotten Y.M.C.A. mentality,” which offered birth control services just twice a week. She advised MS to end the funding, explaining that “the Y.M.C.A. exploits birth control and uses your money only to further their general charity work and give their friends jobs. In birth control they have no deep and abiding interest as such.” (Smedley to MS, Jan. 3 [quote 1] and Apr. 1, 1932 [quote 2] [LCM 10:534, 544]; Lowe, Facing Adversities with a Smile, 64.) 6. Chou asked MS whether she thought the issue was still “a delicate subject,” noting that one member of the SCCS feared publicizing their work in the newspapers. (Chou to MS, Dec. 19, 1934 [LCM 12:672].) 7. After a 1931 visit to China, Selskar Gunn, a RF public health expert, developed a rural development program for China that he began to implement in 1932. John Black Grant of the PUMC asked the RF to integrate China’s medical and public health needs, including birth control, into the program. (New York Times, Oct. 18, 1962; Litsios, “Selskar Gunn and China,” 297–98.) 8. The PUMC Hospital was founded in 1914 by the RF’s China Medical Board to spread Western medical knowledge in China. (New York Times, June 9, 1985.)

97. To George Andreytchine 1 When Sanger met her old friend George Andreytchine in Moscow, she observed, “He was shabbily dressed and looked dilapidated, evidently having seen hard times, and had a beaten expression in his eyes.” Shortly after writing this letter, Andreytchine was arrested

March 1935  •  269 by Stalin’s secret police, the Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh De (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs). (MS, Autobiography, 447 [quote]; William C. Bullitt to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Apr. 4, 1934, in Bullitt, For the President, 82–83.)

[Washington, D.C.] March 8, 1935

Dear George: How very nice to have your letter of January 23rd, and also a letter from Tanja.2 As I have been out of the city a good deal, I only now find sufficient time to take up your letter in leisure.3 Immediately upon my return to America where Grant cabled me to return at once on account of my other son’s illness, I took him at once out to Arizona and I did not return until the middle of January.4 This accounts for your not having seen any publicity or any clippings as to my interviews. I did not give any with the exception of one in [illegible] Arizona which was badly reported in the headlines, though not in the ↑content↓ of the interview.5 I was able, however, to correct that by giving a talk on Russia before the Technocrat Club organization which was a crowded meeting and well attended by some of the most distinguished people on ↑in↓ that State.6 Let me come back to my conversation with H. G. Wells. I told Mr. Wells that I was greatly disappointed in finding that birth control was not practiced in Russia—at least as far as I was able to ascertain up to the time that I saw him in Moscow.7 I found as I told him that the willingness to give and to advise contraceptives was everywhere prevalent, that there were no laws against it, but that in practice it was not followed out because of the lack of material.8 I told him further that I was looking into the scientific study on spermatozoon which I believe was discovered by a group of scientists either in Leningrad or Moscow some eight or ten years ago. It was reported here that over twenty thousand women had been inoculated thru spermatozoon and immunized against pregnancy for a period of from one year to eighteen months.9 This, of course, is one of the greatest discoveries of the age and I was very anxious to follow that through and to see how much truth there was in it. I discussed this subject with several doctors and at least three scientists who claim to know a good deal about the subject, but also ↑all↓10 stated that nothing was being done anywhere in Russia to follow through or to complete that research.11 I told this to Mr. Wells because I know that he is interested and I believe that his influence in meeting Mr. Stalin, Dr. Kaminski and other men higher up might have more influence than anyone else if he could point out the defects of neglecting this important phase of scientific work.12 I have not written about this, nor have I given out any of my views since my return and I do not intend to. I feel that Soviet Russia has problems to overcome and to solve and if I cannot help in giving a constructive opinion,

270  •  “The World Needs You!”

I am not going to criticize her for not doing what no other nation has done. I should, of course, loved to have had the satisfaction of singing from the housetops that Russia was solving many of her problems thru birth control.13 I appreciate the work that is being done about abortion but I consider that a very temporary means and know from the interviews that I had in Moscow that a very fine group of medical men and women thru Vaux, who kindly arranged for me to speak and entertained us with a very nice banquet. I believe that most of them agree that methods of birth control are more practical than abortion and I look for that group to do something in the near future.14 May I tell you in confidence that I think that the work has not gone so well in Russia because of the personality of Dr. Genss.15 Dr. Genss pretends to be interested in birth control and rather places himself at the head of the movement, having all questions and people referred to him. I do not think he is the right person for such a position. In the first place, he is crude; he is ignorant of the broader aspects of the movement. If I judge him at all correctly and fairly, he will prefer to control the advance of this movement himself and thru his own hands than to allow it to get into more sympathetic guidance.16 After I left Moscow I visited many Hospitals and Consultation Centers in nearly every place I stopped all the way out to Odessa, and only in Odessa did I find satisfactory results.17 The other places had fine posters, educational tracts, but alas when it came to the actual facts of getting material—there was no material in any Consultation Center outside of a little glass case perched high on the wall with pessaries and jellies that had been there since [1925]. The rubber was decayed, the jelly was [gangrenous?] mouldy and putrefied, and the doctors in charge simply threw up their hands and shook their heads in despair.18 All of them would be willing and glad to give information and appliances if they had them. I blame Dr. Genss for all of this and for other conditions equally as bad. He has a position of responsibility and I do not think he has fulfilled it in either principle or practice. I have sent to the American Embassy a large package, containing fifty gynecological placques for Consultation Centers thruout Russia.19 This was a contribution from Mrs. Ethel Clyde who accompanied Grant and me on our trip.20 I did not send this to Dr. Genss because I know that he would keep them all in Moscow in storage. I sent them to the American Embassy, asking them to forward to the various centers to which they were addressed. I sincerely hope there will be no trouble in their delivering these packages. The placques are most useful, instructing women as to their own gynecological conditions. I know that the doctors in [rural?] and urban sections will welcome them. I would appreciate it if you could use your good influence for it is necessary to have these distributed according to the addresses. Please give my love to Tanja and tell her that she was one of the bright lights on our trip down the Volga.21 Everyone remembers her with great plea-

March 1935  •  271

sure and affection. I am sorry, too, that we did not see more of you. As soon as my son Stuart recovers his health, I want him to take a trip to Russia because he is a trained engineer, very practical.22 You will remember Stuart was one of the early students at the Ferrar Center back in the early days when we were looking to find places for our children to get sound sensible ideas which would help them to think.23 I am very happy, George, to have your letter and I would like very much to have the name of the English physician who made a study in the medical field in Moscow.24 Three of our American doctors—Dr. Levinson, Dr. Appel, and Dr. Stone were also in Russia and got the same results that I did regarding the practice of Birth Control in Russia.25 I would like to think that the English doctor is right. I am willing to stand corrected if he can give me the facts. My love to Tanja again and my best regards to Mr. Muscatt,26 and an affectionate embrace to your own [good] self. TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 20:642–44). Carbon smears.

1. George Andreytchine (1894–1950), a Bulgarian-born journalist, probably first met MS in Seattle, during her 1916 lecture tour, when he was an Industrial Workers of the World organizer. He fled to the Soviet Union in 1921. Andreytchine’s friendship with Leon Trotsky caused him to be imprisoned until 1932. Rehabilitated, he was made vice president of Intourist and was the Soviet liaison to the American Embassy. He was executed for treason by the Soviet Union in 1950. (MS, Autobiography, 447; Jordan Baev and Kostadin Grozev, An Odyssey into Two Worlds [Sofia, 2014]; Bullitt to Roosevelt, Apr. 4, 1934, in Bullitt, For the President, 82–83.) 2. Andreytchine asked MS about the rest of her tour and enclosed a letter from Tanya, an Intourist guide and MS’s translator on July 27–30, which thanked MS for sending her a book (probably My Fight for Birth Control). (Andreytchine to MS, Jan. 23, 1935 [LCM 20:637]; Tanya ? to MS, Jan. 1935 [LCM 20:721].) 3. MS made several trips to Washington, in January and February, and was on a lecture tour in Indianapolis from February 28 to March 4. (1935 Calendar [MSM S79:178–82].) 4. Grant Sanger’s telegram was not found. MS cut short her vacation in the Alps and returned to the United States in the first week of September. She hoped the Tucson climate would help Stuart Sanger’s severely inflamed sinuses. (MS to Slee, Oct. 6, 1934, and MS to Mabel and John Kingsbury, Sept. 5, 1934 [MSM S9:86, C5:799].) 5. MS refers to “Country of Contradictions, Mrs. Sanger Brands Russia,” Arizona Daily Star (Tucson), Nov. 11, 1934, a lengthy summary of her trip. In the copy preserved in her papers, MS wrote in the margin: “A very bad interpretation of my words!” 6. MS, who spoke before a full house at an open meeting of the Technocrat Club of Tucson on November 16, called the Soviet Union “the best place in the world for women and babies.” She claimed that the people were “95 per cent happy” and “sure of their course.” (Arizona Daily Star [Tucson], Nov. 17, 1934.) 7. See MS to Braude, July 29, 1934, herein.

272  •  “The World Needs You!” 8. OMM officials claimed that there was no shortage of contraceptives, but MS had observed that consultation centers outside major cities were woefully unsupplied, the methods were antiquated, and the materials degraded and inferior. (MS, “Birth Control in Soviet Russia”; Journal Entry, July 24, 1934 [LCM 45:324–25]; MS, Autobiography, 452–53.) 9. MS refers to research focusing on subcutaneous injection of human or animal spermatozoa into a female to produce antibodies, called spermatoxins, to immobilize sperm and cause temporary female sterility, a theory first demonstrated by Mikhail Tushnov in 1911. Spermatoxin research flourished between 1927 and 1932 in Moscow, Leningrad, and Archangel, with studies of twenty to a few hundred women, but nothing near the twenty thousand reported to MS. (Hannah M. Stone, “Present Day Problems in Contraception,” Journal of Contraception 1 [Nov. 1935]: 3–5; Thomas, “International Intercourse,” 95–96; Daniels, “Comparative Study of Birth Control Methods,” 109–11; MS, Excerpts from Journal Entry, July 20, 1934, note 9, herein; for more on spermatoxins, see Vol. 2.) 10. Handwritten interlineation by unidentified author. 11. MS discussed the discontinued spermatoxin research with Drs. Wolfsen and Bachmutskaia of the Leningrad OMM and with Dr. Tushnov. The research left questions about possible side effects, dosage, and the histories of the test subjects, many of whom had recently undergone abortions, which could have skewed the results. See also MS, Journal Entry, July 20, 1934, note 9, herein. (MS, Journal Entry, July 19, 1934 [LCM 20:751]; F. A. Bachmutskaia to MS, Sept. 15, 1935 [LCM 20:683]; Daniels, “Comparative Study of Birth Control Methods,” 111; Stone, “Notes on the Use of Spermatoxins in Russia,” 17–18.) 12. Grigory Naumovich Kaminsky (1895–1938), the Soviet commissar of health, told MS that the Soviet Union had no population problem, claiming that “on the contrary there is a policy of increasing the population.” On the heels of well-publicized meetings with President Roosevelt and other American political leaders in May, Wells flew to Moscow to meet with Stalin on July 23, encouraging the dictator to work with Roosevelt to stabilize global tensions. (Archie Brown, ed., The Soviet Union: A Biographical Dictionary [New York, 1991]; MS, Autobiography, 440, 49; Norman MacKenzie and Jeanne MacKenzie, H. G. Wells [New York, 1973], 376, 379; Andreytchine to MS, Jan. 23, 1935 [LCM 20:637].) 13. The Arizona Daily Star (Tucson) paraphrased MS’s views, quoting her as saying that although Russia hoped to make great scientific strides, it was doing so “with fly paper hanging over operating tables. . . . Breeding thousands of children, yet unable to care properly for the overwhelming population of today; stridently preaching health, good of the race, yet never checking procreation in diseased, criminal or insane.” (Arizona Daily Star [Tucson], Nov. 11, 1934.) 14. MS refers to the VOKS meeting, where she noted that the doctors participated enthusiastically “and eagerly asked questions regarding the use of the various contraceptives, etc.” Dr. Alexander Madzhuginskii told her that many physicians believed “that women are fond of abortion and that it is done so simply, but . . . it is most unpleasant for both doctor and patient.” (For more on the VOKS meeting, see MS to Braude, July 29, 1934, note 3, herein; MS, Journal Entry, July 24 and 25, 1934; MS to Friends, Aug. 30, 1934 [LCM 45:326, 331, 20:554].)

March 1935  •  273 15. MS described Dr. Abram B. Genss as “antagonistic, disagreeable, unpleasant, shouting ‘Malthusianism’ into my ears more times in one hour than I had heard it before in twenty years.” (MS, Autobiography, 450.) 16. MS believed Genss favored abortion over birth control and was obstructing her efforts to have contraceptive supplies sent to Soviet consultation centers. She said the intended recipients “gave me the impression that if they were sent by me to Moscow to Dr. Genss, who assumes to be the authority on the question in Russia, that they would never receive them.” (MS to Bertek Kuniholm, Feb. 26, 1935 [quote] [LCM 20:639]; Henry E. Sigerist, Medicine and Health in the Soviet Union [New York, 1947].) 17. For MS’s stops en route to Odessa, see Rubinraut to MS, Nov. 8, 1934, headnote, herein. 18. MS refers specifically to the hospital she visited in Stalingrad on August 1. (See MS, Autobiography, 452–3.) 19. MS refers to gynaplaques, three-dimensional models of the female reproductive system manufactured by the Chicago Clinic Supply Company. She noted, “The greatest enthusiasm was shown at my mention of our rubber gynecological placque, and everywhere I went in Russia I was impressed with the need for this particular thing.” MS sent gynaplaques on March 9, but the shipment was not released from Moscow customs until August. (BCCRB, “Suggestions for the Establishment of a Birth Control Clinic,” n.d.; MS, Journal Entry, July 24, 1934 [quote], MS to E. Robins, Mar. 29, 1935, and Bertel E. Kuniholm to MS, Aug. 27, 1935 [LCM 29:314, 45:325, 20:650, 681].) 20. Ethel Clyde paid for the gynaplaques at a cost of $3.25 each plus shipping. (Rose to Clyde, Nov. 5, 1934 [LCM 45:602B].) 21. Andreytchine had written that he saw a newsreel of MS “having your morning physical culture on the Volga boat.” (Andreytchine to MS, Jan. 23, 1935 [quote] [LCM 20:637].) 22. Stuart Sanger had not received any formal training as an engineer. 23. The Ferrer Center in New York, opened in 1911 by the Ferrer Association, offered classes, lectures, and an alternative day school. Stuart Sanger was one of the first class in 1911–12. (Avrich, Modern School Movement, 35, 69–70, 74–75; for more on Ferrer, the center, and the modern school movement, see Vol. 1.) 24. Andreytchine wrote that an English physician “told Wells that it was wrong of you [MS] to say that this very vital and important work is kept in the background for he had personally investigated the case having worked a whole month in the medical field in Moscow.” (Andreytchine to MS, Jan. 23, 1935 [LCM 20:637].) 25. Hannah Stone visited the Soviet Union in 1931 and 1933. Cheri Appel spent six weeks in Moscow in 1934, and Marie Pichel Levinson, the BCCRB’s Harlem Branch’s medical director, also visited in 1934. (Hannah M. Stone, “Birth Control in Russia,” Birth Control Review 16 [Nov. 1932]: 261–63; Stone to MS, Sept. 15, 1933, and Rose to Appel, July 30, 1934 [LCM 32:391, 20:552]; New York Times, July 24, 1934.) 26. Mr. Muscatt may also have worked at Intourist.

z FIVE “Mother India”

In the fall of 1935, after more than a decade of contemplating a trip to India, Sanger made arrangements for a six-week tour, with plans to stop in Southeast Asia, China, and Japan. After obtaining an official invitation to address the All India Women’s Conference (AIWC), Sanger, Edith How-Martyn, and Indian organizers put together an extensive program of public and private meetings, interviews, and contraceptive demonstrations. Edith How-Martyn prepared Sanger’s way with her own Indian tour in 1933–34, speaking to almost eighty groups in twenty cities and towns. She not only set the terms for the public debate over birth control there, but also measured the political climate for birth control.1 She recognized that on such a contentious issue, the initiative had to come from within India. India was in the midst of a “dangerous experiment,” gauging the extent to which it could agitate for complete independence from Britain, navigating a treacherous Hindu-Muslim conflict, and contending with momentous changes in the expectations and status of women.2 Women reformers fought to obtain equal rights and to reform laws and customs that accepted polygamy, child marriage, purdah, and other antediluvian expressions of misogyny. For educated women in particular, it was a liberating time, as they played an increasingly more active role in civic affairs, law, and medicine. Though women were inter274  •

“Mother India”  •  275

ested in adopting family planning measures, considerable moral and religious resistance remained. The AIWC, India’s largest women’s group, began advocating for birth control in 1932, passing annual resolutions in support of scientific discussions of birth control and the opening of public contraceptive clinics. The middle-class women who populated the AIWC and other women’s groups supported birth control for eugenic, health, and economic reasons, but many also acknowledged India’s looming population problem.3 Concern about rapid population growth in India was not new; it had become a fixation with Western demographers and a salient public issue in India, particularly after the 1931 census showed an increase of nearly thirty-five million people in ten years. Indian officials were slower to acknowledge these concerns, but as one observer noted in 1934, “The older statesmen of India have begun to scratch their heads over what can truly be described as one of the knottiest of our social and economic problems.” Public health experts argued that only an educated few held knowledge of contraception and to spread it further would require a national propaganda and educational campaign. Government discussions about taking “practical steps to check the increase in population in India” turned into “the stormiest debates.”4 Even as Indian economists and social scientists agreed that education and access to contraceptives were the only practical ways to lower the population rate,5 the nascent Indian population control movement faced enormous challenges. It had to navigate caste, class, religious, and gender conflicts from within and contend with paternalism and imperialistic interests from outside. Sanger was aware of the complexity of the Indian situation and largely avoided population control arguments while in India. Instead, she emphasized the individual and national benefits to improving health and welfare through family planning. “Birth control,” she told a London audience before setting sail to India, “may or may not offer a solution for population problems. What it certainly does is contribute to the health, happiness and mental poise of individual families.” Throughout her tour, Sanger’s intention was to demonstrate that “the Indian maternity and infant mortality rates are a direct consequence of the present birth rates” and that “the low expectation of life” there “is a consequence of the high birth rate, and can be raised by bringing that rate down. Above all,” she explained, “it will be my purpose to convince the great Indian people that between the practice of birth control and their highest conception of ethics and religion there is no inconsistency whatever.”6 More than that, she argued, “Women of India like the women of the world will not be content with privileges for their sex. They will insist nay in truth demand Rights of Equality not only Equal rights with their own countrymen but equal rights in that greater International country of the world.”7

276  •  “Mother India”

Seeking to inspire and organize advocates, while also delivering practical advice, Sanger and How-Martyn traveled separately to cover more ground, with Sanger addressing 105 meetings in eighteen cities and towns over roughly six weeks. To medical groups, she demonstrated contraceptives, screened technical films on conception and birth control, and discussed clinic creation.8 With clinicians, druggists, and physicians, she shared the recipe for foam powder and was confident that “there will be a good foundation laid here for inexpensive contraceptives which can be given to the masses.”9 Her public speeches to municipal groups, including her radio addresses, and her historic meetings with Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, the Maharajah and Maharani of Baroda, and others generated headlines and photomontages, editorials and letters to the editor, and even client letters from Indian women and men in need of contraceptive advice. She was soon exhausted by the pace and overwhelmed by the drama of India. “The loveliest architecture in the world was set against a background of nauseating squalor,” she later wrote. “Wealth beyond calculation existed alongside poverty that was living death, dazzling mental attainments beside ignorance utterly abysmal.” By the end of the tour, Sanger seemed unsure of her accomplishments. India was so vast, so crowded, that her senses were overwhelmed. “And, if you had to hammer away for years in the United States,” she observed, “you had to do it ten times over in India.”10 From India Sanger traveled through the rest of Asia to the Malay Peninsula, Singapore, and Hong Kong, before an intestinal illness forced her to cut short the rest of her tour. How-Martyn soldiered on, visiting Ceylon, Burma, China, the Philippines, and Japan, before sailing to Hawaii and then the United States. All the while, the BCIIC was struggling to stay afloat. Money problems were at the root of its troubles, but personnel issues and infighting compounded them. By November 1935, How-Martyn resigned as director, and Sanger, loyal to HowMartyn, threatened to resign herself. The BCIIC was falling apart. In one of the BCIIC’s last significant tasks, it published Round the World for Birth Control, a report of Sanger and How-Martyn’s extraordinary world tour. In it Indian poet and feminist Sarojini Chattopadhyaya Naidu, whom Sanger met in Hyderabad in January 1936, noted that birth control “is a matter for day to day practical teaching, and must be done by those who can win the faith and confidence of the people and awaken them to the high moral issues and ideals involved.”11 Sanger’s major challenge was clear—how to build a movement in a country like India that would continue, day to day, after she was gone. Notes 1. BCIIC Newsletter, No. 4 (June 1935) (MSM C12:1047). 2. Washington Post, Jan. 4, 1935.

July 1935  •  277 3. New York Times, Jan. 26 and Dec. 27, 1936; Ahluwalia, Reproductive Restraints, 91–97. 4. B. N. Adarkar, “Birth Control Debate in the Council of State,” Marriage Hygiene 1 (May 1935): 423. 5. Extract from “A Statement Prepared for Presentation to Parliament in Accordance with the Requirements of the 26th Section of the Government of India Act,” Calcutta, 1932 (MS Unfilmed). 6. MS, “Statement before Birth Control Campaign in the East,” Oct. 30, 1935 (LCM 130:587). 7. MS, “Women of India,” Nov. 1935 (MSM S71:817). 8. MS and How-Martyn, Round the World for Birth Control, 16–18. 9. MS to John H. and Gerda Guy, Dec. 15, 1935 (LCM 15:990). 10. MS, Autobiography, 490. 11. MS and How-Martyn, Round the World for Birth Control, 24.

98. To Margaret Cousins 1 Before any planning began for Sanger’s fall tour, she wanted a formal invitation from the AIWC and told How-Martyn that if it could be arranged, “I will take the winter off. . . . I do not want to go to India just for the sake of the small scheduled meetings.” To AIWC leader Margaret Cousins, she explained: “I do not want the Indian people to think that we are imposing this idea upon them.” (MS to How-Martyn, Apr. 1, 1935 [quote 1], and MS to Cousins, May 10, 1935 [quote 2] [LCM 17:734, 743].)

[New York, N.Y.] July 16, 1935.

Personal and Confidential Dear Margaret Cousins: There is great interest here as to the possibility of my going to India, but as I wrote you and conveyed to you thru Mrs. How-Martyn, it would be more impressive if I were to go at the invitation of the Indian women.2 Such an invitation would inspire our own women here, have a great influence on government officials, would impress legislators as well as women’s groups3 in Egypt, Persia and other countries where we may stop for a meeting or two.4 Altogether it would make the Indian women, by comparison, with their vision and foresight seem 100 years ahead of the rest of the women of the world, in fact I think it would put to shame most of the other women’s organizations that are timid and fearful and afraid of their shadows. Such an invitation would also help me I think to get funds to carry on some of the necessary work that would come with such a tour and I sincerely hope that if the Indian women pass a Resolution inviting me there, that you will cable me at your earliest convenience, at my expense of course, (SANGATROL, NEW

278  •  “Mother India”

YORK) so that I can prepare for the trip.5 Such a cable need only imply an invitation and your letter in more detail could take its time in following. I would want to leave here early in October. I wish to read up something about India and to know some of its problems that I will encounter when I arrive there. Now one more very important question arises. In discussing my trip with a native of India it was suggested that I go either alone or with an American group rather than with an English group such as was contemplated by Mrs. How-Martyn, and some of the women from the International Center.6 This is a very important and delicate point of view. It was impressed very definitely on me in confidence and I in turn present it to you in confidence for your frankest opinion.7 I would appreciate your replying direct to me at my home at Willow Lake, Fishkill, New York, to avoid your letter going thru my New York or Washington office. With deepest gratitude to you and kindest wishes for your good health and happiness, I am Most cordially yours, Margaret Sanger TLcy FRP, MN-SSC (MSM S10:229–30).

1. Margaret Gillespie Cousins (1878–1954), an Irish-born educator and feminist activist for Indian women, emigrated to India with her husband, James Cousins, in 1915. In 1927 she helped found the AIWC to advance women’s education, as well as broader social and legal issues such as age of marriage, birth control, and a uniform civil code. She served as the AIWC’s first general secretary. (DNB.) 2. In her earlier letter to Cousins, MS explained that an AIWC invitation “could be splendid publicity to the woman’s organizations here.” Cousins arranged for MS to be formally invited to attend the AIWC annual meeting as a “Special Visitor.” (MS to Cousins, May 10, 1935 [quote 1], MS to How-Martyn, Apr. 1, 1935, and Cousins to MS, Aug. 6, 1935 [quote 2] [LCM 17:743, 734, 755].) 3. MS also wrote that the AIWC invitation “would inspire woman’s organizations in every other country to stir themselves on behalf of the cause.” Although a few women’s organizations in the United States, Canada, England, Scandinavia, and Japan supported birth control programs and legislation, most had little to do with birth control. (MS to Cousins, May 10, 1935 [quote] [LCM 17:743]; NCFLBC, New Day Dawns, 18; Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, 229; MS and How-Martyn, Round the World for Birth Control, 28, 52.) 4. Neither MS or How-Martyn visited Persia (Iran) or Egypt on the way to India in 1935. (MS and How-Martyn, Round the World for Birth Control, 28, 52.) 5. Cousins cabled How-Martyn on July 30 to report that the AIWC would invite MS to their meeting. MS received an official letter of invitation on August 30. (How-Martyn to MS, July 30, 1935, MS to How-Martyn, Aug. 20, 1935, and MS to Charulata Mukerjee, Aug. 2, 1935 [LCM 17:754, 763, 135:368].)

August 1935  •  279 6. The British government was in the process of passing the Government of India Act of 1935, continuing the process toward Indian self-government, but it fell far short of nationalist goals. If MS was associated too closely with the British in India, she risked turning public opinion against herself and against the birth control movement. (EB.) 7. Cousins agreed that because many Indians distrusted the English, “emphasis on the American angle of your visit should be made & the English angle be kept in abeyance.” She thought that How-Martyn should not attend the AIWC but work in Mysore instead. (Cousins to MS, Aug. 27, 1935 [LCM 17:769].)

99. To Marian Paschal 1

[New York, N.Y.] August 13, 1935.

Dear Marian Paschal: This is a great day in my career. A cable has come to me from India inviting me to be present and to address the All India Women’s Conference in India the latter part of December.2 This as you may know is a very important and far reaching occasion for me, and not only for me personally as an honor, but for the birth control movement throughout the world, and if I may dare say so in modesty, an important event for our future civilization. Doubtless you have met the argument as I have that many people fear that the birth control movement is going to lead to reduction of the population in the occidental countries while it neglects the population increase in the Orient.3 Here now is our opportunity to balance the populations of the world. The Indian women want me to come there to make an address.4 I shall be happy to do this, but this will not be enough. I could not possibly make that tour and take the time involved for one address, no matter how important the gathering or audience might be. I would want to make more use of my time to and do more in an educational way than merely to meet with that prominent and distinguished group. I would like to bring about and organize a Population Conference in India in conjunction with or at the same time as the All India Women’s meeting takes place.5 I would like to have every angle of the population problem of India and the Orient presented, the philosophic, religious, sociological, economic, and even political. I would like to have such distinguished speakers as Tagore and Gandhi present their viewpoints.6 I would like to have represented the various organizations, universities, and groups that have a point of view that fits in with the future of India as it is affected by the growth of population. From India, I should like to go to China and organize a Conference there, along the same lines, bringing about a discussion and possibly a social consciousness on the part of the people of these two great swarming countries.7

280  •  “Mother India”

The cost of this will be considerable, but nothing in comparison to the good and the far-reaching effects that such a Conference will have. In 1927 I organized an International Population Conference at Geneva, at which there were present 300 scientific representatives of the various governments world.8 The cost of that Conference for five days was about $15,000. I believe I could do the Indian Conference for $12,000, and the China Conference for $10,000, and make them both great successes.9 Do you think you can possibly help me to obtain such financial backing? The work of going out and getting pennies, dimes and dollars from the American public sufficient to cover this project would be too labored and exhausting for me to contemplate. But if it could be done under the aegis of a great philanthropic and I believe nobly inspired friend of yours who might lend her name as a patroness of this great work and contribution to the Orient,10 I believe it would do more toward doing away with war and international hatreds and dissatisfactions than all the other movements and efforts in this direction combined. Moreover, my hope would be not only to instruct midwives in India as requested by the Indian women, but to set up Clinics for the instruction of doctors, midwives and others who might wish to carry on the work of instruction among the people.11 This I feel is the way of the future and a constructive, fundamental method of meeting the population problem. It will be necessary for me to start activities toward such a Conference as early as possible and I would deem it a great pleasure, and privilege, and honor to meet your friends on their return from Honolulu,12 and also I should be most encouraged if I could have a word from you as to their interest as soon as it is humanly possible to receive it. I should want to leave here in October in order to set up the Conference and its organization, all of which it is necessary to do as speedily as possible. Always my love to you, dear friend of humanity. Most cordially yours, Margaret Sanger President TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 9:964–65). For a slightly different copy, see MSM S10:286.

1. Marian Paschal (1903–46) was secretary and personal companion to heiress Doris Duke. In 1933 she became head of Duke’s newly established foundation, Independent Aid, Inc. (1930 U.S. Census; Inventory of Independent Aid, Inc., Records, 1934–1954 [Rubenstein Library, Duke University, Durham, N.C.]; Stephanie Mansfield, The Richest Girl in the World: The Extravagant Life and Fast Times of Doris Duke [New York, 1992], 105, 112, 198.) 2. The AIWC’s annual meeting was held between December 28, 1935, and January 2, 1936. The cable was not found, but for the official invitation letter, see Charulata

August 1935  •  281 Mukherjee to MS, Aug. 2, 1935 (LCM 135:368). (Ramusack, “Embattled Advocates,” 41; Basu and Ray, Women’s Struggle, 179.) 3. Often referred to as the “yellow peril,” the fear that Asian overpopulation would overtake a declining West dates to the late nineteenth century, but was revived in the interwar years. French population expert Charles Richet had announced in 1933 that as Asia expanded, Europe would face extinction in a hundred years and “must develop greater fecundity and destroy ‘vicious’ birth-control propaganda.” (Connelly, Fatal Misconception, 34, 65; Washington Post, July 14, 1935 [quotes]; Los Angeles Times, July 25, 1935.) 4. See MS to Cousins, July 16, 1935, herein. 5. MS hoped to open the conference “to those who cared to come,” with opinions presented by “such distinguished persons as might have particular viewpoints to present.” (MS to Cousins, Aug. 14, 1935 [LCM 17:757].) 6. Gandhi continued to maintain that sex was sinful and should be practiced only for procreation. When they met in January 1935, How-Martyn failed to convince him of the benefit of birth control, as he insisted that “man easily capitulates when sin is presented in the garb of virtue.” Rabindranath Tagore disagreed with Gandhi, arguing that without a focus on education, religious tolerance, economic development, and birth control, India was not truly ready for home rule. (Mahadev Desai, “A Birth Control Enthusiast,” Harijan, Feb. 1, 1935, reprinted in Gandhi, Self-Restraint v. Self-Indulgence [Ahmedabad, 1969], 179 [quote]; Atlanta Constitution, Jan. 31, 1931.) 7. Birth control work in China was still in its infancy, despite the efforts of activists in Peking and Shanghai. In 1934 the government’s National Health Association announced a sweeping infant and maternal welfare program to educate mothers, track birth and death statistics, and investigate the impact of “regulating the number of children” on food supplies and maternal health. But the program was difficult to implement because of its cost. (J. Heng Liu, “Some Phases of Public Health Work in China,” Chinese Medical Journal 48 [1934]: 70–73 [quote 71]; Mary Brown Bullock, An American Transplant: The Rockefeller Foundation and the Peking University Medical College [Berkeley, Calif., 1980], 180.) 8. Fewer than half that number, about 125, attended the WPC. (MS, Proceedings of the WPC, 363–68.) 9. How-Martyn had secured a five-hundred-pound contribution toward the tour from Canadian businessman Alvin Kaufman. (Kaufman to How-Martyn, May 8, 1935 [LCM 12:276].) 10. MS refers to Doris Duke Cromwell (1912–93), heiress to the multimillion-dollar American Tobacco Company fortune, who was a trustee of the Duke Endowment and had started her own philanthropy. (ANB.) 11. Several clinics opened in India in the 1920s and 1930s, but most were underused or quickly closed. How-Martyn suggested that they focus on opening hospital clinics that could seek government funding. (Raina, Planning Family in India, 90–95; How‑Martyn to MS, Feb. 14 and 23, 1935 [LCM 17:719, 725].) 12. Doris Duke married James Henry Cromwell on February 13, 1935, and was on a honeymoon cruise to India, the Philippines, and China. They arrived in Honolulu on August 29. (New York Times, Feb. 14, Mar. 27, July 12, 20, and 29, and Aug. 31, 1935.)

282  •  “Mother India”

100. Journal Entry During the summer of 1935, Sanger commuted between New York City; Washington, D.C.; and Willowlake, with vacations in Truro, Mass.; New Hampshire; and Vermont. She left for India on October 23, sailing for England on the S.S. Normandie, and arriving in London on October 28. There she spent ten days doing publicity and raising funds for her India tour. (1935 Calendar [MSM S79:181–209]; MS, “Statement before Birth Control Campaign in the East,” Oct. 30, 1935 [LCM 130:587].)

[London, England] Nov 1 [1935]. Janet Chance in the throes of an obscenity case on a book by Mr. Charles.1 I expect to read it before I see her Thursday next.2 Went to see the Indian Revolutionary leader at Mt Royal Jawaharlal Nehru who has been released from prison on parole to see his wife who is very ill in Germany.3 He is a quiet poised well mannered educated Indian with latent power well under control. He described to us some of the rules prohibiting him from outside contacts.4 He has already spent four years in prison.5 I will hear more of him later on. Luncheon with Mrs _____ Lancaster, wife of a medical officer & head of the Indian womens groups in London. A delightful cultured Englishwoman L’aison officer between English & Indian women. Is outspoken & sympathetic to the Indian Nationals.6 Was also invited to be guest speaker with Mrs Pethick Laurence & MS.7 To mention Jawaharlal Nehru again as he keeps popping up in my mind I find his face & bearing very convincing. He has no resentment, no bitterness some caution & is rather circumspect but will follow Gandhis leadership along spiritual lines.8 His eyes & face lighted at the mention of Gandhis popularity. There is rumored here the opinion that Gandhi is loosing in popularity getting senile, considered a “nuisance” by his friends Sir John Megaw seemed to imply.9 From Indians this is not true—far from it. I was glad to have a few words in private with J. N. I presented a letter which did not mean much to him seemingly—10 He has given me the address of his sister in India whom I shall meet.11 He will return to prison in January I hope I shall see his reception on his return.12 AD MSP, DLC (LCM 1:146–49).

1. Janet Chance had published several books on sex reform, among them The Cost of English Morals (1931), focused on changing sexual mores and behaviors. She wrote a foreword to The Sexual Impulse, a book by British novelist Edward Charles (pseudonym for Edward Charles Edmund Hemsted) (1898–1961). The book was banned as obscene, and at trial Chance testified to the book’s educational and scientific value, but the publisher lost the case. (DNB; Finding Aid, Edward Charles Correspondence, University

november 1935  •  283 of Tulsa, Department of Special Collections; Times [London], Oct. 17 and Dec. 19, 1935; England and Wales Death Index, 1916‑2005.) 2. MS met with Janet Chance on November 7. (1935 Calendar [MSM S79:209].) 3. Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964), an Indian lawyer who headed the Indian National Congress Party (INCP), sought Indian independence from Great Britain. He was convicted of sedition and sentenced in February 1934 to two years in prison, but his sentence was suspended on September 3 to allow him to visit his wife, Kamala Kaul Nehru (1899–1936), who was undergoing treatment for tuberculosis in a Badenweiler sanitarium. The Mount Royal Hotel, built in 1932–33, was located on Oxford Street near the Marble Arch. (New York Times, May 28, 1934; Times [London], Feb. 17, 1934, and Sept. 4, 1935; Brecher, Nehru, 46, 102, 210; Gill Davis and John Reynolds, One Thousand Buildings of London [New York, 2006], 9.) 4. The government allowed Nehru to travel to Europe, on the condition that if he returned to India before the official end of his sentence in February 1936, he would be returned to prison. (Editors’ correspondence with Deepa Bhatnagar, June 25, 2009.) 5. Nehru had been arrested seven times since 1921, serving prison sentences in 1922–23, 1930–31, and 1932–34. (Times [London], May 20, 1922, Oct 30, 1930, Jan. 5, 1932, and Feb. 17, 1934.) 6. Alice Grace Fox Lankester (1878–1964) was the British wife of missionary physician Dr. Arthur Colborne Lankester (1868–1963), who had lived in Peshawar from the 1890s to 1921. She headed the Women’s Indian Association in London, had ties to the AIWC, and worked in England to change public opinion on India. (England and Wales Birth, Marriage, and Death Index, 1837‑1915; Times [London], Nov. 21, 1963; Basu and Ray, Women’s Struggle, 57; editors’ correspondence with Andy Lankester, May 2, 2009.) 7. Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence (1867–1954) was an outspoken and radical British suffragette, involved in many feminist and peace organizations. She served as a vice president of Marie Stopes’s SCBCRP. She met MS in 1920. “MS” here is a reference to Stopes. (New York Times, Mar. 12, 1954; Pethick-Lawrence to MS, Dec. 1, 1920 [LCM 9:88]; Pethick-Lawrence, My Part in a Changing World [London, 1938], 315–19.) 8. Nehru was devoted to Gandhi, though they did not always agree politically. Nehru leaned more left than Gandhi, but both sought complete independence from England. Gandhi served as India’s spiritual leader and representative of traditional Indian values, while Nehru represented Western education and radicalism. (Brecher, Nehru, 131–34, 169.) 9. Though still revered as the spiritual leader of the Indian independence movement, Gandhi had withdrawn from political activity in 1933 to work for education and social welfare. The British press portrayed him as an impractical idealist whose influence was fading among INCP leaders. Sir John Wallace Dick Megaw (1874–1958), an Irish-born British public health official, had been medical adviser to the secretary of state for India and president of the India Office Medical Board. He recently returned from India. (Louis Fisher, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi [New York, 1950], 324; Times [London], May 1, May 3, and Sept. 3, 1935; “Obituary,” British Medical Journal 2 [Nov. 8, 1958]: 1166.) 10. The letter MS presented Nehru was not found, but may have been a copy of MS’s invitation to the AIWC.

284  •  “Mother India” 11. MS refers to Vijaya Lakshmi Nehru Pandit (1900–1990), vice president of the Allahabad Branch of the AIWC. (Washington Post, Dec. 2, 1990.) 12. While still in Germany, Nehru was elected INCP president in February 1936, just as his sentence ended. He returned to India on March 10, following his wife’s death on February 28. (Times of India, Feb. 15, Feb. 29, and Mar. 11, 1936.)

101. To C. P. Blacker 1 Sanger boarded the S.S. Viceroy of India on November 8, accompanied by a friend’s daughter, Anna Jane Phillips, acting as her secretary. The journey went poorly, as they ran into bad weather. Phillips reported that “the ship is rolling all over the place and my hands are freezing.” (Florence Rose to Mrs. S. M. Ray, Oct. 30, 1935, and Phillips to Stella Hanau, Nov. 11, 1935 [quote] [LCM 17:875, 890].)

[S.S. Viceroy of India, at sea] November 14, 1935

My dear Dr. Blacker, I am writing this letter on my way to India and the Far East where, during the coming months, I shall lead a campaign for birth control on behalf of the Birth Control International Centre. This organization—of which I have the honour to be President—is engaged in work which I am convinced merits the active sympathy and co-operation of the Eugenics Society; and for that reason I should deem it a great kindness if you would submit the following statement of our past achievements and present policy to your Council with my earnest request that it should consider them with a view to contributing a grant in aid of our work.2 I must make it clear that this appeal is made on behalf of the International Centre and by the authority of its Council, and must not be confused with the purely personal request made to you by Mrs. How-Martyn, who though still a member of the Council has resigned her position as Honorary Director.3 The parent of the International Centre was formed in London in 1928; but two years later, following the International Birth Control Conference at Zurich, it was reorganised under its present name and I was elected President. Its purpose—which I may say in passing is being admirably fulfilled with the resources at its disposal—is to spread the knowledge of birth control throughout the world. To this end the Centre helps inquirers with information and literature, makes arrangements for visitors from abroad to visit birth control clinics in England and puts them in touch with clinics in other countries, collects and makes known information on all matters—sociological, statistical, medical, etc.—bearing on birth control, and arranges international conferences. In connection with the latter, I may refer you to the Conference

November 1935  •  285

on Population Problems in Asia which was organized by the Centre in London in 1933, under the presidency of Lord Horder. The proceedings of this Conference have been published in a volume entitled Birth Control in Asia.4 [left spell check here] The International Centre has formed close contacts with workers in every Continent, and with the advance of the movement for birth control it has dealt with an increasing number of inquiries from an increasing number of countries.5 At the present moment the Centre is reorganizing itself to fulfil even more efficiently than in the past the functions for which it came into being.6 I do not think I need emphasise the eugenic importance of this work. We believe, with the Eugenics Society, that the only methods for securing eugenic ends are compulsive measures or birth control; and like the Society we unreservedly favour the latter.7 As far as the international aspect of our work is concerned, the issue was clearly put, it seems to me, in the current Eugenics Review (pages 182–85).8 In my coming campaign I hope to do the preliminary work for realising two aims: first, to bring to the poorer and biologically worse-endowed stocks the knowledge of birth control that is already prevalent among those who are both genetically and economically better favoured: and secondly, to bring the birth rates of the East more in line with those of England and the civilizations of the West.9 As you may well realise, the cost of this propaganda campaign has been a considerable strain on the resources of the Centre and I am very anxious that as a result its very important routine work should not suffer.10 This is particularly important just now when its plans for the future are maturing. For these reasons I appeal for its help. I believe that a donation of 200 pounds would carry the Centre over a critical period and enable it to continue even more efficiently than in the past, the vital work for which it came into existence. Yours sincerely, Margaret Sanger [signed] TLS ESR, WLAM (MSM C5:969–70). Letterhead of the BCIIC.

1. C. P. Blacker, the general secretary of the Eugenics Society, had reconnected with MS at the Zurich Conference. (Finding Aid, CPBP, WLAM; Blacker to MS, Sept. 18, 1930 [LCM 14:1184].) 2. The Eugenics Society was established in 1907 to promote knowledge of heredity and the new science of eugenics. It emphasized positive eugenics, an increase in fit population, and fully sanctioned birth control in 1926 only as a means of limiting the fertility of the poor and dysgenic. By the late 1920s, the society supported birth control research and the work of the National Birth Control Association (NBCA). Clinton Chance had suggested that MS ask the Eugenics Society to support the BCIIC as an organization “where doctors from overseas, etc. can obtain the guidance and education they need.”

286  •  “Mother India” (Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 214; Soloway, Demography and Degeneration, 32–34, 164–66, 183–87, 198, 208; Chance to MS, Aug. 11, 1935 [quote] [LCM 15:951].) 3. MS found it necessary to clarify the BCIIC’s position when Alvin Ratz Kaufman (1885‑1979), a Canadian donor, informed Edith How-Martyn he would contribute five hundred pounds to cover travels in India. But when he became aware that How-Martyn also planned to accompany MS beyond India to other parts of Asia, he protested that this was not what he had funded. Angry that the BCIIC did not seem to support her side, How-Martyn resigned as director, and when she appealed to the Eugenics Society to support her next Indian trip, MS interceded. (Finding Aid, A. R. Kaufman fonds, University of Waterloo, Special Collections; Kaufman to How-Martyn, May 8, 1935, and to John Henry Guy, Nov. 22, 1935, MS and John Guy to Kaufman, Nov. 7, 1935, HowMartyn to MS, Nov. 13, 1934, and Gerda Guy to MS, Dec. 17, 1935 [LCM 12:276, 15:959, 940, 763, 986]; BCIIC Newsletter, No. 6 [Aug. 1936] [MSM C12:1051].) 4. Held at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on November 24–25, 1933, the conference focused on the economic, social, and medical effects of birth control on Asia’s population. European and Asian authorities led the sessions with the hope that follow-up conferences would be held in Asian countries. Lord Thomas Jeeves Horder (1871–1955), a notable British physician and president of both the NBCA and the Eugenics Society, served as conference president and chaired sessions titled “Population Problem in the East” and “Practical Problems of Contraception in the East.” (DNB; Fielding, Birth Control in Asia, 72, 92, 100.) 5. By 1934 the BCIIC had correspondents in thirty-one nations. (BCIIC, “World-Wide Birth Control: An Appeal,” 1934? [JBRP].) 6. With How-Martyn’s departure, Maurice Newfield stepped in as temporary director. The BCIIC Council sought to stabilize its finances through donations and memberships. Newfield began appointing vice presidents from other nations to “emphasize the international character of the organization.” (MS to Newfield, Jan. 6 and 23, 1936 [LCM 15:1022, 1031]; BCIIC Newsletter, No. 6 [Aug. 1936]: 1–2 [quote on 2] [MSM C12:1051].) 7. Neither Blacker, who wrote Voluntary Sterilization in 1934, nor the Eugenics Society endorsed compulsory sterilization, finding it unnecessary for achieving eugenic ends. Society members believed that while some physical and mental defects were inherited, others were derived from environment, and sterilization was useful only for the few disorders known to be purely genetic. (Soloway, Demography and Degeneration, 203; Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 115, 167, 203–7.) 8. MS refers to a short article that questioned the survival of the British Empire in an overpopulated world, predicting catastrophe if birthrates continued to decline in western Europe and increase in developing nations. The editor called on eugenicists “to do everything we can to ensure that the policies adopted for conserving the quality of population should as far as possible be designed to improve its biological quality.” (“Notes of the Quarter,” Eugenics Review 27 [Oct. 1935]: 182–83, 184 [quote], 185.) 9. In an October press release, MS had asserted that her goal in India was to disseminate birth control “among the social, economic, and biological classes in which it is most urgently needed.” The birthrate of Asian countries, like India (34.7 per thousand) and Japan (31.6), was more than twice that of any western European nation save Italy (23.4)

November 1935  •  287 and Ireland (19.6). (MS, Press Release, Oct. 30, 1935 [quote] [LCM 130:587]; Mitchell, International Historical Statistics: Africa, Asia and Oceania, 72, and Europe, 103–6.) 10. BCIIC finances continued to worsen, in part due to the cost of How-Martyn’s tours. In October 1934, John Guy reported that they could barely cover office expenses. In December 1935, the BCIIC could raise only £550 for MS’s tour. (How-Martyn to MS, Sept. 17, 1934, Guy to MS, Oct. 24, 1934, and Newfield to MS, Nov. 25, 1935 [LCM 17:804, 15:757, 908].)

102. Journal Entry The S.S. Viceroy of India passed through the Suez Canal on November 18, and Sanger reported “a very restless and tiresome voyage.” She described the ship as “second-rate, rocky in a heavy sea and raucous. . . . I was awakened at eight or earlier every morning by the most awful thud, thud, thud overhead,” finally discovering that her cabin was beneath a sports deck where “the English were getting exercise by throwing quoits around.” (Times [London], Nov. 20, 1935; MS to Gerda Guy, Nov. 30, 1935 [quote 1] [LCM 17:961]; MS, Autobiography, 464–65 [quotes 2–3].)

[S.S. Viceroy of India, at sea] [November 20, 1935] Im reading Men & Women by Magnus Hirschfield. His journey round the world studying Sexology.1 I met him in Berlin two or three times, visited his [Institution] saw him in St Moritz & again in New York as he was leaving for Japan.2 He died after being driven out of Germany last year.3 Am also reading Ghandhis Gandhis life—his own Autobiography C F Andrews Editing.4 Certainly there is a story for the psychoanalist. His attitude today on Sex & his grief & shame about his fathers death are all tied up ↑as a Source ↓ [of] his present attitude that “Sex is Sin.”5 This condition means that women must depend upon other factors than the law for their protection & happiness. The Hindu woman has no choice in marriage. She is handed over from the guardianship of her father to that of her husband.6 From him she has no legal redress. He may be suffering from syphlis or any abherrent disease. He may be cruel adulterous or desert her or even marry again according to the law of the land if She be childless—this is right & just. She can only claim bare maintenance from him. Divorce is forbidden by Hindu law & Society, as marriage is a sacrament but all this goes by the boards if he marries again & gives his first wife maintenance & a right to live in the dwelling house.7ç

288  •  “Mother India”

Only extreme cruelty which endangers life & insanity are grounds for legal divorce. Having such a treat with time to read. AD MSP, DLC (LCM 1:172–73B).

1. MS refers to Men and Women: The World Journey of a Sexologist (New York, 1935), the English edition of Die Weltreise eines Sexualforschers (Bözberg‑Verlag, Brugg, 1933), which documented Hirschfeld’s 1930–32 world tour. Unwilling to return to Germany due to Nazi attacks on Jews, intellectuals, and sex reformers, he relocated to Switzerland. (New York Herald Tribune, May 16, 1935; Archiv für Sexualwissenschaft, Hirschfeld Collection.) 2. MS and Hirschfeld met in Berlin in September 1920 and in St. Moritz in 1928. Hirschfeld visited the BCCRB in New York on December 3, 1930, but MS missed seeing him due to ill health. They likely rescheduled the visit. (1920 Calendar and MS to Hirschfeld, Dec. 3, 1930 [LCM 1:411, 14:1241]; MS to How-Martyn, Jan. 10, 1928 [MSM C4:533].) 3. After Hirschfeld’s IfS was destroyed by the Nazis on May 6, 1933, he realized he could never go home and lived out his remaining years in exile, dying in France on May 17, 1935. (New York Times, May 17, 1935.) 4. MS was reading an abridged version of Gandhi’s autobiography (originally published as a serial in Young India). Editor C. F. Andrews believed that the autobiography was too candid, and “it greatly needs editing for the West.” (Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi; Mohandas K. Gandhi, The Gandhi Reader: A Source Book of His Life and Writings, edited by Homer A. Jack [Bloomington, Ind., 1956], 3 [quote]. 5. Gandhi had left his dying father’s bedside to have sex with his wife, only to miss his father’s last moments. He wrote: “If animal passion had not blinded me, I should have been spared the torture of separation from my father during his last moments. . . . He would have died in my arms. . . . It is a blot I have never been able either to efface or to forget.” (Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi, 68–69.) 6. Hindu women had no legal right to property, save widows who were exempted from the law in 1923. Women were economically dependent on their fathers or brothers before marriage and on their husbands afterward. Most marriages were arranged and viewed as family alliances rather than intimate relationships between husbands and wives. (Rao and Rao, Marriage, the Family, and Women in India, 14–15.) 7. In Hindu sacred law, marriage could not be dissolved, and women were prohibited from leaving their husbands on any grounds. Men, however, could leave their wives and remarry in cases of infidelity, childlessness, or incurable disease. A husband could also leave his wife if she bore only girls. (P. K. Virdi, The Grounds for Divorce in Hindu and English Law [Delhi, 1972], 20, 29–31.)

November 1935  •  289

103. To Mohandas K. Gandhi Sanger arrived in Bombay on November 25, where she was met by Edith How-Martyn, A. P. Pillay, several local birth control activists, and a crowd of photographers and reporters. Sanger noted: “They welcomed me in the charming Indian fashion by hanging long garlands of flowers round my neck and presenting me with bouquets so I arrived at the Taj Mahal Hotel looking more like a bridesmaid than a propagandist! Almost before I had time to change, there was a reception for me at the hotel and about fifty doctors and officials and social workers came to welcome me to India.” Her first days were filled with visits to clinics, hospitals, and social work groups. At night she attended receptions and dinners held in her honor. (How-Martyn “Second India Tour,” Nov. 14–Dec. 2, 1935, and MS, “Newsletter from Calcutta” [Dec. 9, 1935] [quote] [LCM 17:892, 137:375].)

[Bombay, India] 27th November 1935.

Dear Mr. Gandhi, Your kind letter of the 12th greeted me on my arrival.1 I am deeply touched indeed at your kindness in inviting me to share your hospitality. I shall be most pleased to do this if you can accommodate me for two days. I plan to leave here on Sunday night at 5.50 p.m. arriving at Wardha on Monday morning.2 While I have been told by Mrs. How-Martyn that Monday is your Day of Silence, perhaps you would not mind my hanging about on that day and leaving for Calcutta the following Wednesday.3 I feel sure that a little silence would do me no end of good too and as for your simplicity nothing could I enjoy more. Looking forward with great pleasure to meeting you, Sincerely yours, TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 17:928).

1. MS wrote to Gandhi about her trip before she left for India (letter not found). Gandhi replied: “Our common friend Mrs How-Martyn had already prepared me for your visit. Do, by all means come, whenever you can and you shall stay with me, if you would not mind what must appear to you to be our extreme simplicity.” (Gandhi to MS, Nov. 12, 1935 [LCM 135:345].) 2. Gandhi had recently established a new ashram at Sevagram in the remote Wardha Province of central India. There he focused on studying local industries and diet. (John B. Severance, Gandhi: Great Soul [New York, 1997], 107; Johnson, Gandhi’s Experiments with the Truth, 38.) 3. How-Martyn had visited with Gandhi outside of Delhi on January 16, 1935, and at Wardha on February 1, 1935. On Gandhi’s days of silence, he fasted and communicated only by notes, a practice he began in 1921. He believed it helped “order his cluttered mind and renew his vision.” (“Edith How-Martyn’s Visit to India, 1934–35,” Report Compiled from Letters, 10 [EHMP]; Madras Mail, Feb. 11, 1935; Hindu Madras, Feb. 9, 1935; Judith Margaret Brown, Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope [New Haven, Conn., 1989], 161 [quote].)

290  •  “Mother India”

104. Excerpts from Journal Entry Sanger’s first speech in India was given at the Sir Cowasji Jehangir Hall, under the auspices of the Society for the Study and Promotion of Family Hygiene (SSPFH). Sanger complained that it was “clamorously noisy. It was open to the street, and trams went wobbling by, pedestrians talked loudly, and dozens and dozens of electric fans purred. . . . You had to speak at the very top of your throat to be heard.” She continued, “Looking down on the audience was like gazing at a choppy sea; it was a broken mass of Gandhi white caps, shaped rather like those worn by soldiers overseas.” In an address titled “Birth Control and Modern Civilization,” she discussed eugenics, overpopulation, and birth control to an overflow crowd of one thousand people. (How-Martyn, “Second India Tour,” Nov. 14–Dec. 2, 1935, and MS, “Newsletter from Calcutta” [Dec. 9, 1935] [LCM 17:892, 137:375]; MS, Autobiography, 466 [quotes].)

[Bombay, India] [November 27, 1935] Last night after the meeting we walked back to the hotel Tajmahal1 from dinner about 11:30 & saw men & boys stretched out on the side walk asleep. This is their home. The only belongings they own is the mat on which they sleep. It is said that thousands sleep in the streets. Its hard when it rains, but otherwise they know nothing better! Alas. [Bombay, India] Nov 28th [1935] Yesterday was fairly cool except in the sun at noon. In the morning Dr Pillay & EHm came for me at 9:30 to go to the K.E.M. Hospital King Edward Memorial2 of which the English are very proud & the Indians also. It is a well constructed building with open well lighted spaces & well equipped Dr Metta met us & took us all over.3 The laboratories, especially where the pythons & cobras are & where serum is extracted was very exciting. The Dr__________ took some poison from the fangs of a cobra & the hissing of the creature was severe & menacing.4 A. J. took a photo.5 The plague serum ↑Dept ↓ was very extensive & holds out great promise as a propholactic not a cure— They inject the poison into a horse & from this comes the serum.6 In the afternoon [Mrs] Khandratta a young Indian woman volunteering her time as a social worker took me to the “Charls” slums.7 There we visited her own small crude settlement8 where 100 children are taught songs & co operative play— Two language groups in separate rooms but boys & girls are together in each group. They are given clean gowns & washed every day. They come at 12 & stay to 4. No toys & no equipment it takes courage to hope for something in the lives of such children especially when you see

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where they live. Corregated slab of zink or iron is put up as roof & sides (3) no doors or windows curtain hangs to keep people out from the streets out. There was one place for water & toilet in the block. Simply holes dark & creepy fowl smelling squatting over a charcoal fire cooking— Women everywhere—we asked them how many children they had & all replied 3—4—5—& always added 2 or 3 besides (dead).9 When asked if they wanted any more all but one said “no no” the one looked hopeless & said I don’t know. [A summary of a dinner at the home of Mrs. D. Racoosin of General Motors was omitted by the editors.] [Bombay, India] [November 29, 1935] At 4:15 I went to the to the Ritz Hotel to a social workers group to give them a practical talk on methods all Indian women—10 They told me that the women use plugs for menstruation & after birth, plugs of cotton old rags anything. They will accept cotton or sponges or plugs of any kind as they are used to these.11 Also they said that women use a crude salts to prevent conception.12 They promise to get some for me to analyse. It was a good meeting about 18 were present all that the room could hold. At 9 Pm the medical meeting in the ampetheter of the K.E.M. Hospital. Dr Meta in the chair.13 The hall was packed to standing room. I talked & then both films were run off.14 Great shouts of enthusiasm greeted the picture where the ovum ejected the sperm because another sperm had entered.15 The older men were much impressed by the first reel & one man Dr_____ a Pathologist said it was the most perfect photography of its kind he had ever seen. It was a splendid meeting, a fine reception & I think those medical students got a sound idea of the subject.16 The Chief of the Gynecologic dept17 who was against Bc got up amid [howls?] & applause & said he had been “converted” loud & lingered applause. Back to the hotel for another busy day. K. F Nariman Mayor & Gandhite called to pay respects.18 AD MSP, DLC (LCM 1:186–89B, 194–96B).

1. The Taj Mahal Palace, built in 1903 by J. N. Tata, was a luxury hotel that welcomed both Indian and non-Indian guests. (William Warren and Jill Gocher, Asia’s Legendary Hotels [North Clarendon, Vt., 2007], 36.) 2. Aliyappin Padmanabha (A. P.) Pillay (1889–1956) was an Indian physician, eugenicist, and sexologist who founded a eugenic birth control clinic in Bombay and the

292  •  “Mother India” journal Marriage Hygiene in 1934. The Seth Gordhandas Sunderas Medical College and King Edward Memorial Hospital (KEMH), an innovative teaching hospital, was founded by the Bombay Municipality in 1925. The KEMH was unique in its training and employment of Indian physicians, who were barred from British-run institutions. (Sanjay Srivastava, “We Are Adults Only,” Hindustan Times, July 30, 2009; Ahluwalia, Reproductive Restraints, 31, 37; Ravi Kalia, Gandinagar: Building National Identity in Postcolonial India [Columbia, S.C., 2004], 56.) 3. Jivraj N. Mehta (1887–1978), a Western-educated physician, was dean of the KEMH. (Goenka, “Tribute to Jivraj Mehta,” 26–27.) 4. Cobra venom attacks the blood and central nervous systems, and some Hindu physicians believed that small doses of the venom, taken orally, protected against disease and poison. To collect the venom, handlers placed a cup under the snake’s upper jaw and rubbed the venom gland to express the venom. (K. M. Nadkarni, Indian Materia Medica, rev. ed. [Bombay, 1954], 2:225; David I. Macht, “Experimental and Clinical Study of Cobra Venom as an Analgesic,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 22 [Jan. 15, 1936]: 61–71.) 5. Anna Jane Phillips (Shuman) (1907–76), the daughter of birth control activist Harriet Duff Phillips and industrialist John MacFarlane Phillips, was a twenty-eight-year-old Vassar graduate who worked as a features writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Despite a lack of stenographic skills, MS took Phillips on as her assistant. The photograph was not found. (WWAW; Harriet Phillips to MS, June 18, 1935, MS to Harriet Phillips, June 25, 1935, and Anna Jane Phillips to MS, July 1935 [MSM S10:184, 192, 254]; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jan. 20, 1988.) 6. The Haffkine Institute pioneered the development of plague vaccine, created by injecting horses with small doses of plague bacillus and using serum from the horses to treat humans. (Times of India, Oct. 20, 1930.) 7. Miss Khandratta likely worked at the Social Workers’ Society, a group that hosted MS’s first lecture on birth control. The workers conducted practical social work in the “chawls,” tenement buildings in the slums of Bombay. There they focused on helping delinquent children and the Dalits, or “untouchables,” assigned the lowest social caste and viewed as less than human. (Times of India, Mar. 9, 1936; National Geographic News, June 2, 2003.) 8. This might be a reference to the Children’s Aid Society’s Umerkhadi Observation House, built in 1927 to care for and educate runaway and destitute children. (Meenakshi Sood, Neena Swaroop, and Alka Batra, eds., Voluntary Organisations Working for Children and Women [New Delhi, 1992], 92.) 9. The birthrate in India in 1935 was 34.7 per 1,000 people, but as the death rate declined, the population of India increased more rapidly. The infant mortality rate (164 of 1,000 births) was also declining, but not as rapidly. (Mitchell, International Historical Statistics: Africa, Asia, and Oceania, 78, 88.) 10. MS’s speech was titled “Practical Work for Birth Control” and, with How-Martyn, discussed organizing clinics. (How-Martyn, “Report of November 14–December 1, 1935,” and MS, Newsletter from Calcutta [Dec. 9, 1935] [LCM 17:892, 137:375].) 11. One cheap and readily available contraceptive was the vaginal plug, made from cotton wool, paper, or even mud. Chiefly a barrier between sperm and the os, plugs

November 1935  •  293 were sometimes dipped in vinegar, lemon juice, salt, or butter for increased effectiveness. While the plug could inhibit conception, experts found it one of the least effective methods and argued that the sponge was far superior. (Cooper, Technique of Contraception, 64–66; Himes and Stone, Practical Birth-Control Methods, 106–12.) 12. Sodium chloride, or table salt, was widely known to kill sperm when dissolved in water. MS discussed using salt as a douching solution in the 1914 issue of Family Limitation, suggesting using “four tablespoons of Table salt in one quart of warm or cold water and dissolve thoroughly.” (MS, Family Limitation, 1st ed. [1914], 15.) 13. MS refers to an audience of physicians at the KEMH on November 27, with Jivraj Mehta in the chair. (MS, Newsletter from Calcutta [Dec. 9, 1935] [LCM 137:375].) 14. MS showed “two technical films,” produced by Abraham and Hannah Stone and the BCCRB: Biology of Conception, a twelve-minute film showing the process of fertilization and the effects of aging and chemicals on sperm, and Technique of Contraception, which demonstrated the proper fitting and use of a diaphragm paired with spermicidal jelly and the use of a gynaplaque. (BCCRB 1937 Annual Report, Aug. 1, 1938, and BCCRB, “Regarding the Birth Control Film Report for the Main Office,” Mar. 29, 1937 [LCM 34:691, 137:43].) 15. Although the newly fertilized egg does not actually eject the other sperm, the fusion of egg and single sperm causes immediate changes in the egg membrane that prevent other sperm from entering. (EB.) 16. MS estimated that there were six hundred physicians at the meeting, though Edith How-Martyn reported only three hundred “enthusiastic” participants. (MS to Gerda Guy, Nov. 30, 1935, and How-Martyn, “Report,” Nov. 25–29, 1935 [LCM 17:962, 893].) 17. Dr. Nilkanth Anant Purandare (1877‑1964) headed the KEMH Gynecology Department from 1926 to 1937. (Editors’ correspondence with Shekhar Purandare, Oct. 25, 2010.) 18. Khurshed Framji Nariman (1883–1948) was an attorney, nationalist politician, and the mayor of Bombay. While Nariman agreed with Gandhi’s views on nationalism and imperialism, he differed from him on tactics. His 1933 criticism of the INCP and Gandhi, Whither Congress: “Spiritual Idealism” or “Political Realism,” had alienated some of his former colleagues. (Nanavaty, Khurshed Nariman, 1, 39–44, 47.)

105. To Gerda Sebbelow Guy 1

Kodak House, Bombay [India].2 30th Nov. 1935.

Dearest Gerda: This has been a hectic week and only now am I able to have a little time to write you. We have all been in top speed since the Monday the ‘Viceroy of India’ landed. The voyage out was not a very comfortable one for me although I was moved from one stateroom which was under the Sports Deck the next one was not much better and so what with noise late at night and beginning early in the morning I had a very restless and tiresome voyage. However, enough for that.

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Edith’s arrival before me gave me a fine welcome and made my time more useful than it would have been had I left things in charge of Dr. Pillay.3 He is a good man but does not have the experience or organizing nor choosing the most important and worth-while things to do. Publicity has been far beyond my expectations.4 The meeting the day after my arrival was in the largest hall in Bombay. It was packed to the doors and hundreds turned away. It was a difficult hall to speak in with fans going and the noise from the street coming in because of open doors but nevertheless the publicity from it carried the full speech, which was read by many thousands throughout India. The next day I had a very good meeting with a group of social workers, about 18, whom we hope we will encourage to become a permanent body of workers to represent this district. They are all Indian women with some doctors who will remain on the committee as advisory.5 Of course a group like this, while very worth while, will need a good deal of attention and direction and someone should stay right here to cement and strengthen their affiliations, their objects and their organization and help them to stand alone. We will be getting out a News Letter containing much of what we have just written6 but I am sending this off to you before I leave Bombay and to tell you that any letters will reach me here c/o Thos. Cook & Sons, Ltd., on the 20th or 22nd of December and then go to Travancore and the South of India and will sail from Colombo instead of Calcutta as I had originally planned.7 Two months here is of course a very short time to organize. I can see that now. I could well do with ten or fifteen experienced organizers in India plus an equal number of efficient secretaries to do the details. It is utterly impossible to get anyone here to do these details and while eventually one could organize to get the Indian women themselves speaking on the subject, I think they have very little experience as a whole of organization. The two best things that were done in my estimation were showing the films, the two reels, to the medical group of which there were about 600 persons at the K.E.M. Hospital, the most influential and important hospital here. This was given for physicians only and the Dean allowed some of the senior students to come in.8 There is no doubt that this film with its scientific aspect, made a very profound impression on the older men there. Of course the practical film on contraceptive technique interested the younger group. I think it quite possible to leave such a film behind us in each medical centre where there is an interest and Dr. Mehta has already spoken to me to ask if these Films could be obtained.9 Yesterdays meeting at the Municipality was also very worthwhile. Here, with the Mayor in the Chair, were all the members of the Municipal Government including Doctors, nurses, social workers and midwives. Both Edith and I spoke, questions were asked and a great deal of discussion took place.

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The Mayor told us afterwards that he felt quite certain that something practical and useful would come of it.10 Tonight I am giving a broadcast over the radio11 and tomorrow I leave to spend two days with Gandhi. We had a very delightful visit and luncheon with Governor and Lady Brabourne last Thursday. We found Lady Brabourne very enthusiastic and she is already doing some practical work with her nurses in the infant welfare work with which she is connected.12 Lord Brabourne, on whose left I was seated, incidently whispered that while they were both behind me and fully in sympathy it would not be wise, considering [the] political situation and religious controversies13 to involve Lady Brabourne in the movement at this time. I understood this of course, so do you. We are all getting on famously digging deeper into the consciousness of the Indian public and I feel that if the other states have the results that we have had here so far I shall not be disappointed. Just a word of love to you all and to thank Maurice for the scroll. I hoped that it was going to be larger than that for I understood that the others that have been presented have been nearly two feet long and one and a half feet wide.14 However, it is beautifully worded and I shall talk over with the Secretary of the Conference in Calcutta its presentation, etc.15 So far we have not received any of the parcels of Maurice’s pamphlets but they will probably reach Bombay before I return in three weeks’ time.16 Again my love to you, in which Edith would join me if she were here. She has already plunged into work over at her headquarters and has been since early this morning.17Affectionately, TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 17:961–63). Initials “M.S.” handwritten at the bottom of the letter by an unidentified author.

1. In How-Martyn’s absence, Gerda Guy had taken over the BCIIC’s day-to-day operations. “I find the task left behind exceedingly heavy,” she wrote MS, “and when I come to the office and find one deaf worker only left behind, and no one who can even take down a dictation I find it hard not to feel a little bitter.” (Guy to MS, Dec. 9, 1935 [LCM 15:982].) 2. MS wrote this letter at A. P. Pillay’s office in Bombay. 3. How-Martyn had arrived in Bombay on November 23, two days before MS. She had spent the previous months making appointments and securing speaking invitations for MS. Pillay, who also helped organize MS’s appearances, was sometimes denigrated by Western physicians, as when the coeditor of Marriage Hygiene, Norman Himes, wrote: “Pillay is obviously not the ablest man in the world; yet he is actually doing what others have been talking about.” (Illustrated Weekly of India, Nov. 24, 1935; How-Martyn, “Second India Tour,” Nov. 14–Dec. 2, 1935, and How-Martyn to MS, Sept. 17, 1935 [LCM 17:892, 801]; Himes quoted in Ahluwalia, Reproductive Restraints, 64.)

296  •  “Mother India” 4. How-Martyn had arranged for news reporters and photographers to meet MS when she landed. She was also greeted by a delegation of about fifty Indian dignitaries. (How-Martyn, “Report of Nov. 14–Dec. 1, 1935” [LCM 17:892].) 5. For details, see MS, Journal Entry, Nov. 27, 1935, herein. 6. See MS, Newsletter from Calcutta [Dec. 9, 1935] [LCM 137:375].) 7. MS later reverted to her original plan of leaving India from Calcutta on February 2. (“MS Itinerary and Mailing Schedule,” Oct. 24, 1935 [LCM 17:856].) 8. See Journal Entry, Nov. 27, 1935, notes 14 and 16, herein. Of the approximately 420 students training at the hospital, only 10 percent were women. (Sunil K. Pandya, “Seth Gordhandas Sunderdas Medical College and King Edward VII Memorial Hospital, Bombay,” National Medical Journal of India [Jan. 1988].) 9. Dr. Jivraj Mehta. 10. They spoke to the Bombay Municipal Corporation in a speech titled “What Municipalities in the West Are Doing for Birth Control.” Mayor K. F. Nariman supported MS’s efforts to secure free birth control instruction in government hospitals, dispensaries, and clinics, but his resolution was not immediately approved. (How-Martyn, “Report of Nov. 14–Dec. 1, 1935,” and MS, Newsletter from Calcutta [Dec. 9, 1935] [LCM 17:892, 137:375]; Nanavaty, Khurshed Nariman, 23.) 11. MS’s fifteen-minute radio broadcast “What Birth Control Can Do for India,” delivered on Nov. 30, 1935, was heard “as far afield as Colombo, Delhi, and Nagpur.” She noted that she wanted to deliver it over Calcutta radio as well, but the station director decided that “he would let me do it only on the condition that I had it translated into Bengali and addressed the listeners in that language! This was too much even for my zeal.” (MS, Newsletter from Calcutta [Dec. 9, 1935] [LCM 137:375].) 12. Doreen Geraldine Browne Knatchbull, Lady Brabourne (1896–1979), an AngloIrish aristocrat, hosted MS at a luncheon on November 28, 1935. Her husband, Michael Herbert Rudolf Knatchbull, Fifth Baron of Brabourne (1895–1939), had been the reformminded governor of Bombay since 1933 and was deeply engaged in the delicate negotiations to implement British plans for limited self-rule in India. (Times [London], Jan. 18, 1980, and Feb. 24, 1939.) 13. Brabourne likely refers to the fact that associating birth control with the British rule in India would increase tensions, as the Government of India Act had pleased neither the INCP nor Muslim nationalists, who wanted the British to relinquish all power. (Muhammad A. W. Chishti, Political Development in Manipur, 1919–1949 [Delhi, 2005], 66–67.) 14. Newfield sent MS (via Pillay) an illuminated scroll of greeting to be presented at the AIWC. He later apologized for its small size, which was, he said, due to the lack of coordination. (Newfield to MS, Nov. 25, 1935, and Jan. 6, 1936 [LCM 17:908, 15:1022].) 15. The AIWC was held in Trivandrum (Thiruvananthapuram), a city on India’s southwestern coast. The conference secretary, Charulata Mukherjee (1880–1969), was the chair of the AIWC’s Calcutta Branch and active in the campaign against trafficking in women and children. (Basu and Ray, Women’s Struggle, 179.) 16. Newfield sent three separate shipments of his pamphlet Parenthood: By Design or Accident (written as Michael Fielding), directing one to A. P. Pillay, one to MS, and the last to Thomas Cook & Sons Agency. MS returned to Bombay on December 22, after

december 1935  •  297 trips to Wardha, Calcutta, and Benares. (Newfield to MS, Nov. 25, 1935 [LCM 17:908]; Times of India, Dec. 21, 1935.) 17. A reference to Pillay’s offices in Bombay.

106. Journal Entry Sanger and Phillips left Bombay on the evening of December 1, heading to Gandhi’s ashram. Before their arrival, Gandhi’s secretary Mahadev Desai cautioned, “There is no hotel in Wardha, but we shall be happy to accommodate both Miss Phillips and your bearer. Here in our little home there are undoubtedly no comforts, but there is also no master and no servant and all live on a basis of happy equality, every one doing some or other kind of physical labour.” (Desai to MS, Nov. 27, 1935 [LCM 135:406].)

Wardha [India] Dec 2 [1935] We arrived here at 7:20 Am with all our luggage—- Mr ↑Mahadeva ↓ Desai met us a fine clean cut man with good teeth a healthy appearance & happy manner.1 After arranging to leave the Sanger bags at the station we were put in a small horse cart back seats with backs to the driver & came jogging down to see Gandhi.2 We went directly to his place & met him, tho this is his day of silence. He rose to greet me smiling from ear to ear. I put down my bag & gloves & flowers & magazines in order to take both his hands. He has an ↑[inward] ↓3 light that shines in his face! that shines thru the flesh! that circles around his head & neck like a mist, with white Sails of a ship coming thru. It lasted only a few seconds but it is there. When I looked again it was only the shiney appearance of his flesh that I saw, but always the smile & a hospitable welcome.4 Two important ladies from the A.I.W. Conference are here having been asked to wait over to meet me today.5 Mr Gandhi wanted us to meet. I will see the industries this afternoon. The guest house is a four partitioned house rough hewn white plastered walls half way to the roof, the upper half open for air. Small bamboo poles run cross wise in the roof & larger poles crossing & supporting the roof— Its all spotless & clean—rough stone floors two matressless cots, (our own bedding will do) one pole in the center has a circular wood shelf which serves as a table for us both or chairs. Its all very simple but clean & peaceful, the bath room a large stone floor room in the same building but not adjoining, one has to go outside & around to get to it two commodes & two large pails of water hauled by men on the place from a large circular well seen from my door & window.

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My bearer Joseph prepared hot water & got a large tub (tin) & into it I got & had a refreshing bath & changed my dress & now ready for our visit to the Patron Saints home where we are to have tiffin6 11 Am a bowl of porrige & milk was brought to me on my arrival. I asked no questions about milk being boiled or anything as to its being goats or cows milk, I just ate all of it I could swallow. It was sweetened with either honey or brown sugar & was very nice.7 I happened not to be hungry at all but down it went just the same. About 11 oclock we were taken by Mrs Rajcumari Amaitkaur8 & Mrs Braglal Nehru9 both members of the A.I.W.C. to tiffin to Mr Jamnalal Bajag one of the Patron Saints of this compound who gave all this land & wealth to Ghandis industries. A Saintly tall handsom man who has a fine large open house with many servants & a wife & children.10 J. C. Kumarappa Secty of Home Industries & several others all went with us to Tiffin.11 We rode there in a horse cart but returned via an bullock cart drawn by two white bullocks. The twenty people including servants all sat on the floor of the veranda— A large rubber plant leaf before each guest served as the table napkin & plate. Shoes were removed before entering the house—hands were washed in a by running water holding a pitcher & basin beneath & a towel for us all— Food was passed by a woman servant & put on the leaf, one cut up wet vegetable hot, one curry dry vegetable, rice curried hot rice cooked in milk like a gruel in a small silver or brass bowl. Another small bowel of milk soup then three different kinds of flap jacks two hot & buttered one dry & hard of rye besides a crisp wafer used for curry, fruit salad mixed with tomatoes & bananas & oranges. All kinds of spiced ingredients on the leaf to help yourself. We all sat cross legged & ate with fingers one spoon for the soup but no one else used spoons except A J and self.12 After tiffin another washing of hands & up stairs to sit & discuss topic, or current topics. Mrs Nehru is a leading spirit advanced in helping the cause of Untouchables. She lives in Dehli has been to Russia recently, liked it.13 Gandhis youngest son was at luncheon, works on the paper the Hindustani but does not live in the “astram” with his father14 all who live there have eight hours work to do & are restricted in diet & other ways of life.15 At three oclock I go to see the Industries. There about thirty people on this place called Maganwady, there are several industries going in their infancy.16 The cotton is planted & seeded by a Jenny hand machine, then rolled & spun on hand made looms. The hand made paper industry also is making strides. The linseed oil is made from seeds & pounded by hand to a pulp then placed in huge stone jars & pressed as a white bullock goes round & round

december 1935  •  299

to press the oil into a jar underneath. The pulp is made into flap jacks or cereal.17 The water mill is also operated by two bullocks & water from a huge deep well is drawn up & emptied into irrigation pipes. There are orange trees & guara trees here bearing fruit the orange is like a tangerene but jucier & not so sweet. The “tonga” is the name of the cart we go about in.18 Supper on the veranda at Mahatmans or Gandhijis residence, they are building another story to the old house for his study, now he has no privacy & needs it. We all sat on the floor shoes removed first & food is placed on trays by servants no one may eat until prayers are said which are said only when the tray has considerable food. It was a chant by all in a “luluby tune.” The Gandhiji gave me a spoon ful of very bitter green puree, they were all amused at its reception & my face in getting it down. Then there was raw onions cut up in cream19 one vegetable soup hot, one hot milk, flap jacks dry, a fresh orange & other vegetables & rice, really a lot of food. All eat with their fingers very cleverly & deftly without dropping a spot. They mix it with their fingers & scoop it up as if they had finger spoons. Gandhi used a spoon as he had goats milk & orange salad & one other vegetable puree. He is experimenting with foods trying to find out the most economical foods for the village people & the most nourishment.20 The great majority are living a life of starvation when you ask a villager how things are going, He points to his stomach & says “Salub stomach too long empty.”21 One “full meal” a day is their ambition. The day of silence will be over. We went on the roof to see the sun set, then in the tonga to the temple & now to evening prayers. It is tragic to see the women working as carriers baskets of cement on their heads, backs straight brown legs & faces, all belong to the “depressed” class or untouchables. At 7 Pm all the twenty persons were seated with legs crossed under them on the roof. They were all dressed in white with the moon shining down & the sky & stars overhead. The Gandhiji & both lady guests were seated at the head of the circle, as we came in a little late we sat in the circle near the four depressed women workers who were not in white. Mr Gandhi’s son his youngest son is here his great grandson led the prayers in the moonlight.22 Mrs Gandhi served our food & spins, she is a short, stoutish unempressive woman but very kind & tender.23 Joseph was invited to go up & attend prayers but he shook his head violently & decidedly & waited below with the lantern for our return. The guest house is about 100 feet from the main house. After prayers which were chanted I went down to Gandhijis office, he wrote a few notes to me24 inviting me to walk in the morning also saying that at 7:30 Am he will have conversation with me & it can be absolutely exclusive.

300  •  “Mother India”

In the meantime Mr Desai Mrs Nehru & Mrs Rajcumari & A. J. besides the youngest son with his camera came along.25 6:30 Am [December 3, 1935] Last night we went to bed at 8:30 & our cots were taken out on the terrace with the moon & stars & a glorious clear sky overhead. There are lights along the path to the main house but for the rest all is darkness with only the moon & stars to guide. The air was cool & crisp I fell asleep in spite of the distant noises of voices & calls & dogs & all the noises from the life in the village which is ever carried to all over India. I awakened about three cold & chilled, but as this is not a regular house with luxuries I knew there were no extra blankets, so I slept on as best I could. At 4 Am the bells rang out for morning prayers but I had said I would not attend. At 6 Am Joseph came to tell me the hour & I arose & dressed & went over to meet Gandhiji & the two ladies & I all went with him to the village Sen which is his regular morning walk & which village he is trying to clean up by erecting “privies” portable on stilts to be moved from pit to pit to save the fertilizer & use it quickly.26 Gandhiji walks quickly & has his usual white robe & sandals & staff. We talked of food & diet. He has studied this question for forty years & disapproves of uncooked starches.27 One man here naked & silent for five years—loin cloth only, eats raw grains, pulse which is a grain sprouting. Gandhiji thinks he is not keeping up so well, even tho he works eight hours a day stands in cold water for two to four hours & crucifies desire & endures hardship & lives according to Gandhis code of morals.28 After the walk I had a bath & dashed over to keep the 7:30 appointment on roof in the morning sun. There were four of his people present & A. J. & Self & M. Gandhi questions and answers elsewhere. I am to return at 3 oclock. To my question Do you believe there is a difference between sex lust & sex love? His answer was “yes”—29 Mrs Neru came for me at nine & we went to the cotton industries, the usual hand made cloths & dyes. I purchased three or four articles bed spreads & pillow covers, all very cheap to be sent to Bombay. Lunch or Tiffin at 10:30 all very prompt on the second Gandhiji in his usual corner on the veranda—-soy beans tomatoes, radishes hard slap jacks with herbs, milk & sour milk, vegetable stew, marmalade & fresh oranges.30 All very good. The Doctor general is to see me at two oclock.

Dr T. D. Shahani M B. FR.CS. Dr Y B. Mang Rulkar MB BS. DPH31

December 1935  •  301

both men in the District came to ask about methods & sterilization & Safe Period.32 Interested in the films & will prepare the theatre for these tonight at 6 Pm. At 3 promptly we went to the Mahatranas house & had our talk on the roof. He sat in the burning sunshine with a white cloth over his head, We sat in the shade. The arguments were along the same line as the morning but I am convinced his personal experience at the time of his fathers death was so shocking & self blamed that he can never accept sex as anything good, clean or wholesome.33 At supper we had soy beans rice tomatoes fresh & radishes & hard flap jacks—milk as always. The Mahatma does not eat these articles of diet only oranges milk, vegetable & marmalade. After supper (There are only two meals a day one at 11 Am & one at 5 Pm)— The Doctor general called for me to show the film. But the projector at the theatre could not take my 16 mm so I had to talk to the 40 Drs & magistrates. Slept out of doors under the stars & half moon. Up early 5:45 for a walk with Gandhiji & the two ladies. Mrs Nehru came on the train to Nagpur with me34 we discussed many questions. I left figs & prunes for Gandhiji. AD MSP, DLC (LCM 1:209–29B). For transcribed versions, see LCM 17:1014, MSM S70:376, 383.

1. Mahadeva Haribhai Desai (1892–1942), a lawyer and author, became Gandhi’s personal secretary in 1917. (New York Times, Aug. 16, 1942.) 2. In December 1934, Gandhi established the All-India Village Industries Association (AIVIA), which sought to wean Indians from dependence on British industry by reviving traditional cottage industries, including flour grinding, oil pressing, beekeeping, and the making of paper, soap, pottery, paints, and ink. (Jain, Gandhi, the Forgotten Mahatma, 10; Pandikattu, Gandhi, 184, Johnson, Gandhi’s Experiments with the Truth, 38.) 3. In the transcribed version, this word is rendered as “unusual” (MSM S70:383). 4. Gandhi, then sixty-seven years old, only five feet tall, balding, with a mustache, eyeglasses, and only two teeth, had become an iconic figure. After 1915 he adopted the traditional dress of the Indian poor: a dhoti (loincloth), sandals, and shawl. His ascetic ways and many fasts left him extremely thin. (Jain, Gandhi, the Forgotten Mahatma, 7; Arthur Herman, Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age, 364, 382, 579.) 5. MS refers to Amrit Kaur and Rameshwari Nehru; see notes 8 and 9 following. 6. Joseph, a servant provided by Cook’s Travel Agency, made travel arrangements, organized their meals, and kept street vendors away. MS described him as an “extraordinary character, dressed always in a black alpaca coat and colorful turban.” She paid him a dollar a day, “considered a very good salary,” adding that his “respect for us was

302  •  “Mother India” enormously increased when he heard we were going to visit Gandhi.” “Tiffin” is an informal afternoon meal. See also note 12, following. (MS, Autobiography, 467; OED.) 7. MS may have been served kheer, a combination of milk, a grain (often semolina or dalia), and a sweetener, that was served as either a porridge or a dessert. (Achaya, Indian Food, 59.) 8. Amrit Kaur (1889–1964), a member of Indian royalty (rajkumari means “princess”), was a social reformer, feminist, and founding member of the AIWC and its secretary. Kaur was one of Gandhi’s secretaries in 1934 and became India’s minister of health (1947–57). A Catholic, Kaur opposed birth control. (Siba Pada Sen, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 1 [Calcutta, 1972]; Chicago Daily Tribune, June 6, 1951.) 9. Rameshwari Nehru (1886–1966) was an Indian nationalist known for championing the causes of women and the underprivileged. She was the editor of the Indian women’s journal Stri Dharma and a founder and president of the AIWC Delhi Branch. She was married to Brijlal Nehru, a cousin of Jawaharlal Nehru. (New York Times, Nov. 9, 1966; Basu and Ray, Women’s Struggle, 50.) 10. Jamnalal Bajaj (1886–1942), a wealthy cotton manufacturer and member of the INCP, donated his twenty-acre plantation and home to Gandhi for the use of AIVIA. He and his wife, Jankidevi Jajodia, whom he married when he was twelve and she was nine, had five children. (Bal Ram Nanda, In Gandhi’s Footsteps: The Life and Times of Jamnalal Bajaj [New York, 1990], 9, 51, 211.) 11. Joseph Cornelius Kumarappa (born Chellanduri) (1892–1960) was an Indian economist who had worked closely with Gandhi since 1929, advising him on economic matters and serving as AIVIA secretary. The others were not identified. (P. Rajeswar Rao, The Great Indian Patriots, 2nd ed. [Delhi, 1991], 34–36.) 12. Tiffin was often composed of salads, leftovers from the previous evening’s dinner prepared as pies or curries, and fresh fruit. The use of banana leaves as dishes was a common precaution against contamination, as they could be thrown out after use. MS’s use of the word “curry” may refer to either a traditional kari (any dish of vegetables, spices, and sauce or gravy) or the particular blend of spices that the British call “curry.” The hot buttered bread was likely paratha, while the dry hard bread may have been naan. “A. J.” refers to Anna Jane Phillips. (Achaya, Indian Food, 252; Joan B. Peterson and Indu Menon, Eat Smart in India [Madison, Wisc., 2004], 14.) 13. Rameshwari Nehru helped Gandhi’s efforts to eradicate India’s repressive caste system that ostracized the Dalits (untouchables), who were banned from sharing temples, wells, and other public places and relegated to menial jobs. Gandhi called them “Harijan,” Hindustani for “Child of God.” Nehru also worked on laws to emancipate women and protect children. She visited the Soviet Union in 1931 and was impressed by the legal protections given to women and children. (New York Times, Nov. 9, 1966; Uttara Shastree, Religious Converts in India: Socio-political Study of Neo-Buddhists [New Delhi, 1995], 7; Om Praksah Paliwal, Rameshwari Nehru: Patriot and Internationalist [New Delhi, 1986], 18.) 14. Devdas Gandhi (1900–1957), Mohandas Gandhi’s youngest son, was the managing editor of the Hindustan Times. Also involved in India’s independence movement, he had been imprisoned eight times for his activities. (Chicago Daily Tribune, Aug. 4, 1957.) 15. MS likely referred to satyagraha, Gandhi’s philosophy of spiritual uplift. Among its principles were nonviolence, chastity, and physical work. Gandhi had only recently

December 1935  •  303 established the Sevagram ashram and the village industries at nearby Wardha to build a sustainable local economic and health system. While many of Gandhi’s followers were committed satyagrahis, some just wanted to be close to Gandhi himself. (Johnson, Gandhi’s Experiments with the Truth, 38.) 16. Maganwadi, the village near Wardha, was the base of Gandhi’s AIVIA. By utilizing simple eighteenth-century hand tools, like the spinning jenny, villagers produced khadi, a homespun cotton cloth. (Pandikattu, Gandhi, 184, Paul Mantoux, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century [trans., London, 2006], 217–19.) 17. The process of making paper by hand was well suited to the villagers, as it required little equipment and would “show the artistic capacity of village life.” Linseed or flaxseed, one of the most common crops in India, could be pressed to create an oil used for paint and varnish. R. V. Rao, Our Economic Problems [Lahore, 1946, reprinted 2007], 68–70 [quote 70]; P. Maheshwari and S. L. Tandon, “Agriculture and Economic Development in India,” Economic Review 13 [July–Sept. 1959]: 227; Reserve Bank of India, Review of Co‑operative Movement in India [Bombay, 1950], 120.) 18. The tonga was a two-wheeled wagon hitched to a horse or pony. (OED.) 19. The green puree methi often accompanied meals and was made of fenugreek leaves, used as a treatment for indigestion. The onions in cream was likely raita, made of yogurt, spices, and chopped onions, which served as a cool contrast to the more spicy dishes. (Laxmi Hiremath, The Dance of Spices [Hoboken, N.J., 2005], 27; Achaya, Indian Food, 204.) 20. As part of his philosophy of self-denial, Gandhi believed that by controlling one’s palate, one controlled desires. A vegetarian, Gandhi wrote widely on food, arguing that it should be simple, eaten raw when possible, and limited to the minimum needed to maintain health. He claimed that “if we plan our diet on a scientific basis and eat moderately, nobody would fall ill.” (Joseph S. Alter, Gandhi’s Body: Sex, Diet, and the Politics of Nationalism [Philadelphia, 2000], 20 [quote]; for more on Gandhi’s views, see Gandhi, Diet and Diet Reform [Ahmedabad, 1949].) 21. The food supply in India was insufficient to meet the needs of its rapidly increasing population, a situation made worse by frequent famines. After World War I, many Indian farmers converted from local food production to exportable cash crops to sell to Great Britain, but with the global depression Great Britain’s protectionist bans on Indian imports gutted India’s economy. (Baljit Singh, Whither Agriculture in India [Agra, 1945, 2007], 122; K. A. Manikumar, A Colonial Economy in the Great Depression, Madras (1929–1937) [Hyderabad, 2003], 31.) 22. MS refers to Gandhi’s grand-nephew Kanaiya “Kanu” Gandhi (1917–86), the greatgrandson of Gandhi’s uncle Jeevanchand. Kanu lived at Sevagram and was known for leading prayer meetings and playing music. On Devdas Gandhi, see note 14. (Editors’ correspondence with Peter Ruhe, Nov. 15, 2012.) 23. Kasturba Nakanji Gandhi (1869–1944) married Gandhi when she was thirteen years old. They had five sons (one of whom died in infancy) before Gandhi took his vow of celibacy in 1906. Though MS was dismissive, Kasturba Gandhi was as thoroughly committed a revolutionary as her husband and took on the leadership of the movement during Gandhi’s imprisonments. She was also imprisoned on several occasions. (Gouri Srivastava, Women’s Higher Education in the 19th Century [New Delhi, 2000], 187.)

304  •  “Mother India” 24. Gandhi’s notes were not found. 25. Anna Jane Phillips’s photographs can be found at the Records of the Planned Parenthood Center of Pittsburgh and at the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division; others, possibly taken by Devdas Gandhi, can be found at GandhiServe (http:// www.gandhimedia.org/). 26. Gandhi believed that improving village health was critical to economic development and sought to introduce Western notions of sanitation. He designed improved latrine systems and trash management and took pride in personally cleaning the grounds and ashram latrines. But he faced an apathetic colonial government with a weak commitment to the health of its subjects, as well as a prevalent attitude among Indians that undertaking dirty or menial tasks was beneath them. (Ved Mehta, Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles [New Haven, Conn., 1993], 245–48; Jafar Mahmud, Mahatma Gandhi: A Multifaceted Person [New Delhi, 2004], 18–21.) 27. Gandhi argued that men “should be able to subsist very well by food cooked by the sun’s warmth, even as all the lower animals are able to do,” and that the most nutritious elements were destroyed by cooking. He claimed that “those things that cannot be eaten uncooked, could not have been intended for our food by Nature.” (Gandhi, Gandhi’s Health Guide, 84–86 [quote 84].) 28. Satyagraha centered on a denial of pleasure and excess as a way to spiritual power. In his Guide to Health, Gandhi advised that whenever a man felt “a prompting for enjoyment, [he] should bathe in cold water so that the heat of passion may be cooled down, and be refined into the energy of virtuous activity.” (Gandhi, Gandhi’s Health Guide, 154.) 29. For MS’s version of the interview, see MS, “Does Mr. Gandhi Know Women?,” Jan. 19, 1936, herein; for Mahadev Desai’s account, see “Mrs. Sanger and Birth Control,” 396–99. 30. The sour milk MS tried was likely yogurt, a staple of Indian cooking usually made fresh each day. Gandhi praised the nutritional content of steamed soybeans, a recent import to India, having been available for only about thirty years. (Achaya, Indian Food, 238.) 31. MS was uncertain which doctor was the “doctor general” but noted that both were “high up in Government service.” Tarachand Dayasing Shahani was a British-trained ophthalmologist who worked with the Indian Medical Service through the 1950s. Dr. Yadao Rao Balwant Rao Mangrulkar (1895–1973) was a public health physician who worked in central India. A prominent member of the Nagpur Branch of the Indian Medical Association, Mangrulkar helped facilitate MS’s speech to doctors that evening. She requested his help in getting Pillay’s Marriage Hygiene known among the medical profession. (Editors’ correspondence with Nicola Hilton, Oxford University Archives, Apr. 4, 2011; “Obituary,” Journal of the Indian Medical Association 61 [Oct. 16, 1973]: 358; MS to Mangrulkar, Dec. 5, 1935 [LCM 17:1043].) 32. Many middle-class Indians lacked access to information on childbirth and birth control. In rural areas, even doctors did not have access to this information. (Chandrasekhar, Population and Planned Parenthood in India, 76–82.) 33. Unlike Gandhi, MS linked sexuality with spiritual health and well-being. Mahadev Desai characterized MS during these conversations as “desperately anxious to find out some point of contact with Gandhiji, to find out the utmost extent to which he could go

December 1935  •  305 with her.” (Connelly, Fatal Misconceptions, 100; Desai, “Mrs. Sanger and Birth Control,” 396; for more on Gandhi’s father’s death, see MS, Journal Entry, Nov. 20, 1935, note 5, herein.) 34. Accompanied by Anna Jane Phillips and Rameshwari Nehru, MS took the train to Calcutta on December 4.

107. To Edith How-Martyn 1 Sanger treated Gandhi respectfully, finding common cause on women’s rights and on India’s overpopulation problem, but the two could not agree on the importance of sexuality. Gandhi did concede that he was more opposed to artificial contraception than to abstinence or the rhythm method. (See MS, “Does Mr. Gandhi Know Women?,” Jan. 19, 1936, herein.)

[En route from Wardha to Calcutta, India] 4th Dec. 1935.

Dearest Edith, We are now in the train and I want to get this word off to you to tell you briefly that I had the good luck at Gandhi’s to have waiting for me two women of the A.I.W.C., Mrs. Nehru of Delhi and Mrs. Rajcumari Amrit Kaur, who is one of the principal organisers of the A.I.W.C. (Mrs. Palmer tells me she thinks you were particularly wanting me to meet her).2 Unfortunately neither of these women are going to Travancore. Rajcumari Amrit Kaur remains with Gandhi another fortnight before She goes home to Lahore. She is not at all well and must reserve her strength and is spending this time to recuperate at Wardha. We had some excellent talks and they told me that Gandhi made two important concessions after our two-hour conversations and Mr. Desai told me this morning that he was delighted at the gain made and congratulated me on the approach that I made to Gandhi on the subject.3 You doubtless know that there have been many people discussing this question with him besides yourself4 and my conversations now. Sherwood Eddy and Kirby Page5 and both of these women as well as Madame Naidu6 and now a book by Mrs. Erskine on the ‘safe period’ has been sent him7 and many other people have written him of their point of view since it was known that I was coming here so that he has really been rather bombarded and I believe all on our side.8 However we must not be too optimistic but I think there has been a slight gain. I will send you a copy of our conversations in a very short time and then you will read for yourself better than I can describe to you in this letter.9 Gandhi’s younger son was present and I think we made an impression on him as he was present at both conversations and took some photographs.10 To your private ear: I actually feel that we had the best of the argument and I

306  •  “Mother India”

also feel that the reason for his attitude is because of the psychological shock and regret that was implanted deeply in his subconscious mind at the time of his father’s death when he was in bed with his wife instead of at the bedside of his father.11 If I had more time to be with him and know him better I could give him a test in an objective analysis which I firmly believe would cure him and remove that particular subconscious regret.12 I dare not tell him that now but with a little time that might be overcome. You will be delighted to know that two of the doctors from the village came to see me: Dr. T. D. Shahani, M.B., F.R.S., O.S. and Dr. Y. B. Mangiulkar, M.B., B.S., D.P.H. Both of these men are high up in the Government service. One I believe is the General Director of Medicine.13 They came to talk about methods, sterilisation and the ‘safe period,’ and finally we ended up in a discussion of our films and while this was only three o’clock in the afternoon they dashed off to get the moving picture theatre and the projector and the meeting was called for six o’clock. They herded about forty-five doctors together in what they call a moving picture theatre but it certainly was the most ramshackle place I have ever sat in. When I arrived with the films the man with the projector said he had never seen a film like this before and he had no machine for it. I particularly warned them that my film was of the 16 mm. and not of the 32 mm. and I was deeply disappointed.14 However, after waiting a little while for the Chief Magistrate, who is a direct representative of the King’s, and two or three other magistrates who were present, I sailed forth on giving a talk as broad as I could make it, including a little bit of the scientific and medical aspect for the good of their minds. We only had the theatre for an hour but at least it will start some discussion and I hope before many years that this will spread out and engulf the Mahatma and make him convinced that the workings of his village will depend a good deal upon the control of the population as well as on his handmade industries. I went for my morning walk with both women and Gandhiji this morning at six o’clock and caught the 7.20 train with Mrs. Palmer looking as fresh as an apple-blossom and here we are. Thank you for your letter and for your note about Miss Khandvala having a border for the sari.15 With loving best wishes for a great success and much thanks for sending Mrs. Palmer on. I shall certainly need her as Anna Jane’s beau wired her that he is waiting in Calcutta for her.16 TRcy EHMP, WLAM (MSM C5:990–92).

December 1935  •  307 1. How-Martyn was scheduled to visit Ahmedabad, Palanpur, and Baroda, between December 5 and 17, and then return to Bombay. (How-Martyn, “Report on Second India Tour,” Dec. 2, 1935 [LCM 17:892].) 2. Eileen Palmer (1907–92), How-Martyn’s secretary and a BCIIC organizer, accompanied How-Martyn on her tour. She joined MS as she traveled from Bombay to Calcutta to help with arrangements and publicity. (England and Wales Death Index, 1916–2005; How-Martyn to MS, Feb. 23, 1935 [LCM 17:727]; “Notes and Memorandum,” Eugenics Review 27 [Jan. 1936]: 328; How-Martyn to BCIIC, Nov. 14, 1935 [How-Martyn’s India Scrapbooks, WLAM].) 3. MS wrote to Maurice Newfield that “if I had some more time to see Gandhi, day after day for one week . . . it would have been possible to uproot his prejudice and to carry him on behalf of the cause. He wished very much that I could stay longer or that I could return after Calcutta as he says he is hoping to be thoroughly convinced. I do not flatter myself that he has been convinced but I do believe he was rather entangled in his own arguments and had to make some concession to his reasoning mind.” (MS to Newfield, Dec. 4, 1935 [LCM 17:1034].) 4. See MS to Gandhi, Nov. 27, 1935, notes 1 and 3, herein. 5. Missionary George Sherwood Eddy (1871–1963), a well-known political activist and writer, and Kirby Page (1890–1957), a clergyman, missionary, pacifist, and editor of Christian Century, spent three weeks with Gandhi in December 1929 through the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Eddy became interested in birth control and sex education in the late 1920s, publishing Sex and Youth in 1928. Gandhi told MS, “I have held long arguments with Sherwood Eddy and Kirby Page. I have listened silently, very carefully while they talked to me. But always I have had to say to myself, ‘Why is it that I cannot see eye to eye with them on this thing?’” (ANB; Kirby Page, Kirby Page, Social Evangelist: The Autobiography of a Twentieth Century Prophet for Peace, edited by Harold E. Fey [Nyack, N.Y., 1975], 48–49, 63; New York Times, Mar. 5, 1963, and Dec. 18, 1957; MS, Wardha Journal, Dec. 3, 1935 [quote] [LCM 129:536.) 6. Sarojini Chattopadhyaya Naidu (1879–1949), a feminist, poet, and Indian nationalist since 1905, had a warm relationship with Gandhi. She publicly supported birth control as early as 1921, serving as a patron of Marie Stopes’s London clinic. She and her husband met MS in Hyderabad in January 1936 to discuss inexpensive contraceptives made of rice starch or cornstarch. (New York Times, Mar. 3, 1949; MS, Autobiography, 466–67; “A Birth Control Clinic in London,” Medical Critic and Guide 24 [June 1921]: 208.) 7. Lady Cicely Quicke Erskine (1873–1969), the wife of Conservative member of Parliament Sir James Malcolm Monteith Erskine, authored Nature’s Law of Birth Control (London, 1926), a guide to the rhythm method. (England and Wales Death Index, 1916–2005; Times [London], Nov. 6, 1944.) 8. Marie Stopes and Margaret Cousins were also publicly critical of Gandhi’s views on birth control. (Joseph Kip Kosek, Acts of Conscience [New York, 2009], 86; Connelly, Fatal Misconceptions, 99.) 9. For MS’s conversation with Gandhi, see Wardha Journal, Dec. 3, 1935 [LCM 129:535]. 10. For more on Devdas Gandhi, see MS, Journal Entry, Dec. 2, 1935, note 14, herein. 11. For more on Gandhi’s views of sex, see MS, Journal Entry, Nov. 20, 1935, note 5, herein.

308  •  “Mother India” 12. The test might be a handwriting analysis. MS was interested in graphology, which many believed was a science and a conduit for the subconscious. She paid to have analyses done for herself and friends. See, for example, Ruby Remont, “Impressions of Margaret Sanger Slee,” May 17, 1938 (MSM S83:817). (Los Angeles Times, Feb. 18, 1935.) 13. See MS, Journal Entry, Dec. 2, 1935, note 31, herein. 14. See MS, Excerpts from Journal Entry, Nov. 27, 1935, note 14, herein. 15. MS refers to Kapila Tuljaram Khandvala (1907–ca. 1972), an educator and AIWC social worker who wanted to make birth control available at her center. How-Martyn’s letter was not found. (Waman P. Kubai, ed., Indian Who’s Who, 1937–38 (Bombay, 1938), 373–74; MS to K. Khandvala, Oct. 21, 1935, and “List of Bombay Contacts,” ca. 1936 [LCM 17:855, 18:762].) 16. How-Martyn advised MS to get a good secretary, who, like Eileen Palmer, could also handle publicity. Shortly after returning from India, Anna Jane Phillips wrote MS that she received letters from “our sweet Allan,” who sent her sarongs and other gifts and may have been the beau. (How-Martyn to MS, Feb. 23, 1935 [LCM 17:727]; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Apr. 7, 1941, and Jan. 20, 1988; Phillips to MS, Apr. 26, 1936 [quote] [MSM S11:250].)

108. From Client Sanger received client letters even while traveling abroad, often after a speech or press appearance.

Mymensingh [India]1 6.12.35.

Dear Madam Knowing you to be the sponsor of birth controle theory and have established the fact at your home and abroad, I most humbly venture to you to have some sort of practical remedies, so that I may regain health and energy to be a good housewife in the family I live in. Madam, I won’t encroach upon your pracious time to read over the pages of my woes & sorrows, I only wish to Say that I was given in marriage at the age of eleven2 and now I have attained the age of 23, within this period of 12 years I have given birth to as many as six children. My health is ruined and never hope to be recouped unless or until I am adopted to some sort of guaranteed remedies. Going through the much advertised remedies of birth controle in the Current daily, weekly and monthly papers, I have taken not less than dozen of medecines which are totally proved failure.3 Now I beg to you most humbly to enlighten me with names and address of the specific remedies where available.4

December 1935  •  309

I am not Sure whether this letter will reach your hands or not yet I attach the required stamp, if this reaches you at all, for prompt reply to my given address. I hope this sort of correspondance will not See the light of publication at all, if not think wise to reply, the matter ends here, but I most eagerly awaiting your letter. Thanking you in anticipation of early reply. Yours Sincerely [name omitted] ALS MSP, DLC (LCM 17:1054–55). In the interest of privacy, the MSPP has omitted the author’s name.

1. Mymensingh was a city in the Bengal Province; since 1977 it has been part of Bangladesh. 2. Child marriage, or gouridan, was not uncommon in India. It was only in 1929, with the passage of the Child Marriage Restraint Act, that the minimum age of consent was raised from ten to fifteen years. (Mrinalini Sinha, “Refashioning Mother India: Feminism and Nationalism in Late-Colonial India,” Feminist Studies 26, no. 3 [2000]: 629.) 3. Contraceptives, most of them imported from the United States or Europe, were widely advertised in India. These included spermicidal jellies, condoms, diaphragms, suppositories, and foaming tablets. The advertisements often directed readers to catalogs that simply listed various methods, often without any guidance. A. P. Pillay complained that the lack of scientific knowledge among doctors led to prescriptions for harmful methods. He said that birth control “was too much in the hands of laymen and chemists.” (Hodges, Contraception, Colonialism and Commerce, 108–9 [quote]; Himes and Stone, Practical Birth Control Methods, 91.) 4. MS had become increasingly dissatisfied with the diaphragm and jelly combination, finding it expensive, troublesome, and messy, especially for poor and rural women who were without access to physicians or running water. She hoped that foam powder, which could be used without a diaphragm or a doctor’s supervision, would be better suited to India. (MS to Lydia DeVilbiss, Sept. 19, 1935 [MSM S10:370]; for more on foam powder, see Vol. 2.)

109. To J. Noah Slee 1 On December 8, Sanger spoke in Calcutta before the Indian Medical Association in a speech titled “Organization of Birth Control Clinics.” She also met with reporters and led a public meeting at Albert Hall, delivering the speech “Birth Control and Modern Civilization” under the auspices of the local chapter of the SSPFH. Her words elicited harangues from “two old bearded men in the front row,” until a fistfight broke out, and the meeting abruptly ended. (Evening News of India, Dec. 8, 1935; Times of India, Dec. 11, 1935; MS, Autobiography, 472–73 [quote].)

310  •  “Mother India”

[Calcutta, India] Dec 9 [1935]

My dearest darling hubby: What a life! I live on trains mostly, the long distances are enough, but the slow trains make a journey endless.2 Then the dirt & dust is unbelievable. They have bath tubs & showers in the first class trains & no wonder, but I’d rather remain as I am than get into one of the train tubs. I left Bombay for Wardha to see Gandhi where I spent two days. I had a very nice time there as he has a guest house & two other ladies were visiting him also.3 He is a remarkable personality. I arrived here on Thursday after twenty four hours in the train from Gandhi’s I had only time to wash & change at this hotel when I took the train to see the Poet Tagore—4 That was a five hour ride. I spent one night sleeping in the open, under the stars walked miles around his beautiful school5 & took the six hour slow train back the next day. So that yesterday is the first day I have had not on trains in sometime. I leave here Tuesday 11th & go to Darjeeling & Kolonpong.6 Return here on the 14th to catch the special Express to Delhi. I stop along the way for meetings but Ill be State guest of the Maharaji of Baroda7 from the 18 to the 20th & then I must get to Bombay on the 22 to 24th.8 Ill fly to Travancore as the train takes 36 to 45 hours.9 Ill be on the train or flying Christmas Day as I wrote you in my last letter.10 Edith has helped me no end, she insisted on sending her very competent Secty along with me11 as Anna Jane has beau’s at every port & of course its hard to keep her doing my work when she wants to dance & play.12 I also wrote you that I will not sail from Calcutta but from Colombo in Feb.13 So send c/o Cooks any mail after Jan 25th, Madras will reach me all during January. Care of Cooks everywhere no personal addresses are reliable. Well dearest one I am keeping well thank god finding food very dull & lacking in nourishment but I have those capsules & tablets of food & they help.14 You would be amused to see me travel—two secretaries, one bearer, one Cooks guide, his cooley my bearers cooley, one cooley for every bag & package as between Anna Jane & myself we carry about ten or twelve bags having left the largest ones in Bombay. So about 16 or 18 human beings tag along with your wife from train to station & to hotels. Its amusing. We also carry our own bedding, matresses, blankets, sheets, pillow cases, towels, soap & toilet paper besides drinking water. Our Bearer Joseph is a very intelligent man long experienced in travel, He wears a large maroon colored turban with flowing ends. He was coached by Anna Jane never to converse with me or to talk unless I spoke to him first. So he stands like a sentinel & shakes his head when I speak to him. He prepares

December 1935  •  311

my bath, shines & cleans my shoes, presses my clothes packs & unpacks, cleans the rooms as well as bath rooms & guards my possessions when I am not here. He takes the place of a maid. He is your gift to me & I bless you for it.15 No letters from anyone but Hz, who gives me the news briefly that the magazine is out & all going well.16 These films are a great help making my work far easier, & the strain of lecturing 100% less.17 The weather is delightful cool nights & warm days, blankets necessary even when sleeping indoors. Some beautiful sapphires here & oh such lovely things to buy for the house. Some village industries are reviving their lost arts & are making cloth & material too lovely for words. I want to get some & I cant resist temptation much longer as the articles become more beautiful as we get further into India. I expect to be broke anyway & you will have to support & cherish me in my young days as well as in my old ones.18 So far you would not mind India, except the trains, & food, but I miss you darling every day. It will soon be Christmas & then Spring & our meeting & you. love ever & ever Margy ALS MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S10:753–60). Letterhead of the Grand Hotel.

1. Slee spent the fall and winter of 1935 on a motor tour of the South and Southwest with his friend H. B. Vanderhoef. (MS to Slee, Nov. 12, 1935 [MSM S10:611].) 2. MS had already traveled more than 530 miles from Bombay to Wardha and another 700 miles from Wardha to Calcutta. By the end of her tour, she logged more than 10,000 miles. (MS, “Birth Control International Centre Tour in India.”) 3. MS refers to Rameshwari Nehru and Amrit Kaur. 4. MS arrived in Calcutta on December 5. The next day she went to Rabindranath Tagore’s ashram, Santiniketan, about 200 miles north, staying in the guesthouse. She returned to Calcutta on December 7. (MS to Tagore, Nov. 28, 1935, and Anil Chanda to MS, Dec. 1, 1935 [LCM 17:942, 136:378]; MS to Tagore, Dec. 10, 1935 [MSM C5:1008].) 5. MS toured Visva-Bharati, Tagore’s university, which offered instruction in fine arts, music, and the study of Indian literature. Tagore was one of the sponsors of the “Bratachari” educational movement, which focused on citizenship and cultural revival. (Dutta and Robinson, Rabindranath Tagore, 220–21; Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 9, 1935.) 6. MS spoke to Calcutta doctors at the All-India Institute of Hygiene and interviewed the governor of the Bengal on December 10, then left for Kalumpang and Darjeeling, about 350 miles north of Calcutta in the foothills of the Himalayas, to “see how the Tibetan people live and work.” She stayed with Katherine “Bunty” Graham Odling (1897–1976), the daughter of a missionary, at her home “Glenrilli,” a frequent stop for explorers heading to Mount Everest. (MS, Autobiography, 474–75; John Alexander Lamb, ed., Fasti Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ: The Succession of Ministers in the Church of Scotland from the Reformation [Edinburgh, 1928], 9:694–95; England and Wales Death Index, 1916‑2006;

312  •  “Mother India” Anna Jane Phillips to Katherine Odling, Nov. 30, 1935 [quote] [LCM 17:959]; Peter Steele, Eric Shipton: Everest and Beyond [Seattle, 1998], 91.) 7. Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III (1863–1939) ruled the Baroda State from 1875 to 1939. He was a progressive leader who favored the nationalist cause and opposed repressive social customs such as untouchability, caste restriction, and early marriage. (Times [London], Feb. 7, 1939.) 8. MS’s plans had changed slightly. She returned to Calcutta on December 13 to screen the birth control films, meet with the Indian Medical Association, and join a group of women at the Theosophical Society on December 14. She held meetings for students and women in Allahabad on December 15 and 16, spoke to doctors and women in Delhi on December 17, and addressed female medical students in Agra on December 18, before arriving in Baroda on December 20. (“Mrs. Sanger’s Meetings,” n.d. [LCM 17:1034].) 9. Baroda was approximately 2,100 miles north of Trivandrum, the site of the AIWC. 10. See MS to Slee, Dec. 1, 1935 [MSM S10:707].) 11. MS refers to Eileen Palmer, who accompanied her to Calcutta, Benares, and Nagpur. (See MS to How-Martyn, Dec. 4, 1935, notes 2 and 16, herein.) 12. Anna Jane Phillips, an enthusiastic twenty-eight-year-old, was not a trained secretary and knew little of India. (Phillips to MS, July 1935 and Aug. 22, 1935 [MSM S10:254, 301].) 13. See MS to Slee, Dec. 1, 1935 (MSM S10:707). 14. Concentrated food tablets were marketed mainly for emergencies. MS may have also been taking vitamins. (Manchester Guardian, Aug. 27, 1932; MS to Slee, Dec. 16, 1935 [MSM S10:773].) 15. Slee provided the funds to hire Joseph. 16. MS likely refers to Hazel Zborowski’s letter that updated MS on the new Journal of Contraception (JOC). (Zborowski to MS, Nov. 12, 1935 [MSM S10:651].) 17. For more on the films, see MS, Excerpts from Journal Entry, Nov. 27, 1935, note 14, herein. 18. MS had a modest income from publications and speaking fees but depended on a regular allowance from Slee. Though his finances had improved somewhat, he was still embroiled in a tax dispute and one or more lawsuits. (MS to Françoise Cyon Lafitte, Jan. 1, 1935, and MS to Havelock Ellis, Mar. 21, 1936 [MSM S9:508, 11:162]; see also Vol. 2.)

110. From Client

Gulbarga,[India]1 December 24, 1935

Urgent Revered Madam, I welcome you to this ancient country of India which is the cradle of many religions and cultures and wish your stay here to be happy and successful. Ever since your advent in this country of hoary civilization I have been reading your lectures with the greatest interest and my wife and I myself want to follow your advice in regard to Birth control.2 As for morals and morality both of us have never as yet in all our lives gone for anybody else. My wife

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has given birth to 9 children out of which 6 are alive and we pray and put forth all our resources for their support and long prosperous life. But we are now at the end of our resources: my wife has lost all her vitality allthough she is still 28, and I can not earn more than what is barely sufficient for the present family. More than this it is most hard to get a good bridegroom of equal status & respectability for the girls.3 I am under a religious vow that I must not go to any woman other than my married wife. I am just over 40 when I am bound by a similar solemn vow not to marry again. What am I to do then? Total abstinence or continence is not possible. I am not only a moral being but a religious man bound by many moral vows. Shall I break these vows? It is impossible while there is a flicker of life in me. There is no alternative but the adoption of your method; and I crave your advice and guidance. In your broadcast address in Bombay you declared that you have a safe and unfailing device which does not cost more than 14 annas and remains for a lifetime.4 I am amazed at the statement. I have already used leather caps but they have neither been unfailing nor lasted more than a month.5 In spite of spending a lot on the leather caps I have had a child. I beg therefore request you most earnestly to let me have an apparatus or two which may be easily fitted and may prove really ‘unfailing.’ If you can supply such material your movement is bound to percolate to the masses in India in spite of organised opposition if any.6 Please let me know where I can get your apparatus & who can fit it. I shall but be too glad if I can ↑be ↓ of any service to you. With Respects and soliciting an early reply, I remain Revered madam yours very truly [name omitted] ALS MSP, DLC (LCM 17:1176–80). In the interest of privacy, the MSPP has omitted the author’s name. For a transcribed copy, see LCM 17:1174.

1. Gulbarga is in the state of Karnataka in southwestern India. 2. Summaries of MS’s speeches and interviews with reporters were widely published in the Indian press. 3. Fathers bore the responsibility for finding suitable husbands for their daughters. Girls married young, usually to a member of the same social caste, and fathers had to pay substantial dowries. (Rao and Rao, Marriage, the Family, and Women in India, 7–8.) 4. In her November 30 radio address, “What Birth Control Can Do for India,” MS asserted that current contraceptive methods were 100 percent effective. She also said, referring to a diaphragm paired with contraceptive jelly, “We have a method to offer which will cost less than 14 annas per year” and would last “over a long period of time.” An anna was valued at one-sixteenth of a rupee. (MSM C16:384.)

314  •  “Mother India” 5. The client may be referring to a leather condom or, less likely, a leather pessary. In the nineteenth century, both condoms and pessaries were occasionally made of leather, but the development of rubber made them obsolete. (Howard A. Kelly and Robert E. Fricke, “The Use of Pessaries,” Therapeutic Gazette 45 (Jan. 15, 1921): 5; Himes, Medical History of Contraception, 125.) 6. India did not have the kind of organized opposition to birth control that plagued the movement in the United States. According to Sir Vepa Ramesan, its struggle was against “colossal ignorance even among the highly educated classes, of the barest elements of the subject. As usual in an oriental country, we are struggling against inertia.” (Ramesan to MS, June 10, 1929 [LCM 17:319].)

111. To Client The following letter was written by Sanger in response to the client letter of December 24, 1935, herein.

[Trivandrum, India] December 30, 1935

Dear Mr. [name omitted], I received your interesting letter. I think you have a difficult problem but perhaps no more difficult than thousands of others who, like yourself, are trying to live fine, religious, ideal lives. I should suggest, after deep consideration, the following: You already have as large a family as you are able to provide for. You have already taken a vow not to marry again. Total abstinence would not be advisable for you and yet it would probably bring you great unhappiness to break your vows. As an answer to your problem I should suggest that you have the slight operation of vasectomy performed. This is a means of turning in the little tube where the germ cell or sperm comes through. This does not need to be cut but can be tucked in or pressed together or tied off according to the doctor’s technique.1 At any time in the future when you might desire another child this could be opened and the cell could pass out in the normal way.2 But as you are already 40 years old and considering the circumstances of your life, this may never be necessary. One of the best men to do this would be Dr. A. P. Pillay, Kodak House, Hornby Road, Fort, Bombay,3 or if Calicut is nearer your home, I would suggest that you ask Dr. Maryen Sundaram, Calicut, Malabar, South India,4 to perform the operation. Both are good men. This may mean a trip from home for you but I assure you that the method is very simple. It takes no more than ten or fifteen minutes, only a little local anaesthetic is used, and you can leave for your home the same day. You

December 1935  •  315

will be in no way incapacitated in your sex life or any other way. Thousands of men are having this done all over the world to save their wives from the hardships of too many pregnancies when other methods are not available.5 I personally know dozens of men who had it done ten or twelve years ago and have enjoyed good health and a happy love life every since. If you care to communicate with me again, letters will reach me if addressed care of Thomas Cook and Son, Madras. Sincerely yours, MS. [initialed by secretary] TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 17:1212). In the interest of privacy, the MSPP has omitted the recipient’s name.

1. In this technique, the testicle is drawn down, the seminal duct (or vas deferens) rolled up beneath the skin, an incision made, the spermatic cord drawn out, and the seminal duct separated out, ligatured, and a small piece removed. For more details of the procedure as performed in the 1930s, see Landman, Human Sterilization, 208–9. 2. While vasectomies were theoretically reversible, experts at the time assessed the chances of success at only 25 percent. (E. S. Gosney and Paul B. Popenoe, Sterilization for Human Betterment [New York, 1929], 78.) 3. Dr. A. P. Pillay supported both voluntary and involuntary sterilization. He had recently opened an SSPFH birth control clinic in Bombay staffed by a woman doctor. (Wadia, Light Is Ours, 497.) 4. Manjeri Sundaram was a Calcutta physician who worked for the Government Hospital and as medical officer for the Standard Tile and Clay Works. (Sundaram to MS, Jan. 20, 1936 [LCM 18:13].) 5. Most “voluntary” sterilizations recorded in the United States were performed in prisons or mental institutions on those who agreed to the procedure in exchange for parole. Though surgical sterilization is a simple procedure that does not affect a patient’s sexual desire or performance, vasectomy as a male contraceptive method did not become widespread until the 1970s. (Ian Robert Dowbiggin, The Sterilization Movement and Global Fertility in the Twentieth Century [New York, 2008], 32; Frances Oswald, “Eugenical Sterilization in the United States,” American Journal of Sociology 36 [July 1930]: 65‑73.)

112. News from Margaret Sanger Sanger and How-Martyn left Bombay on December 25 to attend the AIWC meeting in Trivandrum on December 28, “the famous day for which I came to India.” The opening ceremony was held at the New Hall, decorated with “a ceiling of white linen stretched beneath the roof, from which hung ropes and lanterns of white jasmine and crimson roses.” Sanger greeted the AIWC on behalf of the international birth control movement, wishing the women of India “success in their efforts to establish political, social, economic and biological rights for the joyful health of mothers in the new world of tomorrow.” (AIWC Proceedings, Tenth Session, 13 [quote 1]; Times of India, Dec. 30, 1935 [quote 2]; Madras Mail, Dec. 30, 1935 [quote 3].)

316  •  “Mother India”

Mandura, South India1 January 2, 1936 Letter No. 3—For Mrs. Sanger’s Intimate Friends and Family.2 Greetings, Everybody: Here I am in a railway station en route to Madras. I left Trivandrum last night at 9:30 being promised I was on a fast express to Madras. For some reason we were all dumped out here at 10:40 this morning and now must wait for the 7:40 evening train to take us to Madras.3 As Anna Jane worked so hard at the Conference I decided she needed a little let down, so she remained at Trivandrum to see the younger girls and women, who all loved her and whom she wanted to know better; girls of fine families and influential in Indian life.4 So I left her and insisted on the bearer remaining with her, thinking I’d not need anyone until I got to Madras where Edith and Herbert (Mr. and Mrs. How-Martin) are waiting.5 So when I was “ejected” here I laughed at the absurdity of my taking all the luggage of the party with me and to have no bearer to help or watch over it! Well, the Conference was well attended by Catholics!!! All the red tape and influence of the Royal House and ingenuity of a small active group were put into play to defeat the Birth Control resolution. Her Highness had two sessions with me to try to influence me to sidetrack the resolution!!!6 She begged me to use my voice and influence and persuade the Conference to exert all energies on the removal of “brothels,” etc. I replied that the Conference had passed a resolution against “traffic in women” and that this subject was already covered by others who knew more about this traffic than I did.7 Nevertheless she pleaded with me to swing the interest of the women into other lines! As State Guest it was awkward, but it was as impossible to do it as to change the color of my eyes.8 I dashed back to the Conference as my last interview with the Maharani was 8 a.m. and the Conference Section with the Birth Control resolution began at 9. I got back in time to enter the discussion and to speak last before the vote was taken.9 I opened by saying I would have had more respect for the sincerity of the opposition’s interest in the moral aspect of the subject (they based their opposition on the moral issue) had they brought forth a resolution or urged the Conference to take action to wipe out the brothel system, etc., etc. So I threw out that bit for Her Highness and went straight ahead on the attack.10 Everyone realized the difficulty as Her Highness of Trivandrum was not only acting President and presided at every session but this one, but the Social Hostess of the Royal House is a Miss Watts, an ardent Roman Catholic, who has great influence with Her Highness,11 who in turn dominates the Maharaja, her son, who is in power and rules in the Matriarchal State!12 It’s all full of intrigue underneath but it was a lot of fun to me to see the inside machinery going round. Anyway the resolution was carried by 84 to 25!! The

January 1936  •  317

Catholics resigned at once, including Miss Watts. Such poor sports; unless they can dominate the game they won’t play!13 The amusing part of the Session was that all those who spoke against the resolution were “Miss” this or “Miss” that! They spoke with great fervour and concern about the passions of men in and out of marriage.14 One of the women pointed out that so far it was the unmarried women present, who seemed to know so much about these passions that it shocked some of them to hear their views.15 This sent the audience into roars of laughter and then each unmarried woman who spoke emphasized the brothers and the family relationship in excuse for knowing so much about men. But their case was weakened because most of them were foreigners and Eurasians. No important Indian women spoke against the resolution and I doubt if any one of the opponents at all was wholly Indian.16 The men of the press were turned out at the request of Her Highness and the women did not like it at all.17 They were however present at the Opening Session when I presented our Greetings. It was received with tremendous applause and all agreed that it was the most “electrical” message of the Conference and had the best reception given to it. Of course I had it re-done on a larger parchment, about the size of the usual diploma.18 It was nicely done and looked like a real greeting and will be kept on record, and framed. I was given an evening for a meeting before the resolution. But as to meetings I had just about the finest evening after. The Youth Movement, 1,000 men, young of course, sat on the ground in the open air before the Y.M.C.A. and drank in every word I spoke without as much as a sound throughout an hour and a half address. It is the men who are deeply alive to this question.19 Doctors came from all over the South of India, men and women too, asking me to come to their towns or cities and help them get things started. I gave demonstrations in my room, in the dressing room, in the car, and in the ante-rooms at the Conference. I was followed and besieged to tell them what to do and how to help others. Finally on the train last night a young woman had a compartment next to mine. She knocked on my door and asked to come in. She had been to the Conference with her six months’ old baby, whom she nurses. She is 27 years old and has four children, has had five abortions and one still birth. Her husband sent her to the Conference to see me and the poor darling had no chance even to get near me, so when it was announced at the afternoon session that I was leaving that night, she promptly decided to take the same train and got her bed next to me! I was simply amazed at the tenacity and gentleness of this little thing, almost a child in her attitude and yet determined to do something to prevent having more children. The Bombay Corporation passed a resolution that has been before them for three years to ask a Special Medical Committee to report on the question of “Birth Control and the Municipality.”20

318  •  “Mother India”

Also Edith wired me that the Medical Conference at Nagpur had endorsed the Birth Control resolution.21 I am to show the films and speak before the first All India Conference of Gynecologists and Obstetricians tomorrow afternoon and address a Public Meeting arranged by the Y.M.C.A. on January 6th and heaven knows how many more.22 I have already had thirty-three meetings and have established about thirty Centre or places where birth control information is to be given:23 maternity wards and hospitals and other Centre where gynecologists are in charge and are enthusiastic about the gynaeplaque of which I have had fifty shipped here from U.S.A.,24 besides large batches of jellies and pessaries and condoms of a different quality and formulas and a powder that foams.25 I am trying to get the big rubber company of Trivandrum to make rubber sponges and pessaries.26 You would be surprised to know that the men and women too prefer to use the diaphragm pessary and the doctors want to introduce it here cheap.27 I have carried and shipped Maurice’s (Michael Fielding) leaflet all over India28 and as the Catholic Truth Society got hold of several copies they raised a scene by saying we were spreading information among young people, etc., etc.29 I then got up another leaflet of “Questions and Answers” and that is going the rounds as Education. (Copy going forward to Centre).30 I have a very fine young medical man who speaks English, Tamil and Hindi, who is a fine public speaker and will give up his private practice for a year if we can give him 100 Rupees a month and travel expenses (which will be little). This would mean $40 a month and I am going to try him out at Mysore and Hyderabad. He can give a very special demonstration to the men after I give the regular address. We did this at the Youth Meeting in Trivandrum and it was a great joy to find him well versed in the knowledge of the technique. This man was trained in Madras Medical College and lived with Dr. and Mrs. Cousins for five years and knows and speaks English well.31 The interest here is beyond expectation. At the bank today at Madura when I sent to cash an American Express cheque one of the men at the desk came up to Dr. Sundaram and asked if I could come and speak at the Y.M.C.A tonight.32 It’s like that everywhere. Interest is keen and I hope it won’t lag and die down. That’s why it would be wonderfully helpful if we could keep someone here on the job. $40 a month is only $480 a year, less than £100. Expenses would be about the same but $1000 could do an enormous amount of good this year, following up this interest by a medical person. Edith and I are seeing the important people connected with the Government and medical colleges in Madras.33 I go from here to Mysore as State Guest and then on to Hyderabad and expect to attend the Population Confer-

January 1936  •  319

ence at Lucknow on January 27th and 28th34 and then I go to the Conference of the International Council of Women in Calcutta.35 I sail from Calcutta on February 2nd for Rangoon and then homeward bound. Cordial greetings to friends in America and England. MARGARET SANGER TD NHP, MBCo (MSM C6:20–23). Released by the NCFLBC.

1. MS was going from Trivandrum (Thiruvananthapuram), on the extreme southwestern tip of India, to Madras (Chennai) on the eastern coast, a trip of about 450 miles. She likely stopped in Madurai, the administrative center of the Tamil Nadu region, about 170 miles northeast of Trivandrum. 2. MS sent two previous newsletters, the first covering her meetings in London and the second her stay in India up to her meeting with Gandhi. (MS, “Letter to Family and Friends,” Nov. 1935 and Dec. 9, 1935 [LCM 17:984, 137:375].) 3. MS arrived in Madras on January 3 for several speaking engagements, including talks to the All-India Congress of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and the YMCA. (Hindu [Madras], Jan. 3, 4, and 8, 1936.) 4. Phillips handled MS’s correspondence, scheduled speaking engagements, and typed her newsletters and meeting reports. (WWAW; for more on Phillips’s work in India, see LCM 17:1165–1313, 12:742–72].) 5. Edith and George Herbert Martyn traveled together with Eileen Palmer to Madras on December 31, 1935. (Hindu [Madras], Jan. 1, 1936; U.K. Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878–1960.) 6. The royal family of Travancore, particularly Maharani Setu Parvati Bayi (1895–1985), the ambitious mother of the Maharaja, had a long association with Catholic AngloIndian advisers in a region where Catholics made up about a quarter of the population. The resolution still passed by a vote of eighty-four to twenty-five. (Ouwerkerk, No Elephants for the Maharaja, 71; Catholic Encyclopedia [1908], 76.) 7. The AIWC passed a multipart resolution against trafficking in women and children. It called for additional study of the problem, better enforcement of laws, and stronger penalties. (AIWC, Proceedings, Tenth Session, 153–54.) 8. The Maharani had given MS the use of a guesthouse and a car. (MS to Bayi, Jan. 3, 1936 [LCM 17:1255].) 9. The AIWC had passed a 1931 resolution calling for “immediate efforts to be made to spread the scientific knowledge of birth control” through “the medium of recognized clinics.” The 1935 resolution called for “instruction in methods of Birth-Control through recognized clinics, and for pressure to be placed on “Municipalities and other organisations for maternity and child welfare to open Centres to impart such knowledge.” Several delegates, including D. H. Watts, M. I. Rosemeyer, L. C. M. Ouwerkirk, E. Gomez, and Mrs. Thanu Pillai, opposed it. MS noted that all but Pillai were unmarried and Christian, rather than Hindu or Muslim, and asserted that though Christianity was old and powerful, the fact that it still distrusted women with knowledge meant that its teachings had failed. (Ramusack, “Embattled Advocates,” 43 [quote 1]; AIWC, Proceedings, Tenth Session, 86–91 [86 (quotes 2–3), 90–91 (quote 4)].)

320  •  “Mother India” 10. MS’s comments were not included in the AIWC proceedings or in newspaper coverage of the event. 11. Dorothia Henriett Watts (b. 1889) was a British educator whose father and brother held high government positions in Travancore. She tutored Maharani Bayi and was a mentor and friend to the royal family. A staunch Catholic, she opposed birth control. (U.K. Incoming Passengers, 1878–1960; AIWC, Proceedings, Tenth Session, 88; “Watts the Matter,” Hindu [Madras], Jan. 6, 2003.) 12. The succession is better described as matrilineal. Though the royal title was passed along the maternal line, the senior male member of the family ruled. Maharaja Chitra Thirunal Bala Rama Varma (1912–91) inherited the throne from his uncle at twelve years old, assuming power in 1931. He was the last prince of Travancore. (Ouwerkerk, No Elephants for the Maharaja, 71; New York Times, July 21, 1991.) 13. Catholic delegates to the AIWC resigned in protest of the resolution and held a mass meeting on January 3 at the Catholic Young Men’s Association condemning birth control. It was led by Father Paul, vicar of St. Joseph’s Church, who said, “The holy Church, which knew the evil effects of the modern practice of birth control or birth prevention, condemned it and warned people against it.” (Madras Mail, Jan. 4 [quote] and 6, 1936.) 14. These comments were not recorded in the AIWC proceedings. Dorothia Watts argued that “spiritual strength was acquired by self-control and not by indulgence.” Louise Ouwerkerk, a Catholic educator, argued that because birth control was so controversial in the West, India should continue its old ways. (AIWC, Proceedings, Tenth Session, 88 [quote], 89–90.) 15. Lakshmi Menon (1899–1994), an attorney and social reformer, noted that the objections came mostly from unmarried women. She argued that if India’s population kept growing at the current rate, it would eventually have half the resources it had now. (S. N. Visvahath, Lakshmi N. Menon [Bangalore, 1995]; AIWC, Proceedings, Tenth Session, 88.) 16. The resolution’s opponents all had Western names, with the exception of Mrs. Thanu Pillai (possibly Ponnamma Thanu Pillai, the wife of Indian nationalist “Pattom” A. Thanu Pillai). Indian women supporting the resolution included Lakshmi Menon and Drs. Malini B. Sukthankar, Jarbanoo E. Mistri, B. Natarajan, and Ratnamma Isaac. (AIWC, Proceedings, Tenth Session, 88–90.) 17. The press was given a summary of the meeting, very similar to what was published in the proceedings. 18. The parchment was the Scroll of Greeting prepared for her by the BCIIC in London. As the scroll was too small, she had it put on a larger parchment so that it “looked like a real greeting, and will be kept on record and framed.” For a summary of MS’s statement, see Hindu (Madras), Dec. 31, 1935. (Newfield to MS, Nov. 25, 1935, and Jan. 6, 1936 [LCM 17:908, 15:1022]; MS to Everybody, Jan. 2, 1936 [quote] [MSM C6:20].) 19. MS’s speech was not found. Her audience was likely made up of members of the INCP’s Youth Leagues. 20. On December 23, M. R. Masani, the mayor of the Bombay Municipal Corporation, introduced a resolution to include free contraceptive information at its hospitals and dispensaries. MS, How-Martyn, and A. P. Pillay attended the debate. The resolution

January 1936  •  321 did not pass; it was instead referred to the Medical Relief Committee for further study and recommendations. (Bombay Chronicle, Dec. 24, 1935.) 21. The Twelfth All-India Medical Conference, held in Nagpur at the end of December, unanimously voted that birth control methods should be taught in medical colleges. For the telegram, see How-Martyn to MS, Dec. 30, 1935 (LCM 135:276). (Madras Mail, Jan. 2, 1936.) 22. MS spoke to the All-India Obstetrics and Gynecology Congress in Madras on January 3, arguing that birth control under medical auspices was the best way to improve women’s health and reduce infant mortality. On January 6, she lectured on birth control to the Madras YMCA. The meeting was presided over by Sir Vepa Ramesan, a retired high-court judge, who called MS “the greatest woman in the world and the greatest benefactress to humanity.” (Hindu [Madras], Jan. 4 and 7 [quote], 1936.) 23. Most of these clinics were opened by local governments at their maternity hospitals. 24. For lists of the recipients of gynaplaques and other supplies, see Eileen Palmer to Anu Waglé, Jan. 7, 1936, Palmer, “Distribution of Gynaplaques,” Jan. 1936, Anna Jane Phillips to K. N. Marti, Jan. 1936, and Phillips, “Gynaplaques from Bombay,” Jan. 1936 [LCM 17:1293, 18:123, 127, 125].) 25. MS had the BCCRB in New York ship Holland-Rantos, Matrisalus, Mizpah, and Marvosan pessaries and spermicidal jellies to India before she arrived, in care of Pillay and Margaret Cousins. (Hazel Zborowski to Anne Kennedy, W. W. Coppage, and Mr. Weiner, all Oct. 14, 1935 [LCM 17:824, 826, 827].) 26. MS likely meant the Travancore Rubber Company, founded by the state of Kerala in Trivandrum that August. No correspondence has been found between them. MS also tried to convince the Bombay Surgical Company and Lynch’s Chemists in Calcutta to manufacture and market foam powder contraceptives. (Anna Jane Phillips to N. K. Marti, Jan. 1936 [LCM 18:127]; V. G. Pillai, The Public Sector in Kerala [Trivandrum, 1980], 97.) 27. Though middle-class Indians sought the methods used in the United Kingdom and the United States, obtaining them was difficult. For poor and rural Indians, the diaphragm and jelly method was scarce and too expensive. Most relied on cost-free methods such as abstinence or withdrawal. (Gyan Chand, India’s Teeming Millions: A Contribution to the Study of the Indian Population Problem [London, 1934], 342.) 28. The BCIIC had provided some ten thousand copies of Michael Fielding’s Parenthood to be distributed “with discretion” during the India trip. (Hodges, Contraception, Colonialism and Commerce, 66.) 29. The Catholic Truth Society, a British-based Catholic publishing company, issued several anti–birth control tracts and handbills, including The Meaning of Birth Prevention and Why Birth Control Is Wrong. (Hodges, Contraception, Colonialism and Commerce, 66.) 30. MS may refer to the BCCRB’s “Questions and Answers about Birth Control.” 31. Manjeri Sundaram was one of a number of students who lived with James and Margaret Cousins. (James Cousins and Margaret Cousins, We Two Together [Madras, 1950], 292, 747.) 32. The YMCA of Madurai was founded in 1884. No information on whether MS spoke was found. (Times of India, Oct. 16, 2009.) 33. MS and How-Martyn traveled separately in Madras, getting together only for a brief tactical session. Among those MS met in Madras were Lady Marjorie Erskine;

322  •  “Mother India” Dr. Ida Scudder, president of the All-India Obstetric and Gynecological Society; Dr. N. A. Purandare of the Bombay Obstetrical and Gynaecological Society; and Sir Vepa Ramesan. (Senator [Madras], Mar. 29, 1936; Hindu [Madras], Jan. 7, 1936; Government House News [Madras], Jan. 8, 1928.) 34. From January 19 to 21, MS stayed at Race House as the guest of Sir Mirza Ismail, the dewan of Mysore and a birth control supporter. MS delivered the speech “Problems of Population” on January 20 to the Indian Red Cross Society at Rangacharlu Memorial Hall to help celebrate Baby Week. MS was also invited to lead the Social Biology and Hygiene Section of the first All-India Population Conference and present a public talk on birth control, but the conference was postponed to February 3, the day after she left India, due to the death of King George V. (MS to Slee, Jan. 22, 1936 [MSM S10:916]; Anna Jane Phillips to Dr. Melkote, Jan. 17, 1936, and Radhakamal Mukerjee, Nov. 26, 1936 [LCM 18:3, 17:914]; MS, Autobiography, 489.) 35. MS visited Hyderabad before arriving in Calcutta around January 25. The Joint Conference of the International Council of Women and the National Council of Women in India met from January 30 to February 5, 1936, in Calcutta. The ICW worked toward the advancement of women by linking women’s groups in different countries. (MS Hyderabad Deccan Itinerary, Jan. 22–24, 1936 [LCM 18:67]; “Calcutta Conference Souvenir,” Jan. 1936 [ICW Archives, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College], 1.)

113. Journal Entry After the AIWC, Sanger spent a week in Madras, giving speeches and attending meetings, then took two days to visit Paul Brunton, whose book on Indian mysticism, A Search in Secret India (London, 1934), had intrigued her. (Senator [Madras], Mar. 29, 1936; Brunton to MS, ca. Nov. 1935 [LCM 135:313].)

[Madras, India] Jan 10, 1936.

Paul Brunton—Tiruvammalai1 About nine Am P. B. called on his bicycle & I in a “tonga” & he on his cycle went to see Maharshi or Sri Bamana Maharshi or the Sage of Arunachala the one time Hermit of the Hill of the Holy Beacon & one of the last of Hindustan’s race of noble Rishees.2 As we trotted along behind the horse in the tonga through a thickly settled village or town we passed the Pogoda Temple & always the Beacon Hill loomed up at every turn.3 The Secty was in the tonga with me4 & as we stopped at the market for a few plantins (bananas) as a gift for the Maharshi we could see the same coloring & hear the constant chattering of men women & babies, while always far & near is the rumbling of the bullock carts & the shrieking “[hay?]” of the driver shouting to people to get out of the way. At last we got to the ashram at the foot of the hill which is according to ancient lore the heart center of the God Shiva a holy place & the spiritual pivot of the

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world. As we alighted, the Secty took the plantins in his hands but no sooner had he turned to help me out of the tonga than a temple monkey leapt from a near by tree, grabbed two bananas & as quick as a flash had the skins off & gobbled ↑them ↓ down & with no concern whatever of his conduct looked around for another “grab.” The ashram at last, shoes & sandals left outside & the Secty went ahead in case the Maharshi was elert to my arrival. He was, he was reading the morning paper but looked up quickly & asked who it was I heard the Secty say Mrs Sanger & the Maharshi repeated Mrs Margaret Sanger? The Secty said Yes I bowed & took my seat on the floor near the door way, crossed my legs & feet under my dress & looked about me to get & feel & sense the atmosphere. The Maharshi went on reading his paper. There was a book shelf & table revolving kind near his couch. He was seated cross legged on a couch about 1 1/2 feet from the floor. It was covered with a silk cover pillows behind him & a lepard skin thrown over the foot of the couch. He sat reading, evidentially the news of his birthday celebration. Over two thousand people had assembled the day before Jan 9. to celebrate his 56th birthday at the [space left blank] of the moon.5 The Maharshis face was one of character, peace & suffering transmuted into joy. He has battled with the Self & subdued it. He has thought through dogmas & cults & brought himself through to Principle, upon which all his answers are based to questions his devotees put to him. He sits unconcerned at the prostration of the Self of hundreds of men, women & children who bow & fall full length, spread hands above their heads on the floor before him. Head touches the floor three times. They arise & take a place in the ashram to sit & meditate as long as they like. Only when children, babies, are made to lie flat before him, does he smile, sceptically I thot. Also when a small boy about three or four came in alone & said part of a prayer in Tamlin6 but forgot the rest did the Maharshi look amused in understanding, but for the rest he was unconcerned. A small char coal fire & incense burned beside him & attendants saw to it that it burned throughout the day. At first it was nicely quiet, then some women began to sing. These songs are Sacred hymns & are sung in a pitched tone much through the nose & head doubtless good for the pineal gland & may exercise it.7 The men chant aloud & then someone plays a stringed instrument, but the Maharshi pays no attention to it all. His eyes are open, his body relaxed, his fan held straight there he sits apart from it all. The hundred people in the ashram are left over from the birthday celebration. So there is more confusion & chatter than usual. I got into a silence full of lightness for a while, but the women’s voices in Song brought me out of it. We sat until noon when P. B. took me to his hut for lunch. He cooked it himself a very nice one of Cauliflower, millet curry beans, potatoes, pineapple

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oranges & grated cocoanut. We went back to the ashram about three thirty & I asked two questions “Does knowledge cause morality or immorality” “are we made immoral by outside factors or forces.” Also “Is continence the only means allowed married people to control the size of the family.” There was much stir at the first question & as the questions had to be interpreted the answer came back “What is birth”? “When we find the cause of birth we can control it.” I insisted that I had said nothing about control of birth at all, but morality. So then the answer was that It was not the question of morals at all but of desire. This seemed to please all present, including myself. Then the next question was replied to by “of course” meaning that Continence was the only means allowed or morally sanctioned.8 I came back to expostulate & tried to bring the fact of mothers & infants loss in death & the waste of life in trying to impose this method on the masses. Much talk & silence. The interpreter seemed to impose his own ideas and we could do nothing but take them. Later on when we were assembled in the yard several men alive & elert came & told me he had not correctly interpreted the Maharshis answers. So Ill try again.9 We all sat around on the floor in the dining hall & had our supper on a banana leaf as a plate. This time we the Westerners had spoons. This leaf is folded up & each one clears his own place neatly & the leaf is thrown in the garbage pile hands are washed & back I came in a tonga drawn by a white bullock. The moon was full & the drive back was full of color & peace, but not quiet as the driver shouted himself hoarse at other drivers who all go higgly Piggly this way & that through the streets. The parade of people with torches carrying goods to the temple was on! AD MSP, DLC (LCM 1:298–306).

1. Paul Brunton was the pen name of British journalist and spiritualist Raphael Hurst (1898–1981), who helped introduce Indian mysticism to the West. Brunton, who claimed to practice clairvoyance, had arranged to meet MS and introduce her to Hindu guru Ramana Maharshi. “Tiruvammalai” is likely a misspelling of “Tiruvannamalai,” a town in the state of Tamil Naidu, in the Annamailai hills, 130 miles from Bangalore. It was the site of a holy shrine to Shiva, seen as the axis around which the world spun, and home to many mystics. (J. Gordon Melton, Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, 4th ed. [New York, 1996], 183; MS, Autobiography, 488; A. L. Herman, A Brief Introduction to Hinduism [Boulder, Colo., 1991], 10; Martin J. Goodman, On Sacred Mountains [Loughborough, Leicestershire, 2002], 50.) 2. Venkataraman Iyer, known as “Ramana Maharshi” (1879–1950), was a Hindu ascetic and guru who renounced conventional life and retreated to Arunchala in 1896. He attracted followers and visits from Western travelers. A rishi is a holy sage or seer. (Lewis Spence, ed. Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, pt. 2 [Whitefish, Mont., 2003].)

January 1936  •  325 3. MS describes the Annamalaiyar Temple to Shiva, built at the base of Arunachala, made of stepped tiers. (Robert Bradnock, South India Handbook: A Travel Guide [Bath, 2000], 124.) 4. In her Autobiography, MS identified the secretary as Shastro. She may have meant Ganapati Shastri (1878–1938), a Sanskrit scholar and devotee of Ramana, who may have come for the Maharshi’s birthday celebration. (MS, Autobiography, 486; Arthur Osborne, Ramana Arunachala: Seven Essays of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi [Tiruvannamalai, India, 1951], 94–98.) 5. The birth of a sage was seen as a triumph of good over evil. Called a jayanti, Ramana’s birthday was celebrated with speeches and song, despite his discomfort with the pomp and special treatment. Ramana was born on December 30, 1879. (T. M. P. Mahadevan, Ramana Maharishi: The Sage of Arunachala [London, 1977], 67.) 6. MS likely meant Tamil, a Dravadian language spoken in southern India and Sri Lanka. (Francis Robinson, Cambridge Encyclopedia of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives [Cambridge, 1989], 47.) 7. The pineal gland was long associated with the soul and the notion of an “inner third eye” related to mysticism. (EB.) 8. A common objection to birth control was that it was unnatural and was practiced in opposition to divine will. (Chandrasekhar, Population and Planned Parenthood in India, 67–73.) 9. MS changed her mind about asking again, because, she later wrote, “I am convinced it is utterly useless to bother one’s head about the views or opinions of ultra religious men. They live in another World or rather in another sense. The B.C. movement is designed to help the people who look to the future and not those who have already lived their lives and are meditating on the past.” (MS to Manjeri Sundaram, Jan. 20, 1936 [LCM 18:101].)

114. “Does Mr. Gandhi Know Women?” After her interview with Gandhi, Sanger’s assistant Anna Jane Phillips and Gandhi’s secretary Mahadev Desai discussed the wording of the transcript and its publication. Sanger initially wanted her interview with Gandhi to appear first in the American press. Despite her request to Desai to hold off publishing it in India, the first article was published in the Illustrated Weekly of India. (Phillips to Desai, Dec. 5, 1935 [LCM 17:1042]; New York Times, Dec. 29, 1935; MS, “Does Mr. Gandhi Know Women?,” Illustrated Weekly of India, Jan. 19, 1936, 15, 19.)

January 19th. 1936. What He Told Me At Wardha Mr. M. K. Gandhi says he knows women! When I talked with him at Wardha a few days after my arrival in India he said, “I have known tens of thousands of women in India. I know their expe-

326  •  “Mother India”

riences and their aspirations. I have discussed it (family relationships) with some of my educated sisters but I have questioned their authority to speak on behalf of their unsophisticated sisters because they have never mixed with them. The educated ones have never felt one with them. They have regarded me as half a woman because I have completely identified myself with them. . . . I feel I speak with some confidence because I have worked with and talked with and studied many women.”1 This is an amazing boast to come from any man to claim that he knows women! And after reading Mr. Gandhi’s autobiography2 and after having had two long conversations, 24 hours apart, with him, I must challenge his statement because I do not believe he has the faintest glimmering of either the “experiences and aspirations” or the inner workings of a woman’s mind, heart, or being. There are two major points upon which I base my challenge. First, Mr. Gandhi advises the women of India to “resist” or in extreme cases to “leave” their husbands in order to control the size of their families rather than resort to birth control methods.3 Second, he does not recognize that sex expression between men and women can be based on love and not lust.4 The use of the word “resist” implies a lack of mutual agreement between husband and wife. Thus our conversation was not directed toward that small group of idealists who have sublimated their sex energies into creative action into the activities of his own National Congress.5 Our conversation began on my part with an appeal to him to help find a solution for the masses who are the burden bearers of poverty, misery and large families. Continence in the life of unmarried men and women is not an impossibility but it was to the married woman that Mr. Gandhi’s advice to “resist” was directed. Mr. Gandhi is strangely illogical in his demand that women “resist” the sexual advances of their husbands to avoid frequent pregnancies. A woman might resist 364 days of the year and give in on the three hundred and sixty fifth only to become pregnant. If this practice of resisting the husband every day in the year but one, continued, the woman could have a child every year during her child bearing period. But let us look at the state of affairs which would result in the homes of India if Mr. Gandhi’s advice were followed. Picture for yourself a young, loving couple in the fullness of maturity, with health, vigour and vitality, brought together by sex attraction. Perhaps they already have two, three or four children and realize fully that if they were to have more it would rob the children already born of their birth-right of health, proper care and an adequate start in life. Or perhaps another child would jeopardize the mother’s life.

January 1936  •  327

Picture to yourself this situation. Try to imagine the irritations, disputes and thwarted longings that Mr. Gandhi’s advice would bring into the home. There could be no loving glances, no tender good night kisses, no gentle words of endearment lest such attentions, such natural expressions of affection might excite the sexual emotions. Nothing but frowns, refusals, dark glances and frigid repulses could come from the wife or the young loving mother in order to keep from a pregnancy she did not desire. The husband would hardly dare look tenderly at the woman he loved, fearful of his own powers of self-control. Dost thou like the picture? If, as he says, Mr. Gandhi has been “dinning” this advice into the ears of Indian women “all his life” it is quite certain such advice has not been followed.6 The census figures for 1934 are proof of that. They show that the population of India increased by 34 millions in 10 years.7 Thus it is quite obvious his advice was not taken seriously by the women of India. I contend that if he knew women as he claims he knows them, he would not have given nor would again give advice of this character which can never be carried out as a general scheme and never will be carried out as long as love of man for woman and woman for man exists in the human heart. Mr. Gandhi assumes in giving such advice that women are not amorous and do not express their love sexually. This again proves how little he knows women and how far away he is from knowing their “experiences and aspirations.” I may not be so familiar with Indian women as Mr. Gandhi claims to be for I have not known “tens of thousands” of them. But I do know women of the Western countries. In the past 20 years in which I have dedicated my life to the service of the women of the world, I have had private talks and intimate confessions from thousands of women of all nations, all religions and all classes. They have told me of their troubles and their heart-aches. I have shared their sorrows and their joys, as well as their hopes and longings. And I believe firmly that the heart of the Indian woman is not different from the heart of the American, Chinese, Italian or European woman where love is concerned.8 And Mr. Gandhi himself concedes that the “women will not resist their husbands.”9 Then consider the economic implications of this advice. A husband thwarted, driven to desperation by the constant repulses of his wife would ultimately refuse her support and the shelter of his home. Doubtless, public opinion would support him. Probably if Mr. Gandhi’s advice were followed to any great extent the men of the land would band together to make laws, such as we have in many states

328  •  “Mother India”

in America, giving legal sanction to their refusal to support wives who refuse to live with them in natural union.10 What would the women of India do if they found themselves turned from their husband’s doors? The majority of them have had no training to enable them to earn a living for themselves in the competitive world of today. From an early age they have built their entire lives about their husbands and their homes. They have depended upon their husbands for their support. And still more important, what woman would be so unnatural as to want to see the home she has built up through the years by thoughtful, loving care racked by discord and discontent? Yet a mother may realise that her own life and health and the health and training of the children she already has must be sacrificed if she has more children to claim her strength, her health, her time, or perhaps, her life. What is she to do? Resist her husband as Mr. Gandhi advocates? Bring dissension into her happy home? Or use the simple birth control methods which science has brought forward as the answer to her problem? Does anyone think a husband could or would remain devoted very long if his emotions and instincts were continually denied expression by the wife he loves? I predict that if such advice were followed it would be a calamity in Indian life! It would create an atmosphere of dissension, and even brutality in the home. Marriage would become a question of legal rape and laws would soon be enacted to deal with the rebellious, resistant wife, greatly to her disadvantage. The second thing that proves Mr. Gandhi does not know women is his general attitude toward sex union. I asked, “Mr. Gandhi, do you not see a great difference between sex love and sex lust?” Although he answered, “Yes,” his words of explanation showed he does not make such a differentiation but couples both together.11 What do the women of India say to that? Do they agree? I do not believe they do. Mr. Gandhi cannot conceive of this force being transmuted from lust into beauty. He cannot believe that women know this to be true and have in their own lives and relationships with men transmuted this force into one of the most stimulating, beautifying, spiritual acts of human experience. Mr. Gandhi cannot understand this. He is too inhibited by his own emotions to accept this fact, but were it not true, marriage would indeed have become a vulgar, debasing institution and would long ago have collapsed. I would not feel free to mention this point were it given in confidence, but Mr. Gandhi has already expressed it in his autobiography and with unusual frankness and candour discussed his own experiences.

January 1936  •  329

Mr. Gandhi has an appalling fear that licentiousness and over-indulgence will occur unless there is a fear of pregnancy to restrain the man. Has he ever thought that the same frequency can occur during the nine months of a woman’s pregnancy? Does he think of that condition in the lives of married people who know that for reasons of sterility or barrenness, pregnancy cannot result? I said to him, “But Mr. Gandhi, there are thousands, millions, who regard your word as that of a saint. How can you ask them who are not so strong nor wise as you, to follow such advice when you yourself acknowledge that it has taken you years to overcome and control the force that nature implanted in your being?”12 Mr. Gandhi merely smiled. Illustrated Weekly of India, Jan. 19, 1936 (MSM C16:387–89). Accompanying the article were two photos of Gandhi and MS sitting; a photo of Gandhi’s wife, Kasturba; and another of MS. An editorial note at the end of the article reads: “It is only fair to Mrs. Sanger to state that we have felt compelled to remove some of her arguments for reasons which will be obvious. The whole question of some form of population control in India is of such vital importance that we feel the subject is one which fully deserved the publicity we have given to it.” No draft of this article has been found. A slightly revised version was published as “Gandhi Discusses Birth Control” in Unity (Apr. 20, 1936): 71–72 (MSM S71:833).

1. For the source of the quote, see MS, Wardha Journal, Dec. 3, 1935 (LCM 129:535]. 2. MS refers to Mahatma Gandhi: His Own Story. 3. Gandhi believed women lacked sex drives and could practice self-restraint easily, even within marriage. Desai quoted Gandhi: “If they will only learn to say ‘no’ to their husbands when they approach them carnally, I do not suppose all husbands are brutes, and if women only know how to resist them, all will be well. I have been able to teach women who have come in contact with me how to resist their husbands.” Gandhi was more explicit in a May 1936 article when he argued that women should be taught not about contraceptives and abortion, but rather “the art of saying no even to her husband, to teach her that it is no part of her duty to become a mere tool or doll in her husband’s hands.” And MS quoted Gandhi as saying that “all my life I have been dinning into the ears of women the fact that they are their own mistresses not only in this but in all matters.” (Desai, “Mrs. Sanger and Birth Control,” Harijan [Jan. 25, 1936]: 136 [quote 1]; Gandhi, Collected Works, 62:363 [quote 2]; MS, Wardha Journal, Dec. 3, 1935 [quote 3] [LCM 129:635].) 4. Gandhi asserted that when a couple “want to satisfy animal passion without having to suffer the consequence of their act, it is not love. It is lust.” When MS specifically asked Gandhi if “all sex union is lust except for the specific purpose of having children,” he said yes. (MS, Wardha Journal, Dec. 3, 1935 [LCM 129:535].) 5. Adherence to celibacy was not widespread among the leaders of the INCP and Jawaharlal Nehru; the party’s national planning committee supported the idea of statesponsored birth control programs. (Stanley Wolpert, Gandhi’s Passion: The Life and Legacy of Mahatma Gandhi [Oxford, 2001], 122.) 6. See note 3 for the full quote.

330  •  “Mother India” 7. MS underestimated the total by 2 million. In 1925 India had 263 million people, and by 1936 it had increased to 299 million, with a birthrate of 33.7 per 1,000 couples. (Mitchell, International Historical Statistics: Africa, Asia and Oceania, 59, 72.) 8. For an expanded argument on what she learned from Indian women on the trip, see MS, “Do They Want Birth Control?,” Woman’s Digest 2 (Nov. 1936): 171–74 (MSM S71:861). 9. See note 3 for a more complete quote. 10. In the United States, a wife’s consent to marry assumed acceptance of sexual relations with her husband. In several states, a refusal to submit to conjugal relations was grounds for divorce; in other states, such as New York, it was deemed fraud, a precondition for annulment. The legal right to a wife’s body remained in place until the marital rape exemption was overturned in the 1980s. While it was a husband’s legal duty to support his wife, she had little recourse if he reneged. (Harriet Pilpel and Theodora Zavin, Your Marriage and the Law [New York, 1952], 51–52; Nancy F. Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage & the Nation [Cambridge, Mass., 2000], 196, 211, 275.) 11. Gandhi based his views on lust and love on his own life experiences. According to MS, he asserted that “as long as I looked upon my wife carnally, we had no real understanding. Our love did not reach a high plane. . . . [We] came closer and closer the more we, or rather I, became restrained. There never was a want of restraint on the part of my wife.” MS, on the other hand, argued that “sex lust is spent in prostitution, the sort of relationship which makes a man run away after the act, disgusted, ashamed of himself, but a sex love is a relationship which makes for oneness, for completeness between the husband and wife and contributes to a finer understanding and a greater spiritual harmony.” (MS, Wardha Journal, Dec. 3, 1935 [LCM 129:535].) 12. Gandhi answered in a March 1936 Harijan article, “It is not meant merely for a few select individuals. . . . Birth-control by contraceptives no doubt regulates to a certain extent the number of newcomers and enables persons of moderate means to keep the wolf from the door. But the moral harm it does to the individual and society is incalculable.” (Gandhi, “Birth-Control II,” in Collected Works, 62:278–79.)

115. To Mohandas K. Gandhi

[Calcutta, India] 30th January 1936.

My dear Ghandi, From the papers I learn that your health is rapidly improving.1 We have all watched for word of you with high interest, and I am happy that you are at last on the way to health again. I shall be leaving India February 2nd for Rangoon and China2 and leave with a heartful of gratitude for the many kindnesses shown me by your people everywhere. My visit to Wardha will never be forgotten and our talks and interviews continue to be of great interest everywhere.3 Perhaps you saw my challenge to your knowledge of women in the Illustrated Weekly. It was rather sketchy

January 1936  •  331

and abrupt and badly done. Please forgive the scolding tone it seems to have taken on in print.4 I meant it to be humorous and laughing and to get you to laugh too. It was too hurriedly done to get that over I am afraid. Now on departing I want to say how much I wish you good health and success in your great struggle for the liberation of India. Sincerely and Cordially Yours, TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 18:110).

1. Not long after his meeting with MS, Gandhi was diagnosed with high blood pressure. He also had two infected teeth removed and was forced to take two weeks of complete bed rest. In mid-January he left Wardha to recuperate in Bombay and Ahmedabad. (Chicago Daily Tribune, Dec. 8, 1935; New York Times, Jan. 10 and 17, 1936.) 2. MS and How-Martyn were to sail from Calcutta to Rangoon, Burma (Yangon, Myanmar), on the S.S. Egra on February 2. (How-Martyn to the BCIIC, Jan. 17, 1936 [Edith How-Martyn Scrapbooks, WLAM].) 3. MS’s report of her talks with Gandhi came up frequently, most notably at a tea hosted by the SSPFH on December 22 in Bombay, where MS assured her audience that Gandhi “did not convert me.” The meeting was mentioned in coverage of talks in Calcutta (December 9) and Delhi (December 19). (Times of India, Dec. 9, 19, and 23 [quote], 1935.) 4. In response to this article, Mahadev Desai published his own report of the meeting in the January 25 issue of Harijan, in which he complained that MS appealed to Gandhi as a moral teacher during their meetings but in her article ridiculed “his claim to know these women’s aspirations and experiences, thousands of whom marched to jail at his word. All she is concerned about in this article is to prove that Gandhiji does not know the women of India. She utters not one word about the points of agreement sought at the interview, and the extent to which Gandhiji said he was prepared to go with her.” Desai claimed the article was MS’s attempt to mock and dismiss Gandhi’s views on sex and birth control. (Desai, “Mrs. Sanger and Birth Control,” 182–83.)

116. To John Henry Guy 1 At the start of 1936, the BCIIC Council, still struggling with financial and administrative deficiencies, was considering affiliating with other organizations in order to lower expenses. It had recently rejected a proposal for consolidation with the NBCA, because it offered limited office space. It was also still dealing with the fallout from How-Martyn’s contretemps with Kaufman. Sanger first got word of Kaufman’s displeasure at funding How-Martyn from the Guys on December 15. She promised to discuss it with How-Martyn when they met in Madras, but added, “I think it is going to be very difficult as well as unjust on Kaufman’s part at this late date. . . . [All] we can do now is to make the best of a very bad situation.” (Gerda Guy to MS, Dec. 9 and 11, 1935, John Guy to MS, Jan. 6, 1936, MS to Newfield, Jan. 23, 1936, and MS to Gerda and John Guy, Dec. 15, 1935 [quote] [LCM 15:982, 986, 1024, 1031, 990].)

332  •  “Mother India”

[Calcutta, India] 30th January 36.

My dear Harry, Yours of January 6th got to me only a few days ago and I am sending a cable from Calcutta saying “Agree letter Kaufman.”2 The situation as you see it is precisely as it is.3 There has been no fundamental change in my own feelings regarding E. H. M.’s tour. Had she not undertaken it and planned for it and raised some money to do it, the question of the necessity or importance of her coming here at this time would have had a different colouring. Now however in order to be fair to her I must say that on all sides I hear of the good work she did last year and the good impression she made in certain circles (mainly English and Foreign).4 The A.I.W.C. Secretary at the opening Meeting stated that up to the time of E. H. M.’s meeting, there had been no open frank discussion of the subject of B.C. but after having listened to her able presentation in public and in private meetings ascertaining the facts of the practical side, the women were better able to use their own judgment and now speak for themselves etc.5 It was a good public boost for E. H. M. and well deserved. While during this trip I have seen very little of her and she has not had as many meetings as I expected her to have, she claims her objective here is not meetings but important contacts and I hope organisation.6 But I’m frank to say, Harry, Edith is not a person to be directed. She has been too long directing others to take that now even from me. She however is willing to sit down and plan out a system or campaign of action and see that it is done well. Unfortunately this was not done in London and I have had no control of the activities other than my own since we came here.7 E is indefatigable in doing things pro and con and leaves no loose threads hanging out. The tour in China, Korea and Japan and Canada will be planned and arranged for before not after arrival.8 What I want most to do (to your private ear and counsel) is to avoid a personal conflict and a growing resentment which will most certainly result in an opposition movement. E. H. M. is still full of “beans” and ambitions. She cares tremendously for the cause of B.C. She can organise and get people to help her. I want to keep her with us and give her energies direction in the way we, the Council, want them directed. I am not at all certain that I can do this. The hurt pride and humiliation was deep.9 Now on leaving India I’ll say no more. I hope that the move in China will compensate for your trust in my judgment. Most Cordially Yours, TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 15:1036–37).

January 1936  •  333 1. John Henry Guy (1881–1955) was the British-born financial director of the confectionery John Mackintosh and Sons, Ltd., and the BCIIC chairman. (U.S. Passport Applications, 1795–1925; Times [London], July 5, 1955.) 2. John Guy suggested that MS inform Kaufman that she and the BCIIC attached “considerable value” to How-Martyn’s trip to India and recommended she continue on to China as an official BCIIC representative, fulfilling Kaufman’s desire that his funds be used for BCIIC-endorsed purposes. The spat opened a rift between How-Martyn and the Guys who, along with the BCIIC Council, believed that How-Martyn’s planned outreach efforts were not the best use of the center’s limited funds. (Kaufman to Guy, Nov. 22, 1935, Guy to MS, Jan. 6, 1936 [quote], and Kaufman to Guy, Feb. 7, 1936 [LCM 15:959, 1024, 1041].) 3. Guy thought that Kaufman would accept MS’s endorsement of the extension of How-Martyn’s trip as “the advice of the ‘man on the spot’ and in this case the ‘man on the spot’ is the most representative living person in the Birth Control movement in its international aspects.” Kaufman did agree, noting that he was “quite content” to support MS’s recommendation. But privately, the Guys believed that How-Martyn’s data and contacts collected during her trip to India were being used for her own ends, not those of the BCIIC; that “she is definitely engaged in forming a rival organization”; and that the rift between How-Martyn and the council was “too great to be bridged.” (Guy to MS, Jan. 6, 1936 [quotes], Kaufman to John Guy, Feb. 7, 1936, and Gerda Guy to MS, Nov. 18, 1936 [LCM 15:1021, 1024, 16:48].) 4. Margaret Cousins told MS that How-Martyn “did wonderfully well I thought & made splendid contacts for you for later on, especially in Mysore state and in Bombay.” The New Generation reported, “Mrs. How-Martyn’s visit has awakened a new interest among the public of India in Birth Control,” while the Sind Observer noted that How Martyn “attracted very highly interested audiences at her meetings.” (Cousins to MS, Feb. 11, 1935 [quote 1] [LCM 17:716]; P. G. Thomas, “Mrs. How-Martyn at Karachi,” New Generation 14 [Feb. 1935]: 16 [quote 2]; Vinode, “Shot and Shell,” Sind Observer, Jan. 5, 1935 [quote 3] [How-Martyn Scrapbooks, WLAM]; see additional coverage of HowMartyn’s trip in How-Martyn Scrapbooks, WLAM.) 5. Charulata Mukherjee remarked that How-Martyn’s treatment of birth control as a scientific issue focused attention on the health and social welfare benefits that birth control would help bring about. (AIWC, Proceedings, Tenth Session, 28–37.) 6. MS and How-Martyn decided to cover more miles by splitting up, so “there would be no overlapping or duplication of efforts.” The two met on MS’s arrival in Bombay in late November, then again in Madras in early January. (MS, “Birth Control International Centre Tour.”) 7. Gerda Guy wrote MS that the BCIIC Council realized that “you went to India on your own resources; we regret that we were not able to give you the financial backing that was due you as our President. This situation was largely created by the fact that individual work was being done of which we have no knowledge, and we cannot in future tolerate such a situation again.” (Guy to MS, Dec. 11, 1935 [LCM 15:986].) 8. MS and How-Martyn planned to tour China, Korea, and Japan together. (BCIIC Newsletter, No. 6 [Aug. 1936] [MSM C12:1051].) 9. Despite the humiliation and hurt she felt, How-Martyn agreed to continue the Asia tour as a BCIIC representative, adding that she was glad MS’s letters to the council had

334  •  “Mother India” “at last penetrated their head with some sense.” She suggested that in the future, it would be best for MS to direct all the fieldwork herself. (How-Martyn to MS, Jan. 28, 1936 [quote], and MS to How-Martyn, Jan. 23, 1936 [MSM S10:952, C6:52]; MS to Newfield, Jan. 23, 1936 [LCM 15:1031].)

117. To Havelock Ellis 1

S.S. Egra [at sea] Feb. 2. 1936

Beloved Havelock This is your birthday. I sent two letters to you one I trust has reached you before today & one with a small check followed it.2 I am on the river going out to sea toward Rangoon.3 The past four days in Calcutta were not happy ones. It is a place where the system of Purdah still prevails in large areas. One seldom sees an Indian woman on the Streets.4 But when you find them liberated they are rather extreme. But the thing that saddened me was not the Indian women but the narrow minded Western women now at the [Internation Women Conferen].5 Lady Aberdeen is the President & tho she is 80 years & a recent convert to Catholism she sent Dame Cadbury another antique specimen to see that her orders were carried out.6 It happened to effect me, because the Mahanri of Baroda, acting President in Lady Aberdeens place, invited me to come to Calcutta & address the delegates.7 I put off my sailing from Colombo & postponed other meetings en route & at great expense came back to Calcutta (a place I dislike) only to find that Dame Cadbury was up in arms about my speaking & got the Irish, Belgian, Romanian & other delegates to stand behind her to say they would all withdraw if the meeting were held!8 It was most embarasing for Her Highness [for] Baroda, but all we could do was to have another meeting under the National Council. She objected to that too & as the Indian women hate to hurt people or to start a fight they got up a meeting under the A.I.W.C. the same women who endorsed Bc at Travandrum.9 Her Highness came & the Princess her daughter to the meeting, but it left a cool feeling.10 Her Highness has not attended any but the opening Sessions & that she is angry every one knows. These RC’s are now in action wherever they go. Its time to keep them out of all organizations. Well darling Havelock I am leaving India & except for this last “bout” it has all been very interesting & facinating. I told you that I love the people & I certainly do. Now about yourself & Francoise I do hope she is going to get away in the sunshine somewhere. If only I had money to send her to free her mind & let her go & bask in the sunshine at Tunis or Algiers or a place thats exciting.11 Lord Horder can give her a routine by which to live & it will help, but

February 1936  •  335

its more than that she needs.12 I feel helpless about it & only wish I were able to do what Id like to do. May your new year bring you the greatest success & happiness of all your past years. My Salam to you & prayer that you will see many happy returns of Feb 2nd. devotedly & lovingly Margaret ALS MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S11:23–26). Letterhead of British India Steam Navigation. MS wrote at the top of the first page: “c/o Cooks Shanghi until March 22nd.”

1. Ellis’s health was deteriorating, and he faced serious financial problems. (Grosskurth, Havelock Ellis, 424–27, 437.) 2. MS celebrated Ellis’s February 2 birthday with letters and cards. On January 27, she sent him birthday wishes and a check. The other letter was not found. (MS to Ellis, Jan. 27, 1936 [MSM S10:943]; Ellis to MS, Feb. 24, 1936 [LCM 5:434]; for more on Ellis and MS, see Vols. 1–2.) 3. MS reached Rangoon on February 4, where she met with physicians and government officials and spoke at a private meeting on February 6, before continuing to Singapore. (Rangoon Gazette, Feb. 5 and 6, 1936.) 4. Purdah was the practice of veiling or secluding women from society. Though feminist groups, such as the AIWC, fought against the system, claiming that there was no scriptural authority behind it, about a third of Hindu and Muslim women observed the practice. (Basu and Ray, Women’s Struggle, 70.) 5. The ICW’s meeting in Calcutta for the human rights of women was the first time the group met outside the United States or Europe. The largest group of Western delegates was from the United Kingdom and included Lady Marjorie Gordon Pentland (1880–1970), her daughter Margaret Ishbel Sinclair (1905–76), Marion Cadbury Greeves (1894–1979), and Eluinid Lewis, an editor at the Sunday Times. Other delegates were American-born feminist writer Julia Dent Grant (Princess Cantacuzène) (1876–1975), granddaughter of American president Ulysses S. Grant and the wife of a Russian nobleman, and Marcelle LeGrand-Falco (1880–1985), a French expert in the trafficking of women. (Times of India, Jan. 17, 1936; “Calcutta Conference Souvenir,” Jan. 1936 [ICW Archives, MNSSC], 11–12; England and Wales Death Index, 1916–2007; http://www.thepeerage.com; http://www.ancestry.com/geneology/records/marian-janet-cadbury-807166; Archives du Féminisme, http://www.archivesdufeminisme.fr/GDS/index.php.table_name=fon ds&function=details&where_field=id_fonds&where_value=103.) 6. Ishbel (Marjoribanks) Gordon (1857–1939), Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, was a Scottish-born social welfare reformer and Liberal Party member best known for her advocacy of women’s rights. Known to be broad-minded about religion, she was a member of the Presbytery of Edinburgh. No evidence was found that she converted to Catholicism. The seventy-seven-year-old Dame Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury (1858–1951) was a British social worker and peace activist, known for her interest in women’s suffrage, education, and children’s welfare. (Times [London], Apr. 8, 1931, Mar. 8, 1934, Apr. 19, 1939; Lady Aberdeen, “Encouragement of Home Industries,” in The Congress of Women, edited by Mary Kavanaugh Oldham Eagle [Chicago, 1893], 743; DNB; Cheryl Law, Women: A Modern Political Dictionary [London, 2001], 36–37.)

336  •  “Mother India” 7. Maharani Chimnabai II of Baroda (1872–1958), born Garabai Ghatge, became the second wife of the Maharaja in 1885 at the age of thirteen. She was the president of the National Council of Women in India and the author of The Position of Women in Indian Life (1911). (Moore, Maharanis, xii, 101, 171.) 8. The Bombay Chronicle called the ICW meeting “the strangest of all the ‘international’ women’s conferences,” criticizing it for censoring not only MS and birth control but any radical discussions, including Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay’s speech on freedom of the press. (Bombay Chronicle, Feb. 2, 1936.) 9. The National Council of Women in India was a philanthropic group of elite Indian women who held their own biannual meeting in conjunction with the ICW. MS’s speech was likely sponsored by the Calcutta Branch of the AIWC. (Moore, Maharanis, 171; Bombay Chronicle, Feb. 2, 1936.) 10. Indira Raje (Devi) (1892–1968), Maharani Chimnabai’s widowed daughter, was herself a princess, the consort of the Maharaja of Cooch Behar, and the regent for her son from 1923 to 1937. (Moore, Maharanis, xii, 166, 208.) 11. Françoise Lafitte (Cyon) (1886–1974), a French-born socialist, teacher, translator, and writer, was Havelock Ellis’s lover and companion from 1918 to his death in 1939. She had become worn down caring for Ellis and was close to a nervous breakdown. (Ellis to MS, Feb. 24, 1936 [LCM 5:434]; Grosskurth, Havelock Ellis, 396, 404, 427–28, 447; for more on Lafitte, see Vols. 1–3.) 12. MS had arranged to pay Lord Thomas Horder to treat Lafitte; he ordered her to take a six-week rest. (DNB; Ellis to MS, Feb. 24, 1936 [LCM 5:434]; MS to Ellis, Mar. 21, 1936 [MSM S11:162].)

118. Journal Entry Sanger and Edith How-Martyn sailed from Rangoon to Singapore on February 6, then moved on to Penang in Malaysia on February 9, spending the next four days there. Sanger left for Hong Kong on February 15. (How-Martyn to the BCIIC, Jan. 17, 1936 [How-Martyn Scrapbooks, MSPP]; Rangoon Gazette, Feb. 5 and 6, 1936; MS to Slee, Feb. 8, 14, and 16, 1932, MS to Rose, Feb. 15, 1936, and 1936 Diary [MSM S11:42, 52, 58–61, 79:214–15].)

S. S. Corfu [at sea] Feb 17th [1936] One Chinese ywca worker Miss Chen is in Second Class.1 She came over to talk to me this evening. She said being a student people expect her to know everything. People who have babies “too much babies” ask her what to do. She “don’t know.” One friend has six babies, she take medicine, more medicine more & more medicine but all time stomach get bigger stomach get bigger bigger all time. “Then when baby come baby idiot.” We were interrupted by two Chinese ladies, one older & one younger who looked like a girl of 20 years.

February 1936  •  337

The girl is a mother of seven children four girls & three boys living in Singapore. Her mother in law is with her, they are going to Hong Kong. They were wanting to know what to do to prevent the family getting larger came to my cabin & saw the diaphram. She will come in the morning to be fitted. Amusing the way I go around the world fitting diaphrams.2 Slight solar plexus pain at dinner, but it passed. Miss Mary Chen ywca Secty of Singapore came to see me again. “One year one” “One year one” she describes the lot of Chinese mothers. [S.S.] Corfu [at sea] Feb 18th [1936] The Chinese mother of seven came to ask for a method I took her to my cabin & fitted her to a diaphram 60. She learned easily, offered to pay, but of course I was glad to give her what I had. AD MSP, DLC (LCM 1:343–44B).

1. Mary Chen was a secretary for the Singapore YWCA and later helped found the Singapore Council of Women. Chen reported years later that after meeting MS, she began to offer contraceptive advice “in a quiet way,” despite ridicule from some quarters. (Chen to MS, Nov. 17, 1952 [MSM S40:306].) 2. MS had learned how to fit springform diaphragms in 1915, when she visited the clinic of Dr. Johannes Rutgers in The Hague. As a nurse, she was legally prohibited from doing so in the United States. (For more on this, see Vol. 1.)

119. To Edith How-Martyn 1 Sanger arrived in Hong Kong on February 19 to a full schedule of activities and speaking appearances designed to launch birth control organizations and health clinics throughout China. She dined with Arthur Woo, spoke before a meeting of the Chungkuo I‑Shih Hsiehhui (CISH) (Zhongguó Yishi Xiéhuì [Chinese Medical Association]), and met with other officials. During a speech and dinner at the Hong Kong Hotel on February 20, she felt “a pain—very old pain . . . gnaw at me during the meeting so I dashed to my room but my capsules, life savers so far, had been used up.” Sanger was taking codeine for the pain, but when it did not abate she entered the War Memorial Hospital. Released a short time later, she had a relapse and returned to the hospital by ambulance on February 25, where she remained until March 6. In light of her condition, first diagnosed as gastritis, Sanger had to decide whether to continue her tour. (Canton Gazette, Mar. 9, 1936; Journal Entries, Feb. 19–Mar. 6, 1936 [quote], MS to Slee, Feb. 22 and 27, 1936, and 1936 Diary [LCM 1:344–48, MSM S11:82, 79:214–15]; South China Morning Post, Feb. 20 and 21, 1936.)

338  •  “Mother India”

Hong Kong Sunday March 4/1936

Edith dear: Do be careful of your health in this change of cold & fog. Canton sounds colder still & Manila the only place to remain until April first.2 About the north of China— I am at a loss to make any suggestions. Shanghi is to me the weakest spot in the Bc movement, far more difficult than where there is no movement at all.3 This is the reason I was so anxious & urgent for you to get up there when I realized I should have to give up & return home. Had you gone there you would have seen the “whos who” of the place & sized up the quality of those in the Bc movement. When I came for the days stop en route home, we could have made quick decisions as to the future.4 So much material is waiting there for distribution & the Rockefellers at home wanting to have a survey of the present activities etc etc.5 My own contacts with the Shanghi group were not so favorable in the past.6 For two years I sent over to them fifty dollars (gold) a month to run the Bc clinic in Shanghi.7 After failing to get proper reports etc Agnes Smedley held back the money when she found they were doing no Bc work at all, but advising mothers to have babies & spending my money on the infant welfare clinic. Of course I sent no more money to Shanghi. They never give either credit or recognition to this help in their reports or in reviewing their early efforts.8 So I am at a loss to know the situation now & can not make any plans. I expect to spend one day there attending to the packages at Cooks & looking about at the town. It will be too short a time to do anything else under the circumstances. Peiping is better & Dr Maxwell a man of reputation.9 Also Dr Hsu Shu the Philosopher & Chinas brilliant scholar will tell you whos who & he knows.10 I shall leave all the plaques & supplies at Cooks in your name to be distributed as you consider wise all over China.11 It is a sad ending to this big tour but I think it is wisdom on my part to follow the Doctors advice & return before another attack takes me over into the Beyond. I only pray I can be cremated instead of being eaten by the sharks or crocodiles. During these days of fasting & silence my brain has been at work & as I faced the honest facts of the Bc situation I have decided to resign as President of the International Bc Center after I get home & away from the East.12 I don’t want such action to look as th’o it was caused by something en route or because of Kaufman or the Council— So I shall do it later on not at the present time. It is distasteful to one of my temperment to be a rubber stamp

March 1936  •  339

officer & that is all one can be with the ocean between the Pres & the active workers.13 Unconsciously the feeling gets hold of everyone that the Pres is in name only & th’o there may be gestures of authority & politenesses when all goes “merry as the marriage bells” but in action & emergency (as indicated when Shanghi came up) the real feelings pops its head & shows its fangs.14 Its an inevitable result of the situation. No one is to blame, your judgment is certainly as good as mine when you know all the facts. Sometimes its better even when you don’t. But that does not alter the facts of the case in the slightest. If we all agree that Organization is good & we pick people to act in certain capacities as officers in that Organization then it is an unwritten & written law that certain officers have responsibilities & with these go unqualified & unquestioned support by all those cooperating. It is at times of emergency & in a crices that such support is expected & must be given or chaos results. To pit one persons “judgment” against anothers is at such a time is not the spirit upon which organization is founded & by doing so something has to smash & usually it’s the structure. This is the case briefly as I see it & there is no blame or criticism in my heart & I am not going to discuss this again on [written along right margin] any account. Just a heart to heart talk with Edith dearest of friends. [written along the top margin] Ever my love Margaret ALS EHMP, WLAM (MSM C6:80–85). Letterhead of “Mysore Georgette—Queen of Georgettes.”15

1. How-Martyn had arrived in Hong Kong on February 18 and accompanied MS on visits and dinners until the latter took ill. She remained in Hong Kong, visiting MS in the hospital and, at MS’s request, taking on lectures in Hong Kong, the Philippines, and Canton. (How-Martyn, “Reports to the BCIIC,” Feb. 25 and Feb. 29, 1936 [EHMP, WLAM].) 2. How-Martyn left for Canton on March 1, reporting that the cold weather had left her weary and weak. She hoped that MS would be able to accompany her on stops in the Philippines, Shanghai, and North China. (Reports from How-Martyn, Feb. 27 and 29, 1936 [EHMP, WLAM].) 3. Despite the participation of many of Shanghai’s most prominent physicians and social workers, MS found the Shanghai activists lacked the ability to launch clinics or get a strong birth control league under way. Apart from Anna Chou, most SCCS members were the same people who had disappointed MS earlier. (Chou to MS, Dec. 19, 1934 [LCM 12:672].) 4. MS had initially planned to visit Shanghai on Feb. 21, 1936. (MS, Journal Entry [LCM 1:348].)

340  •  “Mother India” 5. The RF had donated more than $37 million to China, most directed toward the PUMC and the China Medical Board; it expanded efforts in 1934 with the “China Program,” run by Selskar M. Gunn. (Qiusha Ma, “The Rockefeller Foundation’s Medical Programs in China,” in Rockefeller Philanthropy and Modern Biomedicine, edited by William H. Schneider [Bloomington, Ind., 2002], 150, 170–77.) 6. A handwritten margin note by How-Martyn reads: “was it the same people?” 7. MS funded the SJL’s birth control work through Agnes Smedley for a little less than one year (June 1931 to April 1932). (See MS to Chou, Feb. 2, 1935, herein, note 5.) 8. MS may have been irked that Anna Chou was unaware of MS’s past support of the SJL. 9. J. Preston Maxwell (1871–1961) was a British obstetrician/gynecologist and medical missionary at the PUMC and the president of the Chinese Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology. (Times [London], July 28. 1961.) 10. Hu Shih (Hú Shì) (1891–1962), a philosopher who studied in the United States under John Dewey, was dean of the College of Arts at Peking University. Shih was best known for his efforts to promote the use of vernacular Chinese in writing. From their first meeting in 1922, MS was delighted “to find such profound comprehension of my outlook in his recognition of all that birth control might mean for the future of the world’s civilization.” (Boorman, Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, 167–74; MS, My Fight, 257–58 [quote].) 11. MS refers to gynaplaques. 12. MS had threatened to resign in October 1934 and again in November 1935, but John and Gerda Guy pressured her to remain. (John Guy to MS, Oct. 24, 1934, and MS to John and Gerda Guy, Dec. 11, 1935 [LCM 15:757, 986].) 13. How-Martyn replied that in England, the office of president was just a figurehead, and it is the “Chairman, Director, or General Secretary who carries out executive details. With your interpretation of the function, I do not wonder that you wish to resign and as the center has hitherto had so little to offer you.” (How-Martyn to MS, Mar. 27, 1936 [LCM 15:1053].) 14. MS refers to the council’s request that MS sign off on a letter to Kaufman stating, “Mrs. Sanger now recommends the continuation of Mrs. How-Martyn’s tour to China. . . . We, in London, cannot contribute an independent judgement to this recommendation.” MS had to cancel her trip to Shanghai, forcing How-Martyn to go on without her. (John Guy to MS, Jan. 6, 1936 [LCM 15:1024]; How-Martyn to MS, Apr. 18, 1936 [MSM S11:224].) 15. MS likely picked up this letterhead while staying at the Mysore State’s guesthouse (January 19–21, 1936). Mysore was known for its high-grade production of silk, especially georgette, a silk crepe used for saris. (Times of India, Feb. 22, 1934, and Aug. 20, 1936.)

August 1936  •  341

120. To José Siurob R amírez 1 Sanger sailed from Asia on March 6, arriving in Los Angeles on April 2. By May she was on the East Coast, lobbying for birth control legislation and lecturing about her Asia tour. Here she follows up on meetings held in Mexico between her secretary Florence Rose and Mexico’s public health chief. (California Passenger and Crew Lists, 1882‑1957.)

[New York, N.Y.] August 14, 1936

Dear Dr. Siurob: May I express my appreciation to you for the courteous consideration you so kindly gave to my secretary, Miss Florence Rose, on her recent visit to Mexico.2 She has advised me of your interest in our efforts, and I wish to assure you that the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau will be happy to extend you every cooperation, should you find it possible to develop this important phase of preventive health work in your very fine Public Health program.3 In America the widespread publicity given to the Catholic sanction of the so-called “Rhythm theory” has helped enormously in combatting the only organized opposition to the intelligent control of the size of the family in accordance with the health and economic conditions of the parents.4 I realize that Mexico has problems peculiar to itself along these lines, but I hope that you will find a way to overcome these.5 Where birth control is available to parents, we know there is an immediate marked decrease in both maternal and infant mortality.6 We also know that the standard of living noticeably improves and the burden upon the State is materially lessened. There are few phases of preventive medicine that show a more immediate and gratifying result.7 As far as I know there is no law against the dissemination of contraceptive advice in Mexico, and where there is no law to the contrary, we assume in this country that it is legal. I hope that this is also true in Mexico.8 We have been experimenting during the past year with a new product that is inexpensive and could be used by women of the poorest class.9 If you would like further information regarding our research along these lines, will you advise me, and I shall be happy to write you further. Under separate cover I am sending with our compliments, the latest issues of the Journal of Contraception, and would be pleased to send you additional copies if you are interested.10 With assurance of my profound interest in the splendid work you are doing in Mexico, I am Very sincerely yours, Margaret Sanger TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 19:478–79).

342  •  “Mother India” 1. José Siurob Ramírez (1886–1965), a physician and former revolutionary general, was chief of Mexico’s Department of Public Health (1935–38 and 1939–40). (Washington Post, Nov. 8, 1965.) 2. Rose, who served as both MS’s secretary and an NCFLBC field-worker, went to Mexico on July 9 for a month to vacation and meet with women’s groups and public health officials regarding birth control. (Rose to Aurea Procel, June 20 and Aug. 27, 1936, and Rose to Margarita Robles de Mendoza, July 9, 1936 [LCM 19:472, 482, 477].) 3. MS and her staff had been discussing plans for training Mexican public health nurses at the BCCRB since 1932. (See MS to A. Hernández Mejía, June 6, 1932, Mejía to MS, June 20, 1932, Robles de Mendoza to Hazel Moore, Nov. 22, 1932, and Rose to Salvador Mendoza, May 24, 1933 [LCM 19:354, 356, 371, 436].) 4. MS frequently made the argument that the Catholic Church, by accepting the rhythm method, had endorsed family planning. (MS, Autobiography, 426; see also Vol. 2.) 5. Mexico was overwhelmingly Catholic, and President Lázaro Cárdenas, elected in 1934, adopted pronatalist policies to increase manpower for economic development. In 1936 a “General Population Law” encouraged large families, by offering social recognition and monetary rewards, while also seeking to reduce infant and maternal mortality. MS and others tried to assist Siurob to institute a public birth control program, but Rose “found him very much in sympathy but a little hesitant as to how far they could take official action in view of the Catholic position.” (Cabrera, “Demographic Dynamics and Development,” 109; Alan Knight, “Cárdenas and Echeverría: Two ‘Populist’ Presidents Compared,” in Populism in Twentieth Century Mexico: The Presidencies of Lázaro Cárdenas and Luis Echeverría, edited by Amelia Marie Kiddle and María L. O. Muñoz [Tucson, Ariz., 2010], 18; Rose to Amalia de Castillo Ledon, Aug. 27, 1936, and to Nadina Kavinoky, Mar. 3, 1937 [quote] [LCM 19:480, 483].) 6. In 1925 a U.S. Children’s Bureau study, Causal Factors in Infant Mortality, demonstrated that two years between childbirths reduced infant mortality rates by a third. (Robert M. Woodbury, “Infant Mortality in the United States,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 188 [Nov. 1936]: 101.) 7. Economists and sociologists, particularly in the United States and Britain, agreed that population control improved or at least protected the standard of living and that smaller families usually experienced better living conditions than larger ones. There was greater consensus that fertility control improved living standards in the developing world. (Himes, Medical History of Contraception, 408, 410; Warren S. Thompson, Plenty of People [Lancaster, Pa., 1944], 165, 169, 225.) 8. Birth control was not illegal in Mexico, but the government had made it difficult to obtain. MS sent Gladys Smith and Florence Rose to speak with the Mexican Consulate in San Diego and public health officials in Mexico, but they were unable to move things forward. (Gladys Delancey Smith, “Interview with Miss Aurea Pracel of the Mexican Consulate,” June 12, 1936, Rose to A. Hernández Mejía, July 9, 1936, and to Nadina Kavinoky, Mar. 3, 1937 [LCM 19:473, 475, 483].) 9. MS refers to the foam powder and sponge method, then undergoing field trials. (MS to Olive Johnson, July 13, 1936 [LCM 15:1133]; see also Vol. 2.)

October 1936  •  343 10. The BCCRB monthly, Journal of Contraception, edited by Abraham Stone, was devoted to biological and clinical aspects of human fertility. Its name was changed to Human Fertility in 1940. (Stone, “Editorial,” JOC 1 [Nov. 1935], 6.)

121. To Mohandas K. Gandhi In a lengthy two-part article published in March 1936, Gandhi asserted that “birth-control by contraceptives and the like is a profound error. I write this with a full sense of my responsibility. I have great regard for Mrs. Margaret Sanger and her followers. She impressed me much by her great zeal for her cause. I know that she has great sympathy for the women who suffer because they have to bear the burden of carrying and rearing unwanted children.” (Desai, “Mrs. Sanger and Birth Control”; Gandhi, “Birth Control,” Harijan, Mar. 14, 1936 [quote], and “For Women Reformers,” Harijan, May 2, 1936, reprinted in Gandhi, Collected Works, 62:262, 361.)

[Fishkill, N.Y.] October 20, 1936

Dear Friend Gandhiji: Whenever word appears in the press as to your state of health we anxiously look for further reports and are grateful when we learn that you are improving and recovering.1 This is just to wish you a continuation of good health. Under separate cover I am sending you a copy of “Asia” containing our interview.2 I trust it will not be displeasing to you or to your loyal protecting secretary, Mr. Desai.3 I especially wanted it reproduced in a magazine friendly to India, and we could have no better medium for the expression of our views than this magazine “Asia.”4 They are carrying a lovely photograph of you—in fact one of the best I have ever seen. I only wish I had a copy of this photograph myself, but many of us are taking the picture out of the magazine until we can find something better.5 Unfortunately I was taken ill in Hong Kong and had to cancel my engagements in China, and I have not been very well through the summer.6 Now, however, I am feeling all right again and am planning to go on a speaking tour until the first of January.7 I shall always look back upon my visit at Wardha and the delightful walks and talks with you, as one of the great privileges bestowed upon me. If there is anything in this conversation that you would like corrected before it goes further into print, will you kindly ask Mr. Desai to send your comments on to me?8 I will be glad to receive any corrections, changes, or omissions. Personally I think it is a good interview and I have tried, as nearly as possible, to keep to the spirit that we both maintained and tried to express at the time.

344  •  “Mother India”

Please remember me to your wife and son, as well as to Dr. Mehta9 and the other friends whom I met when visiting you. I am planning to send you a small package with a friend who is going to India in the near future, and with the package goes my deepest respect and admiration.10 Ever sincerely, Margaret Sanger TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S11:711–12).

1. In September Gandhi was diagnosed with malaria. After recuperating in a hospital, he returned to his village, where almost all the residents suffered from either malaria or dysentery. (New York Times, Sept. 8 and 24, 1936.) 2. The article, “Gandhi and Mrs. Sanger Debate Birth Control,” subtitled “A Stenographic Report of a Private Interview,” was published in the November 1936 edition of the magazine (LCM 129:525). 3. Mahadev Desai revered Gandhi and was likened to Gandhi’s Boswell, due to his protective nature and his many books detailing Gandhi’s life and ideas. (New York Times, Aug. 16, 1942.) 4. Asia, a monthly journal published in New York since 1917, was edited by Richard J. Walsh, husband of novelist Pearl Buck. 5. The photograph was not found. Reprints of the article carried a photograph of MS and Gandhi seated on the ground. 6. MS continued to suffer from diverticulitis and was considering surgery. (MS to How-Martyn, June 9, 1936, and MS to Dorothy Gordon, Sept. 3, 1936 [MSM C6:141, S11:520].) 7. MS started her tour on November 10, traveling to Washington, D.C.; Brattleboro and Bennington, Vermont; Hamilton, Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, and Buffalo, New York; Cincinnati and Cleveland, Ohio; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She spent a few days in Hot Springs, Virginia, in early December and was back in Washington, D.C., for a legislative conference on December 10. She returned to New York on December 12. (Washington Post, Nov. 8, 1936; MS to How-Martyn, Nov. 6 and Dec. 12, 1936, MS to Henriette Posner, Dec. 4, 1936, and 1936 Calendar [MSM C6:204, 250, S12:42, 79:269–76].) 8. Gandhi responded: “I have gone through my reproduction of the interview in Asia. My hurried reading left on me the impression that it was a faithful reproduction.” (Gandhi to MS, Nov. 27, 1936 [LCM 53:474].) 9. Dr. Jivraj Mehta frequently accompanied Gandhi on his tours. (Goenka, “Tribute to Jivraj Mehta,” 227–29.) 10. MS sent some dried fruit to Gandhi, possibly through Agatha Harrison (1885–1952), a British Quaker who worked for reconciliation between India and Great Britain. (Times [London], May 11, 1954; Gandhi to MS, Nov. 27, 1936 [LCM 53:474].)

October 1936  •  345

122. To S. W. Lee While in Nanking, Edith How-Martyn distributed gynaplaques and foam powder contraceptives. S. W. Lee, head of the Central Hospital’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, wrote Sanger to thank her for the gynaplaques and requested additional pessaries and foam powder contraceptives, noting that he tested them on about twenty women and found them “convenient and simple,” with no signs of failure or problems. (Lee to MS, Aug. 7, 1936, and Apr. 13, 1937 [quote] [MSM S11:461, 12:834].)

[New York?, N.Y.]1 October 21, 1936

Dear Dr. Lee: I am very happy to have your letter of August 7, and to know that you have found the gynaplaque helpful. We are glad to make a further contribution to you of foam powder, and I do hope it may be possible for you to undertake a piece of important research for us.2 It is my great hope that the foam powder and sponge method may prove to be the answer to the problem of the poor women, unable to purchase even a pessary. Before the method can be publicized, however, it is important that research work be done under competent auspices, under varying conditions for a long enough period of time, to enable us to judge results. I enclose a record card that we are using in connection with this foam powder research.3 Fifty pounds of the powder has already been shipped to you. This went forward on the tenth of October, and we understand it will arrive in Shanghai on the thirtieth of November. As containers for the powder are so expensive, we decided to send the fifty pounds in bulk. This is enough to take care of 500 cases, over a period of 6 months ↑or 250 cases over a year’s period ↓. We felt quite confident that with your fine equipment you would have no trouble in putting the powder into some tin or cardboard cartons of the shaker type.4 It must be understood that the foam powder is still in the experimental stage. There have been excellent reports on its use over a period of a year in certain sections of this country and we plan a regular check on these cases every three months. If you can cooperate in this study we hope it may also be possible to enter the results of a vaginal examination, reporting on the condition before and after six months’ use of the foam powder.5 Mrs. How-Martyn has told me of your splendid interest and I am deeply grateful to you.6

346  •  “Mother India”

I hope to be able to return to China next fall and I look forward to the pleasure and privilege of meeting you then.7 Cordially yours, Margaret Sanger TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S11:721–22) Handwritten interlineations probably by Florence Rose.

1. MS was commuting between New York City and Fishkill. (1936 Calendar [MSM S79:257].) 2. MS sent Lee a shipment of chemist Philip Stoughton’s foam powder, which was then being tested in clinics in India, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Honolulu as well as the United States. (MS to DeVilbiss, Oct. 7, 1936, and to Frederick Holden, Jan. 11, 1937 [MSM S11:666, C6:295]; MS to Olive Johnson, July 13, 1936 [LCM 15:1133]; for more details on the study, see Vol. 2.) 3. For examples of the record card “Foam Powder Series,” see PPFAR. 4. The technique was to shake a small amount of powder on both sides of a wet sponge, then knead it to produce a lather before insertion. (“Discussion of Occlusive Methods of Contraception,” 107–8.) 5. Though early results were encouraging, with reports of high rates of effectiveness and few complaints, a British lab test found that one batch caused harmful effects in dogs. (H. M. Carleton, “Reports on Pathological Tests of Two Samples of Foam Powder and One of Foam Jelly,” Aug. 27 and Sept. 9, 1936, and Feb. 15, 1937 [MSM S15:577]; “Discussion of Occlusive Methods of Contraception,” 107.) 6. How-Martyn visited Dr. Lee at the suggestion of Anna Chou; he arranged for her to speak to almost five hundred physicians, nurses, and midwives at Central Hospital. (How-Martyn, “Report on Canton,” Mar. 1936 [MSM S13:274]; How-Martyn to MS, Apr. 18, 1936 [MSM S11:224]; BCIIC Newsletter, No. 6 [Aug. 1936] [MSM C12:1054].) 7. Disappointed that she had to cancel her 1936 China tour, MS was preparing to return in September 1937. (MS to Yao Hsua Yuan, June 23, 1936 [LCM 12:865].)

123. To the BCIIC Council The BCIIC’s money troubles continued to worsen. In July Gerda Guy reported that it had been “a ghastly struggle to keep afloat financially and to keep the work going. Europe is full of war talk, and people sit tight on their cash. Not having the money to pay a decent salary has kept us from being able to appoint anyone in Edith’s place, and many, too many duties have fallen on Maurice and me. Many of them extremely unpleasant.” She later added that “the international work needs you, and it needs you being here with us at least 4–6 weeks every year.” (Guy to MS, July 10 [quote 1] and Oct. 10, 1936 [quote 2] [LCM 15:1129, 1226.)

November 1936  •  347

[New York, N.Y.] November 6, 1936

Dear Maurice, Gerda, and Harry:1 This letter must go to all three of you in this personal way, for I am resigning as President of the International Centre and want you to see eye to eye with me in doing so. This is not a new thought, as Gerda knows, for during the past two years I have realized the handicaps and difficulties that confront any organization with a President who is always on the go—but never where her advice and counsel can be useful to the organization to which she belongs.2 If there could be the possibility of my being in London this winter or spring or next summer, I would still hang on, but I cannot see my way clear to going to Europe for some years. Lord Horder could now be a very fine President and if the Council wished to make me Honorary President (or Ex.) I should consider it an honor and would be happy to accept it.3 But if that is not your custom I can be put where you usually place past officers. But I would like to remain with you in some capacity and work for the Centre wherever I go. Trusting this action of mine will help you to do better work and lessen inconveniences, I am Cordially, Margaret Sanger TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 16:11). For a draft version, see LCM 16:12.

1. Maurice Newfield, who had agreed to replace How-Martyn as director, had started to reorganize the BCIIC, but soon found it needed “one really strong full-time person like Edith was.” When Harry Guy agreed to guarantee two years of salary, Newfield hired Eleanor Hawarden as the BCIIC’s organizing secretary. (Gerda Guy to MS, July 10, 1936 [LCM 15:1129]; BCIIC Newsletter, No. 6 [Aug. 1936] [MSM C12:1051].) 2. Unlike her threats to resign in 1934 and 1935, this time MS was too frustrated by the BCIIC’s disputes and too preoccupied with her domestic agenda to stay on. (BCIIC Newsletter, No. 7 [Feb. 1937] [MSM C12:1054].) 3. Seeking to “emphasize the international character of the organization,” the BCIIC Council decided to increase the number of vice presidents from other countries. Among the electees were Lord Thomas Horder of the United Kingdom and Dr. Alex Tofte of Denmark. (BCIIC Newsletter, No. 6 [Aug. 1936]: 2 [MSM C12:1051].)

348  •  “Mother India”

124. “The Soviet Union’s Abortion Law” On June 27, 1936, the Soviet Union reversed its sixteen-year experiment with legal abortion, banning the practice. The new policy imposed prison sentences on abortion providers and fines for women who attempted to self-abort. Officials explained the policy reversal by claiming that social and economic conditions had so improved that the government could now help support larger families. But most observers and scholars viewed the prohibition as part of a rising wave of pronatalism. (Thomas, “International Intercourse,” 156–58.)

[December 1936] Russia was probably the first country in the world to give official sanction to abortion.1 By so doing it courageously faced a world wide evil, and took the first ethical and scientific step, so it appeared, in solving it. For the greatest danger in abortion, when it is forbidden, is that women must place their lives in the hands of quacks and submit to unhygienic conditions at a time when all the safeguards of science should be at their disposal.2 However, even when Russia enacted the law permitting abortions, providing that they must be performed under scientific and hygienic conditions by physicians in hospitals, it was recognized that this method of family limitation was a tragedy at best. Krupskaya, Lenin’s widow, writing in 1920, pointed out that it is only bitter necessity that compels a woman to give up motherhood. “We need only see the agitated and sad looks of the women who have had abortions,” she said, “to understand the price which a mother pays to obtain freedom in this way. Those who seriously want to remove these nightmare questions of child murder and abortion must work constantly to build up the new life where motherhood will occupy its proper place.”3 The Russian law sanctioning abortion had three objectives: to safeguard the lives of women by placing this operation in qualified hands, to control population, and to free the individual woman for other work.4 Over and above these objectives it carried out, logically and fearlessly, the Soviet idea of granting to every woman the power of individual choice as to whether she should or should not have a child. But birth control, i.e., the prevention of conception, is unquestionably preferable to abortion, the destruction of the foetus after conception has taken place. It is preferable for both physical and psychological reasons. No woman who has submitted to an abortion, even when performed under the most ideal conditions, can fail to be aware of her weakened physical condition, of a sense of guilt or profound and bitter depression. She has halted the forces of nature in mid-channel, and nature is exacting her price. Thus it seems strange that Russia sanctioned and provided for abortion first, and birth control second, as a sort of after-thought. Birth control was initiated, according to statements by Dr. W. Lebjedewa of the Research Insti-

December 1936  •  349

tute and other authorities, as a means of combatting the spread of abortion, not as another and better method of controlling population.5 The new law on Abortions and Aid to Mothers is at once a reversal of the earlier libertarian philosophy and a seeming contradiction within itself. Coupled with clear cut and adequate provisions for state aid to mothers and children, in the form of maternity allowances, confinement care, nurseries, kindergartens and so on,6 is a section forbidding abortions except for therapeutic reasons, that is, when the continuation of pregnancy endangers the life or threatens serious injury to the health of the pregnant woman.7 The government provides for the woman’s care in her career of motherhood to a degree which puts other countries to shame. It provides her with all she needs save the most important thing—knowledge of how to plan and space her children, and the right, if she wishes to exercise it, of not bringing a child into the world. Why this reversal in attitude, this contradiction? According to the Russian records, there has been very small loss of life from abortions under the former more liberal policy.8 Hence the change cannot have been made to check maternal deaths or as a health measure in any form. During my trip to Russia two years ago, I found that very little actual clinical birth control work was being done, though posters and printed literature proclaimed its value. Supplies were inferior and almost non-existent, and methods at present recognized as the most reliable could not be used for lack of manufacture or importation of materials. American physicians visiting Russia since that time bring back reports indicating that these conditions have not changed much for the better.9 The Soviet government has understood the problem. Why did not Russia develop its birth control program, and make this method of control as effective and well organized as the opportunities for procuring abortions? I seek for an explanation of the forces behind the new law. At the beginning of the Soviet regime, women were taken out of their homes and put into industry, because all available adult labor was needed to build up the country. Women were needed as workers more than as mothers. Hence every available help was given them to avoid and postpone motherhood when they wished to do so. Today, after almost two-score years, the Russian regime rests on firm foundations, and the first major objectives have been achieved. The Soviet government no longer acutely needs women as laborers.10 It passes now into a second phase where women are needed as mothers. Their usefulness to the state is greater in the field of reproduction than in the field of industry. Hence the new law which provides every incentive for the career of motherhood, in the shape of adequate care for mother and child, and at the same time clinches the matter by making it difficult to avoid childbearing.

350  •  “Mother India”

If this be the explanation of the new law, it is understandable but nevertheless a step backward. Russia is the one country, to my knowledge, which cannot be accused of injustice and arrogance in asking women to bear children, for it gives them assurance of protection and adequate care, medical, economic and social. Viewed in this way, the juxtaposition of provisions depriving women of the right to abortion and provisions for maternity and child care are logical and tenable. The law is reactionary, none the less. As a feminist, I protest against any woman having children if and when she does not want them. As a woman I believe that women do by nature want children, given the assurance that they will have a proper chance in life. Interesting experimentation has been done in Russia in developing new methods of contraception.11 There is here an opportunity to supply a world need in discovering a contraceptive which can be used by the masses; that is, one which is simple, inexpensive, and which does not need the detailed personal instruction which present methods demand. Let Russia further develop its estimable program of maternal and child care. Let it hold courageously to its former policy of abortions properly performed if need arises, and let it lessen that need by providing and developing adequate birth control service. With such a well-rounded course of action, Russian women may well become the envy of women in less “enlightened” countries. Woman Today (Dec. 1936): 8, 30 (MSM S71:874–75). An introductory paragraph added by the press reads: “Margaret Sanger is the president of the International Birth Control Information Center and of the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control. Mrs. Sanger attended the [nurses’] training school of the White Plains Hospital and the post-graduate school of the Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital. Her life has been devoted to the study and dissemination of safe and adequate birth control methods.”

1. In 1920 the Soviet Union became the first country in the twentieth century to legalize abortion. (Popov and David, “Russian Federation,” 236.) 2. MS based her position on her observations as a pre–World War I visiting nurse on New York’s Lower East Side. Wealthy women were usually able to obtain safe abortions from private physicians, while poor women were forced to turn to unlicensed doctors or midwives, in unsanitary conditions. (MS, “Birth Control,” in Sayings of Others on Birth Control [New York: 1921], 9 [LCM 130:548]; MS, “Shall We Have Birth Control,” Estes’ Back to Nature Magazine [Nov. 1930]: 4, 26, 30.) 3. Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya (1869–1939), a Bolshevik revolutionary, married Vladimir Lenin in 1898. Her writings on women’s roles in Bolshevik society had a strong influence on Soviet policy. MS quotes from her 1920 article “The War and Childbirth,” in Kommunistka, Krupskaya’s Bolshevik women’s monthly. (Norma Corigliano Noonan, “Krupskaia, Nadezhda Konstantinovna,” in Encyclopedia of Russian Women’s Movements, edited by Norma Corigliano Noonan and Carol Nechemias [Westport,

December 1936  •  351 Conn., 2001], 149–51; Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, Soviet Woman, a Citizen with Equal Rights: A Collection of Articles and Speeches [Moscow, 1937], 56–57.) 4. Population control was not mentioned as a rationale for Soviet laws permitting abortion and birth control. (Thomas, “International Intercourse, 192.) 5. Physician Vera Pavlovna Lebedeva (1881–1968), a founder and, until 1931, director of the OMM, was a state inspector for the NKZ (1934–38). She met MS in July 1934. Lebedeva’s statement was not found. (Susan Gross Solomon, “The Demographic Argument in Soviet Debates over the Legalization of Abortion in the 1920s,” Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique 33 [Jan–Mar. 1992]: 66–67, 74; Marilyn Ogilvie and Joy Harvey, eds., The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century [New York, 2000], 760–61].) 6. The law called for broadening the “Network of Maternity Homes, Nurseries and Kindergartens,” establishing state aid to large families, and strengthening the penalties for nonpayment of alimony. Though contraception remained legal, state support for it ended. (Popov and David, “Russian Federation,” 237; Thomas, “International Intercourse,” 156–58.) 7. Abortion was allowed when continuation of pregnancy endangered the health or life of the woman and “when a serious disease of the parents can be inherited.” (Quoted in Sigerist, Socialized Medicine, 345.) 8. See MS, Journal Entry, July 24, 1934, note 9, herein. 9. ABCL medical director Dr. Eric M. Matsner toured a Moscow abortarium in August 1935, commenting on the poor hygiene and inferior quality of the contraceptives. He reported hearing that “the condoms are so bad that the patient is instructed to wear five or six at once.” (National Committee on Maternal Health, “Round Table Meeting,” 1–3 [quote].) 10. Despite the government’s changing economic policies, the percentage of Russian women in the workforce, which decreased in the first years of the Soviet regime, remained steady at about 28 percent from 1923 to 1930. However, just as the government began adopting its pronatalist policies, the second Five-Year Plan (1933–37) dramatically increased women’s participation in the labor force, reaching 35 percent by 1937. (See How-Martyn to MS, June 23, 1932, note 2, herein; Goldman, Women, the State & Revolution, 109–10, 310, 312–13.) 11. In the 1920s and 1930s, Soviet scientists conducted research in endocrinology, in hematology, and on the nervous system in search of new contraceptive measures. MS refers to spermatoxin research that had mostly ended in the Soviet Union by 1936, but was being taken up by American researchers. (MS to Andreytchine, Mar. 8, 1935, note 11, herein; Thomas, “International Intercourse,” 95–96; see also Vol. 2.)

z SIX A Troubled World

Sanger had big plans for 1937. A favorable ruling in December 1936 from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in the One Package case lifted most of the remaining prohibitions on contraception in the United States. The decision offered “a great release of my energies, which I shall of course begin to direct toward International work.”1 Less than a year after her return from Hong Kong, Sanger was making plans to visit Japan, the Philippines, and China, where she hoped to expand practical birth control through public health programs.2 Sanger also sought to increase the number of field trials for testing foam powder, the method she thought best suited for the poor and those without access to physicians. Field trials in the United States and India had yielded positive results, and with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation Sanger organized trials in China in advance of her trip and hoped to establish more in Japan and Korea. “There is no place, to my knowledge,” Sanger wrote in the summer of 1937, “where such a human laboratory of boundless scope exists as in China.”3 She hoped foam powder could be manufactured throughout Asia using rice starch as a base ingredient. This would keep the supply steady and the price low. As the date of Sanger’s trip drew closer, Japan began bombing China, throwing her plans into doubt. Japan had invaded China near Peking on July 7, 1937. 352  •

A Troubled World  •  353

Sanger was assured that peace negotiations would commence before she arrived and that “the troubled atmosphere would soon clear.”4 After receiving the go-ahead from the State Department, she set sail from Honolulu on August 7 with a small entourage of friends. Florence Rose, Sanger’s indispensable and indefatigable assistant, had sailed ahead to set up meetings in Japan and China and was in Shanghai when Japanese bombs struck, pinning Rose in her hotel for several tense days before she was evacuated. The Second Sino-Japanese War had begun. Though she was sympathetic toward the Chinese, when forced to cancel her China visit Sanger salvaged the trip by expanding her itinerary in Japan. As in 1922, her presence in Japan in 1937 generated widespread interest, and birth control competed in the press with coverage of the war. She found Japan different from her visit fifteen years earlier. She was struck by the “rapid Westernization . . . the broad streets, the automobiles, the Western costumes of the men and the children,” and “the more educated women.” But she was “disappointed . . . to find that the progress of the women of Japan has been retarded.” Despite the increased militarism and pronatalism of the Japanese government, it did not censor Sanger’s speeches. She reflected that “a great deal has been started in many directions.” This included the launch of a new foam powder trial and the fostering of closer ties with influential public health officials.5 But these advances were short-lived. Just months later, in December 1937, government crackdowns on left-wing groups swept Shidzue Ishimoto and other political activists into prison and forced the fragile Japanese birth control movement underground. The birth control movement in Europe was also under attack, starting in 1933, when the new Nazi regime in Germany began closing birth control, sex advice, and marital advice centers and instituting racist eugenic policies. All the while, the BCIIC was floundering under financial burdens. Without an internationally renowned figure at the helm, it was unable to help the few remaining fragmented and beleaguered European birth control organizations. Sanger expanded the BCCRB’s efforts to take on more international work, but its resources were limited. With new constraints on birth control in Asia and Europe, she turned her sights closer to home, particularly the Caribbean region, which she visited in 1937 and 1941. The creation of the Birth Control Federation of America (BCFA) in 1939 (which later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America [PPFA]) changed Sanger’s role within the American movement, as she allowed others to take the lead in running the organization. She briefly considered another world tour for 1940, hoping the aggressions in Europe and Asia would have quieted by then, but she quickly gave up that idea, writing that “the troubled world at present makes it difficult for any of us to plan for the future.”6

354  •  A Troubled World

When war finally broke out in Europe, in September 1939, Sanger’s world contracted even further. Though she tried to maintain contact with her English friends through the long, dark days of the Battle of Britain and worked with Florence Rose to help Jewish physicians and birth control advocates emigrate as the war intensified, her contacts abroad became silent. Sanger’s focus shifted to domestic concerns—the immediate fate of her two medically trained sons, both of draft age, and the U.S. approach to the war. Despite her early and vocal opposition to Hitler and the Nazi regime, Sanger was a pacifist. From 1939 to December 1941, she held firm in her insistence that the United States adopt a policy of rigid isolationism, even as France fell to the Germans and England teetered on the edge of defeat. And though she condemned the tyrannical leadership of the Axis powers, she did not spare Great Britain and France for their diplomatic failings and continued to warn of the insidious evil of the Roman Catholic Church, claiming Catholics “are as great an enemy in their way to democracy as Hitler but far more clever, subtle and poisonous.”7 Even more emphatically, Sanger once again tied unchecked population growth, “which now screams to us across the world,” to expansionism and war. Overpopulation, she wrote in 1939 and 1940, has “goaded” mankind “on to a frenzy of Exploitation, Aggression, Arrogance & War,” and there “can be no permanent peace until each nation accepts a Population Policy & adheres to it.”8 But her antiwar words were soon drowned out by war drums, and a few months later she closed her 1940 journal, “A war torn world greets us for 1941.”9 Notes

1. MS to How-Martyn, Jan. 23, 1937 (MSM C6:322). 2. MS, “Notes from a Recent Trip to the Orient,” JOC 2 (Nov. 1937): 201. 3. MS to Arthur Packard, July 4, 1937 (MSM C6:552). 4. MS to Friends, Sept. 6, 1937 (MSM S13:461). 5. MS to Friends, Sept. 6, 1937 (MSM S13:461). 6. MS to How-Martyn, June 7, 1939 (MSM C6:1027). 7. MS to How-Martyn, June 16, 1940 (MSM C7:98). 8. MS, “Pressure of Population as a Cause of War,” Nov. 21, 1939 (MSM S72:101). 9. MS, Journal Entry, Jan. 1, 1941 (MSM S70:540).

125. To Eleanor A. Hawarden 1 Though Sanger had resigned as BCIIC president and council member in 1936, she proposed to represent the BCIIC during her China trip, but only if she could retain full independence. She did not want to have to consult with “any person or group a few thousand miles away, to ask them what my next step must be.” (Gerda Guy to MS, Nov. 18, 1936, and MS to Gerda Guy, Jan. 25, 1937 [quote] [LCM 16:48, 194].)

January 1937  •  355

[New York, N.Y.] January 25, 1937

Dear Miss Hawarden: Your memorandum with regard to the work of the Birth Control International Centre interested me greatly, and I regret that it was impossible—owing to the pressure of work here—to give sufficient time to reply before this to all the points involved.2 While it is late for suggestions, and doubtless your plans are being made for your future activities, nevertheless I will take up some of the items for the Council’s consideration. For the past four years there have been many International contacts in Egypt, Palestine, and other important countries, made from the International Centre in London, and these should be followed up by you—as Executive Secretary—and strengthened for future work.3 Many of these contacts are of great value and if there can be a weeding out of worthless contacts and fresh interest inspired in those already in our files, it would be most worthwhile. An example of such valuable contacts will be found in a letter from me, in Mysore, asking that a letter from the Council be written to the Dewan of Mysore.4 I gave his full name and address, requesting that he be asked by the Council to become a Vice President. Later he visited Buckingham Palace as a guest, but evidently no word had been received by him, and he has not gone down on our stationary as a Vice President. I hope something was done to capture his interest, for he was one of the finest contacts made in India.5 The Western methods of birth control—diaphragm and jelly—are out of the question in India and China. They will not be used successfully on a large scale, as they cannot be generally applied, owing to the cost and the necessity for instruction by a doctor. There are millions of people in villages who have no doctor and they never see one from year to year, unless it is the “witch doctor.”6 Medical schools in Bombay have the contraceptive films for student instruction. In representing the International Birth Control Centre these films were given them as from the Centre.7 Fifty birth control centres have been started in India and the names of all these have been sent to the Centre from me direct from India.8 The objects of the Centre should include an educational campaign by leaflets with a follow-up directed to Government officials and public health authorities, social workers, and all others associated with humanitarian agencies.9 I believe the Centre should decide upon two or three lines of attack and should push their educational campaign along these designated lines from year to year—such as

1. Public health and public welfare along the lines mentioned above, including health agencies of various kinds, and Governmental departments.

356  •  A Troubled World



2. Population growth—its distribution and increase, and its attendant problems.

These two lines of education are distinctly separate and need an entirely different approach, but they are both important activities of the future and should be considered in planning for the activities of the Centre. I do not believe that it is necessary to send a paid worker into the Orient. There are sufficient contacts now to get work done by an occasional visitor representing the Centre every year or two. A little money for paid workers in the field, who are native to the country, would go much further than the heavy expense of sending a representative from the Centre. As I wrote the Centre when in India, we could have obtained the services of a young medical man who spoke five languages. He is an excellent speaker and would have traveled and paid his own expenses, for about £10 a month. A great opportunity was lost not to have accepted this young man’s offer.10 Dr. Pillay’s group in Bombay is already established as an educational centre.11 We have supplied them with material for their clinic and with the educational films on the biology of Contraception, and have given some financial support to their magazine “Marriage Hygiene” and are referring letters and inquiries regarding India to Dr. Pillay’s group.12 If the contacts with the Pillay group have gone elsewhere it is only because they have answered their letters promptly and shown an interest in the work that they were doing, and the results that have happened naturally follow.13 This is an incomplete and tardy reply to some of the points mentioned in your letter and report. Inasmuch as I am planning to go to London in the spring—in early April—I feel the other points raised can better be discussed personally than via correspondence. If your plans, however, have not gone too far ahead I hope the Council will give consideration to the above suggestions.14 Will you let me know whether you are planning to publish the report of the Indian tour in London, and in what form you plan to have it appear. As stated in a previous letter, we will be glad to share in half of the expense involved.15 I look forward with much pleasure to meeting you personally. Sincerely yours, Margaret Sanger [signed] Margaret Sanger [handwritten] P.S. It was distressing to learn from India that the report from the London Int Bc Center is being sent without request on the test of the Foam Powder.

January 1937  •  357

It is unfortunate to do this because you are not in possession of the ingredients of the formulae tested & there are four different ones under [written along right margin] research. Please ascertain which formulae.16 MS TLS IPPFR, IPPF (MSM C6:334–36). Letterhead of the BCCRB.

1. Eleanor A. Hawarden (Lewin) (1907–94) was a South African–born lawyer who became the BCIIC’s organizing secretary in July 1936. (United Kingdom National Archives Finding Aid; Gerda S. Guy to MS, July 10, 1936 [LCM 15:1129].) 2. Hawarden’s memorandum (not found) asked for MS’s suggestions on funding and reorganization. According to Gerda Guy, Hawarden had argued that “the centre should re-orient itself and suppress the name of Birth Control and operate in an indirect way through welfare centres and mothers’ clinics. This completely upset my colleagues . . . and instead of discussing the matter in a rational manner there was considerable aloofness between the council and the secretary.” (Hawarden to MS, Mar. 4, 1937 [MSM C6:377]; Secretary to Hawarden, Mar. 24, 1937, Hawarden to MS, Nov. 19, 1936, and John and Gerda Guy to MS, July 11, 1938 [quote] [LCM 16:314, 5, 664].) 3. How-Martyn left detailed documentation of the travels and contacts she made on tours. (For examples, see Edith How-Martyn, “Egypt Report,” Jan. 20, 1934, HowMartyn to MS, Jan. 26 and Feb. 21, 1934 [LCM 13:97, 99, 20:400]; see also BCIIC newsletters.) 4. The dewan of Mysore was Sir Mirza Ismail. Hawarden was unable to find MS’s January 30, 1936, letter about the dewan, so MS resent it. Neither has been found. (Hawarden to MS, Mar. 4, 1937 [MSM C6:377]; MS Secretary to Hawarden, Mar. 24, 1937 [LCM 16:314].) 5. The influential Ismail served as a bridge between British and Indian nationalists. MS likely refers to Ismail’s August 1936 trip to London, accompanying the Maharajah Nalwadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar. (Mirza Ismail, My Public Life: Recollections and Reflections [London, 1954], 66–67; Times [London], Aug. 18, 1936.) 6. MS likely refers to the traditional Indian medicines practiced by vaidyas, natural herbalists who relied on Ayurvedic principles of medicine; hakims, who used Unani principles of medicine; and janteyar, witch doctors who believed that disease was caused by evil spirits. (Deeptee Jain and Rajeev Jain, “Medical Science Education,” in Encyclopedia of India, edited by Stanley Wolper [Detroit, 2006], 3:107–8; Deepak Kumar Behera and Georg Pfeffer, Tribal Situation in India [New Delhi, 2005], 281–82.) 7. See MS, Excerpts from Journal Entry, Nov. 27, 1935, note 14, herein. 8. The BCIIC office lost MS’s clinic list, and Hawarden asked how a “clinic” was to be defined. How-Martyn claimed that there were only six clinics established when she arrived in India, and by the time she left there were about twenty doctor-run establishments. These offices provided contraceptive fittings and supplies, kept records, and held regular hours. The services offered at hospitals and maternity centers were less well organized and did not operate on specific schedules. When combined with the “real clinics,” How-Martyn estimated there were fifty or sixty, including those in Bombay, Ahmedabad, Poona, Akola, Nagpur, Madras, Tinnevelly, Trichinopoly, Colombo, Kandy,

358  •  A Troubled World Wai, Satara, Baroda, and Medha. (Hawarden to MS, Mar. 4, 1937 [MSM C6:377]; HowMartyn to MS, Mar. 22 [quote] and May 30, 1937 [LCM 16:306, 400].) 9. The BCIIC’s aims were to spread knowledge of birth control around the world, distribute literature and answer inquiries about birth control, furnish information and set up clinic tours for visitors to England, and report contraceptive research news. (BCIIC Newsletter, No. 7 [Feb. 1937]: 8 [MSM C12:1054].) 10. MS refers to Dr. Manjeri Sundaram, whose efforts to open a birth control clinic in Calicut were inhibited by a lack of funds. (See MS, “News from Margaret Sanger,” Jan. 2, 1936, herein; Sundaram to MS, Jan. 20 and 23, 1936, and to How-Martyn. July 7, 1936 [LCM 18:13, 62, 253].) 11. Pillay’s SSPFH, founded in 1935, operated a free clinic, offered lectures, and conducted research studies. (Wadia, Light Is Ours, 497.) 12. See Pillay to MS, Oct. 10, 1931, and Jan. 7, 1932, and Rose to Pillay, Mar. 7, 1932 [LCM 17:442, 458, 462].) 13. MS may be responding to Hawarden’s belief that birth control groups formed in British colonies should work closely with other British groups rather than with MS’s BCCRB. (Harry Guy to MS, July 11, 1938 [LCM 16:664].) 14. Hawarden had raised questions about her responsibilities at the BCIIC and suggested that it start a “less medical and more sociological” journal that would not compete with either the Journal of Contraception or Marriage Hygiene. MS did not go to London in 1937. (Hawarden to MS, Nov. 19, 1936 [LCM 16:51].) 15. MS refers to the India report she sent to Maurice Newfield in January 1936, which the BCIIC was reluctant to publish due to the cost. MS eventually published it in 1937 as Round the World for Birth Control with Margaret Sanger and Edith How-Martyn: An Account of an International Tour. (Hawarden to MS, Mar. 4, 1937 [MSM C6:377]; MS to Newfield, Dec. 5, 1936, to How-Martyn, May 12, 1937, and to Julian Huxley, June 10, 1937 [LCM 16:97, 357, 419].) 16. On August 27, 1936, H. M. Carleton reported that a foam powder sample he tested was “indubitably harmful.” Hawarden sent Carleton’s report to Pillay and added that she was not prepared to withhold “the knowledge that a competent authority in this country had tested the powder and returned an adverse report.” However, there was confusion over which sample Carleton had tested, the one created by Lydia DeVilbiss or the one by Philip Stoughton that MS had sent to India. (How-Martyn to MS, Nov. 23, 1936 [LCM 16:56]; H. M. Carleton, “Reports on Pathological Tests of Two Samples of Foam Powder and One of Foam Jelly,” Aug. 27 and Sept. 9, 1936, and Feb. 15, 1937 [quote 1], and Hawarden to MS, Mar. 4, 1937 [quote 2] [MSM S15:577, C6:377]; see Vol. 2 for more on foam powder research.)

126. To Mei-ling Soong (Madame Chiang K ai-shek) 1 Though the Roosevelt administration and most Americans were sympathetic to China’s outrage over Japanese aggression in the 1930s, American foreign policy was aimed at Japanese appeasement. China was torn by a civil war between the National Party, led by Chiang Kaishek (Jiăng Jièshí) (1888–1975), and the Communists and warlords, a division that weakened

March 1937  •  359 its ability to fend off Japan. The United States viewed Chiang Kai-shek as a bulwark against communism in Asia and an important unifying and modernizing force for China, but also recognized that he was corrupt and ruthless in the suppression of dissent. In preparation for her upcoming China trip, Sanger decided that getting the support of Chiang Kai-shek’s powerful wife would be in her best interests. (Warren I. Cohen, America’s Response to China: A History of Sino-American Relations [New York, 2010], 128; New York Times, Mar. 16, 1937, and Apr. 6, 1975; Harold Isaacs, Scratches on Our Minds: American Views of China and India [New York, 1958, reprinted 1980], 203.)

[New York, N.Y.] March 26, 1937

Dear Madam Chiang: There are many in America who look forward to your arrival in this country this summer and who have watched with profound interest and admiration your efforts, as well as those of your husband, in behalf of your country.2 Many mutual friends have suggested that I endeavor to see you when next I go to China. It occurs to me, however, that you will be in America before I plan to leave in August.3 I am wondering if I might have the pleasure and privilege of seeing you while you are here. I cannot help but feel that you too rebel against the needless waste of mother and child life in China, and I dare to hope that you will be in complete sympathy with the cause to which I and countless others in many lands have dedicated our energies.4 I feel that your advice could be of untold value, and before I see the various public health officials in China who have been kind enough to invite me to visit their cities, I would like to talk over the situation with you.5 I expect to spend the two months preceding August 1st, at my home in Willow Lake, Fishkill, New York and a letter addressed to me there will reach me promptly.6 Sincerely yours, Margaret Sanger TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S12:706).

1. Mei-ling Soong (Sóng Měilíng) (ca. 1897–2003), called the “Dragon Lady of China,” was the American-educated wife of Chiang Kai-shek. Initially serving as her husband’s English interpreter, Soong soon emerged as a formidable presence in her own right, acting as an unofficial ambassador to the United States and other Western countries. She directed the Xin Sheng Huó Dōng (XSHYD) (New Life Movement), which worked to reinforce traditional Chinese values in opposition to communism, focusing her efforts on women’s education, vocational training, welfare, and family problems. (New York Times, Oct. 24, 2003; Perkins, Encyclopedia of China, 479–80; Hong Fan, Footbinding, Feminism and Freedom: The Liberation of Women’s Bodies in Modern China [Portland, Ore., 1997], 240–45.) 2. Soong was to speak at Mount Holyoke College in May 1937. In December 1936, Chiang Kai-shek’s generals, led by Xueliang Zhang, kidnapped him and forced him

360  •  A Troubled World to work with the Communists to create a united front against the Japanese. (Perkins, Encyclopedia of China, 69–71; New York Times, Jan. 16, 1937.) 3. Dr. C. C. Chiang of Nanking suggested that MS meet with Soong because “her interest could do much to encourage widespread acceptance of a new idea.” MS planned to visit Peking and Shanghai from August 31 to October 2. (Rose to MS, Mar. 8, 1937 [MSM 12:627]; MS to Anna Chou, Apr. 17, 1937 [LCM 12:136].) 4. As head of the Women’s Division of the XSHYD, Soong sent workers into rural areas to teach birth control and infant care. (Laura Tyson Li, Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China’s Eternal First Lady [New York, 2006], 106.) 5. MS had been invited to speak to the PFYPCH, the CISH, the Bridgeman Girls High School, and the Peking International Women’s Club. (“Tentative Program for Mrs. M. Sanger’s Visit to Peiping,” Mar. 10–23, 1936 [LCM 12:753].) 6. MS actually left New York for the Southwest and West Coast on June 29, 1937. (1937 Calendar [MSM S79:366].)

127. Journal Entry In 1937 Bermuda governor Reginald Hildyard invited Sanger to the island to lecture on birth control “at private meetings with the Board of Health, representative groups of white and colored women, etc.” to “present the subject from the economic, moral, health and population angles.” She was flattered, noting it “was the first government that had ever invited me.” An island of only nineteen square miles, Bermuda had a rapidly growing population of around thirty thousand, with a population density greater than Hong Kong. About 60 percent of Bermuda’s population was black, with a birthrate almost double that of the whites on the island, as well as higher death and infant mortality rates. Since 1933 the Bermuda Department of Health had unofficially offered birth control instruction in its clinics, though it was not made official government policy until 1937. (Hildyard to MS, Mar. 2, 1937 [quote 1] [LCM 11:1159]; New York Tribune, June 2, 1937 [quotes 2–3]; MS, “Birth Control for Bermuda,” June–July 1937 [MSM S71:0947].)

[Monarch of Bermuda, at sea] May 15, 1937 Sailed at 3 Pm on the S.S. Monarch of Bermuda. Not an exciting journey at all but modest quarters & roommate considering I am guest of Sir Reginald Hildyard Governor of Bermuda who invited me to come down.1 [Hamilton, Bermuda] [May 17?, 1937] His Excellency called his chief officer of Health in to consult as to my visit. Henry Wilkinson the medical officer of Health met me at the boat & drove me in a funny little carriage to Waterloo House where a nice corner room was reserved for me.2

May 1937  •  361

Dr Wilkinson is typical English official, youngish, slender (about 40) light, shy, reticent, but warms up delightfully when his intellect gets working. He had arranged to have three meetings for me. One, the first at the assembly rooms or rather in one of the Committee rooms of the Assembly. Several members of the legislature were there. About 40 men & three women were present. The men remind me of an agricultural group with accent on the “cultural” typical fair minded English tradition to give & take live & learn. Dr Dill Pres of the Medico Assn presided & introduced me,3 I spoke for 40 minutes & then “my Lord” who had come in a little late, but sat in the dumps with eyes closed & head bowed throughout. The Bishop of Bermuda an Episcopal who here is called “my Lord.”4 The audiance rose as he entered & stood until he was seated. I took too long to inquire who he was believing it was a Roman Catholic so did not have time to get up. After talking, my Lord who had snorted throughout my talk finally arose to speak. He said he came because he was invited to come & felt it to be his duty. He had spent a most painful hour listening to the speaker & tho he recognized her seriousness she was advocating a damnable cause dwelt on the Lambeth Conference & that unhappy resolution of which he was “proudly in the minority.”5 He did not say why he was against it but ended up by advising me to follow in the foot steps of Marie Stopes. I looked amazed & blank. Later on I was told that it is rumored about that Marie has “recanted” & gone over to the other side.6 God forbid this to have happened as it will show the “cracked mind” long predicted working. The May 1937 Bc news does not show any change nor does it carry an editorial which one misses in any magazine.7 Dr Williams the colored man in the audiance is interested & I hope will take an active part in the movement here.8 AD MSP, DLC (LCM 1:361–65).

1. General Sir Reginald J. T. Hildyard (1876–1965) had been a British military officer before becoming governor of Bermuda (1936–39). (Times [London], Sept. 30, 1965.) 2. Dr. Henry Campbell Wilkinson (1893–1978), director of Bermuda’s Health Department (1928–55), made all of MS’s travel arrangements, including booking her room at Waterloo House, an 1815 mansion overlooking Hamilton Harbor. He wrote of Sanger, “She is most appealing and with an easy manner, and dispelled every evil aura about birth control, except in the heads of a few ecclesiastics.” (Royal Gazette [Hamilton], Mar. 7, 1978; Wilkinson to MS, Apr. 26, 1937 [LCM 11:1163]; Wilkinson, “Draft of 1937 Medical Report on Health and Sanitary Conditions for Bermuda,” 1937 [Bermuda Archives], 99 [quote].) 3. MS’s first speech took place on May 17 before members of the House of Assembly and Legislative Council, physicians, the bishop of Bermuda, and members of the Board

362  •  A Troubled World of Health. She delivered one of her standard speeches, calling birth control a “keynote of a new social awakening” and emphasizing the pressures of population on society. Colonel Thomas Melville Dill (1876–1945), Bermuda’s attorney general, chaired the meeting, though MS seems to have confused him with a doctor in attendance; she identified him correctly in a later article. (MS, Bermuda Diary, May 20, 1937 [LCM 11:1171]; Royal Gazette [Hamilton], May 18, 1937; MS, Bermuda Speech Notes, May 1937 [quote] [MSM S71:935]; MS, “Birth Control for Bermuda,” JOC 2 [June–July 1937]: 131; Paul G. Boultbee and David F. Raine, Bermuda [Santa Barbara, Calif., 1998], 102.) 4. The Right Reverend Arthur Heber Browne (1864–1951), named the first bishop of Bermuda in 1925, led the opposition to birth control. (Chicago Daily Tribune, June 11, 1951.) 5. At the 1930 Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Communion, the bishops voted 193 to 67 to approve birth control in cases “where there is a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood.” The resolution opposed using contraception for reasons of “selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience.” (Chicago Daily Tribune, Aug. 16, 1930 [quotes]; Times [London], Aug. 21, 1930.) 6. The bishop told MS that “he could only pray that I’d recant like Marie Stopes did and join the Roman Catholic Church.” By this time, Stopes’s ego and unwillingness to share leadership had pushed her to the margins of the birth control movement. She had resigned from the NBCA in 1933 and, thereafter, found it difficult to recapture public attention. MS asked Gerda Guy to determine if the story of Stopes’s conversion to Catholicism was true. When Guy denied it, MS made it public, noting that the “people of the Island laughed up their sleeves at the Bishop’s slip.” MS said, “I’m glad she has not gone crazy as I feared when I heard she had ‘recanted.’” (Hall, Passionate Crusader, 204; MS to Guy, June 9, 1937 [MSM C6:519] [quotes]; see also Guy to MS, May 25, 1937 [LCM 16:394–95].) 7. Stopes’s monthly, the Birth Control News, contained short news items about birth control in England and around the world, many of which disparaged efforts by Catholics to thwart birth control activists. (Birth Control News [May 1937].) 8. This was probably Dr. Leon J. Williams (1893–1953), a Bermuda physician and a representative for Warwick Parish in the Bermuda Parliament. (Bermuda Recorder, Mar. 28, 1953.)

128. To K atherine Blondel 1 In 1936 Governor Hildyard announced his government’s plans to unofficially offer birth control services to Bermuda’s black population. He argued, “The present Negro population in the island is increasing too rapidly . . . and, because the question is purely an economic one, the only solution to the problems that may arise in the future is the practice of birth control, now.” His announcement led to protests and accusations of racism in both the United States and Bermuda. Hildyard claimed that the policy was not discriminatory because the whites of Bermuda already had access to birth control. (New York Times, Sept. 28, 1936; Amsterdam News, Nov. 7 [quote] and 28, 1936; New York Tribune, June 2, 1937.)

May 1937  •  363

[Hamilton, Bermuda] May 18th, 1937

Dear Mrs. Blondel, The colored meeting of over sixty persons of whom not more than six or seven were white officials or staff members of medical offices, went off very well today.2 I talked for an hour and then the questions began. It was at first very lively and to a degree antagonistic. The brilliant lawyer of the place asked, how we “plan to control birth control”?3 There was considerable vagueness as to his meaning but then he said he meant to find out who was to control the “Society” that was to decide about birth control. We soon put that to rest by saying we were not organizing a “Society” at all nor did any birth control group aim to impose its advice or knowledge upon any individual or group. Our only aim was to make available such knowledge when it was requested and desired. Then the subject of race suicide came up several times.4 Two men stated that women would not have children if they could prevent it. I disagreed and said the maternal instinct would see to that. After that, morals, free love, education and every side of the subject popped up as fast as I could reply. It was the most alive session I have had in a long time. These dark complexioned colored gentlemen can certainly ask questions. The women came later and stated their views. They were all for it and would gladly help. Mothers are constantly asking them what to do. I was so sorry to miss seeing you at luncheon but the Governor wants lots of action so I felt it wise to work fast and get a swim while the sun shines today. I trust you had a nice voyage. I returned on time to wave you all a “goodbye and bon voyage” although, of course, you could not see me in the crowd. My regards to you both. We all miss you here and it was very vacant without you tonight. Cordially yours, TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S13:96).

1. Katherine Cox Blondel (1882–1967), a member of the Montclair, New Jersey, Women’s Club, may have been vacationing in Bermuda with her husband, John J. Blondel, the president of a Montclair fuel company. They likely ran into MS on May 15, the day they sailed home on the Queen of Bermuda. (N.Y. Passenger Lists, 1820–1957; SSDI; New York Times, July 16, 1967.) 2. MS noted that the audience of social workers and health department representatives was “a good crowd of eager listeners.” (1937 Calendar [MSM S79:350].) 3. This was probably William E. Meyer (b. 1876), mayor of St. George’s Parish. (New York Passenger Lists, 1820–1957).

364  •  A Troubled World 4. “Race suicide,” a term popularized by Theodore Roosevelt in the early twentieth century, initially referred to fears that the white upper- and middle-class populations would, by the voluntary restriction of family size, fail to replace themselves. This fear was taken up by some African American leaders, notably Marcus Garvey, who suspected that white efforts to provide birth control for blacks was designed to reduce the black population and weaken their power. (Engelman, History of the Birth Control Movement, 54; Carol R. McCann, Birth Control Politics in the United States, 1916–1945 [Ithaca, N.Y., 1994], 149.)

129. Journal Entry Sanger spoke to a group of doctors and nurses on May 21, lectured to a “shy audience” of “25 colored & 50 whites” in St. George’s Parish Town Hall on May 24, and participated in “a public meeting at a colored hall” on May 25, before sailing for home on May 26. (1937 Calendar [MSM S79:352–54].)

[S.S.] Monarch of Bermuda, [at sea] Wednesday, May 26 [1937] Luncheon at Government House with Gov & Lady Hillyard a previous meeting in Health officers rooms with several colored women & midwife practical demonstration of Bc.1 Boat full & crowded. Everyone thinks Bc will take hold here now.2 But I give it five years of steady plodding & work—midwives must be trained—& people educated.3 En route to N Y via Monarch of Bermuda AD MSP, DLC (LCM 1:378).

1. MS had a short meeting at the Health Department that preceded lunch with Governor Hildyard and Lady Muriel Bonsor Hildyard (1887–1975), whom she described as “very pleasant & informed.” She noted that the governor was “courteous but that army manner brooks no nonsense by courtesy.” (http://www.thepeerage.com; England and Wales Death Index, 1916–2007; Bermuda Recorder, May 29, 1937; MS, Journal Entry, May 19, 1937 [LCM 1:369].) 2. In June Henry Wilkinson reported interest from “several coloured school teachers,” and “today a bell boy in one of the hotels, with three children already, came in to see what was recommended—& left with the promise that his wife will come to see me.” He also updated MS on plans to build a clinic “in the coloured area.” (Wilkinson to MS, June 19, 1937 [LCM 11:1191].) 3. MS left Wilkinson a supply list and suggested he get a part-time black physician. She told Governor Hildyard that the next step was to promote birth control as a public health service. A year later, Wilkinson reported that he and three colonial doctors were dispensing birth control and that its use was becoming more widespread. He added, “We must ever be grateful to you for the splendid start you gave us.” (MS to Hildyard, June 10, 1937, and Wilkinson to MS, July 9, 1938 [quote] [LCM 11:1179, 1191].)

June 1937  •  365

130. “What Margaret Sanger Thinks of Mussolini” In May 1937, Morris A. Bealle, the muckraking editor of Washington, D.C.’s Plain Talk, published Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s views on women. In the article, Mussolini argued that “women can imitate but not originate,” they have “no wills of their own,” and they are “unnecessary and unwanted in politics.” He described women as “the cushions of our primitive nature” whose work was to “stay at home, attend to our children and give us the womanly and spiritual guidance that all men need.” Bealle did not want to run the article “without permitting some representative woman to express her view of Mussolini.” (Mussolini, “What Mussolini Thinks of Women,” Plain Talk [May 1937], 12–13 [quotes 1–5]; Bealle to MS, Mar. 4, 1937 [quote 6] [LCM 69:660B]).

[June 1937] Item for item and paragraph for paragraph, Mussolini’s ideas about women, as set forth in the article “What Mussolini Thinks of Women,” which appeared in the last issue of PLAIN TALK, are shot through with prejudice. They are a confession of his own limited personal life.1 His fanatical male egotism is a threat to the development of the women of Italy, to the advancement of all women, and to the peace of the world. “The modern woman is liable to forget the primary duties she owes to civilization, and therefore I am not in favor of woman’s dabbling in politics,” Mussolini writes.2 Women realize poignantly the obligation and privilege they carry as race bearers because they are the mothers of the race, and it is because of this that they must, perforce, enter the political arena. For only by so doing can women make the world a fit place for children to live in. “Women never created anything,” writes Mussolini. “ . . . you cannot point to any single instance where a woman has created anything that has been passed down to posterity.”3 Ludicrous—were the implications Mussolini’s bigotry not so fraught with danger and tragedy. Women never created anything? What about babies? What about you, Signor Mussolini. You would not be here to rant and shout, nor we to read and fight, if women had never created anything. As to women not being creators—shame on Mussolini! Has he forgotten his history? Where are his religious teachings? Does he not know that the Virgin Mary, all by herself and without assistance of man (according to legend) created the leader and founder of Christianity. This was an act of creation which has changed our civilization for the past 2000 years. Is this not enough? What are the mutterings of a vain egotistical war lord compared with this achievement?

366  •  A Troubled World

Why waste time in listing other names of women of history, of science, of art, of music, of literature? Women of the world are united in loathing and despising Mussolini’s egotism. Consequently his knowledge of women of brain, personality, talent and ability has been curtailed, and such women do not exist for him.4 “Women in parliament are meddlers and muddlers. Women cannot look after the future of the human race in the home and in the nursery and govern at the same time . . . the governing of the community should be left to the male sex,” Mussolini continues.5 And a fine mess the male sex has made of it. We, the mothers, look today upon a world threatened by war, upon nation arming against nation. We look upon poverty in the midst of plenty, upon millions of able bodied men unable to find work, upon hunger and disease. We see men, women and children without adequate food, shelter or clothing, while billions are spent for armaments and the upkeep of armies. Women cannot look after the future of the human race without taking an active part in shaping their nation’s laws, without entering the fields of politics and government. I am no rabid man hater who thinks that women should rule the world. But I do believe, and my belief is grounded in a study of history, that our problems must be met by men and women acting together, by a fusion of male and female power, by cooperation between the sexes. As truly as these United States could not exist half slave and half free, so truly today the nations cannot build a better world while male dominates female, while man enslaves his womenfolk. “Emancipation of women has imperilled the domestic security of the home and the safety of the world from the point of view of eugenics,” Il Duce states.6 What, I ask, is the greatest threat to domestic security, to the safety of the world? War. And men are responsible for war. Women, because they know the glory of motherhood, because they are the life bearers, the creators of men, feel a horror unknown to mere man at the spectacle of thousands upon thousands of young men mowed down, maimed and crippled in the glory of their youth. It is women who champion the cause of peace, who have made articulate the voiceless protest of the masses. Does Mussolini, with the rape of Ethiopia still vivid in the minds of a horrified world, dare to talk of security?7 Does this arch leader of marching cohorts, bent on further aggression, presume to tell women about “the safety of the world from the point of view of eugenics?” War, which claims the best and the youngest, the choicest flower of the

June 1937  •  367

race, is the deadly enemy of eugenics. France, to cite one example, still bears the scars of the ruthless slaughter of the Napoleonic wars, fought over a century ago.8 Plot the population curve of any nation, and it will show a tragic dip, after each war. Study the make-up, physical and psychological, of that population, and it will show the next generation, and the next, paying for the insanity of war. “I have always said that women are inferior to men,” continues Mussolini. “But to give them their full due I will say that despite their physical frailty they are very often more courageous.”9 Inferior—what yardstick is used here? What of the loyalty, the steadfastness, the ability to meet sudden emergencies, and long years of suspense and unhappiness? Hear the life story of any mother, it matters not what nationality or what station in life. Listen, and marvel at the acts of heroism, the unsung deeds which make men’s feats seem like child’s play. Bernard Shaw once said that if men bore the children there would be but one child in every family, for no man, having once gone down into the valley of suffering to give birth to a child, would willingly and knowingly undertake it again.10 But women freely suffer the agony, because (even Mussolini grudgingly admits it) they are more courageous than men. “Women do not want to enter politics . . . they are unwanted and unnecessary in public life,” Il Duce states blandly.11 Perhaps they do not WANT to enter politics; perhaps they would rather still depend upon their males as did their primitive sisters who stayed at home while the male went forth to stalk his game. But since man today does not, and perhaps can not, provide for all women, they must go out and fend for themselves and their children. Woman has entered public life, industry, politics, in order to FULFIL, not to ESCAPE, her biological function, in order to be able to bear and bring up children, and make the world a fit place for them. It is because man has failed to use the power he has held through so many centuries intelligently, that women are in public life today. But with wisdom we can turn that failure into good. The unmarried woman, the woman who is childless through no fault of her own, the woman whose childbearing and child rearing tasks are behind her, and whose years of highest mental and psychological activity stretch ahead, are needed in the affairs of public life. They have a contribution to make, and thoughtful men will be glad of their cooperation. Male and female together must work shoulder to shoulder if we are to achieve the best for future generations. Woman, set free, given the power of decision over her biological func-

368  •  A Troubled World

tions—that is, given birth control knowledge—is ready and willing to be not only a wife and mother, but a comrade and fellow worker. But birth control, under Mussolini, is ruthlessly forbidden in Italy.12 While, increasingly the world over, birth control is seen as a necessary part of public health, the women of Italy are doomed to needless suffering and death because scientific information about how to space their children and plan their families is forbidden. More babies is Mussolini’s command, and he does not even bother to hide the reason for his orders. According to a recent press report, the Fascist Grand Council, Italy’s highest advisory body, is “taking steps to increase the birth rate, is considering the need for more children for Italy’s armies of the future.”13 This is no new move. Professor Gaetano Salvemini, one of Italy’s most distinguished historians, exiled for anti-fascist views, has pointed out that though Mussolini has pursued his campaign for more babies with all the showmanship and facilities of high pressure salesmanship for more than ten years, the Italian birth rate has declined steadily.14 In 1927 Mussolini issued the command to the women of Italy to breed him not less than fifty million subjects by 1950. While waiting for the desired 50 million, he demanded six million men of fighting age between 1935 and 1940, when European history will reach its crucial point.15 We have already seen in Ethiopia to what use he has put these fighting men. His command for more babies was backed up by reductions and exemptions from taxation and other privileges for large families, by heavy levies on bachelors and childless couples and by suppression of all birth control propaganda and practice. What happened? In 1926, despite peremptory orders to increase and multiply, the women of Italy produced 20,000 less children than in 1925; in 1927 they produced 50,000 less children than in 1926. In 1930, the birth rate was lowered by 56,000 than in 1929.16 In 1902, when Italy’s population was 32,500,000, 1,100,000 children were born. In 1925, with a population of 40 million, only 1,150,000 children were born. Population increase has come, not from an increase in births, but from a decrease in deaths through better sanitary conditions.17 Italy looks toward war, and must have fodder for the cannon of the enemy. But the women of Italy are doing their own thinking, despite the fact that, according to Mussolini, they have no initiative, no brains, no function save to amuse and charm and soothe their men folks, and bear children. While the general trend throughout the civilized world is to raise the legal age of marriage, Mussolini has lowered the marriage age for boys from 18 to 16 and for girls from 16 to 14.18 He says, in effect: “Hurry up and get married and have a lot of babies. Its cheaper. If you don’t we’ll tax the shirt off your back. If you do, you can have a state loan

June 1937  •  369

as a wedding present, reduction in taxes, free passes, bonuses and a lot of glory.” But the women of Italy aren’t interested. The birth rate declines steadily. In 1932, I visited Italy. I went, not as a birth control advocate, but as a private American citizen, under the name I use in private life. While I didn’t get to Rome, the news of my arrival leaked out elsewhere and I was overwhelmed with requests from women’s clubs for secret meetings, for information and help.19 There is, I believe, a great underground movement for birth control in Italy,20 and this is perhaps, in large measure, responsible for the fall in the birth rate. Truth and freedom cannot be killed nor entirely suppressed. It lives, submerged, to do its work and rise again. The women of Italy are silently telling Mussolini WHAT THEY THINK OF HIM. They are telling him that there can be no life unless they will it, and that, with their sisters the world over, they will not bear children to be slaughtered on the battlefield. Plain Talk (June 1937): 14–16 (MSM S71:944–46). This article was introduced by the editor: “Mrs. Margaret Sanger, best known advocate of scientific birth control, who has been to Italy, is telling here what the women of Italy think of Mussolini, as well as her own personal opinion of the world’s most aggressive breeder of cannon fodder.”

1. Mussolini was notorious for, among other things, having numerous mistresses and, possibly, two wives, as he may not have obtained a formal divorce from his first wife. (Roberto Olla, Il Duce and His Women [Richmond, Va., 2013].) 2. The passage is rendered correctly except for differences in punctuation. 3. The full passage reads: “Women never created anything. Look around you in any direction you like—art, drama, law medicine—and you cannot point to any single instance where a woman has created anything that has been passed down to posterity.” (Mussolini, “What Mussolini Thinks of Women,” 12.) 4. American feminist groups, such as the National Woman’s Party, had identified Mussolini as an enemy of women’s progress, publicly condemning his bigoted policies, notably legislation aimed toward propelling women out of public life and back into the home to have babies. (Washington Post, Oct. 5, 1935; New York Times, Nov. 15, 1936; Ipsen, Dictating Demography, 145.) 5. The passage reads in full: “And in politics it is the same. Women in parliament are meddlers and muddlers. They are seldom able to gauge soberly and properly the real depths and boundaries of a law, and they try to assert their position and vote by ranging themselves on the opposite side of all common sense and parliamentary philosophy. Women cannot look after the future of the human race in the home and in the nursery and govern at the same time. It has got to be either one thing or the other, and since Nature and God have ordained that woman shall be the mother of the human race—then, the sooner she realizes that the governing of the community should be left to the male sex, the better.” (Mussolini, “What Mussolini Thinks of Women,” 12.)

370  •  A Troubled World 6. The passage reads in full: “I am not in favor of total emancipation of women. It has not advanced the world as much as many people believe; rather, has it imperiled the domestic security of the home and the safety of the world from the point of view of eugenics. Figures which have been furnished to me within the last few weeks show a gradual decline in the birth-rate all over the world.” (Mussolini, “What Mussolini Thinks of Women,” 12.) 7. Italy invaded Ethiopia in October 1935, taking the country by force and installing a repressive government in the spring of 1936. (EB.) 8. Between 1790 and 1815, France lost some 860,000 men from a combination of war and emigration. Its birthrate, one of the lowest in Europe, declined steadily from 32.4 per 1,000 in 1801–10 to 15.0 in 1936, a drop attributed to birth control use. (Wesley D. Camp, Marriage and the Family in France since the Revolution [New York, 1961], 23; Mitchell, International Historical Statistics: Europe, 30; Spengler, France Faces Depopulation, 53, 65.) 9. This passage is rendered accurately, except for the punctuation. 10. George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), noted Irish-born playwright and critic, was an outspoken proponent of birth control. This exact statement was not found, but in 1949 Shaw wrote, “Think what cowards . . . men would be if they had to bear children. Women are an altogether superior species.” (DNB; Stephen Winsten, Days with Bernard Shaw [New York, 1949], 209 [quote].) 11. MS combined two passages. The first reads: “Beyond a certain modernist minority, women do not want to enter politics.” The second reads: “Women are unnecessary and unwanted in politics.” (Mussolini, “What Mussolini Thinks of Women,” 13.) 12. Mussolini had once been a birth control proponent who believed in “procreative prudence,” but by the early 1920s he was pursuing a pronatalist agenda. In 1926 he enacted a law that made it a crime to publish or disseminate contraceptive information or to display or sell contraceptives. In 1930 Italy stiffened penalties for birth control propaganda and redefined contraception as an offense against the race. The prohibition of contraceptives excluded condoms, which were viewed as protection against venereal disease. Other measures included a hefty bachelor tax, reduced income tax for large families, tax exemptions for seven or more children, preferential treatment for married workers, and prizes for the most prolific mothers and largest families. (William Robinson, “Mussolini, a Birth Controller,” Medical Critic and Guide [Mar. 1935], 67 [quote]; Ipsen, Dictating Demography, 73–74, 173–81; Times [London], Sept. 29, 1936.) 13. Mussolini’s Grand Council of Fascism had, by 1928, become the highest legislative body in Italy. With Mussolini presiding, in 1937 it approved a seven-point program to address “the problem of the declining birth rate and the need of more children for Italy’s armies of the future.” (D. Smith, Mussolini, 64, 164; New York Times, Mar. 4, 1937 [quote]; Washington Post, Mar. 2, 1937.) 14. Gaetano Salvemini (1873–1957), an Italian historian, went into exile in 1925 and was teaching at Harvard. A vociferous critic of Mussolini, Salvemini had published Under the Axe of Fascism (1936). For his birthrate articles, see “Do Italian Women Obey Mussolini?,” BCR 17 (Mar. 1933): 64–66; and “Can Italy Live at Home?,” Foreign Affairs 14 (Jan. 1936): 243–58. (Peter Hainsworth and David Robey, eds., The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature [Oxford, 2002], 534.)

June 1937  •  371 15. On May 26, 1927, Mussolini demanded that Italy have a population of at least sixty million by 1950 and “be able to mobilize 5,000,000 men thoroughly armed. . . . Then, between 1935 and 1940, when we shall reach the crucial point in European history, we will be able to make our voice heard and see at last our rights acknowledged.” MS took this paragraph directly from Salvemini, save that she substituted 6 million for Salvemini’s figure of 8 million. (New York Times, May 29, 1927 [quote]; Salvemini, “Italy’s Problem,” 181.) 16. MS also took this passage from Salvemini, who argued, “Despite Mussolini’s peremptory orders to increase and multiply, the women of Italy produced 20,000 less children in 1926 than in 1925. In 1927, they went from bad to worse, producing 50,000 infants less than in 1926.” Modern demographers estimated the drop in births at only 15,000 from 1925 to 1926 and only about 1,000 from 1926 to 1927. (Salvemini, “Italy’s Problem,” 182 [quote]; Kuczynski, Measurement of Population Growth, 232; Ipsen, Dictating Demography, 183.) 17. This passage was paraphrased from Salvemini’s article. Italy’s death rate decreased from 21.3 per 1,000 in 1902–11 to 13.9 by 1932–41. (Salvemini, “Italy’s Problem,” 181; Kuczynski, Measurement of Population Growth, 232; Massimo Livi-Bacci, A History of Italian Fertility during the Last Two Centuries [Princeton, N.J., 1977], 53.) 18. The legal age for marriage in Italy was lowered in 1929. Canonical law allowed men to marry at age fourteen and women at age twelve. (Corrado Gini and Elio Caranti, “The Family in Italy,” Marriage and Family Living 16 [Nov. 1954]: 355; Edward Westermarck, “Marriage,” in Encyclopaedia Sexualis: A Comprehensive Encyclopaedia-Dictionary of the Sexual Sciences, edited by Victor Robinson [New York, 1936], 511.) 19. MS vacationed at Cortina d’Ampezzo in the Italian Dolomites in August 1932. On her return, she told the press that “I managed to hold many private meetings on birth control while in Italy,” claiming that “in Venice and Milan I had more demand for secret lectures from women’s clubs than I could supply.” (1932 Calendar [MSM S78:893, 905]; New York Times [quotes] and New York Herald Tribune, Sept. 22, 1932.) 20. It seems likely that women sought and used birth control as part of a long-term urban trend toward smaller families. Indeed, studies have revealed that though contraceptives were prohibited, Italian women relied on withdrawal and abortion to keep their birthrates down. (Ipsen, Dictating Demography, 73–74; de Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women, 55–60; David G. Horn, Social Bodies: Science, Reproduction and Italian Modernity [Princeton, N.J., 1994], 124.)

131. To Florence Rose The Second Sino-Japanese War, which began on July 7, 1937, was the culmination of a decadelong series of Japanese incursions aimed at getting free access to China’s natural resources. In 1933 the Japanese took additional areas of China and encouraged Chinese warlords to form states loyal to Japan. Florence Rose landed in Shanghai on July 30 to prepare for Sanger’s arrival in August. (Schoppa, Columbia Guide to Modern Chinese History, 92–93, 159–61; Los Angeles Times, July 28, 1937; 1937 Calendar [MSM S78:335]; Rose, “Itinerary,” July 3–Nov. 3, 1937 [MS Unfilmed].)

372  •  A Troubled World

[Honolulu, Hawaii]1 July 30/ [1937]

Rose dear—dear, dearer, dearest, What a world! Yours of July 19th I scrambled down to the Am Ex as fast as I could get there after landing yesterday.2 The war scare over here has been enough to send one into a cell & stay there— Your letter is good & clear, tho like everyone else you do not know the situation in China yet.3 The question of a Conference is off—thats of course obvious. That long looked for letter from Dr Grant never arrived.4 So on faith alone I’ve come as far as this & would go on if I am not to waste money & time & a public failure in China is hard to correct. Mr Lowe of the Shanghai Bc League is here. I saw him yesterday. He wanted to have a meeting for me tonight & take profits for Famine Relief I suggested giving more time to Same & having it a week from today (the 6th). Think he did not like the idea—5 Your letter says you will cable me to LA on July 27th—you will look again on my itinery & see that I was on the Lurline from July 24 to 29.6 I wish I knew where you were in Tokyo—Ishimotos address is so long, Am Ex has moved to Yokohama so stated in Santa Fe. I sent you the message & it was returned saying Am Ex closed in Tokyo—so then I sent it to Baroness home.7 Instead of “nothing” I said “no change Chinese trip” but over the phone men do take liberties.8 I would not advise you to go to Pieping at all— Keep away never mind Dr Grant.9 Dr Mr Gunn is in Shanghai & will be even better to advise with.10 Mrs Dick & Charles are here.11 I wired Rack Holt to postpone her journey & cancel—12 Sent the same to Joanne Parker who replied she was heartbroken & wanted to be war correspondent in spite of her families displeasure. I then wired her if she wanted to be a good sport on her own to come as far as Honolulu to talk things over & await events. She comes on Clipper Aug 5th.13 Mr Slee is trying to mention South Africa & Cape Town instead of China & of course it would be a good time for him to see his birth place,14 my feeling about going to China is 1st. No harm will come to any of us, tho we might be inconvenienced— 2nd. Our presence will add just so much more responsibility on Governments to protect us. 3rd. Bc friends will be scattered & fearful & public not interested in anything but war. 4th, no conference possible. 5th Public Health or Govt officials reluctant to bother until their own positions assured, depending on outcome of war. 6th— a bad atmosphere for a successful campaign.

July 1937  •  373

7th Shall wait here in Honolulu until July 13th or 21st hoping war is over— cable me, don’t spare words at this time. I’ve missed the Clipp also Pres Hoover which left yesterday so this letter must wait the Pres Pierce, the veteran of the Dollar Line I believe & awful—15 Ill cable you at Shanghai today Am Ex. tho’ its likely it will never reach you at all. “Postpone conference—don’t go Pieping ↑will↓ await developments here until Aug 13. Cable advice.” Sanger.16 If after Aug 13th things are still bad Ill delay another week, or until the Coolidge returns.17 If I can’t feel safe by that time Ill give up China. I only wish I were over there with you lucky dog. Everyone is anxious about you of course, except I who knows your ability to do anything like god. Packard’s money came through, so while you are in China do all you can stay as long as you like, see everybody—get foam powder projects started everywhere.18 Collect the packages & books in Hong Kong & distribute same get Agnes Smedley to start foam project in Soviet China & we will ship a good batch for the study.19 You can order by cable direct to Cele. We also have Sangatrol in L.A.20 So here I wait & it’s a grand spot to wait in, Husband paying my bills, Dicks doing all entertaining, Charles Brush carrying huge globes of the world around to study places to go if we give up China. Mr Lowe here will leave letter for you,21 love & loads of it darlin! D—— Japan MS ALI FRP, MN-SSC (MSM S13:391–96). Letterhead of Halekulani.

1. MS left Los Angeles on the S.S. Lurline on July 24, arriving in Honolulu on July 29. (Itinerary, July 24–Nov. 3, 1937, and 1937 Calendar [MSM S78:335, 79:376–78].) 2. Rose had written that she had “not heard one optimistic word” regarding the conflict in China. She considered going immediately to Peking to expedite conference plans, but learned that the city was under martial law, cut off, and being evacuated. MS was to sail from Honolulu to China on the S.S. President Pierce on August 7. (Rose to MS, July 19, 1937 [quote] [MSM S13:338]; MS to Chou, Apr. 17, 1937 [LCM 12:136].) 3. The Sino-Japanese War sparked intense fear, among Americans, especially in Hawaii, of Japanese expansionism and militarism. Rose’s information on China mainly came through tourist agencies that warned her against traveling to Peking, but little official news escaped from China. (Rose to MS, July 19, 1937 [MSM S13:338].) 4. MS asked about a report on China from Dr. John B. Grant of the PUMC. Rose had spoken with Rockefeller adviser Arthur Packard, who knew nothing of the report but promised to look for it. (Rose to MS, June 14, 1937, and MS to Rose, July 8, 1937 [MSM S13:206, 316].)

374  •  A Troubled World 5. Chuan-Hua Lowe, who was working with the China International Famine Relief Commission, had arrived in Honolulu on June 24, tasked with raising funds to help drought victims in five Chinese provinces. Lowe met MS’s ship on July 20 and saw her again on August 4, but no meetings were arranged. (Lowe, Facing Adversities with a Smile, 72; 1937 Calendar [MSM S79:378].) 6. See Rose to MS, July 27, in which she confirmed her plan to go to Shanghai and await MS’s directions. (Rose to MS, July 19, 27, and 21, 1937 [MSM S13:338, 350; LCM 18:1353.) 7. Rose stayed at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Her Santa Fe cable was not found. (Rose to MS, July 19, 1937 [MSM S13:338].) 8. Rose transcribed the cable as “Nothing China unless message contrary reaches you Shanghai.” (Rose to MS, July 19, 1937 [MSM S13:338].) 9. Rose still planned to see John B. Grant at the PUMC so she would understand “what was what before seeing Dr. Wong.” This was despite Japanese air and ground force attacks that left Peking “in an uproar,” with many Chinese and foreigners seeking shelter and protection from U.S. Marines until Chinese Nationalist forces arrived. (Rose to MS, July 19, 1937 [quote] [MSM S13:338]; Los Angeles Times, July 28, 1937.) 10. Selskar Gunn’s work on the North China rural development program continued through the invasion. He did not leave China until March 1938. (Litsios, “Selskar Gunn and China,” 297–302; Gunn to MS, Aug. 8, 1938 [LCM 31:524B].) 11. Dorothy Hamilton Brush (Dick) (1894–1968), a Cleveland-born socialite and philanthropist, the widow of Charles F. Brush Jr. and wife of attorney Alexander C. Dick, met MS in 1921. She was a founder of the Cleveland Maternal Health Association (1928) and a NCFLBC secretary and board member. She and her son, Charles Francis Brush III (1923–2006), planned to accompany MS on this trip and were already in Honolulu. (Meyer, Any Friend of the Movement, 30, 37, 55, 66; 1937 Calendar and MS, “News from Margaret Sanger,” Sept. 6, 1937 [MSM S79:376–78, 13:461]; New York Times, June 11, 2006.) 12. Rackham Holt (Margaret Van Vechten Saunders) (1899–1963) was a New York– based freelance writer. With her collaborator, Walter J. Hayward, she was ghostwriting MS’s new autobiography and wanted to accompany MS to China. Holt did not receive MS’s wire (not found) and arrived in Honolulu on August 2. (Anne Commire, Something about the Authors [Detroit, 1983], 32:98; Dorothy Brush to Alexander Dick, Aug. 27, 1937 [MS Unfilmed]; Holt and Hayward to MS, Sept. 26, 1936, and Holt to MS, July 16 and Aug. 2, 1937 [MSM S11:579, 13:331, 403].) 13. MS had invited Joanne Shaw Parker (Elliston Kane) (1911–82), the niece of her Tucson friend Edith Bird Bass, on the China trip as her secretary. (SSDI; for MS’s telegram, see MS to Parker, July 24, 1937 [LCM 36:716A].) 14. Whenever he became frustrated over MS’s long absences, Slee talked of returning to Cape Town but never did. He was also in some trouble with tax investigators who were trying to gain access to his accounts. Slee decided to remain in Hawaii. (MS to Slee, Aug. 10, 1937, June 10, 1934, and Apr. 20, 1937, and Slee to MS, Nov. 17, 1937 [MSM S13:417, 8:872, 12:863, 13:852].) 15. MS mistakenly wrote “July” instead of “August.” MS refers to the Pan American Clipper Line, which flew mail and passengers between Alameda, California; Honolulu; and Manila. The S.S. President Hoover, built in 1931 for the Dollar Steamship Lines, left

august 1937  •  375 Honolulu on July 29, while the S.S. President Pierce, built in 1921, was scheduled to sail on August 7. (Los Angeles Times, Jan. 3, July 21, and Dec. 5, 1937; http://www.theshipslist. com/ships/descriptions/ShipsP-Q.shtml.) 16. Rose received the telegram (not found) but was confused because it read “advise” rather than “advice.” (Rose to MS, Aug. 1, 1937 [MSM S13:401].) 17. The S.S. President Coolidge, built in 1931 for the Dollar Lines, departed Los Angeles on August 17 for San Francisco, Honolulu, and Asian ports (Los Angeles Times, Aug. 16, 1937; American President Lines website, http://www.apl.com/history/timeline/stat5.html.) 18. MS wanted to establish foam powder trials in China and had contacted clinics and hospitals in Nanking, Peking, Canton, and Hong Kong. The SCCS had been distributing foam powder since the spring. Arthur Worthington Packard (1901–53), an adviser to the Rockefeller family on their philanthropy, had secured twenty-five hundred dollars for MS’s China research program. (MS to T. Hsiang Wang, Mar. 22, 1937, Philip Stoughton to Rose, June 21, 1937, and MS to Arthur Woo, Aug. 29, 1937 [LCM 12:834, 29:525, 12:956]; New York Times, Jan. 27, 1953; MS to Packard, Dec. 31, 1936, and July 16, 1937 [MSM C6:270, 575].) 19. Agnes Smedley was in the central Chinese city of Sianfu (Xi’an), which was cut off from communications with the West. She had requested that materials be sent to Dr. Nelson Fu in Yenan (Yan’an), the headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party, while she headed to the front to serve as a war correspondent, writing, “If the Japanese finish me off, turn down an empty glass for me before your plate at least once a week. You have always been my true, unwavering friend, and I have always loved you.” (Rose to Mrs. A. E. Sze [Agnes Smedley], June 17 and Sept. 1, 1937, and Smedley to MS and Rose, Sept. 19, 1937 [quote] [LCM 12:906, 963, 10:560].) 20. Celia Armstrong Damon (1899–1959) was the BCCRB’s executive secretary. Sangatrol was the BCCRB’s cable address. (1920 U.S. Census; editors’ correspondence with Robin Marton of North Adams Public Library and Joan and Russell Davis, Apr. 7 and 23, 2004.) 21. This letter was not found.

132. Journal Entry Sanger, accompanied by Dorothy Brush and son Charles Brush III, Joanne Parker, and Rackham Holt, sailed from Honolulu on the S.S. President Pierce on August 7. Although they continued to receive reports of the deteriorating situation in China, the general feeling was that “by the time of our arrival in China, peace negotiations would be under way.” Six days into the voyage, Sanger fell coming out of the swimming pool and broke her wrist. (MS, “News from Margaret Sanger,” Sept. 6, 1937 [MSM S13:461].)

[on board S.S. President Pierce, at sea] Aug [16], 1937. Prince Konoye Prime Minister of Japans new Government which is now in Power.1 The new war is on—long feared & dreaded—Japan occupies Pieping bombs shattered Shanghai.2 F. R. in Shanghai but sent radio to her

376  •  A Troubled World

to meet us in Kobe. Reply that she took Pres Taft for Kobe.3 People on Board with us all up in air not knowing what may happen. News most disquieting each day— There seems to be no high moral force in the world to stop the aggressive warlike nations. Tokyo [Japan]. Aug 24, 1937 Imperial Hotel.4 It is hot one of the heat waves which always follow wars so the sages state. To go back to Kobe—where we arrived from the Pres Pierce on the 20th I went to the Int Hospital for an XRay.5 Rose attended to luggage for Dorothy & me—one of those magic tricks only Rose can do to get all our baggage thru Customs without a declaration.6 At the hospital Dr Ness-Walker—a youngish English man found the bones out of allignment—so my Collis fracture had to be re fractured & re set.7 The local (cocoane) gave my heart a bad turn & I tho’t the end had come.8 AD MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S70:455–56).

1. Prince Konoye (Konoe) Fumimaro (1891–1945), a liberal politician and member of Japan’s House of Peers, was chosen by Emperor Hirohito to create a new government, which took power in June 1937 and tried unsuccessfully to curb Japan’s militaristic right wing. (JBE; New York Times, Mar. 4, 1936.) 2. By August 1, Japan had driven Chinese troops from Peking and set up a provisional government. In mid-August the Chinese bombed Japanese warships near Shanghai; Japan responded by bombing Shanghai and the surrounding areas. (New York Times, Aug. 1, 2, and 29, 1937; Lyman P. Van Slyke, “China Incident,” in Oxford Companion to World War II, edited by Dear and Foot, 179–82.) 3. In Shanghai Rose witnessed the shelling and carnage that devastated the city and restricted her movement. Although she did not receive MS’s August 14 cable directing her to go to Kobe, Japan, Rose cabled MS on August 16 to say she was en route there on the S.S. President Taft. The two met in Kobe on August 21, after Rose had “escaped with her life from Shanghai, and all the bombings and tragedies around her.” (Rose to MS, Aug. 1, 13, and 16, 1937, and MS to Slee, Aug. 21, 1937 [quote] [MSM S13:401, 425, 428, 439].) 4. MS landed in Kobe on August 20 and headed for Tokyo, arriving on August 23 or 24. (Japan Advertiser, Aug. 24, 1937; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 83.) 5. After the X-ray showed that her wrist was healing improperly, MS canceled plans to speak in the town of Ama-no-Hashidate, sending Dorothy Brush in her place. (MS to Slee, Aug. 21, 1937 [MSM S13:439]; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 83.) 6. MS expected trouble upon entering Japan, but found authorities distracted by efforts to curb leftist groups and antiwar sentiment. Dorothy Brush recalled that the

August 1937  •  377 customs officer simply “grunted when he came to Mrs. Sanger’s name,” but “after the usual formalities he suddenly barked at her, ‘How are your principles?’ My heart sank but Margaret smiled sweetly and said, ‘Fine. How are yours?’ We were admitted.” (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 83; Brush, “1937 Trip to Japan,” unpublished manuscript [quotes] [DHBP].) 7. Dr. John Ness-Walker (1895–1977), the medical superintendent and senior medical adviser at the International Hospital, reset MS’s broken wrist. (England and Wales Death Index, 1916–2005; Ness-Walker to MS, Nov. 19, 1937 [LCM 19:72]; Medical Directory 133, no. 2 [London, 1977].) 8. The doctor administered novocaine that made MS’s “heart flutter.” Dorothy Brush commented that the ordeal “has taken her spirit in a way I do not quite understand.” (Brush, “1937 Trip to Japan,” unpublished manuscript [DHBP] [quote 1]; Brush to Dick, Aug. 27, 1937 [MS Unfilmed] [quote 2].)

133. Speech at Opening R eception at Tokyo Clinic After a few days resting in Tokyo, Sanger began a busy speaking schedule. On August 30, she gave the keynote address at the opening of Baroness Ishimoto’s new private birth control clinic in Oimachi, a working-class district of Tokyo. Described by Sanger as the “first clinic comparable to those in Western countries,” it was larger than Ishimoto’s clinic in Tokyo’s Nihonbashi business district and open daily. The event included an address by Ishimoto and speeches by birth control leader Kan Majima, feminist Fusae Ichikawa, and others, followed by a visit to the clinic. While it was legal to operate the clinic, Ishimoto worried that the government, which had voiced opposition to birth control, might suppress her work. Though Ishimoto did not want to attract too much attention, the press announced the dedication, and police were present. (MS, “News from Margaret Sanger,” Sept. 6, 1937 [quote] [MSM S13:461]; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 57–58, 85, 90–92; Brush to Dick, Aug. 31, 1937 [MS Unfilmed]; Japan Advertiser, Aug. 26, 1937.)

Tokyo, Japan [August 30, 1937]

Baroness Ishimoto, and friends:1 I am very happy indeed to be in Japan again and to meet so many old friends. Some of them have been to America and have visited us at our large Demonstration Clinic in New York, and others I met in 1922 in Japan on my first visit.2 So I feel You all never seem to be any older. I, however, seem to be unfortunate in my visits to Japan. The first time I came with enthusiasm. I felt I had a message for the mothers of your country. I was not so hospitably received by your government. Nevertheless, the people, the mothers and the plain people, welcomed me and gave me inspiration to carry this message on not only in Japan but throughout the Orient. On my second visit Japan was under martial law, and no meetings were allowed.3 This time on my way to China and Manila I fell and broke my arm,

378  •  A Troubled World

and in view of the difficulty between China and Japan, I have decided to postpone my visit to China to another year. Every country has its pioneers. England had its Mary Wollencraft,4 France its Madame Curie,5 America its Susan B. Anthony.6 Many others, Olive Shriner,7 Ellen Key of the Scandinavian countries;8 every country has men who pioneer in their line and women in others, and Japan should be proud, and I believe her children’s children will pay homage to one of the greatest women today, to Baroness Ishimoto,9 for Baroness Ishimoto is not only a pioneer in Japan, but also a Marco Polo of Japan, because thru her lectures and speaking to thousands and thousands of people from East to West and North to South, carries the message of Japan.10 I consider Baroness Ishimoto as really a bridge between Japan and the United States, bringing the message of what you are doing here, and what we there are doing there. We need many friends, both of our countries need friends. We need friends, and Japan needs friends in America because the world is going thru a chaotic, difficult time of uncertainty. Japan in particular is going thru a difficult time. She is one of the most over-populated countries in the world, and it is my sincere belief that Japan like other countries will never solve her own problems, the problems of her internal relations and international relations, until she can solve her population problem.11 And population does not involve only the question of food, of rice and wheat and other things we eat; it concerns itself with the quality and the kind of people that are being brought into the world to carry on the destiny of your nation. You are not going to bring up the highest intelligence if you will multiply too rapidly because a rapid multiplication has always demonstrated that as we multiply too quickly we level down, but as we control our numbers and our rate of growth, we evolve to a higher destiny. I have great sympathy with the present situation in Japan because I know it differs from Italy. Italy is one of the greatest sinners before the Court of Justice. She has boosted her families by placing medals on the breasts of the fathers (not the mothers, note!); and in boosting the size of her families she has brought upon the people greater problems to be solved by her future generations than can be met by her present generations. She is heaping up huge debts for unborn generations to meet.12 Japan, on the other hand, has been increasing. . . . 13 It has been the [word(s) possibly missing] momentum of a people that has carried on for many [generations]. I believe that your birth rate is now going down,14 and you will have eventually a quality population, and you will begin like low birth rate countries to strive for [high] higher standards of living, and for peace with all the nations of the world. And someday you will look at this great program of peace and happiness and welfare, and see that we owe the beginnings to this group [and] to Baroness Ishimoto.

August 1937  •  379

And you—my friends, have a spiritual responsibility, here. You can’t believe in this and not support it. You cannot stand idly by and let Baroness Ishimoto and a small group do all the work. That can’t be done. You have a spiritual responsibility to lead the way, and use your intelligence and your ideals, and to try to bring them into realization. I think the way the birth control movement is being conducted in Japan is a wise and constructive way. Baroness Ishimoto is doing a hard up has had a hard hill to climb. She needs your help and she needs our help because birth control is not a national problem only, but an international one, and we who belong to this civilization must all help each other. Her fight is our fight and she will need assistance from us all to send midwives into the homes and help those mothers who cannot come out;15 and to take to them the message of peace and hope, and give them the possibility of spacing their children and having only the number of children that they can decently support and take care of. This will be the great patriot of the future, who will be of benefit not only to her own nation but to the civilization of the world. TDcy MSP, DLC (LCM 19:126–28). Poor-quality copy; carbon smears.

1. Ishimoto, who had been briefly detained by the police in April 1937 after she pressed for women’s emancipation on the Nihon Musanto (Japan Proletarian Party) platform, continued her work with the Tokyo clinic and the party. She also continued her affair with leftist labor leader Kanjū Katō. She hoped MS would help promote her underfunded work in Japan. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 66, 74–76; Ishimoto to Rose, Apr. 23, 1937 [MS Unfilmed]; Hopper, “Ishimoto & Sanger in Japan,” 45.) 2. Japanese feminist and suffrage leader Fusae Ichikawa (1893–1981) and Kan Majima had visited the BCCRB. (Los Angeles Times, Feb. 16, 1981; Hopper, “Ishimoto & Sanger in Japan,” 47.) 3. MS was in Japan on March 11–13, 1936, but could not give a planned lecture in Tokyo due to martial-law regulations imposed from February 26 to July 18, following an attempted government coup. She did manage to meet with Ishimoto and give press interviews. (MS, Travel Journal, 1936 [LCM 1:349–53]; Japan Advertiser, Mar. 13, 1936; New York Times, July 18, 1936.) 4. Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) (1759–97) was an English writer, advocate for women’s equality, and the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), one of the seminal works of feminist thought. 5. Polish-born French chemist and physicist Marie Curie (1867–1934) was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize in Physics, in 1903, along with her husband, Pierre Curie, and Henri Bequerel, for isolating the new elements of polonium and radium. In 1911 she was awarded a second Nobel Prize, this time for chemistry. (New York Times, July 5, 1934.) 6. Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) was an abolitionist, feminist reformer, and pioneer of the women’s suffrage campaign who, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, spent decades lobbying unsuccessfully for a constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote. (ANB.)

380  •  A Troubled World 7. Olive Schreiner (1855–1920), a noted South African novelist, was a dedicated women’s rights advocate who published Woman and Labor (1911), a feminist tract promoting women’s suffrage and economic independence. (Rappaport, Encyclopedia of Women Social Reformers, 623–24; MS, Autobiography, 138.) 8. For Ellen Key, see Carballeira to MS, Oct. 23, 1931, note 22, herein. 9. Ishimoto, well known in Japan for her birth control activism, was often referred to as “Madame Control” or “the Margaret Sanger of Japan.” She was respected for her ancestry and title, though many Japanese were uncomfortable with her open discussion of birth control. Her popularity grew in the West with the 1935 publication of her autobiography. (Ishimoto, Facing Two Ways, 232; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 26, 55, 65.) 10. Ishimoto visited the United States and Europe in 1919–20 and 1924 and returned to the United States in 1932–33 and again in 1937. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 13, 34, 48, 70.) 11. Japan was the most densely populated country in the world, though measured by its food supply, unemployment, productivity, and standard of living, it was no worse than many other countries. Its major challenge was the lack of natural resources. (Kitaoka, Over-population and Family Planning, 3–6; Jeannette Randolph, “Population Pressure in Japan,” Far Eastern Survey 5 [June 17, 1936]: 128.) 12. For Italy’s campaign to raise the birthrate, see MS, “What Margaret Sanger Thinks of Mussolini,” June 1937, herein. 13. MS’s use of ellipses here likely indicates a pause rather than deletion of text. 14. Japan’s birthrate (29.92 per 1,000 in 1936) and the fertility rate were both declining moderately, although the mortality rate was declining more rapidly. Despite its war with China, Japan’s population increased by nearly 1 million in 1937. (Grzegorz Frumkin, “Japan’s Demographic Expansion in the Light of Statistical Analysis,” Sociological Review 30 [Jan. 1938]: 22; New York Times, June 20, 1937, and Nov. 11, 1938.) 15. Ishimoto planned to hire a midwife to distribute the foam powder in poor districts, but was forced to delay due to a shortage of sponges and foam powder containers. (Ishimoto, “A Monthly Budget for the Minimum Expense for the New Birth Control Clinic in Tokyo,” 1937, and Ishimoto to Rose, Dec. 2, 1937 [LCM 19:95, 77].)

134. Excerpt from Journal Entry Despite Sanger’s slow start, her two weeks in Japan helped reenergize the Japanese birth control movement. She met with reporters nearly every day, and reports of her activities and interviews competed with war headlines in Tokyo’s daily papers. Her influence could be seen on Tokyo street corners, where stores sold condoms called “SANGA.” Sanger’s message was consistent: the government must develop sound birth control policies and help make effective contraception more accessible. There were no efforts made to suppress her speech or interfere with her public appearances. (MS, “News from Margaret Sanger,” Sept. 6, 1937 [MSM S13:461]; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 90 [quote].)

September 1937  •  381

[Tokyo, Japan] [September 2?, 1937] I decided to return to Honolulu with J. N.1 as the arm is clumsy & painful & nothing can be accomplished in China now— Pres Hoover Sept 3rd if possible. Dorothy, Rack Joey & Charles all left on Aug 31st on the Sphinx for Indo China & Siam.2 [S.S. President Hoover, at sea]3 [September 4 or 5?, 1937] Rose & I took the Hoover which had been bombed in Shanghai waters where they had gone for refugees, a huge hole on upper deck, glass ceiling in Salon broken thru much damage but only one life taken tho much shock & terror among innocent crew & passengers.4 The films were presented by us at St. Lukes Hospital Dr Kuba, Pres of the Tokio Medical Assn sent out notices & at least 300 were present,5 owing to heat & date many Drs were away but he & Dr Saito were pleased with the films & their reception.6 Baroness interpreted also a woman Dr Sadakota who is not at all good in English—7 The same afternoon we were entertained by the city officials of Tokio. Mayor sent an invitation to Public Health Staff about 30 came. The tea was held in one of the famous gardens now owned by the city.8 Mr Miyakama ↑Commissioner↓ Public Health Director could not speak English & the interpreter was nearly as badly off. His official speech was in favor of Bc & very polite & cheerful— I replied for us all. Then he asked me if I would allow him to express his private opinion for ten minutes. I felt something queer in this request, but had to consent to further torture. It was most amusing because of the interpreters poor English. She kept saying it was “very difficult to understand” the difference between the Oriental morality & western morality. Then the phrase “side wise morality between husband & wife in Western countries” kept repeating itself no one knew what she meant or was trying to say. So it turned out that officially he was for Bc but unofficially against it. Not at all unlike our American politicians who are privately for it & publicly against.9 At last at 6 Pm we were bowed out & into our cars & dashed to the Hotel & then to St Lukes for the evening meeting. I was so hot & perspired & mopped all thru the meeting. Mrs Crocker of the Am Embassy was present & invited me to visit her at Chuzenja above Nikko.10 The next important event was the tea given by the Baroness to us where she had about 50 progressive men & women writers, poets, Drs, labor leaders etc woman Suffragist leader (an archaic position) much enthusiasm & [conversation] a splendid interpreter helped us all.11

382  •  A Troubled World

Then the great opening of the clinic in Tokio. We all went to see it hidden away in a working class district. Joey & Dorothy gave the [Baroness] $650.00 & I added $150. which made $800 almost her years expense.12 One other festive evening when Mrs Mitsui gave a Japanese dinner & then we were entertained at a Gaisha party.13 Dancing & singing & music Dorothy taught them the Hulu hula. Each girl entertains each visitor one charming Gaisha spoke English perfectly having graduated from Miss Dentons school in Kyoto.14 The Mother of the Gaisha presented us each with a hand mirror. Our shoes were left outside & I was “shod” by a man who put on my shoes— Nikko for a week end. Rack was ill & had the Dr—15 then they left & our gay, happy party parted for East & West. Baroness & I went to visit Mrs Crocker at Chuzenja returning on time to take the Pres Hoover to Honolulu. War news still dominated the conversation & press.16 British Ambassador in China was bombed on his way to visit the Japanese Ambassador taken to a hospital & while serious is expected to pull through.17 This caused GB to make certain demands on Japans conduct, a public apology as well. The Japanese do not like to apologize we are told & the situation is tense here.18 AD MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S70:473–80).

1. J. Noah Slee had remained in Hawaii. According to Dorothy Brush, MS felt “guilty about Mr. Slee & since China is definitely out, she thinks she ought to go home to him.” (Brush to Dick, Aug. 27, 1937 [MS Unfilmed]; MS to Slee, Aug. 21, 1937 [MSM S13:439].) 2. Brush, her son, and Rackham Holt sailed through Burma (Myanmar) and Siam (Thailand) on the French vessel Sphinx before splitting up in mid-September. Holt went to Singapore and the Philippines, while the Brushes went to India to “drum up birth control interest.” (MS, “News from Margaret Sanger,” Sept. 6, 1937, Brush to MS, Oct. 2, 1937, Holt to MS, Oct. 14, 1937 [quote], and Brush to MS, Oct. 30, 1937 [MSM S13:461, 530, 583, 681].) 3. MS sailed from Yokohama on September 3, reaching Honolulu on September 10. (Honolulu, Hawaii Passenger Lists, 1900–1953.) 4. On August 30, the S.S. President Hoover, which had been transporting American refugees out of China, was accidentally bombed by Chinese nationalist forces as it headed for Shanghai. (Hartford [Conn.] Courant, Aug. 31, 1937.) 5. On August 27, MS addressed a meeting of doctors, public health nurses, midwives, birth control activists, and social workers at St. Luke’s International Hospital and Medical Center. Its head of gynecology, Tokutaro Kubo (1874–1941), who organized the meeting, was president of the Japan Society of Gynecologists and Obstetricians. Kubo agreed to try foam powder and sponges as an experiment and report his findings to MS. The powder was supplied by Ishimoto. MS likely showed Biology of Contraception and Mechanics of

September 1937  •  383 Contraception. (MS, “News from Margaret Sanger,” Sept. 6, 1937 [MSM S13:461]; editors’ correspondence with Kaoru Oda, Apr. 6, 2012; Japan Advertiser, Aug. 24 and 26, 1937; Kubo to MS, Aug. 28, 1937, MS to Kubo, Sept. 1, 1937, Ishimoto to Rose, Dec. 2, 1937, and BCCRB, “Regarding Birth Control Film Report for Main Office,” Mar. 29, 1937 [LCM 19:29, 39, 77, 137:43].) 6. Kiyoshi Saitō (1893–1971), chief of pediatrics at St. Luke’s, had met Edith HowMartyn and viewed the films in 1936. (Editors’ correspondence with Kaoru Oda, Apr. 6, 2012; Japan Advertiser, Aug. 24, 1937; How-Martyn, “Birth Control in Japan, Visit May 19 to June 5, 1936,” [LCM 18:1231].) 7. Kameyo Sadakata (1889?–1966) was an American-trained pediatrician at St. Luke’s. (Office of Alumni Records Necrology File, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Japan Advertiser, Aug. 26, 1937.) 8. Kobashi Ichita (1890–1939) was the mayor of Tokyo. The reception, organized by Kaikuo Sakai, director of the Tokyo Department of Hygiene, was held in the Kiyosumi Garden. Though the city expressed its welcome to MS, Ishimoto was warned that this should not be construed as an endorsement of birth control. (Roman Cybriwsky, Historical Dictionary of Tokyo [Lanham, Md., 1997], 208; Find a Grave Index; Christian Science Monitor, Mar. 12, 1963; Ishimoto to Rose, Aug. 16, 1937 [LCM 19:18].) 9. MS likely refers to Yoneji Miyakawa (1885–1959), the director of the Institute of Infectious Diseases. She noted Miyakawa claimed that “morals in Japan came down ‘perpendicular’ from the Emperor to the head of family, on downwards, with the wife always below the husband, the woman always below the man; whereas, in the Western countries . . . there is ‘horizontal’ morality, of equality of men and women, husband and wife.” MS often noted that it was common for American politicians who opposed birth control legislative reform to have only two or three children. (Kakushu chiryo kessei to sono rinshoteki oyo [WorldCat First Search], http://goo.gl/GYWiY0; MS, “News from Margaret Sanger,” Sept. 6, 1937 [quote] [MSM S13:461]; see also MS, “American Woman’s Association Award Speech,” Apr. 20, 1932 [LCM 42:714].) 10. Lispenard Seabury Crocker (1902–84) was the wife of Edward Savage Crocker, secretary of the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo (1933–41). Lake Chuzenji was a resort area within Nikko National Park in north-central Honshu, Japan. (SSDI; Washington Post, Apr. 21, 1984; New York Times, Apr. 7, 1968; EB.) 11. See MS, Speech at Opening Reception at Tokyo Clinic, Aug. 30, 1937, herein. 12. Ishimoto’s clinic budget was five thousand yen, or eighteen hundred dollars, per year. MS might have been discussing the amount the clinic still needed for 1937. (Ishimoto, “A Monthly Budget for the Minimum Expense for the New Birth Control Clinic in Tokyo, 1937 [LCM 19:95].) 13. Reiko Mitsui (1905–87), the wife of industrial leader Takaatsu Mitsui, a member of an old and distinguished family, hosted the August 25 dinner party at the Torinabe teahouse in Tokyo. Guests included doctors from St. Luke’s Hospital, several birth control activists, and MS’s entourage. Geisha, a professional class of female entertainers and companions for men, dress in traditional kimonos and perform traditional arts at teahouses. (Curtis Anderson Gayle, Women’s History and Local Community in Postwar Japan [London, 2013], chap. 3; JBE; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 69–70; Japan Advertiser, Aug. 26, 1937; Encyclopedia of Japan.)

384  •  A Troubled World 14. Brush wrote, “At first everything was very stiff—but as the sake flowed things relaxed and finally on Margaret’s insistence, I got up and danced the hula!” Mary Florence Denton (1857–1947), a missionary and educator, developed the Doshisha Girls’ Academy and the Doshisha Women’s College, part of Doshisha University, in Kyoto. (Brush, “1937 Trip to Japan,” unpublished manuscript [quote] [DHBP]; EB; Frances Benton Clapp, Mary Florence Denton and the Doshisha [Kyoto, 1955], ii, 25, 291, 294.) 15. Dorothy Brush remarked that Holt “drinks like a fish and I suspect something worse.” (Brush to Dick, Aug. 27, 1937 [MS Unfilmed].) 16. Chinese resistance in late August and early September, especially in Shanghai, thwarted Japan’s plan to achieve quick and decisive victories, and both sides prepared for a protracted war. Although the Japanese government censored coverage of the war, MS probably had access to the New York Times and Christian Science Monitor through her foreign contacts. (New York Times, Sept. 10, 1937; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 86, 116; E. Tipton, Modern Japan, 127–28.) 17. Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen (1886–1971), the British ambassador to China (1936– 37), was hit by machine-gun fire from a Japanese plane while riding in his official car, flying the Union Jack, outside of Shanghai. (New York Times, Aug. 27, 1937; Times [London], Mar. 23, 1971; Suping Lu, ed., A Mission under Duress [Lanham, Md., 2010], 330.) 18. Britain demanded a formal apology and the punishment of those responsible, but Japan refused to admit fault pending an investigation, suggesting that the ambassador had been careless. Japan did not convey a “formal expression of deep regret” until September 21. (New York Times, Aug. 28 and 31, 1937; Times [London], Aug. 30 and Sept. 7 and 30 [quote], 1937; Jared Taylor, Shadows of the Rising Sun: A Critical View of the “Japanese Miracle” [New York, 1983], 126.)

135. To Anna Ngan Chang Chou Despite the strong defense mounted by Chinese Nationalist forces, the Japanese kept sending more troops, ships, and planes into battle. Though Japan’s aggression was condemned by the LN, and the United States, Great Britain, and France all opposed it, China’s appeals for help from Western nations were unsuccessful. Germany and Italy supported the invasion, claiming that it would save China from communism. (R. J. Rummel, China’s Bloody Century: Genocide and Mass Murder since 1900. [New York, 1991], 104–5; Chicago Daily Tribune, Oct. 15, 1937; Washington Post, Oct. 28, 1937; New York Times, Oct. 4, 1937.)

[New York, N.Y.] October 29, 1937

Dear Mrs. Chou: Your kind letter of September 28th received.1 I am very happy to have your letter and to know that you are safe. Naturally every time we read of the outlandish indignities and barbarous assault upon your country we are not only indignant but are anxious for the safety of you and our other dear friends upon whom must depend much of the reorganization and planning for the future of China.2

October 1937  •  385

Indeed I was terribly disappointed being unable to get to China. We were all pretty sick over it, but it seemed wiser to return and to gird our loins and save our money, and plan for a future tour. At present I am working on a plan for 1940. This gives us plenty of time to make big preparations. I want to make a world tour and have medical, and scientific conferences not only in the big countries like China and India but also in the smaller places as well. The extension of these plans will take time, but with the world in its present troubled state, it is time for us to meditate and to corral and correlate our thoughts and work for a constructive program for the future. Thank you for your willingness to do something about the literature and supplies in Hong Kong. I have left them in care of Dr. Woo who is kind enough to keep them in his office until he hears from me.3 There is quite a supply of them, which of course are intended for China and it would be better to have them in use than lying idly on the shelves. I would like to see them placed where they would do the best service either in a co-operative or public health organization or in one or two of the hospitals where you know they will be sympathetically administered. I would like ↑to thank↓ Dr. Woo, for his kindness, to have whatever he wishes and I would like to have you divide with him and take what you can use. Miss Rose is in Los Angeles. She had a thrilling escape, and as we both came back on the damaged Hoover we heard many tales from the passengers of their experiences, too.4 I enclose the envelope sent me by Mrs. HowMartyn in England.5 She writes on all her letters, “Boycott Japanese Goods.” It is most amusing, and I know that you and our other friends who know Mrs. How-Martyn will appreciate this expression of her indignation.6 There is no doubt that the sympathy of the world, certainly that of the intelligent world, is with China but I feel that the Japanese people are helpless in the situation as they have nothing to say or do except obey. The military regime is ruthless and the people are helpless in their hands, as we are here. Your letter of June 21st telling me of my election as Honorary President of the League has made me very happy, and I accept with much pleasure.7 It is nice to hear from you, and I do appreciate so much all you did to help Miss Rose while she was in your city. My kindest regards to all our mutual friends there, Most cordially, TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 12:987). A copy was sent to Dr. Arthur Woo. Author of handwritten interlineation not identified.

1. Chou was disappointed that MS had to cancel her trip and hoped she could reschedule it. She wrote that birth control work in China “has to stand still,” as “doctors and nurses are all too busy with war work.” (Chou to MS, Sept. 28, 1937 [LCM 12:977].) 2. The British and American governments condemned Japan for its large-scale aerial bombing of civilian targets in Canton, Shanghai, and Nanking. English-language

386  •  A Troubled World newspapers reported on the casualties and atrocities, and one editorial called the assault “plainly and simply mass murder.” (Boston Globe, Oct. 24, 1937; Los Angeles Times, Sept. 19, 1937 [quote].) 3. Arthur Wai-tak Woo (1887–1964), former president of the CISH, had hosted MS during her stop in Hong Kong in 1936. Since then, Woo had worked with the Hong Kong Eugenics League and the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association to start birth control clinics. Woo had the shipments of foam powder and other material MS had planned to distribute in China. (“Obituary: A. W. Woo,” British Medical Journal 1 [Apr. 11, 1964]: 988; MS and How-Martyn, Round the World for Birth Control, 36–37; Woo to MS, Dec. 29, 1936 [MSM S12:284]; Chou to MS, Sept. 28, 1937 [LCM 12:977].) 4. During her voyage from Japan to Honolulu on the bomb-scarred S.S. President Hoover, MS heard “vivid accounts of fellow-passengers who barely escaped with their lives from Shanghai, Peiping, Tientsin, and other Chinese cities.” (MS, “News from Margaret Sanger,” Sept. 6, 1937 [quote] [MSM C6:596].) 5. The envelope was not found. 6. How-Martyn was so upset “with the murderous way Japan is treating civilians” that she helped organize protests and a boycott of Japanese goods to pressure the British to get involved to put an end to the war. (How-Martyn to MS, Sept. 18 [quote] and Oct. 18, 1937 [LCM 16:496, 505].) 7. The SCCS elected MS “in recognition of the contribution you have made in promoting this work in China.” (Chou to MS, June 21, 1937 [LCM 12:913].)

136. To Edith How-Martyn 1 The BCIIC deteriorated swiftly after the resignations of Sanger and How-Martyn. Organizing secretary Eleanor Hawarden was neither well liked nor effective, and no one seemed upset when she left due to illness. By 1937 How-Martyn described the BCIIC office as “a charnel house compared to the happy atmosphere when we were there,” while the Guys admitted that, with Lord Horder as president, Hawarden as secretary, and Maurice Newfield as director, 1937 was, “quite frankly, a completely wasted year.” (Gerda Guy to MS, Nov. 18, 1936, MS to Gerda Guy, Apr. 21, 1937, How-Martyn to MS, Apr. 23, 1937 [quote 1], and Harry and Gerda Guy to MS, July 11, 1938 [quote 2] [LCM 16:48, 340, 345, 664].)

[New York, N.Y.] October 29, 1937

Dear Edith: The sad news about our dear Sue Green made me very heart sick indeed.2 How tragic that her end should come like that. Of course, I think nothing could be worse than anticipating the possibility of going blind, and I know she did make her plans for that condition. Nevertheless, we must be glad that we have seen so much of her; and what a grand person she was! I shall write to her sister. Thanks for the address.3

October 1937  •  387

It was good news to know that Gerda got in touch with you again. I wish it were possible to bury your differences and to let us all work as a unit as we did in the past.4 Already some of the forces have learned of a split and, as good strategists, they aim to unite the enemies.5 For instance, in one of the reports over here the following is quoted: “The status of the various groups in England has radically changed since my visit two years ago.” “Because of the new and rather indefinite status of the IBCC, the indefinite relationship of EHM and Mrs. Sanger with the Association and its limited financial resources, it was considered wise that the ABCL should not become affiliated with the International Council.”6 I am not sure whether there was an invitation for this contact or not. It would be very confusing to have that tie up. I do not know why they should say that my relationship with the Counsel is indefinite, and I am writing to Gerda today to ask what this means.7 A cable from Pillay asking me to come to India in the spring had to be replied to with regrets.8 It is impossible to pick up and march oneself around the world with the nations of the world in the terrible state in which they are today. For myself, I have a plan to make a world tour in 1940. I am thinking the thing through and will try to get finances so that by that time there will be sufficient for us to do a good job. I do not think it would be wise for me to be affiliated with another international organization until I ascertain from Gerda what my status is with the International Counsel. I agree with you that the stationary should carry the names of the members of the Council and its presidents.9 I can quite appreciate that there is a need for an organization with a broader outlook and more active than the International Council has so far demonstrated, but having given birth to it as you did and I stood by, I do not feel that it is good strategy to jump and organize another group until that one has either died out or has defined its policy in such a way as to gain friends and supporters for the new group. One gets a bad reputation of starting something and leaving it and starting another before the work of the first has been completed or accomplished.10 As to myself, my arm is entirely well, but I had a little backset in Honolulu and flew here from Arizona to see a very good specialist. It is quite likely that the same thing that troubled me in Hong Kong is the source of the trouble, and I would not be surprised to be advised to have the gall bladder removed.11 I want very much to come to England and to see you all and, if possible, to straighten out the situation regarding the Counsel, and present my plan for 1940 to the group there. I am working toward this end but cannot say at the present time when that will be. This is a long letter, but I do appreciate your birthday greetings and all the other letters in which you have kept me informed of the activities there.12

388  •  A Troubled World

Now as to the questions. The Conference in California is in the hands of a very good committee there. Miss Rose, Miss Smith and Sara are all there.13 Unfortunately the dates of December 2–4 are very bad for university professors, and with my own possible illness, it is doubtful whether I can be present, and I am sort of hoping that they will postpone it until spring. ↑P.S. Com decided to postpone.↓14 The frightful prosecutions in Massachusetts are an utter disgrace;15 a disgrace to the organization there to allow it to happen and to pussyfoot and be content and willing to close up the office and other clinics like good little children who have been told by the Pope to go home and say their prayers.16 As it is a State League and affiliated with the ABCL, the responsibility is in their hands. I was on my way to China when it occurred and could do nothing except to advise them to carry it to the highest court, which they are doing, but I consider that the whole thing has been very badly handled from the publicity point of view. As to Dr. Pillay and the Family Hygiene Society,17 I only know what Norman Himes has written me; that Pillay is much in debt and has to give up the magazine.18 This was a shock to me for I was under the impression that Norman Himes had been able to get a grant from one the Foundations here to carry the magazine through another year. As I had approached the director of the Foundation I know that such a grant was being considered, and I sent word hurriedly to Himes to come and get it as he was the American editor and had done a lot of talking about his interest I thought it would be nice for him to get its support. To the best of my knowledge, I had a letter stating that this grant had been made, and now Dr. Himes writes me that the thing slipped and he did not get it after all. The reasons seemed too complicated to give me the facts, so I am at a loss to know just what did happen.19 As far as the magazine being published here is concerned, I would much prefer to see it published in England. I very much hope to bring out our own small Birth Control News again before the first of the year, or by that time at any rate.20 Mr. Hu Shih is in this country visiting Mrs. Rublee in Washington21 but I do not expect to see him except for the brief moment when I saw him in Honolulu and stood up the whole evening to hear him lecture. The place was crowded with young Chinese and the whole of us stood, there not being room to squat, but it was worth while.22 And now my dear Edith, my love to you, As always, Margaret [signed] TLS EHMP, MSPP (MSM C6:637–39). Letterhead of the BCCRB. Handwritten interlineation on the last page by MS.

October 1937  •  389 1. How-Martyn, still angry over the BCIIC’s treatment of her, had resigned from the council a year earlier. She raised her own funds for a third tour of India, from November 1936 to February 1937, where she lectured, held demonstrations for medical practitioners, and helped organize groups and clinics in Bombay, Nasik, and Ahmedabad. (BCIIC Newsletter, No. 7 [Feb. 1937] [MSM C12:1054]; Gerda Guy to MS, Nov. 18, 1936, and How-Martyn to MS, Oct. 30, 1936 [LCM 16:48, 15:1256]; How-Martyn to Olive Johnson, Dec. 29, 1936 [EHMP].) 2. Sue Green, seventy-eight years old, fell and suffered a skull fracture in July. After a slow recovery, she returned to Paris, where she fell again and died on September 26. (How-Martyn to MS, Oct. 10 and 18, 1937 [LCM 16:502, 505].) 3. Green had eye surgery in 1934 that impaired her vision and left her unable “to take a really active part in congresses or big movements again.” How-Martyn sent MS the London address of Green’s sister, Jessie Green (b. ca. 1854). (Sue Green to MS, Mar 15, 1934 [quote], How-Martyn to MS, Mar. 15, 1934, and MS to Jessie Green, Oct. 29, 1937 [LCM 13:454, 15:677, 13:475.) 4. How-Martyn reported that Gerda Guy, aloof to How-Martyn since their friendship frayed in 1936, had recently made some friendly overtures. But when Guy claimed that in soliciting funds for her next India trip How-Martyn was siphoning potential financial support and contacts from the BCIIC, MS tried to play the peacemaker. She told Guy that How-Martyn was very talented, but she was “better for the role of doing when she sees a thing needs to be done, rather than getting permission from a Committee to allow her to do it.” How-Martyn, in turn, complained that Guy took too long to reimburse her for her 1935–36 tour expenses and that when payment finally arrived, it came “without a word of appreciation of my voluntary work, not a word of regret about my resignation from the Council.” (MS to Gerda Guy, Jan. 22, 1937 [quote 1], Guy to MS, Nov. 18, 1936, and HowMartyn to MS, Nov. 23, 1936, and Oct. 10, 1937 [quote 2] [LCM 16:52, 179, 56, 502].) 5. Handwritten margin note by How-Martyn at left reads: “meaning?” 6. This is from ABCL medical director Eric Matsner’s 1937 recommendation that the ABCL not ally with the BCIIC due to the center’s uncertain finances. Matsner instead suggested creating an Anglo-American Family Planning Association to affiliate the ABCL with the Family Planning Association (Great Britain) (FPA-GB). (Eric Matsner, “Report of Trip to France and England,” Aug. 1937 [PPFAR].) 7. MS asked Gerda Guy whether there was any truth to the rumor that the BCIIC would affiliate with the ABCL, expressing her opposition. She characterized the ABCL as leaderless and that “their international vision is nil.” (MS to Guy, Oct. 29, 1937 [LCM 16:540]; for more on MS and the ABCL, see Vol. 2.) 8. The specific cable was not found. MS was in frequent contact with Pillay as he struggled to keep his journal, Marriage Hygiene, alive. (MS to Pillay, Jan. 24, 1937, and Pillay to MS, May 11, 1937 [LCM 12:831, 18:432].) 9. How-Martyn was trying to raise money for a fourth India tour and had asked MS to look over a solicitation letter. She wanted to list MS’s name as a supporter, but worried that MS might not be willing because she was still the BCIIC honorary president, “tho’ why your name is not on notepaper puzzles me.” (How-Martyn to MS, Oct. 18, 1937 [LCM 16:505].)

390  •  A Troubled World 10. MS likely referred to the difficulties she faced after she resigned from the ABCL (taking the BCCRB with her) and organized the rival NCFLBC; she was blamed by some for dividing and weakening the movement. By 1937 some believed that the BCCRB should be reunited with the ABCL. (See Stuart Mudd to MS, Nov. 30, 1929 [LCM 9:744]; MS to Clarence Gamble, Apr. 21, 1937 [MSM C6:433]; for more on the work of merging the groups, see the Birth Control Council of America in Vol. 2.) 11. During her mid-September stay in Honolulu, MS again became violently ill and was diagnosed with a diverticulum near her gallbladder. The specialist was Dr. Arthur Lawrence Holland (1873–1959) at the Cornell University Medical Center. (1937 Calendar [MSM S79:392–411]; “Deaths,” JAMA 170 [July 4, 1959]: 1213; MS to William Gerrard, June 30, 1936 [MSM S11:384].) 12. Along with her September 4 birthday wishes, How-Martyn wrote to MS about the Spanish Civil War and the “greater horrors” going on in China. (How-Martyn to MS, Sept. 4 and Oct. 10 and 18, 1937 [LCM 16:492, 502, 505].) 13. The NCFLBC was organizing a Western States Birth Control Conference committee, headed by Grace Bosely Ashley and Gladys DeLancey Smith (1893–1989?), the former secretary of the Pasadena Welfare Bureau. Sara Levine (Bukzin) (1897–1973) was a BCCRB secretary in charge of the Motherhood Advice Bureau and Book Departments who MS sent to Los Angeles to assist Gladys Smith and Florence Rose. (SSDI; Los Angeles Times, Mar. 12, 1937; MS to Levine, Aug. 13, 1931, Levine to MS, Oct. 10, 1935, and Smith to Rose, May 27 and Nov. 24, 1937 [LCM 62:486B, 635A, 37:465, 473].) 14. Ashley, whose son was also having surgery, postponed the conference, because without MS it would “lose it’s greatest drawing power.” Tentatively rescheduled for April 1941, it was never held. (Ashley to Nils Larsen, Nov. 2, 1937 [LCM 127:279].) 15. In the summer of 1937, police raided three Mother’s Health Offices of the Birth Control League of Massachusetts (BCLM) and arrested doctors, staff members, and league officers for violating state laws on advertising, selling, or circulating information about contraceptives. All were tried, convicted, fined, and awaited appeals. (C. Davis, “‘Cradle of Liberty,’” 6; “On the Massachusetts Front,” BCR 22 [Nov. 1937]: 21; see also Vol. 2.) 16. The BCLM, formed in 1928, closed its remaining health offices after the raids. MS disagreed with the strategy of bending to the laws rather than challenging them and risking arrest. (BCLM, “History of the Birth Control Movement in Massachusetts” [AFP]; C. Davis, “‘Cradle of Liberty,’” 8; see Vol. 2.) 17. Pillay unsuccessfully sought donations from English and American supporters to keep Marriage Hygiene afloat. It ceased publication in October 1937. Pillay’s SSPFH had been cooperating with the BCCRB on contraceptive testing. (MS to Pillay, June 20, 1936, and Pillay to MS, Nov. 12, 1937 [LCM 18:237, 501]; Wadia, Light Is Ours, 497.) 18. Norman E. Himes (1899–1949), a sociologist at Colgate University specializing in the medical history of birth control, was the American editor for Marriage Hygiene (1934–37). He wrote that Pillay was “getting deeper and deeper into debt, and feels that he can make no more personal sacrifices.” (Fenton Keyes, “Obituary: Norman Edwin Himes,” American Sociological Review 14 [Aug. 1949]: 556; Himes to MS, Oct. 11, 1937 [quote] [MSM C6:624].) 19. Himes met in January with Rockefeller adviser Arthur Packard, who suggested that Pillay would have to improve his accounting system to receive funds. MS offered to

January 1938  •  391 finance the next issue if Himes could assure her that “there is some prospect of its being carried on after that.” In the end, she supported two issues of Marriage Hygiene (at three hundred dollars each). In October she learned that Packard was still concerned about Pillay’s accounting. Himes “intimated that a grant might be forthcoming” if a group like the ABCL made an emergency request. (Himes to MS, Jan. 2 and Oct. 11, 1937, and MS to Himes, Jan. 22 [quote] and 27 and Oct. 7, 1937 [MSM C6:271, 624, 316, 337, 623].) 20. The National Birth Control News was launched by the NCFLBC in the fall of 1936 and distributed bimonthly to about seven thousand contributors and workers. (Hazel C. Benjamin, “Lobbying for Birth Control,” Public Opinion Quarterly [Jan. 1938]: 54; NCFLBC, New Day Dawns, 28.) 21. When the war with Japan broke out, Hu Shih was touring the United States, speaking on China’s determination to resist Japanese aggression and seeking Western aid. Rublee and her husband, George, hosted him at their Washington, D.C., home. (Boorman, Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, 169; Marc Eric McClure, “Earnest Endeavors: The Life and Public Work of George Rublee” [Ph.D. diss., George Washington University, 2000], 347.) 22. MS stayed in Honolulu from September 10 to 27 and probably saw Hu Shih’s speech before the Institute of Pacific Relations. Shih urged U.S. involvement in the Sino-Japanese War, predicting that if unchecked, it could escalate into “a Pacific war or a world war.” (1937 Calendar [MSM S79:392]; Boorman, Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, 169; Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Sept. 24, 1937 [quote].)

137. From Shidzue Ishimoto Early on the morning of December 15, 1937, Japanese police rounded up more than four hundred labor leaders, intellectuals, and others with radical or antimilitary sympathies, including Shidzue Ishimoto, in what became known as the Popular Front Incident. Ishimoto’s lover Kanjū Katō was arrested later that day as he disembarked from a ship at Nagasaki. Those arrested were accused of obstructing the war effort and attempting to build a popular front. The government declared that anyone with thoughts leading to communist ideas would be “drastically suppressed.” Many of those arrested, including Ishimoto, were released after short detentions; others remained in prison until 1945. (New York Times, Dec. 22, 1937; Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 24, 1938 [quote]; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 7, 100–101; Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan.)

Tokyo, Japan January 11, 1938

Dear Mrs. Sanger: Rose has written me about your recent operation and I am glad to know that it went well and that you are recovering steadly.1 I hope you will take a lengthly period of time for the real rest to get fully well again as I believe that your good health is the joy to us and to the millions of mothers in the world. Perhaps you have learned something about the recent round up of some four hundred liberals in Japan by newspaper, and Arata has written you his

392  •  A Troubled World

impression about this unpleasant excitement occured to us.2 However, I should like to give you full information on the matter. “Birth control workers have been and will be in prison” was my saying to myself since I had known you some seventeen years ago. At least it was put into realization on me on December 15, 1937. The whole plot was set up by the police authorities this time. According to them, liberals and trade union workers who have been organized into “Nippon Proletariat Party” were trying to violete peace in this country under Marxian doctorine, so the have to crush this movement from its root.3 Mr. Kanju Kato, M.P. was taking the political leadership of the party supported by many interectuals of progressive nature and many trade unions and farmers unions of active “untamed” nature was under the influence of this party.4 Mr. Kato has been one of my close friends and co-workers since I became interested in birth control work as well as other social movement in this country and I helped him when he was sent to United States in 1934 as a labor envoy.5 He also helped me to promote the publicity program for birth control and I joined his election campagn to use his platform for birth control propaganda to reach the masses.6 He has been recognized as the leader who has never surrender to military nor fassistic force, naturally he obtained deep rooted confidence among intelligensia and also popular among labor class, which could be seen by the ballots he had collected, the highest record through out the country and history.7 My relation with his party gave the impression to the Japanese public that birth control in Japan have not been abused for “wrong purpose” but it is aiming just the class who really need such information8 However, the case was set up as if this political party have been making close relation with the Japanese section of the communists party in U.S. and as I have been in the U.S. many times so that I may well informed about this alleged relation with American communists. Thus I was arrested as the witness of the case.9 The anticipation of the police was betrayed. There, after serching all over my house, taking English correspondence and books and magazines was nothing to back up this allegation of unlawful relation with communist, which, of course, totally untrue and rediculous to those who know the truth.10 It was also another surprise to them to see me not nervase while I was kept in police detention. Of course, I had a strong conviction that I have been doing nothing but good for our nation, thinking that they should ashame of themselves by arresting such a decent citizen of Emperor as myself. I was questioned four times. Each time a considerablly long time was put on me, sometime took whole twelve hours, asking about my political opinion and my faith in the cause. I took this as a part of my birth control fight and best chance for me to pound the head of police officials to conceive the birth control principle.11

January 1938  •  393

According to our authorities the idea of “work for the emancipation of suffering millions” through birth control is, “bad enough” under this time of national emergency, but they admit that our birth control work has been lawfully conducted so that they have no right to stop it if I am not aiming the “emancipation of suffering millions” by it.12 They also admit that birth control for the protection of motherhood and to reduce high infant mortality from pure medical standpoint.13 To me, their argument did not sound logically, but I stoped to argue further. Of course, I did not express the “words of repentant” to the authorities as Japanese communist usually compelled to do. I thought I better stay in prison than to repent what I have done.14 In spite of my uncompromised argument, the police offcials who took charge of my case liked my frankness beside they had to consider my social rank, I was set free after two weeks of stay in the icy box-like detention.15 I am healthy and enthusiastic as ever to my work and has been strenghened my conviction in the future victory. However, I expect to undergo the most difficult time in the at presence and in the near future. One of the handicap I am facing now is the fact that our authorites issued an order that any article—whatever the contents are—signed by the people who were charged under this recent incident will be prohibited from publication hereafter.16 As the result even an movie review writted by an ex-professor of the Imperial University, who was one of us was ordered to cut out from the magazine which were already published. The January issue of a magazine called “The scientists pen” in which I have contrituted an article “the profile of Margaret Sanger” was banned after they were already widely circulated. This magazine carried several other articles by these recently banned writer, but police authority said to me that he sees “a distinctive tendency of Marxist ideology” in my article so this is also “bad enough.”17 Can you imagine how one can write a short article about Margaret Sanger and her work with relations of Marxism? No argument, no public opinion, but “thought control” in the country under fassistic regime. On December 17th, five police detectives raid our clinic and took papers and records away according to the report of young doctor there.18 It is sad, indeed, that I had to close that clinic for time being to meet this difficult situation. I am not yet offcially told to do so but since the right to write any article nor public speeches for open meetings has been denied to us, how can I carry this work fully to be utilized by the people. The only way I can meet this circumstance is to bring the work back to the point before August, that means I shall continue the work using my house as office and do it in a limited schale.19 I received a new supply of foam powder this morning from you for which I thank you very much. I shall distribute the powder to doctores and to the hospitals as I have planned before, and shall try with my best to defence the

394  •  A Troubled World

birth control front and evey try to fight back again at least to the point it had stood before this calamity.20 Japanese presses gave rather sympathetic reports about my case and gave publicity for birth control.21 Some seeds must be planted during autumn and left underground covered with icy earth during severe winter, but spring will surely come back and the fresh leaves will grow under the warm sun shine. I believe that the new life is being prepared during the decaying process of passing period in our human history. I shall not discourage by this, but will look forward hand in hand with those who are internationally minded. With my love and good wishes to you and to my friends, Sincerely yours, Shidzue Ishimoto [signed] I am sorry that I do not have time to make my official report to the office about this matter, so that I agree to sue↑use↓ this information for your publication purpose if necessary. However, this letter has been written confidentielly to you, so in case you use this material, please take it from pure objective standpoint and don’t mention about my letter.22 TLS MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S14:187–89).

1. MS underwent gallbladder surgery on November 2 at New York’s Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and was hospitalized until November 30. (1937 Calendar and MS to Havelock Ellis, Nov. 13, 1937 [MSM S79:411–26, 13:815]; see also Rose to Ishimoto, Dec. 17, 1937 [LCM 19:84].) 2. Arata Ishimoto was living with his mother in Tokyo when she was arrested. For his letter, see Arata Ishimoto to MS, Jan. 2, 1938 (MSM S14:137). Ishimoto was released on December 29. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 7, 138; editors’ correspondence with Helen M. Hopper, Sept. 9, 2009.) 3. In January 1936, Zempyō (the National Council of Japanese Labor Unions) formed the antifascist Rōkyō (Labor-Agrarian Proletarian Council), renamed the Nihon Musanto in March 1937. It was a more radical alternative to the Shakaī Taishūto (Social Masses Party), a coalition of leftist political organizations formed in 1932. The Japanese government accused the Nihon Musanto of spreading antiwar propaganda and following the orders of the 1935 Soviet-sponsored Seventh Comintern. (George M. Beckmann and Genji Okubo, The Japanese Communist Party, 1922–1945 [Stanford, Calif., 1969], 261.) 4. Kanjū Katō (1892–1978) won a seat in the lower house of the diet in April, representing one of Tokyo’s most liberal districts. While the Nihon Musanto had the support of many small unions, it did not have the backing of the All-Japan General Federation of Labor, nor did it gain much traction among the industrial working classes. Following Katō’s arrest, he was forced to dissolve both the Nihon Musanto and Zempyō. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 64, 74–75, 100; George Oakley Totten III, The Social Democratic Movement in Prewar Japan [New Haven, Conn., 1966], 100–101.)

January 1938  •  395 5. Shidzue Ishimoto, who became Katō’s lover in 1931, helped him improve his English before his 1935 American tour, when he spoke to labor on the need for international opposition to Japan’s imperialist aggression in China. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 47, 62–63; New York Times, June 25, 1935.) 6. Katō was a founding member of the NSCK in 1922 and urged Ishimoto to speak to workers at the Ashio Copper Mine in 1921. (Ishimoto to MS, Apr. 5, 1923, herein; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 2, 32, 47, 66.) 7. Katō had muted his opposition by the fall of 1937 as the war with China intensified. He won his diet seat by a large majority, with Socialists doubling their representation. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 75, 98–99; Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 24, 1938.) 8. The acceptance of birth control by a group committed to workers’ interests countered government accusations that Ishimoto advocated birth control primarily for antimilitarist reasons. (New York Times, Jan. 1, 1938.) 9. The government alleged that the American Communist Party was instructing Japanese working-class groups “to carry on agitation in connection with diplomatic issues, relief for soldiers’ families, and rising commodity prices.” Ishimoto was held for questioning on the allegation that she paid Kanjū Katō’s American trip expenses in 1935, contributed to his election campaign, and appeared on a platform with him at a Nihon Musanto meeting, not about her birth control work. (For Ishimoto’s trips to the United States, see MS, Speech at Opening Reception at Tokyo Clinic, Aug. 30, 1937, note 10, herein; Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 24, 1938 [quote]; New York Times, Dec. 29, 1937; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 9, 49, 70–71.) 10. Ishimoto later told the press that the other detainees were “not Reds,” and “at most some might be called Pinks. Many of them are intelligent working people interested in social progress. They would be correctly described as liberals of the Left wing perhaps, but certainly neither as Communists nor as revolutionaries.” (New York Times, Jan. 1, 1938.) 11. Ishimoto was questioned by three members of the Tokubetsu Kōtō Keisatsu (Special Higher Police), or “thought police,” who were empowered by the Home Ministry to investigate and suppress dangerous ideologies. Though they focused on her ties to Kanjū Katō, they also asked her about her work for the women’s rights and birth control movements, suggesting that her advocacy was motivated by antimilitarism rather than left-wing leanings. (New York Times, Jan. 1, 1938; Hunter, Concise Dictionary, 168; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 103–7.) 12. Japan had no specific laws prohibiting the sale or use of contraceptives, though it banned contraceptive devices considered harmful. The police also suppressed objectionable literature, dangerous advertisements, and disorderly public meetings. (Jesse F. Steiner, “Japanese Population Policies,” American Journal of Sociology 43 [Mar. 1938]: 720–21; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 43.) 13. The police questioners accepted Ishimoto’s arguments for the health benefits of birth control, but not an economic rationale. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 106.) 14. Communists were made to recant or remain in prison. According to her biographer, Ishimoto asked the police, “Aren’t thoughts about women’s liberation and birth control legal? Please instruct me in the ways in which these can be considered crimes. . . . [I]f I

396  •  A Troubled World have made a mistake I will admit it. Just tell me my mistake, what I have done wrong.’” (Hunter, Concise Dictionary, 78; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 106 [quote].) 15. Ishimoto’s cell was in the local police station in the Shinagawa Ward of Tokyo. Her rank may have allowed her slightly better treatment, and her December 29 release would have allowed her to satisfy her aristocratic obligation to show respect to the emperor on the new year. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 103–4, 108; New York Times, Jan. 1, 1938.) 16. Immediately following the arrests, the government called for the suppression of all left-wing ideas. Upon her release, Ishimoto was told not to publish, speak in public, or attend public gatherings. (E. Tipton, Japanese Police State, 66, 170; E. Tipton, Modern Japan, 127–28; Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 24, 1938; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 110.) 17. The article and magazine were not found. 18. The raid occurred while Ishimoto was in detention. Detectives removed, among other items, letters from women seeking help and records of contraceptives mailed by the clinic. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 110.) 19. Ishimoto probably refers to the information clearinghouse and informal clinic she ran from her Tokyo home after her 1933 American trip. The second Tokyo clinic was opened in August 1937. (Katō, Fight for Women’s Happiness, 74–75; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 56–57.) 20. The BCCRB sent a shipment of one hundred pounds of Phillip Stoughton’s foam powder, but it was held up by Japanese customs. It may have sent another shipment later that fall. MS expected Ishimoto to serve as her main distributor of foam powder in China as well as Japan. (Rose to Cele Damon, Aug. 28, 1937, and Ishimoto to Rose, Dec. 2, 1937 [LCM 19:36, 77].) 21. Ishimoto’s arrest was front-page news in Japan, with popular daily Asahi Shimbun referring to her and Taiko Hirabayashi, a proletarian women’s group leader, as “roses in the midst of thorns.” The press freely reported on these raids and arrests until January, when the government suppressed five left-wing magazines. (Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 22, 1937, quoted in Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 100; New York Times, Jan. 1, 1938.) 22. Ishimoto had drafted reports on her activities for MS to use in the BCR or other publications, but it would have been deemed impolite for MS to use a personal letter for movement propaganda.

138. To Frank Wang Co-Tui 1 The New York Herald Tribune published reports by American missionaries in Nanking and Soochow about the large number of rapes of Chinese women by Japanese soldiers, which resulted in high rates of venereal disease and increased requests for abortion. While the missionary-run hospitals treated the venereal disease cases, they refused to offer the women abortions. Frank Co-Tui wrote Sanger that in such emergency conditions, given the dangers of self-abortion and the emotional cost of bearing children who “can only be living reminders to their mothers of destruction, lust and terror,” Chinese doctors should waive their objections. He solicited Sanger’s support to bring the matter to Chinese medical officials. (Co-Tui to MS, Mar. 11, 1938 [MSM S14:680]; New York Herald Tribune, Mar. 4, 1938.)

March 1938  •  397

Casa de Adobe Tucson, Arizona March 18, 1938

Dear Doctor Co Tui: Your letter of March 11th received, enclosing a clipping from the New York Herald Tribune relative to the question of the rights of Chinese women and girls to refuse to becoming unwilling mothers thru forced conception by Japanese soldiers. This question of the right of women to be aborted by recognized authorities was brought up in France during the World War and while ordinarily French laws are opposed to abortion, medical officials of France went overwhelmingly in favor of the right of the French woman to refuse to be a mother of a child forced on her by a German soldier.2 It seems to me that there could be nothing more repugnant or more tortuous to a woman than to have to carry a child conceived under conditions recognized as abhorent to every civilized man or woman. Chinese Medical and Hospital authorities should accept these conditions as unnatural, unusual, and they must deviate from their usual procedure and make exceptions as a war measure.3 It should be a temporary means of relieving the tortuous mothers of this agony, for this will be a means of giving just consideration to unborn children conceived in lust and born in hatred and resentment. Such a birth-right is unfair to the child, no matter what nationality the offending father may be. On general principles I do not approve of abortion as a means of curtailing or controlling the size of the family, but there are circumstances when abortion is justifiable and right and this is certainly one of those circumstances if the mothers which to have it done. Wishing you success in your program, Sincerely yours, MARGARET SANGER TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S14:747–48).

1. Frank Wang Co-Tui (1894–1983) was a Chinese physician and executive vice president of the American Bureau for Medical Aid to China, a humanitarian relief group raising funds in the United States. (SSDI; New York Times, Dec. 16, 1949.) 2. The issue was debated in France in 1915, with some politicians favoring the suspension of France’s prohibition on all abortions and others arguing that women should bear and raise the children as French. In March 1915, the Interior Ministry directed women to give birth and bring their babies to Paris, where they would be given a falsified birth certificate and put into public care. (Ruth Harris, “The ‘Child of the Barbarian’: Rape, Race and Nationalism in France during the First World War,” Past and Present 141 [Nov. 1993]: 192.) 3. The Qing dynasty criminalized abortion in 1910, prosecuting both women seeking abortion and anyone who helped them. China’s constant political strife made it difficult

398  •  A Troubled World to determine how widely the law was applied, but hospitals were aware of it. An exception was made in 1935 for therapeutic abortions. (Kane, “Family Planning in China,” 426–27.)

139. To Margaret A. Pyke 1 The BCIIC, reduced to a few old members and a few inexperienced activists, had lost the support of its longtime funders Gerda and Henry Guy. So when its chairman, Lord Horder, suggested that it merge with the NBCA, the Guys agreed, arguing that “if it received new life it would be excellent and if it failed it would be a gentle burial.” They guaranteed three hundred pounds for the first year. On March 25, the BCIIC leadership, with few other options and without consulting the council, agreed to the merger. (Gerda Guy to MS, Apr. 12, 1938, Harry and Gerda Guy, July 11, 1938 [quote], and Newfield, Apr. 1, 1938 [LCM 16:608, 603, 664].)

[Washington, D.C.] June 3, 1938

Dear Mrs. Pyke: Your kind letter of May 6th has been received.2 I had an earlier one from Gerda Guy telling me that the Birth Control International Information Centre had amalgamated with the National Birth Control Association. There is no doubt that many members of both organizations were interested in the activities of both, but I cannot help but regret that the International Information Centre was not able to carry out all of its plans for activities in fields where so little [has] been done but so much needs doing. I should like to see a national conference take place in London or some other city as soon as the war clouds are dissipated. I, myself, am planning for another world tour in 1940. I hope we can end the campaign in London and I should like to cooperate with your group there in the possibility of a conference at that time. Baroness Ishimoto from Japan is making her plans to join me on the world tour, and if there is a China left by that time, some of the Chinese women expect to come along too.3 We would all stop together in London at the end of the trip. While the tour cannot be outlined in detail at this time and no publicity is to be given to it yet, I just want to let you know of the possibility of this plan. I will, of course, keep you informed as plans progress. With all good wishes to you and your committee and my very special regards to Lord Horder, I am, Sincerely yours, Margaret Sanger TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 16:643). Carbon smears. Copies were also sent to Gerda Guy and Edith HowMartyn.

October 1938  •  399 1. Margaret A. Pyke (1893–1966) was a British school administrator, birth control advocate, and NBCA secretary. (DNB.) 2. Pyke informed MS about the merger, adding that “we are very glad that this has taken place and that we hope it will benefit both the international work and our own.” (Pyke to MS, May 6, 1938 [MSM C6:783].) 3. Ishimoto closed her clinic on February 8, 1938, when the police and the Imperial Household Department warned her that if she continued birth control work, they would “make me very uncomfortable.” Ishimoto worked quietly from her home, answering requests from poor women, dispensing diaphragms and jelly, and helping MS distribute foam powder. MS probably refers to Chinese activist Anna Chou. (Ishimoto to MS, Feb. 3, 1938 [MSM S14:355]; Ishimoto to Rose, Feb. 23, 1938 [quote] [LCM 19:122]; Ishimoto to Brush, June 26, 1938 [MS Unfilmed].)

140. From Stephen Haweis 1 In late August, Stephen Haweis, an old friend of Sanger’s from her radical days, wrote her seeking aid with his plans to distribute birth control instruction “for very ignorant people” in the British West Indies. He noted that he had an old pamphlet, probably Family Limitation, but that it was “hardly suitable for people that are poor and can hardly read: I mean of course our poor negroes who, in the toils of the Church and always on the ragged end of starvation, need birth control almost as much as they need fuel and food.” Sanger responded with information about the foam powder method, but cautioned Haweis that it was best used under medical conditions. (Haweis to MS, Aug. ?, 1938, and MS to Haweis, Sept. 17, 1938 [LCM 11:1126, 1128].)

Mount Joy, Dominica, B.W.I. Oct 9/38

My dear Margaret—after twenty-three years . . . Do you know what happened when some ladies started a clinic in Barbados. Combined with B.C. information they supplied grade A sterilized milk, and were astonished to find that the people would neither buy it nor accept it as a gift. The word “sterilized” was found to be the trouble at last “you drink dat milk, an you’ll catch birth control!”2 I have boiled down the pamphlets into different language, and have introduced a little religious jargon which I believe would help a great deal among our strongly R.C people.3 R.C. and B.C. don’t go easily together and I think anything quotable from any Catholic, indicating that there is any sympathy at all would be very useful. You say “the Catholic Church . . has recognised the necessity of some form of birth control.” Who? and what?4 The Foam powder has come—with thanks—I have not seen it, as the Post Office wants to know its value, age and names of father and mother etc—but at last I shall get it.5 It sounds simple, but the people in the W. I that need information are not only ignorant, they are unbelievably poor. Men get thirty

400  •  A Troubled World

cents a day and women twenty cents—which is really not enough to bring up a family of twelve upon.6 I am therefore interested in the very cheapest possible expedients—salt and a sponge for example, and vinegar.7 One wants to find things which they can make themselves. Some do make salt from sea water, and vinegar is not impossible. Sponges however belong to the Bahamas; they do not live here.8 On the other hand raw sea-island cotton grows on a bush—and I presume they could use that instead?9 Of what exactly are the fish-skin condoms made? Would it be possible for the people to make them? I presume they are the gut of sheep, goats or large fish—the people could obtain those more easily than by buying them in the drug store.10 My idea is to get the simplest and shortest pamphlet using words which the people can understand because they will not ask for explanation. They are more modest than white people as a rule, and they also hate to admit that they do not understand, and trust to luck to finding out gradually. Most of them speak a French patois and understand far less English than they pretend—which means that one must distribute the pamphlets carefully to people who will explain—no educated white man could do it I think. I have an excellent garden boy who developed gonorrhea . . . but it will give you an idea when you know that both he and his father believed that he had contracted the trouble through sitting on a hot stone . . it is really not far from the aboriginal Australian who thinks conception may be cause by pointing a hollow kangaroo bone at a lady—which we think hardly adequate. . . .11 In reply to the Catholic argument that birth control kills human life I have never observed the reply that the male sperm is not human life—and I think that a very important argument. Nor the fact that the Church does not forbid the use of antiseptics for other purposes. I think more might be made of the idea that God (in his infinite goodness and mercy) expects us to use the talent of intelligence instead of wrapping it in a napkin, and that he ‘vouchesafed’ to man the discovery of the microscope and the Lysol bottle, and that he is actually offended when we don’t use birth control! Everything can be said in religious, scientific, poetic, or materialistic jargon, and sometimes one works much better than another. References in the pamphlet to factories and purely American conditions mean nothing to a West Indian negro. I enclose my rough draft of a possible pamphlet for criticism—far from perfect I know.12 I admit that I giggled a little over the Foam powder pamphlet “after each exposure”13—as if children were born by photography!14 [handwritten] Yours very sincerely Stephen Haweis TLS MSP, DLC (LCM 11:1230).

october 1938  •  401 1. (Hugh) Stephen Haweis (Hawys) (1878–1969) was a British painter and photographer who had frequented Mabel Dodge Luhan’s Greenwich Village salon with MS. He left the United States in 1929 and settled in the West Indian island of Dominica, where he painted and worked as a journalist. (Virginia Koudis, Mina Loy: American Modernist Painter [Baton Rouge, La., 1980], 3; Kenneth E. Ingram, ed., Manuscript Sources in the History of the West Indies [Barbados, 2002], 292.) 2. Modern contraceptive clinics in the West Indies were not established until 1955, though the use of artificial contraceptives had been spreading, probably via the informal clinics Haweis mentioned. MS responded, “We . . . love the account of the Sterilized Milk, and in fact I thought it so good that I passed it on to a friend of mine, who is close to the White House, in the hopes that eventually they would be enjoyed by President Roosevelt as well.” MS also shared it with Abraham Stone, who published the section on Barbados in the JOC. (Christopher Tietze and Charles Alleyne, “A Family Planning Service on the West Indies,” Fertility and Sterility 10 [May–June 1959]: 259; Joycelin Massiah, Employed Women in Barbados: A Demographic Profile, 1946–1970 [Barbados, 1984], 15; MS to Haweis, Sept. 21, 1938 [quote] [LCM 11:1232]; Abraham Stone, “Birth Control in the West Indies,” JOC 4 [May 1939]: 109.) 3. MS’s secretary sent Haweis some written information, possibly updated issues of Family Limitation. Dominica, in the Lesser Antilles between Guadeloupe and Martinique, was a French possession and then a British colony until 1978, when it became independent. The majority of the population were Roman Catholic and spoke some English, though they also spoke a French-based Creole patois and Cocoy, a mixture of English Creole and Dominican Creole. (MS to Haweis, Sept. 17, 1938 [LCM 11:1228]; Central Intelligence Agency, “Dominica,” World Factbook [1981], https://www.cia.gov/ library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/do.html; Pauline Christie, “Dominica and the French Caribbean: So Far and yet So Near,” in The Francophone Caribbean Today: Literature and Culture, edited by G. Aub-Büscher and B. O. Oakes [Mona, Jamaica, 2003], 22.) 4. The quote, not found, may have been in the BCCRB material. MS referred Haweis to Leo J. Latz’s The Rhythm, which was endorsed by the Catholic Church, noting that because Latz accepted the need for birth control, “this brings us down only to a question as to a difference in opinion on methods.” (MS to Haweis, Sept. 21, 1938 [LCM 11:1232].) 5. MS sent six boxes of foam powder to Haweis on September 17. (MS to Haweis, Sept. 17, 1938 [LCM 11:1228].) 6. Dominica’s economy was extremely fragile, with most rural families existing only on crops they could grow themselves. The birthrate in Dominica began falling in the late 1920s. (Cecilia Green, “A Recalcitrant Plantation Colony: Dominica, 1880–1946,” New West Indian Guide 73 [1999]: 53–54, 62–63.) 7. Both salt and vinegar were believed to be effective spermicides. MS recommended a salt solution (four tablespoons of salt to one quart of water) in Family Limitation, characterizing it as “good and cheap.” Norman Himes and Abraham Stone agreed that “common table salt . . . has been recommended for douching,” but cautioned that “sperms ‘like’ salt at certain concentrations.” MS also recommended vinegar as an antiseptic. She wrote: “One glassful to two quarts of water is the strength usually desired. Cider vinegar is preferred. Douche afterward with clear water.” (MS, Family Limitation [New York,

402  •  A Troubled World 1914]: 8 [quotes 1 and 3]; Himes and Stone, Practical Birth-Control Methods, 109 [quote 2].) 8. MS assumed that Dominicans could obtain natural sponges locally, making foam powder an extremely inexpensive method. (MS to Haweis, Sept. 17, 1938 [LCM 11:1228].) 9. A cotton tampon was used in a similar fashion to a sponge, soaked with a spermicidal solution and inserted just prior to intercourse. Cotton plugs or tampons had been used as contraceptives for centuries. (Himes, Medical History of Contraception, 217, 246, 303; Stone and Himes, Planned Parenthood, 188–92.) 10. Apparently, some condoms were made from fish bladder in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but the “fish skin” condom was made from the cecum of sheep. (Brodie, Contraception and Abortion, 209; William J. Robinson, The Treatment of Gonorrhea and Its Complications in Men and Women [New York, 1917], 128.) 11. Haweis may be referring to the aboriginal practice of “pourri-pourri,” or “pointing the bone,” whereby an enemy is ritually cursed by publicly shaking a hollowed kangaroo bone with a strand of the victim’s hair attached to it. The practice had nothing to do with reproduction. (Morning Bulletin [Rockingham, Queensland], June 6, 1935; Sydney Morning Herald, June 11, 1947.) 12. Haweis enclosed a draft pamphlet (not found) of simplified birth control questions and answers that MS showed to Robert L. Dickinson. Both added comments, and MS returned it to Haweis on November 21, exhorting, “More power to you!” (MS to Haweis, Nov. 21, 1938 [MSM C6:912].) 13. Haweis refers to P.S. Foam Powder, a product brochure by Philip Stoughton that MS included in each shipment. The passage reads: “It must be used before every exposure; use it when you expect exposure.” (Philip Stoughton, P.S. Foam Powder, n.d. [PPFAR].) 14. Handwritten margin note by Florence Rose reads: “MS—I laughed outright!! FR.” Handwritten note by MS reads: “marvellous idea.”

141. From Charles E. Pengelley 1 On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. In response, Great Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada declared war on Germany. The Soviet Union joined the German offensive, and within weeks Poland fell and was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union. In the months that followed, the Soviet Union invaded and conquered Finland and Germany invaded Denmark and Norway, while the United States continued to declare its neutrality. The war pushed the birth control movement to a back burner, curtailing Sanger’s plans for tours or major organizational work, but requests for birth control information and materials continued to arrive. (EB.)

Mandeville [Jamaica] 30th March 1940

Dear Miss Sanger, Mrs. How-Martyn advised me about a year ago when she was in Jamaica2 that if we got into difficulties here over our Birth Control campaign to write you direct for advice.

March 1940  •  403

I have been using contraceptive methods in Jamaica in my private practice for 25 years, (for many years Dr. Stopes’ Sea Sponge with 8% Quinine DiHydrochloride Ointment with very good results.)3 As the birth rate in Jamaica is much too high for the welfare of the country, the Government have been making efforts to reduce the rate by education in contraceptive methods and in certain cases by free supply of contraceptives in some areas.4 I visited England two years ago and made a report to our Government on some of the work being done by the British Birth Control Association.5 For about two years in the parish of Manchester we have been supplying Cotton Wool and a Vinegar Solution free to all mothers who ought not to have more children on account of ill health or poverty. All Drug Stores have stocked Philip Stoughton’s Foam Powder outfit which sold at 3/6d.6 The difficulties encountered have been as follows— The men object to the rubber sponge as they can detect it.7 The poorer mothers are very liable to use the Cotton Wool for other purposes and then to be out of stock when needed. I have come to the conclusion that the method which works best in this parish is a fine grain oval sea sponge with a Foam Powder which we might be able to pay for, for the poor people who particularly need Birth Control. If we could get a formula which could be made up by one of our wholesale Druggist and sold in bulk, the people bringing their own air tight containers. This is what we are doing with a Tooth Powder. Could you possibly supply me the formula for a Foam Powder that we could make up locally and sell very cheaply and that the Government would pay for, for the very poor people? The Holland Rantos sea sponge can be bought for about 10 cents each, and would probably cost us in Jamaica 6d or a little more and if we could sell this sponge with a Foam Powder in bulk to last for about a year for 1/-, I think it would overcome a lot of our local difficulties.8 We do not want to antagonise Druggists, but, the class who now buy an expensive and attractive contraceptive outfit put up by some well known firm would not buy a Foam Powder in bulk with an unprotected sponge. I hope you will be able to help us in this matter.9 With best wishes, Sincerely yours, Charles Pengelley [signed] C. E. Pengelley. M. O. (H)., Manchester. TLS MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S17:1026–27). Letterhead of the Manchester Health Department. Margin notes at the bottom of the last page, some in Pitney shorthand, are largely illegible. The notes refer to Stoughton’s foam powder formula. (Letha Kay, “Shorthand Translation Services to Editor,” Mar. 20, 2012; for a draft response, see Rose to Pengelley, May 7, 1940 [MSM S17:1114].)

404  •  A Troubled World 1. Charles E. Pengelley (1888–1966) was a Jamaican physician and medical officer of health since 1931 for the Manchester Parish in central Jamaica. (Who’s Who in Jamaica [Kingston, 1954]; Daily Gleaner, July 19, 1966.) 2. How-Martyn and her husband stayed in Jamaica from January to April 2, 1939, during which she spoke at the First Jamaican Women’s Conference. (How-Martyn to MS, Dec. 27, 1938 [LCM 16:774]; MS to How-Martyn, Jan. ? and Feb. 17, 1939 [MSM C6:972, 979]; U.K. Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878–1960.) 3. Stopes recommended using either a rubber or an “ordinary close-grained sea sponge” with a spermicide or greasy solution to block sperm, calling it “very nearly that ‘foolproof ’ method which is demanded by so many people.” Quinine salts (a common ingredient in contraceptive ointments, jellies, and douches) were derived from the bark of the cinchona tree and primarily used to treat malaria. (Marie Stopes, Birth Control To-Day [London, 1934, reprinted 1957], 45, 90 [quotes]; Cooper, Technique of Contraception, 90.) 4. The birthrate in Jamaica declined slightly between 1919 and 1939, from 33.5 per 1,000 to 32.07, probably due to improvements in education and health care. But in this same period, the death rate fell precipitously, creating a nearly 50 percent increase in population. The Manchester Parish opened a birth control clinic in 1938, and by 1939 it, along with the St. Elizabeth’s Parish Health Office, was dispensing free contraception to the poor. The Jamaica Birth Control League, established in February 1939, opened a private clinic in Kingston in June 1939. (Jamaica Times, May 20, 1939, and Dec. 13, 1941; Jamaica Standard, Jan. 31, Mar. 20, and Sept. 25, 1939; Houghton, “Birth Control in Jamaica.”) 5. Pengelley refers to the NBCA, which changed its name to the Family Planning Association in 1938. The report was not found. (Leathard, Fight for Family Planning, 67–68.) 6. Chemist Philip Van Everen Stoughton (1900–1974) manufactured a foam powder contraceptive at R. A. S. Laboratories in New York since 1932. In 1935 he developed P.S. Foam Powder, which MS preferred to other formulas. (New York Times, Apr. 26, 1974; Stoughton to Hannah Stone, July 16, 1936 [LCM 29:507]; Stoughton, P.S. Foam Powder, n.d. [PPFAR].) 7. Some men complained about being aware of sponges, diaphragms, cervical caps, and other devices during intercourse. (Cooper, Technique of Contraception, 47, 52, 59; Haire, “Contraceptive Technique,” 275.) 8. Holland Rantos, an American contraceptive manufacturer, was best known for its line of diaphragms, which it supplied at reduced cost to birth control clinics. MS helped Herbert Simonds form the company in 1925, but she had no financial ties to it. (Anne Kennedy, “History of the Development of Contraceptive Materials in the United States,” American Medicine 42 [Mar. 1935]: 159–61.) 9. Florence Rose answered this request for MS, contacting Philip Stoughton, who suggested that it was better to make arrangements with a specific pharmaceutical manufacturer who would agree to provide foam powder “almost at cost” for governmentsponsored use. (Rose to Pengelley, May 7, 1940 [MSM S17:1114].)

September 1940  •  405

142. To Clarence James Gamble 1 Sanger and Slee sailed for the Caribbean on the S.S. America on August 24, 1940, stopping at the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Haiti, and Cuba, before returning to New York on September 5. On hearing of Sanger’s plan to visit Puerto Rico, Clarence Gamble sent word to birth control leaders there, hoping they would show her around. He also suggested that Sanger meet with the island’s governor and health commissioner, Dr. Martha Robert, but warned, “don’t let the Governor or the others who show you around give you only the beauties of Puerto Rico. Sarah and I want you to see some of the slum conditions we saw.” (1940 Calendar and Gamble to MS, Aug. ?, 1940 [quote] [MSM S79:798–803, C7:120].)

[Fishkill, N.Y.] September 9th, 1940.

Dear Doctor Gamble: The cruise is over and while it was very hot and J. N. and I nearly melted,2 it was a very interesting one from the birth control angle. The day at San Juan was hectic but no more so than the two days in Havana which I ended with a broadcast. This pleased the doctors there very much.3 I am happy to say that we really got something started in the Virgin Islands. The Governor and his wife are willing that something be done4 and they are anxious to get a law passed similar to the law in Puerto Rico including sterilization.5 They want to have all information possible regarding the results of sterilization in California so I believe we really have something started.6 Owing to the reluctance of the Health Director, Dr. Knut-Hansen, to get involved in what he believed would be a “controversial” subject, I approached him from the research angle and promised foam powder in accordance with your offer as a contribution from you.7 This commitment is for 1000 boxes over the period of a year. Dr. Knut-Hansen requested that we send only foam powder with a “measuring gadget.” Otherwise he said the patients would use the entire box in one application. Since H.R. has such a gadget in their package, I think it should be given a trial.8 What do you think? Can you make arrangements with them at cost price? Mrs. Damon has all the facts but unfortunately both she and I will be away the week of the Institute.9 However I have asked Mrs. Damon to send 50 packages to Dr. Rifkinson immediately. Dr. Rifkinson is a young, enthusiastic health man and he has have been given charge of the birth control work.10 All communications are to be addressed to him so we are sending this powder direct to him before things get cold. I am terribly disappointed that the Fiji Island herb work has not yet been started.11 It is quite likely that by this time the herb has lost its potency and I am really not sure that it will be fair after this lapse of time to pass judgement on its value. It seems too bad that we have let so much time go by for it should have

406  •  A Troubled World

been done when the herb was fresh. Still I suppose we must make the best of all this necessary red tape which is always so trying to my impatient spirit. Must it still be held up for the contract and the rest of the paraphernalia.12 I do hope you have had a very pleasant summer and I am looking forward to seeing you very soon. Most cordially yours, Margaret Sanger [signed] TLS CJGP, MBCo (MSM C7:124–25). Letterhead of Willow Lake.

1. Clarence James Gamble (1894–1966) was a wealthy physician and medical researcher with an abiding interest in birth control and population. He financed the formation of many clinics in the United States in the 1930s and served as the BCCRB’s medical field director. Gamble was keenly interested in developing simple contraceptive methods to serve the rural poor who could not afford travel or supplies. He was currently supporting foam powder clinical trials in India. (New York Times, July 18, 1966; Williams, Every Child a Wanted Child, 111–17, 128–37; see also Vol. 3.) 2. Slee, about to turn eighty years old, was showing his age and “slowing up in activity.” (MS to Clinton Chance, July 18, 1940 [MSM S18:172].) 3. In San Juan, Puerto Rico, on August 28–29, MS visited a girls project and the Hospital for Tropical Diseases and attended a luncheon on public health. She found the birth control workers there were “tops,” but the “slums were pretty awful.” After a two-day stop in Haiti, she arrived in Havana, Cuba, on September 1. There she attended receptions at the Dental Clinic, Maternity Hospital, Infants Hospital, and the Hospital for the Crippled and Lame. Her Havana radio broadcast on COCO Radio emphasized the importance of birth control education in reducing maternal mortality. She implored the government to give women information and instruction on how to “space the births of their children from two to three years.” (1940 Calendar, Aug. 28–29, 1940 [quotes 1–2], MS, Radio Broadcast, Sept. 2, 1940 [quote 3], and MS to Jose Belaval, Sept. 10, 1940 [MSM S79:799–800, 145, 18:387].) 4. MS visited St. Thomas on August. 27, 1940, meeting Drs. Nathan Rifkinson, Robert Lovett, and others whom she persuaded to establish clinics and experiment with foam powder. Governor Lawrence W. Cramer (1897–1978) was away during her visit, but his wife, Aline Smith Cramer (1900–1991), hosted a lunch for MS on August 27 and introduced her to local public health leaders. (SSDI; New York Times, July 24, 1935, and Dec. 3, 1940; 1940 Calendar [MSM S79:799].) 5. Though largely Catholic, Puerto Rico legalized the distribution of birth control in 1937 and made it available at government-run health clinics. It also passed a Eugenic Sterilization Law, legalizing voluntary sterilization for a broad range of reasons, including poverty, though women often did not receive thorough information about the permanency of sterilization. (Briggs, Reproducing Empire, 107.) 6. The 1909 California law allowed compulsory sterilization of prisoners and mental hospital patients to improve their mental or moral condition. This was expanded to include those with a hereditary mental disease, defined as “feeble-minded,” or having “perversion or marked departures from normal mentality or from disease of a syphilitic

february 1941   •  407 nature.” Gamble supported both efforts to increase eugenic sterilization as well as to provide simpler birth control methods. (Reilly, Surgical Solution, 133; Alexandra Minna Stern, “Sterilized in the Name of Public Health: Race, Immigration, and Reproductive Control in Modern California,” American Journal of Public Health 95 [July 2005]: 1129–30 [quotes]; Edward J. Larson, Sex, Race and Science: Eugenics in the Deep South [Baltimore, 1996], 149, 156.) 7. Knud Knud-Hansen (1874–1951), a Danish-born obstetrician and surgeon, was a public health leader in St. Thomas. He met MS on August 27 and agreed to try out foam powder. Gamble promised to cover the cost. (Ruth Moolenaar, ed., Profiles of Outstanding Virgin Islanders [St. Thomas, 1972], 33–34; 1940 Calendar and Clarence Gamble to MS, Aug. 18, 1940 [MSM S79:799, C7:113].) 8. MS refers to the Holland-Rantos Company. 9. MS refers to the BCFA Field Staff Institute held in New York on September 23–28, 1940, a forum to update affiliates from around the country on methods and services. (BCFA, “Staff Institute,” Bulletin 5 [Sept. 1940]: 1.) 10. Russian-born Nathan Rifkinson (1912–2010) was a physician at the Health Department of the U.S. Virgin Islands, on St. Thomas. He likely met MS at Aline Cramer’s luncheon on August 27, where he agreed to establish birth control clinics on St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix. (1940 U.S. Census; SSDI; Nathan Rifkinson, A Recollection on the Development of Neurosurgery in Puerto Rico [Puerto Rico, 2002], 20–23.) 11. In August MS received from naturalist Charles Kellogg a sample of an herb, kakuala, that was used in Fiji as a natural contraceptive and abortifacient. Clarence Gamble arranged for the Merck pharmaceutical company to test the sample. (MS to Gamble, Sept. 9, 1940, and Kellogg to MS, Jan. 8, 1940 [MSM S17:732, C7:70]; see also Vol. 3.) 12. Merck’s testing was delayed by contractual negotiations over rights to the herb and the need for a larger sample, which Gamble furnished on December 13, 1940. Used in dry form, the age of the herb was relatively unimportant. It was found to be an ineffective contraceptive. (MS to Kellogg, Dec. 17, 1939, and Gamble to Randolph T. Major [Merck], Sept. 13, 1940 [MSM C6:1089, 7:128]; for more on Kellogg and the Fiji herb, see also Vols. 2–3.)

143. To Mary R einhardt Lasker 1 After the 1939 creation of the BCFA, Sanger relinquished most of her duties as head of the American movement. Though she remained active in a few key programs, such as the Negro Project, her involvement in the BCFA and the BCCRB became largely advisory. Like many Americans, the war in Europe consumed most of her thoughts. She spent much of the year in Tucson, where she devoted her time to painting and caring for the increasingly ailing Slee. At the start of 1941, Sanger was herself recovering from an appendectomy. To regain her strength, she and Slee joined Juliet and George Rublee on a trip to the Bahamas. They arrived in Nassau on February 22, and while most of the trip was for rest and recuperation, birth control work remained on her mind. (MS to Duchess of Windsor, Feb. 20, 1941, and 1941 Calendar [MSM S18:1012, 79:1084] see also Vols. 1 and 3.)

408  •  A Troubled World

[Nassau, Bahamas]2 Feb 25/41

Darling Mary Just returned from having tea with the Duke & Dutchess at Government House.3 Had a long talk with him about Bc. He is willing to see that something is done here at the Hospital. I spent the morning with Dr Cruishank Director of Public Health at the Govt Hospital & if he can get the Dukes support he will go ahead.4 So now that I’ve got his sympathy & interest Ill work out a plan with Cruishank for foam powder to the mothers with tuberculosis at first & then see what follows. The Roman Catholics are influencing the High Church Anglicans to suppress Bc information5—so the Dutchess had the Bishop & a young priest (Anglican) there today to let me give them “the works.”6 She is enchanting! He, shy at first but well informed & courageous— She is a real beauty, far lovlier than her pictures, no wonder he gave up a tottering throne for her.7 She will not totter or fail him. Well I fly back to New York Saturday & will fly back to Tucson Wed or Thursday Mch 4.8 The campaign is on— The Dutchess has no American Dollars but will give us a pound contribution. She gave $1.00 two years ago.9 Hope you are both loving everyday away from the East,10 love to both Margaret ALS MLP, NNC (not filmed). Letterhead of the British Colonial Hotel.

1. In June 1940, Mary Reinhardt married Albert Davis Lasker (1880–1952), a successful American advertising executive and philanthropist. She continued working with the BCFA, becoming secretary of its board of directors in 1940. (ANB; Chicago Tribune, Jan. 3, 1939; Washington Post, Nov. 9, 1941; New York Times, Jan. 26, 1940; for more on Mary Lasker, see Vol. 3.) 2. MS, Slee, and the Rublees stayed at the Colonial Hotel in Nassau. (MS to Duchess of Windsor, Feb. 20, 1941 [MSM S18:1012].) 3. Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor (1894–1972) (the former King Edward VIII), abdicated the British throne in 1936 to marry American divorcée Wallis Warfield Simpson, Duchess of Windsor (1896–1986), in 1937. After displaying seemingly pro-German sympathies, the couple was dispatched to the Caribbean, where he was appointed governorgeneral of the Bahamas in 1940. MS arranged to meet with the duchess to discuss plans for birth control. They met for tea on February 25. Government House was the official residence of the governor-general. (DNB; MS to Duchess of Windsor, Feb. 20, 1941, and Duke of Windsor to MS, Feb. 25, 1941 [MSM S18:1012, 1024].) 4. John Merrill Cruikshank (1901–84), a Canadian-born surgeon, was the Bahamanian chief medical officer and director of public health. He agreed to try foam powder for research purposes. The Russell Commission, formed to investigate labor unrest, recommended initiating a birth control policy despite fears that black Bahamians, concerned that it could be used to reduce the island’s black population, would oppose it. (Aaron

february 1941   •  409 Lee Segal, ed., Population Policies in the Caribbean [Lexington, Mass., 1975], 119; Who Was Who, vol. 8, 1981–1990 [London, 1991], 176; BCFA Executive Committee Minutes, Mar. 4, 1941 [MSM S62:294].) 5. Less than half of the Bahamian population was Anglican, but it was the religion of the island’s ruling class. The church ended its ban on birth control in 1930. (Encyclopedia of the Nations, http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Americas/The-BahamasRELIGIONS.html.) 6. MS and the royal couple were joined by the duchess’s aunt Bessie (Mrs. D. Buchanan) Merryman, visiting from Baltimore; the Scottish-born canon Edward G. Holmes (1902–72) of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin; and the bishop of Washington, D.C., the Right Reverend James E. Freeman (1867–1943), and his wife, Elsie Viglius Freeman. (MS to Slee, Feb. 26, 1941 [MSM S18:1030]; Border Crossings from Canada to the United States, 1895–1956; “The Parish Church of St. Mary the Virgin—History (1931–71), http:// www.holyspiritbahamas.org/church.php; Washington Post, Feb. 25, 1941; New York Times, Aug. 19, 1940, and June 7, 1943.) 7. King Edward’s affair with the twice-divorced Mrs. Simpson became a popular subject of gossip and concern. Told that marriage to a divorcée was not possible, on December 10, 1936, Edward renounced the throne of England for “the woman I love.” (DNB [quote]; MS Diary 1941 [MSM S79:1085]). 8. MS and Slee flew to Miami on March 1, arriving in New York on March 2, and returned to Tucson on March 11. (1941 Calendar [MSM S79:1087–92].) 9. MS refers to the BCFA’s February 17, 1941, fund-raising campaign, which aimed to secure $309,000. The duchess had contributed $100 to the BCFA in 1939. (BCFA Board of Directors Meeting, Jan. 9, 1941, and MS to Duchess of Windsor, Feb. 20, 1941 [MSM S62:282, 18:1012].) 10. After their marriage, the Laskers began spending time at his Lake Forest, Illinois, home until he donated it to the University of Chicago in 1941. (Mary Lasker, “Draft Autobiography,” MLP, NNC, 38.)

z SEVEN Reviving the International Movement

World War II had a devastating impact on the international birth control movement. The old networks of birth control activists in Europe and Asia were torn apart and scattered by state suppression, the pronatalist policies of the Axis powers, forced emigration, and the war itself. Those activists who did try to revive contraceptive services faced supply and funding shortages. Moreover, with tens of millions killed in the span of a few years, war-weary countries sought to rebuild their populations, not limit them. Birth and population control advocates, demographers, and eugenicists had to grapple with new realities in the aftermath of unimaginable human evil and devastation: lebensraum and the Holocaust, Stalinist purges and Soviet gulags, and finally the dropping of the atomic bomb. Eugenicists were forced to reconsider their prewar program, as the public now associated eugenics with evil, destruction, racism, and genocide. Offensive terms like “unfit” and “better stock” were permanently tainted and dropped from eugenic rhetoric. At the same time, although much of the work of groups and individuals advocating fertility control had been erased, new alarms sounded about the rapid increase of population, especially in Asia, the result of improved nutrition and sanitation, vaccination programs, and other advances in disease fighting that were drastically lowering death rates.1 Margaret Sanger contributed to the American wartime effort by writing about the need for family planning education, as well as the impact of wartime 410  •

Reviving the International Movement  •  411

marriages and of women in the military. She continued to speak out about the dangers of overpopulation. Now in her midsixties, Sanger accepted her status as the elder statesman of the American birth control movement, and, despite sometimes confrontational relations with the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the new name of the BCFA, she remained its honorary president. Comfortably settled in Tucson for most of the war, Sanger focused her time and energy on her family. Her husband, J. Noah Slee, died in 1943, followed by her sister, Nan, in 1944. Sanger’s two sons, Stuart and Grant, were stationed abroad, leaving behind a worried mother and anxious new brides with babies at home. Sanger reveled in her new role as a grandmother, especially to Stuart Sanger’s daughters, who also lived in Tucson. She filled her days with family and social gatherings, civic chores, and hours spent painting in the southwestern desert. With the end of the war in 1945, Sanger’s semiretirement also ended. Two events drew her back onto the world stage. The first was the Allied occupation of Japan, a nation that Sanger believed contained the right combination of reformers, trained medical and public health professionals, and a population desirous of bringing its birthrate in line with that of Western countries. With its pronatalist government deposed, the American occupation and rebuilding efforts presented an opportunity to establish birth control policies and programs that would fundamentally transform Japan and provide a model for the rest of Asia. The other catalyst was a 1946 conference sponsored by Sweden’s Riksförbundet för Sexuell Upplysning (RFSU) (National Association for Sex Enlightenment), one of the few birth control organizations to survive the war. Sanger had not worked closely before with Swedish activists, led by Elise Ottesen-Jensen, and the invitation to attend the meeting came as something of a surprise. Deeply committed to sex education, Ottesen-Jensen seized the opportunity to rebuild international connections between sex reform and family planning organizations. She hosted representatives from the United States, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia. They agreed to form an international family planning and sex education organization. Sanger, one of more than two hundred delegates, was unaccustomed to playing a secondary role at such an event and must have bristled when one reporter referred to her as “America’s Elise Ottesen-Jensen.”2 But she left her mark. Working with Abraham Stone on the design of the new international body, Sanger ensured that it would advocate for the rights of individuals to birth control and encourage research and development of effective and less expensive contraceptives.3 Only the bare outlines of the organization were set down at the meeting, leaving Sanger and Britain’s FPA-GB to continue planning. Two years later, they held the International Congress on Population and World Resources in Relation to the Family (ICPWR) in Cheltenham, England, where they created the International Committee on Planned Parenthood.

412  •  Reviving the International Movement

The lack of a strong international birth control organization to help in Japan and other countries impelled Sanger to try to build up the ICPP as quickly as possible. But from the beginning, the new committee was plagued by distractions and disagreements that slowed its progress. Above all, it was splintered by the competing interests of three main power groups: the Dutch and Scandinavians, who wanted to feature sex education in the ICPP’s program; the British, who advocated opening clinics and programs; and many of the Americans, who were interested in population control and Third World stability. Sanger was convinced that appealing to American concerns was the best way to build and fund a strong international organization. As she wrote in 1945: Global war must be followed by global peace. The gains we are struggling to achieve in this country must be expanded throughout the world if they are to be effective for us and future generations. In the United States we have achieved a favorable balance between population and resources which has contributed greatly to the raising of our national standard of living. But it will avail us little in the long run if European and Asiatic countries and some of our own possessions continue to overrun their boundaries and their resources and to breed themselves into greater poverty, famine, and many of them ultimately into war. Therefore, it is time that the planning and intelligent limitation of populations become the concern of the world.4

She believed that birth control was the only way to check uncontrolled population growth and observed that the new American interest in overpopulation was “arousing greater interest in birth control than all our lectures or books combined could do. This is good,” she added, “and I am quite certain that the next few years of careful working in assembling factual data may bring governments to consider birth control as part of our health measure.”5 Sanger also challenged clinicians and researchers to develop better contraceptives. As she told conference delegates in 1948, it was “appalling” that the jelly and the diaphragm remained the only dependable methods. “It seems absurd to me,” she scolded, “that we have been able to discover and make the atomic bomb and yet we have not yet got a really simple, good and harmless contraceptive.”6 Postwar birth control advocates looked to repackage simple methods like rhythm and foam powder for use in developing countries, where patients lacked the resources and sanitary conditions necessary for methods such as the diaphragm and jelly combination. But activists in these regions often did not want to adopt what they saw as inferior contraception. The ICPP, whose goals of reducing the population quantity and improving its quality smacked of the discredited eugenics movement, could succeed only if activists around the world worked together instead of dictating policies to underdeveloped countries. It was in this choppy atmosphere that Margaret Sanger navigated as she tried to revive and expand the international movement.

October 1945  •  413

Notes 1. Robert Engelman, Population, Nature, and What Women Want (Washington, D.C., 2008), 195–96. 2. “Expectations for the Future at the Congress for Sexual Information,” unidentified transcription (MS Unfilmed). 3. Stone, “Stockholm Conference,” 92–96. 4. MS, “Population—Everybody’s Business,” Tomorrow 4 (July 1945): 16–18 (MSM S72:480). 5. MS to Elise Ottesen-Jensen, Apr. 22, 1949 (MSM C8:591). 6. MS, “Survey of the Birth Control Movement,” Aug. 24, 1948 (MSM S34:284).

144. To Douglas A. MacArthur In the spring of 1945, as American and Russian forces met on the Elbe River outside of Berlin, Adolf Hitler committed suicide and Germany surrendered; the war in Europe was over. In July the three big Allied leaders met in Potsdam, where President Truman informed Stalin about the existence of the atom bomb. After the United States used the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, Japan surrendered to the Allies on August 15. World War II was over. General Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964), former army chief of staff and commander of the Southwest Pacific Area theater during the war, was named Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), presiding over the complex process of demilitarizing and democratizing Japan. (ANB.)

[Los Angeles, Calif.] October 25th, 1945

Dear General: One of the most hopeful stories out of Japan recently was that the brilliant feminist, Shidzue Ishimoto, has survived the war; also that her voice, stilled so long by the “thought police,” is again articulate in seeking aid for Japan’s basic problem, that of population pressure.1 Back in the twenties the militarists had already begun their nationwide breeding campaign with the hope that Japan would dominate the world by sheer numbers.2 At that time, aware of appalling poverty, illness and death, Baroness Ishimoto and other thoughtful Japanese realized that what Japan needed was “fewer and better people.” With this in mind, the Baroness enlisted the aid of the Kaizo society and invited me to deliver a series of lectures on birth control in Japan. The result was jail for the Baroness and a tight censorship on all efforts to promote voluntary family limitation.3 But many women of Japan, particularly those made wretched by ceaseless child-bearing, had begun to show great interest in this ray of hope, that was dimmed for them almost immediately. Now in 1945, the Baroness is again free to advocate a basic solution for the misery of her country, with population pressure more terrible than it

414  •  Reviving the International Movement

was back in the twenties. Then more than 60 million people were crowded into an area less than the size of California. In the next twenty years the population increased by 30%.4 Japan is now compressed to her original three small islands, and the doors of the world closed against her emigration.5 The world has seen to its sorrow, the results of regimented breeding for mere numbers. Bursting boundaries led to aggressive warfare, to tragically low standards of living for Japan’s common people, to high death rates and to human slavery.6 Yet in your historic conversation with Emperor Hirohito, General Mac­ Arthur, I note that the only reported reference to Japan’s millions was the problem of how to feed them.7 Not how to control the human flood by the only humane and democratic process, voluntary birth control. Is it to be the American policy in Japan that the natural checks of famine, and disaster continue to limit the population? Will we risk this threat of war again? It is my earnest suggestion that a population commission be set up to study Japan’s real problem, that of population pressure. To head this Commission I would suggest the person who has understood this problem and fought for its humane solution for so many years, Shidzue Ishimoto. Isn’t it true, General, that until America, with her present power, stands for the rights of parents everywhere in the world to voluntary and healthful reproduction, neither a large standing army or the atomic bomb can save us from another war? Sincerely yours, Margaret Sanger TRcy PPFAR, MN-SSC (MSM S25:212–13). Typed note at the top of first page reads: “FOR RELEASE— IMMEDIATE EXCLUSIVE TO UNITED PRESS.” There is no indication that this letter was published.

1. MS had not yet heard directly from Ishimoto, who was consumed with basic needs and preparing to take on a political role. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 138, 161.) 2. See MS, “Overpopulation as a Cause of War,” Mar. 14, 1922, herein. 3. For Ishimoto’s 1937 arrest, see Ishimoto to MS, Jan. 11, 1938, herein. Contraception was not officially banned in Japan until 1941. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 136–37; E. Tipton, “Birth Control and the Population Problem,” 56–57.) 4. Between 1922 and 1945, Japan’s population had increased more than 22 percent, to 72 million. Though smaller than California, it had a population density of 493 people per square mile, as compared to California’s 64. (Honda, Population Problems in Post War Japan, 6.) 5. Japan’s wartime empire included Korea, Taiwan, and several regions in China; afterward, it was reduced to the Japanese archipelago. (Hunter, Concise Dictionary, 38.) 6. By 1945 Japan’s standard of living was half that of 1935. Death rates, declining through the mid-1920s, rose to a height of 29 per 1,000 in 1945, the highest in modern Japanese history. During the war, Japan conscripted Chinese, Taiwanese, and Koreans; operated forced-labor camps; and forced thousands of women and girls into sexual

december 1945  •  415 slavery. (Honda, Population Problems in Post War Japan, 21; Steiner, “Japan’s Post-war Population Problems,” 246; E. Tipton, Modern Japan, 108, 135, 137.) 7. Emperor Hirohito (1901–89), Japan’s 124th emperor and longest-reigning monarch (1926–89), retained his throne after Japan surrendered but relinquished most of his power. He met MacArthur on September 27, 1945. The American Economic Control Board reported that the Japanese were in “very real danger of actual starvation.” (New York Times, Jan. 7, 1989; Sept. 27, 28, and 30 [quote], 1945.)

145. To Shidzue Ishimoto K atŌ 1 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) founder and director Roger Baldwin (1884–1981), an old friend of Sanger’s, informed her that he had been in contact with Shidzue Ishimoto Katō and that Sanger could write to Katō with his assurance it would be delivered “through military channels.” Sanger enclosed this letter in her January 21, 1946, response to Baldwin. (Robert C. Cottrell, “Roger Baldwin: Founder, American Civil Liberties Union, 1884‑1981,” in Notable American Unitarians, 1936–61, edited by Herbert F. Vetter [Cambridge, Mass., 2007]; Baldwin to MS, Jan. 14, 1946 [quote], MS to Baldwin, Jan. 21, 1946, and Ethel B. Weed to MS, Jan. 31, 1946 [MSM C8:14, 17, S25:389].)

[Tucson, Ariz.] Dec 1/45

My dear Shizue: No words can tell you what joy & thanksgiving we all felt getting news in the press that you are alive out of prison and best of all—married and happy.2 Now from Ethel Weeds letter of Nov 15th I have clippings telling us of the death of one of your sons & the birth of a daughter.3 Naturally my heart aches for your loss—- I long to know which son it was. Mrs Dick & Charles will want to know & will grieve with you, as we all have lost a child, you Dorothy Dick & I. We have another bond of friendship in that tragic experience.4 I am sending to Mrs Weed for you as much literature as I can find on the movement here—5 The only other Country where the spark has not been snuffed out by the war is in England.6 We have been cut off from knowing much of what goes on over there except in political circles— But the movement in USA has kept going along. Educating Doctors nurses Social Workers I will send you what pamphlets I can find. Also if you wish me to do so I will try to send you some small size diaphrams for mothers & some foam powder & sponges for others as these are also scarce I do not want them to be confiscated & wish to get word from Miss Weed if I can send them before doing so.7 Indeed I wish I could be of help to you over there— But I can send you literature & supplies from my office in New York (at #17 West 16th St. N.Y.C.)

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My two sons Stuart & Grant are now back home. Grant as you know is a Surgeon & was in charge of a hospital ship in Okinawa.8 Stuart also a Dr was in France & England.9 I am always consoled that their professions were to save lives & not to take or kill. Well my dear dear Shizue— It is good that you have married Kanju Kato. I think he was associated with the Kaizo group when I was in Japan in 21.10 It will be wonderful to hear from you when you can write but news clippings are very helpful my dear love to you & yours, Ever affectionately Margaret Sanger ALS MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S25:300–302). Return address: 2318 East Elm Street.

1. Shidzue Ishimoto formally divorced Baron Ishimoto in November 1944 to marry her lover of thirteen years, Kanju Katō, whose wife had died in 1941. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 142.) 2. Shidzue Katō had been imprisoned only briefly in December 1937. The press had issued wire reports on November 15, 1945, that Katō would become the first Japanese woman to run for political office, a seat in the House of Representatives of the Japanese Diet. She also announced that she would resume her birth control work. (See Ishimoto to MS, Jan. 11, 1938, herein; New York Times and Washington Post, Nov. 15, 1945.) 3. Ethel B. Weed (1906–75), a journalist, public relations executive, and a second lieutenant in the Women’s Army Corps, was SCAP’s women’s information officer, tasked with formulating policy and programs to secure civil rights and greater equality for Japanese women. Weed contacted MS on Katō’s behalf, requesting updated birth control information. Katō’s younger son, Tamio, died of tuberculosis in June 1943. Her elder son, Arata Ishimoto, drafted into the army in 1943, survived the war. In March 1945, at the age of forty-eight, Katō gave birth to a daughter, Takiko Katō (1945–). The clippings were not found. (NAW; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 9, 138, 151; Weed to MS, Nov. 15, 1945 [MSM S25:253].) 4. Dorothy Brush, who was recuperating from pneumonia, lost her six-year-old daughter, Jane, in 1927. MS’s only daughter, five-year-old Margaret Louisa (Peggy) Sanger (1910–15), died of pneumonia in 1915. Katō’s sons had befriended Dorothy’s son, Charles Brush III, when he accompanied his mother to Japan in 1937. (Brush to MS, Dec. 1, 1945 [MSM S25:297]; Representative Clevelanders: A Biographical Directory of Leading Men and Women in Present Day Cleveland Community [Cleveland, 1927]; see also Vols. 1–2.) 5. MS sent Weed more than twenty pamphlets and a list of additional literature. (MS to Weed, Dec. 1, 1945 [MSM S25:303]; for the list of material sent, see Cele Damon to MS, Nov. ?, 1945 [MSM S25:296].) 6. The FPA-GB did not close down during World War II, but curtailed its activities due to a lack of volunteers and funds. Clinics in most cities, even those plagued by German bombs, remained open, but the FPA-GB was unable to open new clinics. It did lobby to include contraceptive instruction through army medical offices. In Europe suppression, war, and lack of supplies halted or drove most movements underground. (Leathard, Fight for Family Planning, 69–74; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 17–18.)

March 1946  •  417 7. Weed encouraged MS to send contraceptive supplies to her official army mailing address. (Weed to MS, Jan. 31, 1945 [MSM S25:946].) 8. Grant Sanger graduated from Cornell Medical School in 1935 and completed a surgical residency before enlisting in the navy in 1942. He served as a lieutenant commander on a naval escort carrier and then senior medical officer of a tank landing ship in 1945. He returned to the United States in November 1945 with the rank of commander. (Grant Sanger to MS, Nov. 27, 1935, Edwina Sanger to MS, Apr. ?, 1942, and May 4, 1944, and Grant Sanger to MS, Apr. 7 and Dec. ?, 1945 [MSM S10:685, 21:123, 23:933, 25:882, 342].) 9. Stuart Sanger graduated from Cornell Medical School in 1938 and served on the medical staff of a Tucson clinic before joining the Army Medical Corps in 1943. He was stationed at hospital units in England and France in 1944–45 and returned to the United States in June 1945 with the rank of major. He was given a medical discharge in November. (1938 Calendar, Stuart Sanger to MS, Aug. 14, 1941, and Apr. 25, 1944, MS to John and Mabel Kingsbury, Mar. 17, 1943, MS to Juliet Rublee, June 11, 1945, and MS to Robert Dickinson, Nov. 9, 1945 [MSM S79:511, 19:823, C7:528, 729, S23:895, 830].) 10. Kanju Katō was released from prison in December 1939 after serving two years and worked as a journalist until the end of the war. He then worked with SCAP to reactivate the Japanese labor movement and was campaigning for a diet seat as a Socialist. He was not part of the Kaizō group that invited MS to Japan in 1922. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 142, 150–51, 156; New York Times, Nov. 15, 1945; see Ishimoto to MS, Jan. 1, 1938, note 6, herein.)

146. To Anne-Marie Durand-Wever 1 With the end of the war, Allied forces occupied Germany, dividing it into four administrative zones governed by the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France. With severe dislocation and massive shortages in food and housing, Germany saw “an unparalleled rise in secret abortions,” according to activist Hans Harmsen. The birth control movement was slow to restart, due to the “practically impenetrable legislative chaos” that led to delays in repealing the restrictive German birth control law. Communication with surviving German activists and physicians was difficult, and Sanger “wondered over and over again just what happened to the women of Germany and to the whole Birth-Control movement since Hitler took over.” (Hans Harmsen, “W. Germany,” in 3ICPP Proceedings, by Family Planning Association of India, 209–13 [quotes 1–2 on 211]; MS to Ernestine Evans, Mar. 30, 1946 [quote 3] [MSM S25:562].)

Tucson, Arizona March 30, 1946

Dear Dr. Wever: I am more than glad to have your letter of February 15th, which was sent to me by Ernestine Evans on March 6th.2 I shall be very glad to send you some diaphragms and other contraceptives if there is any possibility of getting them to you. You will know best how to go about it through whatever means is necessary to ask for permission to have these medical supplies sent.

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There is a friend of mine, a Mr. J. Forrest Ingle, who is on the administrative staff of UNRRA in Germany.3 I believe he is in Frankfurt at the present time, but undoubtedly he will be in Berlin in the near future. I suggest that you go to see him and tell him that I have written you and that I would like to send you diaphragms and other contraceptives, but first wish to be sure that they will reach you, and not thrown into the fire by some anti-birth controller. Will you also tell Mr. Ingle that we see his charming wife frequently, and that we miss him very much in Tucson?4 I am sending to Ernestine Evans a friend who is a manufacturer of contraceptives, and they will await your answer as to the feasibility of getting material through direct to you before we attempt to make a shipment.5 I cannot tell you what a great joy it is to hear from you again, and you may be sure I am anxious to do anything possible to be of assistance. My very kind regards to you and yours. Sincerely yours, MARGARET SANGER TLcy FRP, MN-SSC (MSM S25:561). Return address: 2318 East Elm Street.

1. With the suppression of the German birth control movement in 1933, Durand-Wever retreated to private practice. Once the war began, she directed a first-aid station in Berlin, providing contraceptive advice and abortion to patients, despite the risk. After the war, she tested women and girls for venereal disease, offering birth control and, when necessary, abortion. (Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 192–93, 196; Quack, Between Sorrow and Strength, 225.) 2. Under Allied occupation, any mail sent to or from Germany had to go through military authorities, and shipments of contractive materials were regularly confiscated. Ernestine Evans (1889–1967), an American journalist and book editor, knew both MS and Durand-Wever. She enclosed a letter (not found) from Durand-Wever requesting contraceptive supplies. (New York Times, July 4, 1967; MS to Evans, Mar. 30, 1946 [MSM S25:562].) 3. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration provided basic necessities and services for war victims. J. Forrest Ingle (1905–81), a member of the American consular service (1924–39), was assistant regional director of displaced persons operations under the UNRRA in the Schleswig-Holstein region of Germany in 1946. He knew MS from his service as acting police chief of Tucson (1944–45). MS asked Ingle to meet with Durand-Wever and use UNRRA resources to deliver contraceptives. (California Death Index; Tucson [Ariz.] Daily Citizen, Nov. 29, 1948; MS to J. Forrest Ingle, Mar. 30, 1946 [MSM S25:565].) 4. MS called Irish-born Maud Patricia Hazlett Ingle (b. 1904), who remained in Tucson, “a good friend.” (Arizona Naturalization Records, 1912–1991; MS to Cornelia Bliss Lane, Mar. 16, 1946 [quote] [MSM S25:519].) 5. MS contacted Herbert Simonds of the Holland-Rantos Company to facilitate the shipment. (MS to Evans, Mar. 30, 1946 [MSM S25:562].)

August 1946  •  419

147. To Ethel B. Weed 1

[Fishkill, N.Y.] 6 August 1946

Dear Lt. Weed: Mrs. Dorothy Dick and I spent the weekend down at her home discussing the pros and cons regarding the Japanese women, the things which might be done for them and how best to do them.2 Hazel Moore who was doing secretarial work for me in Tucson this winter has also been in touch with you and has been writing to people to send books directly to you for the women of Japan.3 Mrs. Dick and I would like to make a special birth control collection of books either for your library or if that is difficult then for Mrs Kato.4 We hesitate to send a large amount on this collection if it is going to be a personal possession because we would like it to be available for all men and women who are interested in reading this literature. Can you tell me how this may be done. We would of course want to send things through your office but we would like to feel that you could place them either in a medical library or in some part of a general library where they may be used. Would it be possible for you to get in touch with Dr. Amano who at one time had offices in Tokyo, Yokohama and Kariizawa and who before the war were interested in birth control. I remember them as husband and wife and their initials are K. W. and F. Y. Amano.5 She at one time worked in the birth control clinic in Los Angeles with Dr. Etta Gray.6 She speaks and writes English—or did and we hope she is still there—and would be very helpful to Mrs Kato in getting birth control work started there. Since there is no open communication between the countries there is not use my sending a letter to Dr. Amano so I am sending it through you, asking her if we can help with supplies for her hospital if this could be done through you.7 We are doing the same in Germany through UNRRA and the women there are most grateful for even the little that we can send. I have re-read your letter to Mrs Moore in which you said that you can use the books on womans organizations in the library.8 Will this also apply to books on birth control and contraceptives, if they can be sent? I hope this letter is not too long. I shall look forward to hearing from you when I return from England where I expect to be the latter part of August.9 Please address me at 17 West 16th Street instead of through Morris Ernst.10 Mrs. Dick and I are flying to Stockholm for a conference on family relationships and population problems, including birth control.11 From there we plan to go to London to make contacts for a world conference in 1947 or 1948 on population. We will certainly want the Japanese women and men represented at such a conference. I wish it were possible for some of us to get to Japan12 and to help drive home the importance of checking and holding down

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the birth rate, at least for the next ten years, I believe Japan would be able to get on her feet and become a democratic country of note if she [could] get her population growth under control. My kindest regards to you, Sincerely Margaret Sanger TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S26:27–28). Light carbon copy.

1. Weed organized a group of Japanese women to work for women’s suffrage, achieved in December 1945, and was fostering women’s clubs and efforts to improve the legal status of women in Japan. (NAW; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 161–62.) 2. MS visited Dorothy Brush’s home on August 3–4 in Bridgehampton, New York. Brush was helping Mary Beard to edit The Force of Women in Japanese History. (Brush to MS, May 29, 1946, and 1946 Calendar [MSM S25:717, 80:834]; Beard to Brush, July 27, 1946 [Mary Beard Papers, MN-SSC].) 3. Hazel Black Moore had recently left a position at the Red Cross to work for MS. She was sending books on birth control and women to Japan, with funds provided by Brush. (Moore to MS, Mar. 1946, June 1946, and MS to Rose, Aug. 4, 1946 [MSM S25:570, 865, 26:16].) 4. In April Shidzue Katō was elected to the lower house of the diet on the Nihon Shakei-tō (Japan Socialist Party) ticket. She helped organize the Democratic Women’s Club and lobbied General MacArthur for increased food imports to stem malnutrition. (Weed to MS, Jan. 31 and June 29, 1946 [MSM S25:389, 854]; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 175–78, 181–84.) 5. Physicians Kageyas Wat Amano (1899–1994) and Fumiko Yamaguchi Amano (1903– 87), both graduates of American medical schools, were vocal birth control advocates in Japan. They planned to open a birth control clinic in Tokyo and establish a league modeled after the ABCL. Fumiko Amano had been associated with the International Catholic Hospital in Tokyo from 1937 to 1945. To Weed, MS enclosed a letter with similar content to Fumiko Amano. (SSDI; New York Times, Apr. 13, 1950; Who’s Who of American Women; Fumiko Amano to MS, July 15, 1946, and MS to Amano, Aug. 7, 1946 [MSM S25:915, 26:38].) 6. Etta Gray (Ely) (1890–1970) was a physician and director of the Los Angeles Mother’s Clinic Association (later the Los Angeles Planned Parenthood Center) from 1924 to 1954. Fumiko Amano was a clinician there from 1930 to 1934. (SSDI; Los Angeles Times, Aug. 2, 1925, and Apr. 5, 1954; Amano to MS, July 15, 1946 [MSM S25:915].) 7. Much as in Germany, the Allied occupation screened and censored international mail. Weed was able to circumvent censorship laws for Katō and others by allowing senders to use her military address. (New York Times, Sept. 6, 1946; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 162; MS to Ingle, Mar. 30, 1946, and MS to Evans, Nov. 11, 1946 [MSM S25:565, 26:372].) 8. See Weed to Moore, July ? and July 18, 1946 [FRP]. 9. MS visited London from August 26 to September 3, where she met with familyplanning activists and friends, including Julian Huxley, New Generation editor Robert Kerr, and Hugh de Selincourt. (Huxley to MS, Aug. 26, Marjorie Wells to MS, Aug. 29, and de Selincourt to MS, Sept. 2, 1946 [MSM C8:87, S26:111, 119].)

August 1946  •  421 10. Weed wrote MS in care of prominent civil rights attorney Morris Leopold Ernst (1888–1976), who had represented MS since 1929. MS suggested using the Margaret Sanger Research Bureau’s (MSRB) address instead. (New York Times, May 23, 1976; MS, Autobiography, 404; Weed to MS, Nov. 15, 1945 [MSM S25:253]; for more on Ernst, see Vols. 1–3.) 11. The two left New York on August 20 to attend the International Sex Education Conference (ISEC), sponsored by the RFSU in Stockholm. (1946 Calendar [MSM S80:594–97]; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 19–20.) 12. SCAP had banned travel to Japan.

148. To Florence Rose 1 Sweden’s leading sex education and family planning reformer, Elise Ottesen-Jensen, hoped to revive the international movement by organizing the ISEC in Stockholm on August 23–26, 1946. Some 250 participants attended, most from Europe and the United States. While many sessions focused on sex education and clinical services, the conference included sessions on contraceptive methods and research. The participants agreed on the need to assist those birth control and sex education organizations most damaged by the war by creating a secretariat to facilitate exchange of information on research and clinical experience and to prepare for the establishment of an international family planning organization. Sanger found the ISEC very helpful in “arousing a new interest & expanding my hope for our future.” (Linder, Crusader for Sex Education, 172, 174; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 19; Elise Ottesen-Jensen to Elna Orrman, Nov. 20, 1945, and 1946 Travel Journal [quote] [MSM S25:262, 70:598].)

Stockholm Sweeden Sunday Aug 25/46

Rosee dear Tomorrow we fly over to London & it will be sad to go. We have had glorious weather & a very good time.2 The Congress opened yesterday at 11 Am. Dr Stone had all our pamphlets & [literature] on the wall & we far out did any other organization in that regard.3 Dr Griffiths of England, a very tall handsome Doc had only his own books but like the British Lion he dominated wherever he was allowed to.4 The representatives of Norway & Holland & Denmark were many.5 Finlands representative arrives today.6 Mrs Jensen is a vital, good but vigorous woman of 60.7 She has more emotions than vision, but with strong conviction, & courage she has carried her Organization “Sweedish League for Sexual Education” over the rocks until today it has quarters offices & a labrotary all in the building of one of the finest on the main St of Stockholm. It has a huge membership labor & liberals mainly.8 It is really more up & doing & has more patients a year than we have at the Bureau.9 Dr Levene flew here from

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London & is having a jolly time apparently.10 Dr Hodan is here with a new wife looking as tho he had been years in a Concentration Camp.11 Last night a dinner was given for us, 135 people attended Music—an orchestra was there & then ending with a dance (no one asked me so I went home).12 Of course the usual difficulty pops up in languages. Translators are rare & then poor— So that it takes hours to say what we say. Getting out resolutions which I insisted we do before we form an International Secretariat was screamingly funny. Mrs Jensen appointed a Professor [of Languages] to be Secretary for the committee & we got to work on these resolutions.13 Dr Stone & I had three good ones as a start about the right of a child to be wanted by both parents Period. But Dr Griffiths added in marriage—Mrs Jensen refused to have marriage mentioned—Saying “you with your marriage” to him. Then he tossed in at all times “we in England” etc also he corrected everyones English— I finally said to Dr Stone give these resolutions to me to correct!!14 Well we struggled over these for—four hours—& finally [got] something down on paper—to read at the dinner. Then one of the labor leaders on reading them proclaimed in private that these were Anglo American views & he would not endorse them.15 So they were not read until Monday. We think it’s the translation that is poor—but there one stands like liberty broken at the door of language. Dorothy Dick was appointed to be Secretary for U.SA. & Dr Stone for the Federation.16 I don’t know why he hangs on to that blurb. This is a steering group for a year or until the next Conference. It has been very interesting—as Sweeden has every thing—good food & plenty—shoes—clothing cars people are well dressed & well fed, serene & happy—wages are high— They took thousands of refugees & welcomed them here they have assimilated them as they were short of Labor.17 So where ever we go we meet refugees old & young from every where. Now we fly over to London Ill be at the Savoy & from reports it won’t be Comfortable in England anywhere.18 The flight over the Atlantic was wonderful—not a ripple, we slept most of the way to Ireland & then were grounded while the sun struggled to push back the rain clouds. You must save a certain part of your Salary every month to take the flight across— It cost $1040 to & from including the trip from Stockholm to London. We figure it will take us into $2000 before we get home. Here we are huddled in one room in a little side street Pension with one toilet on a floor for ten roomers no bath. We went to a public bath to scrub ourselves & swim.19 Fun it was & is Every day, dearest love MS ALI FRP MN-SSC (MSM S26:97–100). Light original on third page.

August 1946  •  423 1. After leaving her position as MS’s secretary in 1939, Rose worked for the PPFA public information department until 1943. In August 1946, she became the executive secretary of the newly formed Los Angeles–based Meals for Millions Foundation, Inc., a nonprofit hunger relief organization that distributed a multipurpose food powder. (Kate Weigand, “Biographical Note: Inventory to the Papers of Florence Rose” [FRP]; Rose to MS, July 10, 1946 [MSM S25:894]; New York Times, Oct. 3, 1955; for more on Rose, see Vols. 2–3.) 2. Of the Swedes, MS wrote that “the children everywhere are beautiful mostly golden hair or ‘towheads.’” And she noted, “The Nordics are really beautiful the men taller & robust—- We are told that the women suffer from frigidity & that romantic love is alien to the Swedish marriage—companionship has taken its place.—” Finally, she remarked upon the widespread interest in the issue of single mothers and noted that she was often asked her opinion regarding single motherhood and abortion. (1946 Travel Journal [MSM S70:601].) 3. With the death of his wife, Hannah Mayer Stone, in 1941, Abraham Stone became the medical director of the Margaret Sanger Research Bureau, the new name of the BCCRB. He gave a paper on sterility at the ISEC. In addition to the RFSU, other organizations represented included Britain’s FPA and Marriage Guidance Council (MGC), and Norway’s MHK. (ANB; Linder, Crusader for Sex Education, 174; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 19–20.) 4. Edward Fyfe Griffith (1895–1987), a British physician who opened a birth control clinic in Aldershot in 1932, had written Modern Marriage and Birth Control (1935) and other books on marriage and sexuality. Representing the MGC, he presented a paper on marriage counseling. (Times [London], Aug. 6, 1987; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 19–21.) 5. Nearly sixty delegates came from the Scandinavian nations, the Netherlands, Britain, and the United States. (Linder, Crusader for Sex Education, 174.) 6. Dr. Leo Kaprio (1918–99), a Finnish public health specialist who later directed the World Health Organization’s (WHO) European Regional Office, was Finland’s representative. (New York Times, Jan 20, 1967; Aura Raven-Tommola, “Kaprio, Leo,” in Kansallisbiografia-e [National biography of Finland online], http://www.kansallisbiografia.fi/kb/artikkeli/8219/.) 7. Elise Ottesen-Jensen (1886–1973), a Norwegian-born sex education and women’s rights advocate, moved to Sweden in 1919 with her syndicalist husband, Albert Jensen. Also a radical labor activist and journalist, she soon incorporated family planning and sex education into her programs. She first met MS at the 7IBCC in 1930. After the war, she resumed her correspondence with family planning leaders around the world. (Linder, Crusader for Sex Education, 1–76.) 8. Ottesen-Jensen founded the RFSU in March 1933 to promote sex education, overturn Sweden’s anti–birth control and antiabortion laws, and open sex information clinics that also offered contraceptives. In 1936 the large clinic moved to spacious quarters on Kungsgatan (King Street), a major downtown thoroughfare in Stockholm, also used as RFSU headquarters. The RFSU was unique among birth control groups because it manufactured and sold contraceptives and sex education pamphlets to fund its work. (Linder, Crusader for Sex Education, 106–9, 126–29, 140–48, 171.) 9. MS asserted that the “Bc movement in Sweden is very strong even tho Mrs Jensen is mainly interested in unmarried mothers & helping them to adjust their lives via abortion

424  •  Reviving the International Movement or adoption of the child after birth.” The RFSU’s Stockholm clinic saw between sixteen and eighteen thousand clients annually, while the MSRB saw only some five thousand a year. (1946 Travel Journal and MSRB, “New Patient Intake,” Nov. 1946 [MSM S70:598, 64:353]; Linder, Crusader for Sex Education, 199.) 10. Lena Levine (1903–65), an American gynecologist and psychiatrist, was the associate director of the MSRB, specializing in marriage counseling. (ANB.) 11. Max Hodann fled Germany in 1933, living in England, Norway, Spain, and Sweden during the war. He was married three times, to Mary Saran (1897–1976); to Traute Neumann, whom he divorced in 1945; and to Lise Lindbæk (1905–61), a Norwegian journalist. Hodann suffered from severe asthma and died after an attack that December. (Wolf, Max Hodann, 13, 34, 66, 70; editors’ correspondence with Ralf Dose, Sept. 9, 2013.) 12. Ottesen-Jensen hosted a farewell banquet on August 24. In her address, MS focused on the global importance of birth control. Dorothy Brush described the scene: “There were millions of flowers everywhere, on us and on the table and they drank Vodka and shouted Skoal and it was all very gay.” (Linder, Crusader for Sex Education, 175; Brush to Peggy ?, Sept. 9, 1946 [quote] [MSM S26:145]; for possible draft notes for the speech, see MS, “History of the Birth Control Movement in the U.S.,” Aug. ?, 1946 [MSM S72:533].) 13. During the day devoted to international concerns, delegates testified to the conditions in their own countries and the need for better international communication. Most of the resolutions were made in English and translated into Swedish. The resolutions committee consisted of Einar Tagen, Nils Nielsen, and Elise Ottesen-Jensen (Sweden); MS, Dorothy Brush, Abraham Stone, and Lena Levine (United States); Boris Belonski (Denmark); Leo Kaprio (Finland); Conrad van Emde Boas (Netherlands); Christine Bruusgaard (Norway); and Edward Griffith (England). At the end of the ISEC, the committee disbanded and was replaced by a British-based committee, which began planning a 1948 conference. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 19–21; Linder, Crusader for Sex Education, 174.) 14. The resolutions dealt with the following: the right of a child to be wanted, the right to “secure scientific information from competent personnel about birth control and sterility,” the right of children to receive sex education “and in this way be prepared for marriage,” the need for medical education to include sexuality and contraceptive methods, and the need to support scientific research in sexuality and contraception. (Linder, Crusader for Sex Education, 174.) 15. Dorothy Brush claimed it was an unidentified Norwegian representative who made the statement. (Brush to Peggy ?, Sept. 9, 1946 [MSM S26:145].) 16. Brush was named secretary of the new international committee, but not as a U.S. representative. Stone became the PPFA representative and published news on international birth control in his journal, Human Fertility. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 21; Stone, “Stockholm Conference,” 91.) 17. Sweden, which remained neutral, came through the war in far better shape than its neighbors. Although the government rationed bread and butter, food and consumer goods were plentiful and stores well stocked. Sweden harbored more than one hundred thousand refugees during the war, including between twenty and thirty thousand Jews, and its refugee policy encouraged them to take industrial, agricultural, and forest jobs. (Chicago Daily Tribune, Oct. 19, 1945, and Jan. 28, 1946; Christian Science Monitor, Apr.

December 1946  •  425 2, 1946; New York Times, June 2, 1945, and June 12, 1946; Minneapolis Star Tribune, Nov. 11, 1989.) 18. MS stayed at the Hotel Savoy in central London. Major rebuilding was still under way in Great Britain, and rationing remained in force and had expanded to include bread after a bad grain crop in 1946. (Christian Science Monitor, July 27, 1946.) 19. MS observed that a “Swedish public bath & a salt swim was something. The naked women & children scrub with a brush as large as our floor scrubbing brush. There is no self consciousness here.” (1946 Travel Journal, Aug. 26, 1946 [MSM S70:600].)

149. From Shidzue Ishimoto K atŌ 1

[Tokyo, Japan] December 23rd, 1946

My dear Mrs. Sanger; Now I am going to have the second Christmas since the end of the war and thinking of the Christmas in America remembering especially those dear friends of mine in America.2 I have had many chances which reminded me of you during and after the war. I have the desire to tell you all what I felt and thought about the phenomena and events which occurred around me. Yes, first of all I want to tell you one by one those awful scenes full of thrills which I have undergone and survived fortunately under the air-raids of the Allied forces carried out by the weapons which were the latest results of scientific researches made by mankind. Although I was forced to live under awful air-raids for eight months, sometimes even without knowing whether or not I could live another hour or even another ten minutes, I think I can tell you that I lived throughout this period with the burning hatred for militarism and totalitarianism and did not take any part in patriotism distorted by the militarists.3 At last the democratic powers gained the victory at the sacrifice of many invaluable lives and formidable consumption of materials. Now the time has come when the deep-rooted feudalism and militarism are to be swept away in this country. What does it mean for me? It just means a revolutionary change of social positions of those including me who adamantly resisted the militaristic policy of the government.4 During the war I used to live under the custody of police and was deprived of every freedom of thought and expression.5 But now I am a member of the House of Commons and enjoying the full liberty to discuss the birth-control problems sometimes in lectures and sometimes through radio without considering the interference from the police.6 Even now I wonder sometimes whether I might be dreaming when I find myself in such a changed position in which I am now. In December, 1937, I was detained by

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the government because of my ideas about birth-control and surplus population in Japan. Now the government can not oppose to the draft of the report presented by the Institute of the Population Problems to the effect that the birth-control must be considered as one of the indispensable policies to be adopted by a civilized nation.7 The present Japanese government is not sufficiently democratic from the advanced democratic standpoint. It is not vigorous enough to realize the importance of voluntary birth-control and to push forward my idea that the state facility for birth-control must be afforded from the nation-wide standpoint.8 I am not, however, too much concerned about this fact. Because I believe that now it is within our power to put into action everything which is considered to be necessary to set up the democratic Japan. I hope you will share my delight to see the tree of birth-control grown up to a thick and deep-rooted one from a seedlings which you transplanted to this country twenty years ago.9 I have given a greater part of this letter to our mutual concerns. Now I offer my wholehearted congratulations on the birth of Margaret Sanger the second of which I knew by the scrap of newspapers you sent over to me. I am sure that it will make up for the grief at the loss of your beloved granddaughter Peggy.10 I told you this, because a daughter was born to me miraculously after the interval of twentyeight years.11 This comforted me very much. Because she seems to me just a rebirth of my late son who died by illness during the war. Arata, the other son, came back from Sumatra last month, that is, one year and three months after the end of the war. I can understand how full of pain and hardship four years service as a private have been to him who is a student full of enthusiasm and devotion to the study of pure science.12 But I think I should be thankful for seeing my son back again and at the same time having a baby. It is for me a sort of spiritual luxury. In conclusion I should like to beg your pardon for the delay in writing this letter to express my everlasting respect and affection to you. Cordially Yours Shidzue Ishimoto Kato [signed] TLS MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S26:555–57).

1. Kato continued to advocate for birth control, publishing a pamphlet, Birth Control and Women (1946), publicly calling for Japanese women to “take a holiday from births.” She argued that “there is a lack of housing, food, clothing and transportation in defeated Japan and this is no time for anybody to have babies.” (Hopper, New Woman of Japan,

December 1946  •  427 182–91; Weed to MS, Jan. 31, 1946 [MSM S25:389]; New York Journal-American, June 27, 1946 [quotes].) 2. Katō spent the Christmas holidays in the United States in 1919 and 1932. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 13, 48.) 3. Katō had consistently opposed Japanese aggression and militarism in the 1930s, ending her association with all organizations that pledged support for nationalistic policies. American bombing raids on Tokyo began in November 1944 and peaked in March 1945, with low-level incendiary attacks that destroyed large sections of the city and killed tens of thousands. Katō, nearing the end of her pregnancy, remained in Tokyo as bombs destroyed much of her neighborhood. (Gordon Daniels, “Japan: Domestic Life, Economy and War Effort,” in Oxford Companion to World War II, edited by Dear and Foot, 480; New York Times, Nov. 30, 1944, and Apr. 22, 1945; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 131–32, 152–53, 175.) 4. Within weeks of Japan’s surrender, American occupying authorities invited both Katōs to advise them on reforming Japan’s governing system. In less than a year, both were elected to the diet. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 157–58, 175, 181–82.) 5. During the war, Katō stopped speaking on birth control and women’s rights, fearing another arrest. She was probably being observed by the government until the war ended. Kanjū Katō had been under police surveillance since his release from prison in 1939. (Katō, Fight for Women’s Happiness, 87; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 150.) 6. Katō served on both the Budget and the Constitution Revision Committees. An opposition party member, she could neither initiate legislation nor speak directly to the full diet. But she often spoke publicly on family planning, participating in a radio broadcast on birth control with the home minister. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 182–91; Nippon Times, July 8, 1946.) 7. In November 1946, Japan’s Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Population Problems Institute recommended that birth control and abortion be legalized and compulsory sterilization be instituted for “sex criminals and those with incurable infectious diseases.” But because SCAP strongly opposed it, and the ministry was still staffed by pronatalists, the plan was never implemented. (Norgren, Abortion before Birth Control, 33–34, 84–85.) 8. After Katō and other advocates were unable to persuade the first Yoshida administration (May 1946–May 1947) to adopt state-sponsored birth control, she actively worked to replace the administration. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 191, 202–3.) 9. Katō refers to MS’s 1922 tour. 10. Margaret Sanger (Marston Lampe), born to Stuart Sanger and his wife, Barbara, in 1941, was MS’s first grandchild. The Peggy to whom Katō refers was MS’s daughter, who died in 1915. 11. See MS to Katō, Dec. 1, 1945, note 3, herein. 12. Arata Ishimoto, drafted into the army in 1942 after graduating with a science degree from Imperial University in Kyoto, refused to enter officer training and became a private in the army transportation corps. He was held by the Allies for more than a year after Japan’s surrender, serving as an interpreter. After returning to Tokyo in November 1946, he worked for SCAP’s Civil Information and Education Section. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 138–39, 145, 192, 213; Rilma Buckman to Rose, Sept. 10, 1946 [FRP].)

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150. To Shidzue Ishimoto K atŌ 1

[Tucson, Ariz.] January 16, 1947

My dear, dear Shidzue: What a very great pleasure it is to have your letter of December 23rd. I want to congratulate you on the two great events in any woman’s life—that a baby girl was born to you and that you have been honored by your people to represent them in the House of Commons.2 Of course this has been gained by and through great sacrifice and we—Mrs. Dick, Charles, Miss Rose and all of us—were sad at the tragic news of the death of your son.3 Mrs. Beard is also very interested and we send each other all the news of you all over the country.4 Wherever I go friends ask of you and wonder what happened to you during all those tragic years when the military tyrants of the world set the world aflame in hatred and discontent. I wish those in command of your new government would open their eyes to the necessity of a National Policy on Birth Control or Child Spacing. The world’s food supply now is scarce and it is questionable if, even with a communistic system of equal distribution of food and raw materials, any nation can keep up her standards of diet, such as 60% of our people have known to be a first rate diet of meat, fruit, milk, vegetables and eggs every day.5 If the United Nations has courage to get at the facts it will have a survey made of available tillable land in each country and upon that make an estimate of the number of people the land will sustain.6 I wish someone in Japan would make such a study. It is indeed wonderful that you are happily married and have your Arata back with you again. We send him our kindest regards and best wishes for his success in his scientific studies. I have hoped for some time that Mrs. Dick and I might get to Japan for a visit and study of the population. But the Roman Catholic elements in our State Department is as vicious as it is unprogressive.7 It is religion first and the welfare of the people second. However there will come a time when we may apply for passports and take ourselves to see you. I hope it may be soon. Always I send you my affection and regard and best wishes for your continued success and happiness. Margaret Sanger TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S26:674). This letter was sent via Ethel Weed.

1. At Katō’s urging, the Women’s Division of the NS began planning for consultation clinics to dispense contraception in late 1946, but they were having trouble finding suitable sites and securing supplies. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 191; Katō to Moore, Feb. 6, 1947 [FRP].)

march 1947  •  429 2. See Katō to MS, Dec. 23, 1946, herein. 3. Dorothy Brush was divorcing her second husband, Alexander Dick. Her son, Charles Brush III, was an undergraduate at Yale. Along with Florence Rose, they traveled with MS and Katō in Japan in 1937. MS refers to the death of Tamio Ishimoto. (Brush to MS, Jan. 29, 1947 [MSM S26:726]; State of New York, in the Matter of the Petition of Dr. Charles F. Brush III, June 5, 2000; MS to Katō, Dec. 1, 1945, note 3, herein.) 4. Mary Ritter Beard (1876–1958), feminist and historian, met Shidzue Katō in 1922 in Japan. The two corresponded frequently, with Beard helping Kat publish her autobiography, Facing Two Ways (1935), in the United States. They had been working together on a history of Japanese women when war erupted. (NAW; Patricia d’Itri, Cross Currents in the International Women’s Movement, 1848–1948 [Bowling Green, Ohio, 1999], 163–67].) 5. Postwar food shortages and rationing continued globally, as production lagged behind demand. The U.S. Department of Agriculture predicted serious shortages in Europe in 1947, particularly in Germany, Austria, Italy, and Romania. The United Nations proposed a World Food Council to coordinate food production and transportation. (Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 9, 1947; New York Times, Jan. 16, 1947.) 6. The UN was created immediately after World War II to maintain peace and security, promote economic development, and aid in solving international disputes. It established a Population Commission in October 1946, which concentrated on gathering basic population statistics. Its plans did not include a survey of arable land, but in 1947 the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization began collecting information on agricultural acreage, commodity production, and land classification. (Encyclopedia of New York City, 1214; Symonds and Carder, United Nations and the Population Question, 41–42, 46, 52–53; Frank W. Notestein, “Reviewed Demographic Work of the United Nations,” Population Index 16 [July 1950]: 186, 190; H. G. Hirsch, “1950 World Census of Agriculture,” Journal of Farm Economics 29 [May 1947]: 564–65.) 7. Neither MS nor Dorothy Brush was able to get a visa to visit Germany or Japan. SCAP denied requests from Katō and the Amanos to allow MS to lecture there, because, according to Katō, they feared offending American Catholics. MS believed that President Roosevelt had increased the number of Catholics in the State Department in exchange for Vatican support of the Allies in the war. Both the Roosevelt and the Truman administrations had informal diplomatic relations with the Vatican through the use of a personal representative, an arrangement viewed by many Americans as evidence of strong Catholic influence in the State Department. (MS’s passports, U.S. Dept. of State, Passport and Visas Division, MS to Rose. Aug. 15, 1946, Kageyas and Fumiko Amano to MS, Oct. 11, 1947, and MS to H. G. Wells, May 31, 1943 [MSM C17:895–900, S26:77, 27:595, 22:610]; Washington Post, Feb. 10, 1946, and Nov. 14, 1944; New York Herald Tribune, May 8, 1949; and New York Times, Aug. 11 and 25, 1946.)

151. To Ernst Gräfenberg 1 In March MSRB physician Ernst Gräfenberg received a copy of a letter from a Hannelore Brohm, a housewife in Mannheim Germany, written to Voice of America radio host Anna Buerger. After reading a German translation of Sanger’s Motherhood in Bondage, Brohm

430  •  Reviving the International Movement compared the plight of German women, “hungry, nervous, daily assailed by new worries,” to the desperate women who wrote to Sanger pleading for contraceptive advice. Brohm pleaded with Buerger to “try to win the American public for our cause,” because, though German abortion laws might soon be liberalized, Germans “do not want abortion. We want harmless preventatives!” Gräfenberg shared the translated letter with Sanger. (Brohm to Buerger, 1946 [quotes], and Mary Compton Johnson to MS, Mar. 21, 1947 [MSM S26:918, 917].)

[Tucson, Ariz.] March 29, 1947

My dear Dr. Grafenberg: Your letter and the enclosed copy of the letter from the Mrs. Brohm is heart breaking.2 We should and must do something. Here is a place where you can surely help the women of Germany. Please talk the situation over with Dr. Dickinson as to the persons to see in Washington, D.C. for permission to do something—private sources are bound to be slow and smaller in scale—but it could be a start at least.3 If I had money enough I would ask you to go back to Germany for six months to set up organizations in all medical ranks to deal with contraceptives.4 This might be the time for your “ring” again, as cheaper and easier than the diaphragm.5 We must do something— and soon! I hope you have written to Mrs. Buerger, or have seen her would be better yet. She could broadcast a reply and put shame on any government which refuses to allow these mothers to get knowledge and supplies.6 I don’t care about the R.C. objections, as tax payers—we are tax payers on a larger scale and if they want to take over the upkeep of these desperate mothers and children then they have a case and a right to talk objections; but we know they never lift a finger to help them—so we must have a strong firm reply and go straight ahead to help.7 I will return to New York in early May,8 and in the meantime we must get information as to how to go to work and whom to see to make the wheels go round. Thank you for sending me this letter. Cordially yours, (Mrs.) Margaret Sanger TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 117:84). For the signed autograph draft, see MSM S26:959.

1. Ernst Gräfenberg (1881–1957) was a German gynecologist who developed the Gräfenberg ring, an IUD, and gained posthumous fame for his discovery of what became known as the Gräfenberg or “G” spot, an erogenous zone in the vagina. MS helped him escape Nazi Germany in 1940, and he joined the MSRB staff in 1942. (Anton Sebastian, ed., Dictionary of History of Medicine [Lancaster, England, 1999], 424; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 66, 153, 180; MSRB Medical Staff Meeting Minutes, Mar. 4, 1942 [MSM S64:61].) 2. For the translation of Brohm’s letter, see Brohm to Buerger, 1946 (MSM S26:918). 3. According to MS’s secretary, Gräfenberg had volunteered to go to Germany as an

July 1947  •  431 ambassador for birth control if the trip could be funded. MS refers to fertility expert Robert Latou Dickinson, who was still engaged with contraceptive research. Gräfenberg’s letter was not found. (Mary Compton Johnson to MS, Mar. 21, 1947 [MSM S26:917].) 4. MS was in the process of selling her New York estate and was short on funds. (MS to Caterina Kerr-Lawson, Sept. 3, 1947 [MSM S27:476].) 5. Gräfenberg’s IUD was first made of silkworm gut rolled into rings and held together by silver wire. He modified it in the 1930s, replacing the silkworm with a silver spiral ring. While initially successful, opposition to the device arose after reports of pelvic irritation and infections. A 1947 study covering use between 1930 and 1946 found it reliable, but many subjects reported uterine problems and discontinued it. (Christopher Tietze, “History of Contraceptive Methods,” Journal of Sex Research 1 [July 1965]: 78–79; Abraham Stone, “Editorials: Intrauterine Contraceptives,” Human Fertility 13 [Mar. 1948]: 16–17.) 6. Anna Buerger, the professional name of Baroness Anna Kirstein von Bucovich (b. 1896), was an Austrian-born journalist who worked for the Office of War Information in New York. She broadcast a Voice of America radio program focused on the concerns of German women. She fled Europe in 1933, making her way to the United States in 1937 and becoming a naturalized citizen in 1944. (California Passenger Lists, 1907–1948; Index to Petitions for Naturalization Filed in New York City, 1792–1989; St. Petersburg (Fla.) Evening Independent, Aug. 2, 1945.) 7. Gräfenberg may have believed that the U.S. government would not allow him to return to Germany for birth control work, out of fear of offending Catholics. (Ware Adams to Gräfenberg, July 25, 1947 [LCM 117:88A].) 8. MS arrived in New York on May 11, 1947. She spent the next several weeks shuffling between New York City and her son Grant Sanger’s homes in Mount Kisco and Fishers Island, New York (1947 Calendar [MSM S80:934–76].)

152. To Florence Rose Sanger flew to London on June 30 to attend a conference on infertility at Oxford University on July 21–26, 1947. Before she left the United States for Great Britain, she gave a press statement advocating a “ten-year moratorium on births in the hungry countries of Europe, including England,” adding that people “should not bring children into the world to starve.” Reaction in England was swift and angry, and Sanger was forced to skip the conference. (Washington Post, July 1, 1947 [quotes]; see also Washington Post, July 2, 1947, New York Times, July 4 and 9, 1947, New York Daily News, July 1, 1947, and Time, July 14, 1947, 42.)

[London, England] July 26/47

Rosie darling— I am here in Mary’s room—1 She is up in Birmingham on lecture tour & Conference. It is an out of the way street & taxi drivers from the Savoy listen to first my American accent Penywern—(damn hard) but second because Savoy clients do not slum over in Earls Court—2 But to me it is Peace—hospitality &

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love something the Savoy does not dish up these days. I got a blast in publicity the first few days of my arrival—on my “Moratorium of the birth rate for ten years for Starving Countries.”3 Is England included? Do you mean England? Have you been fed by the press that England is starving? My reply: “I’ve only just landed in England you don’t look hungry (to the reporters) but if you are yes England too!!! That set John Bull off & retorted that “Granny Slee better stay home & teach the American G.Is how to avoid leaving Illigitimate children for England girls to work for!!!4 The reporters held up the Savoy wires until the Press room offered to sieve the calls for me. The Pathe & Paramont Flicks set up lights as I walked off the elevator to catch me & make me look fat, old, mean—superficial & “Granny.”5 But of 130 letters sent [to] me only five were against the idea—6 The Family [Planning] group just preparing a Conference at Oxford today on Infertility were up in the air at my remarks7— & the Press were on my trail for Oxford. So I said I was not going to Oxford at all—“changed her mind” the papers said. I went out of town for a week until things quited down. Now at Marys. They do not know where I am. So I go to see the Drysdales8 & visit here & there & try to get some sense for the Int Conference next year—9 London is for MEN. Get a giglo when you come here—women are dregs—cooks, baby tenders, charwomen. Nothing more. So Ill fly home Aug 4, & unless the F.P. group wake up & act on my suggestions for a Conference programe Ill let it simmer.10 Gerda Guy—is spending thousands to increase the birth rate. Its so easy & respectable & praise worthy.11 I give a farewell party Monday at the Savoy. Spend four days at Maurice Newfields.12 Saw Norman Haire who is hated & scorned.13 Had lunch with Lord Horder & Dr Blacker—14 So Im sending my love. As Ever MS ALI FRP, MN-SSC (MSM S27:320–25). Letterhead of the Savoy Hotel. Return address: 30 Penywern Rd. Earls Court.

1. MS was visiting Mary Macaulay, who founded the Iona Education Centre, which offered educational programs and publications on self-improvement through understanding “preventive and social psychology.” (Iona Education Centre, “Lectures in Educational Psychology,” n. d. [MS Unfilmed].) 2. MS refers to Penywern Road in Earl’s Court, an inexpensive section of West London. She had been staying at the posh Savoy Hotel in London. (New York Times, May 6, 1947; Times [London], Apr. 26, 1946.) 3. The Spectator, for example, noted, “It may be a good idea, though from some obliquity of vision I seem able only to see the flaws. However, it doesn’t really matter. Nature will frustrate a million Mrs. Slees.” (Spectator, July 4, 1947, 5.)

July 1947  •  433 4. “John Bull” was used as the personification of a British citizen, someone who is honest, stolid, and stubborn. Many fulminated against MS’s suggestion; one woman objected: “saying we haven’t enough food to bring up our children properly. Did you ever see redder cheeks or sturdier legs than my babies have got?” London’s Daily Mirror, which described MS as the “mother of three children and grandmother of five,” suggested she “go back to America,” adding, “Her proposal would be about as practical as telling the sun to stand still or the tide to turn back.” (New York Times, July 4, 1947; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 23–24; OED; “Unwelcome Visitor,” 226 [quote 1]; Leathard, Fight for Family Planning, 82 [quotes 2–4].) 5. Associated British-Pathé and British Paramount News were major new outlets producing newsreels comprising film, music, and voice-over narration. MS received requests for film and print interviews from the Sunday Pictorial and the Associated Press. “Photos, snaps, movies—,” she wrote, “the Pathé— Paramount took pictures— The R.K.O. & others wanted me to go to the studios. I refused.” She noted that, as she “had no prepared statement on the 10 year moratorium idea,” the press attention became “very trying.” She finally agreed to a filmed interview for Pathé. (http://www.britishpathe.com/ pages/history; http://www.newsreelarchive.com/?page_id=19; MS to Mary Compton Johnson, July 5, 1947 [quotes], Jean Nicols to MS, July 3, 1947, and John Parsons to MS, July 11, 1947 [MSM S:27:246, 248, 265]; for the Pathé interview, see “One Minute News,” July 7, 1947, http://www.britishpathe.com.) 6. Not all the letters were found, but for two in support of MS’s suggestion, see Candida E. Taylor to MS, July 13, 1947, and Mrs. D. M. Thomas to MS, July 23, 1947 (MSM S27:268, 305). An opposing response, published in Ave Maria, claimed that a hasty survey showed opposition to MS’s moratorium idea at twenty to one. (“Unwelcome Visitor,” 226.) 7. The FPA-GB’s Conference on Infertility, held at the Nuffield Institute for Medical Research at Oxford, sent out a press release “disassociating the FPA from the statement attributed to Mrs. Sanger.” (FPA-GB, The Family Planning Association Conference on Infertility [London, 1948], 1; FPA-GB, “Letter to Members,” Quarterly [July 1947] [MS Unfilmed] [quote].) 8. MS decided not to attend the conference and instead remained in London until July 28, when she traveled to Hove to visit Charles and Bessie Drysdale. MS noted in her calendar that R. B. Kerr was also there, and they talked a lot about Drysdale’s idea that “Density of Population is not necessarily overpopulation of a Nation.” MS also spent a week with Janet and Clinton Chance in Fordingbridge, about eighty miles southwest of London. She saw other friends as well, including Françoise Lafitte and Hugh de Selincourt. (Benn, Predicaments of Love, 208, 226–28; 1947 Calendar [quote], MS to Compton, July 5, 1947, Newfield to MS, July 7, 1947, de Selincourt to MS, July 17, 1947, Lafitte to MS, July 21, 1947, and R. Rockliff to MS, July 23, 1947 [MSM S80:978, 27:248, 254, 279, 288, 302].) 9. Following the ISEC, the FPA-GB began organizing the ICPWR, scheduled for August 1948. (“The Cheltenham Conference,” 215.) 10. On July 31, MS met with FPA-GB leaders who were uncertain about sponsoring the ICPWR. Some feared it would divert resources from rebuilding the FPA-GB, while others supported the idea, particularly in light of MS’s offer to pay for an organizing secretary. MS returned to New York as scheduled on August 4. (Eileen Palmer to MS,

434  •  Reviving the International Movement Aug. 18, 1947, MS to Gertrude Denman, Sept. 11, 1947, and 1947 Calendar [MSM C8:187, 195, S80:982]; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 25.) 11. Gerda Guy had become FPA-GB honorary treasurer and served with Harry Guy on the executive committee. The Guys had funded the FPA-GB’s efforts, which since 1936 soft-pedaled its contraceptive programs because of a depopulation panic that had gripped Britain. By 1943 it had added clinical services for infertile couples and promoted its infertility work to change public perceptions. (Leathard, Fight for Family Planning, 78–81; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 24–26.) 12. MS’s party was on July 28. On August 1, she drove to Great Bardingfield in Essex, about fifty miles northeast of London, to visit Maurice Newfield, who was recuperating from a severe illness. (1947 Calendar and Newfield to MS, [June?] 12, 1947 [MSM S80:978–82, 27:155].) 13. Norman Haire met with MS to discuss the poor health of Edith How-Martyn, whom he had seen in Australia, as well as to solicit an article for Marriage Hygiene, the journal he edited with A. P. Pillay. Haire, a teetotaler and a massively overweight Jewish homosexual, was roundly disliked by most of MS’s British friends. They viewed him as a self-aggrandizing “outsider” who abandoned England during the war. (Haire to MS, July 2, 1947 [MSM S27:244]; Times [London], Sept. 13, 1952; Crozier, “Becoming a Sexologist,” 300–302.) 14. Lord Thomas Horder, then FPA-GB president, was also president of the BES (1935–55). C. P. Blacker worked at the Ministry of Health in 1942, advising on population issues. The meeting was held on July 22. (DNB; Blacker to MS, Feb. 4 and July 22, 1947 [MSM S29:653, 27:291].)

153. To Mary R einhardt Lasker 1 Sanger flew to Port au Prince, Haiti, on January 2 for a two-month holiday with Anne Kennedy. Dorothy Brush joined them on January 8. Sanger spent most of her time sightseeing, painting, and relaxing, but she also made time to deliver a few birth control lectures. (1948 Calendar [MSM S81:16–27].)

Port au Prince, Haiti Feb 1/48

Dearest Mary— Indeed you need never say a word of thanks for the little box of flowers when your own glorious gift was so beautiful it brought thrills to dozens who saw it. So thank you darling for you, just being you (Albert agrees).2 This is new territory for Bc.3 Last night I spoke on Bc & Population before a very fine intelligent group of [300?] Haitians.4 Only three Americans present—- But next week I tackle the Parent Teachers Group & hope to get them to set up a center somehow.5 I don’t know if the Voodoo religion joins with the Catholic Church on restriction,6 but with soil erosions getting more serious every year—some thing has to happen to keep ↑these↓ people alive—7

February 1948  •  435

You would laugh to see me dancing with the famous artist Hippolite the Voodoo Priest— He is both black as night & frail as a grasshopper—8 Im facinated with the climate here— Life is easy for us as we have a house five miles out of Town (Petitionville) and with a pool—& car & five willing servants plus my own maid I brought down we are very comfortable.9 Dorothy Brush Anne Kennedy & I share everything & are having a delightful time exercising, painting writing, sculpturing, drumming & just lazing—10 Every night drummers singers & dancers arrive to entertain us—& as Carnival is here on week ends, we see things to surprise us constantly.11 The Haitian negro is a [hopeful] entity—different, oh so different from the American negro—& with the dignity reserve, courtesy of the common peddler he stands up ↑most↓ favorably against the American tourist who dashes in for the day & knocks things about!!12 Loads to do & say— I hope all went well at the Annual—13 & that the Lasker Award found a worthy person—14 I hope you will meet Warren Thompson someday who wrote Danger Spots.15 He is the bravest scientist on our side I know. dearest love always Margaret ALS MLP, NNC (MSM C8:227–28). Return address: 15 Rue de la Revolution.

1. Though Mary Lasker was increasingly occupied with her health philanthropies and urban beautification projects, she remained a member of the PPFA Board of Trustees and Executive Committee. In 1948 she became an honorary PPFA vice president. (NAW; PPFA Executive Committee Minutes, Oct. 17, 1944 [MSM S65:605]; New York Post, June 12, 1944; New York Times, Sept. 26, Oct. 20, and Nov. 12, 1945; Washington Post, May 10, 1947.) 2. MS refers to Mary’s husband, Albert Lasker. In 1942 he and Mary established the Lasker Foundation to support medical research. (New York Times, Sept. 26 and Nov. 12, 1945, and May 31, 1952.) 3. Haiti had no family planning movement, despite its high population density. While Haitians likely had some knowledge of simple contraceptive practices, surveys taken between the 1950s and the 1970s reveal no widespread use of mechanical or chemical contraceptives. Most Haitian women relied on abstinence or breast-feeding to postpone pregnancy, and it is likely that withdrawal was also widely practiced. (J. Mayone Stycos, “Haitian Attitudes toward Family Size,” Human Organization 23, no. 1 [1964]: 45–6; James Allman, “Fertility and Family Planning in Haiti,” Studies in Family Planning 13 [Aug.–Sept. 1982]: 237, 240. 4. MS’s speech was translated by Remy Bastian, a Haitian scientist. (1948 Calendar [MSM S81:30–31].) 5. This meeting took place on February 19. (1948 Calendar [MSM S81:39].) 6. The majority of Haitians were nominally Roman Catholic, but many also practiced some form of voodoo (also known as voudou or vodun), a melding of African and Caribbean traditions with Catholic symbolism. As with Roman Catholicism, practitioners of voodoo encouraged fertility and did not support birth control. (EB.)

436  •  Reviving the International Movement 7. Deforestation in Haiti, the Caribbean’s poorest country, was proceeding at a rapid rate, with only about 8 to 9 percent of its forested land remaining by 1954. Soil erosion limited Haiti’s ability to balance agricultural output and population growth. (Laurence A. Lewis and William J. Coffey, “The Continuing Deforestation of Haiti,” Ambio 14, no. 3 [1985]: 158‑60.) 8. Hector Hyppolite (also spelled Hippolite) (1894–1948) was a celebrated Haitian painter and voodoo priest associated with artist DeWitt Peters, a friend of Anne Kennedy. He died on June 9. (Ian Chilvers, A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art [New York, 1999].) 9. DeWitt Peters rented a house for the women in Pétionville, a suburb of Port-auPrince. (1948 Calendar [MSM S81:16].) 10. After her divorce from Alexander Dick in late January 1947, Brush traveled a great deal. Anne Kennedy settled in Haiti after retiring from Holland Rantos. At age seventythree, Kennedy remained MS’s close friend. (Los Angeles Times, Jan. 18, 1965; Brush to MS, Jan. 29, 1947, MS to Brush, Nov. 13, 1947, and Kennedy to MS, Mar. 11, 1948 [MSM S26:726, 27:730, 28:33]; Kennedy to MS, Jan. 10, 1928 [LCM 8:1270].) 11. Carnival is a pre-Lent spectacle lasting for three days during which people dress up in masks and costumes and parade, sing, dance, and otherwise amuse themselves. Haitian Carnival reflects its mix of French, African, and Indian influences, as well as Haiti’s spiritual allegiance to both Roman Catholicism and voodoo. (Gage Averill, “Anrage to Angage: Carnival Politics and Music in Haiti,” Ethnomusicology 38 [Spring–Summer 1994]: 217–32.) 12. Haiti, whose population descended from African slaves, won independence from France in 1804, becoming the only Western Hemisphere nation ruled by former slaves. Economic, political, and social problems, as well as military occupation and economic exploitation, had transformed it into the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, with a wide economic gulf between the black masses and a small, wealthy elite of mixed races and whites. (EB; Robert Debs Heinl and Nancy Gordon Heinl, Written in Blood: The Story of the Haitian People, 1492–1971, rev. ed. [Boston 1978], 436.) 13. The PPFA annual meeting, “Planned Parenthood’s Contribution to Community and Family Life Today,” was held in New York on January 26–28, 1948. (PPFA, “1948 Annual Meeting,” Jan. 1948 [LCM 121:183].) 14. The 1948 Lasker Awards for scientific achievement went to Selman A. Waksman, Rene J. Dubos, Vincent du Vignead, Martha Eliot, and Rolla E. Dyer. (New York Times, Oct. 7, 1948.) 15. Warren Thompson continued to study international population trends and demographic transition theory, which posits that nineteenth-century industrialization drove the transition from high birth- and death rates in Western nations to low ones. In Danger Spots in World Population (1929), he predicted that unrestrained population growth in Asia, especially in Japan, would lead to another war. He believed that birth control, the only effective way to relieve the pressure of overpopulation, would “change the entire course of history.” (Hodgson, “Warren S. Thompson,” 940; Warren S. Thompson, Danger Spots in World Population [New York, 1929], 316, 331 [quote].)

August 1948  •  437

154. To Mary Worley Compton 1 Sanger attended the ICPWR, August 23–27, 1948, in Cheltenham, England. Lord Thomas Horder was the president, and Sanger and Elise Ottesen-Jensen were vice presidents. Delegates from twenty nations attended, including Gerda and John Guy and Clinton and Janet Chance. Sir John Boyd-Orr, director-general of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, opened the first session by warning that rapidly increasing population growth would outrun the food supply within twenty-five years and that the only way to stop it was by regulating population. (“The Cheltenham Conference,” 215; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 24–33.)

[Paris, France]2 Aug 28/48

Compy dear— Your letters were here on my arrival yesterday from Cheltenham & Television3—am having lunch with Dr Stone & will cable you re the films & Dublin or send an air mail—4 I sent a night cable last night but you may not get it before Monday.5 The Conference had about 300 people— The four Germans were good,6 Doctors all, Dr D Wever gave a tragic report that abortions, rape & illigetimate children were rife in the American zone—no Bc allowed—no sterilization while the Russian zone asked women Drs to help the women get Bc or sterilization even proper medical care for abortions.7 Whellpton & Lorrimer were the best—gave a high tone to the opening of the Conference following Sir John B. Orr.8 The reception to me with Lord Horder on my left & Lady Denman on my right went off with great style.9 After I gave my little talk there was such an overwhelming Ovation of applause ↑300 men & women↓ standing & ↑a Song↓ shes a jolly good fellow & “hipp hipp hoory” that I was breathless.10 Dorothy Brush will write it up I think—for you. Read some of this to your staff—send them my love— Tell them that Dr Stone was loved by all— Dr Levine very practical, even tho she irritated Dr Griffith who wanted Christian marriages everywhere!!!11 Dr Stone was most helpful in every case—made a darling Chairman12 always an appropriate story—& Cooperative. He goes to Ireland & we go to France & I think Switzerland & the Conference on World Federalists.13 All for now—Am Ex Co Paris until Sept 15.14 love ever to all MS. ALI MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S28:717–20). Letterhead of the RMS Mauretania.

1. Mary Worley Compton (Johnson) (1894–1985), the MSRB executive secretary, had just been reassigned to help MS and Abraham Stone with correspondence on international matters. (SSDI; Kansas City Star, Dec. 1, 1985; “Reallocation of Bureau Program as Designated by Mrs. Sanger,” October 1948 [MSM S29:35].)

438  •  Reviving the International Movement 2. On August 27, Sanger and her party (Dorothy Brush and her daughter Sylvia Dick, Hobson Pittman, and Sanger’s niece Ginger Higgins) left Cheltenham for London, then visited Paris the next day. (1948 Diary [MSM S81:132].) 3. For Compton’s letters to MS, see Aug. 16, 23, 26, and 27, 1948 (MSM S28:672, 692, 706, 710). MS was interviewed at London’s Alexandra Palace Studios for the BBC daily program Woman’s Hour. (1948 Diary [MSM S81:132]; EB.) 4. In addition to Abraham Stone, MS lunched with Maurice Newfield and Lena Levine. Her August 28 telegram to Compton was not found. (1948 Calendar [MSM 81:132].) 5. MS’s August 27 cable to Compton was not found. 6. There were six German delegates: Anne-Marie Durand-Wever and K. Koermike (Berlin), Ernst Georgi (Wiesbaden), A. W. Langeheine (Göettingen), W. Schulte (Bremen), and Dr. Strookman (Hamburg). (ICPWR List of Delegates, Aug. 23–27, 1948 [MSM C14:520].) 7. Durand-Wever reported that between eight hundred thousand and one million illegal abortions were performed, which took the lives of fifty to one hundred thousand German women. Tracing the history of the suppression of birth control and abortion since 1933, she reported on the widespread rape of German women after the war, which resulted in many more abortions. She also detailed the creation of marriage guidance bureaus in the Soviet occupation zone, which offered premarital and marriage counseling, contraceptive services, and abortion. In West Germany, marriage guidance clinics faced opposition and did not offer birth control. (Durand-Wever, “Germany—Eastern Zone,” 100–104; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 200.) 8. Pascal K. Whelpton (1893–1964) was an American demographer with the SFRPP. He gave a paper on the postwar rise in birthrates, calling for cheaper and more effective birth control. Frank Lorimer (1894–1985), an American demographer and sociologist at American University (1938–64) and an expert on the Soviet Union, was administrative director of the IUSIPP. His paper compared living standards in various regions over time. Lord John Boyd Orr (1880–1971), a Scottish Nobel Prize–winning nutrition and food expert, served as vice chair of the ICPWR. His talk at the opening session was titled “World Resources,” on August 24. (New York Times, Apr. 7, 1964, June 28, 1985, and June 26, 1971; John D. Durand, “Pascal Kidder Whelpton [1893–1964],” Population Index 30, no. 3 [1964]: 323–28; Lorimer, “Essential Standards of Living,” in Proceedings of the ICPWR, 27–40, 48–56; Etienne van de Walle, “Frank Lorimer, 1894–1984,” Population Index 51 [Winter 1985]: 635–42; “Program,” Aug. 23–27, 1948 [MSM C14:526].) 9. A reception was held in MS’s honor on August 24, which, she noted, “was superb.” She “felt choked at Lady Denhams introduction” and was moved when Lord Horder led the audience in cheering and singing to her. Horder opened the ICPWR on August 23 with the presidential address. Lady Gertrude Mary Denman (1884–1954), a feminist and chairperson of the FPA-GB, was the ICPWR cochair. (1948 Diary [quotes] [MSM S81:131]; Proceedings of the ICPWR, iv; New York Times, June 3, 1954; ICPWR program, Aug. 1948 [MSM C14:509].) 10. MS gave a short talk on the history of the birth control movement, claiming that there were “just a few things for which I take credit . . . and the first . . . is that I coined a term to call the movement by.” She then shared stories of her activism in challenging

february 1949  •  439 the Comstock laws and highlighted her trips abroad. She concluded with an exhortation to “stir people up and make them think and feel and do, so that they do something that is right to do for civilization.” (Proceedings of the ICPWR, 85–95 [quote 1 on 86, quote 2 on 95].) 11. Lena Levine had worked with New York rabbis on marriage counseling and the role of contraceptives, while Griffith approached birth control as a Christian conservative, emphasizing spirituality and marriage as a prerequisite to sex and criticizing childless marriage. The two worked in the ICPWR Sex Education and Marriage Guidance Study Group, which eventually resolved that sex education should be in “a wise relationship not only to their religious and cultural backgrounds but to the needs of mankind in general.” (Lena Levine, “Marriage and Family Counseling,” in Hebrew Union College School of Religious Education Summer Institute [New York, 1947], 1–4; Griffith, Modern Marriage and Birth Control, 7–8, 21, 70; Proceedings of the ICPWR, 242 [quote].) 12. Abraham Stone chaired sessions titled “Sociological, Religious and Political Implications of Family Planning in Various Countries” on August 25 and “Ethical and Medical Advantages of Planned Family Limitation” on August 26. (Proceedings of the ICPWR, v, vi.) 13. Stone undertook a “mission” in Northern Ireland, stopping in Belfast, probably to promote birth control and the international movement. MS remained in Paris until September 4, when she and her intimate friend Hobson Pittman flew to Geneva, arriving on September 5. They then took a sightseeing trip to Caux and Montreaux and on September 7 flew to Luxembourg, where MS caught up with Dorothy Brush and attended the second conference of the World Movement for a World Federal Government. (Stone to Hildegarde ?, Sept. 14, 1948 [ASP]; 1948 Calendar [MSM S81:132–37]; New York Times, Oct. 22, 1945, Feb. 24, 1947, and Sept. 6, 1948.) 14. MS returned to Paris on September 14 and left for the United States the next day. (1948 Calendar [MSM S81:140–41].)

155. To Helen Donington Cohen Following the ICPWR, representatives from the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States formed an international secretariat. Its main goal was to make contact with planned parenthood organizations and activists around the world and serve as a clearinghouse for information. Housed in the British FPA offices in London, the secretariat, with funding from the Brush Foundation (BF), published and distributed the conference proceedings, answered inquiries, and encouraged the creation of leagues and clinics. Lady Helen Phoebe Stevenson Donington Cohen (Hope) (1913–78), widow of Robert Donington and wife of diplomat Sir Andrew Benjamin Cohen, was the FPA-GB’s international secretary and worked part-time for the new secretariat. (DNB; England and Wales Death Index, 1916–2007; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 39; Helen Donington Cohen, “What the International Secretariat Is” [Oct. 1949] [MSM C13:56]; Bermant, The Cousinhood, 130.)

440  •  Reviving the International Movement

[Tucson, Ariz.] February 8, 1949

Dear Mrs. Donington: It was good to have your letter of January 28th giving your ideas as to the work of the new International Organization.1 I have gone over your letter and the program and the budget carefully with Mrs. Brush who is living with me here this winter.2 Mrs. Brush, as you may know, is a life director of the Brush Foundation Board of Trustees, and has been instrumental in getting them to contribute toward the international program. This foundation was established in memory of her husband who assisted her to start the first birth control clinic in Cleveland.3 In 1937 she went abroad with me to Japan and then carried on around the world speaking for the cause; she went to Sweden with me two years ago and to Europe with me last summer. 1. We agree that Vogt’s book on the important knowledge relative to world population and food resources should be the starting point and we shall ask Mr. Vogt to be a member of the American committee.4 We do not understand your comment about “undertaking fundamental research in this field.”5 We have thought of the International Organization as a clearing house for world-wide information and, as you say, with the purpose of keeping a close liaison with the organizations doing research and educational work in the population field. There should be a clarification as to the meaning of the word “research”. Most population research is really a survey. When I use the word I have in mind clinical or laboratory contraceptive research which, where properly conducted, we would certainly wish to encourage. I would fully agree with your plan where the British Drug House is contributing the Volpar Paste to a group in Germany.6 It might be necessary for the International clearing house department to pay the necessary expenses of records or follow-up to get the work established along scientific and ethical lines. 2. Personally, we feel that none of our American Foundations would wish to sponsor or contribute to the International if its work was solely to initiate birth control centers, family counseling, marriage guidance or family planning committees, no matter how important and valuable this work certainly is. If such countries as Sweden and Holland prefer their contributions to go directly for such purposes, it may be necessary to open a separate department in the International to take care of this. But for our own committee and speaking for the representatives of such Foundations as I have already consulted, we are definitely interested in the broader aspect of the international point of view.7 Believing as we do that if sufficient knowledge is publicized relative to the tremendous growth of population and the scarcity of world resources, nations must if only from motives of survival and defense, be forced

february 1949  •  441

to set up through their public health facilities methods and means of controlling their population, this seems to us of paramount importance. The realization of this hope may be a long way off but at least we have taken the first step toward it with this contribution from the Brush Foundation and particularly with their interest in enlisting support from other organizations. But for this very reason it is vastly important first of all to have a thorough understanding with your committee and with the American one as to exactly what the work is to consist of. I know that the last session at the Cheltenham Conference did stress family planning angles etc. but as you so wisely state in your letter, it is going to be a question of emphasis.8 The international clearing house must indeed know and list all knowledge relative to this aspect of population but, as I have said, the possibility or advisability of spending Foundation money on setting up such organizations in different countries is questionable. 3. We do not think the name of the International should carry the name of your organization, nor of the Planned Parenthood lest it identify the new program with local or national work already existent. I should like you to consider a name such as the International Population Planning Committee or Association. To bring the word “population” into the new title would be most helpful on this side of the Atlantic.9 4. We are eagerly awaiting the proceedings of the Cheltenham Conference for which we have had many requests. We trust you are including the need of this new international organization in this literature.10 5. Can you tell me who Professor Lanval of Belgium is? I trust he is not the Belgian representative who spoke at the Cheltenham Conference; a man who obviously had no medical or scientific standing as his talk dealt largely with sheer superstition.11 If Helios is his organization we certainly should not send a delegate or be affiliated with him in any way.12 6. The news letter is a necessary and excellent idea.13 So, also, is the plan for lectures and we hope they may be spread abroad in Britain and also take place in European Universities if possible.14 The rest of your ideas also seem excellent.15 My office is sending and will continue to send you names of interested visitors from the United Nations who have registered at our Bureau.16 With all good wishes for our future success, Most Cordially Yours, Margaret Sanger [signed] Margaret Sanger [handwritten] P.S. I hope the Brush check for $5000.00 has arrived before this & that you are as happy as I am.17 TLS IPPFR, IPPF (MSM C8:524–26). Return address: 901 North Sixth Avenue.

442  •  Reviving the International Movement 1. Donington Cohen’s letter was a response to a letter from MS about the purpose of the secretariat. Donington Cohen also sent a progress report and an estimate of expenses and income. (MS to Donington Cohen and Donington Cohen to MS, both Jan. 28, 1949 [MSM C8:493, 509].) 2. Dorothy Brush visited MS in her Tucson home from December 1948 to late March 1949. (1948 Calendar and Brush to MS, Mar. 24, 1949 [MSM S81:291, 29:810].) 3. The BF was established in Cleveland in 1928 by Charles F. Brush Sr. to support programs and research in population control and eugenics and to help fund the Cleveland Maternal Health Association, which Dorothy Brush established in 1928. (Meyer, Any Friend of the Movement, 65–67; Roslyn Weir to Friend, Feb. ?, 1949 [MSM C8:538].) 4. William Vogt (1902–68), ecologist, ornithologist, and chief of the conservation section of the Pan American Union (1943–50), was a population control expert. He authored Road to Survival (1948), an update of Malthus’s argument that natural resources and the food supply would not keep up with uncontrolled population growth. Donington Cohen had suggested inviting Vogt to join the secretariat, which he did in March. (New York Times, July 12, 1968; Vogt to MS, Mar. 21, 1949, and Donington Cohen to MS, Jan. 28, 1949 [MSM S29:800, C9:509]; see also Vol. 3.) 5. Donington Cohen questioned the secretariat’s role in research, noting, “It seems that the role of our young organisation should rather be to keep close liaison with the statutory bodies carrying out work in this field.” (Donington Cohen to MS, Jan. 28, 1949 [MSM C8:509].) 6. British Drug Houses, Ltd., a wholesale chemist formed in 1909, funded John Baker’s development of the Volpar contraceptive suppository in return for manufacturing rights. Donington had suggested that they send Volpar to Germany, as they had to India and Pakistan. (Soloway, Demography and Degeneration, 224; Lesley Richmond, Julie Stevenson, and Alison Turton, eds., The Pharmaceutical Industry: A Guide to Historical Records [Burlington, Vt., 2003], 127–28; Donington Cohen to MS, Jan. 28, 1949 [MSM C8:509].) 7. The American delegation of MS, Abraham Stone, and demographer Frank Lorimer hoped to tap into increasing government and philanthropic interest in issues such as the rapidly rising populations in underdeveloped countries, global food shortages, and overcrowding. MS likely referred to the BF and the RF, where she had many contacts. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 42, 52.) 8. At the last session of the ICPWR, delegates agreed on the following: that family planning information and help be made available in all countries; that research into human fertility problems should be encouraged, “with particular reference to the development of a simple, practical and universally applicable contraceptive method”; and that a provisional international committee be established “to promote research and education for the furthering of human welfare through planned parenthood and progressive sex education.” Both Donington Cohen and MS agreed that marriage counseling and sex education were less important than birth control, unlike the Swedish and Dutch. (FPAGB, ICPWR Proceedings, 236–239 [quote 1 on 238, quote 2 on 239]; Donington Cohen to MS, Jan. 28, 1949 [MSM C8:509].) 9. Donington Cohen had suggested the name “International Family Planning Committee” but admitted it might not emphasize “the food and population aspect of our work” sufficiently. The suggestion to incorporate “population” into the name came from

july 1949  •  443 Dorothy Brush and Roslyn Weir. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 36; Donington Cohen to MS, Jan. 28, 1949 [quotes 1–2] and Weir to MS, Feb. 12, 1949 [quote 3] [MSM C8:509, 527].) 10. The ICPWR Proceedings (1948) were published in London by H. K. Lewis & Co., Ltd., but advance copies were not available until February 1949 due to war-related shortages. (Donington Cohen to MS, Feb. 15, 1949 [MSM C8:532].) 11. Marc Lanval, the pseudonym of Joseph-Paul Swenne (1898–1955?), was a Belgian birth control social scientist and sexologist and founder of Hélios, who did participate in the ICPWR. He reported on birth control and abortion in Belgium, but also claimed that withdrawal led to increased rates of tuberculosis among Belgian men and uterine cancer among Belgian women. (Société Royale Belge d’Anthropologie et de Préhistoire, Bulletin de la Société Royale Belge d’Anthropologie et de Préhistoire [Brussels, 1955], 66:64; Peeters, “Authenticity and Asceticism,” 437; Evert Peeters to editors, Oct. 26, 2010; Marc Lanval, “Sociological, Religious, and Political Implications of Planned Family Limitation in Various Countries,” in ICPWR Proceedings, by FPA-GB, 132–33.) 12. Hélios, the Belgian League of Heliophilous Propaganda, was a Belgian sex education and birth control organization, founded by Lanval in 1924. Helen Donington Cohen noted that the FPA-GB planned to send a representative to Hélios’s twenty-fifth anniversary celebration. (Donington Cohen to MS, Jan. 28, 1949 [MSM C8:509]; Peeters, “Authenticity and Asceticism,” 437.) 13. Donington Cohen suggested that the secretariat publish a quarterly newsletter. This was discussed again in September 1949, but no action was taken until January 1952. (Donington Cohen to MS, Jan. 28, 1949 [MSM C8:509]; ICPP Report Aug. 1948–Aug. 1950 [LCM 139:447].) 14. Donington Cohen suggested holding a series of lectures in London in the fall on population and food resources. (Donington Cohen to MS, Jan. 28, 1949 [MSM C8:509].) 15. Donington Cohen reported on communications with Dutch and German activists, efforts to test German contraceptives, attempts to ally with the UN, and a plan to set up correspondents around the world to keep them updated on global family planning and population issues. (Donington Cohen to MS, Jan. 28, 1949 [MSM C8:509].) 16. Physicians and health professionals from other countries regularly visited the MSRB to observe or take part in training programs on methods and techniques. (MSRB, 25th Annual Report, Oct. 24, 1949 [MSM S64:365].) 17. The BF donated five thousand dollars toward the fifteen thousand dollars needed to pay for the secretariat’s office and staff. (Compton to Donington Cohen, Feb. 6, 1949, and Weir to Friend, Feb. ?, 1949 [MSM C8:523, 538].)

156. To Shidzue Ishimoto K atŌ 1 Sanger renewed contact with Shidzue Katō and other Japanese advocates and was invited to come to Japan to assist their work. In June 1948, the diet passed a Eugenic Protection Law that increased access to contraceptives, permitted abortions in certain cases, and expanded the availability of sterilizations. A 1949 pharmaceutical law authorized the manufacture, advertisement, and sale of certain contraceptive chemicals. And public discussion of birth

444  •  Reviving the International Movement control in Japan dramatically expanded following statements by demographer Warren Thompson, speaking as a SCAP adviser in the spring of 1949, who advocated birth control as Japan’s only effective way to curb population growth. (Norgren, Abortion before Birth Control, 37–40, 44–46, 87, 90, 83; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 219, 238.)

Tucson, Arizona. July 18, 1949

My dear Shidzue: Yours of June 28th gave me great happiness because you are going at the prospect of my visit to Japan in such a good way.2 Yes, if an invitation can come to me from Japanese authorities I am sure General MacArthur will be glad to have it happen and he will not have to take any blame.3 So the higher and more official the Japanese invitation the better. October will be a good month. Let me know if the meetings are to be popular . . . to the people or to Medical and Professional groups? I always prefer to talk to the “little people”, the regular mother or the younger women about to start a family. If the medical group want to have lectures I would like to suggest Dr. Abraham Stone, whose deceased wife, Hannah Stone, helped me all the early years at the Birth Control Clinic. Dr. Stone is now my medical director and is very up-to-date on all sides of the medical question. I am sure he would come along if invited. It will be exciting to know what luck you are having, so keep me informed, please do. Ever affectionately, Margaret Sanger TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S30:600). Return address: 2133 East Elm Street.

1. In January 1949, after a bribery scandal discredited the Nihon Shakai-tō, Katō lost her reelection bid. She was also disappointed by the passage of the 1948 Eugenic Protection Law, which she felt favored abortion over efforts to expand birth control and education. She decided to refocus her efforts on birth control. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 219–38.) 2. Katō had restarted efforts to invite MS for an October lecture tour of Japan and was seeking assistance from the Yomiuri Press and government contacts to overcome SCAP’s reluctance to “offend American Roman Catholics.” (New York Herald Tribune, May 9, 1949 [quote]; Katō to MS, June 28, 1939 [MSM S30:414].) 3. MS’s confidence in MacArthur’s assent may have stemmed from Pascal Whelpton and Warren S. Thompson, both SCAP members, who asserted that Japan needed a national birth control program. (Nippon Times, July 2, 1949; Los Angeles Times, Mar. 23 and 24, 1949; New York Times, July 2, 1949.)

September 1949  •  445

157. To George H. Hendricks 1 In August a Pentagon official informed Sanger that her application for a military permit to enter Japan had been rejected because “that country is presently engaged in discussions on the subject of birth control.” (George H. Hendricks to MS, Aug. 30, 1949 [MSM S30:1006].)

[Tucson, Ariz.]2 September 10, 1949.

Dear Captain Hendricks: I would like to request reconsideration of the decision which you communicated to me in your letter of August 30th. It is very definitely because Japan is presently engaged in discussions on the subject of birth control that some of the Japanese leaders in education and public health as well as the press are inviting me to their country. May I also request that the following points be taken into account in reviewing—favorably, I hope—my application for a permit to enter Japan.







1. The control of conception has become an official part of Japanese governmental policy, as evidence by the laws passed by the Diet in June, by the work of the Health Ministry in providing for the instruction of physicians, educational films for the people, etc., and the statement of the Welfare Ministry the “an overwhelming majority of Japanese people favor birth control as a solution for problems of health and overpopulation”.3 2. The invitation to me comes from Japanese leaders, both in the government and the press, familiar with my previous educational efforts in their country.4 I was invited to visit Japan in 1921 and spent several weeks in helping to map out an educational campaign relative to population control and parenthood.5 3. The war and the reduction of Japan’s territory combined with the rapid growth of population, have made the problem of limitation by approved means an especially acute one not only for the Japanese but for the occupying authorities also.6 4. The alternative to modern progress in this field is the continuation of abortion and infanticide, hunger and poverty.7 Education in family planning is recognized as the solution. 5. The invitation I wish to accept come to me because I have had long experience in the educational work needed both in this country and abroad. 6. While birth control is not a controversial subject among the people of Japan—being accepted officially as I have already pointed out—the

446  •  Reviving the International Movement

United States occupying authorities have created no difficulties about the propagation of an opposing point of view by Americans in Japan.8 For all these reasons, I hope they you will be able to advise me that I will be permitted to visit Japan in the interest of their people and our own. Sincerely yours Margaret Sanger Slee TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 140:256–57). Letterhead of the MSRB.

1. Captain George H. Hendricks (1902–74) was chief of the Pacific Military Permit Branch in Washington, D.C. (Washington Post, July 30, 1974; U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850–2010; Hendricks to MS, Aug. 30, 1949 [MSM S30:1006].) 2. MS was recovering in the Tucson Medical Center after a coronary thrombosis. (1949 Calendar [MSM S81:457, 619].) 3. Japan’s May 1949 Eugenic Protection Law revision extended the use of abortion for economic and health reasons and permitted the manufacture and sale of chemical contraceptives. The Welfare Ministry started a campaign to publicize the efficacy of contraceptives, and the Institute for Public Health began contraceptive training for public health personnel. The statement by the Welfare Ministry was not found. (Norgren, Abortion before Birth Control, 44–46; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 238; Japan Birth Control League, History of the Japan Birth Control League, 2; Muramatsu, Some Facts about Family Planning, 65.) 4. Invitations came from Kageyas and Fumiko Amano, the re-formed NSCR (which also collected thousands of names on a petition), Shidzue Katō, Tsunego Baba, the president of the Yomiuri Press, and Senshun Hashimoto, a welfare official with the Tochigi Prefecture. A letter of support came from Kaneshichi Masuda, a cabinet secretary. (Amano to MS, Oct. 11, 1947, Katō to MS, May 19, 1949, Baba to MS, July 21, 1949, Hashimoto to MS, July 24, 1949, and Masuda to MS, Sept. 29, 1949 [MSM S27:595, 30:89, 617, 633, 21:300].) 5. She was invited in 1921, but toured in 1922. (See chapter 1, herein.) 6. See MS to MacArthur, Oct. 25, 1945, note 4, herein. 7. Abortions increased with the changes in the law in 1948 and 1949. Although there is no official estimate of the number of abortions for 1948, there were 144,017 reported stillbirths, of which about 30,000, or roughly 21 percent, were considered induced abortions. Reported abortions numbered 246,104 in 1949, though countless abortions went unreported. Infant mortality figures increased from 165,406 in 1948 to 168,467 in 1949. Infanticide, widespread in Japan in earlier periods, was defined as murder and probably constituted a small percentage of infant deaths. The devastation of war and the surge in population led to dramatically increased hunger in Japan, with the average urban adult forced to live on about twelve hundred calories a day, a thousand less than in prewar years. (Muramatsu, Some Facts about Family Planning, 22; Taeuber, Population of Japan, 269, 278, 279; E. Tipton, Modern Japan, 144–45; Oakley, “American-Japanese Interaction,” 619; Norgren, Abortion before Birth Control, 37.) 8. The Catholic Women’s Clubs of Tokyo and Yokohama, composed mostly of the wives of American occupation forces, opposed the birth control and abortion provisions of

october 1949  •  447 the Eugenic Protection Law. MacArthur personally distanced himself from population control policy recommendations made by his advisers. (Oakley, “American-Japanese Interaction,” 618, 624–26, 632; Norgren, Abortion before Birth Control, 87–88.)

158. To Mary Worley Compton 1 On September 9 and 10, the international secretariat met in London and officially named itself the International Committee for Planned Parenthood. Sanger did not attend the meeting, at which the ICPP also designed a program to gather and distribute information on birth control, sex education, and population; to conduct research; and to build organizations. The ICPP received office space from the BES, and funds were contributed by member countries and the BF. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 49; Helen Donington Cohen, “Report of Work of International Secretariat,” Oct. 1948–Oct. 1949 [MSM C13:43].)

[Tucson, Ariz.] Oct 11/49

Compy dear I know how you must feel to open letters cold & not a word from me as usual.2 Someway no one can get used to a change in my ways, which must be from now on—not much writing—no dictation after 10 Am—alas—and all these rules down in black & white for me to live by.3 So this means (as I discussed things with Cele out here)4 that I shall not be doing the International work this year—or perhaps for some years— Certainly not on the programe the Int have now planned for themselves— I cease to be interested in working like a dog in 1949–50 for the same things we advocated & worked for in 1921– 1947,5 no. Of course I have not talked any of this over with Dr Stone but the Secty (Mrs Cohen) is so inadequate as a Secty she could never get a penny from me to hold her in that important job.6 So I feel relieved to let it go as the delegates wanted it & let them support & run it as they wish—7 But this is an important thing for you dear Compy as your work has been solely for the Int since I took it over & Cele took over the direction of the Bureau in my absence.8 Now the question is will you be ready by the end of the year to teach or do the art work you have so diligently worked for?9 I hope so— But from now on to the end of the year—will you please finish up the work on the books & pamphlets in the library, compiling classifying same into neat well marked containers—many duplicates to go to Smith College library.10 Also save out all Japanese & Indian & Oriental pamphlets, clippings & articles & give a place to these & let Mrs Zohn & Cele know exactly where they are—11 That may be the one thing I can do—yet! Am waiting for Mrs Brush to help me move into the new house— It is finished inside—but landscaping still to be12—god knows when that will get paid for!!

448  •  Reviving the International Movement

This is confidential about International except to you, Cele & Dr Stone. Talk over any of this with either or both of them & let me have your reactions. As ever my affectionate regards— M.S. ALI MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S31:289–92). Return address: 65 Sierra Vista Drive.

1. Mary Compton did part-time secretarial work for the ICPP American Committee. (Cele Wright to MS, Feb. 3, 1950 [MSM S31:961].) 2. MS had always hand-drafted replies to incoming letters or wrote comments in the margins for her secretary to use to respond. After her July heart attack, she began forwarding letters directly without draft responses. 3. MS had reduced her workload in an effort to regain her strength after the heart attack, but still kept a night nurse. (1949 Calendar and MS to Lafitte, Oct. 8, 1949 [MSM S81:597–614, 31:282]; see also Vol. 3.) 4. Cele Damon Wright visited MS in Tucson on September 22–26. (1949 Calendar [MSM S81:625–28].) 5. MS found the ICPP resolutions uninspiring for American philanthropists, faulting the emphasis on “family planning, marriage counselling and other aspects of the movement which . . . [are] not as important a need in the educational field and the subject of population as a world resource.” She asked the ICPP to develop a wider program to secure “a larger public opinion that would be willing to back and support a group.” (MS to Donington, Jan. 13, 1949 [MSM C8:494].) 6. Helen Donington, recently married to Benjamin Cohen, became the full-time ICPP secretary in October 1949, but MS complained that she lacked leadership and took credit for the ideas of others. (Bermant, The Cousinhood, 130; MS to Helen Cohen, Sept. 14, 1949 [MSM C8:766].) 7. The ICPP meeting was attended by Conrad van Emde Boas (the Netherlands), Frank Lorimer and Abraham Stone (United States), Elise Ottesen-Jensen (Sweden), Margaret Pyke (Great Britain), W. F. Storm (Germany), and Helena Wright (Great Britain). Though the ICPP outlined a broad plan of action, funding was limited, and MS may not have found it sufficient to achieve such a wide agenda. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 39.) 8. Wright, the former BCCRB executive secretary, returned to help MS reorganize the MSRB from April 1948 to December 1950. (Wright to MS, Feb. 26, 1948, Dec. 12, 1950, and Compton to MS, Apr. 27, 1948 (MSM S27:1054, 34:545, 28:139].) 9. In the fall of 1950, Compton began teaching art, cutting back on her MSRB hours. (Compton to MS, Sept. 24, 1950, and Aug. 31, 1955 [MSM S32:0977, 49:575].) 10. In 1946 MS began sending correspondence and copies of organizational material to be preserved at the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College. (MS to Florence Rose, June 10, 1946 [MSM S25:773]; see also Vol. 3.) 11. Sarah C. Zahn (1905–85) was a PPFA librarian who periodically helped organize the MSRB library. (Zahn to MS, June 29, 1942, and Mary Compton Johnson to MS, Sept. 15, 1949 [MSM S21:342, 31:127].) 12. MS built a house next door to Stuart and Barbara Sanger’s home in Tucson. Brush, who had been working with Leighton Rollins on “Green Courage,” a biographical play

October 1949  •  449 about MS, arrived in Tucson on October 16. MS moved into her new house on October 20. (Brush to MS, Sept. 26, 1949, and 1949 Calendar [MSM S31:188, 81:637–38]; Chesler, Woman of Valor, 413.)

159. To Shidzue Ishimoto K atŌ 1 The Vatican, along with Catholic groups in the United States and Japan, loudly protested SCAP adviser Warren Thompson’s advocacy of birth control. One Vatican news agency claimed that “American experts” sought to turn Japan into “a scientific laboratory” for contraception. General MacArthur repeatedly stated that Thompson’s views were not those of occupation forces. Though health officers within SCAP were sympathetic to the birth control movement, the uproar prompted SCAP to discourage Japanese invitations to Sanger. (Norgren, Abortion before Birth Control, 87; New York Herald Tribune, Paris Edition, July 4, 1949 [quotes]; Katō to MS, Oct. 12, 1949 [MSM S31:306].)

[Tucson, Ariz.] October 15, 1949

My dear Shidzue: Much has been happening since my last letter to you.2 First of all, I have been ill out here in this very hot part of our country. This was brought on mainly from the over-work of moving into a new home during the hot weather. However, I am rapidly recovering and shall be in excellent form for my proposed visit to Japan whenever the State Department here makes it possible for this journey to transpire. I am convinced, however, that a permit will be granted only if the people of Japan are sufficiently articulate and insistent relative to their wishes in regard to my coming. You will note that General MacArthur’s statement to the Press, in regard to birth control and population control, stated that: “such matter does not fall within the prescribed scope of the Occupation, and decisions thereon rest entirely with the Japanese themselves.”3

I firmly believe that if there is sufficient demand for my visit, expressed by the people through the press, Japanese government officials and health officers, permission will be granted. I should very much like to bring with me Dr. Stone, the Medical Director of our Bureau who is thoroughly familiar with all the technical problems and who, having just returned from Europe, is well versed in what is going on in the birth control movement throughout Europe as well as in this country.4 In addition to Dr. Stone, I should like to bring a nurse or someone familiar with setting-up of clinics of high standards such as we maintain in our own clinics throughout this country.5

450  •  Reviving the International Movement

Mrs. Brush would also come and can do the publicity work for us.6 Because of this delay in securing the military permit necessary to enter Japan, we can make our plans and program well ahead of time in order to accomplish as much as possible for the people individually, for medical and university groups, and womens’ organizations. I have had some very interesting letters from Japan regarding my visit. Senshun Hashimoto, Welfare Official, Chief-editor of sex education magazine “Mezame”, Tochigi Prefecture Sanitation Department, sent me a copy of his magazine, but this was never received by me. I feel confident that he is working and would work with you to secure the necessary official invitation.7 We have also had a letter from Ryoichi Oka who is a physician by profession and a member of Parliament of Japan. He is planning on opening a clinic and office in Tokyo and I’m sure would be helpful if you could get in touch with him.8 If all these various groups and individuals would cooperate with you and present a united front in requesting my visit I feel sure permission would be forth coming. If you have any other suggestions that would be helpful in procuring this permit, please let me know. We are doing every thing possible from this side, but there is considerable red tape in our state department, owing to Roman Catholic pressure, and no doubt this same thing is spreading itself into the occupation atmosphere in your country. I send you my love and best wishes for your health, happiness, and success. Affectionately, Margaret Sanger. TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S31:323–24).

1. Katō continued gathering endorsements for MS’s proposed trip. (Katō to MS, July 25 and Oct. 12, 1949 [MSM S30:641, 31:306].) 2. See MS to Katō, July 18, 1949, herein. 3. The full quote was drawn from a June 6 memorandum, sent on MacArthur’s behalf: “In order to prevent any misunderstanding and to eradicate any misconceptions, the Supreme Commander wishes it understood that he is not engaged in any study or consideration of the problem of Japanese population control. Such matter does not fall within the prescribed scope of the Occupation and decisions thereon rest entirely with the Japanese themselves.” (Nippon Times, July 2, 1949.) 4. Abraham Stone attended conferences in Rome, Paris, and London in September 1949. (Compton to Ottesen-Jensen, Aug. 31, 1949, and Cele Damon to MS, Aug. 30, 1949 [MSM C8:745, S30:1013].) 5. The PPFA’s clinical standards included nonprofit status and independence from any for-profit contraceptive manufacturer, a medical advisory board and medically trained clinicians, a staff nurse or social worker, confidential case histories, and statistical sum-

FEBRUARY 1950  •  451 maries of the clinic’s work. (PPFA, “Required Minimum Standards for Certification of Clinics,” Feb. 1948 [PPFA II 22:530].) 6. Katō had invited both MS and Brush. (Katō to MS, May 19, 1949 [MSM S30:89].) 7. Senshun Hashimoto, the editor of Mezame (Awakening), was also an official in the Epidemic Prevention Section of the Tochigi Prefecture Sanitation Department. He wanted MS to meet with sanitation officials in Japan. On October 18, the MSRB received the copy of Mezame (Summer 1949) containing MS’s “Principles of Birth Control.” (MS, “Principles of Birth Control,” June 20, 1949, Hashimoto to MS, Apr. 19 and July 24, 1949, and Compton to MS, Oct. 18, 1949 [MSM S72:582, 29:917, 30:633, 31:334].) 8. Ryôichi Oka (1905–94), a socialist doctor, had written to the PPFA for advice on a clinic in Tokyo. (JBE; Oka to PPFA, Sept. 10, 1949 [MS Unfilmed].)

160. Statement on General Douglas MacArthur Sanger’s requests to reconsider her application to enter Japan were denied on September 15 and November 22, 1949. The Yomiuri Press, the chief sponsor of Sanger’s tour, blamed MacArthur for the decision. The New York Times argued that it was “impossible for General MacArthur to allow her to lecture to Japanese audiences without appearing to subscribe to her views.” Sanger called it an “outrage” and blamed the Catholic Women’s Clubs in Japan for pressuring MacArthur. The story received wide coverage in the international press, with help from Sanger herself. (Hendricks to MS, Sept. 15 and Nov. 22, 1949 [MSM S31:126, 467]; New York Times, Feb. 13, 1950 [quotes]; see MS Unfilmed for additional newspaper coverage.)

New York, N.Y.1 FEBRUARY 13, 1950 I must refuse to accept as final the reported decision of Gen. MacArthur that I may not come to Japan at the invitation of the Japanese. That an American can be barred from a perfectly proper mission by the bigotry or whim of other Americans is intolerable. This is not the first time I was told I could not visit Japan. In 1921 I was refused permission by the Imperial Japanese government. It is tragic to see that our Occupation authorities, while mouthing democratic principles, are emulating the old Japanese military regime. However, in 1921 the angry protests of the people forced the lifting of the ban.2 I am confident that something of the same sort will occur in 1950. When I asked to have Gen. MacArthur reconsider the refusal to admit me, I believed he meant what he was quoted as saying last July—that birth control was a matter for the Japanese people and the Occupation had a policy of hands off.3 I hope that this attitude will be resumed. Anything else is a denial of the right of the Japanese to decent and healthy family life. Anything else is a denial of the basic democracy which we are trying to help this people achieve.

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My invitation came from the press, health officials and private groups.4 They wanted me to advise them on carrying out their new laws which legalize birth control, because they know that is the only way to halt the disastrous rise in population. If I can help them in applying their new laws on birth control, I mean to do so. I shall continue to work for a reversal of any ruling that seeks to stop me. TD MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S77:52). PPFA Press Release.



1. MS was in Tucson when the statement was released. (1950 Calendar [MSM S81:707].) 2. MS was refused a visa in February 1922 (see chapter 1). 3. For MacArthur’s statement, see MS to Katō, Oct. 15, 1949, note 3, herein. 4. For more on the invitation, see MS to Hendricks, Sept. 10, 1949, note 4, herein.

161. To Florence Mahoney 1 Sanger marshaled supporters to continue fighting the SCAP ban, especially Florence S. Mahoney (1899–2002), an influential health advocate and the wife of the president and general manager of the Miami Daily News and Arizona Daily Star publisher William R. Mathews. In late January, Mahoney visited her longtime friend Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson for help. Johnson sent her to Undersecretary of the Army Tracy S. Voorhees, who directed his staff to look into it. Mahoney learned that the decision to ban Sanger was actually made by General Crawford Sams, head of SCAP’s Public Health and Welfare Section, who told her, “We do not want Margaret Sanger barnstorming Japan. It’s a newspaper racket for publicity, and birth control has nothing to do with population trends.” Mahoney continued pressuring her government contacts, promising Sanger, “I have also given them the impression that it is going to create a lot of bad publicity from your newspaper friends unless they deal with it quickly.” (New York Times, Dec. 16, 2002; Mahoney to MS, Feb. 4, 1950 [quotes] [MSM S31:1004]; Mathews to Mahoney, Jan. 13, 1950 [FMP].)

[Tucson, Ariz.] February 21, 1950

Florence dear, Thank you for everything. Your experience in Washington was surprising. A large group from New York plan to call to see Johnson and to ask why?2 Mary is advising Loth from the Federation,3 and letters from Japan state that SCAP is R.C. from the bottom up.4 The Japanese people are frightened at its growing influence over the Occupation. They can understand military rules and psychology, but that religion shall dominate and dictate has them guessing—as they say, with “disrespect”. Hundreds of letters, telegrams, etc., came from all over regarding the Times article.5 It may take time to change events, but it seems humiliating for

FEBRUARY 1950  •  453

a great Democracy to bow the head to a small group of women who know nothing of the tragic conditions in Japanese homes.6 Your column is very cheery and covers all the high spots here.7 Frank Lloyd Wright was here yesterday, and I had Isabella and Harry in for the evening.8 “A gay time was had by all”. The weather is super; I am painting three times a week and attend life classes three evenings also.9 Some life! It was wonderful having you in Tucson, and I hope you will come and stay longer.10 Let us keep pushing on the Japan question and see what can be done. Ever my thanks— Affectionately, Margaret [signed] Margaret Sanger Slee [handwritten] A line from you to the Wash Post would be helpful. M.11 TLS FMP, MdBE (MSM C8:821). Return address: 65 Sierra Vista Drive.

1. Mahoney met MS through Stuart Sanger, who had roomed with Mahoney’s son at Yale. (J. Robinson, Noble Conspirator, 30.) 2. On February 14, 1950, the PPFA executive committee officially protested the ban against MS, coordinating a letter-writing campaign to government officials and appealing to President Truman and Secretary Louis A. Johnson (1891–1966). The “large group” did not materialize, but on February 28 PPFA president and chairman Charles Scribner, accompanied by PPFA acting director David Loth, met with Undersecretary Tracy Voorhees in Washington. Voorhees informed Mahoney in March 1950 that proper procedures were followed and nothing more could be done. (New York Times, Apr. 25, 1966; PPFA Press Release, Feb. ?, 1950, Scribner to PPFA State Leagues and Local Committees, Mar. 17, 1950, and to MS, Mar. 1, 1950, and Voorhees to Mahoney, Mar. 7, 1950 [MSM S66:555, 318, 32:19, 385].) 3. Mary Lasker had spoken to David Loth (1899–1988), an author and journalist who had joined the PPFA staff in 1946. Lasker advised MS not to make the issue public “until every avenue is explored because after there is publicity, I doubt very much that the official attitude will be reversed.” (New York Times, Aug. 11, 1950, and June 3, 1988; Lasker to MS, Jan. 3, 1950 [quote] [MSM S31:739]; SSDI; PPFA Executive Committee Minutes, Oct. 8, 1946 [Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts Records, MN-SSC].) 4. MS claimed that “the Japan ‘incident’ is making people realize how aggressive the Roman Catholics are in every place.” Shidzue Katō and the Drs. Amano wrote MS that strong Catholic influence within SCAP had also led to the removal of population control references in SCAP consultant Edward Ackerman’s analysis of Japan’s natural resources. (MS to Lasker, Feb. 16, 1950 [quote], Fumiko and Kageyas Amano to MS, Feb. 14, 1950, and Katō to MS, Feb. 18, 1950 [MSM C8:818, S31:1000, 1024]; New York Times, Feb. 8, 1950.) 5. Scores of letters and telegrams were sent to MS, the PPFA, and various newspapers in response to a United Press International article on MS’s ban that appeared in the New

454  •  Reviving the International Movement York Times and other papers. See MSM S31–32 and C8 for examples. (New York Times, Feb. 13, 1950.) 6. MS refers to the Catholic Women’s Clubs. 7. MS refers to Mahoney’s weekly column, “About People,” in the Miami Daily News, in which she often used the pseudonym “Mary Marley.” In her January 15 column, Mahoney wrote about Tucson and some of its more colorful figures, including MS, whom she described as “small, energetic and soft voiced.” (J. Robinson, Noble Conspirator, 26; Mary Marley, “About People,” Miami Sunday News, Jan. 15, 1950 [quote].) 8. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) moved to Arizona in 1939 with his third wife, Olgivanna Lazovich Hinzenberg, and their daughter, Iovanna, where he built Taliesin West. The dinner was on Saturday, February 18, 1950, and included Isabella Selmes Greenway King (1886–1953), a cattle rancher, former Arizona congresswoman, and founder of the famed Arizona Inn, and her husband, Henry Orland King (1890–1976), a businessman, former National Recovery Administration manager, and special assistant to the U.S. Air Force chief of staff. (ANB; Biographical Directory of the United States Congress; New York Times, Sept. 25, 1976; MS to Frank Lloyd Wright, Jan. 27, 1950, Wright to MS, Feb. 3, 1950, and 1950 Calendar [MSM C8:811, S31:964, 81:678].) 9. MS took up painting after moving to Tucson in the late 1930s; she joined the Tucson Watercolor Guild and went on frequent painting trips in the Southwest and Mexico. (“The Tucson Watercolor Guild,” 1950 [MS Unfilmed]; see also Vol. 3.) 10. Mahoney visited MS in Tucson on January 10. (1950 Calendar [MSM S81:684].) 11. The Washington Post had printed a February 15 editorial protesting the ban. Mahoney knew Post publisher Philip L. Graham. (Washington Post, Feb. 15, 1950; Graham to Mahoney, Apr. 10, 1950 [MSM S32:289].)

z EIGHT The International Committee on Planned Parenthood

In fits and starts, and despite the inability of the four founding members (the Netherlands, Sweden, Britain, and the United States) to easily agree on common goals, the ICPP made significant progress after its establishment in 1948. It surveyed the state of birth control work around the world; established ties with family planning organizations in some twenty countries; initiated new contacts in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean; and started publishing Around the World News of Population and Birth Control (AWNPBC), a monthly bulletin edited by Dorothy Brush. In 1951 the ICPP began plans to create a permanent organization with a regional structure, to be launched immediately after the 1952 conference. Since the ISEC in Stockholm, Sanger had been pushing for a formal international organization to take on educational, clinical, and research aspects of contraception and approach birth control as the common ground linking issues such as population control, the ecology and environment, public health, sex education, and economic development. Criticized by the Dutch and, at times, by the British for promoting an overly broad, impractical agenda, Sanger held firm to her vision. She knew that American funders would not respond to a smaller, more narrowly defined program. Her own fund-raising connections, especially at the Rockefeller Foundation, gave her more clout than activists in other countries, but she was also aware that her ties to financial power created •  455

456  •  The International Committee on Planned Parenthood

resentment among some European activists. Nevertheless, she did not hesitate to exert her influence when she thought it necessary. Sanger wanted to hold the Third International Conference on Planned Parenthood (3ICPP) in India, which had become the focus of American population control advocates. India offered Sanger a better opportunity for attracting demographers and luring support from the Population Council, the RF, and other American sources. Sanger wanted to demonstrate that the ICPP was interested in more than sex education and birth control—that it was committed to addressing the population problem. The ICPP’s Dutch members vehemently disagreed, preferring a European site for the conference and protesting what they saw as Sanger’s unilateral action. Despite such resistance within the IPPF, in December 1951 Sanger asked the Family Planning Association of India to host the ICPP’s 1952 meeting. The FPA-I and its founder, Lady Dhanvanthi Rama Rau, agreed and chose Bombay as the site. Sanger took the lead in organizing the conference; lining up funders, delegates, and a list of notable sponsors; and assisting the FPA-I with the program.1 While some balked at having to travel so far, the timing was right for India to play host. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru publicly endorsed family planning, and India’s National Planning Committee recommended state support for contraceptive services, including facilities for sterilizations. By 1951 the Indian government urged all states to advocate for birth control as part of an effort to stem population growth and improve economic health. The government also applied to WHO for help conducting field studies on the rhythm method. MSRB director Abraham Stone toured India for WHO for six weeks, one of the first times the UN involved itself in a population control program. The 3ICPP organizers planned to recognize the women-led efforts of the FPA-I and AIWC and highlight the role of government agencies and advocacy groups in providing practical contraceptive programs throughout the country.2 The ICPP hoped to spotlight India’s embrace of family planning as a model for other Asian nations. While en route to the 3ICPP, Sanger stopped in Japan, her path finally cleared by President Harry S. Truman’s removal of General Douglas MacArthur as SCAP, in April 1951. After a fifteen-year absence, Sanger’s arrival on the S.S. President Cleveland on the morning of October 30, 1952, was met by a long greeting line of costumed notables and a frenzied mob of reporters and photographers described by one observer as “the closest thing to a Hollywood opening night I’ve ever seen out here.”3 Japan’s birth control movement had expanded during the postwar reconstruction, with the government incorporating reproductive control measures into public health programs. But its policies also resulted in increased numbers of abortions, both legal and illegal. Shidzue Katō, Kan Majima, and other activists hoped that Sanger’s visit would energize efforts to open contraceptive clinics and emphasize the difference between birth control and abortion. As

January 1951  •  457

Sanger noted, “An adequate education program has not been worked out. One which stresses the important fact that abortion is not contraception, that there are better and safer ways of spacing pregnancies and limiting families.”4 Sanger conducted her ten-day tour of Japan with the tirelessness and assurance of a popular politician running for reelection in a friendly district. The public knew her name, and she gloried in the aura of celebrity surrounding her—quite aware that the rest of the world was watching. “It is a family problem,” she told a Tokyo audience in November 1952, “and it is a world problem.”5 She left Japan, revitalized by her celebrity, and set out to make history in India. Notes 1. Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 47–48. 2. Houghton, “International Planned Parenthood Federation,” 202–4; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 44–47. 3. Lader, Margaret Sanger Story, 326. 4. MS, “Japan Wants Birth Control,” 554. 5. MS, “Return to Japan,” Nov. 1, 1952 (MSM S72:764).

162. To Clair E. Folsome 1

[Tucson, Ariz.] January 23, 1951

Dear Dr. Folsome: A very interesting couple came to visit me yesterday, a Mr. and Mrs. G. B. Watumull of Los Angeles. Mr. Watumull was born in India, but is now an American citizen. His wife, an American, has just returned from a 3 month trip to India, where she went as a delegate to the Institute of Pacific Relations Conference.2 As you will note from the enclosed report, their Watumull Foundation is identified with many contributions to India in various forms, and they are concerned with aiding progressive programs on behalf of India.3 During Mrs. Watumull’s trip through various sections of India, she found, as we all know, a crying need for a simple, inexpensive contraceptive. She also found that many officials and leaders in public life, would be eager to actively aid in furthering the expansion of birth control knowledge in the towns and villages, IF a simple technique were available for such a program. Mrs. Watumull believes that interested friends would be willing to provide a few thousand dollars to assist in such expansion, and it was to discuss these possibilities and current research in simple techniques that she and her husband came to Tucson to see me.4

458  •  The International Committee on Planned Parenthood

My understanding is that you have been carrying on some interest and research with simple contraceptives, and I am writing to obtain from you as much information as you can send me on this point. Is your product marketable as yet, and has there been an opportunity to conduct clinical tests—not only here in the U.S.A. but abroad—and specifically, in the Orient? Do you have distributing agents, or offices, in Bombay or elsewhere in India? And do you have an agency in Japan—through which your products might be purchased by Indians, who cannot obtain dollar exchange easily for the purchase of contraceptives from America?5 I think that a wonderful opportunity is opening before us all to do something really significant in India and for India—and of course, we all realize that any successful effort in that country, where conditions are supremely difficult, would open comparable opportunities in many other countries where the greatest impediment to the spread of the birth control movement is the lack of a simple, cheap, contraceptive. If you do have representatives in India, I would like to know:



1. Just which techniques are being offered? Are you making a special price to birth control clinics there? What is the price approximately at which similar material is made available to Indian women who purchase supplies in drug stores, or any other retail outlets? 2. If the Family Planning Association in India were in a position to purchase, for example, $1500 worth of your standard contraceptives, diaphragms, jellies, etc. would your company be interested in donating an equal amount in the form of your new simplified powder in capsule form, which Mr. McIntyre of the Planned Parenthood Federation—recently here in Tucson—mentioned with much enthusiasm?6 Such a sizable donation might enable a number of comparable tests to get under way in a few cities. In return for such a donation, the thought is that the birth control clinics would employ a trained social worker to keep accurate clinical records of those utilizing both the standard methods and the simplified procedures.

We have been giving consideration to the possibility of holding a Conference in India in the late fall of 1952.7 The records of such a study, even if only of a year’s duration, would nevertheless have value for presentation. I am not informed as to whether your new product has been tested at the Bureau as yet, but perhaps that will come later.8 Meanwhile, any information you can send along will be much appreciated, and if samples should be available at this time, I would like a few of them, and will reforward some to the Watumulls.

January 1951  •  459

I was deeply distressed to have my Christmas card addressed to Mrs. Huse returned to me with the notation “deceased”.9 I assume this is accurate, but it is the first word I have had, and I would appreciate your sending me any details. Are there members of her family to whom I can express my own appreciation of her contribution and devotion to the movement?10 Sincerely yours, Margaret Sanger TLcy IPPFR, IPPF (MSM C9:22–23). For a similar letter to Merle Young of Young’s Rubber Company, see MSM S33:788.

1. Clair E. Folsome (1903–56), an American obstetrician and gynecologist at New York Medical College who helped establish maternal and child health clinics in Asia and the Caribbean, was vice president and research director for the Ortho Research Foundation. As Folsome was recovering from a heart attack, MS’s letter was answered by Ortho Foundation director B. J. Todd. (“Scientists in the News,” Science 113 [June 29, 1951]: 758; New York Times, Mar. 21, 1956; Todd to MS, Jan. 26, 1951 [MSM S33:816].) 2. Gobindram Watumull (1891–1959) was an Indian-born businessman who ran a chain of Hawaii-based department stores. In 1942, with his wife, Ellen Jensen Watumull (1897–1990), he established the Watumull Foundation to promote cultural cooperation between the United States and India. The Institute of Pacific Relations, an international research organization, held its eleventh conference in Lucknow, India, on October 3–14, 1950. (SSDI; New York Times, Aug. 13, 1959, Apr. 7, and Oct. 4 and 15, 1950; Watumull, “Margaret Sanger as I Knew Her.”) 3. The Watumull Foundation provided scholarships and fellowships for Indians to study in the United States and for Hawaiian cultural institutions. For the enclosed report, see Watumull Foundation, Report for 1949–1951 (MSM S33:751). 4. Ellen Watumull met with Dhanvanthi Rama Rau and Clarence Gamble’s brother, Walter Gamble. Rama Rau asked for a simple contraceptive that could be used by the Indian masses. Watumull also met with MS’s former secretary Florence Rose, who arranged her meeting with MS. (Watumull, “Margaret Sanger as I Knew Her,” 7.) 5. Ortho Products, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, manufactured Ortho-Gynol, a contraceptive jelly, and Preceptin, a spermicidal gel that worked without a diaphragm. Ortho had informed Indian physician Mangladeir Talwar about the preparation, and she planned to take it back to India to influence government officials to adopt it. (“Ortho: A Her-Story of Achievement in Women’s Health,” Women’s Health Care 5, no. 5 [2006]: 16–20; Todd to MS, Jan. 26, 1951 [MSM S33:816].) 6. The FPA-I was founded in Bombay in 1949 by Rama Rau, who enlisted a number of physicians, sexologists, and welfare workers to help open birth control clinics and launch educational programs. Ortho offered to match FPA-I’s purchase with an equal amount of Preceptin. James H. McIntyre was a PPFA field service representative who met the Watumulls when he visited Tucson a few days before. (Raina, Planning Family in India, 104–6; Todd to MS, Jan. 26, 1951, and MS to David Loth, Jan. 25, 1951 [MSM S33:816, 806].)

460  •  The International Committee on Planned Parenthood 7. MS had begun discussing the conference idea with a few close friends and colleagues, including Dorothy Brush, Abraham Stone, Pearl Buck, Katharine McCormick, and Charles Vickery Drysdale. (MS to McCormick, Buck, and Drysdale, all on Jan. 9, 1951, Brush to MS, Jan. 21, 1951, and MS to Vera Houghton, Jan. 25, 1951 [MSM S33:712, 717, 718, 768, 808].) 8. Ortho’s Preceptin Gel had not been tested by the MSRB, but it was tested in clinics in the South and in North Dakota. The MSRB tested Preceptin Gel in 1960, finding it more effective than others. (“New Miracles in Birth Control,” Jet, Mar. 6, 1952, 24; John MacLeod, Aquiles Sobrero, and Will Inglis, “In Vitro Assessment of Commercial Contraceptive Jellies and Creams,” JAMA 176, no. 5 [1961]: 427–31.) 9. Penelope Huse died of a heart attack in July 1950, after a long career with the ABCL, National Committee on Maternal Health, and Ortho Pharmaceutical Company. (Plainfield [N.J.] Courier News, July 8, 1950.) 10. MS offered her condolences to Huse’s son on February 8. (MS to Robert Huse, Feb. 8, 1951 [LCM 6:203].)

163. From Client

St. John’s, Antigua BWI 7-10-51

Dear Mrs Sagner, I do not want to be an imposter, but I am just asking you to throw a little light on my ignorance. Today I read “Margaret Sagner Mother of Planned Parenthood” in Readers Digest July 19511 and thought I would write asking you to give me some information on Birth control and contraceptives. Ours is a small Island in the West Indies2 and our Drugstores apart from Profolatic Rubbers only carry one Item a soluable pessary known as Rendell Pessary.3 Why I write to you, is not because I am a play boy that do not want any children, but I am a married father of 4 children the first one a boy was borned 1947 the secont 1948 the third 1949 then I found things was getting too bad so I inquired and found out about this Rendell Pessary which I used but June this year my wife gave birth to a little girl. I am 30 years of age and my wife is 28 years, we got married in 1946 and the cost of living have changed and its real tough to bring them the way one would like too.4 When my wife is to have a baby she always want me to be with her and I having to be there feel like a condemned murder. Please write as I am anxiously waiting to hear from you and I hope will not tell me to sleep on the roof.5 I am asking you again Please to answer me. Hoping to hear soon. I Remain Yours Truly [name omitted] ALS MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S34:921–22). In the interest of privacy, the MSPP has omitted the author’s name. MS wrote the following draft response at the bottom of the last page :

august 1951  •  461 “Dear Mr— Your letter of—etc. There are many better methods today than the Rendell Pessary. The best thing to do is to write to our two national offices for literature about methods of contraception—ask for very definite information (not theories) & also ask for names of Drs in or near your Island.” (For final version, see MS to Client, Oct. 19, 1951 [MSM S35:462].)

1. The client refers to Lois Mattox Miller’s article recounting the Sadie Sachs story and highlighting MS’s legal battles. It announced that PPFA clinics “not only provide contraceptive information but provide ‘fertility service’ to aid unmarried couples who have been unable to have children.” (Miller, “Margaret Sanger.”) 2. Antigua is a western Caribbean island in the Lesser Antilles, part of the British Commonwealth until 1981. (Britannica Online.) 3. Birth control devices were commercially available in Antigua, though the government offered no education or assistance in their use. The Rendell pessary, developed in 1885, was a cocoa-butter soluble pessary infused with the spermicide quinine sulfate. (W. Handwerker Penn, “West Indian Gender Relations, Family Planning Programs and Fertility Decline,” Social Science and Medicine 35 [Nov. 1992]: 1246; Niels Lauersen and Steven Whitney, It’s Your Body: A Woman’s Guide to Gynecology [New York, 1983], 186.) 4. Antigua’s sugar industry collapsed during World War II, and fractured labor relations resulted in unemployment and poverty. (Brian Dyde, A History of Antigua: The Unsuspected Isle [London, 2000], 235.) 5. The client refers to MS’s often-told Sadie Sachs story, probably a composite portrait of women she tended to as an obstetrical nurse. According to MS, a doctor refused to provide contraceptive advice to Sachs, who was suffering from complications of an induced abortion, telling her to avoid additional pregnancies by having her husband “sleep on the roof.” (Miller, “Margaret Sanger,” 27–28; MS, Autobiography, 91; see also Vol. 1.)

164. To Abraham Stone 1 At an ICPP meeting held in London in August, Sanger, Elise Ottesen-Jensen, Margaret Pyke, and Helena Wright listened to reports on Germany by Anne-Marie Durand-Wever and Ilse Lederer, discussed advances in India, and began planning the 3ICPP. Other American members and the entire Dutch delegation were not able to attend. (ICPP Report, 1950–51, and ICPP, “Report of Meeting of International Committee on Planned Parenthood: 29th and 30th August, 1951” [MSM C13:66 and 74].)

[London, England] Aug 30/51

Dearest “Abram”— Today finished the Int Com meetings! These two days were strenuous— Because Helena Wright was in the chair—2 The present Secty Vera Houghton is good & were she as scatterbrain as HW Id have resigned from the Int for ever—3 But she is not—Margaret Pyke

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is also level headed & she & I were eye to eye on every important decision.4 Mrs Otto-Jensen from Stockholm was present & pushed hard the idea of a Conference in Sweeden in 1953— We accepted the invitation & will help her to organize it Aug 1953.5 Frank Lorimer resigned from the Int!6 It was accepted! We are asking Vogt to take his place.7 The Int Com also requested us to bring out for the Int Com a Bulletin, a news bulletin, monthly (& on time) can it be financed by USA for the first year? The weather is vile— People are no longer hungry food everywhere. Congratulations on the grandson—-trust Gloria did not have too hard a time. Id have bet on triplets!8 As to the Rhythm method in India—I wonder if the women will believe in it.9 The Indian women are not slaves—& are very independent. If this is [being done?] to appease the R.C’s it won’t go down with the Intelligent women nor with the men—10 I trust you will not accept this proposal without serious thought from all sides. It looks to me as if someone wants to get on the right side of Political Catholics & wants you to pull the chestnuts out— Perhaps not—but—— Do consider the results as well as the invitation flattering of course—but—what results did Rock have? Why do not more women in Boston use it?11 The Indians must invite you to do this I think rather than outside big shots—even Chisholm.12 Today I had lunch with Dr Drysdale— He is very old looking but the spirit is there—desperately trying to get the Malthusian Magazine in order—wants money (as they all do)—13 The International expects us to duplicate the contribution we sent them in the spring to deal with expenses up to Dec 31/51—14 I’ve been visiting friends so I will hope to have something on my letter of credit left—15 But all the Germans just naturally look to “rich Mrs Sanger” to taxi them & dine them etc. I like to do it too. A young German woman Mrs Leaderer from Kissel is a torch-bearer—more of this—(Dr Wever & Mrs. Leaderer).16 They took the films over to Germany, just had to have them17 & so poor Mrs Houghton does not have them after all- We must send her another set— Please do that now! Im slowing down now & hope to keep from any “bad times” until I return.18 love to you & yours Margaret ALS ASP, MBCo (MSM C9:163–64, 195–98). Letterhead of the Goring Hotel.

1. In August 1950, Abraham Stone purchased the MSRB from MS. Though unable to attend the London meeting, he worked closely with MS on international efforts,

august 1951  •  463 managing, through the MSRB, the funds she raised. (New York Times, Aug. 15, 1950; MSRB Trustees Minutes, Dec. 14, 1950 [MSM S64:96]; Stone to MS, Aug. 18, 1951 [LCM 7:512].) 2. Helena Lowenfeld Wright (1887–1982) was a British gynecologist and public health officer who worked at the North Kensington Women’s Welfare Centre. She served on the FPA-GB Executive and Medical Committees and was described as a dominating figure, “enormously sure of herself and of the rightness of her views.” MS had known her since 1930. (Evans, Freedom to Choose, 19, 145–47, 206–8; Reed, Birth Control Movement, 297 [quote].) 3. Lady Vera Travis Houghton (1914–2013) replaced Helen Cohen as ICPP secretary in November 1949. The wife of Douglas Houghton, a prominent Labour member of Parliament, she took up the cause of reproductive rights during World War II. (Guardian, Dec. 15, 2013; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 39.) 4. Margaret Pyke played a key role in the founding of the ICPP, setting up the committee’s first headquarters, with Helena Wright, and serving as the FPA-GB representative. (Connelly, Fatal Misconception, 133; ICPP, “Report of Meeting of International Committee on Planned Parenthood: 29th and 30th August, 1951” [MSM C13:74].) 5. MS refers to Elise Ottesen-Jensen, who wanted the RFSU to play a significant role in the ICPP and the new organization. (Linder, Crusader for Sex Education, 180–83.) 6. Frank Lorimer had been the PPFA’s representative to the ICPP since 1949, but wanted to devote more time to the IUSIPP. (New York Times, June 28, 1985; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 38, 41.) 7. William Vogt was the PPFA’s new national director. (PPFA, “William Vogt, Biographical Sketch,” Nov. 12, 1951 [PPFAR].) 8. Abraham Stone’s daughter, Gloria Stone Aitken (b. 1923), and her husband, Gerard Aitken, had their first child, Gerard James Aitken III (1951–87), on August 29. (Rinaldo, Rinaldos from Poland; MS to Gloria Stone Aitken, Oct. 9, 1951 [MSM S35:336]; New York Times, July 5, 1959; Massachusetts Death Index.) 9. The rhythm method, a practice of limiting sexual intercourse to the sterile phase or “safe period” of a women’s menstrual cycle, was not a reliable contraceptive method, especially for women with irregular cycles. MS was concerned that if Stone promoted such an unreliable method, he might undermine confidence in more effective methods. Dhanvanthi Rama Rau also doubted rhythm’s effectiveness in India, which had a large illiterate population. (Stone and Stone, Marriage Manual, 113; Christopher Tietze, Samuel R. Poliakoff, and John Rock, “The Clinical Effectiveness of the Rhythm Method of Contraception,” Fertility and Sterility 2 [1951]: 449; MS to Angus Macdonald, Sept. 18, 1951, and Rama Rau to MS, Dec. 11, 1951 [MSM S35:241, 722].) 10. While Stone’s rhythm project was sponsored by WHO, the organization had come under attack by the Catholic Church for recommending that family planning be incorporated into maternal health programs. (Symonds and Carder, United Nations and the Population Question, 61–62; Stone to MS, Mar. 1, 1952 [MSM C9:360].) 11. John Charles Rock (1890–1980), a Catholic gynecologist who founded and directed an infertility clinic at the Free Hospital for Women in Boston, opened the first “rhythm” clinic in the United States in 1936. He understood the limits of the method and helped

464  •  The International Committee on Planned Parenthood develop the oral contraceptive. (ANB; Loretta McLaughlin, The Pill, John Rock, and the Church: The Biography of a Revolution [Boston, 1982], 43.) 12. George Brock Chisholm (1896–1971), a Canadian psychiatrist, was WHO’s directorgeneral and organized the rhythm study requested by India. (New York Times, Feb. 7, 1971, and Oct. 30, 1951; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 45.) 13. At seventy-seven, Charles Drysdale was five years older than MS, but in very poor health. In 1950 he revived the Malthusian monthly, aided by MS’s donation. He and assistant Olive Johnson met MS on August 31 to discuss reviving the ML. (Benn, Predicaments of Love, 229–33; Drysdale to MS, Aug. 26, 1951, and 1951 Calendar [MSM S35:143, 81:1073].) 14. In January 1951, MS sent five hundred dollars, part of a donation to her from Albert Lasker, to the ICPP to help defray office expenses. She promised to send an additional five hundred dollars after June 1. (MS to Stone, Jan. 8, 1951, and MS to Houghton, Jan. 23, 1951 [MSM S33:713, 803].) 15. MS arrived in England on August 25, traveling with her Tucson friend Dorothy Davis McNamee. While there she visited Clinton and Janet Chance, Mary Macauley, and others. (U.K. Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878–1960; 1951 Calendar [MSM S81:1067–95].) 16. Ilse Lederer, a German activist, had already opened two birth control clinics in Kassel and was trying to organize a new German birth control organization. MS funded Durand-Wever’s airfare from Germany to London. She was also considering funding propaganda in Germany to generate support from the medical profession and to dissuade illegal abortion. (Lederer to MS, Jan. 16, 1951, and Durand-Wever to MS, July 19 and Aug. 4, 1951 [MSM S33:745, 34:993, 35:61]; Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 203; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 43.) 17. The two instructional films were probably the MSRB’s Biology of Conception and Technique of Contraception. Stone had promised copies when he visited Germany earlier that year, and Durand-Wever had already arranged a viewing for sympathetic doctors. (Durand-Wever to MS, Aug. 4 and Sept. 17, 1951 [MSM S35:61, 231]; “Family Planning Films,” AWNPBC 3 [Mar. 1952]: 4.) 18. MS was still worried about her heart, though a doctor had told her she was in good condition. (MS to Brush, June 27, 1951 [MSM S34:763].

165. To Dorothy Hamilton Brush 1

[London, England] 5th September 1951.

Dearest Dorothy, The Committee meetings have finished and I have missed you terribly. You would have been delighted at the progress that the Committee has made since Cheltenham. Especially have things become clarified, and principles and policies more entrenched along the lines that you and I, and Mrs. Weir, hoped for.2 The London group is definitely an information center and, as you will see from the enclosed report, groups are springing up all over the world.3 They

September 1951  •  465

are co-operating with the central committee, and money is needed terribly to supply these groups with accurate educational material so that they won’t be spreading themselves all over the map and get tangled up in abortions, &c., &c.4 The present personnel in the center is superb, but with growing work one little person will never be able to handle adequately the needs that the expanding movement demands.5 We could use two typists and assistants in this office now—and it really would be money well spent—if we could get some of the foundations to see the possibilities of the growth of this movement in Asian countries as well as in other parts of the world. I am enclosing a second copy of the report for (if you will be good enough to send it) the Brush Foundation. I don’t have Mrs. Weir’s address with me. I know a word from you encouraging further support by the Brush Foundation would be most helpful.6 Yesterday a reception was given me by Lady Hartog of about 35 charming and beautifully-gowned Indian, Pakistani, Singhalese, and Indonesian women, who were congregated to discuss birth control in Asia.7 You know how shy these women usually are, but as the group was kept small, for Lady Hartog particularly wanted them to ask questions, things began to buzz. They are all important women and wives of distinguished officials. To-day, I was invited by the High Commissioner to India to a reception at the India House.8 It was a splendid mixture of Asians and Europeans and, ending up, an amazing demonstration of Yoga exercises.9 I longed for you to be here. Everything would have enriched your experience (already very rich), and I feel that you must make your plans to come with me the next time, wherever I go for b.c. I hope you will agree, as I have practically accepted the responsibility on behalf of the Committee, to have a news bulletin in New York at the Bureau.10 I know Mrs. Cadbury11 is interested in helping on this particular phase of the work, and so is Mary Blanshard,12 and if you too could be on that committee you would have a good time as we hope the reports and clippings from the liaison committee groups will come to us and will keep us abreast of the movement throughout the world. I have never felt more hopeful than I do this minute, and I want to clasp my hands and pray to the good gods to enlighten some individuals and groupsfor-spending-money, and charities and philanthropists, to get them to look our way. One-tenth of the money spent on keeping miserable humanity alive, spent on a constructive plan for limiting the birth-rate, controlling the populations, would give us hope of a decent civilisation in the not too distant future. We are going up the Shakespeare country in a few days, then back Tuesday, and go to Paris for a week.13 It will be no time before I’m home again on the Elizabeth, arriving on the 25th.14 Do let’s get together.

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I hope you are better—a thousand times better. If you could have seen this Yoga do his exercises you’d know how we could be sylph-like and never have another ailment! Dearest love, As always, MS. [initialed] TRcyI ASP, MBCo (MSM C9:173–74). A copy of this letter was sent to Abraham Stone.

1. Brush missed the London meeting due to bronchitis and asthma. (Brush to MS, June 30 and Oct. 27, 1951 [MSM S34:809, 35:527].) 2. M. Rosalyn Campbell Weir (1881–1967) was a founding member and trustee of the Brush Foundation and the Cleveland Maternal Health Association. (Meyer, Any Friend of the Movement, 37, 71; “The Brush Foundation,” AWNPBC 6 [Dec. 1957]: 4.) 3. MS likely enclosed the 1950–51 ICPP Report that covered family planning work in Australia, Canada, Finland, Hong Kong, India, Jamaica, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Africa. (ICPP Report, 1950–51 [MSM C13:66].) 4. The ICPP wanted to quickly disseminate information on contraceptive technique and education to stem the increasing reliance on abortion. (ICPP Report, 1950–51 [MSM C13:66].) 5. MS refers to Vera Houghton, who soon hired a part-time assistant, Valerie Hughes. (Houghton to ICPP, Oct. 15, 1951 [MS Unfilmed].) 6. Brush advised MS to first use up the BF funds earmarked for the conference before approaching the foundation again. (Brush to MS, May 24 and Oct. 27, 1951 [MSM S34:604, 35:527].) 7. Mabel Helene Hartog (1887–1954), the American-born widow of Sir Philip Hartog, the British vice chancellor of Dacca University, was known for promoting conciliation between Hindus and Muslims in India. She organized similar social events, such as a September 4 reception to gather English, Indian, and Pakistani women to hear MS speak. (Times [London], July 19, 1954; Houghton to MS, Sept. 3, 1951, and MS to Ellen Watumull, Sept. 12, 1951 [MSM S35:182, C9:182].) 8. Sir Archibald Edward Nye (1895–1967) was the Irish-born high commissioner of India, a veteran army officer, and supporter of Indian independence. MS noted that they discussed Indian affairs and populations at his residence, India House. (DNB; 1951 Calendar and MS to Watumull, Sept. 12, 1951 [MSM S81:1078, C9:182]; New York Times, Sept. 25, 1956.) 9. Yoga is an Indian physical, spiritual, and mental practice, probably best known for its physical exercise system. 10. MS hoped Brush would take on the bulletin because of her interest in writing. She also hoped it would encourage more funds from the BF. (Brush to MS, May 24, 1951 [MSM S34:604].) 11. Barbara Cadbury (1910–2001), a British-born birth control pioneer, was married to British economist George Cadbury, son of the noted chocolate manufacturer. In 1940 the couple moved to Canada, where they devoted much of their time to promoting birth control. Barbara Cadbury helped organize the ICPP’s American Committee in the fall of 1951, becoming its secretary, and helped edit the bulletin. (Oakville [Ont.] Beaver, May 13, 2001; Toronto Daily Star, June 5, 2001.)

October 1951  •  467 12. Mary Hillyer Blanshard (1902–65), the wife of former Nation editor Paul Blanshard, was an American activist for peace, social justice, and birth control. She joined the PPFA in 1946 and was drawn to international work. (New York Times, Mar. 11, 1965; Paul Blanshard to MS, Oct. 13, 1951 [MSM S35:380].) 13. MS and Dorothy McNamee went to Stratford on September 8, visiting Harry and Gerda Guy in Beaconsfield on the way. They returned to London on September 10 and left for Paris the next day. (1951 Calendar [MSM S81:1081–84].) 14. MS sailed from Cherbourg on Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth on September 21, arriving in New York on September 26, 1951. (1951 Calendar [MSM S81:1093–95]; New York Passengers List, 1820–1957.)

166. To K atharine Dexter McCormick 1

Tucson, Arizona October 8, 1951

My dear Mrs. McCormick, At last I was able to go to England to attend the International Committee meeting in London, August 28th. and 29th. This Committee is small at present, representing Birth Control National Organizations in such countries where National Organization still exists.2 The war disorganized so many that it is like beginning all over again in Europe. But England, Sweden, Holland and the U.S.A. hold the line,3 and with Japan and India clamoring for material and educational supplies, there is hope that another two or three years will find great advances in the Orient, as the first International Social Welfare Conference is being held in Madras, December 11th. to 16th., 1952.4 The interest in Birth Control has popped up like mushrooms this last year. Requests come from groups in India, France, Italy, Egypt, Ceylon, Hongkong, Africa, etc. Almost world wide requests for films, literature, speakers, advisers, etc. come constantly to headquarters.5 I was able because of your contribution to help the London Committee to bring two German delegates to London in the hope of supporting and strengthening the feeble interest already in Germany.6 That will be the most difficult task, as the American Occupation has left the Hitler laws intact, which frightens everyone and prevents even Doctors from advising prevention of conception to their patients. These laws must be repealed, as has already been done in the Russian zone.7 Perhaps you read of the fine stand Prime Minister Nehru took in advocating the practice of Birth Control in India and including its teaching in his welfare program.8 That step has greatly increased courage in leadership elsewhere. The International Committee are invited to hold the next Conference in India in [1952?]. Madras is suggested as the place.9 The Indian women are good organizers in their own country, and we will offer our cooperation and advice if needed.10 We hope to send four or five

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delegates, men and women of scientific standing who will not be afraid to utter the words “Birth Control”.11 I really feel hopeful that at last people in many countries are awakening to the importance of Birth Control, not only as a means of health and welfare but as a step toward world peace. The fear of war hangs over England like a cloud of doom. The masses distrust American leadership and if Churchill does not win at the general election it will be cause the miners and laboring classes think he is being “used and led by the ‘War Mongers’ in the U.S.A.” It is a shock to hear these slurs from speakers in Hyde Park and elsewhere.12 This is a long letter just to give you the results of my trip to England and the plans for the next Conference. Another thing I want to report is the encouraging news from two big contraceptive firms that simple means are being tested—one a dehydrated jelly in to powder to mix with water applied to a sponge or wad of cotton.13 This powder is being send to India. Japan has already used a tablet and her birthrate has dropped considerably this last year.14 Always my trust that you keep well and my gratitude for your great interest and support. Cordially Yours, Margaret Sanger P.S. Enclosed is a copy of a brief report from the Secretary of Bombay F.P.A.15 TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S35:323–24). Return address: 65 Sierra Vista Drive.

1. Katharine McCormick inherited a fortune after her husband died in 1947. In 1950 she asked MS’s opinion on the greatest need for financial support in the birth control movement. MS responded that “the world and almost our civilization” depended on the development of a simple, cheap, and safe contraceptive, suggesting that McCormick fund the National Research Council laboratories in the United States, Britain, and Germany and make smaller donations to general international work. McCormick donated five thousand dollars to organize the 3ICPP. (MS to McCormick, Nov. 3 and 23, 1948, Oct. 27 [quote], 1950, and Jan. 8, 1951, and McCormick to MS, Nov. 15, 1948, and Oct. 19 and Nov. 18, 1950 [MSM S29:38, 196, 33:202, 712, 29:134, 33:123, 401.]) 2. The ICPP hoped to add Australia, Canada, Finland, Hong Kong, India, Jamaica, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, and Switzerland as member nations. It was working with other countries to reestablish prewar leagues and launch new birth control work. (ICPP, “Report of Meeting of International Committee on Planned Parenthood: 29th and 30th August, 1951” [MSM C13:74].) 3. The FPA-GB was forced to evacuate its main office during the war and reduce its operations to a bare minimum, postponing the start of new clinics and contraceptive research. After the war, it expanded its clinic network from six to one hundred between 1945 and 1950. In 1938 the Swedish Riksdag eased prohibitions on the sale and advertising of contraceptives, while during the war the RFSU kept birth control services available

October 1951  •  469 and maintained contraceptive manufacturing. The NMB was shut down during the German occupation of the Netherlands and operated underground. It reorganized in 1946 as the Nederlandse Vereniging voor Seksuele Hervorming (NVSH) (Dutch Society for Sexual Reform), with a much greater emphasis on sex education. In the United States, the postwar baby boom lessened the demand for contraceptive services, leading the PPFA to expand marriage and infertility counseling, propose new contraceptive research programs, and become more involved in international efforts. (Leathard, Fight for Family Planning, 69–82; Linder, Crusader for Sex Education, 171; Allan Carlson, Swedish Experiment in Family Politics: The Myrdals and the Interwar Population Crisis [New Brunswick, N.J., 1990], 175; Brandhorst, “From Neo-Malthusian to Sexual Reform,” 66; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 17; PPFA, “A Planned Parenthood Program,” Jan. 19, 1950 [MSM S65:275]; MS, “Birth Control, 1950,” in Britannic Book of the Year [MSM S72:610]; PPFA Field Committee Meeting, Mar. 5, 1952 [PPFAR].) 4. In Japan public acceptance of birth control swelled to 70 percent after the war, and contraceptive use was increasing. However, abortion remained the most common method of family limitation. With Indian independence in 1947, the new government created committees that encouraged family planning and sterilization programs, but still needed funds to implement the work. The Sixth International Conference of Social Work hosted representatives from forty countries to discuss East-West cultural differences and the need to retain village-based communities in Asia. (Steiner, “Japan’s Post-war Population Problems,” 246–7; New York Times, Mar. 30, 1951, and Dec. 14 and 18, 1952; “News and Announcements,” American Sociological Review 16 [Aug. 1951]: 558; Houghton, “Planned Parenthood in India,” 33‑34.) 5. For a summary of the requests and the status of ICPP work in individual countries, see Helen Donington Cohen, “Report of Work of International Secretariat,” Oct. 1948–Oct. 1949 (MSM C13:43). 6. The two delegates were Ilse Lederer and Anne-Marie Durand-Wever. For more on their report, see MS to Stone, Aug. 30, 1951, note 16, herein. MS refers to McCormick’s five-thousand-dollar contribution. (Donington Cohen, “Report of Work of International Secretariat,” Oct. 1948–Oct. 1949, and ICPP, “Report of Meeting of International Committee on Planned Parenthood: 29th and 30th August, 1951” [MSM C13:43, 74]; see also note 1.) 7. On January 21, 1941, the Himmler Police Ordinance outlawed the importation, sale, and production of any contraceptive (save for condoms) and all abortifacient devices unless used to prevent hereditary disease. Despite requests by the German Advisory Body on Public Health, none of the Allied governments repealed it, nor did the Federal Republic of Germany, when it was established in 1949. The law remained in effect until 1969. In the Soviet occupation zone, laws against birth control and abortion were repealed in 1947, though abortion was recriminalized by the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) in January 1950. (Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 151–52, 197–98; Hans Harmsen, “Notes on Abortion and Birth Control in Germany,” Population Studies 3 [Mar. 1950]: 402–5; Göran Therborn, Between Sex and Power: Family in the World, 1900–2000 [New York, 2004], 252.) 8. In July 1951, Jawaharlal Nehru announced a Five-Year Plan that included state support for sterilization and contraception. (Brecher, Nehru, 345–414; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 45.)

470  •  The International Committee on Planned Parenthood 9. With the help of Ellen Watumull, MS convinced the FPA-I to sponsor an international conference at the end of 1952. The ICPP was considering Madras, Bombay, and New Delhi as possible locations. (MS to Watumull, Mar. 16, 1951, and Watumull to Houghton, May 17, 1951 [MSM S34:99, 35:196].) 10. There was some discussion about the respective roles that the ICPP and the FPA-I should play in organizing the meeting. Ellen Watumull and MS wanted to give responsibility to the Indians, which would allow them to reap publicity benefits. Vera Houghton and the British Committee preferred the ICPP to retain control. (MS to Houghton, Mar. 15, 1951, MS to Watumull, May 1, 1951, Watumull to Houghton, May 17, 1951, and Houghton to MS, Apr. 9, 1951 [MSM S34:80, 445, 543, 241].) 11. MS hoped to fund this travel and would ask Rama Rau to see how many delegates the FPA-I could host. (MS to Watumull, Mar. 16, 1951, Brush to MS, Mar. 17, 1951, and MS. to Rama Rau [MSM S34:99, 100, 35:439].) 12. Sir Winston Churchill (1874–1965), British prime minister (1940–45, 1951–55), author, and leader of the Conservative Party, was seeking reelection, after being ousted as prime minister in 1945. He was known to support closer ties with the United States, which made him unpopular among the Left and the working class, who viewed the United States as too conservative and right-wing. London’s Hyde Park was known for its speaker’s corner and the demonstrations that often took place there. (EB; New York Times, Sept. 16 and Oct. 10, 1951.) 13. MS refers to the Holland-Rantos Company and its inconclusive experiments with dry jelly. Ortho Products was the maker of Preceptin, a spermicidal gel. (Todd to MS, Jan. 26, 1951 [MSM S33:816]; see also MS to Folsome, Jan. 23, 1951, note 5, herein.) 14. Contraceptive foaming tablets, such as the Sampoon brand, cost about the same as a condom and were easy to use. Japan’s birthrate dropped from 28.3 per 1,000 in 1950 to 26.7 in 1951, but its population continued to increase by more than 1 million a year. (Fumiko Amano to David Loth, June 3, 1948 [MS Unfilmed]; Yoshio Koya, “The Prevention of Unwanted Pregnancies in a Japanese Village by Contraceptive Foam Tablets,” Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly 38 [Apr. 1960]: 167–68; Population Problems Research Council and Mainichi Newspapers, “Problems of Population,” in Facts about Japan’s Population [Tokyo, 1960], 9; New York Times, Apr. 2, 1952.) 15. The FPA-I report, likely written by Elfriede Vembu, was not found.

167. To C. P. Blacker 1 The ICPP delegates continued to be divided over priorities. The British and Americans sought to focus on birth control and population reduction through family planning, while the Dutch, and to a lesser extent the Swedes, wanted more emphasis on sex education; they were also sensitive to being bullied by American financial clout. Blacker, general secretary of the BES, had begun to work more closely with Sanger in planning for the permanent international organization. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 42.)

October 1951  •  471

Tucson, Arizona [October 25, 1951]

Dear Dr. Blacker, Yours of October 17th. came at the same time with one from Margaret Pyke.2 I cannot tell you how grateful I am that you will consider the Honorary Directorship of the International Committee, after you have been released from your present position in the Eugenics Society.3 The fact that you would like your position to be Honorary is most generous and will I feel certain, help us here enormously in the way of contributions. The probation period that you speak of is wise and good policy.4 And also in the hectic conditions in the world today one like yourself will want to direct the course of the Committee as close to our goal as possible. I quite agree about the Dutch members of the Committee. I have never felt that their influence in Holland or in the International was particularly valuable, and so it seems that it would be wise to let the present setup end and begin again to reconstruct and establish an International that will be a credit to the pioneering work that has gone on in the English-speaking world, as least for the last generation.5 I like your suggestions as to the objectives of the Committee in establishing branches or other centers in the Middle East.6 This has been an untouched territory. I feel certain that you will be inspired with splendid, constructive ideas, and it will be my hope that perhaps in another year you could visit us in America and meet many of the people whose interests are keen and many who have admired you from afar. I am entirely in agreement with your suggestion that we wind up the present Committee at the end of the year. At this rate I will not send a further contribution, as I have already urged the Planned Parenthood Federation to send $750.00 as their contribution for this year.7 I will, however, not hold out on my promised check if there will be need of it to get by until the first of the year. Mrs. Houghton or Helena Wright can let me know in November what the financial situation is at that time. Again my kindest regards and my sincere thanks for your splendid cooperation. I think in considering new objectives it is important that we realize that population studies are being covered by special population groups, one at Princeton New Jersey and another at the U.N., and doubtless there are one or more groups in England doing the same work.8 In my estimation the population question and especially population control has become of worldwide significance, and I think that in order to hold our own group interests and the support of our contributors over a period of many years, we must include either Family Planning or Planned Parenthood as part of our setup. I am not so

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interested in dragging in sex education or family guidance as the Swedish and Holland groups, but I think our goal must be more or less reviewed in the light of world events. As I finish this letter today reports have come in about the election in England. While it seems there is still doubt as to Churchill’s triumph, the headlines give us hope that it will be a triumph for him.9 With deep appreciation for your generous cooperative suggestions. Most Cordially, Margaret Sanger TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S35:574–75). Return address: 65 Sierra Vista Drive. For a transcribed copy, see MSM C9:240–41.

1. Blacker became more involved in ICPP work after its offices moved to the BES. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 33.) 2. Margaret Pyke formally suggested that the ICPP be replaced by a “new organization concerned with world problems of population,” nominating Blacker to be honorary director. (Pyke to MS, Oct. 18, 1951 [MSM S35:457].) 3. Blacker agreed to take the ICPP position starting in June 1952. (Blacker to MS, Oct. 17, 1951 [MSM S35:443].) 4. Blacker refused to take a salary and proposed a one-year “probation on both sides.” (Blacker to MS, Oct. 17, 1951 [MSM S35:443].) 5. Blacker wrote: “I am not enthusiastic about the Dutch members. Indeed I think we would be much better off without them. I suggested to Mrs. Pyke that it might be a good plan formally to dissolve the present committee as soon as possible, ostensibly on the grounds that it is financially insolvent, but in practice keep our present secretariat alive and in being.” (Blacker to MS, Oct. 17, 1951 [MSM S35:443].) 6. Blacker thought that the ICPP should also establish a Middle Eastern branch, suggesting Turkey as a good starting place because its “women are more emancipated.” He thought that Greece, which lacked religious opposition to birth control, might also be suitable. (Blacker to MS, Oct. 17, 1951 [MSM S35:443].) 7. See Vogt to MS, Oct. 15, 1951, and Houghton to MS, Nov. 12, 1951 [MSM S35:419, 605].) 8. Population groups active in 1951 included Princeton’s Office of Population Research (OPR), founded in 1936 with funding from the Milbank Memorial Fund; the UN Population Division, a twelve-member commission of experts, formed in 1946, who investigated and reported on population issues; and other U.S.-based groups such as the SFRPP (Miami), founded in 1924, and the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) (Washington, D.C.), founded in 1929. In Europe the Population Investigation Committee, founded in 1936, conducted research at the London School of Economics and Political Science. (Connelly, Fatal Misconception, 106, 117; Symonds and Carter, United Nations and the Population Question, 41–42; Soloway, Demography and Degeneration, 246–48.) 9. The Conservative Party won a slim majority in the House of Commons, restoring Churchill as prime minister. (Washington Post, Oct. 27, 1951.)

December 1951  •  473

168. To Jawaharlal Nehru 1

[New York, N.Y.] December 3, 1951

Dear Mr. Nehru: Your cable came a few days ago and I quite appreciate that you cannot safely lend your name to magazines or publications without knowing their content and their policies.2 First, may I apologize that we have put you to this expense? We tried to have a collect message return, but were told that this is not possible in cables. I had the pleasure of seeing your sister and her daughter at Dorothy Norman’s a week or ten days ago and she looks so radiant and beautiful that I think America and the exciting life in Washington did her no harm.3 She will tell you of our hope to have an international birth control and population conference in your country in 1952.4 I would like to have it take place in New Delhi rather than in Madras.5 It would be a great joy to me to go back to India again and it would be especially a feather in my cap to have our conference in India so shortly after General MacArthur’s refusal to allow me to go to Japan upon the invitation of some of the freedom loving people in that country.6 Another attempt is being made in Japan to get me there and it is quite possible that our going to India will make this easier for the occupation authorities to admit my presence.7 It’s a lot of fun living and working these days. I hope to see you when we go to India and I do want to personally thank you for making it possible for my medical director, Dr. Stone, to go to India under the prestige of the WHO at the invitation of your medical director.8 Sincerely yours, P.S. My close friend, Dorothy Brush, sends personal greetings. She has never forgotten the honor and privilege of being entertained by you at luncheon in your home with her young son, Charles, in 1937.9 We were both deeply impressed and grateful for the trouble you went to to see that she received your letter supporting me when Mrs. Brush got my honorary degree from Smith College for me.10 M. S. TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S35:696–97).

1. Nehru was up for reelection and in the midst of a seven-week national speaking tour to support INCP candidates. (New York Times, Sept. 18, 1951.) 2. MS had asked Nehru to act as a sponsor for an ICPP monthly newsletter. Nehru cabled back, “I am sorry that I am unable to give my name to any publication.” (MS to Nehru, Nov. ?, 1935, and Nehru to MS, Nov. 30, 1951 [MSM S35:688, 680].) 3. Nehru’s sister Vijaya Pandit had recently resigned her post as India’s ambassador to the United States to run for a Parliament seat. She encountered MS at a farewell

474  •  The International Committee on Planned Parenthood reception held for her on November 19 in New York City. Pandit had three daughters, one of whom, Nayantara Pandit Sahgal (b. 1927), recalled in her memoir meeting MS in New York. Dorothy Stecker Norman (1905–97), a photographer, writer, and social activist who had known MS since 1929, was a member of the BCCRB board of managers. Long a supporter of Indian independence, Norman was close friends with Nehru and his family. (New York Times, Nov. 6 and 20, 1951, and Apr. 13, 1997; Washington Post, Nov. 23, 1951; Nayantara Sahgal, Prison and Chocolate Cake [New York, 1954], 147; MS to Friend, [1932?] [MSM S61:864].) 4. The ICPP was still working with the FPA-I on arrangements, including setting dates, location, and the number of delegates. (MS to Rama Rau, Oct. 16, 1951, Watumull to Rama Rau, Oct. 25, 1951, and Houghton to MS, Nov. 12, 1951 [MSM S35:439, 524, 605].) 5. Madras was hosting the International Conference of Social Work, and some hoped its delegates might attend both meetings. The FPA-I wanted to hold the conference in Bombay because it was more advanced in birth control work. MS preferred New Delhi, where they could attract the attention of government officials. (MS to Pandit, Oct. 15, 1951, and Houghton to MS, Nov. 12, 1951 [MSM S35:410, 605].) 6. MS had given up trying to enter Japan after General MacArthur wrote, in February 1950, that the matter was “a social problem for solution by the Japanese people themselves without interference.” President Truman relieved MacArthur of his military command for insubordination. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 242; MacArthur to Charles Scribner, Feb. 24, 1950 [MSM S32:353] [quote]; ANB.) 7. Once the occupation of Japan ended in September 1951, Shidzue Katō arranged for the Mainichi Shimbun newspapers to invite MS to Japan to lecture in October 1952. MS received the formal invitation on the day she wrote this letter. (Hunter, Concise Dictionary, 188–89; Katō to MS, Nov. 4, 1951, and Chikao Honda, Mainichi Newspapers, to MS, Dec. 3, 1951 [MSM S35:587, 693].) 8. Abraham Stone’s six-week tour of India to initiate government-funded tests of the rhythm method was at the invitation of Amrit Kaur, India’s minister of health and the president of the WHO assembly. Kaur opposed artificial birth control methods for religious and moral reasons and argued that Indian villages were not sanitary enough to adopt Western birth control methods. Stone’s trip was controversial, as many American and Indian family planning activists saw rhythm as an ineffective contraceptive method, but Stone viewed it as a breakthrough—the first time that the UN had endorsed any birth control program—and took the opportunity to talk to medical audiences about the entire range of contraceptives. (New York Times, Feb. 7, 1964; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 46; Connelly, Fatal Misconception, 146; Stone to MS, Dec. ?, 1951, and Mar. 1, 1952 [MSM S35:913, C9:360].) 9. Brush was now the editor of the AWNPBC. She wrote that Nehru was “tall and spare with the face of a sad ascetic, his dark brooding eyes flame with the fire of Nationalism.” (MS to Houghton, Oct. 8, 1951, and Brush to MS, Oct. 30, 1937 [MSM C9:208, S13:681]; Brush, “Calcutta” writing fragment, 1937 [quote] [DHBP].) 10. MS received the honorary LL.D. on June 6, 1949. Brush, a Smith alumna, had arranged for MS to donate a large collection of her papers to the college in 1946. Nehru’s letter was not found. (Springfield [Mass.] Daily News, June 6, 1949; Margaret Grierson to Brush, May 6, 1946 [LCM 119:192B]; for more detail, see Vol. 3.)

January 1952  •  475

169. To Dorothy Hamilton Brush 1

[Tucson, Ariz.] January 24, 1952

Dearest Dorothy, This morning the marvelous news bulletin arrived.2 I sent you a telegram trying to express my enthusiastic delight in its make-up, its content and the style with which you have produced it.3 I am more than delighted. I have asked for at least 10 copies at your earliest convenience so I can send them to special people here for money raising for International. Did you send them or have them sent to the list that I sent you, Mr. Creel, Rockefellers, and others?4 Also do be sure to put aside a number from each issue for historical volumes, which will be most necessary as this increases in popularity. Smith College, Library of Congress, New York Library.5 Many libraries should have the first copy, but you have probably thought of all this and have done it. As to Dr. Gamble’s suggestion I agree, and you and I have discussed this before, that we will not carry any Roman Catholic controversy or arguments in the bulletin, nor contraceptive information, per se.6 However, we must realize that all over the world in other countries the question of contraceptive technique is discussed with much more freedom and openness than it is in the U.S.A. The nearer midwest that you go, the more puritanical do people become. So I am quite positive that the Brush Foundation Board would be quite horrified at the thought.7 But that doesn’t mean that they are right, even though you may have to take orders or consider their opinion, no matter how reactionary for the time being.8 But Dr. Gamble has a very important point that more and more people reading the Bulletin in the Orient are going to want to know the good or the bad opinion regarding contraceptives.9 For instance there is a new book called Human Fertility by Dr. Edmund Farris, Executive Director of the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology, Woodland Avenue and Thirty-sixth Street, Philadelphia 4, Pa. I received a letter from him in which he states about Dr. Stones trip to India, “I am exceedingly disappointed that the rhythm method is being employed, in that I know there will be many, many failures. The system which I would advocate I believe would be much safer than any other method available today.”10 This is of interest. It is scientific, it is up to date, and I think definitely something of this nature should be carried either in the February or the March issue.11 The point that must be considered, however, when you come to contraceptive technique is Post Office rules, and I would not be of the opinion that you should have the medicos make all the decisions, to keep the paper alive and interesting and up to date.12 If you are going to discuss the application of methods, there must be a wide range of opinion among scientists, bio-chemists, experienced laymen, as well as Urologists and Gynecologists.

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They ↑Because the M.Ds?↓ have too much fear to express anything that isn’t already an accepted opinion. There may be some specialists but quite few. Do get word from Dr. Farris and his book and write to Dr. Mudd, who will give you even more interesting information than those who are stuck-in-the-mud on rhythm.13 There is a lot more to write about, but I will take bits at a time so that you won’t be overwhelmed. As to the Conference I told you over the phone that it is pretty definite, and both Mrs. Watumull and I agreed with Lady Rama Rau that if November 24th. to December 1st. was a good time for her, and Bombay the place, that we were all for making it as easy as possible for her and her group to make it good.14 The Watumull Foundation has send some money to help. $5,000 is to be available for Lady Rama Rau’s overhead. I think that is magnificent, as they are not a big foundation, depending year by year on exports.15 I have sent my 25% on the SS President Wilson to Rose Speck.16 I will keep my fingers crossed for the rest of it. Perhaps when Uncle Sam sends me his bill in March,17 I will have to give up the whole project, but until then I am hoping. Affectionately, Margaret [signed] Margaret TLS MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S36:296–98). Return address: 65 Sierra Vista Drive. Handwritten interlineation by MS.

1. Brush worked with Robert Allerton Parker, MS’s old ghostwriter, to prepare the first issue of the AWNPBC. Parker (1888–1970) was an American journalist, editor, and author of several biographies. Brush thought that the AWNPBC needed “a business manager” because she was only comfortable on “the writing end and don’t feel confident on organizing bizness!” (Brush to MS, Jan. 4, 1952, Parker to MS, Feb. 1, 1952, and Brush to MS, Jan. 25, 1952 [quotes] [MSM S36:50, 431, 316]; SSDI; New York Times, June 15, 1970; see also Vol. 1.) 2. The inaugural issue included a brief message from MS, short articles on the ICPP and world population, and birth control news from thirteen countries. (AWNPBC 1 [Jan. 1952]: 1–4 [LCM 145:2].) 3. See MS to Brush, Jan. 24, 1952 (MSM S36:295). 4. For MS’s list of thirty “special people” to receive the bulletin, see Helen Truman to Brush, Jan. 2, 1952 (MSM S36:30). 5. In addition to the Sophia Smith Collection, MS donated a large group of her organizational documents to the Library of Congress and a smaller group of records to the New York Public Library. (MS to Florence Rose, June 10, 1946, [MSM S25:773]; see also Vol. 3.) 6. MS preferred that birth control instruction be given individually by “those who are qualified to give it.” Clarence Gamble suggested that the AWNPBC should include information on effective contraceptive methods. William Vogt, Brush, and Abraham

January 1952  •  477 Stone agreed with MS. (MS to Gamble, Feb. 5, 1952 [quote], and Brush to MS, Jan. 18, 1952 [MSM S36:489, 220].) 7. In November 1951, the BF provided ten thousand dollars for the AWNPBC but was “dead against” including contraceptive information. Gamble persisted, and Brush thought that he was wearing Vogt down. (MS to Gamble, Feb. 5, 1952, and Brush to MS, Jan. 18 and 25 [quote] [MSM S36:481, 220, 316].) 8. The BF distrusted some of the ICPP’s goals and did not want to support “anything but a clearinghouse for world information on pop. problems.” (Rosalyn Weir to MS, Feb. 21, 1949 [MSM C8:537].) 9. Gamble wanted the AWNPBC to help groups evaluate the cost and effectiveness of specific contraceptives. (Gamble to Brush, Jan. 16, 1952 [MSM S36:510].) 10. Edmond John Farris (1907–61), an American physician and fertility expert who questioned the reliability of existing ovulation tests, developed a “small instrument” for calculating ovulation. In India Stone “was always careful to emphasize that I did not consider the method to be the best or safest one—and with medical groups I always talked about all other methods.” (New York Times, Apr. 15, 1961; Farris, Human Fertility and Problems of the Male [White Plains, N.Y., 1950]; Farris to MS, Jan. 3, 1952 [quote 1] [LCM 8:482]; Stone to MS, Dec. ?, 1951 [quote 2] [MSM S35:913].) 11. Brush did not change her mind, explaining in the March issue, “Policy and space limitations preclude description and technical discussion of contraceptive methods.” The February issue announced the 3ICPP, included a short article by Brush on birth control and the masses, and provided updates from nine countries. (Brush, “Notes,” AWNPBC 3 [Mar. 1952]: 4; see also AWNPBC 2 [Feb. 1952]: 1–4.) 12. In 1936 MS won a judicial victory that provided an exception to the Comstock Act for physicians “for the purpose of saving life or promoting the well being of their patients,” but sending contraceptive advice and instruction through the mails remained illegal for laypersons. (Augustus Hand, U.S. vs. One Package Opinion, Dec. 7, 1936 [LCM 60:278].) 13. Stuart Mudd (1893–1975), an American microbiologist at the University of Pennsylvania and a birth control activist who worked with Clarence Gamble and the Pennsylvania Birth Control Federation, sent MS Farris’s book in December, arguing that his research could be used for infertility or contraceptive work. (NatCAB; New York Times, July 8, 1987; Mudd to MS, Dec. 26, 1951, and MS to Mudd, Jan. 18, 1952 [LCM 9:753, 754].) 14. Lady Dhanvanthi Handoo Rama Rau (1893–1987), a prominent Indian women’s rights activist, was the president of the FPA-I. She had discussed her overall scheme for the conference with Abraham Stone and Ellen Watumull. (New York Times, July 20, 1987; Santa Barbara [Calif.] News-Press, Oct. 27, 1953; Watumull to Rama Rau, Jan. 10, 1952, and Rama Rau to Watumull, Jan. 24, 1952 [MSM S36:159, 412].) 15. See MS to Folsome, Jan. 23, 1951, note 3, herein. 16. Rose M. Speck (1894–1978) was a New York–based travel agent who arranged the trip details for Brush and MS. The S.S. President Wilson was an American President Lines ship that made regular trips to Asia. (SSDI; Speck to MS, Jan. 15, 1952, and MS to Speck, Jan. 22, 1952 [MSM S36:191, 270].) 17. MS’s 1951 income taxes were not found.

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170. To Abraham Stone 1

[Tucson, Ariz.] March 7, 1952

Dear Abram, It was very good of you to write a good full letter of March first.2 It was just the kind of letter I wanted to have. I also am grateful that you had the Federation send me the report of the four research studies now underway.3 I am especially interested in Dr. Pinkus’ studies, and I wonder if he would be a suitable person to send to India for the Conference.4 I wish you would ask Mr. Vogt to have a copy of Dr. Blackers last letter. It is full of suggestions, and I think it is very worthwhile to give it serious study.5 Dorothy Brush, too, should have a copy, and I think they are better set up in the Federation for keeping you and Dorothy completely informed than I am here, although I do keep Mrs. Watumull and Mr. Vogt complete informed, and a good deal is sent on to Dorothy. There is no doubt that your trip to India did a great deal of good. I could not imagine otherwise. Wherever you go and wherever you speak you have that personality which quietly gives confidence and never seems to stir antagonism, nor too much controversy. I quite appreciate that the people of India want to know what to do. That is the cry all over the world, but that should not in any way diminish the constant, continuous work that should be done to inform, to agitate, to instruct the people over there over and over again on the need. Remember that the enemy is never still and if we lose sight of their activity how subtly they work, how they never cease their poisonous insinuations. It would be a very short-sighted viewpoint to hush the propaganda side of this work. I did not find in my past experience that the Japanese people resented suggestions that they should reduce their population. In fact the Japanese write me that those talks in 1921, relative to their population and the prophecy that such increase would mean war, has stirred them again to do something about their population question.6 Nor the people in India did not resent that point of view as far as I could find, even though the population question was not as important in their minds as the health of woman and the protection of the living children.7 So much depends upon how far the audience has gone, how much they know, and what their particular needs are. We must soon have a get-together on the International. I am urging Dr. Blacker to come over to New York where he can consult with members of the Federation and yourself, and it would be cheaper for us all to contribute toward his expenses than for anyone of us to go over there. I would be willing to do that if Mr. Vogt cannot raise the money. Perhaps Dorothy and you would share if the Federation isn’t able to underwrite his expenses.8 I feel this is most important, and I might save my time and come east when he

March 1952  •  479

is in New York. But it is getting late in the year to get qualified scientists to make their plans for November, if they are going to India. This should be decided before the first of May, and I wish you could needle up Mr. Vogt to its importance.9 Remember that in Geneva we worked for two years on that Conference, and everyone of the 300 men who came had planned a year in advance to make the trip and their contribution.10 If you and Dorothy could plan to come out I could get Mrs. Watumull to come over here, but first I think there should be a meeting with Mr. Vogt and other members of the International Committee to go over Dr. Blacker’s suggestions, his proposed members for the Committee, all excellent scientists and we should set up in America a corresponding group of the same caliber and reputation in the scientific world.11 At present I feel our own International Committee is quite weak and should be strengthened. Certainly we need separate funds, and then we need a full time director or executive secretary, or someone with International experience of organizing. There seems to be a lot to talk about, but this is just a note to thank you again for your good letter. Affectionately, Margaret [signed] Margaret TLS ASP, MBCo (MSM C9:369–71). Return address: 65 Sierra Vista Drive.

1. Since his return from India in January, Stone reported on the establishment of five pilot studies of the rhythm method in India and spoke about his trip at the PPFA’s annual meeting in Chicago. (New York Times, Jan. 6, 1952; Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb. 9, 1952.) 2. Stone discussed his trip and the PPFA’s research program in the letter, promising to meet with MS in Tucson. (Stone to MS, Mar. 1, 1952 [MSM C9:360].) 3. The reports detailed John Rock’s “statistical study of infertility factors,” G. E. Seegar Jones’s study of “endocrine factors in fertility,” David W. Bishop’s “study of the male factor in fertility,” and Gregory Pincus’s “studies in hormonal contraception” at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology (WFEB). (PPFA, “Research Projects in Progress,” Mar. 1952 [LCM 119:108A]; Stone to MS, Mar. 1, 1952 [MSM S36:739].) 4. Gregory Goodwin Pincus (1903–67) was an American endocrinologist at Boston University specializing in the study of reproductive hormones. MS met Pincus through Stone in 1950 and helped him secure two PPFA grants to study hormonal contraceptives. Working with scientist Min Chueh Chang, Pincus focused on the effects of progesterone on ovulation. Stone noted that of the four projects, Pincus and Chang’s work was the most important. (Stone to MS, Mar. 1, 1952, and MS to McCormick, Mar. 10, 1952 [MSM C9:360, S36:827]; ANB; Marks, Sexual Chemistry, 91–94; for more on the pill, see Vol. 3.) 5. Blacker noted that the British were “a little nervous about the possibility of being asked to undertake rather more than we can adequately carry out” and proposed that

480  •  The International Committee on Planned Parenthood the ICPP be headquartered in the United States, where there was more funding. He suggested that the current London group become “the British Committee of the ICPP” and other countries be encouraged to form their own committees to liaise with the ICPP. (Blacker to MS, Feb. 19, 1952 [MSM S36:612].) 6. Stone had asserted that while the “literate people of India” understood the pressing population problem, there was “resentment in many quarters that people from the outside come to India to tell them that they have too many people.” (Stone to MS, Mar. 1, 1952 [MSM C9:360].) 7. Though the AIWC focused on improving maternal and infant care, most birth control advocacy groups in India were more concerned with overpopulation and its relation to poverty and economic development. By the 1950s, opponents were still arguing that birth control was immoral. (See, for example, G. Raghava Ras to MS, Nov. 26, 1935, K. S. Palmer to the ABCL, Nov. 8, 1932, M. O. Varghese to MS, Nov. 29, 1935, and Poona Birth Control League, “Appeal to Ministers and Legislators throughout India,” ca. 1930s [LCM 17:922, 512, 943, 18:856]; Times of India, Dec. 3 and 10 and Nov. 28, 1952.) 8. MS had been urging Blacker to visit New York since the end of January, but other commitments and the cost of the trip delayed him. (MS to Blacker, Jan. 31, 1952, and Blacker to MS, Feb. 8, 1952 [MSM S36:392, 524].) 9. Planning for the November 3ICPP had bogged down, with the British reluctant to invite delegates without assurances that their travel costs would be covered. The Indians were uncomfortable with inviting foreign dignitaries or setting up a program without ICPP guidance, and the Americans were slow to raise funds. As a result, no invitations had gone out. MS complained, “No one seems to have the authority of what do to and what not to do,” adding, “If I had been given full authority and direction to organize this Indian Conference it would be much easier for all concerned.” (MS to Houghton, Mar. 19, 1952 [quotes] [MSM S36:942]; for more on the negotiations, see correspondence between MS, Blacker, Watumull, and Rama Rau, January–March 1952 [MSM S36].) 10. MS began work on the WPC immediately after the 6INMBCC concluded in March 1925, but the program and speaker roster did not fully come together until about five months before the conference. (“Second Meeting on International Committee,” Apr. 4, 1925, and Edith How-Martyn to Clarence Cook Little, Mar. 22, 1926 [LCM 122:352, 547].) 11. Abraham Stone, Dorothy Brush, and William Vogt met in New York on March 21 to work on the 3ICPP program and drafted a list of potential American delegates. (For more details on Blacker’s proposal, see “Proposed Formation of a British Advisory Committee,” Mar. 21, 1952, and Vogt to MS, Mar. 21, 1952 [MSM C13:91, S36:983].)

171. To Dorothy Hamilton Brush 1 Both Sanger and Brush were too understaffed to keep PPFA and ICPP officers abreast of conference planning. Sanger urged the PPFA to raise conference funds, but it was still deliberating over its allocations to the AWNPBC and international work. (MS to Brush, Mar. 5, 1952, and Brush to MS, Mar. 12 and June 9, 1952 [MSM S36:789, 849, 37:789].)

May 1952  •  481

[Santa Barbara, Calif.] 5 Am Thursday May 29/52

Darling Dorothy— Your wonderful success at the Cleveland meeting simply astonishes me— not at the success, but at your doing & saying & requesting, when you think you are “not good” at money raising—2 As a matter of fact you are a most convincing adept individual in getting what ever you decide you want— It was just the right attack to ask for money for other objectives because you had won their confidence in making the Bulletin so good & such a Success. Each issue retains the high quality of the first issue which was my first love—3 Rob Parker says you are unusually equipped for a perfect Editor— He thinks you can go as high in the Editorial world as you want to— Thats high praise from one who never praises—4 Of course the business end is part of any magazine—you must keep your hand on that part too— Its too easy for some high & mighty “expert” to take over the “bizness” & ruin utterly ruin every thing you stand for. Its someone like Helen you need—someone honest & faithful without experience but can learn—5 It’s the pesky details that bore me but those are just the “drops of water” that make the Ocean—also as soon as you start subscriptions—thats a headache—a real headache darling— Having edited the Woman Rebel on a free basis—then the B.C. Review on a sub basis—Id take the free basis any time—6 Subscriptions run out, notice must be sent before, all kinds of problems pop up when people pay their 200. On the other hand its only right that people should subscribe— If we do succeed in launching a Permanent International P.P. Organization after or out of Bombay then your Bulletin may become the official organ & if there is a staff—the business end will be off your hands—that can be done in orderly fashion, leaving you to do & direct the contents & editorial— The cost of any magazine goes up & up the more people have a hand in it—I dread to see that. You are right in assuming that I have been thinking about a Permanent World Organization—from the light touch of our conversation with Mr Creel you remembered that.7 I met a Mr Mehta at the Wattumulls the other day—Scholar—financial adviser to the Banking interests now lecturing at the University of L.A.8 Charming—History of the B.C. movement at his finger tips— Accurately remembered every incident married—four or five children—a son left blind from meningitis in childhood—tops all his studies in A’s wants to go to Columbia College in N.Y—9 So he will be in New York with his son in June or

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July & I hope you will meet the father if not the son. Look him over as a possible director— Then Mrs Nehru10 was here to lunch yesterday en route to Wash D.C. Her husband & Sir Rama Rau are together on the World Bank in Wash DC11 you will like her— She believes in Rhythm as it has worked since 1936 for her!! Stone met her—went to Wash before he went to India to talk to her—she thinks he did the right thing in advocating Rhythm to the people of India— as they have nothing in the way of a Contraceptive—12 Her description of conditions simply strips one of every suggestion & gets thinking down to basic—salt—& oil— The only two possible ingredients as household essentials that might be used—13 Im going to write to Zonite people—Salt is the basis of Zonite14— But Salt ↑or↓ Oil must be used with a plug—cotton or sponge—any indigenous commodoty available— Lady Rama Rau hopes we can bring with us a person who can remain a while to set up an experimental clinic— Any suggestions?15 not a pilot but something else—where all methods are advised &. Its what our Bureau has always done—all methods—all supplies no one type of pessary no one type of jelly all known methods used.16 Well here it is the end of the month & Vogt has not sent one dollar for expenses. Sectys bill went off ten days ago. I just refused to bother any further— If he does not send the $500, Ill have to make the most of it.17 Yes darling Ill be glad to keep account of every dollar—to whom will the bills or expenses be sent?18 Sectys & stamps—long distance phone calls—typewriter supplies—extra typewriter—- Air travel now & then to LA to consult. Stationary—typists on hour basis— I’ve spent over $100 since I came here just getting supplies & material to work with—any way I can go ahead with a lighter heart because of you—& your dear & darling thought of me—loyal & precious that you are— Fortunately Im keeping well. Thank God for that dearest love ever Margaret I need a 1951 Whos Who—any one have an extra?19 ALS MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S37:592–601).

1. Despite continued poor health, Brush worked full-time on the AWNPBC and helping MS organize the 3ICPP. (Brush to MS, May 12 and 19, 1952 [MSM S37:407, 475].) 2. Brush took MS’s advice to “do the thing I’m scared to do,” which was fund-raising. She went to the BF and secured a one-thousand-dollar donation for 3ICPP expenses as well as funds to pay for the AWNPBC for another year. “I told them the international

May 1952  •  483 work was now in the pioneer stage your work had been in this country; that the Brush was the only foundation I knew of . . . to do this work. That while I knew the medical research they had done was wonderful . . . there were many other foundations set up to support such work. That if the Brush would take on the leadership in this work for the world they might make the name as internationally famous as the name of the founder had been.” The foundation also promised support for an international headquarters in London when the new organization was formed. (Brush to MS, May 12 [quote 1], 19 [quote 2], and 26, 1952 [MSM S37:407, 475, 539].) 3. MS refers to the June 1952 issue, the sixth published of the AWNPBC. 4. Parker also wrote of Brush, “I wish she had more confidence in her own judgement.” (Parker to MS, Mar. 5, 1952 [MSM S36:773].) 5. MS hired Helen Stahl Truman (1913–72) as her secretary, in November 1951. (Tucson [Ariz.] Daily Citizen, May 2, 1972.) 6. MS often distributed the Woman Rebel for free, though she charged an annual subscription fee of one dollar. The BCR, which MS edited from 1917 to 1929, was circulated through subscription, street, and newsstand sales. (Woman Rebel 1 [Mar. 1914]: 8; for more on the BCR, see Vol. 1.) 7. MS met Dana S. Creel of the RF on September 28, 1951. She believed he would support creating an international organization if it became a permanent body with a board of prominent individuals and a paid director. (MS to Houghton, Oct. 8, 1951, and to Creel, Oct. 8, 1951 [MSM C9:208, 207].) 8. Amolak Ram Mehta (1895–1986), a Punjab-born, London-trained physician and India’s director-general of health services, was at the University of California at Los Angeles Medical School as a visiting Fulbright professor. (New York Times, July 29, 1986.) 9. Amolak Mehta had seven children, including noted essayist and journalist Ved Mehta (b. 1934), who had just graduated as salutatorian from the Arkansas School for the Blind. He had contracted cerebrospinal meningitis and lost his sight at age three. (New York Times, July 29, 1986; Guiyou Hang, Asian American Autobiographers [Westport, Conn., 2001], 243–45.) 10. (Fori) Shobha (Magdolna Friedmann or Forboth) Nehru (b. 1908) was the Jewish Hungarian-born wife of Indian diplomat Braj Kumar Nehru. (Times of India, Nov. 5, 2012; Sunday Guardian, May 29, 2011.) 11. Braj Kumar Nehru (1909–2001), a cousin of Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, was an executive director of the World Bank. He became economic minister at the Indian Embassy in Washington in 1954. Sir Benegal Rama Rau (1889–1969), Dhanvanthi Rama Rau’s husband, was a career civil servant who had formerly served as India’s ambassador to the United States and as governor of the Reserve Bank of India from 1949 to 1957. He was elected chairman of the board of the World Bank in 1950. (New York Times, Dec. 14, 1969; Anna Rothe, ed., Current Biography Yearbook [New York, 1949].) 12. India’s educated began adopting birth control more widely after World War II, but its rural and poor women, many illiterate, were still hampered by a lack of bathrooms, running water, privacy, and the availability of cheap and reliable methods. As S. Ghosh wrote to MS, “India is a poor country. So the method used must be cheap and the manipulation must be easy and simple.” (Houghton, “Planned Parenthood in India,” 33–34; Ghosh to MS, Oct. 16, 1951 [quote] [MSM S35:424].)

484  •  The International Committee on Planned Parenthood 13. Poor women frequently resorted to using a piece of cotton or other material soaked in a salt solution as a contraceptive. As early as 1914, MS had advocated it in Family Limitation, having learned of its popularity among Parisian peasants. Clarence Gamble promoted this method for the poor because it was cheap and easy to use. Butter or oil was also sometimes recommended. Many believed that even intermittently effective contraception was better than nothing. (Himes and Stone, Practical Birth Control Methods, 109, 112; Linder, Crusader for Sex Education, 186.) 14. The Zonite Company, founded in 1922, manufactured cosmetics, household products, and pharmaceuticals, including its popular eponymous liquid antiseptic. Zonite’s active ingredient, sodium hypochlorite, was a bleach. It was promoted as a “feminine hygiene product” and used as a contraceptive douching solution because of its ability to kill sperm as well as bacteria. (New York Times, Feb. 26, 1956; “The Accident of Birth,” 112; Rachel Lynn Palmer and Sarah K. Greenberg, Facts and Frauds in Woman’s Hygiene [New York, 1936], 152–53.) 15. (Fori) Shobha Nehru told MS that Mrs. Rama Rau wanted an experienced researcher to open an “experimental center” that would provide advice on both contraceptives and infertility treatment. (Hannah Peters to MS, May 29 and June 2, 1952, and MS to Rama Rau, June 2, 1952 [MSM S37:589, 645, 652].) 16. Since its founding as the CRB in 1923, the MSRB tested new contraceptives and shared the results with other clinics and leagues. In 1952 the MSRB studied more than one thousand patients to “develop a more simple method of contraception which will prove to be a safe, economical, harmless and acceptable product.” (MSRB, 1952 Annual Report [MSM S64:392].) 17. Funds raised by the ICPP American Committee were funneled through the PPFA, but William Vogt was reluctant to release them. He sent $505 to MS on June 4. (MS to Vogt, May 5, 1952, and Vogt to MS, June 4, 1952 [MSM S37:359, 703].) 18. The BF required a careful accounting of all expenses charged to its $1,000 gift. (Brush to MS, May 26, 1952 [MSM S37:539].) 19. Who’s Who in America was a biographical reference, published annually since 1899 by the Marquis Who’s Who Company in Chicago.

172. From Albert Einstein 1 In May Sanger began sending invitations to a list of Planned Parenthood supporters in the United States and India as well as to “others interested in Population and allied subjects,” asking if they would serve as official sponsors of the 3ICPP. She promised that the names would “be given only at the Conference and carried in the documentary record of its proceedings.” Among those sent such letters were Betty Mary Goetting, Fannie Hurst, and Ernest Burgess. A British version of this letter was sent to a similar list of influential people, including Sir Russell Brain, Lord Simon of Wythenshawe, and Julian Huxley. (MS to Sponsors, May 1952, and C. P. Blacker, “Provisional List of Sponsors for the World Conference,” June 1952 [MSM C14:560, 576].)

June 1952  •  485

[Princeton, N.J.] June 28, 1952

Dear Mrs. Sanger: I am gladly willing to become a sponsor of the World Conference on Planned Parenthood in Bombay. You undoubtedly know that in those last years genuinely liberal people have forcefully supported the hypothesis that excessive propagation is the physiological consequence of malnutrition.2 There is a school of thought, especially promulgated by the extreme Left, which holds that the fight against overpopulation can be waged successfully only by economic and technical help and not by a direct attempt to influence and educate people.3 I am, however, fully convinced that this attitude is dangerously one-sided. It does, f.i., completely neglect the fact that progress of hygiene and medicine has completely altered the earlier precarious equilibrium of the quantitative stability of the human race. The increase of the human population of the world in the last hundred years cannot entirely be due to malnutrition! I am therefore firmly convinced that a powerful attempt to solve this tremendous problem, at least partly, by conscious educational effort is of urgent necessity. Yours very sincerely, A. Einstein [signed] Albert Einstein.

TLS MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S38:353). For TRcy, see MSM C9:592; for published version, see MSM C9:592.4 Copies were sent to the names MS listed at the bottom of the letter: “Notsten Creel Ogburn5 Mrs Myer6 Whelpton Vogt Thompson Pendel7 Brush Watumull8 Rau London9 (C. V Drysdale10) sent.”

1. Albert Einstein (1879–1955), the renowned German-born theoretical physicist, was then at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. An ardent pacifist, Einstein favored birth control as a population control measure. (ANB.) 2. Einstein refers to Josué de Castro, the chair of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, who argued that high-protein diets lowered birthrates, while low-protein diets increased them. He concluded that improving diet and education was the only effective means of birth control and that artificial contraceptives would reduce food production and increase starvation. (de Castro, The Geography of Hunger, x–xi, 25.) 3. Einstein may be referring to advocates of demographic transition theory at Princeton University’s OPR, including Frank Notestein, Dudley Kirk, and Irene Taeuber, who argued that modernization was the catalyst for transforming a society from high mortality and high fertility to low mortality and low fertility. They argued that population control could not be achieved until large families were viewed as economic burdens. Although these demographers were not opposed to birth control, they believed that facilitating industrialization through economic and technical aid would achieve better results. (Kingsley Davis, “Population and the Further Spread of Industrial Society,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 95 [Feb. 13, 1951]: 17–18; Dudley Kirk, “Demographic Transition Theory,” Population Studies 50 [Nov. 1996]: 361–69.)

486  •  The International Committee on Planned Parenthood 4. The letter was published in AWNPBC 7 (Sept. 1952): 1 and Planned Parenthood News 1 (Fall 1952): 3. 5. MS forwarded the letter to several important contacts and asked them to circulate copies to draw more sponsorship and support for the conference. Recipients included Frank W. Notestein (1902–83), an economist and demographer at the OPR and the first director of the UN’s Population Division (1946–48); the RF’s Dana S. Creel; and sociologist William Fielding Ogburn. All three agreed to serve as sponsors. (New York Times, Feb. 22, 1983; Notestein to MS, June 7, 1952, and MS to Creel, July 13, 1951 [MSM S38:525, C9:622]; FPA-I, 3ICPP Proceedings, xvi.) 6. Louise Chase Myers (1880–1960), a philanthropist and birth control supporter, and her husband, George Hewitt Myers, agreed to be 3ICPP sponsors and donated three thousand dollars for meeting costs. (Washington Post, Dec. 17, 1960; Myers to MS, June 24, 1952 [MSM S38:285].) 7. Demographer Pascal K. Whelpton was a 3ICPP delegate. William Vogt was one of the six-member American Section. Warren Thompson and Elmer Pendell (1894–1982), sociologist, eugenicist, and analyst at the PRB and Pennsylvania State University, agreed to be sponsors. (FPA-I, 3ICPP Proceedings, xvi, xxi; MS to Friends, May 19, 1952 [MSM S67:319]; Who’s Who in the World, 1982–1983, 6th ed. [1983]; Tuscaloosa [Ala.] News, Mar. 25, 1982.) 8. MS copied Ellen Watumull, who was assisting with 3ICPP fund-raising and organization. 9. MS refers to the ICPP’s London office. 10. Charles Drysdale promised to include Einstein’s letter in the next issue of the Malthusian, but financial limitations and his poor health impeded quick publication. (Drysdale to MS, Aug. 9 and Dec. 9, 1952 [MSM S39:275, 40:447]; editors’ correspondence with the British Library Reference Service, Nov. 19, 2011.)

173. To Eleanor Roosevelt 1 Hundreds of invitations to sponsor the 3ICPP flowed from Sanger’s office as the meeting date neared. On May 28, Sanger invited Eleanor Roosevelt, writing, “You, who are so much beloved in both countries, will, I trust, lend the prestige of your name as sponsor to this Conference.” Roosevelt sent a brief reply indicating that she would “be glad to lend my name.” (MS to Roosevelt, May 28, 1952 [quote 1], and Roosevelt to MS, June 30, 1952 [quote 2] [MSM C9:507, S38:383].)

Santa Barbara, California July 8, 1952

Dear Mrs. Roosevelt: It was indeed a great pleasure to me and to our Committee to have your letter of June 30th, permitting the use of your name as a sponsor for the Planned Parenthood Conference in India. This will mean a great deal to our workers in India, as well as our workers here.

July 1952  •  487

It is amazing how many outstanding people in many walks of life who have the courage to stand by their ideas will hesitate, owing to the pressure of the Roman Catholic Church in this country, to give expression to their convictions and views on this question of Population.2 But you have always been known for your courage—and especially for having the courage of your convictions and opinions—and for this, you have millions of friends throughout the world. I hope that you are well; and that your Indian trip was not too strenuous for you.3 The Japanese friends and numerous groups in the Planned Parenthood movement are asking me to spend at least two weeks in Japan, on my way to India. I plan to leave for Japan, by boat, about October 3rd or 4th, taking a leisurely trip to Tokyo, and then fly from there to India.4 I am sure you had a great reception there, as I have heard from many friends in India how much your visit meant in friendship and toward a better relationship between our two countries. My thanks to you, and my very heartfelt wishes for your continued good health. Most sincerely yours, Margaret Sanger [signed] Margaret Sanger TLS ERP, NhPR (MSM C9:616). Letterhead of the 3ICPP. Return address: 121 East Arrellaga Street. Handwritten note by Eleanor Roosevelt at the top of the first page reads: “Good wishes for her trip.” For TLcy, see MSM S38:564.

1. Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) was an American social reformer, politician, birth control advocate, and the widow of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. After her tenure as first lady, she was appointed as a delegate to the UN. She chaired the UN Human Rights Commission, which helped pass the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. (ANB; for more on Eleanor Roosevelt, see Vols. 1–2.) 2. Of the more than twenty extant letters declining the invitation, only Barclay Acheson of the Reader’s Digest mentioned Catholic opposition. In 1952 the Catholic Church pressured WHO to abandon a proposal to study the benefits of birth control in overpopulated countries. (For responses to MS’s sponsor invitation, see MSM S37, 38; Acheson to MS, June 23, 1952 [MSM S38:243].) 3. At Nehru’s invitation, Eleanor Roosevelt toured India from February 27 to March 25, 1952, educating herself about the nation and its problems and explaining American policy. She chronicled her trip in India and the Awakening East and in her “My Day” newspaper columns. (Sipra B. Johnson and M. Glen Johnson, “India and Jawaharlal Nehru,” in The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia, edited by Maurine Hoffman Beasley et al. [Westport, Conn., 2001], 269–72.) 4. MS planned to leave California on October 10, sailing to Hawaii on the S.S. Lurline; from there she would take the S.S. President Cleveland to Japan, landing on October 30. (1952 Calendar [MSM S82:229–55].)

488  •  The International Committee on Planned Parenthood

174. To Albert Einstein

Santa Barbara, California July 11, 1952

Dear Dr. Einstein: It is good to get your letter of June 28th, in which you express your willingness to lend your name as a sponsor to the World Conference in Bombay to be held in November.1 It is most helpful to have your opinion and views as to the importance of Planned Parenthood in this day and age; and to also have your opinion relative to the recently publicized School of Thought—that the increase in population is caused by malnutrition.2 I think a little study over the last century would prove the fallaciousness of that theory. When I was in Japan in 19213 it was amazing for me to find that, according to all factual evidence, the overlarge families not only in births but in survivals belonged to the groups called “well to do” classes. In a large percentage of cases, and of course due to better nutrition, there were a greater number of living children in the professional and “upper” classes than in the working classes.4 Also, it was interesting to know that literacy was on the 97% scale of the population; and not only was this large percentage of the population literate, but in good health; and it was stated then that beggary and thievery was seldom known.5 Doubtless conditions have changed since that time; but from all sides we learned that birth control is being rapidly used among the educated and the ambitious in both classes as the means of limiting the size of families.6 In my letter to you asking for your sponsorship of the Convention in Bombay, I said that the names of the sponsors would not be given to the public until the opening of the Conference: I wonder if you would allow me to make an exception in your excellent statement—which, I am sure, if allowed to have read, would be illuminating and encouraging to many “doubting Thomases”7 and some others who are a little timid about expressing their views. It would be most helpful if you would concede this.8 I do thank you for your fine letter and your interest in this great humanitarian movement. Most cordially yours, Margaret Sanger P. S. I want you to know that Mrs. Fuld was one of my very dear friends, and just before her millions were given to Princeton University9 she seriously considered giving a good share of her wealth and that of her brother to Helen Keller10 for the work with the blind, and to me for Birth Control.11 Just one of those “shooting stars” that come on the horizon of all of us—but interesting to remember. M. S. TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S38:624–25). Return address: 121 East Arrellaga Street.

September 1952  •  489 1. Einstein to MS, June 28, 1952, herein. 2. Einstein to MS, June 28, 1952, note 2, herein. 3. MS visited Japan in 1922, not 1921. 4. MS’s personal observations do not match population figures. The average family size in Japan in the early 1920s was 4.9 children, a birthrate around 35 per 1,000 people, with the highest fertility among rural agricultural workers and the lowest among urban white-collar professionals. Japan’s high infant mortality rate (ca. 150 per 1,000 births) likely predominantly affected the poor. (Kizaemon Ariga, “The Family in Japan,” Marriage and Family Living 16 [Nov. 1954]: 362; Taeuber, Population of Japan, 232, 253, 268; Frühstück, Colonizing Sex, 23.) 5. Japanese literacy rates climbed more than 90 percent after the age for compulsory schooling was raised in 1907. Its crime rate in the early 1920s was lower than in the West, but increased by 40 percent in Tokyo from 1922 to 1923 due to unemployment and rising poverty. (Hunter, Concise Dictionary, 218; Jean-Claude Courdy, The Japanese: Everyday Life in the Empire of the Rising Sun [New York, 1984], 157; New York Tribune, July 3, 1921; Los Angeles Times, June 16, 1923, and Apr. 19, 1925.) 6. The rate of contraceptive use increased from 19.5 percent in 1950 to 26.3 percent in 1952, with rates in urban areas significantly higher. (Taeuber, Population of Japan, 273; Steiner, “Japan’s Post-war Population Problems,” 246–47.) 7. MS refers to a skeptic who demands physical evidence, named for the Apostle Thomas. 8. Einstein replied, “I gladly give my permission to use my name and the remarks . . . as you see fit.” (Einstein to MS, July 14, 1952 [MSM S38:675].) 9. Caroline Bamberger Fuld (1864–1944), sister of department store mogul Louis Bamberger (1855–1944), founded Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, where Einstein worked, with a five-million-dollar grant in 1930. (New York Times, July 19 and 27, 1944; Anne Commire and Deborah Klezmer, eds., Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia, vol. 5 [Waterford, Conn., 2000].) 10. Helen Adams Keller (1880–1968), the distinguished American reformer, author, and lecturer, blind and deaf from the age of two, was chief fund-raiser and national and international counselor of the American Foundation for the Blind. (ANB.) 11. Fuld funded MS’s BCCRB Harlem Branch and the BCFA’s Negro Project, at far lower levels. (MS to Fuld, Nov. 1, 1940, and June 10, 1942 [MSM S18:591, 21:264].)

175. To C. P. Blacker 1

Tucson, Arizona September 4, 1952

Dear Dr. Blacker, I was glad to have your letter of August 22nd. giving me just the information I was desirous of having.2 It is good that Dr. Margaret Jackson and Dr. Bertram and Mrs. Freida Lasky, as well as Dr. Helena Wright will be in Bombay with you and Vera Houghton.3 I have written to Vera Houghton today

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to ask how best to transfer the travel expenses for Dr. Wright, either thru the bank or personal check. There is just one very confidential matter that I think I should let you know about, and that is my own health complications. You may have known that about two years ago I had a coronary thrombosis and was put in the hospital here for several weeks.4 About a year later I had another attack, mainly caused it was thought by the high altitude of ten thousand feet where I went to spend a few weeks with Stuart and his family in the northern part of Arizona.5 While recent examinations have shown a complete recovery from the thrombosis, I have been left with another complication known as auricular fibrillation, associated with anginal pain.6 When this occurs I am absolutely incapacitated for the following twenty-four hours. As these attacks are unpredictable I have been strongly advised by cardiologists both in Santa Barbara and in Tucson not to leave the country.7 However, I am planning on finishing up the stress and strain of this work within the next two weeks, shifting as much responsibility as possible to Bombay and relaxing, and taking a boat to Hawaii, spending a week there, and a boat to Tokyo. Dr. Stone will fly to Honolulu and be with me in Japan and also in Bombay.8 There will be enough doctors in Bombay to look after me if anything happens. I am telling you this in confidence. I hate whispering and talking about my health, but I feel that I owe this to you, so that it will not be an utter surprise if I do not show up here or there at sessions in Bombay. If of course I should have a bad seige of these attacks coming closer together, I would have to abandon the whole trip. It would be such a blow to me that I can’t even endure the thought of it. I believe that the success of the Conference is assured as far as attendance, cooperation, quality of papers is concerned.9 The important thing to me is that there may emerge from this Conference a permanent organization. Such an organization must be sound in concept, must have world wide horizons. It must include not only the educational and the technical, clinical setup, but research facilities and plans and procedures. If we could get up some sort of an approximate budget for these various departments, including salary for a director and travel expenses, or even three assistant directors, covering Europe, Asia, and the United States, this would not be beyond the vision of a contemplated world organization. I have already discussed this possibility with one of our Foundations.10 $100.00 budget would not be enough to cover the above suggestions, and I firmly believe that none of the big foundations would touch this in a big way unless our vision and scope was large enough to gain their respect and their confidence that the directors of such an organization would know what they were doing.11 I am firmly convinced that we should get out of the committee category. I am also firmly convinced that none of the national organizations

September 1952  •  491

should dominate the new permanent organization. The Planned Parenthood Federation in New York has obligations toward its own national work, and I have been unable to get more than $200 from Mr. Vogt and the Executive Committee to do the preliminary work on the Conference for the American Committee.12 This has convinced me that while the Federation’s Committees would like to extend their work to the International, it will remain to be a little Orphan Annie if we give this over to either the Research Bureau under Dr. Stone’s direction or the Federation under Mr. Vogt’s direction.13 I do not know what the situation in England or in Sweden may be, but I shall battle strenuously to keep the world organization separate and independent, but the other ↑all↓ nationals would be affiliated as far as possible with it. I have not had a chance to talk to Dr. Stone or Mr. Vogt about this yet, but I hope while in Bombay that I will not be expected to do public addresses but can confine my time to interviews and to feeling out the possibility of a sound after-procedure.14 You may not be willing or ready to give an opinion about this yet, but perhaps by the time you reach Bombay you will have definite thoughts relative to the procedure or the plans of the future.15 Most Cordially Yours, Margaret Sanger [signed] Margaret Sanger TLS IPPFR, IPPF (MSM C9:725–27). Letterhead of the 3IPPC. Return address: 65 Sierra Vista Drive. For TLcy, see MSM S37:489.

1. Blacker retired as the BES’s honorary secretary on May 1 and became a 3ICPP director, along with MS and Rama Rau. The three maintained a close correspondence, discussing fund-raising and a headquarters site for the ICPP. (Blacker to MS, Feb 8 and 19, Apr. 28, and May 28, 1952, and MS to Blacker, Apr. 23 and 30, 1952 [MSM S36:524, 612, 37:209, 271, 293, 577]; FPA-I, 3ICPP Proceedings, 2.) 2. In the letter, Blacker discussed the British delegation to the 3ICPP, composed of Margaret Pyke, Nancy Raphael, Helena Wright, and others. When MS questioned the usefulness of Wright, whom she did not like, Blacker wrote, “I fully appreciate how you feel about her, and . . . am inclined to share your views. . . . But . . . in view of the wishes which the Indians themselves have expressed, we should do what we can to facilitate Dr. Wright going to Bombay.” (MS to Blacker, Aug. 5, 1952, and Blacker to MS, Aug. 22, 1952 [MSM S39:61, 351].) 3. Margaret Constance Noel Jackson (1899–1987), British obstetrician and gynecologist, had a long commitment to birth control. She was the medical officer of the Exeter Women’s Welfare Centre, a founding member of the FPA-GB, and a member of the FPA’s Scientific Advisory and Medical Sub-Committee. George Colin Lawder Bertram (1911–2001), a British biologist and explorer, was a leading population control advocate, active in the BES. Helena Wright was scheduled to give a paper titled “Technical and Scientific Aspects of Family Planning.” Vera Houghton was expected to arrive in India

492  •  The International Committee on Planned Parenthood on October 31 to assist Avabai Wadia and Dhanvanthi Rama Rau with conference details. (“Obituary: Margaret Constance Noel Jackson,” Lancet 330 [Dec. 5, 1987]: 1347; Charles Swithinbank, “Obituaries: George Colin Lawder Bertram, 1911–2001,” Geographical Journal 167 [June 2001]: 191; Evans, Freedom to Choose, 208; Houghton to MS, Sept. 11, 1952 [MSM S39:592].) 4. MS refers to the heart attack she had in July 1949. (See MS to Compton, Oct. 11, 1949, note 3, herein.) 5. MS likely suffered another heart attack on August 11, 1950, while vacationing with Stuart Sanger; his wife, Barbara; and their daughters, Margaret and Nancy. (1950 Calendar and MS to Brush, Aug. 16, 1950 [MSM S81:809–14, 32:736]; Stuart Sanger to Brush, Nov. 3, 1952 [DHBP].) 6. MS had been suffering from angina and atrial arrhythmia, or fibrillations, since the summer. She took Demerol, a highly addictive narcotic, for the pain and complained of weakness and flu-like symptoms when she went too long without the drug. (1952 Calendar and MS to Brush, Aug. 19, 1952 [MSM S82:184, 39:282]; Jacqueline Van Voris, “Interview with Margaret Sanger Marston and Nancy Sanger Ivins,” May 29, 1977, 56–57 [MS Unfilmed].) 7. MS’s cardiologists were David Edwin Engle (1909–57), Dr. Haven, and Dr. Kofod in Santa Barbara. MS wrote, “I don’t intend to bother about that advice unless I get more intense & frequent attacks.” (NatCAB; 1952 Calendar and MS to Brush, Aug. 19, 1952 [quote] [MSM S82:174, 228, 39:282].) 8. Abraham Stone joined MS at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo on October 30. (MS, World Trip Journal, Oct. 30, 1952 [MSM S70:641].) 9. MS worked over the summer with American, British, and Indian ICPP members to develop a program that focused on family planning’s effects on the environment, population, public health, and physical and mental health. It featured papers and reports on scientific and technical topics, including contraceptive methods. (3ICPP, “List of Suggested Topics for Discussion,” June 27, 1952, and “Persons Sending or Presenting Papers to the International Conference at Bombay,” June 1952 [MSM S67:238, C14:577].) 10. MS had approached the Rockefellers in September and November 1951 on behalf of the 3ICPP and to discuss plans for a new organization. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund contributed a disappointing $7,500 for the 3ICPP, so MS approached the BF and the Lasker, Cadbury, Watumull, Doris Duke, and Rosensteil Foundations for additional support. She planned to apply again to the Rockefeller Brothers and Ford Foundation to establish a new organization. In the meantime, the BF provided most of the operating costs for the ICPP’s London headquarters. (MS to Arthur Packard, Sept. 11, 1951, Creel to MS, June 23, 1952, and MS to Houghton, April 22, 1952 [MSM C9:181, 575, 441].) 11. MS’s “$100.00” is likely a typographical error for $100,000. Blacker questioned the figure, writing “$10,000?” in the right margin. While the International Planned Parenthood Federation began with small grants from Ellen Watumull and Clarence Gamble, by 1953 it had raised $63,900, most coming from the PPFA and the BF. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 57, 96; IPPF, “Consolidated Statement of Expenditures,” 1952–53 [MSM S63:128].) 12. See MS to Vogt, May 5, 1952, and Vogt to MS, June 4, 1952 (MSM S37:359, 703). 13. While the PPFA adopted a policy of cooperation with international birth control programs, it allocated only 5 percent of its budget for international work. The MSRB

September 1952  •  493 raised contributions for MS’s international expenses, but its own financial problems prohibited a larger role. (Frances Hand Ferguson, Report of the International Committee to the Membership, May 1953, and MS to Stone, July 15 and 26, 1952 [MSM S66:627, 38:712, 958].) 14. Abraham Stone was finalizing the 3ICPP program, which included two public appearances by MS. (FPA-I, Provisional Programme, Nov. 1952 [MSM S67:288].) 15. Blacker responded with the sincere hope that MS would be able to attend and participate in the Bombay conference, promising to “think over the matters you raise.” (Blacker to MS, Sept. 19, 1952 [MSM S39:751].)

176. To Vera Houghton As the ICPP geared up for the Bombay meeting, the NVSH members complained that their major interest, sex education, had been pushed to the side by American and British members, who were focused solely on contraception and population control issues. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 42; Margaret Ranney Otis to Brush, June 14, 1952 [MSM S37:951].)

Tucson, Arizona September 12, 1952

Dear Vera, Perhaps Lady Rama Rau has already sent you a copy of her letter to me.1 However, we mailed a copy to you several days ago. What a poor sport that fellow is. The fact that neither Dutch representative2 attended the International Committee meeting in London means that anything done at that meeting by the majority of the Committees members, is null and void because they were not present to approve it!! Doubtless you have read and digested the letter written by Margaret Otis who visited Holland and learned much as to the standing of the two Representatives on our Committee.3 We should get rid of them at all costs!! I believe the only way to do so is to close down the present International Committee. If any money had been given recently to the Committee by the Dutch it should be returned at the closing and say goodbye to them both. I believe we shall never get proper representation from Holland as long as these two Fellow Travelers are known to represent our International work.4 The suggestion of Lady Rama Rau to invite Dr. Boas to India is o.k. by me, but certainly I’ll not recommend any of our hard to get money to send him there.5 Dr. Boas has previously seemed to be a pleasant and interested person but very weak. His choice of Dr. S. as a Dutch representative proves this—for Dr. S. is a complaining nagging person who dominates Dr. Boas.6 As to their objection to this Conference being the Third International— what else is it?7 What difference does it make when the work is better accomplished by being directed by the International Committee. As I recall

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events in London last year the reply to our cable from Lady Rama Rau had to be acted upon and the invitation accepted personally by the various members of the Committee who had left London, but who were written to or phoned to and their replies recorded.8 All but the Dutch agreed to hold the next Conference in India. If it was next to the Second it had to be the Third, so what? What can be done about these two complaining creatures? They are afflicted with the Communist psychology, that there is no problem of Population in the world.9 Their desire to have an Organization directed to Sex Education is well and good, if they wish to direct and support it.10 But to us the question is shopworn, as nearly all public schools and churches have classes in sex education and marriage counseling. It is not a pioneer project over here.11 Please look up the records and the support given to the International Committee by the Dutch and let me know please what should be done.12 I prefer to keep out of it all. Cordially Always, Margaret Sanger TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S39:616–17). Return address: 65 Sierra Vista Drive.

1. Rama Rau wrote to MS that A. P. Pillay had received a letter from Dutch delegate Conrad van Emde Boas, who indicated that the 3ICPP had been planned without the Dutch representatives’ knowledge and organized despite their protest. Therefore, the NVSH decided to boycott the conference. Boas was also frustrated by the ICPP’s decision to exclude sex education as a prominent aim of the international organization and to bypass the Netherlands as the previously agreed-upon next conference site. (Rama Rau to MS, Sept. 4, 1952 [MSM S39:487].) 2. The NVSH representatives were Dutch psychoanalyst and sexologist Conrad van Emde Boas (1904–81), president of the NVSH medical council, and Wim F. Storm (1913–91), a Dutch physician and NVSH chairman. (ICPP Report, 1950–51 [MSM C13:66].) 3. Margaret Ranney Otis (1897–1988), an American author and former UN volunteer, interviewed Boas and Storm in Amsterdam in June 1952. She noted their resistance to the ICPP’s emphasis on population control and their suspicion that the Americans wielded too much power and made unilateral decisions. MS sent copies of the letter to Ellen Watumull and Abraham Stone. (Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 5, 1988; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 60; Margaret Otis to Brush, June 14, 1952. [MSM S37:951].) 4. “Fellow traveler” was a term for a Communist sympathizer. Both Boas and Storm self-identified as Communists, and Storm had anarchist leanings. (Paul Luykx and Pim Slot, Een stille revolutie? [Verloren, the Netherlands, 1987], 156.) 5. Boas indicated he would attend the conference if he received “a personal invitation from India” and money for his travel expenses. (Rama Rau to MS, Sept. 4, 1952 [quote] [MSM S39:486].)

September 1952  •  495 6. MS met Boas and Storm at the ICPWR, and, according to Margaret Otis, tensions between the three were already evident. In a draft letter to Boas that was probably never sent, MS called the Dutch representatives’ refusal to agree to hold the next conference in Bombay “an exhibition of poor sportsmanship,” adding that she and other ICPP leaders “resent the petty attitude of the Dutch representatives who talk a lot but do nothing to further the work of the Int Committee.” (MS to Boas, Sept ?, 1952 [MSM S39:989].) 7. Boas argued that the upcoming conference was the second, not the third, but MS counted both postwar conferences (ISEC in 1946 and ICPWR in 1948), making the Bombay conference the third. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 2–4; Rama Rau to MS, Sept. 4, 1952 [MSM S39:486].) 8. At their 1951 London meeting, the ICPP officially accepted an RFSU invitation to hold the next conference in Stockholm in 1953 (the RFSU’s twentieth anniversary). But when MS raised the possibility of holding a meeting in 1952 in India, the other delegates agreed. (ICPP Report, 1950–51, and Otis to Brush, June 14, 1952 [MSM C13:66, S37:951].) 9. Communists believed in the use of abortion and contraceptives as a woman’s right. But in the wake of massive losses of Soviet and Eastern-bloc countries in World War II and the slower rate of population growth than other regions, Communists favored pronatalist policies to expand the proletariat. They believed that cooperative measures would limit population growth. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 291; Popov and David, “Russian Federation,” 225, 228.) 10. The NVSH sought to provide leadership and education on all aspects of sexuality because it believed sexuality must be fully explored and understood. They also argued that sexual knowledge and freedom would lead to wider acceptance of contraceptive use. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 17, 42; Brandhorst, “From Neo-Malthusian to Sexual Reform,” 66.) 11. Public school sex education programs had been growing steadily in the United States, and most high schools included some form of sex education in their curriculum. Marital and premarital counseling in churches increased steadily in the postwar years, but despite attempts to expand sex education programs, surveys revealed that many young people remained ill-informed, getting much of their sexual knowledge from popular culture. (A. H. Clemens and Jean Schick Grossman, “Unscientific Aspects of Sex Education,” Marriage and Family Living 15 [Feb. 1953]: 10; Leland Foster Wood, “Church Problems in Marriage Education,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 272 [Nov. 1950]: 174–75.) 12. Houghton responded on September 18, disclosing a “strictly private” letter from Boas in which he complained that he and Storm felt as though they were treated like “a couple of naughty boys.” Houghton thought that the NVSH was “wholly in the grip of Storm” and that the NVSH medical members were excluded from policy and administration decisions. She felt sorry for Boas, who, “from being President of the pre-War Society,” was “now less than nothing and cannot even speak for the Society.” As the NVSH had never contributed funds to the ICPP, many ICPP officials were unresponsive to Dutch complaints. (Houghton to MS, Sept. 18, 1952 [MSM S39:736].)

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177. Excerpt from “Greetings from Japan” When Sanger arrived in Yokohama on October 30, she was greeted by photographers and reporters, her Japanese friends, as well as Dorothy Brush and Abraham Stone, who had arrived earlier. Sanger, who had traveled with Tucson physician Clarence Lieb and her old friend Marion Ingersoll, immediately embarked on a busy schedule. In addition to roundtable meetings on October 30–31 and a formal lecture to an audience of nine hundred in Tokyo on November 1, she visited a farming village and school on the outskirts of Tokyo to observe one of Kan Majima’s contraceptive instruction sessions (November 2) and met with the emperor’s youngest brother and a welfare group in Yokohama (November 3). Sanger also attended luncheons and meetings in Osaka (November 5) and Kyoto (November 6–7). She summarized the highlights of the trip in a November 1952 newsletter sent to “Friends and Sponsors” of the 3ICPP. (MS, “Greetings from Japan,” to Friends and Sponsors, Nov. 1952, and MS, World Trip Journal, Oct. 30–Nov. 9, 1952 [MSM C9:799, S70:641–70]; Population Problems Research Council, Family Planning Movement in Japan [Tokyo, 1953], 45–46]; Mainichi Shimbun, Oct. 31, 1952.)

Tokyo, Japan NOVEMBER 8th. [1952] A good day, although I was tired enough to die. Mrs. Kato came at 9 A.M. to say that women were downstairs with trucks and gramaphones to take me into the slums of Tokyo. They awaited a message. I had hoped for a day’s rest, but I realized Mrs. Kato’s disappointment and decided to dress quickly and go.1 I was certainly amazed at the two loud-speaker trucks with Japanese signs telling about the coming of Margaret Sanger to Japan and the welcome accorded her. All I could hear was that Mrs. Sanger is coming, and finally the loud speakers said that she was in the car behind. People flocked out of their shops and doorways, thousands of them. Children in school yards ran into the street to learn what was going on. “Sanger is here! She says no abortions . . . Sanger is here . . . she says no abortions.” When the crowd was large, the trucks drew up to the curb and talking began.2 It is a sad thing that there are no clinics, no free places for these women. Desire for Birth Control is surely far ahead of the materials and technique to meet that need. Japan is making a heroic effort to adjust herself to the post-war conditions. In 1922 her population was about 60 million; in June, 1952, it was 84 million. In 1922 her territory was too small to feed and supply her people, but today she has less territory to maintain the increase of 24 million.3 The questions of decreased birth-rate, family limitation, population control, birth control, and family planning are being discussed everywhere.4 Two projects are operating. I have mentioned the one by Dr. Y. Koya, who is sending nurses into three villages to talk to the parents and teach methods of contraception.5 This is a most practical way to reach mothers, and if this can be extended, the results should be far-reaching. The second project is

NOVEMBER 1952  •  497

that the Population Problems Research Council, conducted by the Mainichi Newspapers, has made a national survey of public opinion on Birth Control in Japan. Mr. Chikao Honda, the President of this Council, has issued several reports from data collected by the survey.6 The need of a contraceptive, simple to adjust, cheap and harmless, is almost the greatest need in Japan if she is to save herself from the consequences of an increased population. Abortions, still-births, infant mortality are increasing.7 The cruel necessity of these is the only relief she has to adjust population to arable land. The Eugenic Protection Law gives the right to practice contraception, but the methods used in the western world are far less suitable here.8 It is reported that over a million abortions took place in 1951.9 These are legal under the law. It is unfortunate that in this modern day of chemistry, of miracle drugs, of atom bombs, that a contraceptive to immunize the ovum has not been developed to meet the world-wide need. It is perhaps the only solution to the growing problem of Japan’s population. I feel encouraged that the people of this country are fearless and awake to this growing problem. Their attitude, as expressed in the surveys has changed; formerly it was the desire of a number of children to guarantee the living of the old, and now it seems to be the desire of only two children in a family.10 It is everywhere evident that the awareness of the need of Birth Control is far ahead of the material to meet that need. It is my prayer that this will be remedied in the immediate future. We are now on our way to investigate and ascertain what other countries are doing to solve their population problems. Tomorrow we leave for HongKong, remaining there until November 13th.11 Then on to Bangkok, Singapore, Ceylon and Bombay November 20th.12 TL Starr (MSM C9:804–5). For the rest of the newsletter, see MSM C9:799; for a draft version, see MSM S40:365.

1. Shidzue Katō, reelected to the diet in 1950 as a Nihon Shakai‑to member, helped organize MS’s trip. Katō hoped that MS’s tour would spur more government advocacy of birth control over abortion. Katō was accompanied by her party colleague Shizue Yamaguchi (1917–2012). (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 234, 238, 246–47; MS, World Trip Journal, Nov. 8, 1952 [MSM S70:668].) 2. MS noted that Katō was “used to this way of talking to the people on her political campaign. I did not like it.” (MS, World Trip Journal, Nov. 8, 1952 [MSM S70:668].) 3. Japan lost 40 percent of its territory (including Korea and Formosa [Taiwan]) in 1945. It had the highest population density in the world at six hundred people per square mile, and its population was young and rapidly increasing. (Irish Times, Feb. 17, 1953; Washington Post, June 7, 1953.) 4. Press coverage and public discussion on birth control had increased in Japan, in part due to government attempts to increase access to contraception. MS’s trip sparked

498  •  The International Committee on Planned Parenthood even more interest. Katō wrote, “In ten days the message spread through Japan in much the same dramatic way it had those many years ago.” (Norgren, Abortion before Birth Control, 94–95; Japan Birth Control League, History of Japanese Birth Control League, 2; Katō, Fight for Women’s Happiness, 100 [quote].) 5. Yoshio Koya (1890–1974), a Japanese artist, novelist, and public health physician, was introduced to birth control work on a trip to the United States in 1950. Koya was determined to replace abortion with birth control and developed a study designed to introduce birth control into three rural villages to see how it affected the birthrate. (Reed, Birth Control Movement, 295; C. P. Blacker, “Dr. Yoshio Koya: A Memorable Story,” Eugenics Review 55 [Oct. 1963]: 153; Williams, Every Child a Wanted Child, 209].) 6. The Mainichi Shimbun, one of Japan’s largest newspapers, formed the Jinkō Mondai Choskai (JMC) (Population Problems Research Council) in 1949 to keep family planning in the public eye. It conducted a series of field and public opinion surveys that revealed 74 percent of Japanese wanted families of three or fewer. Newspaper editor Chikao Honda (1899–1980), who became president of Mainichi Shimbun in 1948, invited MS to speak to the Japanese in 1952. (JBE; New York Times, July 31, 1980; Chikao Honda to MS, Dec. 3, 1952 [MSM S35:693]; Population Problems Research Council, Public Opinion Survey, 3–4.) 7. Abortions increased from 489,111 in 1950 to 805,524 in 1952, and the rate of stillbirths increased from 84.9 per 1,000 births in 1950 to 92.5 in 1952. Infant mortality actually declined from 140,575 in 1950 to 99,057 in 1952. (Amano, Family Planning Movement in Japan, 13; Taeuber, Population of Japan, 286.) 8. The 1952 revisions to the Eugenic Protection Law further eased access to abortions and allowed approved health care providers, including midwives and nurses, to dispense barrier contraceptives (condoms and diaphragms). The 1948 Pharmaceutical Law allowed the manufacture and sale of contraceptive drugs, but MS believed Japan still needed less expensive and easier-to-use contraceptives. (Norgren, Abortion before Birth Control, 48–49, 91; Lee and Larson, Population and Law, 25; Taeuber, Population of Japan, 274–75.) 9. The official figure of 805,524 abortions did not include those performed by midwives, unauthorized medical personnel, or doctors who failed to report them for tax reasons. (Norgren, Abortion before Birth Control, 48–49; Taeuber, Population of Japan, 276; see also MS to Hendricks, Sept. 10, 1949, note 3, herein.) 10. A Nippon Times poll found 60 percent of Japanese preferred families with fewer than three children. (Steiner, “Japan’s Post-war Population Problems,” 246–47.) 11. MS flew to Hong Kong on November 9 and then gave a series of lectures. (1952 Calendar [MSM S82:246].) 12. MS flew to Singapore on November 14, then to Colombo, Ceylon, on November 18, and arrived in Bombay on November 20. (1952 Calendar [MSM S82:250–55].)

z NINE The Culmination of a Life’s Work

Under the leadership of Sanger and C. P. Blacker, the ICPP made steady progress in building a postwar global birth control organization. Sanger’s vision for the new federation was more singularly focused on birth control than many of her colleagues. For her, birth control was the common ground among advocates of population control, ecological reform, public health, sex education, women’s rights, and economic and development concerns. She was determined to take on the educational, clinical, and research aspects of contraception and was undaunted when Dutch and British members criticized her agenda as impractical and overly broad. Sanger was willing to trumpet the population control agenda because it would attract funding from the RF and other philanthropies, but birth control remained her primary aim—and she recognized the challenge of keeping it in the forefront of the international movement. Sanger understood that the prominence of Americans in world affairs created resentment and was cautious about stepping on the toes of activists in Europe. But she did not hesitate to use her power and sometimes made executive decisions without consulting other members. She did, however, recognize the importance of working with local organizers, helping them design programs, providing administrative advice and funding, and putting them in touch with American funders.1 •  499

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Sanger realized early on the importance of securing the support of the governments of India and Japan as models of progressive states that were more supportive of family limitation and population control than many Western nations. India led the world in state support for contraceptive services, and the 3ICPP showcased its work on a global stage.2 This shift from relying on activist groups to serve individual needs to cultivating state-based population and reproductive health programs was one Sanger had been working toward for decades. For her, the 3ICPP was “the culmination of my life’s work,” and at its conclusion, she rejoiced “that at last the emphasis is being placed where it should be; that it is the responsibility of governmental agencies and medical and public health authorities to include contraceptive instruction as a basic element in maternal and infant welfare programs.”3 The 3ICPP saw the founding of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, a permanent organization headed by honorary copresidents Sanger and Dhanvanthi Rama Rau. It created geographical regions to organize the work, making provisions for new member nations as birth control organizations were established. At the Fourth International Planned Parenthood Conference (4ICPP), held in Stockholm in 1953, the members ratified an IPPF Constitution, selecting Sanger as its president and Rama Rau as chairman. In a relatively short time and out of an inchoate cluster of like-minded activists and advocacy groups, Sanger had helped to establish a united and organized international movement.4 The Japanese again invited Sanger to help them open birth control clinics and spread the word that contraception was a better option than abortion.5 Sanger returned to Japan in 1954 and again in 1955 for the Fifth International Planned Parenthood Conference (5ICPP) held in Tokyo. On that visit, she became the first foreign woman to address the Japanese Diet and also carried with her some breaking news. While Sanger applauded the new emphasis on a population-conscious environment, she was frustrated by the slow pace of contraceptive research. Methods had improved over the years, but there had been nothing new and promising. When she arrived in Bombay in 1952, she carried samples of foam powder almost identical to what she had brought in 1935. She hoped that widespread government adoption of birth control would kick-start new clinical research on the development of a contraceptive that “will immunize the ovum.”6 In 1954 she announced in Japan that promising efforts were under way to develop a birth control pill. As exciting and invigorating as Sanger’s busy travel schedule was, the increased workload took a toll on her health. She was seventy-three years old when she took on the IPPF presidency and suffered from a chronic heart condition. The medications she took, as well as her age, made her difficult to get along

The Culmination of a Life’s Work  •  501

with, as she was plagued by mood swings and fatigue. Her health also made it increasingly challenging for her to keep up the duties of a world figure. By 1954, exhausted by her travels and ill health, Sanger missed the 1954 World Population Conference in Rome (WPCR), the first major international gathering she had failed to attend since 1922. Organized by the UN and the IUSIPP, and held from August 30 to September 10, the WPCR was not a family planning conference. Much like the 1927 WPC, the Rome meeting focused on large-scale trends in mortality and fertility as well as the differences in birth- and death rates between nations and socioeconomic groups. It established at the outset that there would be no discussions of practical remedies.7 The IPPF was invited to send delegates, but was not involved in setting the program. The meeting drew more than four hundred delegates, representing eighty countries and fiftyeight governments. The choice of location for the conference, in the shadow of the Vatican, signaled that the Catholic Church was modifying its stance on population problems. While continuing to oppose artificial birth control and claim that the world could contain many more people, the church did succumb to the inevitable: that its parishioners wanted to practice some form of family planning. Pope Pius XII had endorsed the rhythm method three years earlier, and he now received WPCR delegates at the Vatican, a remarkable about-face that may not have occurred had the vilified Sanger attended.8 Sanger also missed an IPPF Governing Body meeting in Rome, which weakened her leadership position. Working mostly via letter and memo from her home in Tucson, she faced enormous challenges in overseeing a growing international organization, not the least of which was trying to manage the prickly relationships between the Western Hemisphere Region (IPPF-WHR), the PPFA, and the IPPF. Within the IPPF, tensions rose over funding allocations, the unwieldy regional structure, and the roles to be played by independent-minded Americans like Clarence Gamble. These internal disagreements were exacerbated because the IPPF Executive Committee rarely met in person, leading to personality conflicts and the creation of alliances among the leaders. The infighting came to a head in 1955 when Sanger’s long-standing impatience with organizational bureaucracy, combined with what she saw as parochialism in the IPPF regions and the lack of quick response to those most in need of contraceptive services, left her trying to restructure the IPPF, regardless of what other leaders thought. Sanger saw an inability on the part of many IPPF leaders to learn from the past and hold an international vision. “Well, as doubtless you know, ‘progress’ has its ups and downs,” she wrote to longtime RF liaison Dana Creel, “especially when new people come into an organization full of enthusiasm minus vision and ignorant of the history of the movement.”9 Three years into her IPPF presidency, Sanger still often felt like she was going it alone.

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Notes 1. Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 47–48. 2. Houghton, “International Planned Parenthood Federation,” 202–4; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 44–47. 3. Los Angeles Times, Dec. 21, 1952 (quote 1); MS to Friends, Dec. 1952 (quote 2) (MSM S40:527). 4. MS to Juliet Rublee, Dec. 1, 1952 (MSM C9:806). 5. MS, “Japan Wants Birth Control,” 554. 6. MS to Friends, Dec. 1952 (MSM S40:527). 7. United Nations, Proceedings of the World Population Conference, 1954 (New York, 1955), iv–ix; Symonds and Carder, United Nations and the Population Question, 83. 8. Symonds and Carder, United Nations and the Population Problem, 69, 78, 89; UN website, http://www.un.org/en/development/devagenda/population.shtml; Blacker to MS, Oct. 2, 1954 (MSM C10:587). 9. MS to Dana Creel, Dec. 12, 1956 (MSM C11:88).

178. Excerpt from “Greetings from India” Sanger left Tokyo on November 9, flying to Hong Kong. While en route, she suffered a severe angina attack and was treated with codeine and Demerol, forcing her and her party to remain in Hong Kong for three days. (1952 Calendar, MS, World Trip Journal, Nov. 8, 1952, and MS, “Greetings from Bombay,” Dec. 3, 1952 [MSM S82:246, 70:671, 82:246]; for the entire newsletter, see MSM C9:821–27.)

Hong Kong November 10, 11, 12 1952. We were met by Prof. Gordon King of the HongKong Medical University and several other members of the Family Planning Committee.1 A luxurious private launch took us across to the mainland. Before leaving the airport at Kaitak, we as usual had to give many interviews and dozens of pictures were taken by cameramen representing all the papers of HongKong.2 It is difficult to describe HongKong adequately. Previous to the war the population was approximately seven hundred thousand. Today, refugees from the mainland and those from Formosa, have increased the population to a total of two million, five hundred thousand! The problem of feeding and housing these refugees has grown beyond the ability of local agencies to solve. Hundreds of these men and women have been executives, doctors, professors, business men in their own communities.3 Now they are reduced to idleness. Menial tasks, such as “sweepers” are welcome, as they will do any work for survival. We stayed at the Repulse Bay Hotel, with a beautiful view of the water, high-ceilinged spacious rooms, quiet and comfortable.4 Almost every day, in fact almost every hour, was crowded with activity. We were guests of Gov-

November 1952  •  503

ernor Sir Alexander and Lady Grantham for lunch.5 A reception was held at which we met Committee members and supporters of the Family Planning Association of HongKong.6 We visited fertility and infertility clinics.7 There are not enough birth control clinics to supply the demand. We visited the Violet Peal Clinic, belonging to the city of HongKong, which has birth control clinic sessions three times a week.8 To see thousands of frail women and little deformed children, hungry and sick-looking, crowded in lines, standing and squatting, all needing medical care, is a sorry sight one cannot forget. At the first public meeting, held at the Episcopal Church hundreds were turned away. Dr. Stone addressed the Medical Association that evening.9 We dined with Dr. Arthur Woo, an old friend who was my host on my last visit to HongKong some years ago;10 he was President of the Chinese Medical Association at that time, the first national medical body to go on record endorsing contraception as a part of the program of public health, especially in the field of maternity and child welfare.11 The city of HongKong still retains its Chinese character and has not become westernized, as was Tokyo and Yokohama.12 There are the same masses of people living in little sampans on the river. Thousands of Chinese children are a pathetic sight, none of them so healthy or sturdy as the Japanese children—most of them were poor, ragged and hungry.13 The heads of many were no larger than a grapefruit. HongKong is to be congratulated for its clean-up of mosquitoes, a great pest in the past that no longer exists. It is a relief to have open screenless windows.14 TLS ASP, MBCo (MSM C9:821–22). This excerpt is taken from the Hong Kong portion of a November 1952 newsletter sent to “Friends and Sponsors” of the 3IPPC. The first paragraph, which was omitted, listed Sanger’s traveling companions and described her farewell in Tokyo. For another copy of the newsletter, see MSM S40:527.

1. Gordon King (1900–1991), a British-born obstetrician and gynecologist at Hong Kong University, was the founding president of the Family Planning Association of Hong Kong (FPA-HK), which opened in 1950. (Times [London], Oct. 17, 1938; Royal Perth Hospital Emeritus Archives; Elizabeth M. Jolly, “The Family Planning Association of Hong Kong,” in 5ICPP Proceedings, by IPPF, 297–300; Plarr’s Lives of the Fellows, Register of the Royal College of Physicians of England, Nov. 13, 2015, http://livesonline. rcseng.ac.uk/biogs/E008713b.htm.) 2. Kai Tak Airport is on the western side of Kowloon Bay. In her statement, MS called for increased research in contraception, hospital provision of contraceptives, and physicians to lead the movement. Photographs of MS, along with Dorothy Brush and Abraham Stone, appeared in Gongshang Ribao. (Gongshang Ribao [Commerce and Business Daily], Nov. 11, 1952; South China Morning Post, Nov. 11, 1952.) 3. Hong Kong’s population had more than doubled since 1938 to 2.26 million in 1952. Refugees from Communist China flooded Hong Kong, overtaxing housing, resources,

504  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work and aid and resulting in settlements of squatters living in makeshift housing. An estimated 20,000 of them were Chinese intellectuals. (E. Eastman Irvine, ed., World Almanac and Books of Facts [New York, 1941], 202; Harry Hansen, ed., World Almanack and Book of Facts [New York, 1953], 331; New York Times, Aug. 5, 1952.) 4. The Repulse Bay Hotel, built in 1920 outside the city proper, was frequented by international travelers. (Solomon Bard, Voices from the Past: Hong Kong, 1842–1918 [Hong Kong, 2002], 376.) 5. Sir Alexander Grantham (1899–1978), the British governor of Hong Kong, and his American-born wife, Maurine Sampson Grantham (1891–1970), hosted the luncheon at Government House and offered MS the use of their transportation during her stay. (Times [London], Oct. 9, 1978; 1900 U.S. Census; England and Wales Death Index, 1916–2007; B. E. Sieven to MS, Nov. 10, 1952 [LCM 120:37A].) 6. The reception was held at the home of J. H. Ruttonjee, a patron of the FPA-HK, in the town of Stanley in southwestern Hong Kong. (King to MS, Nov. 4, 1952 [LCM 120:36].) 7. MS visited the infertility clinic at St. Mary’s Hospital on November 12. (1952 Calendar [MSM S82:248].) 8. Dr. Louise O. Hunter opened Hong Kong’s first birth control clinic, the Violet Peel Maternity and Child Welfare Centre, in 1935. It was closed during the Japanese invasion, but reopened by the FPA-HK in 1950. (Hunter to MS, May 21, 1935 [MSM S11:294]; Susan Fan, “Hong Kong: Evolution of the Family Planning Program,” in The Global Family Planning Revolution: Three Decades of Population Policies and Programs, edited by Warren C. Robinson and John A. Ross [Washington, D.C., 2007], 193.) 9. On November 11, MS lectured on birth control at St. John’s Cathedral Hall, an Anglican church. The speech, sponsored by the FPA-HK, was attended by more than two hundred people. Stone spoke on the medical aspects of birth control and showed the MSRB films Biology of Conception and Technique of Conception at the Northcote Science Building. (South China Morning Post, Nov. 12, 1952.) 10. MS first met Dr. Arthur W. Woo in February 1936. 11. The CISH, formed in 1932, passed the resolution in 1935. (MS and How-Martyn, Round the World for Birth Control, 35.) 12. MS had noted in her journal that Yokohama and Tokyo had “clean streets,” “high brick buildings,” and “more people in Western clothes.” (MS, World Trip Journal, Oct. 30, 1952 [MSM S70:644].) 13. One study found that infant mortality rates dropped in Hong Kong after World War II, but poor housing and malnutrition contributed to the most common causes of death: pneumonia, tuberculosis, and enteritis. (Frederick J. Simoons, Food in China: A Cultural and Historical Inquiry [Boca Raton, Fla., 1991], 504.) 14. Malaria, a chronic problem in Hong Kong, was intensified due to the weakened condition of Chinese immigrants. Antimalarial efforts began with the end of World War II, including aerial spraying of DDT and improved sanitary controls, which reduced the number of cases from 2,422 in 1946 to 1,305 cases in 1952. (Ka-Che Yip, “Colonialism, Disease, and Public Health: Malaria in the History of Hong Kong,” in Disease, Colonialism, and the State: Malaria in Modern East Asian History, edited by Yip [Hong Kong, 2009], 22–24.)

November 1952  •  505

179. Excerpt from “Greetings from India” Sanger left Hong Kong on November 14, making stops in Bangkok, Singapore, and Colombo, before reaching India on November 20. (1952 Calendar [MSM S82:249–54].)

[Bombay,] India November 20th [1952] Visited the headquarters of the India Family Planning Committee, which organized and acted as host for the Third International Conference on Planned Parenthood.1 There I had the pleasure of meeting and thanking the very capable group who had so efficiently laid the groundwork for the Conference, assisted by Mrs. Vera Houghton, Secretary of the International Committee at London, who had arrived several weeks earlier to assist with preliminary details.2 Delegates and observers, bearing Conference reports, had already begun to arrive from the U.S.A., Belgium, England, Israel, Greece, HongKong, Singapore, Japan, Italy, Canada, South Africa, Sweden, Germany and Pakistan, as well as various centers of India.3 The next few days were given over to interviews, broadcasts, and Conference preliminaries.4 The Conference opened officially on Monday, November 24th. at the Sir Cowasji Jehangir Hall, Bombay. Approximately 500 delegates registered. Shrimati Dhanvanthi Rama Rau presided as Chairman and read messages to the Conference from distinguished officials of India who could not be present,5 notable among them a message from Prime Minister Nehru, sending greetings and good wishes to the Conference.6 A reception for the delegates was given by the Indian Medical Association that afternoon.7 The public also was invited to hear the Inaugural Address by the Vice-President of India, the Hon. Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, that evening.8 It was a magnificent expression of his opinions, clear and honest all the way through, no hedging or avoiding the problems facing India. It seems to me that only India could produce individuals with such calm, age-old wisdom, coupled with friendliness, good humor, modesty, and a rare insight into the needs of the people of his country. He also helped to clarify some of Gandhi’s pronouncements in a most masterly way. [Extensive quotes from Radhakrishnan’s address have been omitted.]9 It was a great address, and a triumphant beginning for the extension of the planned parenthood program in India. At the opening session I was called upon to speak and then presented a letter of credit for $2500.00 as a gift from a small group of my friends in Tucson, Arizona who wished to have a part in the establishment of the first Research Clinic for contraception in India.10 This announcement was received with great applause, almost an ovation, by the packed to the ceiling audience. That evening Lady Rama Rau and Madame Kamiledevi,11 an old friend and a leader of the cooperative move-

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ment in India, gave a dinner and reception at which the delegates personally met Dr. Radhakrishnan. As a full report of all Conference sessions and papers presented by delegates will be printed and off the press in the near future,12 I will not attempt to review each day of the Conference but will sum it up by saying that it was inspiring to hear delegate after delegate report on the progress being made in their respective countries in the establishment of birth control facilities, and even more so to hear their reports on the awakening demand all over the world from the people for this information.13 I rejoiced that at last the emphasis is being placed where it should be; that it is the responsibility of governmental agencies and medical and public health authorities to include contraceptive instruction as a basic element in maternal and infant welfare programs.14 In India the army delegate reported 106 clinics where birth control information was included in the maternal and infant welfare services.15 The Municipality of Bombay reported 17 birth control clinics, also as a part of the maternal and infant care and education.16 Until Mrs. Shidzue Kato (formerly Baroness Ishimoto) and Dr. Y. Koya of Japan spoke, many delegates and official observers had not realized the extent to which the national government of Japan had also committed itself to the spread of education and clinical service in the field of contraception.17 While all the papers presented were excellent, some of them were outstanding. Dr. C. P. Blacker of Great Britain dealt with “The Control of Fertility in Human Culture” and presented a historical review and analysis of the present position of many religions, including Islam, Buddhist, Hindu, Shinto and Christian.18 The address of Dr. Lewis C. Walmsley of the University of Toronto, Canada, on the cultural pattern of women of China, was warmly greeted as a hopeful aspect for the future of China.19 Mrs. Elise OttesenJensen of Sweden made a tender and touching exposition of the way in which she teaches children how they came into being,20 and Dr. Lena Levine of the U.S.A. told of work with adults in marriage counseling and guidance.21 Dr. Pesce of Italy made a courageous attack upon officials who prevent medical colleges and physicians from helping Italian parents and mothers.22 Dr. Margaret H. Jackson of Great Britain gave a clinical paper on Infertility, which was greatly appreciated. It brought hope to many childless women of India that their marriage might still be blessed with children. Dr. Stone elaborated on this aspect of infertility.23 It was revealing to all delegates to learn that in England and in the U.S.A. practically all planned parenthood clinics have infertility sessions every day, helping married couples to have children.24 Dr. Helena Wright generously gave extra time to teaching clinical procedures and all her sessions were over-crowded.25 Physicians and clinicians arrived from various distant cities of India to be instructed. Dr. Clarence

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Gamble of the U.S.A. told of interesting research projects under his personal direction.26 Prof. Gordon King of the University of HongKong and Mrs. Koh Goh Kee of Singapore both made stimulating addresses.27 The Municipality of Bombay gave the delegates a magnificent reception, where we were received by the Mayor, the Hon. G. H. Desai, and all the officials of the municipality, in the beautiful Hanging Gardens built like a park over the Bombay reservoir.28 The address of the Mayor, like that of Dr. Radhakrishnan, was frank and fearless—an inspiring contrast to the tendency of officialdom in other parts of the world to avoid or straddle difficult public issues. Each day there were receptions, lunches, teas and dinners.29 One of the memorable events was the privilege of dining with Prime Minister Nehru at the Cricket Club, together with several leaders of the International Child Welfare Conference.30 Conference sessions continued until December 1st. All sessions were fully attended, and the press and radio gave liberal coverage.31 On the last day, Resolutions32 were presented by Dr. C. P. Blacker of London, Director of the International Committee. It was unanimously voted to expand that Committee into a World Federation. Mrs. Ottensen-Jensen nominated Lady Rama Rau as Honorary Director for the Orient and Margaret Sanger as Honorary Director for North America. This takes into the World Federation many of the countries where there are already thriving national Family Planning Associations. It will also include associate members where such groups are local and have not yet been able to become national in scope.33 We hope the inspiration and assistance that will follow from the creation of World Federation will assist them to do so. [Sanger’s acknowledgment of the foundations who helped support the conference as names of many who presented good papers has been omitted, along with a paragraph calling for research into cheap and effective contraceptives.] TDS MSP, DLC (LCM 140:152–54B). The editors have omitted the reports from individual countries represented at the meeting, discussions of MS’s travel between Hong Kong and India, and summaries of the 3ICPP program and study groups. For the entire letter, see MS, “Greetings from India,” Dec. 1952 (LCM 140:152–55). For the initialed copy, see MSM C9:822–24.

1. The FPA-I had been working on conference arrangements for nearly a year. (Dhanvanthi Rama Rau to MS, Dec. 11, 1951, and Hannah Peters to MS, June 2, 1952 [MSM C9:279, S37:645].) 2. Houghton arrived in Bombay on October 31. In addition to Rama Rau, FPA-I workers included Avabai Wadia (1913–2005), a Ceylonese-born lawyer and feminist, and Hannah Lilien Peters (1911–2009), a German-born physician who worked at the FPA-I’s Kutumba Sudhar Kentra clinic and helped Rama Rau with conference correspondence. (Vera Houghton to MS, Sept. 11, 1952 [MSM S39:592]; SSDI; New York Passenger Lists, 1820–1937; Times of India, Sept. 22, 1952.)

508  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work 3. For published reports and a listing of the 403 delegates, organized by country, see FPA-I, 3ICPP Proceedings, 204–46, xx–xxvii. 4. On November 22, delegates enlarged the ICPP into the IPPF and set up a regional office in India. MS spoke on the radio on the twenty-third and then met with the 3ICPP Steering Committee for a last check of the agenda. (MS, World Trip Journal, Nov. 22–23, 1952 [MSM S70:690–91].) 5. The 3ICPP inaugural session was held on the evening of November 24. Messages from Jawaharlal Nehru, senior Indian government ministers, Family Planning Associations, Albert Einstein, and others were read by Avabai Wadia. MS spoke at the first plenary session, introducing a series of reports on nations. One delegate recalled MS as a “dynamic personality” whose speech “gave old and young workers in the field enthusiasm and renewed interest.” (Lotte Fink, “Report on the Third ICPP,” Nov. 24–Dec. 1, 1952 [quotes] [LAFP]; for text of the messages, see FPA-I, 3ICPP Proceedings, 2–6.) 6. Nehru, who was in New Delhi mediating a political battle between India and Pakistan, indicated in his message that the Indian government had an open mind on family planning and welcomed an open discussion of the issue. He also noted that India’s ills were not solely due to overpopulation and warned delegates not to overlook other important social problems. (Nehru to MS, June 12, 1952, and MS to Nehru, June 19, 1952 [MSM C9:537, 567]; New York Times, Nov. 13 and 16, 1952; “Messages of Good Wishes,” in 3ICPP Proceedings, by FPA-I, 2.) 7. MS described the afternoon reception as “Speeches & tea in the garden. Only nuts, chips, tea & soft drinks allowed.” (FPA-I, “Provisional Program,” Nov. 1952, and MS, World Trip Journal, Nov. 24, 1952 [quote] [MSM S67:288, 70:693].) 8. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) was an educator and world expert on Hindu philosophy. He led the Indian delegation to the UN Economic and Cultural Organizations and served as the Indian ambassador to the Soviet Union, before being named vice president of India in 1952. (Stanley A. Wolpert, Encyclopedia of India [New York, 2005], 1:363–64.) 9. Radhakrishnan admitted that Gandhi, who was assassinated in 1948, preferred continence, but he doubted that most humans could succeed at that “saintly” goal. (For his full speech, see FPA-I, 3ICPP Proceedings, 10–12; New York Times, Jan. 31, 1948.) 10. MS’s friends Muriel “Budge” Painter and Grace Sternberg organized a drive to raise funds to establish an experimental birth control clinic in India. The list of donors was not found, but the women raised $2,181 by October 7, 1952. MS used contributions by Angus MacDonald and likely Dorothy Brush, Abraham Stone, and herself to bring the total to $2,500. In “The Humanity of Family Planning,” MS argued that overpopulation was the cause of lowered standards of living, depleted natural resources, and conflict and that it could be best combated by birth control. (Sternberg and Painter to MS, Oct. 7, 1952, MS to Frieda Blom, Oct. 6, 1952, MS to Blom, Sept. 30, 1952, and MS, “The Humanity of Family Planning,” Nov. 24, 1952 [MSM S40:118, 101, 39:966, 72:776].) 11. A reference to Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya. 12. For the published proceedings, see FPA-I, 3ICPP Proceedings. 13. In her journal, MS listed the fifteen country reports and speakers, remarking on the “long drawn out papers, difficult to stop.” (MS, World Trip Journal, Nov. 25, 1952 [MSM S70:694].)

November 1952  •  509 14. MS had long argued that contraceptive services were integral to infant and maternal health care. In 1915 she held up the public clinics in the Netherlands as a model approach to birth control distribution. In 1930 she and the delegates of the 7IBCC resolved that “Birth Control must be regarded as an essential part of the public health program and of preventive medicine in all countries.” And later that decade, she called for contraceptive services to be included in every state public health program in America. (MS, Dutch Methods of Birth Control [Mar.–Apr. 1915]; MS, The Case for Birth Control: A Supplementary Brief and Statement of Facts [New York, 1917], 8–10, 93–184; MS and Stone, Practice of Contraception, 313 [quote]; NCFLBC, New Day Dawns, 44; see also Vol. 3.) 15. Bishen Lal Raina (1911–97), an Indian physician with the army corps., reported that the army began to open family planning clinics in 1951 and that 108 had been opened by 1952, treating more than 8,000 men and 6,000 women. (Ahluwalia, Reproductive Restraints, 211n7; FPA-I, 3ICPP Proceedings, 218–19; Raina, Planning Family in India, flyleaf.) 16. The Bombay Municipal Corporation opened 2 free clinics in 1947, expanding to 17 by 1952. These clinics provided advice, instruction, diaphragms, and contraceptive jelly to 4,306 women in 1952. Dr. Ram D. Vohrah represented the corporation at the 3ICPP. (“Clinics of the Bombay Municipal Corporation,” in 3ICPP Proceedings, by FPA-I, xxi, 224.) 17. Katō and Koya, two of the four Japanese delegates, both addressed the Japanese government’s birth control education campaign and efforts to increase access to contraception. Koya, whose trip to Bombay was subsidized by John D. Rockefeller III, reported on contraceptive use in the three Japanese villages he was studying. Kan Majima focused on the impact of the legalization of induced abortion. (Koya to MS, June 25 and Sept. 10, 1952, and MS to Koya, Sept. 15, 1952, and Jan. 6, 1953 [MSM S38:295, 39:568, 366, 40:623]; Katō, “History of the Birth Control Movement in Japan,” and Koya, “The Program for Family Planning in Japan,” in 3ICPP Proceedings, by FPA-I, vi, 232–36.) 18. Blacker argued that many religious dictates about diet, sexual behavior, and celibacy may have been rooted in early efforts to control fertility and that the challenge for modern science was to balance new discoveries and technologies against their demographic impact. (Blacker, “Control of Fertility in Human Cultures,” in 3ICPP Proceedings, by FPA-I, 14–25.) 19. Lewis Calvin Walmsley (1897–1989) was a Canadian former missionary to China and professor of East Asian studies at the University of Toronto. He argued that women’s rights improved dramatically after the Communist takeover in China, but feared that the government’s demands for loyalty and large families might conflict with women’s rights. (Lewis Calvin Walmsley fonds, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives; Lewis C. Walmsley, “The Position of Women in China,” in 3ICPP Proceedings, by FPA-I, 79–83.) 20. Ottesen-Jensen’s November 28 paper, “Sex Education and Marriage Counseling,” offered her experiences in teaching sex and reproduction to children. (FPA-I, 3ICPP Proceedings, 198.) 21. Lena Levine and Elise Ottesen-Jensen ran a 3ICPP study group on sex education and marriage that discussed frigidity and impotence. (Fink, “Report on the Third ICPP,” Dec. 1, 1952.)

510  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work 22. Vito Stefano Pesce (b. 1915?), assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Bari, blamed the Catholic Church for sexual ignorance among Italians and accused the government of concealing population problems. (New York Passenger Lists, 1820–1957; Pesce to MS, Aug. 10, 1952 [MSM S39:138]; Pesce, “The Need for Family Planning in Italy,” in 3ICPP Proceedings, by FPA-I, 230–32.) 23. Jackson’s paper covered infertility and sterility tests and treatments used at FPA-GB clinics. During the infertility study group, Abraham Stone remarked that in 40 percent of infertility cases, the fault lay with the man. (Jackson, “Fertility, Sterility and Infertility”; Stone, “Research in Contraception.”) 24. The clinic study group agreed on five central purposes of planned parenthood clinics: family planning, infertility diagnosis and treatment, marriage guidance, premarital health inspection, and eugenic guidance (for potential parents anxious about hereditary diseases). Jackson argued that the United States and Scandinavia had better access to infertility treatments than did Britain. (Jackson, “Fertility, Sterility and Infertility,” 120.) 25. At the conclusion of the 3ICPP, Wright toured India for three weeks. She trained doctors, medical students, midwives, and nurses to fit diaphragms and spoke to lay audiences about family limitation. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 61; Evans, Freedom to Choose, 214–16.) 26. Gamble discussed his salt and sponge contraceptive during the study group Contraception and Contraceptive Methods, led by Abraham Stone. (FPA-I, 3ICPP Proceedings, 195–96.) 27. In his November 28 presentation, Gordon King outlined the efforts of the Hong Kong Eugenics League in the 1930s and reported on the activities of the FPA-HK. Sai Poh “Constance” Wee Goh (1906–96) was a Chinese-born feminist and welfare worker who helped found the Family Planning Association of Singapore (FPA-S) in 1949. Married to physician “Alfred” Kok Kee Goh, she did not appear on the program, but may have spoken at one of the social events. (Gordon King, “Hong Kong,” in 3ICPP Proceedings, by FPA-I, 215–18; Perdita Huston, Right to Choose: Pioneers in Women’s Health & Family Planning [London, 1992], 55; Straits Times [Singapore], Nov. 22, 1996.) 28. Ganpati Shankar N. Desai (1899–1984), mayor of Bombay (1952–53), was an Indian nationalist and longtime member of the Bombay Municipal Corporation. The reception was held on November 25. The Hanging Gardens of Mumbai (Ferozeshah Mehta Gardens) are terraced gardens, created in the 1880s, with views of the Arabian Sea. (Editors’ correspondence with Sandhya Mehta, Dec. 3, 2007; David Anthony Pinto, The Mayor, the Commissioner and the Metropolitan Administration [Bombay] [New Delhi, 1984], 96; Who’s Who, Modern Bombay and Her Patriotic Citizens [Bombay, 1941], 25.) 29. MS was also honored at a reception hosted by the Indian Medical Association on November 24 and later at a dinner held by Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya. She attended a lunch at the Turf Club hosted by Dr. Pillay on November 28 and heard musical presentations on November 23 and 27. (1952 Calendar and World Trip Journal [MSM S82:256–261, 70:687, 699].) 30. MS refers to a December 5 dinner with Jawaharlal Nehru and several organizers of the First International Study Conference on Child Welfare, which opened that day. (1952 Calendar [MSM S82:269]; New York Times, Dec. 6, 1952.)

December 1952  •  511 31. Vera Houghton characterized the coverage in India as “unprecedented,” with preconference press sessions attended by more than thirty reporters. Reuters and the Associated Press reported on the conference. (Vera Houghton, “The Bombay Conference and Its Aftermath: Reactions of the Press,” Eugenics Review 45 [Apr. 1953]: 41; for sample coverage, see New York Times, Nov. 25 and 26, 1952.) 32. The 3ICPP passed six resolutions: that countries with national family planning associations be invited to join the ICPP and that those without national organizations be invited to join as associate members; that the ICPP become the IPPF; that three regions, centered in Bombay, London, and New York, be created and others be incorporated as needed; that each region develop a committee to consider applications for IPPF membership within their region and to recommend members to the IPPF; that there be two honorary presidents and that each region appoint a director and working committees; and that a vote of thanks be given to Dorothy Brush for her AWNPBC work. (FPA-I, 3ICPP Proceedings, 202–3.) 33. Once the membership categories were established, West Germany, India, Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore were invited to join. Over the next year, the IPPF would further refine the membership categories, allowing all members to discuss issues but only full members to vote. (FPA-I, 3ICPP Proceedings, 203; IPPF, “Constitution,” 1953 [MSM S63:69].)

180. From Helen Keller 1

Arcan Ridge, Westport, Conn. December eighth, 1952.

Dear Margaret Sanger, What a glow of gratification was kindled in my heart when Polly read to me last week the wonderful news that you had founded the Planned Parenthood Association in India!2 Not only have I continued to follow your work with loving admiration and expect ever greater results from your beneficence, I have also known of Nehru’s statesmanlike interest in birth control,3 and now I behold you and him and Lady Rama Rau working together4—a triple Hercules—for the deliverance of a land cursed with excess of population. I cannot imagine anything more blessed happening on earth. As you teach, mankind has through ignorance often destroyed the sweet joy of childhood. Now a tide of enlightenment, slow but sure, shall lift its healing waves from one end of the world to the other until every child has a chance to be well born, well fed and fairly started in life—and that is woman’s natural work as the creator of the human race. Affectionately I salute you as the prophet and the woman Prometheus of humanity’s highest physical and mental welfare. Often Polly and I speak of the visits we used to have with you and the inspiration I drew from your brave words.5 You have travelled up and down

512  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work

and athwart the world since, but I never lose the warm thrill of your beautiful personality. With Polly’s and my love and wishes for a Christmas luminous with the service you are rendering to mankind, I am, Devotedly your friend, Helen Keller [signed] TLS MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S40:441–42).

1. Keller, who had argued since 1915 for birth control as a means of working-class empowerment, supported its use in cases where children would likely be born severely disabled. MS had invited her to attend the 3ICPP. (Engelman, History of the Birth Control Movement, 132; MS to Keller, June 12, 1952, and Eric T. Boulter to MS, June 27, 1952 [MSM S37:917, 38:333].) 2. Mary Agnes “Polly” Thomson (1885–1960) was Keller’s Scottish-born companion, secretary, and interpreter. She replaced Anne Sullivan Macy in 1936. (New York Times, Mar. 22, 1960.) 3. That day Nehru announced that India would budget $1.3 million for the provision of birth control services in clinics, one part of his Five-Year Plan for economic and social development. (New York Times, Dec. 9, 1952.) 4. Dhanvanthi Rama Rau, who with MS was elected IPPF copresident, organized medical training at the FPA-I’s clinic and arranged for several delegates, including Abraham Stone, Clarence Gamble, Elise Ottesen-Jensen, and Helena Wright, to tour India and train doctors. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 58–60.) 5. Though they worked next door to each other in New York and had traveled in the same World War I radical circles, MS and Keller did not meet until 1944, after which they corresponded regularly. (MS to Keller, Mar. 3, 1938 [LCM 8:1262]; 1944 Calendar and Keller to Sanger, Sept. 18, 1944 [MSM S80:386, 24:308]; see also Vol. 3.)

181. To Gobindram J. Watumull Sanger had visited the Watumulls in Honolulu just before leaving for the 3ICPP and returned on January 22, 1953 (Ellen Watumull to MS, Oct. 7 and 29, 1952, and 1953 Calendar [MSM S40:119, 229, 82:303].)

[Tucson, Ariz.] January 8, 1953

Dear Gomah, It was so good of you to call me on New Years day.1 I feel certain that your good wishes will be magic. Florence Rose flew over a few days before, and of course with much laughter and repetition of everything that went on in Bombay, I was exhausted from the telling. I am awaiting eagerly to hear from Lady Rama Rau as to the final framework of the International Federation. She and her Committee requested that

January 1953  •  513

they set up this framework, as most of our activities in the future will be in the Orient. We agreed to that. I fear, however, that their framework will not be acceptable to the western mind. She, for instance, believes that everything should center from London, the temporary headquarters of the International Federation.2 We know that there is practically no such thing as a strong Committee in London. There is only a very nice, willing, hardworking secretary, while all the other members of the Committee are busy doctors, seldom communicating with the headquarters.3 That is not the framework that I believe in any more than I believe that Washington, D.C. should dictate not only to every state, but to every county and city and town in U.S.A. It is a different setup, and I am not keen about central governments.4 I want to tell you how very well I have been, to the surprise of all the doctors and all the family, but now after this Christmas rush is over, things will be easier for me, and I hope to take up painting for a little while. But I want to come over to see you and Ellen as soon as she gets back and gets settled.5 The enclosed newspaper publicity letting the home folks know what I have been doing, is not too bad when your consider that a hero is never a hero to his own [valet].6 Thank you for sending the program, which I am returning as requested.7 My thanks to you, dear Gomah, for your good new years message. Affectionately, Margaret Sanger TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S40:639–40).

1. Watumull also sent MS a New Year’s greeting on December 30, 1952. (Watumull to MS, Dec. 30, 1952 [MSM S40:522].) 2. Dhanvanthi Rama Rau was critical of Western imperialism and racism, which she had experienced in a preindependent India in the 1920s and as the wife of a diplomat posted in England, South Africa (1938), and Japan (1947–48). In the draft Rama Rau sent to MS on January 14, she laid out an IPPF administration with a strong central committee of officers and delegates from member nations, with regional centers in Europe, America, and Southeast Asia, which would be supported by funds from the central committee and funds raised in each region. Rama Rau suggested that the IPPF Central Committee headquarters be in “the country of the General Secretary.” (Rama Rau, Inheritance, 118–21, 188, 231; Rama Rau to MS, Jan. 14, 1953, and “Draft Constitution of the International Planned Parenthood Federation,” Jan. 1953 [MSM S40:694, 63:13].) 3. MS refers to Vera Houghton, the IPPF’s only full-time employee and the contact for officers, member affiliates, and outside individuals. The other London committee members were C. P. Blacker, Helena Wright, and Margaret Pyke. (Cossey, “Vera Houghton,” 156; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 39.)

514  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work 4. MS’s past conflicts with the ABCL and the PPFA, both of which sought to centralize decision making at the national level, led her to identify more closely with state and local organizers whom she thought better understood their environments. She often put more faith in field-workers than administrators who had little practical experience. (For more on MS’s battles with the American organizations, see Vols. 1–3.) 5. Ellen Watumull remained in India until January, helping Rama Rau make plans for future work. (Watumull to MS, Jan. 16, 1953 [MSM S40:716].) 6. MS paraphrases Montaigne, “Peu d’hommes out esté admirés par leurs domestiques” (No man is a hero to his valet). MS likely enclosed clippings from the Tucson (Ariz.) Daily Citizen covering her trip to Asia, experiences in India, and the high infant death rate and abortion rates in Japan. (E. Cobham Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable [New York, 1922], 893; Tucson [Ariz.] Daily Citizen, Dec. 22, 24, and 31, 1952, and Jan. 3, 1954.) 7. The enclosed program was not found.

182. To Dorothy Hamilton Brush Sanger and Dorothy Brush had a falling-out during their travels in Hawaii and Japan in October–November 1952. Brush felt that Sanger had treated her badly, characterizing her concern over Sanger’s poor health as nagging. She also claimed that Sanger preferred spending time with new friends such as Ellen Watumull. Sanger wanted to minimize the friction, but believed Brush had been overly possessive and controlling on the trip. (Dorothy Brush, “Recollections,” Oct. 24, 1952 [MS Unfilmed].)

[Tucson, Ariz.] [January 10?, 1953]

Darling Dorothy— I enclose these for you to read.1 Clarence is a lone wolf in more ways than one!! But does a job—even tho’, seldom do we get reports of the results.2 There are several sarcastic touches in your letter that should be cleared between friends, but as I am not so good with the pen as you are—we must talk these points over—3 I received no letter from you darling in India about being appointed Editor etc only the cable to wire Barbara.4 We had one meeting of the Int Com after you left—5 Clarence was present at my invitation— Vogt, Stone, Blacker Ottensen-Jensen Wright6 & Houghton. The main decision was that the Int Federation was not to be under any national—but overall— Vogt wanted it a branch of the P.P.F. & I said flatly I’d not consider being Director of any such plan—to have to go on the knees to the Ex Com at 501 to ask advice as to world or N. Am. moves.7 Perhaps thats what you refer to as this “is too much a one woman movement.”8 God knows I’ve tried since 1939 to remove this one woman from the arena—9 Mr

January 1953  •  515

Rose made the same remark about the “one woman” trying his utmost best to transfer the movement into a “one man” instead.10 Doubtless Elise had a point—a “real point” as you say her suggestions however as to the strong basis for the movement was to purchase rubber plantations & manufacture condoms diaphragms & do the business!! That would certainly remove the “one woman” forever, as the one contribution we have made to the Bc movement in USA was to keep it ethical & non Commercial—11 Helena Wrights instincts & leanings would go along with the Sweeds & Dutch tho Blacker I am certain would not touch it nor would I.12 The minutes of that meeting of the Int Com. requested that you Edit the news—13 We all just took it for granted that you would carry on—no one else can do it. Its also a “one woman” idea & a damn good one all the way through!! Let any others muddle with it & it’s a dead end idea. If Vogt has suggestions for the Int Federation it seems to me it would have been ethical to let you & Stone see these—14 The “one woman” might have been allowed a peep—but these are principles that must be agreed to by us first. You are such a part of this whole movement Dorothy I cant think of any part without you past—present & future—where or what part you wish to be needs only a wink & it is yours— I begged you to give the report of the USA movement at Bombay you know its essentials far better that Vogt or Stone— You are “stage shy” as I know—consequently there was no good report given by any of us.15 Ill go & look for the spoons—16 two hours later—No find in safe—many things missing!! Not the Russians—the dame before I believe—17 I cant believe it yet—& will look further— I wish you had been here early enough to edit the news letter I am now mailing to sponsors.18 Do you think we could send the Jan issue to all the Sponsors as a trial copy?19 You have the list of names—a few supporters from Tucson—who gave their bit for the Clinic in Bombay are not Sponsors, but would doubtless pay the subscription rate for it. You will find that subscription plan a headache & expensive—20 Far more expensive than giving a copy to everyone who requests it for a year—to renew their request each year— I’ve tried both plans & paying for someone to keep track of the subs when due—reminders are also expensive in time & postage. Id rather accept contributions but not subscriptions—any ideas on this? (aside from people appreceating what they pay for). Again & again & again my love Margaret ALS DHBP, MN-SSC (MSM S40:658–61).

516  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work 1. MS enclosed several clippings and business cards for the AWNPBC’s mailing list (not found). (Brush to MS, Jan. 13, 1953 [MSM S40:675].) 2. Clarence Gamble was testing simple contraceptive methods that could be employed in primitive conditions. Independent and unconstrained, he alienated the BCFA and PPFA by promoting his own research goals over those of the movement. MS likely enclosed Gamble’s January 1 letter, which reported on his work in Ceylon and India, including the opening of a family planning association in Ceylon. (Gamble to MS, Jan. 1, 1953 [MSM S40:579]; for more on Gamble, see Vol. 3.) 3. In her last letter, Brush commented on MS’s recklessness with her health and on her imperious manner, noting, “I doubt very much if you are at all aware in your concentration on the work, of how you brushed your good friends off and made them feel completely unwanted.” (Brush to MS, Jan. 6, 1953 [MSM S40:617].) 4. Brush wrote MS an angry letter on November 7 that MS claimed not to have received (though it is extant). In it Brush complained that MS brushed her off in Honolulu and she said she feared that “the Watumull Foundation will take over the I.P.P.C. with headquarters in Bombay and so the ‘Brush’ with their peanuts will no longer be of any interest to you.” She warned that if MS moved the AWNPBC to London, she would resign as editor. She revealed her hurt feelings by noting, “I am afraid that my real interest . . . has been rooted in personal adoration for you! So that when I can no longer be of use to you, I don’t particularly want to do anything more for the Cause.” (Brush to MS, Nov. 7, 1952 [MSM S40:261].) 5. Brush did not accompany MS to Paris, but left India a few days after the 3ICPP, stopping in Beirut, Jerusalem, Florence, Rome, and Paris, before returning home. During the 3ICPP, IPPF leaders—including British members Helena Wright, C. P. Blacker, and Vera Houghton; PPFA director William Vogt; MSRB director Abraham Stone; and Sweden’s Elise Ottesen-Jensen—met every day in MS’s Taj Mahal Hotel suite to define and refine IPPF proposals. They presented a plan for the IPPF at the plenary session on November 29. Clarence Gamble attended the session, though he could not vote. (Brush to MS, Jan. 6, 1953 [MSM S40:617]; Connelly, Fatal Misconception, 168.) 6. Helena Wright served on the IPPF Governing Body. While MS praised her educational work, she thought Wright’s judgment was “a little dipsy and not at all to be relied upon, as far as personalities are concerned.” She sought to block Wright from becoming IPPF treasurer. (IPPF, 4ICPP Proceedings, xi, xxii, 139–40; MS to Clinton Chance, Jan. 9, 1953 [MSM S40:650].) 7. C. P. Blacker recalled that he and Abraham Stone hatched the idea of creating a regional structure for the organization, but he did not mention discussions about making the IPPF a PPFA subsidiary. (Blacker, “The International Planned Parenthood Federation: Aspects of Its History,” Eugenics Review 56 [Oct. 1964]: 139.) 8. Brush had complained, “This movement is too much a one woman movement and Elise Ottesen-Jensen had a real point when she said it ought to be built on a strong basis for the future. This conference certainly proved that if anything should happen to you the whole thing would collapse, at least temporarily.” The remark stung MS, who wrote that Brush “talks about me in flattering sentences to others— But her remarks to me were so cruel that I have less heart for the work than ever before in my life—” (Brush

January 1953  •  517 to MS, Jan. 6, 1953 [quote 1], and MS to Rublee, Feb. 6, 1953 [quote 2] [MSM S40:617, C9:887].) 9. Following the 1939 merger and creation of the BCFA (later renamed the PPFA), MS stepped back, serving only as honorary chairman, without any real authority. (See Vols. 2–3.) 10. MS refers to David Kenneth Rose (1902–63), a public relations consultant who served as BCFA/PPFA national director from 1939 to 1948. He battled with MS over the direction of the movement and his efforts to replace the women who had built the movement with untried male professionals. (New York Times, Aug. 3, 1963; for more on this relationship, see Vol. 3.) 11. FPA-GB leaders, in particular chairwoman Lady Gertrude Denman, were not as interested in global family planning work as they were in expanding practical work in England. Sweden’s RFSU remained fully committed to international work, financing the Swedish delegation’s trips to the ICPWR and the 3ICPP. Ottesen-Jensen worried that the IPPF would be too dependent on private donors and called for member organizations to finance it by contributions and the proceeds of manufacturing and selling contraceptives—an idea that MS vehemently opposed. Sanger noted that she “never allowed my name or the cause of birth control to be tied up in any way with money-making concerns.” (MS to John A. Kingsbury, June 17, 1931 [LCM 57:222A]; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 25, 35; Evans, Freedom to Choose, 207–8; Linder, Crusader of Sex Education, 122–23, 171, 183–87.) 12. Wright believed in family planning as a woman’s rights issue and was less persuaded by arguments for population control favored by MS and Blacker. (Evans, Freedom to Choose, 212–13.) 13. The meeting minutes were not found. 14. According to Brush, Vogt drafted his ideas for a permanent international organization and sent them to Rama Rau, but did not share them with her. (Brush to MS, Jan. 6, 1953 [MSM S40:617].) 15. Brush had long battled stage fright, and while she read a short report at the 3ICPP titled “The International Birth Control Movement,” which provided history and background leading up to the present conference, Vogt read the American report. (Dorothy Hamilton [Brush] Dick, “Unaccustomed as I Am,” Harper’s, July 1936, 207–14; FPA-I, 3ICPP Proceedings, 204, 241.) 16. Brush had asked whether MS still wanted to give her some “gold lacquer coffee spoons.” (Brush to MS, Jan. 6, 1953 [MSM S40:617].) 17. The “Russians” were Ephim (John) Voronoff (1889–1964), MS’s butler and chauffeur, and his wife, Elizabeth Voronoff (1902–93), a housekeeper. The previous domestic worker may have been Molly Walker Smith. (SSDI; California Death Index; Madeline Gray, Margaret Sanger: A Biography of the Champion of Birth Control [New York, 1979], 398; MS checkbook stub, 1949 [MS Unfilmed].) 18. MS’s sponsor letter was not found. 19. MS refers to the January 1953 issue of the AWNPBC. 20. Brush wanted the AWNPBC to become self-sufficient, believing that “if it is worth anything people ought to be willing to pay for it.” After the BF renewed its support of the

518  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work AWNPBC in August, the IPPF decided to charge a small subscription fee in the United States, Canada, and England to help subsidize free distribution in Europe, Asia, and Africa. (Brush to MS, Jan. 13, 1953, and IPPF, First Annual Report, Nov. 29, 1952–Aug. 31, 1953 [MSM S40:726, LCM 139:455].)

183. To K ageyas W. Amano The Amanos sent the PPFA a translation of an apology to Sanger published in their journal Nippon Ninshin Chōsetsu Kenkyūsho (Japan Planned Parenthood Quarterly) in which they mentioned the warm welcome she received from the Japanese public in contrast to several public officials, including Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, Tokyo governor Seiichirô Yasui, and the members of the Welfare Ministry, who “all failed to pay proper honor due her.” (Amano and Amano, “Very Sorry Mrs. Sanger.”)

Tucson, Arizona May 29, 1953

Dear Dr. Amano: Your “Very Sorry Mrs. Sanger” translated into English for the Planned Parenthood Affiliates Bulletin of May 1953, is causing much amusement among our friends. It is a charming sentiment as expressed by you and your wife, but I have long ago expected no visits or invitations to call on Governors or Mayors in any country, including my own. Usually I have noticed an epidemic of what I term “political colds” whenever I am in the area of political officials. This was not true in Kyoto, where we were invited for lunch at the home of the distinguished Mayor of that famous city.1 Also in India, there has always been the open door and hospitality offered by both Indian and British officials, including Gandhi, Tagore, and the Prime Minister Nehru, as well as to the home of his sister Mrs. Pandit.2 The Municipality and Mayor of Bombay honored all of our delegates at a reception tea, as also did the Medical Association of that city.3 Also, my dear Dr. Amano, my happiness was to be welcomed by the thousands of people everywhere we went in your country.4 After all, I am the protagonist of the mothers of all countries, whose lives, health and happiness depends on Birth Control. It is to them I speak. To have personal, official welcome would be an added honor and pleasure but not a necessity to my happiness. I thank you for your enchanting idea of an audience given by your Emperor.5 That indeed would have been an honor and a very great honor. I appreciate your thought of me in this regard. Cordially yours, TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 7:815–16). Return address: 65 Sierra Vista Drive.

August 1953  •  519 1. Gizô Takayama (1892–1974), the mayor of Kyoto (1950–66), hosted MS and fifteen others at his residence in Kyoto on November 6, 1952. (Ian Martin Röpke and Jon Woronoff, eds., Historical Dictionary of Osaka and Kyoto [Metuchen, N.J., 1999], 250; MS, “Greetings from Japan,” Nov. 1952 [MSM C9:799].) 2. Vijaya Pandit, a member of India’s Parliament from 1951 to 1953, recalled MS’s visit to Allahabad in 1936 as the start of a valuable friendship. For details of the dinners, receptions, and other honors paid to MS in India, see MS and How-Martyn, Round the World for Birth Control, 12–27. (For Tagore’s support of birth control and MS, see Tagore to MS, Sept. 30, 1925, herein, and Nov. 23, 1935 [MSM C5:975]; Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, The Scope of Happiness: A Personal Memoir [New York, 1979], 116.) 3. See MS, Excerpt from “Greetings from India,” Nov. 20, 1952, note 28, herein. 4. MS wrote that she was “warmly welcomed, invited to speak whenever possible,” and “urged to help in the effort to educate the Japanese people to avail themselves of government-sanctioned medical means of spacing their babies.” (MS, “Japan Wants Birth Control,” 553.) 5. The Amanos wrote that they regretted MS “was not given audience by our Emperor who usually honors scientific and religious leaders when they visit Japan.” (Amano and Amano, “Very Sorry Mrs. Sanger.”)

184. Excerpts from Journal Entry Sanger went to Scandinavia in August to attend the 4ICPP in Stockholm (August 19 to 22, 1953), accompanied by Dorothy McNamee. She sailed from New York on the S.S. Stockholm on August 5, arrived in Copenhagen on August 14, and flew to Stockholm the next day. The IPPF Governing Body met for two to three hours each day during the 4ICPP, in between formal sessions, study groups, and country reports, to work on the constitution. (1953 Calendar [MSM S82:461–69]; Linder, Crusader for Sex Education, 190–92.)

[Stockholm, Sweden] Aug 15 [1953] MS & Lena1 ↑Harriet↓2 flew to Stockholm Andrew Pazzini & Jack had used influence to get D & MS to Grand Hotel.3 Registered at conference. [Sun] Press conference at Gillet Hotel, consisting of 20 reporters—Photographers. Lady Rama Rau D- Blacker arrived also Dr Stone—4 We began early Monday to get to work on the Constitution which Dr Blacker had so carefully prepared.5 He had sent it not only to me & to Lady Rama Rau, the two Presidents but after remarks & suggestions it was sent to Holland Germany & Sweeden for their consideration.6 Unfortunately the American Committee7 suggestions went hay wire— I had sent the whole set up to Jerry Fisher of Cleveland, John Wilson Chicago8 Harriet Pilpel NY. The Watumull Foundation all legal individuals— Jerry Fisher sent a prompt rejoiner & constructive remarks & suggestions,9 but as Harriet was to be present in Stockholm she wanted to wait until then to give her views. When

520  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work

we arrived in the room with the Steering Committee consisting of delegates & observers from HongKong Singapore, Germany, Holland Sweeden USA10 we were confronted with an entirely new constitution by Mr Vogt written by Mr Griesserman whom I had never seen before11 & who had been sent over by a new friend of the Int Mr Moore12—who paid the fare of Mr Griesserman— The tension was Something—13 It was not ethical to do this—all the delegates whispered that it was typical American. The individuals who had drawn it up were Pilpel, Stone & Griesserman but Vogt sent it off before the Committee met & that was an error— But Dr Blacker was not to be put down like that, he had worked hard & had the delegates of all the countries (including me) behind him— He ruled the discussion with courteous consideration but ↑with↓ a firm iron hand. It was strenuous work on his part & usually as is ↑with↓ British courtesy he asked me first as to ↑an↓ opinion on every rule on every subject, often I was not too prepared to give an opinion, but as I sat between Lady Rama on my left & Else Ottensen Jensen on my right,14 the Dutch delegates across from me & the Hong Kong & Singapore on the right angle so I could see & hear much to get the trend of their thinking— Day by day, hour after hour Dr Blacker worked & wrote added suggestions, inserted every objection & every opinion on the margins—& scarcely ever attended one of the Sessions—15 His work was superb & had he not done this for us—there could not possibly be such a firm foundation as this Constitution, rules & Aims establish.16 AD MSP, DLC (LCM 1:384–387).

1. Lena Levine was representing the MSRB at the 4ICPP, while also serving as MS’s “resident and personal physician.” (MS to Levine, May 25, 1953 [MSM S41:465].) 2. Harriet Fleischl Pilpel (1911–91) was a lawyer in the office of Greenbaum, Wolff, and Ernst who specialized in civil liberties and reproductive rights cases. She had represented MS and acted as PPFA counsel since 1936. In May Pilpel was invited to work on the IPPF Constitution and to accompany MS to Stockholm for deliberations. (Sylvia A. Law, “A Tribute: Harriet Fleischl Pilpel,” Family Planning Perspectives 23 [July–Aug. 1991]: 182–83; MS to Pilpel, May 7, 1953, and Pilpel to MS, July 8, 1953 [MSM S41:345, 594].) 3. Andrew J. Pizzini (1879–1962), a wealthy industrialist, was one of MS’s Tucson neighbors. Albin E. “Jack” Johnson (1890–1992), a former foreign correspondent and diplomat stationed in Europe, met MS in Geneva in 1926. He may have used his connections to secure the reservations. “D” refers to Dorothy McNamee. (New York Times, May 31, 1962, and Nov. 26, 1992; Arizona Daily Star [Tucson], Sept. 28, 1953; and Tucson [Ariz.] Daily Citizen, Feb. 8, 1977].) 4. Rama Rau, who with the FPA-I had published the 3ICPP Proceedings in May, joined the Indian Family Planning Research and Programs Committee, a newly formed government advisory group on birth control services. Abraham Stone was delivering

August 1953  •  521 papers on contraceptive research and artificial insemination. (Rama Rau to MS, June 5 and May 23, 1953 [MSM S41:523, 459]; IPPF, 4ICPP Proceedings, 59, 108.) 5. Blacker worked with MS and members of the British Committee to draft the IPPF Constitution and Rules. In April he sent MS and Rama Rau the first draft of the IPPF’s aims, structure, financial setup, and rules for regional and national organizations. (Blacker to MS, Mar. 27, 1953, MS to Blacker, May 5, 1953, and Blacker, “IPPF Draft Outline of Constitution,” Apr. 10, 1953 [MSM C9:971, 1014, S63:40].) 6. On June 18, MS also sent Blacker’s version to Rama Rau, who had written her own draft in January. (Rama Rau, “Draft Constitution of the International Planned Parenthood Federation,” Jan. 1953, and MS to Rama Rau, June 18, 1953 [MSM S63:13, 41:552].) 7. MS refers to an unofficial group of Americans associated with the PPFA, including Harriet Pilpel, Thomas Griessemer, Abraham Stone, and William Vogt, who drafted their version of an IPPF Constitution in New York. (Vogt to MS, July 7, 1953 [MSM S41:590]; IPPF Governing Body Minutes, Aug. 17–22, 1953 [LCM 128:58].) 8. Jerome C. Fisher (1888–1954), a Cleveland attorney and treasurer of the BF, was the IPPF treasurer. He praised Blacker’s draft as “uncommonly thoughtful and wise” and was especially impressed that the new constitution did not “over-organize” the federation. John P. Wilson (1905–78), an attorney with the Chicago firm of Wilson and McIlvaine, was a member of the PPFA National Board. (1930 U.S. Census; Fisher to MS, June 9, 1953 [MSM S41:530]; Chicago Tribune, Nov. 20, 1978.) 9. Fisher suggested expanding the power of the IPPF Governing Body, giving it “final power, and ultimate decisions,” as well as the power to expel members for involvement with contraceptive manufacturers. He also believed the governing body should be able to vote by proxy if they could not be present at meetings. He opposed Blacker’s idea of having three honorary presidents, fearing that it would complicate operations. (Fisher to MS, June 9, 1953 [MSM S41:530].) 10. MS refers to the IPPF Governing Body, which the American contingent called the Steering Committee in its draft constitution. The body had eighteen voting members plus six observers without voting power. Voting members included representatives from Hong Kong, Singapore, West Germany (two), the Netherlands (two), Sweden (two), India (three), the United Kingdom (three), and the United States (four). Nonvoting observers were Thomas Griessemer, Harriet Pilpel, Clarence Gamble, and Frances Hand Ferguson (United States); David Pyke (United Kingdom); and P. A. Van Huet (Netherlands). (IPPF U.S. Committee, Statutes of the IPPF, June 11, 1953 [MSM S63:42]; IPPF Governing Body Minutes, Aug. 17–22, 1953 [LCM 129:56].) 11. William Vogt sent the American draft constitution to Vera Houghton on July 17, but it arrived too late to be circulated to the governing body before the 4ICPP. Vogt also shared the draft with MS and other American members and apprised MS of two sections on regional associations and fund-raising that he proposed to change. But because most of the other representatives had not read it, the committee worked from the British Committee’s draft. (Vogt to MS, July 9, 1953 [MSM S41:597]; IPPF Governing Body Minutes, Aug. 17–22, 1953 [LCM 128:58].) 12. Thomas Otto Griessemer (1904–66) was a German-born lawyer associated with the New York–based World Federalist Movement and the Hugh Moore Fund for International Peace. Hugh Moore (1887–1972), a retired industrialist and cofounder of the

522  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work Dixie Cup Company, supported population control as a weapon against communism and donated Griessemer’s time to help draft the IPPF Constitution. (New York Times, June 28, 1966, and Nov. 26, 1972; Critchlow, Intended Consequences, 16–17.) 13. C. P. Blacker recalled that there “was some initial tension. Tom put his case with the vigour of a lawyer in court; and I wondered how we were going to get on with this emphatic newcomer. But,” he wrote, “as the busy hours passed, misgivings were quickly dispelled. It became increasingly clear that the Americans and ourselves were, in two senses, speaking the same language. It also became clear that Tom’s points were always good ones.” (Blacker, “T. O. Griessemer,” IPPF News [Sept. 1966]: 7.) 14. In February 1953, Elise Ottesen-Jensen was chosen as director of the IPPF’s Europe, Near East and Africa Region (IPPF-ENEAR), with MS’s reluctant support. (Linder, Crusader for Sex Education, 190–91.) 15. The conference committee met five times during the 4ICPP and created at least three revisions of the constitution. Most of the work centered on merging Blacker’s draft, which described an organization geared toward organizing national groups and creating public interest in population and family planning, with the American draft, which sought a more research-oriented organization. The final draft included both views. (See IPPF, “Statement of Aims, Third Revision,” Aug. 22, 1953 [MSM S67:49]; for drafts made during the conference, see MSM S63:46–60].) 16. The IPPF Constitution called for a ten-member federation with broad aims to advance scientific research and the spread of information on family planning, human fertility, and sex education. It also encouraged the creation and interaction of family planning associations and training for doctors, nurses, and health workers. A general assembly, a council, and an executive committee were set up to make decisions and direct policy. (IPPF, “Constitution and By-Laws,” 1953 [MSM S63:68].)

185. To Lawrence Lader 1 Sanger opened the 4ICPP Jubilee Dinner at Stockholm’s Grand Hotel with a speech titled “The History of the Movement in the English-Speaking World.” She reviewed her early activism and leadership of the movement and then discussed the legal situation. She called on delegates to work together to find inexpensive and simple contraceptives. (MS, “The History of the Movement in the English-Speaking World,” Aug. 17, 1953 [MSM S72:834]; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 68.)

[Stockholm, Sweden] Tuesday Aug 18/53

Dear Lary! The big event for me is over thank the Gods that be! Last nights banquet with me as the sole speaker except the very important Dr Engel Director General of Public Health2 on my right who was sent by his Organization to speak on behalf of the local League— Then on my left was Dr Evang of Norway, that may not be the way to spell his name,

August 1953  •  523

but he was on the WHO & did a good fight on Bc but was defeated by the R.C’s—3 The dinner was good in caluries & taste—with only me to make a speech I made it fairly short. One joke was enjoyed only by the Americans & English— Remind me to tell you. There are delegates from India & Greece, Turkey, Germany Italy all over Europe—4 It’s a great success. It is cool here but the trip over was prepostereus—rough & dangerous to walk about on the boat. I kept in bed most of each day.5 Mrs Pilpel is a god send in helping to clear the legal air—but Americans are blunder busses in all European affairs; we think our slop jack ways of “quickies” are best.6 This is just a brief word to say Hi—& let you know Im alive & like Johnny Walker “going strong.”7 My thoughts of you are affectionate. OK? MS ALI LLP, MH-H (MSM C10:52–53). Letterhead of the Grand Hotel.

1. Lawrence Lader (1919–2006), a journalist, was writing a biography of MS. The two maintained an active correspondence through 1953 about her activities. (New York Times, Aug. 29, 1942, and May 10, 2006.) 2. Arthur Georg William Engel (1900–1996), a Swedish physician, was director-general of Sweden’s National Board of Health (1952–67). (Arthur G. W. Engel, Planning and Spontaneity in the Development of the Swedish Health System [Chicago, 1968]; Catalog, National Library of Sweden.) 3. Karl Evang (1902–81), a Norwegian socialist physician, dedicated himself to public health issues and early on supported sex education and women’s reproductive rights. After World War II, he became Norway’s chief medical officer and was one of the organizers of WHO. At the fifth World Health Assembly in 1952, Evang was angered by the director-general’s refusal to include family planning in any of the UN programs and proposed that WHO investigate the health implications of overpopulation. He also wanted WHO to participate in a world population conference. Both proposals were opposed and eventually withdrawn. (K. Ringen, “Karl Evang: A Giant in Public Health,” Journal of Public Health Policy 11 [Autumn 1990]: 360‑67; John Farley, Brock Chisholm, the World Health Organization, and the Cold War [Vancouver, 2008], 181–82.) 4. The 4ICPP hosted delegates from eighteen countries. (IPPF, 4ICPP Proceedings, xiii–xix.) 5. MS reported that during the voyage, Lena Levine had to give her two shots, possibly painkillers. (1953 Calendar [MSM S82:465].) 6. MS refers to the American draft of the IPPF Constitution. (See MS, Journal Entry, Aug. 15, 1953, note 11, herein.) 7. Johnnie Walker, the Scottish whiskey brand produced by Distiller’s Company, used the advertising slogan “Born in 1820; still going strong.” (Display advertisement, New York Times, Nov. 13, 1953.)

524  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work

186. To Dorothy Hamilton Brush 1 On August 21, the IPPF ratified its constitution and, on Ottesen-Jensen’s nomination, elected Sanger president. Rama Rau was named chairman of the governing body, which would meet again at the next international conference. (IPPF, 4ICCP Proceedings, xxi–xxiii; Linder, Crusader for Sex Education, 190–92.)

[Stockholm, Sweden] Friday Aug 21/53

Dorothy dear Last evening you were made International Editor of the magazine by Acclimation!!!2 Elisa3 wanted me to send you a cable with her name added but this letter will reach you almost as quickly— I too have been made President & Lady R. Rau Chairman Stone & Pillsbury Vice Presidents.4 I don’t like being world President at all, but Lady R. R. finds such jealousies & problems in her world that she insists it would hamper the work in India if she were made President.5 It has been a most facinating & cooperative gathering. Blacker a superb chairman.6 So Madame Editor you are it indefinitely. The rest of us [written along right margin] for two years. as of yore. Margaret ALS MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S41:709). Letterhead of the Grand Hotel.

1. Brush did not attend the 4ICPP due to ill health, but she agreed to continue as editor of the AWNPBC. She and MS had begun to mend their relationship. (Brush to MS, Aug. 13, 1953, and to IPPF Executive Committee, Aug. 12, 1953 [MSM S41:692–93].) 2. The IPPF Executive Committee confirmed Brush as AWNPBC editor and took up her request for more administrative help. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 71, 74; Brush to MS, Aug. 13, 1953 [MSM S41:692].) 3. MS refers to Elise Ottesen-Jensen, the RFSU director and 4ICPP host. 4. Each of the IPPF’s regions was to elect two vice presidents. The IPPF-WHR selected Abraham Stone and Eleanor Bellows Pillsbury (1913–71), PPFA president since 1950 and the wife of Philip W. Pillsbury, chairman of the Pillsbury Company. Other regional vice presidents were Ottesen-Jensen and Conrad van Emde Boas (IPPF-ENEAR) as well as R. N. Khosla (Indian Ocean Region) (IPPF-IOR). The Far East and Australasian Region (IPPF-FEAR) decided to hold its elections later. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 70; New York Times, Aug. 28, 1971.) 5. Rama Rau recalled that rather than be president, she had wanted to concentrate on India. She wrote, “I hoped for guidance from the central office, but I knew that the major work in India-‑organizing programs that would fit into the social and cultural patterns of our large cities, smaller district towns, and even, perhaps-‑the village areas, must be undertaken by Indians.” (Rama Rau, Inheritance, 265.)

August 1953  •  525 6. C. P. Blacker chaired the IPPF Constitution meetings and presented the final version to the 4ICPP on August 19. He was elected vice chairman of the IPPF Governing Body. (IPPF, Program of the Fourth ICPP, August 17–23, 1953 [MSM S67:401]; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 71.)

187. Excerpts from Journal Entry The 4ICPP concluded on August 22 with reports and resolutions from study groups and formal closing remarks by Elise Ottesen-Jensen, followed by public thanks from Sanger and other officers. (IPPF, 4ICCP Proceedings, xxiii.)

[Stockholm, Sweden] [August 23?, 1953]1 The last day of the conference was most dramatic, we were all set up on the platform, Dr Blacker the Dutch, Germans,2 Lady Rama Rau3 & I when Mrs Ottensen Jensen thanked the delegates etc all officially correct—4 Then I held forth to thank Mrs Jensen & the committee who had made the Conference so successful, I thanked them for their superb hospitality, & emphasized my appreciation of the Sessions being conducted in English, I asked for a raising vote of thanks to the Conference Committee.5 All stood up & applauded. Lady R. R. took up the lead & thanked Dr Blacker all stood & we were about to disperse when the Japanese woman delegate Mrs Magima (midwife who brought the Crown Prince “to earth”) wedged her way up the aisle & steps to the platform & began to speak and to cry!!— She talked & cried she kept her left hand or finger tips over her mouth—but she talked about the mothers in Japan their sufferings, their losses thru the war, their abortions 50000 Midwives are busy preforming abortions.6 She cried & talked, no one could possibly understand a word she said, except a few of us near her on the platform. People in the audiance were wiping their eyes the men blowing noses—the rest of us choking back emotion. Finally she finished to the end—determined to say her say. Mrs OttensenJensen flew to her & hugged her & they both rocked in each others arms & cried— Finally I went over also & put my arms around her—& then spoke & asked her to take our greetings to the Japanese people & to promise the Japanese mothers that it would not be necessary for them to depend on abortions to space their pregnancies—as research on Contraceptives was going on & we hoped within a few years to have a contraceptive simple, harmless cheap & dependable. This ended the Embarrassing Situation & we were all glad to escape— It was a dramatic ending to the Fourth International P.P. Conference. AD MSP, DLC (LCM 1:389–91).

526  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work 1. The entry was written shortly after the conference ended. 2. For a list of Dutch and German delegates, see IPPF, 4ICPP Proceedings, xiii–xix. 3. Rama Rau had chaired the session on World Population Trends. In the closing session, she described the FPA-I’s work and singled out the need for increased research on simple contraceptives. (Rama Rau, “The Family Planning Work in India,” in 4ICCP Proceedings, by IPPF, 10–16.) 4. Ottesen-Jensen noted, “We have seen how well those in scientific and social field can work together” and singled out C. P. Blacker in her thanks, but of MS she said only that “our beloved Margaret Sanger has unanimously and with acclamation been elected President, and the dynamic Lady Rama Rau, who has captivated our hearts, as Chairman of the IPPF governing body.” (IPPF, 4ICPP Proceedings, 148.) 5. A short summary of MS’s remarks appears in IPPF, 4ICPP Proceedings, 149. 6. MS refers to Chimo Mashima (1892–1959), a Japanese midwife with the NSCR and one of two Japanese delegates to the conference. Mashima asked the IPPF to hold its next conference in Japan, “where a million abortions a year pointed to the desperate need of Japanese women for family planning.” Under Japanese law, physicians could perform abortions, but illegal abortion was rampant. There were 55,356 midwives as of 1955. (Library of Congress Virtual International Authority File; IPPF, 4ICPP Proceedings, 149; Norgren, Abortion before Birth Control, 49, 149, 176, 182; see also MS, Excerpt from “Greetings from Japan,” Nov. 8, 1952, notes 7 and 9, herein.)

188. To William Vogt 1 Almost from the start, the IPPF’s relationship with the PPFA was problematic. The United States was widely seen as the most abundant source of funding for international work, but the PPFA was reluctant to allow the IPPF to fund-raise there independently. It feared that international appeals, especially when made by Sanger, might siphon funds away from the PPFA. Sanger disagreed, and when she heard that Vogt had called an international meeting in New York without consulting her, she sent him an angry letter insisting that “my position in the movement and its activities has never been a figurehead.” Vogt responded that he sent the announcement at the request of IPPF-WHR vice president Eleanor Pillsbury and explained that the meeting “merely gets together the local people who are interested to discuss certain problems, some of which must be handled locally, and perhaps to make some suggestions on matters that cannot be handled here.” (Vogt to MS, July 9, 1953, MS to Fisher, Oct. 27, 1953, MS to Vogt, Nov. 3, 1953 [quote 1], and Vogt to MS, Nov. 5, 1953 [quote 2] [MSM S41:597, 987, 42:25, 52].)

[Tucson, Ariz.] November 10, 1953

Dear Bill, Thanks for your letter.2 It is important for us working together cooperatively to remember how difficult things can get owing to distances of 2500 miles across the country. Also it is important for us all to keep constantly in mind, the touchiness of the various nationals throughout Europe in hav-

November 1953  •  527

ing the Americans given too much power and too much say so in all the International affairs, because of the money position that we fortunately hold.3 I will be very happy to have any suggestions or opinions expressed by the regional group at your meeting of November 13th., so that we can stand together on these opinions and forward them to the Secretary in London, to be in turn commented and decided upon by the Executive Committee.4 I enclose a copy of my letter to Mrs. Houghton relative to Dr. Gamble.5 I know that there has been some adverse criticism of him, especially by Helena Wright, who did a bit of gossip concerning his lion hunt and expenses involved, to the representatives in India.6 This, together with the rumours that people were to become “guinea pigs” was an unfortunate piece of bad relationship, and unfortunately he has this to overcome.7 I stoutly denied both of these rumours when I heard of them, both in London and to Lady Rama Rau.8 I could tell you personally how I know that both of these are false accusations. I think that Gamble has a valuable background for the expansion of the International field work. Personally and to your private ear one of the English representatives wants to go to India to do field work for six months, and if you could see the suggested bill for expenses, you would laugh loud and long. This is confidential, but I think if you can get Lady Rama Rau to a quiet small evening tete a tete, she will give you some information that will help you keep your fingers crossed and to stand behind Gamble. I wish she were more positive as to the acceptance of Gamble and his work in India. There is no doubt that he will be welcome in Ceylon with the salt jelly, and he should do follow up work in Pakistan.9 I would like to have discussed these matters with you before I sent my letter to London, but distances of travel and long distance telephones become more and more difficult. I am trying to clear the boards here so I can get east for the Holidays, and I would like, if possible, to have a meeting of the International called while I am there.10 I think it would be good to have a small meeting first of Pillsbury, Stone, you and Mrs. Ferguson, for she, I believe, is one of the representatives, and Dr. Stone and Mrs. Pillsbury are Vice-Presidents, and you as Chairman of the Finance Committee, or was it the Program Committee.11 I do not recall which, but I am sure that you were on one of these committees in Stockholm. After a small International meeting we could then call the larger group together.12 Will you let me know what dates would be suitable to you and other members of the Regional Committee. With best regards, Margaret Sanger TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S42:103–4).

528  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work 1. Though he held no formal office in the IPPF, Vogt’s significance lay in his role as PPFA national director and his insistence that the IPPF clear any fund-raising and fieldwork in the Western Hemisphere through the PPFA. MS found Vogt frustrating, complaining that “as a newcomer into the movement, both nationally and internationally, it seemed to me his vision was rather narrow through lack of experience.” (Vogt to MS, Nov. 5, 1953, Vogt to C. P. Blacker, Nov. 6, 1953, and MS to Fisher, Oct. 27, 1953 [quote] [MSM S42:52, 63, S41:987].) 2. See Vogt to MS, Nov. 5, 1953 [MSM S42:52].) 3. MS may refer to Swedish and Dutch concerns over American influence in the IPPF. (See MS to Houghton, Sept. 12, 1952, herein.) 4. MS refers to the November 13 inaugural meeting of the IPPF-WHR Steering Committee. While all the attendees were American, the steering committee hoped to invite representatives from the entire Western Hemisphere region and to differentiate the IPPF-WHR from the PPFA. MS, as IPPF president, was not a IPPF-WHR member. (IPPF-WHR Steering Committee Minutes, Nov. 13, 1953, and Brush to MS, Nov. 16, 1953 [MSM C13:188, S42:126]; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 91.) 5. Clarence Gamble had written to MS on November 2 to request IPPF sponsorship of his salt-jelly contraceptive research in rural India. Gamble proposed that he represent the IPPF “under whatever title you consider desirable,” promising to fund the costs of the study that he would conduct with his son Richard Gamble. He asked MS to intercede with Rama Rau, who disliked the method because it had not been tested on Western subjects. Gamble also proposed an IPPF fieldwork department to help developing countries build organizations and distribute contraceptives. MS wrote to Vera Houghton supporting Gamble’s request and suggested that both Gambles should be named IPPF field representatives. (Gamble to the IPPF Executive Committee, Sept. 28, 1953, and Gamble to Rama Rau, Oct. 21, 1953 [LCM 8:743, 764]; Gamble to MS, Nov. 2, 1953 [quote], and MS to Houghton, Nov. 10, 1953 [MSM C10:176, S42:97].) 6. In late January 1953, Clarence and Richard Gamble went on a two-week tiger hunt in India, about which William Vogt remarked that “there have been nasty cracks about ‘tax-free tiger hunts’ charged to PPFA.” Helena Wright dismissed Gamble’s salt method as “simpleminded” and warned that the formula would cause irritation. (Vogt to MS, Nov. 6, 1953 [quote 1] [MSM C10:195]; Williams, Every Child a Wanted Child, 236–39 [quote 2 on 238].) 7. Helena Wright remained in India after the 3ICPP to help educate physicians, while Gamble stayed on to conduct his own fieldwork. When Gamble offered the FPA-I the services of a Canadian field-worker, Rama Rau’s assistant Avabai Wadia recalled that both she and Rama Rau were disturbed at the suggestion they accept an unqualified foreigner to teach them. Gamble met with Rama Rau in Boston, where he learned she opposed the testing of the salt-jelly method in India. (Williams, Every Child a Wanted Child, 236–39; Wadia, Light Is Ours, 165; MS to Oliver Gutenelaike, Feb. 3, 1953 [MSM S40:887]; Gamble to Rama Rau, Oct. 21, 1953 [LCM 8:764].) 8. Rama Rau opposed efforts to bring simple contraceptive methods to developing countries, viewing them as primitive and ineffective when compared to those used in the West. She was not swayed by Gamble’s October 21 letter assuring her that his saltbased contraceptives had been tested at the MSRB and listed by the AMA Council on

November 1953  •  529 Pharmacy and Chemistry. MS tactfully told Gamble, it is “my opinion that the feeling back in India, especially the feeling of the Director of Public Health is so strong that she hesitates to take the initiative as to any field worker coming into India.” (Rama Rau, Inheritance, 51, 63; Gamble to Rama Rau, Oct. 21, 1953, and MS to Gamble, Nov. 10, 1953 [quote] [LCM 8:764, 775].) 9. In 1952–53 Clarence and Richard Gamble helped organize Family Planning Associations in Ceylon, Pakistan, and East Pakistan. Clarence Gamble also established a clinic in Colombo that tested foam tablets. (Gamble to MS, Mar. 16 and Sept. 28, 1953 [MSM C9:952, 743].) 10. MS left Tucson for New York on December 13, 1953. The international meeting was scheduled for December 17. (1953 Calendar [MSM S82:570–81].) 11. IPPF vice president Eleanor Pillsbury was in charge of organizing the IPPF-WHR. Frances Hand Ferguson (1907–95) was a PPFA vice chairman and member of the IPPF American Committee. Vogt was chair of the IPPF Program Committee. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 70–71; New York Times, Aug. 4, 1995.) 12. Seventeen IPPF American Committee members, including Abraham Stone, William Vogt, Dorothy Brush, and Hugh Moore, along with nonmembers Dhanvanthi Rama Rau and Indian demographer Chidambara Chandrasekharan, met on December 17. The informal group defined its role as advisory. They discussed IPPF Constitution revisions, requests for membership from Japanese and Australian groups, and whether to hold an IPPF meeting in conjunction with the WPCR. When Hugh Moore proposed forming a committee to secure funding for the IPPF’s “demographic program” rather than its “clinical program,” Rama Rau spoke in opposition, concerned that such a group might drive policy, something that only the IPPF Executive Committee should do. The issue was held over for another meeting. (IPPF American Committee, “Summary of Proceedings at the Meeting,” Dec. 17, 1953 [MSM C13:195].)

189. To K an Majima 1 In September Japanese activists formed the Nihon Kazoku Keikaku Kyōkai (NKKK) (Japan Family Planning Federation) to coordinate the activities of the various public and private family planning groups. Headed by Yasumaro Shimojō, Shidzue Katō, Yoshio Koya, and Kan Majima, the NKKK applied for full IPPF membership. (Majima to MS, Oct. 27 and Nov. 11, 1953 [LCM 128:151, 154B].)

[Tucson, Ariz.] November 16, 1953

Dear Dr. Majima, Thank you for yours of November 11th. enclosing a copy of letter to Mrs. Houghton from Mr. Shimojo (it had not come to me).2 It is good to know all groups in Japan are now united in a Federation, and an invitation by this group extended to the International Planned Parenthood Federation to hold the next Conference in your country. I will have this invitation sent at once

530  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work

to various members of the International Committee. We want 1955 to be the year and cherry blossom month should be an ideal time to be in your country.3 It is revealing that you want to combine the splendid work you have done for birth control combined in a plan for world peace.4 I too, want more and more that the aims of the International Planned Parenthood Federation shall be emphatic on World Peace. I am not so optimistic that the rubber plant, or rubber diaphragms will ever be the ideal solution to family planning. We need a simple pill or capsule, or cup of tea to immunize the ova temporarily for month by month or longer as desired.5 However, we all know that the diaphragms have done a good job when properly made and fitted and used.6 I plan to go to New York for the Christmas holidays and call a meeting of friends of the International Planned Parenthood Federation to discuss many problems confronting our progress (especially financial problems). I will let you know later as to our decisions.7 Wishing you a successful and good health New Year, Most Cordially Yours, Margaret Sanger TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 128:155B).

1. At the end of the war, Majima revived the NSCR and operated his own birth control clinic. He felt overlooked and underappreciated by international activists such as MS and remarked that the creation of the NKKK had been difficult, writing that “a proper time has come to me to retire from the first line of activities, as the family planning movement in Japan has grown up to be taken up as a national problem on the whole.” He was made a NKKK vice president. (Majima to MS, Oct. 27, 1953 [LCM 128:151].) 2. Majima had sent MS a copy of NKKK president Yasumaro Shimojō’s official request to join the IPPF and his invitation to bring the next conference to Japan. Yasumaro Shimojō (1885–1966) was an economist and politician who had served as Japan’s education minister. (JBE; Find a Grave Index; Shimojō to Houghton, Oct. 29, 1953 [LCM 128:152].) 3. The 5ICPP was tentatively planned for the spring of 1955. 4. Majima wrote that he wanted to work for world peace, which he did not think possible without family planning. (Majima to MS, Nov. 11, 1953 [LCM 128:154B].) 5. Majima believed that cheap production of diaphragms and condoms in India and Japan would soon alleviate the problem of contraceptive access, but MS had already begun promoting research on progesterone as a more effective long-term solution. (Majima to MS, Nov. 11, 1953 [LCM 128:154B]; Marks, Sexual Chemistry, 96–97; see Vol. 3.) 6. With proper fit, instruction, and care, the diaphragm was up to 98 percent effective. But many couples disliked the method, and women did not always follow directions, resulting in failure or abandonment of the method. A study of 143 women conducted by Christopher Tietze in 1953 revealed that almost 30 percent had discontinued its use.

January 1954  •  531 (Joyce Dolphin Cappiello and Marilyn Grainger-Harrison, “The Rebirth of the Cervical Cap,” Journal of Nurse-Midwifery 26 [Sept.–Oct. 1981]: 14.) 7. For details of the December 17 IPPF American Committee meeting, see MS to Vogt, Nov. 10, 1953, note 12, herein. The group approved of Japan’s membership and forwarded their recommendation to London. (IPPF American Committee, “Summary of Proceedings at the Meeting,” Dec. 17, 1953 [MSM C13:195].)

190. To C. P. Blacker Still working on a shoestring budget, the IPPF pushed a dual agenda of population control and maternal and child health and welfare. An early policy stipulated that all work done in member nations be driven by local demand and not be imposed from outside. As a result, Clarence Gamble’s unsolicited fieldwork in South Asia created difficulties. Dhanvanthi Rama Rau, who attended the American Committee’s December meeting in New York, agreed to allow Gamble and his son to represent the IPPF in India, provided that he cooperate with the FPA-I. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 72–73; MS to Houghton, Dec. 18, 1953 [MSM S42:372]; Williams, Every Child a Wanted Child, 243–46.)

[Tucson, Ariz.] January 18, 1954

Dear Pip, Thanks for yours of the 13th.1 I still feel Janet and Clinton’s death as one of the greatest losses of my life.2 I have practically not known England without them. But you are there now and my good friends that may not be so intimately entrenched in my consciousness, but are nevertheless dear and affectionate friends, for which I am grateful. As to the problem that confronts you relative to Dr. Gamble. Perhaps by this time he is already in London, and you have tackled and struggled and solved the problem.3 It is unfortunate that Lady Rama Rau and the Minister of Health have the aversion relative to the simple methods that Dr. Gamble tried out in Pakistan. I tried to tell Lady Rama Rau when she was here that we have all had to try out and experiment with methods from the beginning of the birth control movement in this country.4 Dr. Gamble has done pioneering work in the southern states, and we carried on quite a large campaign of 2,000 women in Florida with foam powder, all experimental, but under a doctor’s direction on the spot.5 We are never going to get anywhere with the western methods and the diaphragm and jelly. We have got to take up simple household methods, or at least use the material in the cases of primitive people such as oil and jelly, if we are going to make any headway in these overcrowded poorer countries. I know and appreciate that we have a problem with C. J. G. But all of the ingredients, the combination of same that he recommends have been

532  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work

submitted to our Medical Committee. He has done some excellent laboratory work in Massachusetts and his salt and oil methods have been tried out in the Margaret Sanger Bureau.6 If Dr. Gamble wishes to try these out in countries or communities where there are no clinics, and where there is no activity, no organization, and only medical groups or individuals who would like to take on a survey, or do the work with these methods by C. J. G., I would be for it. He is going to do it anyway, as an individual, and when he does this as an individual we will have no control over him or over the methods that he is using and will not be entitled to a report on the methods. It seems to me, Pip, that it would give him greater responsibility and more cooperation if we could advise where he is to get suggestive backing for his simple methods, and altogether work as closely to him and with him as our policy and principals will allow. There is no other person in his position in the whole movement that is so capable and has the experience and the background and the financial means as Gamble.7 He not only travels at his own expense, but will supply the material for these experiments and even pay the wage or salary of the individuals to continue them. I think such activity should not be pushed aside by the officers of the I.P.P.F. I would like to see us work with him and have as much control as possible over the methods and supplies that he is going to use. I quite agree with the point stressed as to the approval of national associations, and that whatever is done should be authorized beforehand. I know of no new methods or experiments that Dr. Gamble expects to advise, except the salt solution and the oil and sponge. But by the time this letter reaches you, you will have had contact with him and will have dealt with the question properly I am sure.8 With best wishes that all problems will be solved in as gracious and a generous spirit as only you can convey, and my thanks for your letter, Margaret [signed] Margaret Sanger TLS ESR, WLAM (MSM C10:315–16). Letterhead of the IPPF. Return address: 65 Sierra Vista Drive. For TLcy, see MSM S42:617–18.

1. Blacker sent MS two letters on January 13, one about the death of Janet Chance and the other discussing his upcoming meeting with Gamble. (Blacker to MS, Jan. 13, 1954 [MSM S42:553, 555].) 2. Clinton Chance died in August 1953, and Janet Chance, who had regularly battled depression, committed suicide on December 18, 1953. MS claimed that the news “put me to bed for two days. . . . [H]ow perfectly ghastly that this way of leaving life had to be like that.” (DNB; MS to Blacker, Jan. 6, 1954 [quote] [MSM C10:297].) 3. Gamble had traveled to London in January to secure the IPPF’s formal endorsement. Blacker hoped to make Gamble understand that he could represent the IPPF

february 1954  •  533 only in countries where a national organization approved his activities. In areas where there were no organized birth control groups, Blacker preferred that Gamble work as a private citizen. He wrote to MS that “the plain fact seems to be that some people are afraid that Dr. Gamble might use the women in undeveloped countries for unauthorised experiments in new methods.” Blacker had asked MS’s opinion of this proposal, but had not received it in time for the meeting. (Blacker to MS, Jan. 13, 1954 [MSM S42:553].) 4. Rama Rau believed Gamble intended to use Indians to test contraceptives that were not acceptable in the United States, as they were aimed at undeveloped countries, where running water, technology, medical care, and education were lacking. She also found his “autocratic” manner disturbing and disruptive to the FPA-I’s work. Indian health minister Amrit Kaur opposed chemical or mechanical means of contraception in favor of simpler methods. As a converted Catholic, she supported the rhythm method. (Wadia, Light Is Ours, 163; Farley, Brock Chisholm, 175.) 5. During the 1930s, Gamble’s field-workers in North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Montana, and Puerto Rico compared simple doctorless methods, such as cotton plugs saturated with oil and salt douching solutions, to the diaphragm and jelly combination. The 1936 Florida study was supervised by Gamble and public health nurse Joyce Ely. (Williams, Every Child a Wanted Child, 128.) 6. Gamble’s laboratory and clinical tests found that a 10 percent salt solution was as effective as 90 percent of available spermicidal jellies. He also reported that sodium chloride jelly, at strengths of either 10 or 20 percent, did not cause irritation when tested at the MSRB. His imported Japanese foam tablet, “Sampoon,” used in India, had only a 4 percent failure rate in small-scale tests. (Gamble to the IPPF Executive Committee, Sept. 29, 1953 [LCM 8:745]; see also “The Contraceptive Effectiveness of ‘Sampoon’ Tablets,” Japan Planned Parenthood Quarterly 2 [July–Dec. 1951]: 25.) 7. Gamble’s wealth and medical training enabled him take an active part in the research, but as Avabai Wadia commented, “He was someone who carried on doing things he considered important, but he did not listen to others.” (Reed, Birth Control Movement, 226; Wadia, Light Is Ours, 165 [quote].) 8. Both Blacker and Gamble reported that the meeting went well. Blacker concluded that the IPPF policy should be “to use him to the utmost but at the same time prevent stresses between him and the leading personalities in undeveloped countries.” (Blacker to MS, Jan. 29, 1954 [quote], and Gamble to MS, Feb. 1, 1954 [MSM S42:730, 782].)

191. To Gladys May Farquharson 1 Responding to a request to hold a family planning conference in Jamaica, local activist May Farquharson indicated that one doctor associated with the Jamaican Family Planning League (JFPL) was “entirely opposed to the idea,” for fear that it would “arouse opposition which has been quiescent for some time. I think I agree with her. . . . I have always felt nervous lest there should be legislation introduced against b.c. activities.” With little knowledge of the local situation, Sanger was disappointed and wrote to Eleanor Pillsbury that she had heard that Farquharson was “not the person to be in charge of the movement

534  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work in Jamaica,” remarking, “It is just time that we needle up some of these weak sisters that sit on the lid of the movement.” (Farquharson to Brush, Jan. 28, 1954 [quote 1], and MS to Pillsbury, Feb. 9, 1954 [quotes 2–4].)

[Tucson, Ariz.] February 9, 1954

Dear Mrs. Farquharson, A copy of your letter to Mrs. Brush of January 4th. gives me serious thought.2 So much hope for a constructive organization in Jamaica was given us some years ago when Edith How-Martyn spent over two months in your part of the world.3 Her reports were promising of progress. Since she left we have had almost no reports of activities, and now from your letter to Mrs. Brush I can see why.4 It is an unfortunate attitude when leaders in a movement are fearful of our opponents and prefer to remain status quo and to die of rust and inactivity, rather than to speak up and stand up for high principles of public health and social welfare. All of this movement from the beginning in both England and U.S. has had to meet the same Roman Catholic opposition and raids.5 But we had done such a good educational job that public opinion, even Catholic opinion, was with us, and the Hierarchy in every case stood quite alone.6 How a Physician like Dr. Lightbourne, a public health official, could be opposed to the idea of an educational and scientific conference relative to the important affect of child spacing is beyond me.7 The public health work in nearly every country is hampered seriously by this lack of child spacing. The consequence is that maternal and infant death rates are comparatively higher in these countries than where child spacing is properly advised.8 It would seem to me that it is unfair to the mass of people in any community to carry on the name or the pretense of Family Planning with such an attitude toward a scientific educational conference. It would be kinder and more honest to close up shop and to let others carry on who are more courageous and more far seeing toward public welfare. There is no one activity so conducive to public education and to fine intelligent support as a well conducted scientific conference in any community. The Conference in Bombay in November of 1952 was almost electrical in its results, with the consequence that the Government through its planning commission, advised the expenditure of $1,300,000 toward the educational work of Planned Parenthood.9 I regret exceedingly that this attitude should remain today in any part of this hemisphere. We expect it in communist China and in Russia,10 but we do not expect it in enlightened communities, and I believe that once you found a courageous group in Jamaica to give support to the progressive idea of family planning, that you would be able to carry on an enlightened and constructive

February 1954  •  535

program. As President of the International P.P.F. I write to you as frankly as this, because I am anxious to see the North American Region, which includes the Caribbean, to inspire courage, as well as to lead in progressive scientific educational teaching to the rest of the world.11 I quite agree with your statements about the methods. The methods today are cumbersome, even though there is the highest percentage of success in their use, but unless there is a demand for cheaper and simpler methods and financial support to encourage research, we will not get very far.12 I would like to see you reorganize the group in Jamaica. Bring in outstanding sociologists, gynecologists, public health officials and reeducate your masses regarding the benefits of child spacing and family planning in your community. I think you will find a new interest when Dr. Stone and Mrs. Pillsbury meet in your community, and I sincerely hope that you will arrange a Committee to hear them.13 Most Sincerely Yours, Margaret Sanger TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S42:873–74).

1. Gladys May Farquharson (1894–1992), a social reformer, philanthropist, and birth control advocate, founded the JFPL and Mother’s Welfare Clinic in Kingston in 1939. (Rita Landale to Amy Hague, Oct. 10, 1992 [MN-SSC Donor File]; Jamaica Standard, June 29, 1939; Houghton, “Birth Control in Jamaica.”) 2. Among the other obstacles Farquharson mentioned was the strength of Catholic opposition and the need for a method adaptable to the “jungles and the slums.” Brush forwarded the letter to MS on February 1. (See Farquharson to Brush, Jan. 28 [not Jan. 4], 1954 [quote], and Brush to MS, Feb. 1, 1954 [MSM S42:1127, 779].) 3. Edith How-Martyn jump-started the movement in March 1939, resulting in the JFPL formation and the possibility of persuading Kingston’s Maternity Hospital to offer contraceptive instruction for doctors and nurses, but the JFPL did not follow up. (How-Martyn to MS, Mar. 15, 1939 [LCM 16:801].) 4. Farquharson wrote, “General public opinion is still not on our side,” and without an effective method, “even our theoretical supporters are not strong on the subject.” The JFPL served nearly three thousand patients by 1953. In 1950 the Family Welfare Organization, a free contraceptive service, opened in St. Ann’s Bay. (Farquharson to Brush, Jan. 28, 1954 [quotes] [MSM S42:1127]; Dorothy Brush, “Jamaica, B.W.I.,” AWNPBC 30 [Dec. 1954]: 3; Houghton, “Birth Control in Jamaica.”) 5. The Catholic Church was the most vocal opponent of birth control in England and the United States; in the former, the church had a relatively small population base and was less able to thwart the movement. (Soloway, Birth Control and the Population Question, 246; Soloway, Demography and Degeneration, 203; Tentler, Catholics and Contraception, 16, 31; for American Catholic opposition, see Vols. 1–2.) 6. The first major American public opinion polls on birth control showed overwhelming support (70 percent) for liberalizing legalization. A 1955 study found that 68 percent of Catholics had used or expected to use contraception. (“Summary of Polls on Birth

536  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work Control,” Dec. 8, 1936 [LCM 69:698]; Pascal K. Whelpton, Arthur A. Campbell, and John E. Patterson, Fertility and Family Planning in the Unites States [Princeton, N.J., 1966], 216.) 7. Hyacinth Isabel Lightbourne (1906–56), a Jamaican public health doctor and children’s health expert, was the JFPL worker Farquharson referred to in her letter to Brush. (“Obituary,” British Medical Journal 1 [June 23, 1956]: 1490–91; Jamaica, Civil Registration Birth, Marriage, and Death Records, 1878–1930.) 8. The difference in the maternal death rate between industrialized and nonindustrialized nations was stark. In the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and the Netherlands, the rates were between 6 and 12 per 100,000 births, while in Jamaica it was 372 per 100,000. Leading causes of maternal mortality were toxemia and sepsis (often brought on by abortion), hemorrhage, and ectopic pregnancy, only some of which were affected by ready access to birth control. (Eleanor P. Hunt and Ruth R. Moore, “Perinatal, Infant, Childhood and Maternal Mortality,” in U.S. Children’s Bureau Statistical Series 42 [Washington, D.C., 1957], 1–2; Loudon, Death in Childbirth, 44, 544, 552–61; L. L. Williams, “Some Observations on Maternal Mortality in Jamaica,” West Indian Medical Journal 22, no. 1 [1973]: 254–60.) 9. The Indian government had announced its support for family planning even before the 3ICPP was held. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 45–46.) 10. Though the Soviet Union eased its pronatalist measures in 1948, it made little effort to improve family planning services or increase the availability of contraception, despite a rising number of illegal abortions. Under early Communist rule, China encouraged large families and limited access to birth control, abortion, and sterilization, characterizing Western concerns for population control as an effort to weaken China. By 1952 the government recognized that uncontrolled population growth limited economic growth. As elite Chinese women began to fight the government’s pronatalist policies, Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping advised the government to reevaluate its policies. (Popov and David, “Russian Federation,” 238, 247; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 145; White, China’s Longest Campaign, 19–23.) 11. The IPPF-WHR was surveying family planning activities in South and Central Americas with an aim to developing organizations and programs for the region. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 93.) 12. Farquharson complained, “Oh, for a real method, acceptable by the poor and the indolent! Till then, we are just playing about with the matter, only able to help hundreds, when there are scores of thousands badly needing B.C.” (Farquharson to Brush, Jan. 28, 1954 [MSM S42:1127].) 13. Farquharson shot back that MS would not have written, “in quite such harsh terms, if you had had more information about conditions in this benighted part of the world!” She added that the work there was growing, but “we are a long way from getting it taken up by Government.” Vera Houghton, who had visited Jamaica in the early 1950s, defended Farquharson, writing, “I don’t think it is that Miss Farquharson hasn’t been courageous enough. . . . The point is, I think, that she has got as far as a white can get there.” Eleanor Pillsbury may have briefly visited Jamaica after attending meetings in Puerto Rico in March. Stone did not travel there until May 1955. (Farquharson to MS, Mar. 1, 1954 [quotes 1–2]; Houghton to MS, Feb. 15, 1954 [quote 3], and MS to Houghton, Mar. 23, 1954 [MSM S43:15, C10:351, 414]; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 115.)

March 1954  •  537

192. To Lotte A. Fink 1 At the request of Dhanvanthi Rama Rau and Mary Grove-White, the Irish-born head of the FPA-S, the IPPF divided the Asiatic region into the IPPF-IOR and the IPPF-FEAR. It quickly became evident that the IPPF-FEAR, composed of Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore, and Japan, had little geographic, linguistic, or cultural cohesiveness. It was the only region that did not choose its vice presidents at the 4ICPP. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 70, 88.)

[Tucson, Ariz.] March 5, 1954

Dear Dr. Fink, It was good of you to send me a copy of your letter to Vera Houghton of February 24th. It was quite right that you took the question up to your Executive Committee for their consideration. I can not see eye to eye with their viewpoint as to the possibility of a Japanese member of the International that anyone chosen by your own Region could be in the hands of sinister groups that could be detrimental to Australia.2 Shidzue Kato, a member of the Japanese Senate, was perhaps the earliest and first birth control pioneer in her country.3 I was guest in her home in my first visit in 1922 to Japan. She set up a clinic shortly after and was arrested and sent to jail, but nevertheless fought on among the poorest working classes in her city and throughout the country.4 I think it was work in this field that led her husband to decide on a divorce, because the military regime was certainly against controlling the number of births among the Japanese women.5 She has undergone considerable suffering for her ideas, and yet she has kept on and has involved some of the highest authorities in the Government, as well as the great, influential owners of the Mainichi Press.6 She will certainly not be able to do any harm to Australia, nor to any of the other countries in the Region. All her decisions would have to be submitted to the Regional Committee, including Australia, HongKong, Singapore and Malaya. Mrs. Houghton, I am sure, will write you in detail as to this and quiet any fears or objections that your Committee may have when they are acquainted with the facts of our Constitution.7 Please do not be alarmed at the position of Mrs. Kato. She deserves the position and the honor, and we must work to help the Japanese P.P.F.8 feel that they are one with us, and that we are all together [striving] to control the population of our countries for the ultimate peace of the world. Thank you for your letter and with very kindest regards, Most Cordially Yours, Margaret Sanger TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S43:70–71).

538  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work 1. Lotte A. Fink (1898–1960) was a German Jewish doctor and birth control and sex education activist who worked in a Frankfurt birth control clinic before World War II. She fled to Australia in 1938, but was unable to practice medicine there. She worked with the Racial Hygiene Association of New South Wales (RHANSW), the leading birth control organization in Australia, which had recently been admitted to the IPPF as an associate member. (Lysbeth Cohn, Beginning with Esther: Jewish Women in New South Wales from 1788 [Sydney, 1987], 249; Fink to MS, Jan. 3, 1953 [LCM 120:41].) 2. Houghton requested that Fink ask Australian activists if they could accept a Japanese member (Shidzue Katō) as head of the IPPF-FEAR. Fink found that all fifteen RHANSW Executive Committee members were opposed. She was “somehow astonished” that wartime antipathy to Japan lingered and that so many Australians believed that “even the best Japanese may be pawns in the hands of mighty groups” and could be “detrimental to Australia.” The Australians suggested that they take on the regional leadership, but allowed that they would not “obstruct any democratic election.” (Fink to Houghton, Feb. 24, 1954 [MSM S42:1037].) 3. Several intellectuals and reformers publicly advocated birth control before Katō, including Isoo Abe and Kikue Yamakawa, but she was the most visible activist. Katō, a member of Japan’s House of Councillors, had become increasingly involved in international anticommunist activities, but had taken time to help organize the NKKK. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 251, 258, 264; Callahan, “Dangerous Devices,” 52–64.) 4. Katō’s first clinic opened in 1934; she was arrested in 1937. (See Katō to MS, Jan. 11, 1938, herein.) 5. The Ishimotos had held increasingly different political views, with the baron supporting Japan’s expansionist policies and the baroness opposing them. Keikichi Ishimoto had been an early birth control proponent. The couple separated in 1931 and divorced in 1944. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 44, 151.) 6. Katō maintained close contacts with business and reform leaders and used her political position to pressure the government and the press. (Katō to MS, May 19, 1949, and Nov. 4, 1951, and MS to Katō, Jan. 30, 1952 [MSM S35:693, 587, 36:383].) 7. The RHANSW may have misunderstood Houghton’s question, claiming that she asked only about Japanese candidates for vice president of the IPPF-FEAR, which was headquartered in Singapore. “Nowhere,” Houghton said, “did I suggest that Japan was to be given ‘a leading executive position’ in the Federation.” Shidzue Katō and Rose Lee Hah Liong of Hong Kong were selected as vice presidents, Constance Goh Kok Kee was made regional director, and Margery Butcher of the FPA-S was made regional secretary. (Houghton to Fink, Mar. 3, 1954 [MSM S43:47]; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 88.) 8. MS refers to the NKKK. (Officers of the Japan Family Planning Federation, First Meeting, Apr. 18, 1954 [MS Unfilmed].)

193. “Japan” Sanger arrived in Tokyo on April 9, 1954, to meet with the NKKK and government officials and make plans for the 5ICPP to be held the following year. She was accompanied by Chieko Hata (1915–83), an administrative assistant at the Planned Parenthood Association of the

April 1954  •  539 Chicago Area, who served as Sanger’s secretary and translator. Shortly after Sanger’s arrival, she delivered the following address over Radio Tokyo and Japanese television. (SSDI; Chicago Tribune, Aug. 6, 1983; Edna McKinnon to MS, Feb. 12, 1954, Hata, “Newsletter re Mrs. Sanger on Her Trip to Japan,” Apr. 5–27, 1954, and “Schedule for Mrs. Sanger, Tokyo, Japan, Apr. 9–27, 1954” [MSM S42:909, 78:371, 378].)

[Tokyo, Japan] April 9, 1954 I have come back (like the spring)1 to Japan. It is going to be a renewed experience for me to be here in April, for that was the month in 1922 that I first came to your beautiful country, through an invitation of a most distinguished group of intellectuals.2 I bring today cordial greetings from the International Planned Parenthood Federation, who have honored me in Stockholm last August by electing me their President. This Federation now consists of 8 ↑9↓ national organizations: ↑1↓ United Kingdom—(England, Scotland & Wales—) ↑2↓ Sweden, ↑3↓ Holland, ↑4↓ Western Germany, ↑5↓ India, ↑6↓ HongKong, ↑7↓ Singapore, ↑8↓ Japan ↑USA↓.3 Several other national groups are organizing their forces to make application as affiliates.4 It is also my pleasure to personally accept the invitation the Japanese Family Planning Federation has extended to the International Planned Parenthood Federation to hold the next conference in this country in 1955! We are grateful for this invitation, and I am here in person, as President, to accept it with our gratitude and respectful thanks. You own Committee ↑JFP. Assn↓ is expanding its interest through fields and areas and villages with results of much concern to our Federation, for as your original projects succeed in lowering the birth rate in a safe and healthful method, so shall other nations follow your example and apply these methods to their population problems.5 The Americas, though spending huge sums on educational work on birth control, have not thus far reached the submerged population to any extent. While we have hundreds of birth control clinics ↑(500)↓ throughout every state in the union, these are not available to thousands of mothers who live on farms, on ranches, and in slums of large cities.6 Clinics, though well organized as teaching centers, are usually too far away for poor parents to reach and availe themselves of proper scientific instruction given by medical experts in this field. Your project which helps the same group of parents in overcrowded areas by sending into the homes nurses or midwives trained to advise and instruct mothers and fathers personally in the technique of contraception is a far better way to reach those most desperately needing it.7 When ↑a↓ mother must resort to abortion in order to keep alive the children already born, it is a proof that she is in a desperate state of mind.

540  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work

She needs help. She needs understanding advice. She should have the best information your medical and welfare departments of your government has available. This should be her right! The decision should be a joint agreement between the father and mother, or husband and wife.8 There should be nothing put in their way to thwart that decision. Parents want children. They want healthy, strong, vital children. Why has such knowledge been kept from the poorest parents, while the well to do, the educated have for generations practiced spacing their children and limiting the numbers the parents could educate and bring up to become adults, helpful to the nation and to our civilization.9 Now at last the parents of the lower income brackets have become articulate. They speak for themselves. Their voices are heard around the world. They do not want to be forced to the indignity and necessity of abortion. They call out to the health and welfare ministries for scientific knowledge and information. These departments in your country have bravely answered them and are giving the help in family planning to all. I congratulate you. TDf MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S72:895–96). Handwritten interlineations by MS. Written on behalf of the IPPF.

1. MS liked to quote this first line from a 1921 poem by her friend and onetime lover Harold Hersey: “So you’ve come back like the spring. . . . The old flowers for a moment darted like living things in your eyes.” (Hersey, “So You’ve Come Back,” BCR 5 [Apr. 1921]: 12; for more on Hersey, see Vol. 1.) 2. MS was in Japan from March 10 to April 4, 1922. (See chapter 1, herein.) 3. The IPPF was structured so that member nations had to be represented by a national organization. Associate or affiliate members, which could be individuals or local or regional planned parenthood organizations, were not granted voting rights. MS incorrectly identified Japan instead of Singapore as one of the nine full members. Japan and Australia became associate members in 1954. (IPPF Constitution, 1953, and IPPF, “Rules of the Governing Body,” Jan. 15, 1954 [MSM 63:68, 80].) 4. A number of countries had or were forming national organizations in order to apply for IPPF membership, among them Canada, Puerto Rico, Malayan Union (Malaysia), New Zealand, and Denmark. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 80, 90, 93.) 5. MS is referring to innovative work carried out by the NSCR from 1948 to 1953, which presumably would be continued under the NKKK. See note 7. 6. The PPFA reported 532 clinics in operation in 1954, with 52 percent located in public health centers, 14 percent in hospitals, and 34 percent operated by PPFA affiliates. Most were located in urban areas. (MS, “Birth Control,” in Britannica Book of the Year [Chicago, 1955].) 7. The NSCR helped to reach underserved portions of the population by organizing thousands of small meetings (sometimes just eight or ten participants) in private homes where nurses or midwives discussed contraceptive methods and sent instructors door-to-door (more than two thousand visits in 1952). But it still reached only a small percentage of the population. As of 1954, only 33 percent of married people in Japan

April 1954  •  541 used birth control. (Norgren, Abortion before Birth Control, 97–98; Japan Birth Control League, History of Japan Birth Control League, 2–3, 8–9; Amano, Family Planning Movement in Japan, 10, 13.) 8. Abortions in Japan continued to climb, from 1,068,066 in 1953 to 1,143,059 in 1954. The Ministry of Health and Welfare tried to discourage abortion by increasing birth control education counseling services to women seeking abortions at government clinics. The JMC, formed in 1954, supported physicians and poor women who wanted birth control programs, but a lack of funds and bureaucratic problems limited its reach. (Amano, Family Planning Movement in Japan, 13; Norgren, Abortion before Birth Control, 94–95, 97.) 9. Family planning workers made little headway in Japan’s rural villages, where resistance to birth control remained strong. Among agricultural workers and fishermen, the rate of contraceptive use was 10 percent or lower, compared to 40 percent of urban salaried and professional workers. (Taeuber, Population of Japan, 273.)

194. To K atharine Dexter McCormick With funding from Katharine Dexter McCormick, Gregory Pincus and his colleagues made significant progress in developing an effective hormonal contraceptive. Pincus chose to use synthetic progesterone compounds obtained from pharmaceutical companies, which were less expensive than natural progesterone. He found both Searle’s norethynodrel and Syntex’s norethindrone effective and by 1954 was ready to launch larger clinical trials. McCormick and Sanger hoped to get one such clinical trial started in Japan. (Marks, Sexual Chemistry, 55, 74, 91–94; Watkins, On the Pill, 28–29; Pincus Report to the PPFA, Mar. 5, 1954, and Pincus to MS, Mar. 23, 1954 [MSM S43:310, 431].

Tokyo, Japan April 16, 1954

Dear Mrs. McCormick: Your letter of April 12th arrived this morning.1 With its arrival came Mr. Ozawa, Chief of Section of General Affairs of the Bureau of Public Health, Ministry of Public Health and Welfare, and Mr. Saita, translator for Mr. Ozawa.2 Previous to this call upon me Mr. Ozawa and Mr. Saita, I was asked to consult with the Minister of Public Health and Welfare, Mr. Kusaba.3 I had already been in touch with Dr. Yoshio Koya, Director of the Institute of Public Health so altogether these departments of the government have been informed about the experiment of progesterone.4 It was unfortunate that the interview with Mr. Kusaba, the Minister of Pubic Health and Welfare. Someone gave word to the press that I was requesting an experiment of a so-called birth control pill. The name of progesterone was not used. This caused considerable excitement. There were telephone calls and newspaper reporters are very anxious to get data and I am insisting that there shall not be given to the public until a thorough study and experiment has been made, now that there is a pos-

542  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work

sibility of the Public Health and Welfare Department of the government setting up a scientific committee to deal entirely with this experiment.5 They would like to know if they will receive the material and if the ingredients and substance of progesterone would be given to the scientists so that they will know what they are doing and what they are giving. They want to be assured that the material will be sent to them free of charge.6 I also suggested that they choose one member of the scientific committee to go to Shrewsbury for one month and his expenses round trip would be paid and hospitality for one month. This was accepted with great interest; owing to the difficulty of language, naturally they want one of their own who can speak our language rather than to have it translated from the English.7 I am sending you a cable today to ask if this can be reassured.8 Also they would like to know what type of person should be sent, a gynecologist like Dr. Rock, of high standing;9 or a technician who understands laboratory techniques; or an endocrinologist which I doubt are many in this country so if you will be good enough to find out from Dr. Pincus, if he has not already gone to Europe, Dr. Rock would know, and wire me as to the type of worker to be sent and also if expenses will be paid.10 There is great enthusiasm and I think there will be no difficulty in having large number of cases if directions are given and the harmlessness of the drug is assured. I am sending this letter off to you following a cablegram just to explain in more details the result of my visit so far. I will be more than happy to come to you in May after the International Meeting and it would indeed be most desirable to report to Dr. Hoagland as to the results here.11 I understand perfectly how you feel about a dog once you have had a bad experience.12 You just got to be consistent with your decision. With kindest regards, Affectionately, Mrs. Margaret Sanger President TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S43:585–86). Written on behalf of the IPPF.

1. McCormick reported on the progesterone trials in Massachusetts and New York and suggested a Boston meeting between McCormick, MS, and WFEB researchers Hudson Hoagland and John Rock. (McCormick to MS, Apr. 12, 1954 [MSM S43:538].) 2. MS met Tatsuo Ozawa (1916–2013), a Japanese lawyer and government official, and Akira Saita (b. 1908), chief of information and liaison for the Ministry of Health and Welfare, to discuss running the progesterone trial. They formed a Japanese committee of physicians and scientists to supervise the trial and sent a medical technician to the WFEB for training. (Honolulu, Hawaii, “Passenger and Crew Lists, 1900–50;” Kyoto News International, Oct. 17, 2013; Who’s Who in Asian and Australasian Politics [London, 1991],

April 1954  •  543 230; Chieko Hata, “Conference with Mr. Ozawa, Chief of Section of General Affairs of the Bureau of Public Health,” Apr. 16, 1954 [MSM S78:410].) 3. Ryūen Kusaba (1895–1966), Japan’s welfare minister, met with MS, Ozawa, and Saito on April 13. They discussed Japan’s population growth and the failure of government birth control programs to reach the lower classes. (JBE; Nciku Chinese Dictionary Online, http://www.nciku.com; Chieko Hata, “Visit to the Ministry of Public Health and Welfare,” Apr. 13, 1954 [MSM S78:392].) 4. MS kept Koya apprised of the progesterone research conducted by Pincus and Rock and asked him to organize scientists interested in progesterone testing in Japan. (MS to Koya, Mar. 31, 1954 [MSM S43:455].) 5. The Ministry of Health and Welfare may have informed the press about the progesterone trials. The Mainichi Shimbun called it “an experiment for easier and yet more effective means of preventing conception,” and another paper described it as “a serum that would be injected with a hypodermic needle” and be effective for six months. MS was quoted as saying, “My telephone rings, callers come, people at meetings, all plead to be given the ‘pill.’” (Mainichi Shimbun, Apr. 26, 1954 [quote 1]; Asahi Evening News, Apr. 16, 1954 [quote 2]; Chieko Hata, “Visit to Dr. Majima’s Home,” Apr. 14, 1954 [quote 3] [MSM S78:395].) 6. Ozawa insisted that the Japanese be privy to all data and findings. MS assured him that all materials would be supplied and that five thousand dollars would be set aside for the study, which began in February 1955. (Hata, “Visit to the Ministry of Public Health and Welfare,” Apr. 13, 1954, and Hata, “Conference with Mr. Ozawa, Chief of Section of General Affairs of the Bureau of Public Health,” Apr. 16, 1954 [MSM S78:392, S78:410].) 7. The NKKK selected Michio Matsuba (b. 1920), a pharmacology instructor at the Tokyo Jikei School of Medicine in Japan, for the training. (See McCormick to MS, Dec. 2, 1954, and Matsuba to MS, Aug. 27, 1954 [MSM S45:372, C10:633]; correspondence between Masashiro Kawamura and the editors, Mar. 2, 2008; see also Vol. 3.) 8. MS’s cable read: “Enthusiastic project. Please cable specialization person visit Pincus gynecologist or technician Will expense be guaranteed.” Pincus agreed to hold a clinical trial in Japan as long as the technicians who stained and read the vaginal smears were supervised by a trained physician. (MS to McCormick, Apr. 16, 1954 [quote], Pincus to MS, Mar. 23 and 31, 1954, and MS to Pincus, Mar. 23 and 29, 1954 [MSM S43:587, 451, C10:409].) 9. John Rock, a clinical professor of gynecology at Harvard University, wrote widely on menstruation, hormones, and female reproduction. (ANB.) 10. Pincus had sailed for England, arriving on April 15. (U.K. Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878–1960.) 11. Hudson Hoagland (1899–1982), a neuroendocrinologist and cofounder of the WFEB in 1944, served as its executive director and worked closely with Pincus. (Chicago Tribune, Mar. 5, 1982; New York Times, Nov. 18, 1952.) 12. McCormick offered MS the use of her guesthouse in Santa Barbara, but banned dogs from staying there “after last summer’s experience,” referring to the “obnoxious dogs” next door to her house. At the time, MS owned a two-year-old cocker spaniel named Chablis. (McCormick to MS, Apr. 12, 1954 [quotes], and 1953 Calendar [MSM S43:538, 82:415].)

544  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work

195. To Abraham Stone 1 On April 15, 1954, Sanger became the first foreign woman to address the Japanese Diet when she spoke before the House of Councillors’ Standing Committee for Welfare. In her address, she hinted at the potential of the progesterone pill, noting, “We all know that we must be immunized against cholera, small pox, yellow fever, etc, and there is no reason that we can not have this same immunization for pregnancy. . . . I am here to see how soon we can get together the scientists and medical people in Japan, as in India, Puerto Rico, England and in the United States, to experiment on a simple contraceptive to be used by all people in the world.” She compared the birth control movements in the United States and Japan, congratulated Japan on its Eugenic Protection Law, and declared that the United States would be better off if, like Japan, it worked harder to control hereditary diseases. She also called for more government aid for birth control programs, citing the example of India’s allocation of $1.3 million. (Hata, “Visit to the House of Councillors,” Apr. 15, 1954 [quote] [MSM S78:402]; New York Times, Apr. 16, 1954; M. Johnson, “Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in Japan,” 147–79 [MSM C16:447], for her translation of the speech.)

[Tokyo, Japan] Easter Sunday April 18/54

Dear “Abram” The enclosed tells you the story of our dinner & evening with Gloria & Gerry—what a beautiful young woman she is! So lovely & gracious & happy in her marriage & her motherhood.2 Its wonderful! Today was the big day of the 18th the meeting of the Nat F.P. Assn delegates from all over Japan came. It was a dark cold rainy day & the hall was only 2/3 full about 500 in the afternoon meeting at my Session.3 But the big event was the Diet meeting, as I was the first foreign woman ever to be invited to address that August body,4 previously known as the House of Peers. Now the Councillors, or Senate.5 Wed the House of Representative gives a tea in my honor & it is amazing how awake the government seems to be to this problem—6 I will have a conference meeting here tomorrow,7 I had a 48 hour angina pain with that damnable fibrulation, & did not think I could ever get out of bed again—but today I am up & doing.8 Dr Pomerinky9 came to the meeting more to tell you when I come to N.Y. Its all exciting & good. love as ever Margaret ALS ASP, MBCo (MSM C10:465–66). Letterhead of the Prince Hotel.

1. Abraham Stone, still an IPPF vice president and the MSRB director, had begun progesterone testing at the MSRB. (Stone to MS, Mar. 30, 1954 [MSM C10:419]; New York Times, Sept. 3, 1954.)

April 1954  •  545 2. MS had dinner with Abraham Stone’s daughter, Gloria, and her husband, army captain Gerard J. Aitken Jr. (1922–95), who were living in Japan. The couple then had two children, Gerard James III (b. 1951) and Amy Stone Aitken (b. 1952). The enclosure was not found. (SSDI; Gerard J. Aitken Jr. to MS, Apr. 8, 1954 [MSM S43:520]; Rinaldo, Rinaldos from Poland, 259.) 3. On April 18, the NKKK became a full member of the IPPF, which agreed to hold its next international conference in Tokyo. Its inaugural meeting featured an address by MS, who told the audience that “the birth rate of Japan must be brought down to the level of the death rate,” but it was important to “get a simpler and cheaper method . . . to reach into the submerged over-crowded homes in every country.” (MS, “Address before the First Inaugural Meeting of the National Family Planning Association,” Apr. 18, 1954 [quotes] [MSM S72:897].) 4. Shidzue Katō, who arranged the speech, had convinced Aiichi Kamijo, the chairman of the House of Councillors’ Standing Committee for Welfare, to invite MS to give her views on “population problems and conception control status in various countries.” MS also answered questions on new methods, immigration, sterilization, MSRB funding, and religion and birth control, but became fatigued during the two-and-a-half-hour session and frequently digressed from the topic at hand. (Aiichi Kamijo to MS, Apr. 13, 1954 [quote] [MSM S43:552]; Chieko Hata, “Visit to the House of Councillors,” Apr. 15, 1954 [MSM S78:402]; M. Johnson, “Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in Japan,” 147–79 [MSM C16:447], for her translation of the speech; for the Japanese version of speech, see MSM C16:481].) 5. Japan’s peerage was abolished under the 1947 constitution. The Japanese Diet, formerly the Imperial Diet, became a bicameral, democratic national assembly. (Hunter, Concise Dictionary, 34, 167.) 6. The Speaker of the House, Yasujirô Tsutsumi (1889–1964), one of the most powerful politicians in Japan, hosted a reception for MS on April 21. He said that had Japan and other countries listened to MS earlier, World War II would have been avoided. He affirmed that the “adjustment of population” was one of Japan’s most important national policies. (Tsutsumi, “Welcome Greetings to Mrs. Sanger,” Apr. 21, 1954 [quote], and Hata, “Tea Reception Given in Honor of Mrs. Sanger by Speaker of the House of Representatives,” Apr. 21, 1954 [MSM S77:709, 706]; New York Times, Apr. 26, 1964.) 7. MS attended several meetings to discuss logistical planning for the 5ICPP. (MS, “Notes for Conference Planning Committee,” Apr. 20, 1954 [MSM S67:424].) 8. MS continued to suffer from angina and atrial arrhythmia, including an attack that lasted from April 16 to 17, but still held to her busy schedule. (1954 Calendar [MSM S82:707–17.) 9. Wesley T. Pommerenke (1901–61), an American obstetrician and gynecologist at the University of Rochester, was in Japan conducting research on abortion at the Keio Gijuku University School of Medicine in Tokyo. He had met MS at the 3ICPP. He attended the NKKK inaugural meeting and dined with MS twice during her stay. (Arthur Hove, ed., “Necrology,” Wisconsin Alumnus 63 [Feb. 1962]: 39; Washington Post and Times Herald, Apr. 7, 1955; Pommerenke to MS, July 29, 1952, and 1954 Calendar [MSM S38:992, 82:711, 716].)

546  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work

196. To Dhanvanthi R ama R au 1 Relations between Sanger and Rama Rau had cooled since they met in 1952, particularly after Rama Rau went on a speaking tour of the United States in the fall of 1953. At one appearance, Rama Rau agreed to drop her discussion of birth control at the last minute on the request of the sponsoring Santa Barbara Woman’s Club. She recalled that “Margaret Sanger was hotly indignant. She walked out of the hall, leaving me to manage as best I could.” After that Sanger occasionally questioned Rama Rau’s commitment to family planning. (Rama Rau, Inheritance, 273–74 [quote]; see Vol. 3 for more details on the Santa Barbara event.)

Santa Barbara, California June 25, 1954

[Dear Dhan]2 [Your letter of the 16th?]. of June was forwarded to me [from Tucson? yesterday].3 I am here in Santa [Barbara] [text missing] [cooler] than in Tucson, and I am [text missing] [worked] when I was in this house [as the guest of Mrs.] Stanley McCormick two years ago arranging and working with you so cooperatively for the Bombay Conference.4 I am glad the Conference in Japan is further on, so that I do not have any responsibility at the present time.5 I regret exceedingly to hear of the various illnesses and the problems that you have had to go through, but you are always so strong and so brave and capable that you seem to take all of these things in your stride, and you look so beautiful and healthy that no one I am sure ever feels the least bit anxious about you.6 Delighted I am that you have taken on Dr. Krishnarao for your field worker, and it is splendid that Mrs. Cadbury, who is in Ceylon, is there to help you.7 May I please make a very important suggestion relative to the foam tablets. I know much about them. I think they have not been successfully used in Japan, as was formerly advertised, and I will tell you darling Dhan, why. Such a tablet placed in the vagina can only be a successful foaming agent when there is considerable moisture in the vagina. Some women expel and exude constant moisture, but others again do not, and when there is what we call a dry vagina, The foam tablet can be irritating and can be far from successful, often causing irritation or remaining in the vagina without foaming, or being absorbed or melted. This is important and your doctor should be informed of these probabilities. The patient should also be informed to test out the moisture of her vagina before such is inserted, or to dip it into water before it is inserted so that it will melt easily and readily.8 I pass this on to you in confidence because there has been a great deal of publicity regarding these various contraceptives that have not gone through

June 1954  •  547

the test, such as we test everything out in the Margaret Sanger Bureau in New York.9 I do not trust the Japanese regarding these experiments because their problem is so great that they are willing to push anything into the hands of the troubled women to give her even 50% satisfaction.10 As to your perceptin jelly, God knows I hope that you have not swallowed that contraceptive according to the premature advertising that the Ortho Company has carried on. While perceptin has been proven by our clinic a very good contraceptive jelly, it does by no means adhere to the cervix in all cases. If it is to be used, it must be used with a diaphragm or some covering of the cervix. Please [get] your clinician to test this out on 20 or 25 women before this is widely advertised as a jelly to be used without The mechanical covering of a diaphragm.11 I am so glad that you have related these experiments to me by letter. They could not have been oked by the government of India without proper testing.12 Almost all of these that you have suggested are tested by Dr. Stone and his various experts at the Bureau. Why in God’s name have we not been advised, or why has the government not asked our advice or our opinion of these matters. We are set up for that purpose. Even the AMA, American Medical Association, puts all of these [tests] to our clinic before they are advised to be used by the American Medical Association.13 Please remember dear Dhan, that no matter how big or successful a contraceptive firm is, they have only laboratory tests. Seldom do they test out their products on women, and it is The M. S. Bureau that does this, especially for The A.M.A., and we hope that you in Bombay will do the same thing. Get up a very splendid group of honest, sincere gynecologists who will serve as testing experts for every contraceptive that comes to India and do not, I beg of you, let these things go out to the people until these experts have given their okeh.14 Now in regard to your trip to Rome.15 While you say “I had definitely decided to attend the meeting, that was wishful thinking”, there is nothing that I would rather do than to go to Rome, especially as I have been invited to attend and speak at public meetings in Milano and Rome,16 but like you, I have to conserve not only my strength and health, but my resources for Japan. I want to help to make the Japanese Conference as successful as you made it in Bombay, which was in my mind a far better conference than ever held before or since. And may I say, with better results. Japan has the Bombay Conference as its ideal, the highest standard, and it is going to take money to help them, and most of that money will have to come from America. So I am girding my loins to do what I can to help.17 I know how you feel, and I wish that you were to be there. I was sort of counting on you to take my place as Chairman, and next to you I hope we will both decide and suggest that Dr. Blacker take over.18

548  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work

There will be many innuendos suggested and many political maneuvers that will be attempted. You doubtless gathered a little bit of that at the meeting you attended in New York.19 You doubtless realize that while the American Western Region has an interest in the International P.P.F., not one of them to my knowledge has had any international experience. Charm and ability there is aplenty, but nationalism and ambition, personal mainly, leads on.20 I am tremendously against this pushing of Americans over and above and beyond the other nationals. One instance the question of the allocation of funds by the International Executive Committee was decried by the North American Region because the Executive Committee personnel was scattered over the world for any suggestion or decision by them as to the allocation of money, and it would be weeks and weeks before decisions could be reached.21 Therefore the suggestion was that the allocation of funds should not be in the hands of the International Committee. Now, on top of this negative suggestion comes the next suggestion to be placed before the Governing Body that all the Vice-Presidents of the I.P.P.F. shall be part of the Executive Committee, enlarging the Committee by 13 or more members scattered over the world, which would make it even more difficult according to their views of getting a quick decision.22 I am entirely against enlarging the Executive Committee. The function of an executive committee is to act for the governing body, and I would like to see it even smaller than it is for quick action. I hope that you will agree to this, and if so to send your vote to Mrs. Houghton and to use any influence that you can with HongKong and Singapore to hold the Executive Committee to the number that it now is.23 I would like to see Mrs. Dorothy Brush as a member of the Executive Committee, as she is an officer as editor of the Bulletin.24 I am voting for a room to be held in Rome and have contributed $100 towards the rent of that room. I have suggested that instead of a dinner that perhaps a tea or cocktail party could be held by the Executive Committee for the delegates of the U.N. providing this is the desire of the Executive Committee, and that all those who attend and vote for this could help by dropping into the hopper sufficient money to pay for the party.25 I have left so much of this work of the International to Mrs. Pillsbury because I have not been informed of suggestions coming up, nor informed as actions have been voted on.26 I might just as well be in [Timbuktu] as far as any participation in the Western Region is concerned, and if I know my countrymen at all, they will never do anything in consulting me unless it is a rule of the Governing Body that such must be done.27 You doubtless felt the tension when you were here, and the difficulty with Eleanor Pillsbury is that her heart has been bound to the P.P.F.28 She has been the most progressive person in that movement. She has pushed Vogt far beyond where his own ability could take him.29 She has had the influence to get money for its main-

June 1954  •  549

tenance and naturally it is hard for her to divide herself to other regions.30 There is no doubt that she would like to be the next president of the I.P.P.F., but I think it is time, if I resign, to have someone in Europe or in Asia to take the presidency, which I sincerely hope and trust that you will do, and if not I will hold on until such time as you and I agree as to the next president.31 This is a long and confidential letter. I hope that you will forgive it, but I want you to know just what I am thinking, and I hope you will let me know in the same confidential way how you feel and what your reactions are. I regret to tell you that Goma Watumull has not been too well. He has had neuritis and there seems to be nothing to help him. Ellen is worried.32 They hope to build a new house but have not been able to do so so far. They spoke of you and love you and have great enthusiastic hopes for the rejuvenation of India, in which I join them. Florence Rose is coming here tonight to spend the weekend.33 With dearest love, Margaret Sanger TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S43:1043–46). Return address: 121 E. Arrellaga Street. A section of the top of the first page is missing. Carbon smears on the second page.

1. Rama Rau continued her work with the FPA-I, the IPPF Regional Office, and the Indian government’s Committee on Family Planning Research and Programs. (Rama Rau to MS, June 16, 1954 [MSM S43:960].) 2. The salutation and other supplied text are based on forms used by MS in other correspondence with Rama Rau. 3. Rama Rau updated MS on the work of the IPPF-IOR and foam powder testing in India. (Rama Rau to MS, June 16, 1954 [MSM S43:960].) 4. MS stayed in Katharine McCormick’s Santa Barbara guest home from June 5 to August 26, 1954. (1954 Calendars [MSM S82:742, 792].) 5. MS was not involved in all the planning for the 5ICPP, but was consulted about the program. The Japanese hoped she would also help them raise funds. (Conference Planning Committee Minutes, Apr. 26, 1954, and Planning Committee to Houghton, July 8, 1954 [MSM S67:427, 44:38].) 6. Rama Rau complained of being bedridden for two weeks after the strain of dealing with an understaffed office and a number of sick relatives who had temporarily moved in with her. (Rama Rau to MS, June 16, 1954 [MSM S43:960].) 7. Devi Krishna Rao (ca. 1898–ca. 1983) was an Indian physician hired as the medical officer for the IPPF-IOR. Clarence Gamble recommended Rao, who had previously been a maternity and child welfare doctor in Bangalore. Barbara Cadbury had been in Ceylon with her husband, George Cadbury, since January working for the UN Technical Assistance Administration as an adviser to the Ceylonese government. (Williams, Every Child a Wanted Child, 250; Rama Rau to MS, June 16, 1954, Cadbury to MS, Nov. 30, 1953, and Rama Rau to MS, June 16, 1954 [MSM S43:960, 42:246, 43:960]; New York Times, Sept. 9, 1954.)

550  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work 8. Foam tablets, available in Japan since the late 1940s, were cheaper than condoms and, unlike diaphragms, did not require a physician’s fitting. But without sufficient moisture to dissolve the tablet and produce a spermicidal foam barrier, they were less effective and more likely to cause irritation. (Fumiko Amano to David Loth, June 3, 1948, and P. K. Whelpton, Abraham Stone, and Lena Levine, “Conference re Japan,” Nov. 18, 1949 [MS Unfilmed]; Stone and Himes, Planned Parenthood, 162–63.) 9. Though many doctors balked at prescribing untested products, contraceptive suppositories, creams, and jellies were often marketed before adequate tests of their effectiveness and safety were completed. Rama Rau’s field experiments were with the British-made Volpar and Fomos tablets that had not yet been widely tested. Abraham Stone and Clarence Gamble were planning to test them at the MSRB in 1955. (Stone, “Research in Contraception,” 98; Abraham Stone, “Clinical Tests of Chemical Contraceptives,” and Yoshio Koya, “Five Years of Family Planning in Three Japanese Villages,” in 5ICPP Proceedings, by IPPF, 153, 115; Rama Rau to MS, June 16, 1954 [MSM S43:960].) 10. MS refers to periodic abstinence, or the Ogino rhythm method, used by more than 30 percent of Japanese who practiced birth control, with success rates significantly lower than barrier and chemical methods. (Taeuber, Population of Japan, 274.) 11. The FPA-I had started a field trial of Preceptin Jelly, a spermicide manufactured by Ortho Pharmaceuticals, which billed it as “contraception without the diaphragm.” The jelly created a “physicochemical barrier” that both killed sperm and prevented their access to the uterus. Though contraceptive jellies could be effective on their own, MS and her clinics always recommended using a diaphragm as a backup. (Rama Rau to MS, June 16, 1954 [MSM S43:960]; for Preceptin advertisement [quotes], see back cover of Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine 14 [May–June 1952], and Cooper, Technique of Contraception, 145, 187.) 12. The FPA-I-organized testing of Fomos, Preceptin, and Durofoam had been approved by India’s Committee on Family Planning. (Rama Rau to MS, June 16, 1954 [MSM S43:960].) 13. The AMA, founded in 1847, was the United States’ largest and most powerful physicians organization. In 1937 it approved contraception as part of legitimate medical practice, and by 1953 it cited MSRB tests as part of its evaluations of contraceptive products. (EB; MSRB Report for 1953 [MSM S64:398].) 14. The FPA-I tested contraceptives by distributing them in villages and camps rather than in more controlled settings. It preferred working with established commercial products rather than with the “simple” and “cheap” methods such as salt-based contraceptives. (Rama Rau to MS, June 16, 1954 [MSM S43:960]; Gamble to Rama Rau, Oct. 21, 1953, and Gamble to MS, Oct. 22, 1953 [LCM 8:764, 762].) 15. The WPCR was held in Rome in September 1954 under the auspices of the UN and IUSIPP. With five hundred experts from seventy countries expected, the IPPF hoped to build a closer working relationship with the UN. The IPPF sent Dorothy Brush and Elise Ottesen-Jensen as observers, but many other IPPF members also attended. The IPPF Governing Body scheduled a meeting to be held during the conference. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 83–84.) 16. The Associazione Italiana per l’Educazione Demografica (Italian Association for Demographic Education) invited MS to address meetings in Rome or Milan during

June 1954  •  551 the WPCR, though no invitations from conference organizers were found. MS’s heart problems, along with a bout of bronchitis, kept her from going to Rome. Rama Rau sought MS’s permission to skip the WPCR, claiming she might not be able to afford to go to the 5ICPP if she went to Rome. (MS to Thomas Griessemer, Feb. 4, 1954, Vittoria Olivetti to MS, Feb. 8, 1954, Rama Rau to MS, June 16, 1954, and 1954 Calendar [MSM S42:825, 856, 43:960, 82:775].) 17. The biggest 5ICPP expense was travel for delegates from the United States and Europe. Over the next nine months, MS secured travel funds through appeals to her wealthy contacts, notably Martha Baird Rockefeller. (Planning Committee to Houghton, July 8, 1954, MS to Gobindram Watumull, Aug. 5, 1954, MS to Friends, Feb. 2, 1955, and Creel to MS, Mar. 28, 1955 [MSM S44:38, 285, 67:499, C10:766].) 18. MS and Rama Rau agreed that if neither could make the WPCR, C. P. Blacker should stand in for them and chair the IPPF Executive Committee meeting. (Blacker to MS, Apr. 5 and 28, 1954, Sanger to Blacker, Mar. 29, Apr. 20, and Aug. 4, 1954, and Rama Rau to MS, Feb. 24, 1954 [MSM C10:447, S43:644, 410, 607, 44:253, 42:1043].) 19. MS refers to the December 17, 1953, IPPF American Committee meeting in New York. (See MS to Blacker, Jan. 18, 1954, herein.) 20. In April the IPPF-WHR created a regional council with twenty-nine members from the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean. The IPPF-WHR’s Executive Committee, responsible for daily operations, was dominated by PPFA members, including Eleanor Pillsbury (chair), Clarence Senior and Joseph Van Vleck (vice chairs), Jerome Fisher (treasurer), and Thomas Griessemer (acting regional director and secretary). Senior (1903–74) was a socialist activist and expert on education and Puerto Rican immigration to the United States. He was the only member of the committee with foreign experience. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 92; New York Times, Sept. 10, 1974). 21. Infrequent meetings also made it difficult to implement decisions quickly. 22. The IPPF Executive Committee, charged with raising and allocating funds, proposing policy changes, and interpreting the IPPF’s aims and objectives, numbered fifteen members, including representatives from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, West Germany, Sweden, and India as well as one from each of the four regions. Eleanor Pillsbury proposed that IPPF vice presidents also be made members of the executive committee, a move that would swell the committee to nineteen members, almost the size of the governing body. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 71.) 23. Vera Houghton, fearing “we may have some trouble at Rome,” suggested that the proposed meeting be shifted from the executive committee to the full governing body. As head of the IPPF-IOR, Rama Rau did not directly supervise either the FPA-HK or the FPA-S, but she knew the staffs of both. (Houghton to Elise Ottesen-Jensen, Apr. 30, 1954 [IPPFR].) 24. Brush, who had been ill in the first half of 1954, remained editor of the AWNPBC. She was not made a member of the IPPF Executive Committee until 1957. (Brush to MS, Feb. 24, 1954, MS to Brush, Mar. 17, 1954, and Helen L. Custeau and Brush to MS, May 7, 1954 [MSM S42:1035, 43:243, 679].) 25. MS and the IPPF-WHR Steering Committee agreed in June to set aside fifty pounds to entertain WPCR conference delegates in small gatherings. (IPPF-WHR Steering Committee Minutes, June 9, 1954 [MSM S63:260].)

552  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work 26. Eleanor Pillsbury, still on the PPFA’s board of directors though no longer board chair, was disappointed in the amount of money she had been able to raise in the United States for international work. She believed that “without money to start Regional offices we can’t get a program. It is a vicious cycle.” (Pillsbury to MS, Jan. 28 and June 24, 1954 [quote] [MSM S42:725, 43:1032].) 27. The competition for funds between the PPFA and the IPPF influenced MS’s relationship with the IPPF-WHR (made up almost exclusively of PPFA members), which she believed should take direction from her. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 98–99; for more information on MS’s dealings with the PPFA, see Vol. 3.) 28. Eleanor Pillsbury came up through the ranks at Planned Parenthood, starting with the Minnesota League for Planned Parenthood in 1939 and serving as PPFA president (1950–53) and chair of its executive board (1953–54). MS distrusted Pillsbury’s protestations that she was “gradually withdrawing from full active participation in the P.P.F.A.” (Who’s Who in American Women, 7th ed. [Chicago, 1972–73]; Pillsbury to MS, Jan. 28, 1954 [quote] [MSM S42:725].) 29. Vogt wanted the PPFA to stop covering IPPF administrative costs, finding it too time-consuming and expensive. MS was frustrated by Vogt’s inattentiveness to her ideas and requests and relied on Pillsbury to advocate for her within the PPFA. (Vogt to Pillsbury, MS, and Frances Ferguson, Apr. 8, 1954, MS to Vogt, Nov. 3, 1953, and MS to Pillsbury, July 16, 1954 [MSM S43:524, 42:25, 44:106].) 30. Pillsbury’s father, Henry A. Bellows, had been a prominent executive and former vice president at Columbia Broadcasting, and her husband, Philip W. Pillsbury, was the chairman of General Mills. She also had experience in raising money for the PPFA, the Red Cross, and local Planned Parenthood affiliates. (New York Times, Dec. 30, 1939, and Apr. 18, 1949; Washington Post, Jan. 10, 1950, and Aug. 29, 1971.) 31. MS’s term as president was set to expire in 1955, but there were no plans to run a contested election for any IPPF office. 32. Gobindram Watumull had been suffering from an inflammation in his arm since May 1954 as well as an abscessed tooth. Ellen Watumull wrote MS frequently about both conditions, which cleared up by early August. (Ellen Watumull to MS, May 13, June 14 and 23, and Aug. 9, 1954 [MSM S43:715, 942, 1043, 44:318].) 33. Florence Rose came up from Los Angeles to spend the weekend of June 25–27 with MS in Santa Barbara. (1954 Calendar [MSM S82:753].)

197. To Mary R einhardt Lasker After Mary Lasker’s husband, Albert, died in 1952, she became president of the Lasker Foundation. She continued her health-focused philanthropy and advocacy, including funding the copying and distribution of birth control films to international groups and funding the 5ICPP. (NAW; MS to Lasker, June 29, 1948, Mar. 28, Apr. 14, and May 19, 1952, Nov. 24, 1954, and Lasker to MS, Apr. 1 and May 22, 1952 [MSM S28:391, C9:394, 415, 407, 482, S45:208, C9:488].)

January 1955  •  553

[Tucson, Ariz.] January 17, 1955

Dearest Mary, It was good to have your telegram of January 3rd. and I am especially happy to tell you that because of your contribution to the Bureau, that already through the sessions that have been opened for birth control or contraception, there has been a splendid increase of patients.1 Your contribution has put new life into The workers of the Bureau and the whole spirit is on the up, instead of on the down as it has been for the last year and a half.2 Indeed you are good enough to say I have done something for millions, but my darling Mary, you have done much for millions also.3 Your great vision of health and your splendid energy and financial support of everything that you put your heart on, has changed the lives of many millions. I long to see you so that we can have hours of conversation. It is most encouraging what is going on in Japan. The Government is making strides and one of the fascinating laws that is being put into effect, mainly by Mrs. Kato, a dear friend of mine of many years, that any doctor who performs an abortion is legally bound to teach the patient contraceptive technique or will be under arrest.4 Also there is an educational campaign that people shall definitely limit their numbers to two children.5 A rather brilliant article is being circulated on a moratorium asking people to have no children for three years.6 All of this is good talk and bringing a consciousness to the masses of the responsibility in having children haphazardly. The International Conference to be held in Tokyo in October 24th. to 30, I hope will be a success.7 Of course with all of this educational work being carried on by the Japanese, the great thing that is needed is a simple contraceptive, which I hope and pray that progesterone will soon prove to be.8 I think I told you that Mrs. Stanley McCormick had put her heart into this and will give no money for anything else except to push this project, which is in the experimental state now, and so far has been successful.9 Do let me know if you are coming to Arizona and let me come and stay long enough that we might make plans together for quite a new world, at least a new civilization. All my love and thanks to you Mary, for everything. Devotedly, Margaret TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S45:889–90).

1. Lasker’s cable offered New Year’s wishes. The Lasker Foundation donated five thousand dollars to the MSRB in December 1954. (Lasker to MS, Jan. 3, 1955, and MSRB Board of Trustees Minutes, Dec. 9, 1954 [MSM S45:578, 64:114].)

554  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work 2. The MSRB’s financial struggles weakened the morale of its overworked and underpaid staff, particularly Abraham Stone. (For more on the MSRB and Stone, see Vol. 3.) 3. Mary Lasker’s cable offered “gratitude for all you have [done?] for so many millions of people in the past.” (Lasker to MS, Jan. 3, 1955 [MSM S45:578].) 4. The Advisory Council on Population Problems of Japan’s Ministry of Welfare passed a resolution in 1954 calling for physicians who performed abortions to furnish patients with contraceptive information, but there was no law mandating this. Kato was working on a law, passed in 1955, that allowed birth control field-workers to sell contraceptives. (Muramatsu, Some Facts about Family Planning, 37, 40; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 263.) 5. Family planning groups and government-sponsored educational campaigns advocated smaller families, though there were no official recommendations to limit families to two children. There was a 1955 survey that reported that Japanese couples preferred two children. (Population Problems Research Council, Third Public Opinion Survey on Birth Control in Japan [Tokyo, 1955], 13; Kitaoka, Over-population and Family Planning, 46–48.) 6. The specific article was not found, but there was widespread consensus that Japan had few other options for reducing demand on its resources. Its aggressive expansionism had failed, and it had lost the territories that it had seized in China and Korea. (S. Chandrasekhar, Hungry People and Empty Lands [London, 1954], 102, 105, 109.) 7. Though initially planned for the spring, the date of the 5ICPP was postponed to October; formal invitations to sponsors and speakers were sent in July. (MS to Friends, Jan. 14 and 17, 1955 [MSM S67:497, 499].) 8. Human studies and trials in late 1954 demonstrated that synthetic progesterone, or progestins, continued to be an effective ovulation inhibitor, but questions remained about the correct dosage and administration. (Pincus, “Some Effects of Progesterone.”) 9. See MS to Lasker, Sept. 14, 1954 [MSM S44:766].)

198. To Vera Houghton In 1954 Clarence Gamble and his son Richard conducted an extended tour of Asia that undermined the fledgling IPPF’s credibility in family planning work. Gamble hired a Western field-worker, Margaret Roots, to help form birth control groups and clinics and organize contraceptive testing, without consulting or securing the permission of local family planning associations or the IPPF-IOR, but still sought the IPPF’s official endorsement. IPPF leaders refused to sanction Roots without some direct control over her activities. In addition, complaints came in from India, Ceylon, and Burma about the Gambles’ insensitivity toward locals, including their use of terms like “coolie” and “native” to describe patients. The “Gamble situation” was addressed at the IPPF’s September meeting in Rome, and, without Sanger or Rama Rau present, the executive committee decided to require Gamble to seek permission from national affiliates and IPPF regional offices before conducting any fieldwork. (Williams, Every Child a Wanted Child, 243–47; Houghton to MS, Aug. 27, 1954 [quotes], Rama Rau to Gamble, Sept. 14, 1954, and Houghton to Gamble, Oct. 7, 1954 [MSM S44:523, 783, 963].)

February 1955  •  555

[Tucson, Ariz.] February 8, 1955

Dear dear Vera, Yours of The 3rd. of February gave me the exact feeling that I have had so many times about Dr. Gamble. At one time I was absolutely overrun with two and three letters at a time putting pressure on the “President” to do this or that.1 I finally wrote him a very frank letter relative to the Indian situation in which I emphasized that no matter who he was, or what plans he had, or how much money he had, that the Indian people from top to toe did not want suggestions, interest, or activities. That they fought for their independence and they want to prove to the world that as an old civilization and the knowhow, plus the language, and they wish to do things themselves.2 I was pretty adamant about India, but I am afraid I did say that I thought HongKong and Singapore would welcome his suggestions and help.3 Since that time I have had only copies of letters from him to others, and there has been no more pressure. And so I think there has been a transfer putting this on you. It is unfortunate that he is so persistent, but perhaps that is the way he accomplishes so much. He has accomplished a good deal, as you will see from his report on contraceptive tests.4 But I doubt that his results have been lasting. He is suggesting at the Japanese Conference there should be one session given to a so-called workshop as to just how clinics are run and set up.5 The National Federation here has them all over the country, and they are very practical. But I am more concerned to have the Japanese Committee set aside a few days session for the discussion of chemical or hormone projects now in operation, and the possibility of those in the future.6 We have been able to get Dr. Gregory Pincus, who is doing a splendid project on progesterone for the past several years and is now setting up different scientific groups in Honolulu, Japan, and Puerto Rico,7 and Dr. Stone has undertaken the same project at the M.S. Bureau.8 Pincus and his wife will attend the Conference, and it is our plan for those who are going to Japan to have a one or two day conference either going or returning to Honolulu.9 Lady Rama Rau has written me requesting that the scientists prolong their trip so that they can set up a scientific committee or conference in Bombay. I have suggested to Dr. Pincus that he will take the time to go to Bombay.10 Now it comes to England and the continent, and I am hoping that you and Dr. Blacker will find out the best scientists or those that have an interest in scientific projects for contraception to be invited to attend.11 The list of persons in U.S.A. the Japanese Committee has invited is enclosed, and I am adding 6 others to request that they be invited also.12 I do trust that there will

556  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work

be a quieting down with Dr. Gamble, and if there is anything I can do to help you as International President, I can be stern and will be glad to help you. Best love, M S.[initialed] Margaret Sanger TLI IPPFR, IPPF (MSM C10:719–20). Letterhead of the IPPF. For TLcy, see MSM S46:134.

1. Gamble bombarded IPPF officers, mainly MS and Vera Houghton, with ideas, requests, and reports of his work. While he offered to donate funds to back the programs he suggested, he was less generous when asked to supply the IPPF or other organizations with operating funds or funding for programs that they developed. Houghton complained, “His almost daily letters, first to one and then to another, trying to put pressure on to get things done his way, are bringing headquarters and regional work to a standstill. . . . I’m afraid his money is acting like a carrot to persuade people to take actions which they would not otherwise do. He simply will not take ‘no’ for an answer.” Many IPPF leaders complained to MS, hoping she could rein in his exuberance. (Williams, Every Child a Wanted Child, 288–89.) 2. In her December 4 letter, MS praised Gamble’s enthusiasm, but told him he was alienating the newly independent Indians. She added that “the new groups formed for family planning or for population control want no outside leadership while they have the individuals, the personality, the setup and the intelligence to conduct the work themselves. . . . [I]n fact they are most greatly in need of money for field work, [but] they would almost rather do without the money for field work if it has to be done by foreigners, and especially by westerners.” (MS to Gamble, Dec. 4, 1954 [MSM S45:409].) 3. MS suggested that Gamble focus on unorganized regions, adding, “I think you would have a much greater welcome if you were to send a field worker into Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, Israel, or any of the various parts of that region,” but warned him that it was “essential that you have the support and the invitation from the directors of that region.” (MS to Gamble, Dec. 4, 1954 [MSM S45:409].) 4. Gamble found that many forms of contraception sharply reduced pregnancy rates, but concluded that his salt-based methods were better suited to conditions in rural villages. For a summary of his tests of simple contraceptives, see Gamble to Rama Rau, Oct. 21, 1953 (LCM 8:764). 5. Gamble established or helped to establish numerous clinics in both the United States and Asia, but his suggestion for a workshop was not adopted. (Gamble to MS, Oct. 27, 1953, and May 4, 1954 [LCM 8:769 and MSM S43:668].) 6. MS recruited Gregory Pincus to lead an all-day session at the 5ICPP on the state of chemical and hormonal contraceptives and asked that the Japanese include representatives involved with the progesterone trials. (MS to Juitsu Kitaoka, Feb. 8. 1955 [MSM S46:136].) 7. In addition to the Japanese trials on progesterone, Pincus sought to conduct additional human trials in Puerto Rico, while McCormick and MS investigated Hawaii as a testing site. (Pincus to MS, Mar. 23, 1954, McCormick to MS, June 14 and December 9, 1954, and Pincus to McCormick, Dec. 2, 1954 [MSM S43:309, 934, 45:461, 367]; for more on the trials, see Vol. 3.)

October 1955  •  557 8. The MSRB’s clinical research on progesterone not only resulted in “definite indication of inhibition of ovulation,” but also found that after stopping the progesterone, some previously infertile women were able to conceive. Abraham Stone and Herbert Kupperman reported on this research at the 5ICPP. (Stone and Kupperman, “The Effects of Progesterone on Ovulation,” Fifth International Conference on Planned Parenthood: Report of Proceedings [London, 1955], 185.) 9. McCormick invited Pincus to stop in Hawaii en route to the 5ICPP, promising to pay his expenses, along with those of his wife, Elizabeth Notkin Pincus (1901–88). (MS to Pincus, Mar. 18, 1954, and MS to McCormick, Feb. 1 and 8, 1955 [MSM C10:409, S46:18, 139]; California Death Index, 1940–1997.) 10. Rama Rau hoped to entice some of the 5ICPP delegates to the FPA-I conference in Bombay. Pincus did not attend. (Rama Rau to MS, Jan. 18, 1955, and MS to McCormick, Feb. 4, 1955 [MSM C10:275, S46:77].) 11. Few European scientists attended the 5ICPP; only two, Dr. A. S. Parkes of the National Institute for Medical Research in London and Sir Solly Zuckerman of the University of Birmingham’s Department of Anatomy, gave papers summarizing biological methods of controlling fertility. (Blacker to MS, Jan. 20, 1955 [MSM S42:730]; IPPF, 5ICPP Proceedings, 163, 212, 235.) 12. The enclosed list was not found, but MS suggested invitations be sent to Henry Wilkinson, Ellen Watumull, Gregory Pincus, Nils Larsen, and Pascal Whelpton, among others. (MS to Juitsu Kitaoka, Feb. 3, 1955 [MSM S46:136].)

199. To Kuo Mo-Jo Kuo Mo-Jo (Guo Mòruò) (1892–1978), one of China’s leading cultural figures, was the head of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the All-China Federation of the Literary Art Circle, vice chairman of the standing committee of the National People’s Congress, and a member of a peace delegation. Sanger’s friend John Adams Kingsbury wrote to Mo-Jo, suggesting that he help Sanger “introduce her work to People’s China and to further its aim.” China’s first modern census, conducted in 1953, showed a population of more than five hundred million and an average annual population increase of about seventeen million, leading it to start advocating birth control in 1954. (Perkins, Encyclopedia of China; New York Times, Apr. 7, 1955; Kingsbury to Mo-Jo, Oct. 6, 1955 [MSM S48:768]; Cheng-Siang Chen, “Population Growth and Urbanization in China, 1953–1970,” American Geographical Society 63 [Jan. 1973]: 55–58; White, China’s Longest Campaign, 26–36.)

[Tokyo, Japan] October 18, 1955

Dear Mr. Mo-Ju: Enclosed is a letter of introduction to you from our mutual friend, John A. Kingsbury.1 A copy of Mr. Kingsbury’s letter to you of October 6 was also sent me, and I blush with embarrassment at the flattering remarks that our friend John has written about me.2 However, he has watched for many years the battle

558  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work

that I and a few friends made in U.S.A. to change our federal and state laws in order to allow the women of our country to have proper information in order to space their pregnancies or to limit the size of the family. Some of the conditions of our poorest groups are most deplorable, and I who spent many years working among them as a trained nurse know very intimately their wishes, hopes and desires, as well as the heart-felt tears.3 It is a long story of battling against ignorance and prejudice to bring enlightenment to those leaders who could change our laws. I am here in Tokyo at the invitation of the Japanese Family Planning Federation.4 I have the honor of being the International President of the Planned Parenthood Federation, of which there are fourteen countries affiliated.5 We expect a very large delegation to attend. One of the best sessions will be where papers will be presented by scientists who will discuss their experiments in the laboratories on a new hormone called progesterone.6 This, at present, is given to women in the form of a tablet or pill twenty days in the thirty days of the month to minimize the ovum against pregnancy. It has been completely successful for over ten years in the work with the female animal and as successfully with a small group of women for the past two years.7 Owing to its expense, it is impossible to produce it in large quantities, and the attempt now is to get a scientific project, possibly from the Mexican yam, that will make it cheaper in larger quantities so that it can be distributed in larger quantities at less expense.8 This is only one of the sessions of interest of which it would take too much of your valuable time to write about.9 I shall remain here in Japan until the 9th of November, when I plan to return on the President Wilson to America.10 It would, of course, give me the greatest pleasure and be a great honor to me to be invited to come to China, but only if whatever knowledge I may possess can be of use to your splendid women’s organization. I have read that this organization is endeavoring to set up clinics in your country, and that is why many of us are interested in such progress.11 I myself believe that Japan has a better method of disseminating contraceptive information by giving this work to mid-wives who go into the homes where the poorest parents are enlightened and encouraged and helped personally by the midwife.12 In our country, while we have over 600 clinics for this purpose, many of the poorest mothers have no transportation and noone to leave the children with so it is they who are neglected and do not have the privilege of such knowledge.13 It would enable them to limit their numbers to the desirable size of the family. I have heard very much of your influence in China, and it is a great honor for me to be able to address you.14 Kindest regards, and I join with Mr. Kings-

October 1955  •  559

bury in hoping for worldwide peace and the enlightenment of mankind. Sincerely yours, Margaret Sanger TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S48:816–17). For another TLcy, see MSM C10:967.

1. John Adams Kingsbury (1876–1956), a public health activist and former secretary and managing director of the Milbank Memorial Fund, was a lecturer on American-Soviet relations who had been a close friend of MS since 1928. Kingsbury’s letter of introduction asked Mo-Jo for “anything you feel able and disposed to do” to aid MS’s efforts to travel to China to help Chinese women start birth control clinics. (New York Times, Aug. 4, 1956, and Apr. 10, 1969; SSDI; Kingsbury to Mo-Jo, Oct. 6, 1955 [quote] [MSM S48:768].) 2. Kingsbury called MS “a leader of progressive causes . . . one of the best known and generally beloved citizens in the U.S.A. She is recognized as a great benefactor of humanity.” He also praised her as “a woman who has always known where she is going, and the world has never failed to step aside for her.” (Kingsbury to Mo-Jo, Oct. 6, 1955 [MSM S48:767].) 3. MS worked as a part-time visiting nurse for obstetrical patients in New York City from about 1911 to 1913. (MS, Autobiography, 46–57, 86–87; see also Vol. 1.) 4. MS arrived in Tokyo on October 1, 1955, visiting Manila, Hong Kong, Kobe, and Yokohama, before returning to Tokyo for the 5ICPP on October 24 to 29. (MS to Friends, Oct. 5–11, 1955, and 1955 Calendar [MSM S48:761, 82:1056–84].) 5. There were fifteen members in 1955: Australia, Ceylon, Great Britain, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Puerto Rico, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, the United States, and West Germany. Three more would be admitted at the 5ICPP: Belgium, Denmark, and New Zealand. (Houghton, “International Planned Parenthood Federation,” 204–5.) 6. The session featured papers by Gregory Pincus, Abraham Stone, Herbert S. Kupperman, and Masaomi Ishikawa. Pincus’s report, his first public announcement of the success of progesterone as an oral contraceptive, was the highlight of the 5ICPP. (IPPF, 5ICPP Proceedings, 175–87.) 7. At this point, Pincus and Rock had settled on an oral dosage of three hundred milligrams of progesterone daily for days five to twenty of the menstrual cycle. The first successful animal experiments were done by Pincus and Min Chueh Chang in 1951 at the WFEB. (Pincus, “Some Effects of Progesterone,” 183; Marsh and Ronner, Fertility Doctor, 144–45; Marks, Sexual Chemistry, 91, 96.) 8. In the early 1940s, chemist Russell Marker was the first to synthesize progesterone from a steroid compound in a Mexican yam, significantly lowering the cost. Chemists Carl Djerassi and Frank Colton modified Marker’s compound into norethindrone and norethynodrel in 1951, leading to more potent synthetic progestin compounds that could be ingested orally. (Watkins, On the Pill, 22–23; Tone, Devices and Desires, 210; Marsh and Ronner, Fertility Doctor, 154.) 9. The conference’s title was “Overpopulation and Family Planning,” and sessions covered population and resources; the relation of family planning to sociology, health,

560  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work and eugenics; research and clinical techniques; sterilization; artificial insemination; and marriage counseling as well as sex education. For the complete program, see IPPF, 5ICPP Proceedings, xxv–xxviii.) 10. MS sailed for Honolulu on November 9, arriving on November 16. (1955 Calendar [MSM S82:1056].) 11. MS may refer to the All-China Federation of Women, a trade union organization, that worked with the Ministry of Health to study birth control issues and recommend action to the central committee. (White, China’s Longest Campaign, 31–34.) 12. Thirty-six thousand trained contraceptive workers, mostly midwives and nurses, worked out of Eugenic Protection Consultation Offices in Japan, but found only limited cooperation from obstetrician-gynecologists, who preferred more lucrative abortions or maternity cases. But by 1955, the government added subsidies to encourage contraceptive distribution to the poor. (Lee and Larson, Population and Law, 12–13, 27; Kitaoka, Over-population and Family Planning, 46–49; Samuel Coleman, Family Planning in Japanese Society [Princeton, N.J., 1983], 34.) 13. The PPFA reported 556 clinics in 1955, about two-thirds of which were located in hospitals and public health centers; only one-third were operated by PPFA affiliates. (MS, “Birth Control,” in Britannica Book of the Year [Chicago, 1956].) 14. Mo-Jo responded on December 31, regretting that MS’s letter had arrived too late to make the arrangements for her 1955 trip. “You had been to old China,” he wrote, “therefore all the more we welcome you to visit the New China so that you can witness how China is re-shaping herself.” In a letter to John Kingsbury, Mo-Jo explained, “In the new China people do not embrace the population theory as advocated by Malthus and neo-Malthusians. But . . . still we welcome Mrs Sanger to come to visit China as a friend of the Chinese people.” (Mo-Jo to MS, Dec. 31, 1955 [quote 1], and Mo-Jo to Kingsbury, Dec. 31, 1955 [quote 2] [MSM S48:1058, 49:185].)

200. To Dorothy Hamilton Brush 1 The 5ICPP, held in Tokyo from October 24 to 29, was attended by more than three hundred experts from seventeen countries, including an observer from the People’s Republic of China. Delegates resolved to solicit WHO to dispense birth control as a health measure and asked Asian governments to include planned parenthood in their public health programs. The announcement during the conference of the success of Gregory Pincus’s progesterone research was reported by Reuters, which described it as a contraceptive that “can be eaten like candy.” (Chicago Daily Tribune, Oct. 23, 1955 [quote]; New York Times, Oct. 30, 1955.)

[Tokyo, Japan] Oct 31/55

Dorothy dear— At last the Conference is over— It has been a severe strain & ended up Sat evening by a banquet given & chaired by Dr Amano—2 presents to all overseas guests—ending in a heart attack from 3 Am all the next day until 8 Pm Sunday night.3 Every one went to Niko4 so only Dr & Mrs Pincus were in

October 1955  •  561

the hotel as I had run out of the medicine Dr Stone brought to me to prevent these attacks, there is no drug store in Tokyo which is allowed to import it. So Dr Pincus called up & went to the Army Hospital where he succeeded in getting one capsule & injected it & I slept until 6 Am & as usual its all over & Im up & down.5 Vera has sent you papers & clippings so [she] thinks you are informed of all the big doings.6 The most discouraging event to me or in all my life was the way Lady R. R. “poled” all The Governing body against Dr Gamble—7 Even Stone & Levine fell for her charm & Vogt & Ferguson went to vulgar extremes to kick him out of the IPPF.8 I did my alone best to take his part but even Mrs Kato voted against him in spite of the $875.00 he sent to Koya to pay travel & hotel expenses for over 100 scientists & officials in Japan to attend The conference.9 I was so sad I nearly cried to have to defend Gamble alone against all who had received his help & money to start their work.10 Your dear Ottensen Jensen was as vicious as a tiger she talks about everyone— Took Dr Blacker to task for being chairman at my request (not democratic) and accused him of “eating out of the hand of MS.”11 Had I resigned as Pres they had her name to present & she was ready to take it. I then changed my mind & accepted it for two years. It would have been a [stick] for the R.Cs to have the Pres of the IPPF, supported by the sale of condoms & pessaries. She is now having special condoms made the profits of which will go to the IPPF.12 I am completely discouraged at the low standards of the clan— Lady R.R ↑thinks she↓ owns all of India, Ceylon Pakistan, the Malay Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore & Japan & no one shall enter without her authority!!!13 I accepted the Presidency for two years with Ellen Watumull as assistant to the President.14 I hope to push her into the Presidency as Ill never attend another conference, Japan was a triumph & the end so I said Hail & Farewell Farewell & Hail— Its my last speech & the end of the Road.15 I was happy that you were not here to go along with the gang, as you doubtless would have been influenced by the charm of L. R. R. & her logic against Gamble.16 So it goes—you were at least saved that sad nerve racking experience. Ill be in New York by Dec 11— Mary Lasker has invited me to be her guest, then Ill go to Mt Kisco for Christmas.17 love as ever Margaret ALS MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S48:861–68). Letterhead of the Imperial Hotel.

1. Brush continued to edit the AWNPBC but did not attend the 5ICPP because she feared a repeat of her conflict with MS in 1952. (See Brush to MS, Sept. 25, 1955 [MSM S48:731].)

562  •  The Culmination of a Life’s Work 2. The 5ICPP closed with a formal reception and dinner on October 29 at the Imperial Hotel in honor of MS. The dinner was hosted by Kageyas W. Amano and featured tributes by Rama Rau, Blacker, Ottesen-Jensen, Stone, and Katō. (Kageyas W. Amano, “Get Together Dinner in Honor of Mrs. Sanger,” Oct. 29, 1955 [MSM S77:119].) 3. MS suffered several episodes of angina while in Japan, the worst on the night of October 29. (1955 Calendar [MSM S82:1056–76].) 4. Rufus and Madge Day, Clarence Gamble, Shidzue Katō, Yoshio Koya, and Juitsu Kitaoka went to visit Nikkō, a city near Tokyo known for its scenic views, shrines, and mausoleums. (1955 Calendar [MSM S82:1078].) 5. Pincus secured the medication, probably Demerol, from the Tokyo Army Hospital, which served troops from UN countries involved in the Korean War. (1955 Calendar [MSM S82:1076]; Charles Kirkpatrick et al., “Operation of Tokyo Army Hospital: A General Hospital in a Theater of Operations,” Medical Bulletin of the U.S. Army Far East 1 [Aug. 1953]: 162.) 6. The material sent by Vera Houghton was not found. 7. On October 29, the IPPF Governing Body discussed the Gamble problem. Most agreed with Rama Rau that Gamble should work independently and that if he wanted to funnel contributions through the IPPF treasury, he would need prior approval from the local and regional associations. Gamble was banned from the meeting, but friends such as MS and Abraham Stone reported to his field-workers that Rama Rau had disparaged their reports, objecting repeatedly to the lack of scientific specificity and to the tone. He came away with “a sense of utter failure so far as building real cooperation with the corps of the IPPF.” The complete minutes of the meeting have not been found. (IPPF Governing Body, “Excerpt from the Report,” Oct. 29, 1955, and Gamble to Collaborators, Nov. 10, 1955 [quote] [CJGP].) 8. Gamble was told that Stone spoke in his favor, but that many other board members agreed with Lady Rama Rau. MS characterized Vogt, Lena Levine, and others as “emotional with hatred” toward Gamble. In 1953 Vogt had rejected Gamble’s proposal to be a field-worker for both the PPFA and the IPPF. (Gamble to Collaborators, Nov. 10, 1955 [CJGP]; MS to Brush, Nov. 6, 1955 [quote], and Vogt to MS, Apr. 23, 1953 [MSM S48:902, 41:301].) 9. Though Gamble refused to fund Katō’s traveling birth control clinic in Japan in 1949, he supported Yoshio Koya’s lengthy study of family planning in three Japanese villages, providing thirty-seven thousand dollars between 1950 and 1962. He also contributed three thousand dollars to the 5ICPP. (Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 262; 5ICPP, Program, Oct. 24–29, 1955 [MSM S67:434]; Williams, Every Child a Wanted Child, 209, 215; Houghton to IPPF Executive Committee, Feb. 3, 1955 [CJGP].) 10. Dorothy Brush later wrote Gamble that she regretted the decision of the IPPF and “was glad I was not there to see it.” She suggested that he “Go out and pick a tiger, name it IPPF & shoot it!” (Brush to Gamble, Nov. 15, 1955 [CJGP].) 11. Ottesen-Jensen admired Gamble’s devotion to the cause, but she too opposed having him represent the IPPF. Blacker later noted that, although Ottesen-Jensen was sympathetic and compassionate, she could also be “impulsive and excitable; she can jump to conclusions and can both speak and act prematurely. . . . At Tokyo she called me a liar half an hour after she had thrown her arms around my neck and told me that

October 1955  •  563 we were firm friends.” (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 103–4; Linder, Crusader for Sex Education, 186, 233; Blacker to MS, Mar. 29, 1958 [quote] [MSM S53:719].) 12. Ottesen-Jensen had long supported the RFSU through the sale of contraceptives. In 1955 she and Conrad van Emde Boas proposed that a “stamp tax” be added to contraceptive sales to help fund the IPPF, but after an April 1955 Time article condemned Sweden as an amoral, oversexed society, quoting Ottesen-Jensen as condoning sex without marriage, her ideas lost support among IPPF members. Clarence Gamble claimed that MS found Ottesen-Jensen “inappropriate” and that she retained the presidency to block Ottesen-Jensen’s ascendancy. (Linder, Crusader for Sex Education, 112–13, 207, 220 [quote], 223; Joe David Brown, “Sin & Sweden,” Time, Apr. 25, 1955, 29; Ottesen-Jensen to MS, June 4, 1955 [MSM S4:578]; Gamble to Collaborators, Nov. 10, 1955 [quote] [CJGP].) 13. MS was also exasperated with Rama Rau’s insistence on a top-down approach to regional organization because she believed it slowed progress and thwarted the efforts of activists like Gamble. 14. Ellen Watumull had begun helping MS with IPPF administrative and secretarial work in February 1955. In May MS announced that Watumull would join the IPPF Council, a decision likely ratified at the 5ICPP. (MS to Watumull, Feb. 7 and May 13, 1955 [MSM S46:120, 47:0337]; IPPF, 5ICPP Proceedings, x.) 15. MS’s opening address at the 5ICPP was “Planned Parenthood: A Cultural Civilization Will Bring World Peace.” (IPPF, 5ICPP Proceedings, iii, xiii; for drafts of MS’s speech, see MSM S72:940–55.) 16. Brush took exception to this remark, writing back, “It hurts my feelings. . . . You know very well that I have almost always voted with you and . . . I feel the IPPF has made a mistake about Clarence and have said so openly many times. On the other hand I do think it is almost impossible to change him sufficiently so that he can work with an organization.” (Brush to MS, Nov. 14, 1955 [quote] [MSM S48:930]; Brush to Gamble, Nov. 15, 1955 [CJGP].) 17. MS left Tucson for Chicago on December 3, went on to the East Coast on December 9, and then went to Mount Kisco to visit her son Grant and his family on December 10 and 11. She then returned to New York City. (For a more specific outline of her plans, see MS to Lasker, Nov. 28, 1955, and 1955 Calendar [MSM S48:983, 82:1096–1101]; the invitation letter was not found.)

z TEN The Trials of Being President

In 1955, at the age of seventy-six, Margaret Sanger was reelected to another two-year term as president of the IPPF. By then personality conflicts and fixed alliances had created an atmosphere of distrust within the IPPF Governing Body, with Sanger often at its center. Her strong personality and sometimes peremptory manner, altered by aging and perhaps by medications, came up against strong-willed colleagues. The results were backbiting, bitterness, and strained deliberations over policies and procedures. Sanger’s lack of a good working relationship with her own national movement hindered her international work. The PPFA, whose officers ran the IPPFWHR, were reluctant to share access to funding prospects. They had their own agendas for international work and were unwilling to subsidize the IPPF’s program in any meaningful way. Unlike Rama Rau and Ottesen-Jensen, Sanger did not lead the national organization in her country, the PPFA, nor was she a member of the IPPF-WHR, and could not direct the decision making of either organization. With the United States as the chief target of international fund-raising, Sanger found herself more often than not in competition with her own countrymen. In Tucson for much of the year and isolated from PPFA leadership in New York and the IPPF headquarters in London, Sanger often felt disrespected and underappreciated. 564  •

The Trials of Being President  •  565

The IPPF was experiencing growing pains, the root of which may have been its regional structure. Despite the plan that it function as a decentralized, representational organization, Sanger believed that regional offices had taken on too much power, were stifling development in local areas, and were failing to respond adequately to those regions most in need of contraceptive services. Another thorny question faced by the IPPF, which Sanger addressed only tangentially, was the question C. P. Blacker asked: “How far do conditions of severe population pressure justify the principle of compulsion?”1 If governments reacted to population decline by restricting birth control and criminalizing abortion, should they respond to too much population growth by imposing family-limitation policies?2 More important, what role should the IPPF play in influencing government policy? The IPPF was dominated and disproportionately funded by white Westerners, notably Americans, attempting to reduce fertility rates in countries populated by nonwhites. Eugenicists, although less prominent than before the war, retained influential positions within the IPPF and among supporters. While Sanger tried to maintain a neutral course, the IPPF Governing Body recognized the necessity of distancing itself from population control zealots like Clarence Gamble, who exuded racial paternalism, and sought broader membership and leadership beyond the United States and Western Europe. Sanger’s history of supporting and working with local activists in developing countries helped the IPPF veer away from the kind of race-motivated colonialism that some eugenicists pressed for after World War I. And her preference for focusing on the plight of the individual and viewing birth control as a transformative tool for women everywhere had the effect of deflecting issues of class, race, and ethnic origin. She often left it up to each country to devise its own population policies. For those with transmissible disease and for other “dysgenic types,” Sanger still believed sterilization, whether voluntary or not, was acceptable.3 If the IPPF, and by extension the international movement under Sanger’s leadership, had so far resisted taking a race-based approach to reproductive control and other pitfalls of social engineering, questions remained about whether the movement had become too focused on broad international concerns. By the late 1950s, with governments more interested in population policy and efforts to control fertility, the movement became more focused on global demographics. The impetus for birth control programs now came from governmental authorities, public health agencies, and IPPF regional groups, as much as, if not more than, from grassroots activism. More women in more regions of the world were seeking birth control than ever before. But there was a danger of ceding the goal of women’s reproductive autonomy, and the inherent freedom of every couple to plan their family, to collective concerns conveyed by numbers.

566  •  The Trials of Being President

Sanger had pragmatically led the international movement to this preoccupation with population trends and resource allocations, and while she gloried in the attention she received from foreign governments, she never seemed comfortable with the planning-board mentality of many population controllers and government bureaucrats. She reminded IPPF members to stay focused on the individual, that “this knowledge of—and communication with—the average man and woman is the real forward tide of history.”4 Such tension between the goals of society and those of the individual had always existed within the birth control movement. These motivations were not mutually exclusive but did require different approaches. Reelected in 1957 for a final two-year term as president, Sanger battled increasing ill health and the inevitable weakness of old age. She acknowledged that her “heart condition will get me down eventually & thats that,” yet she had long stretches, even months at a time, during which she was remarkably resilient, before falling ill again. When her health allowed, she worked diligently; when fatigued and feeling fragile, she was forced to depend on others and made some questionable choices. She drafted proposals to end the IPPF’s regional structure and impose management-based efficiencies, ideas that were politely entertained by the governing body but largely ignored. Sanger met with even more frustration trying to bring the Sixth International Conference on Planned Parenthood (6ICPP) to the United States in 1957. It was first postponed and finally held in India in 1959. By then Sanger was more than ready to become president emeritus. Her last public appearance was for the World Population Emergency Campaign (WPEC), a fund-raising vehicle that organized a “World Tribute to Margaret Sanger” to mark the forty-fifth anniversary of the opening of her Brownsville Birth Control Clinic. Sir Julian Huxley, serving as the international chairman, invited “long-time friends and associates of Mrs. Sanger, leaders of the World Population Emergency Campaign, and distinguished international leaders” to a private dinner on May 11, 1961. The May 12 tribute and conference, which focused on the world population crisis, raised more than forty thousand dollars for the Margaret Sanger Fund, to be used by the WPEC to “carry on her life’s work.”5 Sanger made the long journey from Tucson to New York to attend the luncheon in her honor, regaling reporters who asked if she had mellowed in her old age: “Of course I haven’t mellowed,” she retorted. “Back when I was actively crusading I felt everyone simply had to believe what I said. I still do. I don’t see how any thinking person could feel differently about birth control.”6 By 1962 Sanger’s rapidly deteriorating health and advancing senility forced her into relative seclusion, confined to a nursing home. She was awarded various accolades and honors, including Japan’s prestigious Third Class Order of the Precious Crown in 1965, the highest honor that nation could bestow upon a foreign woman.7 But her worsening dementia kept her in the dark for much

The Trials of Being President  •  567

of that time. She died from congestive heart failure on September 6, 1966, just days shy of her eighty-seventh birthday. Sanger’s death was reported throughout the world, in newspapers large and small. Like few other women of her generation, she was known on all continents and eulogized in a dozen languages. Many of the reports of her death noted that she had lived to see the acceptance of her cause throughout much of the world. The Times (London) attributed her success to her single-minded engagement with medicine and science: “Against formidable odds, she stuck to the goal she had set herself to enable poor women to control their fertility, and that she managed at the same time to enlist the help of progressive elements in the medical profession and encourage scientific and social study of the problem on an international scale was an amazing achievement.”8 A tribute in a leading Tokyo newspaper needed no words to express the appeal and approval of Sanger’s fifty-year mission. It featured a cartoon panel showing a young man reading one of Sanger’s books and coming to an epiphany, after which he climbed to his attic and began reading the book aloud to dozens of rapt mice.9 Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi called Sanger’s death “an event of special sorrow to India . . . one of the first nations to adopt family planning as part of national policy. Dr. Sanger is no longer with us but the fruit of her struggle is evident all over the world.”10 When sifting through the scores of death notices, remembrances, and summaries of Sanger’s remarkable career and contributions to postwar internationalism, the concluding sentence of the obituary in the Bombay Sunday Standard stands out as consistent with Sanger’s belief that there had, as yet, been no final victory: “Margaret Sanger has lit the flame and shown the way, but the revolution is unfinished.”11 Notes 1. C. P. Blacker, “Family Planning and Eugenic Movements in the Mid-Twentieth Century,” Eugenics Review 47 (Jan. 1956): 231. 2. MS, “Inaugural Address,” 10–11. 3. MS to Katharine Dexter McCormick, Oct. 27, 1950 (MSM S33:202). 4. MS, “Planned Parenthood,” 7. 5. WPEC, “World Notables Gather to Pay Tribute to Margaret Sanger” and “International Leaders in Arts, Sciences and Government to Participate in Sanger Tribute,” WPEC Newsletter (Apr. 1961): 1–2 (MSM C17:369). 6. Hutchinson (Kans.) News, May 16, 1961. 7. Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 266. 8. Times (London), Sept. 8, 1966. 9. Asahi Shimbun, Sept. 9, 1966. 10. New Delhi Patriot, Sept. 11, 1966. 11. Bombay Sunday Standard, Sept. 18, 1966.

568  •  The Trials of Being President

201. To Hsue-Shen Tsien 1 In January 1956, Nationalist Chinese chairman Mao Zedong issued a twelve-year plan for agricultural development that included a program to promote birth control in all densely populated areas. China established an Office of Planned Births, charged with coordinating research and drafting birth policies. Provincial Bureaus of Health made contraceptives available in rural and urban areas, and birth control services were provided by factory health clinics and local health stations. (White, China’s Longest Campaign, 24–35; Leonard L. Chu, Planned Birth Campaigns in China, 1949–1976 [Honolulu, 1977], 39.)

Santa Barbara, Calif. 10 July 1956

Dear Dr. Tsien: Please, oh please forgive this delay in replying to your good letter of May 15.2 I left Tucson early in May to do a few cities in a speaking tour, from Kansas City to Washington, D.C., Virginia, Rochester, N.Y., Buffalo, N.Y. and finally to New York City in the hottest June I ever knew.3 We had several meetings concerning the International Movement and the organization of holding an International Conference in Population and Birth Control in October, 1957.4 We hope to hold this conference in Washington, D.C.; as the capitol of our country it may have interesting after effects to enlighten our congressman as to the population problems in many countries. It was such a pleasure to know that you are the Director of the Institute of Mechanics. You were placed in a prominent position, I gather, very soon after your arrival.5 Good luck and good news. I do thank you for the invitation to visit your country. That indeed is an honor and deeply appreciated.6 That the Chinese children’s numbers are “astronomical”, so are they in Japan and in India.7 Japanese children all look fat and clean and loved. The Indian children of the same classes are dirty, diseased beggers.8 Sad, truly. But India and Japan have both decided to spend money in these areas, not only for food and better standards of living, but educational efforts to space the time between births in order to give the mothers a chance to gain health and time to keep the babies clean and healthy.9 I quite rejoice in the news of your country’s progress and that hunger is a thing of the past.10 That fact should be blazoned from the house tops, for even in this country there are certain areas where people live on a starvation diet. Were it not for welfare agencies there would be far more of this.11 I can see that if your country has conquered the economic problem and there is ample food for all, then that is not a reason to adopt family spacing or to cut down the birth rate. But, as you realize and state, that there are personal reasons where the practice of birth control is rational and even necessary, a country which

July 1956  •  569

respects women and desires their progress will not forbid the knowledge of contraceptives.12 Educated women, loving their professions and work, either industrial or cultural, should carefully consider the time of birth and the number she can care for. Remember that the words “birth control” do not mean “limitation”. Control is the word which is in action today. Our college men and women are having from two to six children, but over a space of years—two years apart or even three—to insure the mother’s health as a basic factor for family and national welfare.13 I am so happy to have your letter and to know about your wife and the children.14 I should love to come to China, of course, but I would have to have a special invitation to get a vise.15 Perhaps from one of the Women’s organizations, a University, I spoke before several thousand students at the Pekin University in 1923—(Dr. Hu Shih was Chairman and interpreter).16 I shall look forward to your next letter with great interest. Note the change of address. TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S50:234–35). Return address: 121 E. Arrellaga Street.

1. Hsue-Shen Tsien (Qian Xuesen) (1911–2009) was a Chinese physicist who lived in the United States from 1935 to 1955, cofounding the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. In 1950 he was arrested and accused of pro-Communist activities and deported to China in 1955. MS met Tsien on the S.S. President Cleveland in September 1955 on her way to Japan. (Los Angeles Times, Nov. 1, 2009; Chang, Thread of the Silkworm, xi–xiii.) 2. Tsien recalled that MS saw him as “an idealistic Chinese full of enthusiasm for the new China.” He invited her to visit China and to help with their population problem. (Tsien to MS, May 15, 1956 [MSM S49:1116].) 3. Despite her heart problems, MS began her tour in Kansas City on May 19, continuing to Washington, D.C., and Orange, Virginia. On May 27, she headed to Rochester and Buffalo, New York, stopping in Mount Kisco to visit her son and his family before going to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She returned to New York on June 12 and flew back to California on June 26. (1956 Calendar [MSM S82:1126].) 4. Discussions about holding the 6ICPP in the United States had begun in March, despite the PPFA’s objection that the timing conflicted with its annual meeting. (MS to William Vogt, Mar. 29, 1956, Katharine Reynolds DuPont to MS, May 16, 1956, and PPFA Executive Committee Minutes, June 14, 1956 [MSM S49:703, 1118, 65:941].) 5. From 1950 to 1955, the U.S. government forbade Tsien to travel without prior approval. Upon his arrival in China, he condemned the United States for detaining him and was quickly named director of applied mechanics at the Academy of Science. He became instrumental in developing China’s missile program and training its scientists. (Boorman, Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, 1909.) 6. Tsien wrote that few Americans had been to China and predicted that MS would find it much changed from the “very backward country” she saw in 1922. But he noted

570  •  The Trials of Being President that the government was not convinced that China needed a national birth control policy. (Tsien to MS, May 15, 1956 [MSM S49:1116].) 7. Tsien claimed that the number of children was “astronomical and can be believed only after seeing them.” The population of China in 1956 was more than 600 million. The Japanese population increased from 89,276,000 in 1955 to 90,259,000 in 1956, despite a slight decrease in the birthrate. India’s population increased from 389 million in 1955 to 397 million in 1956. (Tsien to MS, May 15, 1956 [quote] [MSM S49:1116]; Poston and Yaukey, Population of Modern China, 280; Lee and Larson, Population and Law, 6; Mitchell, International Historical Statistics, Africa, Asia and Oceania, 59, 72.) 8. Japanese children gained significantly in height and weight after the war due to improved diet. On average, twelve-year-olds were a half inch taller and two pounds heavier in 1957 than in 1936. But with the end of the Allied occupation and severe rice shortages, malnutrition was increasing in 1956, especially in rural areas. One study of Indian children living in rural Hyderabad showed that more than 80 percent were born to the lowest income categories, and these children were 15–20 percent shorter and weighed 40–50 percent less than the average. Overcrowded cities like Calcutta fared even worse, with 62 percent of its schoolchildren in poor health. (Washington Post and Times Herald, June 24, 1957; Times of India, Nov. 23, 1958; N. Pralhad Rao, Darshan Singh, and M. C. Swaminathan, “Nutritional Status of Pre-school Children of Rural Communities near Hyderabad City,” Indian Journal of Medical Research 57 [Nov. 1969]: 2135, 2138; Times of India, Apr. 8, 1957.) 9. In 1955 the Japanese government, for the first time, included family planning in its budget, and in 1956 the Ministry of Health and Welfare worked with family planning organizations to develop birth control measures. Japan’s Shin Seikatsu Undo (New Life movement), launched in 1953, fostered efforts to modernize daily life and increase standards of living through birth control and other social improvements. In July 1951, Nehru introduced India’s first Five-Year Plan (1951–56), which included the aim of reducing birthrates to “a level consistent with the requirements of national economy,” budgeting 6.5 million rupees for the first three years for educational and research programs. (Mainichi Shimbun, May 26, 1955; Norgren, Abortion before Birth Control, 99; Kitaoka, Over-population and Family Planning, 46–48; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 45–46, 169 [quote]; Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb. 9, 1952.) 10. Tsien claimed that the Communist government’s organization of farming and conservation efforts had “made starvation a thing of the past.” (Tsien to MS, May 15, 1956 [MSM S49:1116].) 11. Puerto Rico and parts of the Deep South in the United States still grappled with hunger and malnutrition, and certain urban populations also recorded dietary deficiencies despite increases in U.S. food production and public assistance programs. (de Castro, Geography of Hunger, 113–14, 125–27, 137; New York Times, Aug. 2, 1953.) 12. Tsien told MS that birth control was “not forbidden” in China and that contraceptives were available for those who wanted them. He claimed women “in factories, in offices and in universities practice birth control” to ease their economic burdens and allow them to “devote themselves more effectively to national reconstruction.” (Tsien to MS, May 15, 1956 [MSM S49:1116].) 13. Though college-educated women had fewer children than those with little or no education, they experienced the largest increase in birthrates during the baby boom. One

November 1956  •  571 1955 survey found that American college-educated women between the ages of eighteen and thirty-nine planned to have 3.2 children, while those with only a grammar school education expected to have 4.4 children. The interval between births was slightly higher for educated women. (Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era [New York, 1988], 136–39; Ronald Freedman, Pascal K. Whelpton, and Arthur A. Campbell, Family Planning, Sterility and Population Growth [New York, 1959], 289–94; Joseph Schachter and Wilson H. Grabill, “Child Spacing as Measured from the Ages of Children in the Household,” Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly 36 [Jan. 1958]: 81–82.) 14. Tsien’s wife, Jiang Ying (1920–2012), a Chinese opera singer, taught at the Center for Experimental Opera in Peking. Tsien remarked that his son, Yucon Tsien (b. 1948), and daughter, Yung-jen Tsien (b. 1950), “can now speak Chinese very well, but, I am afraid, are losing their English.” (Xinhua, Feb. 6, 2012; Tsien to MS, May 15, 1956 [quote] [MSM S49:1116]; Chang, Thread of the Silkworm, 135, 141, 145, 232–33.) 15. The State Department refused visas to Americans traveling to places where the United States did not have diplomatic relations, notably the Communist-run nations of China, North Korea, North Vietnam, Albania, and Bulgaria. Exceptions could be made if citizens “could show good cause.” (New York Times, Sept. 12, 1955.) 16. For MS’s April 19, 1922, speech at National Peking University, see MS to Rublee, Apr. 16, 1922, note 5, herein; for more on Hu Shih, see MS to Edith How-Martyn, Mar. 4, 1936, note 10, herein.

202. To Dorothy Hamilton Brush 1 Sanger wanted to hold the 6ICPP in Washington, D.C., despite a lack of support from the PPFA and IPPF-WHR. After an October 16 meeting of the IPPF’s American Committee, member Thomas Griessemer, acting director of the IPPF-WHR, summarized the committee’s decisions in a letter to Vera Houghton, without first sending a draft to Sanger for approval. Sanger was livid and wrote him a blistering letter, vowing to “not take lightly any action . . . by volunteer or paid assistant who acts over my head. Never has this happened during the forty years or more of my leadership.” She added, “I certainly do not intend to work with anyone who behaves in this manner.” (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 155; Griessemer to MS, Aug 4, 1954, IPPF Western Hemisphere Region, “Resolution,” July 28, 1954, MS to Griessemer, Oct. 31 [quotes] and Nov. 5, 1956, and to Rufus Day, Nov. 6, 1956 [MSM S44:251, 269, C11:65, S50:0944, 949].)

[Tucson, Ariz.] November 12, 1956

Dorothy dearest, If Tom wants to resign please I beg of you to let him go.2 He will never learn, and it will be only a question of months when I’ll get out. We can certainly find a full time American trained man who will do the job better. Warren Nelson knows so many people and good ones; so does Fairfield Osborn.3 It will be the question of a good salary and expenses for secretaries which should be settled before the person is engaged.

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The lack of historical knowledge of the BC movement is all over the pages. You, or someone, has corrected the sentence that 1957 will be the first International Conference in U.S.A.4 Of course there was one in 1922—the Town Hall riot was its climax.5 Also there was the English Mal. League meeting in Dresden, France, London its headquarters and Amsterdam with Dr. Aletta Jacobs, the famous clinical expert.6 Medical men and scientists from Norway, Sweden and other countries came to annual conferences from all over Europe.7 The seed was certainly scattered thickly—with Carlisle, Huxley, Darwin writing and speaking and getting arrested until Annie Besant and Bradlaw challenged the law and changed it!8 You went through all that early history in revising the BC from Malthus to Tokyo.9 There were national organizations in France, Holland, and England—all Neo-Mal groups—with a monthly magazine regularly printed and circulated copies of which I have thanked God from number one.10 Some day I’ll give them to Smith bound in gold and glassed with lock and key.11 T. G’s words, like Ken Rose, sound as though the BC movement began with their arrival as paid and hired hands.12 It shows that [a mind] is too lazy to read history and absolutely no [interest] in the past. I do not see what good it will do for you and Abram to sit down and talk it all through with T. G.13 The only thing you can face him with and he can’t deny is employing Kurtz, or whatever her name is, over your head and without the courtesy of asking you—he laughed at his trick, so she said when she got the job, saying you were mad at him, but he did not care!14 She may have lied, but she said that when I was surprised to see her back again. He sent her to take dictation from me. I did not reply to that pert remark, but it is like him to laugh it off. He has no regard for Stone, or you or me.15 He has been on his own and thinks Lena is o.k.16 and Eleanor. When I said I, as President, would open the W.H. meeting, he objected and said he would have to ask Eleanor!!!!17 That gave him away as far as I was concerned. His knowledge of parliamentary law is superficial. He nearly caused the International to break in two at Stockholm by cutting down to one page what Dr. Blacker had worked on for over two months.18 Jerry Fisher gave thoughtful creative and constructive support to Blacker’s splendid treatise.19 Vogt told Blacker he has been the cause of a twenty-five thousand dollar loss from Tom’s “Boss” by his behavior.20 Blacker threatened to walk out and give over the chairmanship to Vogt or T. G. I got Lady Rama Rau and all the others from HongKong and Singapore and Ceylon to stand by Blacker and said we would follow him out. So Vogt and Pilpel got things quieted down.21 The one thing he does not realize, that every important meeting must have stenographic notes and a proper report sent out. He makes a few pencil notes and calls that enough. I think he did not dare bring his stenographer

November 1956  •  573

to the 16th. of October meeting because you were there.22 He reads a lot of stuff and takes for granted we all agree to it. He does not put it to a vote. He certainly did nothing but read pages and pages of his ideas in Santa Barbara.23 There was no motion and certainly I expected that the whole thing would be circulated to you, to Ellen, to Abraham, to Marion, [Lena] and others for their opinions and ideas.24 Instead he took for granted that Rufus and I were for the whole thing and sent if off to Vera to be sent to the Governing Body and Executive Committee as if it were the American decision.25 You saw it only when you corrected it, I think. Now it will go out again, with at least English that is correct, but history of the early movement not mentioned. Well, darling Dorothy, all this is enough to give you my heart attack, but I am getting better.26 Estelle will go to Honolulu with me but can not stay but a month or six weeks. Then I must get well, and she to get the kind of administrative job she is trained for.27 Thank you a million for your thought of me and going to the bat,28 but its far too expensive to have a long drawn out condition like this with no likelihood of a cure ever—-So as one Doctor said, “You will have to learn to live with pain.” Pain, if you please. I just won’t live with it. I wish you were to come out after Christmas to Honolulu. It will be lovely there—you, Ellen, and I will settle things as women can.29 Won’t you plan that? Do. Ever my love—ever, Margaret P.S. in answer to your letter of November 8th.30 Dearest Dorothy, As to giving—publicity to the Conference—a year and a half away, with no agenda, no special speakers or delegates, no subjects or dates to announce.31 Is the man crazy? Has he gone off his head? He has written to Vera about speakers and asked her to ask them—no reply. It is not her place, nor his, to invite speakers.32 I think we can not announce the Conference until we have a few “big shots” whose names will carry weight with other scientists. A year is enough time, and you are right not to put anything about it in the magazine at this time. When we have a program—a few top people attending—they we can give it a push. We must have a chairman or director, then a committee of scientists. I have already invited Vogt and Pincus,33 and I’d like to ask Fairfield Osborn, whose book The Limits of the Earth is superb.34 It is a comfort that you are there to talk to T. G. and to try to make him respect some of us who have been in the movement some years when he was—well I won’t say what he was doing—.35 Yes, you can read that Rock report to your Brush Board but please no publicity or public discussion yet.36 It looks encouraging. T. G. says no money

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is needed for research, as Mrs. McCormick is supporting that work of Pincus. If Rock had a million he could use it—so could Pincus.37 I am up today for the first time in three weeks. I am discouraged with having pain so often day after day, but my love to you dearest of dears. Ever my best. Margaret TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S50:976–78).

1. Brush was working on her last issue of the AWNPBC, having resigned as editor as of December 1956. (Brush to MS, Nov. 23, 1956, and IPPF Third Report, 1954–1956 [MSM S50:1028, 63:907].) 2. Brush reported that Griessemer “was at a complete loss to understand the reason for your anger! . . . I think Tom is really on the verge of resigning—if he does, what happens then?” After several letters back and forth on the Griessemer issue, tensions subsided. (Brush to MS, Nov. 8, 1956 [MSM S50:966].) 3. Warren O. Nelson (1906–64), an endocrinologist specializing in sperm biology and an expert on reproduction, was the medical director of the Population Council (1954–64) and a member of the PPFA’s medical committee. Paleontologist (Henry) Fairfield Osborn Jr. (1887–1969), the president of the New York Zoological Society (1940–68), was a leading conservationist and population control advocate. (New York Times, May 2, 1956, Oct. 20, 1964, and Sept. 17, 1969; Frederick Coulston and J. M. Wolfe, “Memoir: Warren O. Nelson, 1906–1964,” Journal of the Society for Reproduction and Fertility 10 [1965]: 157.) 4. MS likely refers to Griessemer’s draft of the IPPF U.S. Committee program, which had a “History” section that began with the postwar years. For the final version, see IPPF U.S. Committee, “Program of the U. S. Committee for International Planned Parenthood, Oct. 1, 1956, to Sept. 30, 1958” [MSM S63:103, 118].) 5. Though the first international meeting in the United States was the 6INMBCC in 1925, MS counted the November 1921 First American Birth Control Conference, an international meeting because Harold Cox, from England, was on the program. (For more on the conference, see Vol. 1.) 6. The ML held international meetings in 1900 (Paris), 1905 (Liege), 1910 (The Hague), 1911 (Dresden), 1922 (London), 1925 (New York), and 1930 (Zurich). Aletta Jacobs’s birth control work centered on providing medical care for poor women in her charity clinic and private practice. She ceased these activities in 1893, but was acknowledged as a leader in the movement into the 1920s. (MS, introduction to International Aspects of Birth Control, vi–x; Harriet Pass Freidenreich, “Aletta Jacobs in Historical Perspective,” in Memories, by Jacobs, 181.) 7. Among the Scandinavians who attended some of the meetings were Anton Nystrom and Knut Wicksall, both Swedish. (Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, 188–89, 193.) 8. MS refers to nineteenth-century British writers: Richard Carlile (1790–1843) was a free-speech advocate whose birth control pamphlet Every Woman’s Book linked contraception and freedom of speech. Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95) was a naturalist

November 1956  •  575 and champion of Charles Darwin (1809–82), the author of Origin of the Species, which posited the theory of natural selection. Annie Besant (1847–1933), author of The Law of Population, founded the Freethought Publishing Company with Charles Bradlaugh (1833–91). The pair successfully challenged British censorship laws in 1877 when they republished Charles Knowlton’s Fruits of Philosophy. (Peter Fryer, The Birth Controllers [New York, 1967], 44, 147–48, 161–65; EB; Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex [London, 2004], x.) 9. MS refers to an eighteen-page pamphlet, Historical Highlights of Birth Control: Malthus (1798) to Tokyo, Japan (1955), which the IPPF published in conjunction with the 5ICPP in 1955. (For other summaries, see ABCL, One Hundred Years of Birth Control [New York, 1921]; and MSRB, One Hundred Fifty Years of Birth Control: Malthus (1798) to Cheltenham (1948) [New York, 1948].) 10. The ML’s journal the Malthusian, published from 1879 to 1921, was renamed the New Generation (1922–49), then reverted back to the Malthusian before it ceased publication in 1952. Most of the ML’s international affiliates were founded in the late nineteenth century, including the German SHV, which published Die Sozial Harmonie; the French LRH and its journal Régéneration; and Spain’s Liga Espanola de Regeneracion Humana, which published Salud y Fuerza (later La Vie Intime). Leagues without journals included the NMB (Netherlands) and the Madras Malthusian League (India), along with several Swedish groups. (Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, 181, 187, 189, 192.) 11. Most of MS’s collection of international printed material, including the Malthusian, can be found at the MN-SSC. 12. MS refers to D. Kenneth Rose, the former national director of PPFA. See MS to Brush, Jan. 10, 1953, note 10, herein for more on their relationship. 13. Brush and Stone proposed to “talk the whole thing out” with Griessemer. But MS responded, “I think I have considerably distressed him, and if he can’t take it, that is just too bad.” (Brush to MS, Nov. 8, 1956 [quote 1], and MS to Day, Nov. 6, 1956 [quote 2] [MSM S50:949, 966].) 14. Alice Kurz was a secretary for the IPPF-WHR, hired by Griessemer in early 1955. Brush apparently let Kurz go, but Griessemer rehired her using BF funds. (MS to Brush, Oct. ?, 1956, and Brush to MS, Nov. 3, 1956 [MSM S50:908, 966].) 15. Brush noted that Abraham Stone felt “very much as you and I do,” but C. P. Blacker observed that Griessemer “knew how to keep his temper and his manners when people were rude to him.” (Brush to MS, Nov. 8, 1956 [quote 1] [MSM S50:966]; Blacker, “T. O. Griessemer,” IPPF News [Sept. 1966]: 7 [quote 2].) 16. MS believed that Griessemer had received good advice when he worked in proximity to Lena Levine, Abraham Stone, and others more experienced than him, but on his own he was making avoidable errors. (MS to Hugh Moore, Nov. 19, 1956 [MSM S50:1001].) 17. MS’s relations with Eleanor Pillsbury, who worked well with Griessemer, had deteriorated during the infighting between the PPFA and the IPPF, with MS insisting that Pillsbury resign one of her two IPPF offices (she was IPPF-WHR representative to the governing body and an IPPF vice president). (Pillsbury to MS, Aug. 19, 1954 [MSM S44:474].) 18. MS refers to the American draft of the IPPF Constitution. (For drafts, see MSM C13:121–37; for the version approved at Stockholm, see MSM C13:138.)

576  •  The Trials of Being President 19. IPPF cotreasurer Jerome C. Fisher died of a heart attack on January 12, 1954. Fisher had advised that the best people be secured for the IPPF Governing Body, which would be given control over the IPPF. He also suggested language, eventually adopted, to allow the IPPF to expel national organizations if they were involved in commercial practices. (Conneaut [Ohio] News Herald, Jan. 15, 1954; Fisher to MS, June 9, 1953 [MSM S41:530].) 20. Griessemer’s “boss” was Dixie Cup head Hugh Moore, who donated Griessemer’s salary to the IPPF. At the 4ICPP Constitution Committee meetings, Vogt, Pillsbury, and Griessemer supported the American draft over Blacker’s. (Critchlow, Intended Consequences, 31.) 21. The minutes from the IPPF Constitution Committee meeting were not found. After the 4ICPP meetings, Harriet Pilpel and Griessemer seemed to work amicably with Blacker to finalize the wording of the constitution. (See Journal Entry, Aug. 15, 1953, notes 2 and 15, herein; Blacker to Griessemer, Nov. 27, 1954, Griessemer to Blacker, Oct. 13 and 28, 1953, and Jan. 15, 1954 [MSM S45:247, 41:849, 995, 42:580].) 22. The IPPF U.S. Committee met on October 16 to discuss changing the date of the 6ICPP to 1958 and to better develop the committee’s organization. Fifteen attended, including MS, Dorothy Brush, Rufus S. Day, Griessemer, Hugh Moore, and Ellen Watumull. (IPPF U.S. Committee Minutes, Oct. 16, 1956, and MS to Griessemer, Oct. 30, 1956 [MSM S63:291, 50:892].) 23. MS refers to meetings held in Santa Barbara on August 4–6 between MS, Rufus Day, and Thomas Griessemer. No minutes were found, but discussion centered on the status of the IPPF U.S. Committee, plans for the 6ICPP, and the stormy relations between the IPPF and the PPFA. (Griessemer, “Matters to Be Discussed at Santa Barbara,” July 23, 1956, and Ellen Watumull to Day, Aug. 6, 1956 [MSM S63:96, 50:499].) 24. Ellen Watumull, still serving as assistant to the IPPF president, had worked with Griessemer in New York in October 1956, seemingly without conflict, but agreed with Rufus Day that Griessemer had to “observe the proper limits of his authority.” Marion Crary Ingersoll (1880–1972), the widow of Brooklyn borough president Raymond Vail Ingersoll, was a loyal supporter of the BCCRB and MSRB. She joined the IPPF Advisory Committee in 1954. (Watumull to MS, Oct. 20, Oct. ?, and Nov. 26, 1956, and Day to MS, Nov. 23, 1956 [quote] [MSM S50:829, 916, 1054, 50:1031]; New York Times, June 10, 1972; MS to Ingersoll, Jan. 5, 1954 [MSM S42:487].) 25. See Griessemer to Houghton, Oct. 23, 1956, MS to Griessemer, Oct. 31, 1956, and Blacker to Griessemer, Nov. 27, 1954 (MSM S50:836, C11:65, S45:247). 26. MS’s heart problem kept her confined to bed. Though her atrial fibrillation had improved, she was experiencing more frequent angina episodes. (MS to Margaret Sanger Marston and Nancy Sanger Ivins, Sept. 25, 1956, and MS to Nils Larsen, Nov. 14, 1956 [MSM C11:46, S50:987].) 27. Estelle Flowers (1904–90), a former MSRB executive secretary and a trained nurse, worked for MS in Tucson. She also accompanied MS to Honolulu on December 1, 1956, where MS went to recuperate. (1940 U.S. Census; Florida Death Index; MS to Stone, Oct. 25, 1956, and 1956 Calendar [MSM C11:61, S82:1150].) 28. Brush promised to “go to bat” for MS to make sure she received money to keep Flowers with her. (Brush to MS, Nov. 8, 1956 [MSM S50:966].)

april 1957  •  577 29. Brush did not go to Hawaii with MS because of her own health problems. (Brush to MS, Nov. 23, 1956 [MSM S50:1028].) 30. Brush’s November 8 letter dealt in part with Griessemer’s rehiring of Alice Kurz; see note 14. 31. Brush told MS that Griessemer wanted to include a 6ICPP announcement in the AWNPBC, but Brush and Stone agreed that it was “jumping the gun. . . . [A] year ahead would really be ample time to start publishing it in the Bulletin.” (Brush to MS, Nov. 8, 1956 [MSM S50:966].) 32. In his October 23 letter to Houghton, Griessemer indicated that the U.S. Conference Committee would set the program and select speakers. He promised that the committee would check with the national organizations before inviting someone from that nation. Official letters of invitation would go out over MS’s signature. MS thought Griessemer’s suggestion of time limits on papers and paper limits on sessions was ridiculous. She had played an integral role in setting programs and selecting delegates for previous conferences. (Griessemer to Houghton, Oct. 23, 1956, and MS to Griessemer, Nov. 5, 1956 [MSM S50:836, 944].) 33. Vogt’s invitation was not found; MS asked him in December to help organize the conference program. She invited Gregory Pincus to be on the 6ICPP Program Committee and asked for his input on the agenda and invitation lists. Pincus was willing to chair the session on scientific or biomedical issues and to invite participants. (MS to Vogt, Mar. 27 and Dec. 4, 1956, MS to Pincus, Dec. 4, 1956, and Pincus to MS, Dec. 6, 1956 [MSM S49:703, 51:27, 26, 30].) 34. Henry Fairfield Osborn Jr.’s book Limits of the Earth (Boston, 1953) emphasized the imminent threat from overpopulation and limited resources. (New York Times, Sept. 17, 1969.) 35. MS may be alluding to the fact that Griessemer, born in Germany in 1904, was old enough to have been involved in Nazi politics. He was a German refugee who arrived in the United States in 1937 and became a naturalized citizen in 1944. (New York, Passenger Lists, 1820‑1957; Index to Petitions for Naturalization Filed in New York City, 1792‑1989.) 36. The report is likely Rock, Pincus, and Garcia’s article “Effects of Certain 19-Nor Steroids,” Science, Nov. 2, 1956, 892, which Brush found exciting and asked to share with the BF’s doctors. (Brush to MS, Nov. 8, 1956 [MSM S50:966].) 37. Griessemer was reported to have told this to Marion Ingersoll, who told MS. (MS to Day, Nov. 6, 1956 [MSM S50:949].)

203. From C. P. Blacker 1 In late 1956, conflicts with Thomas Griessemer and the PPFA’s reluctance to hold the 6ICPP in Washington led to a postponement of the conference to 1958. Sanger, who wanted the latest scientific data to be the focus of the meeting, worked closely with biologist Gregory Pincus on the organization and content of the sessions. The PPFA remained only a peripheral partner, which irked Sanger, who began to think that the United States was not the best choice to host the conference. With a program committee meeting scheduled for April 22,

578  •  The Trials of Being President she wrote to Katharine McCormick that “we are in the hands of the Gods and it may be that the Sixth Conference will be held in another part of the world instead of Washington. Personally I would like to see it held in Geneva. There’s always so much trouble in getting people into this country, with fingerprints and all the humiliating questions to be answered. It would really be a relief to me to have it in another country.” (MS to Griessemer, Nov. 27, 1956, MS to Pincus, Jan. 31, 1957, MS to Frank Notestein, Apr. 5, 1957, and MS to McCormick, Apr. 6, 1957 [MSM S50:1012, 51:386, 858, 871].)

London, [England] 10th April 1957.

Dear Margaret, I am not happy about next year’s conference in Washington. Several people have written to the London office about it and I feel that I ought to tell you what is widely felt and what I myself think. Frederick Osborn wrote early in March expressing misgivings, but saying that he did not wish to take the matter up directly with you.2 He believes that Washington is the wrong place to hold an international conference for three reasons. First he thinks that if Congress reacts at all it will do so unfavourably.3 It is impossible to control what is said by all the speakers at any conference and some indiscreet remarks could be seized on and publicised in a manner injurious to foreign aid which, he says, is the whipping boy for a few members of Congress at all times. He is especially afraid of someone saying that foreign aid should only be given to countries which actively restrict birth rates—a remark which, he thinks, could do immeasurable harm.4 Secondly he is doubtful whether Washington is the best place for raising money.5 Thirdly he thinks that pronouncements coming from Washington might injure voluntary family planning movements in under-developed countries: irresponsible statements might be seized on by nationalist groups and used by them to hinder enlightened governmental policies.6 Bob Cook has also written.7 He supports Osborn and stresses how Washington officialdom is scared of population problems in general and of birth control in particular. He thinks that, in seeking to apply pressure at the centre, our conference may evoke counter-pressures to which Congress would be more sensitive than to our own pressure. Not only Catholics, he thinks, would be stirred to vigorous counter-reactions. The Administration, he says, will have nothing to do with our conference in any way, manner, or form.8 He agrees with Osborn with whom he has discussed the matter that policies for over-populated countries should be pressed from the capitals of those countries and not from the capital of the most prosperous nation in the world.9 He thinks that no Congressman would be impressed by a parade of experts from overseas. Sir Solly Zuckerman, whom you will remember having met in Tokyo, has written on the same lines. He thinks that Washington is the last place on earth where such a conference should be held.10

April 1957  •  579

I agree with these views, and so do the others on the British Committee including Sir Jeremy Raisman.11 There is, I think, a wide difference between the effects of an international conference in countries like India and Japan, whose national associations invite us and are strengthened by our support, and their ↑its↓ effects when held in the capitals of developed countries which have no internal population problems. Since 1952, moreover, when we met in Bombay, the movement has made giant strides.12 Much of the progress has been in response to stark realities and has been unprompted by us. The communist world, for example, has largely come round;13 and the Catholic world is now anxiously groping for a solution.14 Today there are few places in the world where we could hold conferences in an atmosphere like that of Bombay or Tokyo. Cairo might be ripe in another two or three years;15 Mexico city and Jakarta or Bandung in another five to seven years;16 Buenos Aires in another ten or fifteen years.17 In the meanwhile, I feel that we can be of most help by assisting regional and local activities and by helping all who need advice or training. This can be done as a matter of routine without holding large and expensive international conferences.18 If the conference in Washington next year were cancelled we in this country would on the whole be relieved. The Pakistanis are planning a fairly big conference next year.19 Could not some of us help there? I have sent a copy of this letter to Mrs. Watumull and to Rufus Day.20 My very best wishes. Ever yours, CP Blacker [signed] TLcyS MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S51:912–13). Letterhead of the IPPF. Handwritten interlineation by C. P. Blacker.

1. C. P. Blacker continued as vice chair of the IPPF Governing Body. 2. Frederick Henry Osborn (1889–1981), a businessman and philanthropist, was a proponent of demography and population control. He helped start Princeton University’s OPR in 1936 and in 1953 joined John D. Rockefeller III to found the Population Council. Osborn initially wrote to Vera Houghton on March 7. On hearing that MS had asked Griessemer to withdraw from working on the 6ICPP, he too became less enthusiastic about holding it in Washington. (New York Times, Jan. 7, 1981; Edmund Ramsden, “Social Demography and Eugenics in the Interwar United States,” Population and Development Review 29 [Dec. 2003]: 558, 560–61, 579; MS to Griessemer, Nov. 27, 1956, and Osborn to Houghton, May, 7, 1957 [MSM S50:1012, 51:607].) 3. Osborn thought that Catholic pressure was too powerful in the United States, “particularly perhaps with this Administration, and we can be sure that the United States Government would not cooperate with such a conference in any way.” The Eisenhower administration was viewed as seeking to ingratiate itself with the Catholic Church, in part as a reaction to atheistic communism. (Osborn to Houghton, Mar. 7, 1957 [MSM S51:607]; Kristen Heyer, Mark J. Rozell, and Michael A. Genovese, Catholics and Politics: The Dynamic Tension between Faith and Power [Washington, D.C., 2008], 179–80.)

580  •  The Trials of Being President 4. Osborn may have been referring to a recent Washington Post column that called foreign aid “a whipping boy for everyone who wants his taxes cut.” (See Osborn to Houghton, Mar. 7, 1957 [MSM S51:607]; Washington Post and Times Herald, Mar. 16, 1957 [quote].) 5. Osborn noted that rather than advancing fund-raising, holding the conference in Washington could “have the opposite effect.” (Osborn to Houghton, Mar. 7, 1957 [MSM S51:607].) 6. Osborn asserted that any Washington-based proposals to reduce birthrates “would be dynamite in the hands of nationalist groups and might immeasurably set back the important movements already under way with government support in high fertility countries.” (Osborn to Houghton, Mar. 7, 1957 [MSM S51:607].) 7. Robert Carter Cook (1899–1991), a geneticist and demographer who had been warning about overpopulation since the 1930s, was director of the PRB. Cook refused to join the 6ICPP Program Committee but did plan to attend the conference. In a March 15 letter to Vera Houghton, he indicated that he thought the 6ICPP would be more effective and more welcome if held in Latin America, specifically Mexico. (New York Times, Jan. 9, 1991; Cook to MS, Feb. 28 and Mar. 28, 1957, and Cook to Houghton, Mar. 15, 1957 [MSM S51:537, 739, 665].) 8. Cook indicated that no one knew how the 6ICPP might affect government officials, but warned that “the U.S. collective officialdom is frightened green by population in general and birth control in particular.” The Eisenhower administration’s fear of offending Catholic voters who supported the Republican president influenced its policy on family planning. Cook declared that population control efforts should be conducted by private groups, not the U.S. government. (Cook to Houghton, Mar. 15, 1957 [quote] [MSM S51:665]; Critchlow, Intended Consequences, 17–18, 42–47.) 9. Cook argued that “the suspicion that the super-haves are concerned about being swamped by reproduction among the ‘lesser breeds’ can have the most disastrous repercussions.” (Cook to Houghton, Mar. 15, 1957 [MSM S51:665].) 10. Sir Solly Zuckerman (1904–93) was a South African–born biologist and animal anatomy expert at the University of Birmingham. He reported on research focused on inhibiting female fecundity at the 5ICPP. His letter to Blacker was not found. (New York Times, Apr. 2, 1993; IPPF, 5ICPP Proceedings, 197–200, 212–13.) 11. Sir Abraham Jeremy Raisman (1892–1978), a British-born civil servant, had held a number of government posts in India until 1947 and then worked at Lloyd’s Bank. He was IPPF cotreasurer with Rufus Day and a member of the IPPF British Committee. Other members of the IPPF British Advisory Committee were L. N. Jackson, Margaret Pyke, Helena Wright, and G. Aird Whyte. (Times [London], Feb. 23, 1978; Blacker to MS, Oct. 4, 1957, and IPPF British Advisory Committee Minutes, Aug. 3, 1956 [MSM C11:322, 29].) 12. The IPPF had expanded steadily from the eight founding organizations to twenty, with the addition of Jamaica and Barbados in 1957. The IPPF and its regional and local organizations supported travel for field-workers, physicians, and IPPF officers to promote family planning, provide instruction to local physicians and clinics, and help start local advocacy groups. (Houghton, “International Planned Parenthood Federation,” 205; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 135–62.)

April 1957  •  581 13. The two largest Communist countries, China and the Soviet Union, shifted their fertility control policies in the 1950s. China eased restrictions on contraception and abortion in an effort to confront its rapid population growth, while the Soviet Union began to limit the scope of its pronatalist policies in 1948, repealing abortion restrictions in 1955. (Popov and David, “Russian Federation,” 238, 247; White, China’s Longest Campaign, 20, 25–26, 30.) 14. Many Catholic Church leaders continued to advocate for large families, but increasing numbers sanctioned the use of the rhythm method and acknowledged the health and economic rationale for family limitation. (Noonan, Contraception, 518; Tentler, Catholics and Contraception, 137, 163, 176–77.) 15. Mohammad Kamal Abdul Razzak, director general of the Egyptian Association for Population Studies, had suggested Cairo as a host for the 6ICPP in 1957. Some IPPF delegates favored the idea of having a Muslim country host the meeting, but others believed that birth control was not yet well-enough established in Egypt. The idea was dropped due to the escalating tensions in the Middle East that led to the Suez Crisis. (Griessemer to MS, Feb. 6, 1956, Houghton to MS, Feb. 6, 1956, and Day to Watumull, Apr. 9, 1956 [MSM S49:316, C10:1019, S49:757].) 16. Mexico’s birthrate was rapidly increasing, but the government was still promoting large families. Mexico began participating in the IPPF-WHR in 1955 but did not join the IPPF until 1965. Progress was also slow in Indonesia due to considerable opposition. However, several prominent physicians had formed the Indonesian Family Planning Association in 1957, which began lobbying the government to lift prohibitions on contraception. (IPPF, 5ICPP Proceedings, 274; Matthew Gutman, Fixing Men: Sex, Birth Control, and AIDS in Mexico [Berkeley, Calif., 2007], 118; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 159, 90, 150; Cabrera, “Demographic Dynamics and Development,” 109.) 17. Argentina, a Roman Catholic nation that sought to increase its population size, prohibited birth control and abortion. (New York Times, Mar. 17, 1974; Dora Barrancos, “Problematic Modernity: Gender, Sexuality, and Reproduction in Twentieth-Century Argentina,” Journal of Women’s History 18, no. 2 [2006]: 137.) 18. Blacker was not alone in this. Vera Houghton did not think international meetings were worth the expense unless they could garner headlines and significantly help the host group. Ellen Watumull agreed, suggesting that funds could instead be used to send an IPPF official, MS or Houghton, to encourage the formation of local and national family planning groups. Rufus Day preferred that the IPPF use funds for fieldwork. (Houghton to MS, Apr. 10, 1957 [MSM S51:914].) 19. The Family Planning Association of Pakistan held its first national conference on planned parenthood in Lahore on March 15–17, 1958. (“Pakistan,” AWNPBC 66 [June 1958]: 7.) 20. Both Watumull and Day agreed with Blacker about postponing the meeting. (Watumull to MS, Apr. 17, 1957, and Day to MS, Apr. 23, 1957 [MSM S51:972, 986].)

582  •  The Trials of Being President

204. To C. P. Blacker On April 22, 1957, the 6ICPP was officially postponed. Sanger commented that “it has made little difference what reasons were given to postpone the Sixth Conference.” She was just “relieved and grateful to get all the responsibilities off my back.” Sanger used the postponement as an opportunity to lay out her own goals for future IPPF policy. (IPPF-WHR Executive Committee Minutes, June 4, 1957, and MS to Watumull, May 17, 1957 [quotes] [MSM S63:305, 52:30].)

[Tucson, Ariz.] 18 July 1957

Dear Pip: I must thank you again for your courtesies and hospitality during my stay in England. My trip there was made all the more pleasant by your charming wife and daughter who served us such a splendid lunch at your home.1 And the magnificent dinner at your Club! Just a letter is so far short of giving you my real deep feelings of appreciation for your wonderful kindnesses. Also, my Administrative Assistant, Jonathan Schultz, was most impressed by your chairmanship and your management of IPPF and British matters, and would like to add his thanks to mine for your generous courtesies to him, both official and non-official.2 On my return to New York, I talked with Tom Griessemer for two hours.3 He seemed stubbornly determined to take on the whole Western Hemisphere as now established, not accepting the reality that no growth or expansion of services can be achieved with his approach and limitations, particularly as he still is on a half-time basis working for Mr. Moore.4 How egotistical that man is to think he can even start to do the job literally crying to be done in this region! I feel that proper services from the IPPF in birth control must be provided for the peoples of Canada, Mexico, Central America, South America, and the islands of the Caribbean—as well as all other countries of the world—by separating them into individual country sub-centres with a local Medical Field Director stationed in each area, reporting to and getting aid and guidance directly from the London Office through a Field Services Manager in the Headquarters Office, who will be under the Executive Secretary and General Director, that is, Vera.5 With the Brush grant for expanding field work in the amount of $25,000.6 for each of the next two years, and with funds available from other supporters who want to see IPPF services expanded, real progress is now possible if the Headquarters Office will organize to train and support Medical Field Directors who are native Doctors from these new countries, and will help them get established as sub-centres with direct lines of authority, responsibility, and accountability to London.7

July 1957  •  583

I suggest that a beginning be made in one city in Eastern Canada, one in Western Canada, one or two cities in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and Venezuela, one in Costa Rica, with possible others to be suggested for other areas of the world.8 Probably it could be arranged to satisfy Griessemer, Moore, and Pillsbury by letting them head the sub-centre for the islands of the Caribbean and, possibly, Mexico.9 I am sure that this is more than the amount of territory they can properly develop and adequately serve in a newly-expanded program which I feel the IPPF must undertake now. It is so evident that the West—no less than the East—is desperately in need of our Birth Control information and services. We cannot lie slumbering and let the unenlightened stubbornness of a few individuals stifle our Cause when the need is so great all over our Western part of the World. No man senses his own limitations and Tom Griessemer cannot even recognize them when they are forced upon his attention. In talking to him, I learned he expects to use some of the Brush money for a field worker nurse in Mexico.10 I consider that this shows an utter lack of practical knowledge on his part. The most important thing in a new country, especially a Roman Catholic dominated country, is to get the Medical profession together in a conference or committee meeting in their counties where they can make decisions. Without such support, no field worker nurse is successful, or even safe, no matter how much money is behind her.11 Of course, T. Griessemer knows nothing of this kind of organizing. I feel that the committee controlling the disbursement of this Brush money should not give it out for such amateur activities.12 I have mentioned this to Rufus Day, Jr., who talked with me on the telephone this week from Cleveland.13 We are planning to have a personal meeting soon, before we go to Berlin.14 In New York, I went down to the Margaret Sanger Research Bureau just on a visit, and while there was introduced to two M.D.’s from Argentina. Naturally, I talked to them about the work in their country and they agreed with me about the necessity of first alerting the Medical profession to the idea. A woman going around alone without the support of the Medical profession in any of the South American countries is an entirely different situation than in the USA or English-speaking countries. I am arranging for these Argentina doctors to meet and talk with Dr. Gregory Pincus, Director of the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology in Massachusetts.15 I have a strong feeling that it is the duty and responsibility of our International Office and Officers—President, Chairman, Vice-Chairman, Treasurers, Editor, and Vice-Presidents who have vision, to make the changes in the organizational structure of the IPPF which will limit any one person to an area no larger than such a person can serve with the efficiency and adequacy which our Birth Control cause deserves.16 It is my feeling that some Principles of Organization, Policy, and Procedures for pioneering field work should be

584  •  The Trials of Being President

put in to the Constitution and Rules.17 Otherwise, any haywire egotist can put his own ideas into a new country and utterly discredit the Movement and the IPPF. I am enclosing two sheets with some of my ideas about basic policy.18 Because you are the man who, above all, gave greatest thought to the Constitution and the regional plan of organization structure as a trial plan, it is especially important to IPPF progress that you be one of the leaders in revising that original form to one more adapted to the present needs of our Movement.19 I know that you, with Lady Rama Rau and others, have already given thought to the replacing of the region structure with sub-centres.20 I believe that the Far East region members support the idea of a change from the present scheme of huge areas with one or two people in charge, which has proved to be not efficient or even adequate in furnishing birth control information and services to the individual countries.21 I expect that Europe, the Near East, and Africa would be receptive to your suggestion for a change. I believe you mentioned in our talk that consideration had been given already to separating Africa from the large region.22 Actually, it seems to me, that only three or four governing body members from the Western Hemisphere Region would be opposed to a uniform reorganization plan with a structure of sub-centres in each of the various countries directly integrated with London headquarters which we can propose at the Berlin meeting of the Governing Body.23 I know that your sole interest through the years since 1927 has been the same as mine, to spread the birth control services to every part of the world. I feel that we are in agreement on the desirability of your suggested reorganization plan at this time. I think that your system of sub-centres is practicable and can be brought into existence with you helping to lead the proposal and advancing your good reasoning in its support. In fact, the costs of operating Regional offices, which cannot deal with the needs of the large areas they are assigned are not wisely spent and the whole scheme is most uneconomic.24 To re-allocate such funds to the new subcentres and also give them funds which will be coming to the IPPF from the Brush Foundation and from other interested supporters will be much more productive of real service to the peoples who need birth control. In this letter, I am just putting on paper much of what we discussed in London, plus some facts I have gathered since returning to the USA.25 I feel sure that you will want to send me some memorandum of your own thinking in this regard.26 With my most cordial regards, Yours in long friendship, Margaret [signed by secretary] Margaret Sanger TL IPPFR, IPPF (MSM C11:249–51). Letterhead of the IPPF; copies sent to Rufus S. Day Jr. and Ellen Jensen Watumull. For TLcy, see MSM S52:324–26.

July 1957  •  585 1. MS had flown to London on June 20 to work on logistics for the 6ICPP, but became quite ill and returned home on July 6. The Blackers had two daughters: Carmen Blacker (1924–2009), an assistant lecturer in Japanese at Cambridge University, and Ann Thetis Blacker (1927–2006), a mezzo-soprano with the Glyndebourne Opera House. The lunch, hosted by Helen Blacker, was probably held in late June 1957. (Times [London], July 15, 2009, and Feb. 24, 2007.) 2. In March MS hired (Samuel) Jonathan Schultz (1913–89), a graduate of the University of Arizona Law School, to help her with IPPF work; he accompanied her on the London trip. Schultz, who often inserted his ideas in the letters he drafted for MS, called the trip “the most broadening and stimulating experience of my life to now.” (Editors’ correspondence with Janet Miller, Nov. 22 and 27, 2006; Arizona Daily Star [Tucson], Mar. 19, 1955; Schultz to Day, July 11, 1957 [quote] [MSM S52:282.) 3. The conversation probably took place between July 7 and 10. (1957 Calendar [MSM S83:70–72].) 4. The IPPF-WHR, which MS thought was too large a region to be easily managed, focused on organizing in the Caribbean, helping to create national leagues in Jamaica and Barbados, and planning a regional meeting in Jamaica. Griessemer was also the parttime director of the Hugh Moore Fund. Moore, who backed Griessemer in his dispute with MS, had resigned from the IPPF U.S. Committee and “added a bit of blackmail,” according to Ellen Watumull, by threatening to withdraw his financial support for the IPPF-WHR if Griessemer was not appointed its secretary. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 74; IPPF-WHR Executive Committee Minutes, June 4, 1957, Moore to MS, Mar. 26, 1957, and Watumull to MS, Mar. 27, 1957 [quote] [MSM S63:305, 51:723, 734].) 5. Blacker highlighted this and the next paragraph, adding an exclamation point at the end. MS’s disputes with Rama Rau and the IPPF-WHR might have been the driving force behind her desire to restructure the IPPF and reduce the power of regional offices. In his August 13 response, Blacker argued that each region would have to decide separately about any subdivisions and that recommendations about the future of the IPPF-WHR should come from the American members of the governing body, lest they lose PPFA support. (Blacker to MS, Aug. 13, 1957 [MSM S52:513].) 6. The BF grant was awarded in May 1957. (Day to Houghton, May 29, 1957 [MSM S52:79].) 7. Blacker, who favored working with health ministries, women’s groups, and gynecologists in each nation to establish birth control services, thought it would be difficult “to find in a new country a medical man or woman who will be prepared to go abroad for training and then return as organizer and evangelist.” (Blacker to MS, Aug. 13, 1957 [MSM S52:513].) 8. As the IPPF-WHR focused on organizing in the Caribbean, it had accomplished very little in other areas. There were no birth control organizations in the Central and South American nations that MS listed, with the exception of Brazil. There were no laws against contraceptive use in Chile, Uruguay, or Venezuela, but in Cost Rica it was illegal to manufacture or import contraceptives. (IPPF-WHR Executive Committee Minutes, Feb. 26, 1957 [MSM S63:296]; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 208–15.) 9. Both Pillsbury and Griessemer were deeply involved in IPPF-WHR efforts to build family planning organizations in the Caribbean, forming councils of activists in several

586  •  The Trials of Being President nations as well as organizing regional conferences. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 70, 98, 113.) 10. IPPF-WHR field-worker Dr. Ofelia Mendoza was in Mexico helping to establish the Sociedad Mexicana de la Organización de la Familia (Mexican Society for Family Organization) (IPPF-WHR Executive Committee Minutes, Sept. 26, 1957 [MSM S63:358].) 11. On the same day, MS released her presidential guidelines for establishing a contraceptive service in a country. It called for using native doctors trained in contraceptive use to organize local medical groups before trying to broaden support for birth control. She did not advise using field-workers to break ground, especially in Catholic countries where opposition was expected. (MS, “Basic Procedure for Establishing Birth Control Services in a New Country,” July 18, 1957 [MSM S63:157].) 12. The IPPF Executive Committee was to distribute the BF funds, but only with the approval of the foundation. (Day to Houghton, May 29, 1957 [MSM S52:79].) 13. MS suggested the same structural reorganization to IPPF treasurer Rufus Day. The two planned to meet in Tucson. (MS to Day, July 15, 1957 [MSM S52:298].) 14. The IPPF Executive Committee meeting, scheduled in Berlin for October 26–29, was to be held at the IPPF-ENEAR’s first regional conference. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 160.) 15. MS visited the MSRB during her stop in New York from July 7 to July 10. The two Argentinean physicians Aquiles J. Sobrero (1922–2007) and Cesar Gilberman came to the MSRB to learn about oral contraceptive research. (1957 Calendar, MS to Pincus, July ?, 1957, and Pincus to MS, July 18, 1957 [MSM S83:70–72, C11:268, 248]; SSDI.) 16. According to the existing constitution, new regions could be created only by the IPPF General Assembly. (IPPF Constitution, 1953 [MSM S63:68].) 17. The IPPF’s aims, per article 1, did not mention fieldwork. Blacker was reluctant to make changes, reminding MS of “the difficulties we had in Stockholm over this Article.” Blacker and Houghton suggested possible amendments to the rules, including allowing governments to join the IPPF as members (as opposed to only national family planning organizations) and establishing rules for voting proxies. (Blacker to MS, Aug. 13, 1957 [MSM S52:513].) 18. MS likely enclosed her guidelines for organizing (see note 11). 19. Blacker had designed the constitution to be “a broadly conceived document which would require little alteration,” while the rules could be altered as the IPPF grew. (Blacker to MS, Mar. 27, 1953 [MSM C9:971].) 20. Blacker reported on a conversation he had with Rama Rau in October 1956, on the possibility of replacing the IPPF regions with smaller subcenters that reported directly to London. While their discussion focused on the IPPF-IOR, IPPF-FEAR, and IPPFENEAR, MS applied the idea to the IPPF-WHR as well, seeing it as a way to limit the PPFA’s power in the region. Whether organized into subcenters or regions, the IPPF did not yet have the funding to put such goals into action. (Blacker, “Memorandum on Conversation with Lady Rama Rau Held on Saturday, 6 October, 1956,” Oct. 7, 1956, and Blacker to MS, Aug. 13, 1957 [MSM S51:589, 52:513].) 21. The IPPF-FEAR, centered in Singapore, split from the IPPF-IOR in 1953 and sought further division to separate Japan from the Pacific islands and Australia. In 1960 it was

November 1957  •  587 divided into the Western Pacific Region and the South East Asia and Oceania Region. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 70.) 22. The IPPF created administrative regions based more on the number of activists in each region than the expanse of land. Blacker called the IPPF-ENEAR “absurdly large and unwieldy,” but did not expect it to be divided in the near future. The IPPF-ENEAR was not broken up into three regions (Europe, Africa, and Arab world) until 1971. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 184–85, 375; Blacker to MS, Aug. 13, 1957 [quote] [MSM S52:514].) 23. MS likely refers to Griessemer and Vogt. Dorothy Brush agreed with MS, but the idea did not gain traction at the Berlin meeting. (Brush to MS, Aug. 5, 1957, and IPPF Governing Body Minutes, Oct. 26–29, 1957 [MSM S52:463, C13:232].) 24. IPPF treasurer Rufus Day estimated that field- and organizational work for the IPPF would cost about $100,000; the IPPF sought contributions from its members to secure these funds. In its estimated budget for 1957, the IPPF listed funds for specific geographic regions, ranging from $30,000 for West Africa to $3,120 for Italy. The IPPFIOR requested $41,000 (plus an additional $16,000 for Pakistan), while the IPPF-WHR requested $35,000 ($13,000 for administrative costs, $10,000 for the United States, $6,000 for the Caribbean, and $6,000 for Latin America). (Day to IPPF Members, Aug. 31, 1957, and MS, “IPPF General Information,” 1957 [MSM S63:673, 176].) 25. MS discussed the plan at a meeting of the IPPF British Committee on June 24, 1957. (IPPF British Advisory Committee, Meeting Agenda, June 24, 1957 [MSM S63:669].) 26. For Blacker’s response, see Blacker to MS, Aug. 13, 1957 (MSM S52:513).

205. To Ellen Jensen Watumull 1 Sanger attended the IPPF-ENEAR’s regional conference, held in Berlin on October 26–29, which was titled “Moral, Physical and Psychological Foundations for Health Family Life.” Representatives of a number of countries, including China and several Eastern-bloc countries, also attended. The IPPF Governing Body met on October 26, 28, and 29, forming subcommittees for nominations, finance, work programs, constitution, and fieldwork. For the first time, it had a significant amount of money to distribute to regions and countries. The governing body also selected New Delhi as the site of the 6ICPP and approved government groups from Bermuda, Jamaica, and Switzerland as full IPPF members. (IPPF Governing Body Minutes, Oct. 26–29, 1957, and IPPF Conference Committee Minutes, Oct. 27, 1957 [MSM C13:232, 251]; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 160–61.)

[San Francisco, Calif.]2 15 November 1957

Dearest Ellen: I have many things to tell you about the results of recent meetings in Berlin of the Europe, Near East, and Africa Region Conference on Planned Parenthood and the meetings of the Governing Body and the Executive Committee of the IPPF. I was much encouraged by the great increase in world-wide interest in birth control reported by the delegates from every country.3 On the other

588  •  The Trials of Being President

hand, I was somewhat depressed by the conduct and attitude of some delegates, including Americans, showing their lack of a real international viewpoint and their failure to understand the need for a more efficient world-wide functional organization for the IPPF to take on the expanding work which should be our program! I took with me to the meetings an organization chart which looks to the future of the IPPF as a world service organization by diagramming a possible way of putting the management of the IPPF into functional departments instead of leaving it in the present unwieldy Regional system which is operating not at all efficiently.4 Only a little part of this plan was accepted. That is, the group did elect Mrs. Dorothy Brush to take on the Field Work Services function. But even at that, they balked at calling her position Vice-President, although they did elect her to membership on the Executive Committee.5 Now I am preparing to take a second step toward this kind of organization by functions, expecting very soon to appoint the Forward Planning Committee.6 I am sending this copy of the organization chart to you for your own files as something I think points the way to efficient management in the future. I know, of course, that many changes can and should be made to improve this idea—which I have worked out in my Office by my Administrative Assistant, Jonathan Schultz, who is a young lawyer with only a basic knowledge of management structure and organization planning.7 However, I believe this chart can become the starting point for the right kind of an organization of the IPPF! I am sending copies also to others of our interested friends and want to have all your opinions and help in putting this into effect in the coming years.8 I have but two more years to finish my full term as President of the International Planned Parenthood Federation,9 and one of the things I want most dearly to leave with the world birth control movement is a good, efficient, economical system of management. Despite the resistance of the present Regional Vice-Presidents to any changes in their titles and areas10—grossly unworkable as they are!—I am going to use all my energy and influence to give this kind of functional management plan a good full start. I will admit that so strong were the reactions of opposition by some Americans who are ignorant of the history of the birth control movement and merely ambitious for power and position, I was tempted to resign at once my position as President!11 However, I never have run away from a fight in the forty-odd years I have struggled to advance the birth control movement. My strength is not as great as it once was,12 but my whole adult life pattern is wrapped up in the spreading of our birth control movement to all the world, and I want this to go on and on in the most effective way. I think that following this organization chart will interest and draw to our movement actively many retiring business men who, after great successes in their busi-

November 1957  •  589

nesses, will want to help in world-benefitting activities. So I will continue to fight on a little while longer with your good help and support. Most cordially yours, Margaret Sanger TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S52:1105–6).

1. Ellen Watumull missed the meeting to attend her daughter’s marriage in India. (Watumull to MS, Aug. 6, 1957 [MSM S52:493].) 2. MS left for Paris on October 19, continuing on to Berlin for the meeting on October 24. She returned to the United States via Paris on October 31. (1957 Calendar and MS to Betty Mary Goetting, Nov. 15, 1957 [MSM S83:96, C11:332]; Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 4, 1957.) 3. Delegates delivered progress reports on October 26. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 143.) 4. In July MS and Jonathan Schultz drafted a chart that reorganized the IPPF into eleven services, each advised by a committee and administered by a paid manager. She thought that the major focus of the work should be expanding the reach of family planning through fieldwork, training local medical and clinical staff, and providing low- or no-cost contraceptives for impoverished patients. The proposal was discussed and rejected by the governing body on October 28. (MS and Jonathan Schultz, “Proposed Functional Departments Organization Plan for I.P.P.F. 1957,” July 1957, and IPPF Governing Body Minutes, Oct. 26–29, 1957 [MSM C11:318, 276].) 5. Brush, who attended the Berlin meeting, agreed to become honorary fieldwork adviser. (Brush to MS, Oct. 2, 1957 [MSM S52:875]; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 149.) 6. MS organized a “Forward Planning Committee” of advisers to work on long-range plans, who would report to the executive vice president. (MS and Schultz, “Proposed Functional Departments Organization Plan for I.P.P.F. 1957,” July 1957 [MSM S63:180].) 7. MS put a lot of faith in Schultz’s ideas, though he was a recent law school graduate with little business experience. (Arizona Daily Star [Tucson], Mar. 19, 1955.) 8. MS sent a copy to humanists and philanthropists Lloyd and Mary Morain, hoping to get advice on improving the functionality of her plan. She met with them to discuss it on November 19. (MS to Mary Morain, Nov. 13, 1957, and Lloyd and Mary Morain to MS, Nov. 15, 1957 [MSM S52:1087, 1098].) 9. At the Berlin meeting, MS was reelected for another two-year term as IPPF president. 10. The IPPF’s regional vice presidents were Eleanor Pillsbury and Abraham Stone (IPPF-WHR), Conrad Van Emde Boas and Elise Ottesen-Jensen (IPPF-ENEAR), R. N. Khosla (IPPF-IOR), and Constance Goh Kok Kee (IPPF-FEAR). 11. In addition to MS, the other Americans at the meeting were Rufus Day, Abraham Stone, William Vogt, Dorothy Brush, Lena Levine, and Thomas Griessemer. It is likely MS was referring specifically to Vogt and Griessemer. (IPPF Governing Body Minutes, Oct. 26–29, 1957, Brush to MS, Aug. 5, 1957, and Day to MS, Aug. 26, 1957 [MSM C13:232, S52:463, 590].) 12. At seventy-eight years old, MS tired easily and had recently battled bronchitis. (1957 Calendar and MS to Gamble, Dec. 11, 1957 [MSM S83:93, 53:59].)

590  •  The Trials of Being President

206. To Rufus S. Day Jr. 1 When her proposed reforms were not adopted, Sanger felt alienated from IPPF activities. In a letter to Ellen Watumull, she complained, “I feel no inspiration regarding the Indian Conference. In fact . . . I feel of little use and I doubt I will take the long trip.” She sent copies of the letter to C. P. Blacker, Dorothy Brush, and Rufus Day, “so that they will know my feeling regarding this situation.” Day responded by praising her as the driving force behind international work and asking that she take the same active role at the 6ICPP that she had in the other international meetings. He urged her to be closely involved in selecting new IPPF leadership. (MS to Watumull, Aug. 4, 1958 [quotes], and Day to MS, Aug. 8 and 12, 1958 [MSM S54:158, 176, 199].)

[Tucson, Ariz.]2 14 August 1958

Dear Rufus: It is most interesting to have your long letter of August 12th expressing frankly your thoughts about the future of the IPPF,3 and I will be equally frank in my reactions to that letter and to yours of August 8th.4 Please do not write to Lady Rama Rau to submit anything about the Sixth International Conference to me because it is too late for me to be concerned with any responsibility whatsoever about it!5 I have not been consulted and my advice has not been sought. I do not have even any knowledge of who is to be there, or who has been invited. Between Bombay and London, they seem to be going along their own way and I hope they achieve a successful Sixth Conference. It makes me sick that you would have to prompt Lady R-R to submit anything to me at this last minute, and I’d just like to have the matter left entirely alone now. As to your suggestions about money raising by the Western Hemisphere Region and the United States Committee for IPPF, I do not see how the Conference could provide any “impetus” for fund-raising when we do not know of any American who is going or has been invited, and have had nothing to do with the agenda or set-up!6 So I could not raise any money for it with any enthusiasm. What “impetus” can the Sixth Conference possibly have to aid fund-raising when almost no one in the United States has been even informed about the dates, much less about the program, leading speakers, etc., etc.? Even persons as important as Dr. Warren O. Nelson, of The Rockefeller Institute, wrote me under date of July 11, “ . . . do you have any information regarding the plans for the Scientific Program at the next Congress of the I.P.P.F.? I should be delighted to have such information if you have it available.”7 Dr. Pincus was not informed about the Conference planning,8 nor was Dr. Tyler of Los Angeles, and so on with others of importance.9 So, six months remain in which the Bombay and London Committees and personnel have to put on a respectable Sixth International Conference for the IPPF—and this little is known about it!

August 1958  •  591

Certainly I cannot raise money without knowing the personalities, subjects, program of the Conference. So that is OUT as far as I am concerned to raise any money for the Conference.10 I believe it is time now for the WHR group to raise money for the Conference, using whatever “impetus” they can find from it. They are in the mood for a fund drive and they have had success in raising money, so let them take on the duty which they should have toward the IPPF,11 instead of us trying to use the specially-created USCIPPF to do the WHR’s work. I do not know what “an appropriate form” for the USCIPPF would be, because it was created to sponsor a Conference in the United States in 1958 and when that idea was abandoned, it seems to me that the USCIPPF should end its being.12 I must correct a mistake in your letter because I did not “launch Rama Rau on her career twenty years ago.” She was merely a member of the AllIndia Women’s Group which sponsored my appearance in India then. She did not become prominent in our movement until just before the Bombay Conference about six or seven years ago.13 She belongs to many organizations and works for them as it suits her pleasure, by no means dedicating herself to IPPF matters, because actually she puts many things ahead of IPPF interests even now when only six months remain to prepare the Sixth Conference!14 I do not think that she is qualified for the Presidency and I’m surprised that you, Rufus, take such a strong stand relative to it being inevitable, and that she “is bound to be” next President of the IPPF.15 I for one would never go to the Sixth Conference to turn over to that person the Office of President that I am resigning, but that would have to be done by the Governing Body or nominating committee.16 It is true that I—with Mrs. Watumull—did favor her to succeed me and indicated that a few years ago, but I have learned much more about her since then which has made me change my view completely. Many of the things she has done—and not done—in the IPPF work have brought me to this firm decision, such as the way in which she used the “scientists” travel funds, etc., etc.17 One of the things about which I was most disappointed—and which helped change my entire feeling about her—was when she told me she had “kicked Gamble out of India” and would “do the same thing to him in Ceylon and Pakistan.” Her whole attitude about Dr. Gamble and the poisonous remarks she spread about him were unworthy of anyone in her position.18 Also, her mean attitude toward granting funds to the Japanese19 served to emphasize the clear fact that she is not capable of having the real international point of view so essential to the growth of our IPPF. When she asked to have the Conference in New Delhi and it was granted at Berlin last October, she had more than a year to prepare.20 Then she decided to make trips to Russia and elsewhere on matters she thinks are more important to her, more of a primary interest with her than the progress of the

592  •  The Trials of Being President

IPPF and the preparation of a really good Sixth Conference.21 Of course, it is said always, she talks in her foreign visits about our movement—but she does so as something of a secondary interest, or even as an afterthought. I am led to the conclusion that she uses her position in the IPPF to give herself importance rather than working for the IPPF’s improvement and progress. Mrs. Watumull covered India very thoroughly on her last visit and found to her surprise that the little Family Planning Group in Bombay was taking tremendous credit for the successful results that various departments of the Government had initiated, organized, financed, and were producing!22 In regard to your letter of August 8th, I had no intention of sending a letter to Mr. Cadbury relative to his taking the position of President, certainly not at this time, as I think a man of his distinction should be approached personally, not through a letter.23 My idea, Rufus, is that as the IPPF has had only one President since it began, and since now the whole world is alive to the importance of the population question, many important persons are going to be watching to see who will be our next President. So in my opinion we should consult several of our sponsors and financial supporters who have been with ↑us↓ through the years about nominations for the next President. I am going to send them a list of names that have been suggested as possible President and ask their opinions. Mr. Cadbury would be included in this, but neither he nor any of the others listed will receive a letter asking their acceptance. I think the opinions expressed by these persons will be helpful in selecting nominees for the Governing Body to vote upon.24 I am planning to appoint a nominating Committee very soon to be considering names of possible candidates. I would like to have your direct opinion on this question: Do you agree that it is within the executive power of the President to appoint a Nominating Committee to name nominees for the Presidency? I feel that I have the right to do this, particularly since there could be no other head of the Governing Body than myself to appoint such a committee, even if someone attempted to say such committee should be appointed by the Governing Body. Please let me have your opinion on this as soon as possible.25 Cordially yours, Margaret TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S54:219–21). Copies were also sent to Ellen Watumull and Dorothy Brush.26

1. As treasurer Day was in frequent communication with MS, especially over issues of fund-raising. An ally in her disputes with the IPPF-WHR, Day argued that the IPPFWHR should accept responsibility for raising funds to cover both the IPPF’s general programs and IPPF-WHR work. (Day to MS, Aug. 12, 1958 [MSM S54:199].) 2. MS had recently returned from Honolulu, Hawaii. (MS to Watumull, Aug. 4, 1958, and to Blacker, Aug. 15, 1958 [MSM C11:444, 453].)

August 1958  •  593 3. Day’s August 12 letter discussed fund-raising for the 6ICPP and IPPF fieldwork. He agreed that the IPPF-WHR’s plans to raise funds for use only within its region was shortsighted and suggested that the U.S. Committee conduct its own funding campaign. He hoped that MS would participate actively, promising that “we will not burden you when you want to be left alone, and even when you are not active, you are pulling your weight better than anyone else could do.” (Day to MS, Aug. 12, 1957 [MSM S54:199].) 4. As early as January, MS had indicated her concern about her successor. She noted that Rama Rau, who seemed to expect she would be the next president, “is highly national in her interests and proud of it—as you recall how reluctantly she was made to tell us in Berlin about her visit to China, dwelling instead on telling about India, India, always India!” Day admitted the truth of MS’s claim, but wrote that “during the last few years. . . . she evinced statesmanship and an international viewpoint, and I believe that, with her native abilities, she might rise to the challenge of being a good international president.” He concluded that the movement “can be better served by trying to help her to be a good president than by promoting an opposing candidate, however able.” (MS to Day, Jan. 9, 1958 [quote 1], and Day to MS, Aug. 8 [quotes 2–3] and 12, 1958 [MSM S53:258, 54:176, 199].) 5. MS was pessimistic about Rama Rau’s ability to put together the meeting in the remaining six months. She explained her reservations to Day, noting that “the question of a next President is not coming up . . . until 1959. And if the person chosen will be one who has to be put to bed because of intoxication, I will ask that the Constitution be re-written and I take another few years as President until the right person comes to the fore.” The FPA-I got a late start on organizational work due to Avabai Wadia’s illness, and Day indicated that “they had to make up for lost time, and did not wait for suggestions and clearances.” (MS to Watumull, Aug. 4, 1958, and Day to MS, Aug. 25, 1958 [quotes] [MSM S54:158, 274].) 6. Day hoped the American Committee could “build up a committee of responsible persons in the United States, who are more broadly interested in the world picture of the planned parenthood movement.” (Day to MS, Aug. 12, 1958 [MSM S54:199].) 7. Warren Nelson, the medical director of the Population Council, was brought up to speed on 6ICPP plans and by mid-August agreed to deliver a paper titled “Control of Spermatogenesis.” (Nelson to MS, July 11, 1958, and 6ICPP, “Suggested Outline for Plenary Session,” Aug. 20, 1958 [MSM S54:73, 67:681].) 8. MS hoped that Pincus’s 6ICPP agenda could be used for the 1959 meeting. But because MS did not have a direct role, Pincus’s involvement was diminished. Though he remained on the scientific committee, he was not driving the planning. (Pincus to MS, Apr. 23 and July 29, 1958, and MS to Pincus, Jan. 29 and May 6, 1958 [MSM C11:412, 440, 359, 415].) 9. Edward T. Tyler (1913–75), a physician and professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California at Los Angeles Medical School, was director of Planned Parenthood of Greater Los Angeles. In 1956 he conducted human trials of progesterone and eventually led a 6ICPP discussion and delivered a paper on oral contraceptives. (Los Angeles Times, Aug. 1, 1975; IPPF, 6ICPP Proceedings, 231–33, 237–42; Paul Vaughan, The Pill on Trial [London, 1970], 212–13.) 10. MS had led the fund-raising efforts for all previous international conferences and was deeply involved in designing the programs and selecting speakers. For the 3ICPP,

594  •  The Trials of Being President she secured travel grants and support for FPA-I’s organizational work and for the 4ICPP had made a large personal donation. For the 5ICPP, MS raised twenty-five thousand dollars from friends and associates to cover conference costs and travel for delegates as well as postconference support for the Japanese federation. (MS to Blacker, Apr. 18, 1952, and MS to Friends, Jan. 19 and Feb. 14, 1955 [MSM S37:160, 67:499, 500]; MS to Clarence Gamble, Oct. 14, 1953 [LCM 8:753]; Watumull, “Margaret Sanger as I Knew Her,” 8; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 97.) 11. The IPPF-WHR had raised funds to send its delegates to the 6ICPP, but needed money for its regional meeting in Jamaica and fieldwork in Latin America and the Caribbean. (IPPF-WHR Executive Committee Minutes, June 5, 1958 [MSM S63:352].) 12. The USCIPPF (U.S. Committee of the IPPF) was formed in 1955 to provide MS with an organizational base for her fund-raising. It was not disbanded after the 6ICPP was postponed, but continued to serve as a fund-raising arm for IPPF in the United States, whereas the IPPF-WHR sought money only for projects in North and South Americas. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 154; Day to MS, Sept. 4, 1958, and MS to Day, Sept. 8, 1958 [MSM S54:367, 415].) 13. In his August 8 letter, Day wrote, “It will not be the least of your services to turn over the active administration of the international movement . . . to a lady from the other side of the world, whom you launched on her career twenty years ago.” Rama Rau was living abroad when MS went to India in 1935–36. Rama Rau founded the FPA-I in 1949, when she and her husband returned to India. She met MS for the first time in 1952 at the 3ICPP. (Day to MS, Aug. 8, 1958 [quote] [MSM S54:158]; Watumull to Brush, Sept. 4, 1958 [DHBP]; Raina, Planning Family in India, 104–5.) 14. In addition to her work with the IPPF and FPA-I, Rama Rau continued to work with the AIWC and served on the Committee on Social and Moral Hygiene. She was also head of the Family Planning Board of the government’s long-range-planning commission. Ellen Watumull parroted MS’s reservations, noting, “Lady Rama Rau . . . is ready to go on any tour for any other cause to any part of the world just as readily as she would for Family Planning. To hold the Office of President of the IPPF, one should be willing to give one’s entire time and thought to that organization.” (Rama Rau to MS, Aug. 4, 1955 [MSM S48:290]; Watumull to Brush, Sept. 4, 1958 [quote] [DHBP]; see also MS to Rama Rau, June 25, 1954, headnote, herein; New York Times, July 20, 1987; Times of India, July 23, 1955, and Mar. 6, 1960.) 15. As chairman of the IPPF, Rama Rau was the next ranking officer, and many assumed she would become president upon MS’s retirement. However, concerns about her dedication to the international movement, fanned by MS, began to grow. In response to this letter, Day backpedaled: “I agree with you that my statement that ‘she is bound to be’ the next president is a little too strong. . . . It may be that Mrs. Ottesen-Jensen could be elected in view of her long and distinguished service to the movement, but it is hard for me to believe that any other alternative candidates would have a real chance.” (Day to MS, Aug. 25, 1958 [MSM S54:274].) 16. According to article 3 of the IPPF Constitution, the president was elected by the general assembly, but as MS was the IPPF’s only president in its six-year history, the issue of who nominated candidates had not yet been raised. (IPPF, Constitution and By-Laws [MSM S63:68].)

August 1958  •  595 17. MS’s negative views of Rama Rau intensified when she learned that Rama Rau had used 5ICPP funds, earmarked for scientists, to pay for her own and Avabai Wadia’s expenses. Ellen Watumull shared MS’s views, writing, “I don’t think that Margaret has said or done anything unkind or ungracious to Lady Rama Rau; on the contrary Lady Rama Rau has done many ungracious and unkind things to Margaret.” (MS to Houghton, Mar. 27, 1956, and MS to Blacker, Aug. 25, 1955, herein; Watumull to Brush, Sept. 4, 1958 [quote] [DHBP].) 18. After his break with the IPPF, Gamble founded the Pathfinder Fund, through which he funneled his birth control philanthropy. (For more on Rama Rau and Gamble, see MS to Brush, Oct. 31, 1955, herein; Williams, Every Child a Wanted Child, 300–301, 305–11; Gamble to MS, Mar. 12, 1956 [MSM C10:1046].) 19. MS refers to Rama Rau’s opposition to the IPPF providing funds for the NKKK “to pick up the pieces” after the 5ICPP. She found this hypocritical, since the FPA-I was given one thousand dollars by the Watumull Foundation to recover from the 3ICPP. (MS to Houghton, Mar. 23, 1956 [MSM C10:1055].) 20. The IPPF Governing Body had considered offers from India, Pakistan, Singapore, New Zealand, and the United States. (IPPF Governing Body Minutes, Oct. 26–29, 1957 [MSM C13:232].) 21. MS thought Rama Rau should have concentrated on the 6ICPP, calling her decision to go to the Soviet Union “a disgrace.” (MS to Watumull, Aug. 4, 1958 [MSM S54:158].) 22. Watumull was in India from late October to mid-December 1957, when she interviewed government officials, doctors, and others. She argued that the FPA-I did not need IPPF funding because “the Government of India is providing 80% of the Indian Family Planning Association’s budget.” (Watumull to Day, Jan. 8, 1958 [MSM S53:247].) 23. George Cadbury (1902–95), the British-born heir to the chocolate dynasty, was an economist, health administrator, and family planning advocate in Canada. A former UN director of technical assistance, he had lived in Asia and Jamaica. He and wife, Barbara Cadbury, had funded several IPPF projects. Both Ellen Watumull and MS viewed Cadbury as a potential candidate for the IPPF presidency, with Watumull even suggesting that the IPPF might cover his travel expenses should he become president. But Day cautioned that they were getting too far ahead. (New York Times, Mar. 8, 1995; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 161, 194; Day to MS, Aug. 8, 1958 [MSM S54:176].) 24. A few weeks later, MS sent a “Special Poll of Opinions” to the IPPF Governing Body and other influential supporters, including Frederick Osborn, Clarence Gamble, John Nuveen, and Julian Huxley. She claimed that too many organizations “lie fallow and stay just about where the retiring leader left them.” She wanted to take a more proactive role in ensuring that her successor was not “someone, no matter how colorful, whom I feel does not have the essential competency and ingrained qualifications to fill the position.” (MS, “Special Poll of Opinions,” Aug. 28, 1958 [quotes], and, for opinions, see Nuveen to MS, Sept. 3, 1958, Osborn to MS, Sept. 4, 1958, and Huxley to MS, Sept. 2, 1958 [MSM S54:355, 342, 373, C11:372].) 25. Day responded that it was the IPPF Governing Body that should appoint a nominating committee, but questioned the practicality of getting the group to meet before the 6ICPP, suggesting instead that they ask for a mail vote. (Day to MS, Aug. 25, 1958 [MSM S54:274].)

596  •  The Trials of Being President 26. Brush responded that MS “should remain President for just as long as you live.” She favored Constance Goh Kok Kee if MS resigned. (Brush to MS, Aug. 14 [quote] and Sept. 4, 1958 [MSM S54:218, 366].)

207. To C. P. Blacker 1 With her health failing, it was still not clear whether Sanger would attend the 6ICPP in New Delhi on February 14–21, 1959. Vera Houghton and governing-body member Avabai Wadia had handled most of the arrangements, while funding was secured from the central government of India and the BF. Sanger requested that Blacker represent her at the 6ICPP if she was unable to attend. She particularly wanted him to emphasize her desire that the IPPF retain its international character, her opposition to closing the London headquarters, and ending international meetings in favor of regional ones. She suggested the establishment of new committees for coordinating meetings, membership, nominations, and organizational issues and harked back to her 1957 plan for IPPF reorganization. (MS to Blacker, Dec. 3, 1958, and Jan. 9, 1959, MS to Rama Rau, Sept. 2, 1958, Rama Rau to MS, Sept. 26, 1958, and Day to Rama Rau, Oct. 18, 1958 [MSM C11:499, 577, S54:350, 574, 708].)

[Tucson, Ariz.] 13 January 1959

Dear Pip: A most successful and happy New Year to you and yours! Happily I can say that I have felt “in the pink” these last two, even three, days which boosts up my hopes and desires, even my faith that I may be well enough to go to India for our Sixth International Planned Parenthood Conference. But— but—a heart condition can bog you down at two or three A.M. and that day is out for you.2 However, in order to give a push to the organization I so love, I want to make all, or nearly all, the ideas and suggestions which have been roaming around in my mind ever since you and I did some thinking on the International Planned Parenthood Federation in Stockholm. You have a glorious and constructive mind. So to you I am asking some questions, seeking to push us over the top for the years to come. We need, dear Pip, as I see it, a real reconstruction. We have no one in the Governing Body, I repeat no one, who is capable of directing the movement unless we write down the “ways and means” of conducting the “going”.3 The suggestions which Jonathan and I have talked about may seem to some as revolutionary for an organization, but I do not look at these as more than common sense and practical.4 I want first of all to have your opinions and suggestions before I send them out to the various members of the Governing Body. While the International is new and also young, now is the time to

January 1959  •  597

break down some of the old-fashioned routine and adjust our future actions to new thinking and courageous reactions. Who the President to follow me is to be, God only knows! But if only you, Pip, will consent to take the Presidency for the next term, we will progress. You always have been my first choice, and you have been the leading person named by those who have responded to my Special Poll.5 I hope and pray your group will not sponsor Lady Rama Rau6 or the Swedish dear person whose practice and reputation has not been expressing Birth Control or Population’s interests, but sex education mainly.7 If she becomes President, I predict it will be the end and finish of Planned Parenthood. I have been in Sweden earlier, before Elise got herself into the IPPF. The Scientists of Geneva, you will recall, were reluctant to accept her because of her aggressive manner. She still has it. She will not make the kind of friends we need.8 Helena Wright’s her kind, and H. W. will push her.9 But God forbid that she will be taken on longer than two years. You can see how weak we are as an organization! I have succeeded in getting Jonathan Schultz to take the trip to London now in the dead of winter to see you and talk over this statement of my farewell as Founding President and I am making him my deputy to speak mainly to you and discuss the International with you.10 After you and Jonathan have discussed my letter and affairs about IPPF reconstruction, I would like him to meet, either singly or in a group, Dr. L. N., and Dr. Margaret Jackson,11 Dr. Helena Wright, and Mrs. Margaret Pyke,12 and I will feel it a favor to me personally if you will help him see these persons, as well as any others of the British whom you feel that he should. I believe that Jonathan, and Lloyd Morain should be coopted to the Governing Body.13 They both have had experience, and know how things should be done. I trust them both and believe their thinking should be listened to and followed. We are lucky to have them interested in our cause. Bless you, Pip, and again best wishes for the New Year and for years to come. Cordially yours, Margaret [signed by secretary] Margaret TL IPPFR, IPPF (MSM C11:531–32). Letterhead of the IPPF.

1. In December 1957, Blacker became the second recipient of the Galton Award, the BES’s highest honor. (“Medical News,” British Medical Journal 2 [Dec. 14, 1957]: 1445.) 2. Still experiencing periodic angina attacks, MS continued to take the narcotic Demerol. The day after writing this letter, she complained of her “pain, pain & endless pain.” (1959 Calendar [quote] [MSM S83:110].)

598  •  The Trials of Being President 3. The governing body numbered fifty-one in 1959, consisting of eight officers, seven regional vice presidents, twenty-six council members (leading family planning advocates from organized countries), five co-opted members, and five regional representatives and secretaries. Many members headed national birth control organizations. Because the governing body met only at international meetings, it tended to rubber-stamp executive committee decisions. (Houghton to MS, Aug. 21, 1957 [MSM C11:296]; IPPF, 6ICPP Proceedings, x–xi].) 4. As MS relied more and more heavily on Jonathan Schultz, some friends suspected he was taking advantage of her. Both Dorothy Brush and Ellen Watumull noticed the “pompous and legal” tone of her recent writings, and Brush mentioned that MS’s sons thought Schultz was overpaid. (Watumull to Brush, Sept. 4, 1958 [quote], and Brush to Margaret [Grierson?], Dec. 14, 1959 [DHBP].) 5. MS’s poll listed the responsibilities and qualities needed in the next IPPF president, which, she advised, should be a full-time position. MS suggested C. P. Blacker, George W. Cadbury, Karl Evang, Clarence Gamble, Shidzue Ishimoto Katō, Yoshio Koya, Percy MacNeice, Elise Ottesen-Jensen, Dhanvanthi Rama Rau, Abraham Stone, and Ellen Watumull as possible candidates. She asked for the first, second, and third choices and comments on each candidate, as well as suggestions of other names. Of the sixty-six responses found, spread among nineteen candidates (including eight write-ins), the highest number of votes went to Blacker (eleven votes), Rama Rau and Karl Evang (seven votes each), Watumull (six votes), and Ottesen-Jensen and Stone (five votes each). (MS, “Special Poll of Opinions,” Aug. 28, 1958 [MSM C11:372]; for responses, see MSM S54:320–509.) 6. The British Committee was generally supportive of Rama Rau. Blacker’s and Houghton’s poll responses were not found. 7. MS refers to Elise Ottesen-Jensen, who had received the Lasker Award in May 1954 and celebrated the RFSU’s silver jubilee in September 1958. Blacker wrote that based on the nominations so far, Ottesen-Jensen would be the next IPPF president. MS had long opposed Ottesen-Jensen’s leadership because of her interest in selling contraceptives to fund the IPPF. (Vogt to Ottesen-Jensen, Apr. 6, 1954, Blacker to MS, Dec. 28, 1958, and MS to Blacker, Jan. 9, 1959 [MSM S43:516, C11:507, S55:53]; Linder, Crusader for Sex Education, 216.) 8. MS first met Ottesen-Jensen at the 7IBCC in 1930, but did not see her again until the 1946 ISEC. Ottesen-Jensen was deeply involved in radical politics, lecturing on the dangers of capitalism and the risk of war, as well as on sex education and birth control. (Linder, Crusader for Sex Education, 76–77; Connelly, Fatal Misconception, 177; see also Vol. 3.) 9. Both Helena Wright and Ottesen-Jensen were less interested in family limitation than in liberating women through sex education. MS and Wright did not get on, possibly because the latter was, as one observer noted, a domineering figure, not to be questioned. (Evans, Freedom to Choose, 157; Linder, Crusader for Sex Education, 88, 242; Reed, Birth Control in American Society, 297; MS to Janet Chance, Jan. 9, 1953 [MSM S40:652].) 10. MS wanted Schultz to vote in her stead if she missed the 6ICPP, but Blacker and Houghton balked, arguing that she should delegate an actual member of the governing body. MS argued: “Jonathan is the one person who could represent me best as he knows

march 1959  •  599 my thinking and wishes most thoroughly, from close association with me continuously for nearly two years.” But she yielded and appointed Blacker. (Blacker to MS, Dec. 20, 1958, Houghton to MS, Dec. 29, 1958, and MS to Blacker, Jan. 9, 1959 [quote] [MSM S54:1003, 1035, 55:53].) 11. Lawrence Nelson Jackson (1898–1984), a physician and birth control advocate, edited several of the ICPP proceedings and succeeded Dorothy Brush as editor of the AWNPBC (later International Planned Parenthood News). In 1954 his wife, Margaret C. N. Jackson, chaired the Testing Sub-committee of the IPPF Medical Committee, which ensured quality control of contraceptives. (Times [London], Oct. 29, 1984; Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 106; Wright, Freedom to Choose, 223.) 12. Margaret Pyke, a member of the IPPF Council, Governing Body, and Executive Committee, succeeded Lady Gertrude Denman as FPA-GB chairman in 1954. She was unable to meet Schultz because she had left for India. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 313; Blacker to MS, Jan. 16, 1959 [MSM C11:535].) 13. Jonathan Schultz was not invited to join the IPPF Governing Body and attended the 6ICPP only as an observer. Lloyd L. Morain (1917–2010), an American businessman, philanthropist, and film producer, headed the American Humanist Association (1951–55 and 1969–72). He became a generous supporter of international family planning through his wife, Mary Dewing Morain, an active member of Planned Parenthood centers in Massachusetts and California. He did not join the governing body. (IPPF, 6ICPP Proceedings, xxix; Don Becker, “My Friend,” Humanist 70 [Nov.–Dec. 2010]: 37; Lloyd Morain, “Mary S. D. Morain,” General Semantics Bulletin 65–68 [2001]: 75.)

208. To Amy du Pont 1 At the age of eighty, Sanger made the arduous trip to India and, as outgoing president, addressed the 6ICPP, briefly outlining her principles for the international movement. She told the audience it was the duty of the IPPF “to help married couples, or those about to be married, to acquire knowledge of contraception. It is also our aim to inspire research work, so that there will be simpler contraceptives for the more ignorant, simple-minded people who know little about anatomy or physiology.” She continued, “The second is, that we want to have such information advocated and guided by the medical profession.” She also rearticulated her belief that couples with transmissible diseases should not have children until they were cured and that children should be spaced by two or three years, “to give the mother a chance to recuperate from the ordeal of childbirth.” Sanger concluded that “even though these are all great responsibilities, there is one greater that should, I think, be in the minds of every married man and woman thinking of bringing a child into the world—the responsibility of ushering a soul into this world to take its part in the mystery as a material being. I think if we could have about two or three generations where children are wanted and loved before they were conceived, I believe it would take only a few generations before we could really have faith in the possibility of peace on earth, goodwill to men, throughout the whole world.” Elise Ottesen-Jensen was elected to succeed Sanger as president, and Sanger was named founder and president emeritus. (MS, “Inaugural Address,” 10–11; MS to Mary Lasker, Apr. 1, 1959.)

600  •  The Trials of Being President

[Tucson, Ariz.]2 March 21, 1959

Dear, dearest Amy: Here I am, having returned two days ago from six weeks spent in Japan, Bangkok, New Delhi and HongKong.3 The Sixth International Conference held in New Delhi was a superb success for our cause. Prime Minister Nehru opened the Conference after escorting me to the platform!!4 I shall send you the two photos of this great, historic event.5 India is on her way with the government allocating Ten Million Dollars to the Birth Control Family Planning Association for one years work.6 This, of course, is not enough to cover all of India. They must train midwives and nurses as well as social workers to go into the village homes and help the parents to practice contraception in order to space the pregnancies and control or limit the birth rate of the nation.7 Amy, dear, this was a thrilling experience for me. After years and years of education to have the greatest living statesman, Nehru, come out wholeheartedly and frankly and tell the nation that India is doomed unless the people will cooperate and limit the size of the family. It was a great speech.8 I followed him to the speakers stand and spoke briefly but frankly and stressed the importance of preventing parents from producing diseased children.9 The Health and Welfare departments of the government all over India are cooperating with the Birth Control group to speed up the work of Family Planning.10 In the city of Madras they are giving fathers of three and four children a pension if they will submit to sterilization! Men are clamoring for this operation which is very slight; taking only ten or fifteen minutes to perform.11 So, Amy, dear, all the good support you have given me is bringing results. Thank God! I want to get this word off to you. Jonathan, who has been my administrative assistant, went ahead on a tourist flight to prepare the way for me.12 I was almost too ill to make the long journey, but a good friend and nurse offered to go with me if I could pay her hotel bills. She took care of her air travel there and back to Tucson. So, she was with me night and day saving me trouble and strain.13 I have returned in far better condition than when I left February 2 for India.14 Japan is also forging ahead having cut her birth rate 50 percent in 1957– 58.15 More of this later. My dear love to you beloved Amy, As ever, TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S55:300–301).

1. Du Pont donated three thousand dollars to the 6ICPP. In thanking her, MS indicated, “If my presence will add in the tiniest way to help decrease the number of starving

March 1959  •  601 population it will make me feel that my life and activities is worthwhile.” (MS to du Pont, Jan. 14, 1959 [MSM S55:92].) 2. Given her declining health, MS’s presence at the 6ICPP was a surprise to many of the attendees. When she arrived, Lady Rama Rau recalled that “we found her so ill and tired that we were desperately afraid that she might not, after all, be able to attend the inauguration. . . . On the day of the inauguration, to our amazement, Margaret Sanger got up from her sickbed, dressed in a smart new dress, put on a jaunty hat, and presented herself.” MS, she noted, “was determined to take all the risks. She saw such a meeting as the vindication of the calumny she had suffered and the culmination of the years of hard work and struggle she had carried on so nobly.” MS returned to Tucson on March 19. (New York Times, Feb. 15, 1959; Rama Rau, Inheritance, 294 [quotes]; 1959 Calendar [MSM S83:133].) 3. MS, who by this time had to travel in a wheelchair, left India on February 20, arriving in Hong Kong on February 21, Tokyo on February 25, and Honolulu on February 28, where she stayed until March 16, when she returned to Los Angeles. (1959 Calendar [MSM S83:119–33].) 4. Rama Rau recalled that when she told Nehru that MS was present, “he ran up the steps like a schoolboy, put his arms around Margaret in greeting, and gently led her into the hall where the great gathering was waiting for him. It was a most touching and unforgettable scene: the Prime Minister ignoring all formality, Mrs. Sanger glowing with pride, and the huge audience standing up, cheering and applauding.” (Rama Rau, Inheritance, 295.) 5. One photo of MS and Nehru seated at the speaker’s table was sent out by the Associated Press and appeared in many newspapers. Additional photographs of the two are held by the MSPP. (For the AP photo, see the New York World Telegram and Sun Collection [DLC] and the New York Journal-American photo collection at the Harry Ransom Center.) 6. The Second Five-Year Plan for India (1956–61) included 50 million rupees (equivalent to $10.25 million in 1956) for family planning, with an emphasis on opening clinics, instructing doctors and nurses, and public education. (Boston Globe, Aug. 5, 1956; Shanta Kohli Chandra, Family Planning Programme in India: Its Impact in Rural and Urban Areas, 1970–1980 [Delhi, 1987], 56.) 7. By 1959 India had almost 800 centers where family planning information was provided, and the FPA-I worked closely with the government of India to shape its family planning policies. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 166.) 8. Nehru commented on global overpopulation, advising Westerners talking about birth control in Asia to do it in “a different way, a global way.” He also declared that India needed to estimate the size of its future population and integrate family planning with educational and economic planning. (Jawaharlal Nehru, “Inaugural Speech,” in Sixth International Conference on Planned Parenthood [New Delhi, 1959], 7–10 [quote on 8]; New York Times, Feb. 15, 1959.) 9. For the full text of MS’s “Inaugural Address,” see MSM S72:983. 10. By December 1958, local Indian governments had opened some 675 family planning clinics in both rural and urban areas, constituting 82 percent of all clinics in the country. Birth control advice was also available at 1,318 of the 4,163 government-sponsored

602  •  The Trials of Being President Maternity and Child Welfare Centres. The Second Five-Year Plan also provided funds for training and contraceptive research. (B. L. Raina, “Family Planning Programme in India,” in 6ICPP Proceedings, by IPPF, 286.) 11. R. A. Gopalaswami of the Madras Family Planning Board discussed the voluntary sterilization program at the 6ICPP. The government offered parents of two or more children a monetary inducement (25 rupees, about $5) to be sterilized. Rama Rau questioned the process, fearing that many who were sterilized did not fully understand the permanence of the procedure, but the program was popular and the government considered expanding it nationwide. (“Study Group in Sterilization,” in 6ICPP Proceedings, by IPPF, 341; New York Times, Nov. 16, 1958; Los Angeles Times, July 14, 1959.) 12. MS paid for Schultz’s travel costs to New Delhi. (Blacker to MS, Dec. 20, 1958, and MS to Blacker, Jan. 9, 1959 [MSM S54:1003, 55:53].) 13. During her travels, MS was watched closely, carried up- and downstairs, and transported by wheelchair much of the time. The friend was Grace Sternberg (1902–2000), a photographer, trained nurse, and longtime Tucson Birth Control Clinic board member. (1959 Calendar [MSM S83:119–24]; SSDI; Tucson [Ariz.] Daily Citizen, May 6, 1997.) 14. MS had not experienced an angina attack since January. (MS to Day, Jan. 24, 1959 [MSM S55:146].) 15. Japan’s birthrate declined from 18.4 per 1,000 in 1956 to 17.2 in 1957 and then increased slightly to 18.0 in 1958. MS may have meant 1947, when the Japanese birthrate was 34.3. (Lee and Larson, Population and Law, 6.)

209. To Mary R einhardt Lasker Sanger returned to Japan again on June 4, accompanied by her Tucson friend Dorothy McNamee; her two granddaughters, Margaret and Nancy Sanger; and two of their school friends. Between sightseeing trips, Sanger met with Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, received the key to the city of Tokyo, and attended events hosted by Shidzue Katō, the NKKK, and the Mainichi Newspaper Company. (“MS & Party to Orient,” May 18–July 9, 1959 [MSM S78:448]; Mainichi Shimbun, July 4, 1959; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 265–66.)

[Tucson, Ariz.]1 14 July 1959

Dearest Mary: At last I am back home from Japan and Hong Kong.2 It was a great pleasure and satisfaction to me to find the Birth Control cause going especially well in Japan. It was a surprise to find there were no B.C. Clinics, but midwives in the field.3 One group of wealthy women, wives of big business leaders, are paying for over forty midwives. I finally spoke at their special annual meeting and got them interested in organizing a Research Clinic and suggested getting the midwives properly instructed in birth control techniques.4 These business men can control over a million employees and want them all to practice family limitation.

July 1959  •  603

You will be amused to learn that the Jockey Club of Hong Kong has built a lovely house for the B.C. group with a good sized room for lectures, as well as well-equipped offices and clinics, costing about 250,000 U.S. dollars. Now they are building another across the island, closer to the poorer population area.5 All Asian countries are getting some government financial support. In India, the Health and Welfare Departments of all cities cooperate in giving women birth control instruction. The central government contributed ten million dollars to cover the work of certain districts.6 If the work goes on as at present, Asia will be gaining a cultural and eugenic population while the U.S.A. will be the slums of the world! I hope you are not in Europe or out of the country. I expect to get to New York in August and want much to see you7 and to tell you again what wonderful help it was to have your contribution to pay the salary of a splendid administrative assistant who has been working and clearing up the collection of my materials and records for the Smith College Library while I was in Japan.8 Thank you again for your thoughtful help. Love as ever, Margaret TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S55:598).

1. MS arrived in Tucson on July 8 (1959 Calendar and MS to Dr. and Mrs. Woo, July 15, 1959 [MSM S83:164–65, 55:606].) 2. MS stopped in Hong Kong from June 18 to June 23, where she was feted by members of the FPA-HK and was interviewed for television and radio broadcasts. (MS to Brush, June 16, 1959, and Schultz to MS, June 23, 1959 [MSM S55:534, 553].) 3. Government-run eugenic health centers and prefectural offices that dispensed contraception had largely superseded private clinics, though voluntary organizations, such as the Nihon Ninshun Chôsetsu Kenkyûkai (Japan Birth Control Institute), still ran a few small clinics. About twenty thousand active contraceptive instructors, mostly nurses and midwives, worked out of local health centers. Despite the widespread access, abortion continued to be the popular alternative to contraception. (Asia Family Planning Association, Family Planning in Japan [Tokyo, 1961], 14–17; Kageyas W. Amano to Planned Parenthood News [May 15, 1961]; George W. Cadbury and Barbara Cadbury, “Report on Visit to Japan, Nov. 1960 [PPFAII].) 4. On June 30, MS spoke to the Research Institute for Better Living, a group founded in 1953, as part of Japan’s Shin Seikatsu Undo movement. It established clinics and worked for the repeal of liberal abortion laws. (Cadbury and Cadbury, “Report on Visit to Japan, Nov. 1960 [PPFAII]; see also MS to Tsien, July 10, 1956, note 9, herein.) 5. After World War II, the Hong Kong Jockey Club, established in 1884, became a major charitable institution and donated funds to build the headquarters for the FPA-HK on land donated by the government in 1955. (Michael Ingham, Hong Kong: A Cultural History [Oxford, 2007], 81–82; Jolly, “Family Planning Association of Hong Kong,” 300.) 6. For details on the Indian government’s efforts, see MS to du Pont, Mar. 21, 1959, notes 6 and 10, herein.

604  •  The Trials of Being President 7. Lasker was in Europe. MS arrived in New York on August 14 and stayed a few days with Grant Sanger in Mount Kisco. She returned to New York City on August 19 and spent August 21–25 with Dorothy Brush in Bridgehampton, Long Island. Though MS planned a longer stay in the East, she became ill and returned to Tucson on August 29. (1959 Calendar, MS to Brush, Aug. 29, 1959, MS to McCormick, Sept. 1, 1959, and Lasker to MS, July 21, 1959 [MSM S83:180–86, 55:788, 804, 628].) 8. Jonathan Schultz prepared two large boxes to be added to MS’s papers at the MNSSC. (Schultz to MS, May 29 and June 17, 1959 [MSM S55:491, 539].)

210. To Martha Baird Rockefeller 1 Though she resigned the IPPF presidency at the 6ICPP, Sanger continued to travel and talk about birth control, keeping herself in the media. In December 1959, after President Eisenhower declared that he would not use federal foreign aid funds to promote birth control in developing countries on the grounds that it was not a governmental function, Sanger publicly criticized him, asserting that family planning was “just as much a governmental problem as anything such as polio or any disease that affects all of the people.” On a Tucson television program, she claimed that the president needed “to be straightened out” on the question of government involvement in family planning and challenged him to a debate. Sanger also continued raising funds for international work. (New York Times, Dec. 2 and 3, 1959; Washington Post, Dec. 4, 1959 [quote 1]; 1959 Calendar, MS, “Statement on Television Channel 13,” Dec. 27, 1959 [quote 2], and MS to New York Times, Dec. 28, 1959 [MSM S83:105–61, 72:987, 56:245]; Tucson [Ariz.] Daily Citizen, Dec. 28, 1959; see also Vol. 3.)

[Tucson, Ariz.] February 19, 1960

Dear Mrs. Rockefeller, Enclosed is a copy of a letter from Hugh Moore who has made his millions by developing the little Lily ↑Dixie↓ cup.2 His big interest is Birth Control and population, and he has given the movement a half time executive so that he keeps in touch with what is going on.3 His wife (his fourth) is beautiful and young, and she is on the Bureau’s Board of Directors, so he keeps pretty close to the movement.4 Now he is gathering together his best friends and setting out to have an International fund of $1,200,000 and everyone on the Committee is supposed to at least be honored by contributing at least $50,000 to the fund.5 I am the only one who is not expected to get $50,000, but they would like me to gather together at least $25,0006 as I am not too well and I have not been raising money for the last two years.7 I know, or assume, that the first request of $50,000 will be the Rockefeller brothers, but I wonder if you and your husband could help me toward the $25,000 that I am to raise. That would be a great release for me. The other

February 1960  •  605

friends that would ordinarily help me are already dedicated to the research going on under Dr. Pincus and Dr. Rock in Massachusetts. Mrs. Stanley McCormick won’t give a penny to anything except that, and she is doing it generously.8 She keeps an eye on the work and has reports from both Rock and Pincus as they go step by step. Pincus travels all over the world at her expense and he, of course, inspires the biologists and others, while John Rock is the humanist and gynecologist, and so he steps up the medical profession. Being a good R.C. and as handsome as a god he can just get away with anything.9 There will be a statement coming along to you from the Committee,10 but enclosed is the personal letter from Hugh Moore that I thought you would like to see, especially the Committee of Bruce Barton, Will Clayton and William Draper Jr. that are serious social scientists and their names are pretty well known.11 I understand that you must keep your husband quiet and have him enjoy the air, although the weather has been pretty bad here lately. Nevertheless he would likely be spared by dozens of people who would wear him out if you were not there to protect him.12 The Princeton meeting, I believe, is to be called the World Population Emergency campaign, and there is an emergency in many places where they scarcely have a handful of money and another handful of volunteers. But they have keen interest and get tremendous lot to do. A one days meeting at Princeton will scarcely be enough to cover the subject, especially if Lady Rama Rau gets on the platform. No one else will have an opportunity to say anything.13 Thank you again for your letter, and I am happy to know that you have a good environment and are comfortable. I hope your husband will feel stronger after his visit. Most Cordially, Margaret Sanger TLcy MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S56:692–93). Handwritten interlineation by MS; section overwritten on the second page.

1. Martha Baird Rockefeller (1895–1971), a pianist, was the second wife of John D. Rockefeller Jr. (ANB; New York Times, Aug. 16, 1951, and Jan. 25, 1971.) 2. Hugh Moore had made his fortune developing disposable paper drinking cups for public use. When he sold the Dixie Cup company in 1957, it had annual sales of $53 million. Moore, who had long been active in efforts to promote world peace, became convinced that this goal could not be achieved without population control. In 1944 he founded the Hugh Moore Fund for International Peace, dedicated to funding organizations involved in population control. In 1954 Moore published The Population Bomb. For his announcement and invitation, see Moore to MS, Feb. 8, 1960 (MSM S56:620). (New York Times, May 1, 1957; Biographical Sketch of Hugh Moore, Hugh Moore Dixie Cup Collection, Special Collections, Lafayette College, Easton, Pa.)

606  •  The Trials of Being President 3. Moore funded Griessemer’s work as IPPF-WHR director. Griessemer organized conferences in the Caribbean and Central America and raised funds for fieldwork in Latin America. (Suitters, Be Brave and Angry, 155–59.) 4. Hugh Moore was married only twice. His second wife, Louise Wilde Moore (Van Vleck Pine) (1919–2009), was twenty-three years his junior. His first marriage, to Berenice Brown, lasted from 1917 to 1947. (Editors’ correspondence with Louise Moore Pine, Feb. 20, 2009; New York Times, Nov. 26, 1972; Lehigh Valley [Penn.] Express Times, Dec. 30, 2009.) 5. The WPEC sought to raise funds for international family planning by focusing on American fears of rising world population. Moore invited fifty wealthy supporters to each contribute $50,000 to the program. His goal of $1.2 million was significantly higher than amounts previously sought for planned parenthood groups. (Moore to MS, Mar. 26, 1957, Feb. 8, 1960, and WPEC, “Statement of Purpose,” Mar. 20, 1960 [MSM S51:0723, 56:620, 66:926].) 6. Rockefeller agreed to donate $25,000 to the WPEC on February 26. (Secretary to MS, Feb. 26, 1960 [MSM S56:746].) 7. At eighty years old, MS had to travel with a companion at all times. (MS to Brush, Feb. 12, 1960, and MS to Moore, Mar. 2, 1960 [MSM S56:657, 786].) 8. From 1953 through 1960, McCormick contributed more than $1 million toward research on an oral contraceptive. (Marks, Sexual Chemistry, 56; see also Vol. 3.) 9. After the 6ICPP, Pincus began launching human trials of progesterone in India, while continuing to fine-tune dosage. He met regularly with colleagues in Haiti, Puerto Rico, and Japan. John Rock, retired from Harvard, had opened the Rock Reproductive Study Center, where he continued to conduct research on the pill. (Pincus to MS, Jan. 31 and Aug. 25, 1959, and Pincus to Dr. Tata, July 27, 1959 [MSM C11:538, S55:779, C11:610]; Marsh and Ronner, Fertility Doctor, 185, 202.) 10. The WPEC statement of purpose, released on March 20, called for a two-step program of educating and influencing American public opinion on population problems and lobbying for government action in various countries. The WPEC explicitly stated they would “seek only to aid suffering people—upon their request” and “seek no issue with those whose beliefs forbid their participating.” (WPEC, “Statement of Purpose,” Mar. 20, 1960 [MSM S66:926].) 11. Bruce Barton (1886–1967) was a well-known advertising executive, writer, and political figure. William Lambert Clayton (1880–1966), a cotton manufacturer, philanthropist, and former undersecretary of state for economic affairs, helped formulate the Marshall Plan. William H. Draper (1894–1974), an investment banker, military adviser, and former undersecretary of the army, chaired the 1958 panel appointed by President Eisenhower to study U.S. foreign aid programs. The panel concluded that the United States could address economic development effectively only if it also dealt with overpopulation. (New York Times, July 6, 1967, Dec. 27, 1974, Nov. 25, 1958, Mar. 15, 1959, and Mar. 19, 1960; Chicago Tribune, Feb. 9, 1966.) 12. John D. Rockefeller Jr., who had wintered in Tucson for some fifteen years, had a heart condition and had been hospitalized since December 1959. He died of pneumonia on May 11, 1960. (New York Times, May 12, 1960.)

December 1966  •  607 13. The WPEC kickoff was a one-day event held on March 20 and attended by more than a hundred people. Moore wanted a splashy opening for the WPEC that would net one hundred thousand dollars as seed money. He asked MS, who did attend, to speak for about five minutes, claiming that her presence would be inspiring. Rama Rau also attended. The WPEC merged with the PPFA on October 25, 1962, selecting Alan Guttmacher as its president. (Moore to MS, Feb. 29, 1960, and PPFA-WPEC 1961 Annual Report [MSM S56:757, 66:789]; Christian Science Monitor, Apr. 15, 1960; New York Times, Oct. 27, 1961.)

211. C. P. Blacker Tribute to Margaret Sanger By 1962 Sanger’s rapid decline forced her into relative seclusion and around-the-clock nursing care and then to a nursing home. Her public life came to an end. Between 1963 and 1966, a steady stream of letters and visitors delivered her news about the birth control movement. When she died from congestive heart failure on September 6, 1966, the IPPF had thirty-two affiliates and birth control had been adopted as a policy by several nations. Tributes to Sanger began pouring in. Of all her colleagues, Sanger may have respected C. P. Blacker the most.1 They agreed on many issues, and she often praised his abilities.

[December 1966] Who of our contemporaries will figure in world history? Which of the names which have resounded during our life-times will become fixtures in the accepted record of this disturbed century? If the question were to-day aired by a brains trust or considered tomorrow by a historian, the names of Lenin, Hitler and Churchill would doubtless be pronounced. Also the names of men connected with aviation, television and planetary exploration—all products of the twentieth century. And if the future historian were to recognize the population explosion as one of the century’s exhibits, he could scarcely omit the name of Margaret Sanger. This remarkable woman made two impacts. The first, mainly felt in the United States, was prepared between 1912 and 1939. Early experiences as a nurse in the poorest sections of New York sensitized her to the miseries caused by unregulated fertility. Her powerful advocacy of birth control gained on the one hand the support of a widening circle of converts who hailed her as a liberator; and on the other it incurred the hostility of ecclesiarchs and legislators. She was attacked in many pulpits and was several times imprisoned, her ardour being thereby intensified. During the inter-war years she tried to win over the confraternity (hesitating and aloof) of demographers. She was the moving spirit in convening, in 1927, an important international conference on population. By then she had converted some Americans

608  •  The Trials of Being President

of substance who placed funds at her disposal; with these the Geneva conference was partly financed. But preliminary publicity was so well organized that a counter-movement was generated which resulted in Mrs. Sanger being consigned to the background of the conference. Pressures were applied to the controlling committee which laid it down that the conference was to be strictly “scientific” and that all “propaganda” should be ruled out of order. References (or even allusions) to the need for controlling fertility were liable to interpretation as propaganda so that the outcome of the conference was not quite what Mrs. Sanger had hoped.2 Nor did the depopulation scare, which spread nine years later, help her cause.3 During the Second War we heard little of birth control. When first appointed, our Royal Commission on Population (1944–49) was more concerned with the prospect of falling than of rising numbers;4 and during the terminal war-year of rockets and flying bombs, rumours penetrated that Mrs. Sanger was seriously ill.5 I, for one, did not expect to see her again; nor did Maurice Newfield, then editor of the eugenics review, who had kept in closer touch with her than I had done. But Mrs. Sanger had a profound faith in herself. She said that, like a cat, she had many lives. She believed in her personal destiny: indeed she held herself to be a woman of destiny. Her destiny included her survival for as long as was necessary to complete the task she had begun. Her faith in herself was justified by events, for it was in the post-war years that she made her second and more important impact. The international birth control movement was her creation. Her plans for its development were influenced by two convictions. The first was that, though the United States might provide the main funds, the movement should not be centered in the New World. The headquarters, she believed and insisted, should be in London. It is now well known that this happened, though it is less well remembered how small were the beginnings. The Eugenics Society was sympathetic to the point of providing the embryo international body with its first modest headquarters office. The nascent movement, moreover, had a striking piece of luck—perhaps an installment of its founder’s destiny. Mrs. Vera Houghton became its first general secretary.6 During these early years nobody was better placed than myself to see with what effectiveness, harmony and mutual affection Mrs. Sanger and Mrs. Houghton worked together. The second of Mrs. Sanger’s convictions was that Asia should be made the spring-board for an international birth control movement. India and Japan were countries in which she was especially interested. It was in Bombay, during 1952, that the most brilliant and successful of the early post-war conferences on birth control was convened. This conference was the outcome of the co-operation between Mrs. Sanger and another woman—perhaps another woman of destiny—Lady Rama Rau.7

December 1966  •  609

Men and women of destiny are not always easy to work with. They do not lightly tolerate criticism or opposition. Mrs. Sanger knew this and on one occasion, when I was present, she demonstrated how she could curb herself. Conferences in Asia are expensive for Europeans. Travel grants are always in demand. Mrs. Sanger controlled a fund to meet this need and had a say in the allocations. Hence she could influence not only how the programme of a conference should be drawn up but also who should be present. Since there are usually more applicants than travel grants, awkward situations can arise. Protests may be uttered by those who feel that their claims have not been recognized. Such a protest was conveyed in writing to the organizers of the Bombay conference. The wording of the protest was not entirely felicitous.8 The letter had to be conveyed to Mrs. Sanger, who took it badly. I recall the scene which was enacted during an informal meeting in her private suite at the Taj Mahal hotel. From a central position in the room she sat erect and motionless, dominating the group. Little outward expression was given to the indignation which was inwardly seething. During a discussion of the contents of the letter of protest, and of the activities of the organization on behalf of which the letter was written, I noticed that Mrs. Sanger’s respirations were becoming deeper and more rapid. Then, choosing her moment, she delivered herself of the following words: “They should be thrown out”. Consternation and crisis! The cutting pronouncement had important implications for the future; and none of those present had contemplated this disruptive step. Dissentient opinions were tentatively expressed, and the text of the letter of protest was re-read. Again I noticed the change in respiration and again Mrs. Sanger repeated the five incisive words. They were, in fact, repeated three times and I could see that Mrs. Sanger’s emotions rose and fell according to an inner rhythm. It finally became clear that no one else favoured expulsion; and then it was that Mrs. Sanger, perceiving the unanimity, applied the curb to herself. She accepted the majority view so that the protest was otherwise dealt with. The rift was later healed. This receptiveness, sometimes linked with courage, was well demonstrated on another occasion at the conference in Bombay. Addressing a large meeting at an early session, Mrs. Sanger described how, some years before, she had met Mahatma Gandhi. She described him as “your great leader and to many the world’s greatest saint”. They had discussed birth control. Each had put his view and neither had made the slightest indentation on the convictions of the other. But they had parted on cordial terms, their respect for each other enhanced. No admirer of Gandhi, however fervid—and there were plenty of fervid admirers at this meeting—could have objected to what Mrs. Sanger said. Indeed the sustained applause suggested general admiration for the candour with which the delicate subject had been broached. I was sitting next to her when she sat down. “That was brave of you,” I said.

610  •  The Trials of Being President

“Gandhi is in everyone’s mind here,” she replied. “I had to take the bull by the horns at the first possible moment.”9 Mrs. Sanger was wonderfully responsive to her audiences. She could draw from them as much as she gave them. I have thrice heard grave misgivings expressed before public meetings as to whether Mrs. Sanger, frail and ill at the time, would be fit to appear. Yet she always appeared. Large assemblages acted on her like a tonic. She visibly drew strength and zest from the packed seats and galleries; and the iller she seemed beforehand the more triumphant was her performance. Several books about her and by her have been written on which the historian can draw if he wishes. Her charm and warmth, to which I can testify, have been abundantly stressed.10 What I would particularly like to mention here is her power of strategical thinking. She saw how Asia, Europe and America could play different but complementary roles. This grand design, by no means obvious at the start, is now so taken for granted that it can easily be forgotten that Mrs. Sanger was its originator and architect. Eugenics Review 58 (Dec. 1966): 179–81.

1. Blacker retired from his position at the BES in 1961 and then served as the chairman of the Simon Population Trust, an education and research foundation dedicated to understanding the problem of world population and resources. (Penny Kane, “The Simon Population Trust: A Brief History,” Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health 28, no.2 [2002]: SPT1–2.) 2. See MS to Raymond Pearl, May 6, 1926, and How-Martyn to MS, Aug. 27, 1927, herein; MS, Autobiography, 385. 3. In 1938 the Times (London) predicted that Britain’s population could fall catastrophically over the next fifty years. Coupled with concerns about another impending war, the resulting panic was fanned by the press and resulted in the FPA-GB downplaying contraception as a means of family limitation and instead calling it a tool for child spacing. (Leathard, Fight for Family Planning, 61–62; Soloway, Demography and Depopulation, 226, 241.) 4. The Royal Commission on Population (1944‑49) studied postwar population trends in Great Britain. In 1949 its final report endorsed free birth control through the new National Health Service. (National Archives of the UK [TNA], RG 67, Record Summary: General Register Office, Royal Commission on Population, 1944‑1949; Soloway, Demography and Degeneration, 169, 309, 348–49.) 5. MS remained in relatively good health during the war. Blacker may be referring to later incidents, in 1949 and 1955, when news outlets reported on her heart problems. (See MS to Compton, Oct. 11, 1949, and to Brush, Oct. 31, 1955, herein.) 6. After ten years as executive secretary, Houghton left the IPPF in 1959 to care for her ailing husband and work for abortion rights. (Cossey, “Vera Houghton,” 35.) 7. Rama Rau was elected IPPF president in 1963 and served three terms, stepping down in 1971 to become president emeritus until her death in 1987. (Times of India, Feb. 17, 1963; New York Times, July 20, 1987.)

November 1955  •  611 8. For more on this incident, see MS to Houghton, Sept. 12, 1952, herein. 9. MS liked and admired Gandhi, saying he was “to many the world’s greatest living saint,” but admitted “neither of us convinced the other we were wrong.” The National Standard reported that the audience “continually chuckled as she narrated her discussions with Mahatma Gandhi.” (MS, “The Humanity of Family Planning,” Nov. 26, 1952 [quotes 1–2] [MSM S72:776]; National Standard, Nov. 27, 1952 [quote 3].) 10. Blacker may be referring to Lader’s Margaret Sanger Story, among others.

212. Burial Instructions On November 8, 1955, the last day of Sanger’s stay in Tokyo for the 5ICPP, Prince and Princess Takamatsu invited her to an Imperial Garden party, where she had an audience with Emperor Hirohito. This official recognition of Sanger’s work capped off a series of tributes and honors bestowed on her by the Japanese government and its people. At age seventysix, she probably drafted this note on her trip home or shortly thereafter. (1955 Calendar [MSM S82:1082]; Katō to Brush, Nov. 21, 1955 [MS Unfilmed].)

[Nov. ?, 1955] In case of my death—I want to be cremated not before 2 weeks later—1 The heart to go to Japan to be buried in Tokyo—any place the govt or Health & Welfare Minister,2 together with Senator Shizue Kato to have it buried, as it is or in ashes—3 This is gratitude to the Japanese people & Govt—the only country in the world who have officially recognized me & the Bc work also presented to the emperor.4 AD MSP, MN-SSC (MSM S83:889).

1. MS was cremated, but her ashes were interred in the Fishkill Rural Cemetery, alongside J. Noah Slee and her sister Anna E. Higgins. (Rose to McNamee, Sept. 25, 1966 [MS Unfilmed].) 2. On November 7, Hideji Kawasaki, Japan’s health and welfare minister, presented MS with a formal scroll and a set of silver plates in appreciation for her work. “It is the matter known all over the world,” he wrote in an accompanying letter, “that you have done invaluable contribution for the dissemination of the idea of the planned parenthood in the years past.” (Kawasaki to MS, Nov. 7, 1955 [MSM S48:918]; New York Times, Nov. 8, 1955.) 3. Katō noted the importance of MS’s being presented to the emperor, writing, “I thought this honor given to Margaret meant the recognition of our course in this country.” (Katō to Brush, Nov. 21, 1955 [MS Unfilmed].) 4. Hirohito (Emperor Showa) (1901–89) was the 124th emperor of Japan. MS met the emperor for only five minutes but offered no further details. (1955 Calendar [MSM S82:1082].)

z Bibliography Full citations for sources that appear only once in the volume are in the endnotes. Those mentioned more than once are listed below. For those that also appear in the Margaret Sanger Microfilm, reel and frame citations follow the entry. Accampo, Elinor. Blessed Motherhood, Bitter Fruit. Baltimore, 2006. “The Accident of Birth.” Fortune, Feb. 1938, 83–114. Achaya, K. T. Indian Food: A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food. Delhi, 1998. Ahluwalia, Sanjam. Reproductive Restraints: Birth Control in India, 1877–1947. Urbana, Ill., 2008. All-India Women’s Conference (AWIC). Proceedings, Tenth Session. Trivandrum, 1936. Amano, Fumiko Y. Family Planning Movement in Japan. Tokyo, 1955. Amano, Fumiko Y., and Kageyas Amano. “Very Sorry Mrs. Sanger.” Planned Parenthood Affiliates Bulletin 3 (1953): 9. American-Russian Chamber of Commerce. Handbook of the Soviet Union. N.p., 1935. Avrich, Paul. The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States. Princeton, N.J., 1980. Banks, Olive, ed. Biographical Directory of British Feminists: A Supplement, 1900–1945. Vol. 2. New York, 1990. Basu, Aparna K. Basu, and Bharati Ray. Women’s Struggle: A History of the All India Women’s Conference, 1927–1990. New Delhi, 1985. Benn, J. Miriam. Predicaments of Love. London, 1992. Bermant, Chaim. The Cousinhood. New York, 1972. Bessel, Richard. “Unemployment and Demobilisation in Germany after the First World War.” In The German Unemployed, 1919–1936: Experiences and Consequences of Mass Unemployment from the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich, edited by Richard Evans and Richard Geary. New York, 1987. “Birth Control in Mexico.” Birth Control Review 6 (May 1922): 79–80.

•  613

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z Index Page numbers in bold indicate main biographical information; numbers in bold italics indicate the reference is to the text of the document by or to the individual or organization. ABCL. See American Birth Control League Abe, Isoo, 41, 45, 46n7, 46n8, 69, 184, 186n5, 206n5, 538n3 abortifacients, 172n26, 187n8, 188n2, 194, 194n13, 204, 206n7 abortion, 80n14, 197, 203n16, 350n2; birth control and, 8, 185, 348, 445; laws regulating, 7–8, 55n6, 80n14; MS on, 7–8, 195, 195n4, 270, 348, 397, 457, 539; rape and, 396–97, 438n7 Ackermann, Frances, 150, 152n19 Addams, Jane, 246, 248n13 Aitken, Gerard, 545n2 Aitken, Gloria Stone, 462, 463n8, 545n2 Amano, Fumiko Yamaguchi, 419, 420n5, 429n7, 446n4, 453n4, 518, 519n5 Amano, Kageyas, xix, 419, 420n5, 429n9, 446n4, 453n4, 518, 562n2 American Birth Control League (ABCL), 1, 22n3, 26n14, 32n5, 55n11, 65, 69, 74, 76n2, 79n12, 97, 97n1, 98n9, 105n14, 112, 113n5, 119n10, 122n10, 138, 140n1, 150, 150n5, 179, 179n2, 180n3, 184n1,

190n7, 190n13, 387, 388, 389n6, 389n7, 390n10; officers, directors and staff, 24n1, 25n4, 54n1, 79n12, 84, 84n2, 95n1, 102n10, 102n11, 109n10, 110n18, 120, 121n1, 122n10, 131, 133n20, 138, 150, 152nn18–20, 159, 161n12 American Medical Association (AMA), 72–73, 73n7, 76n7, 547, 550n13 American Social Hygience Association (ASHA), 175, 178–79nn25–27 American University in Beirut, 243, 244n9, 244n11, 244n12 Andersson, Thor, 252, 252n3, 252n7 Andreytchine, George, 259, 268–71, 271n1, 271n2, 273n21, 273n24 Anthony, Susan B., 378, 379n6 anti-Semitism, 224, 225n4, 225n5, 241n6, 266n3 Apert, Eugène, 134–35, 135n8 Appel, Cheri, 262, 263n3, 263n5, 271, 273n25 Arabs, 242–43, 243n2, 244n7 Argentina, 5, 6n5, 581n17, 583 Arnold, Edward A., 161, 163n4 Around the World News of Population and Birth Control (AWNPC), 455, 465, 466n10, 475, 476n2, 476n4, 476–77nn6–8, 480, 483n3, 486n4, 515, 516n1, 516n4, 517n19, 573, 599n11. See also Brush, Dorothy Hamilton Asia: birth control in, xxiii, 69, 88, 554–55, 601n8, 603, 608; population size, 281n3, 410

•  625

626  •  index Asia (periodical), 343, 344n2, 344n4 Astor, Nancy, 68 Asúa, Jiménez de, 200–201, 202n2 atomic bomb, 412–13 Australia, 538n1, 538n2, 538n7 Austria, 164n15, 177n14; birth control clinics and leagues, 78n1, 126n7, 164n15, 182n4 Axis Powers, 354, 410 Aza (Díaz), Vital, 200, 202n2 Bachmutskaia, F. A., 254, 256n14, 272n11 Bahamas, 407, 408, 408nn2–4, 409n5; birth control in, 408, 408n5 Bajaj, Jamnalal, 298, 301n10 Baker, John R., 157n7 Baldwin, Roger, 415 Barbados, 585n4 Barker, Llewellys, 72, 73n5 Baroda, Maharaja of. See Gaekwad II, Sayajiro Baroda, Maharani Chimnabai of. See Ghatge, Garabai Barton, Bruce, 605, 606n11 Bayi, Setu, 316–17, 319n6, 319n8, 320n11 BCIIC. See Birth Control International information Centre Beard, Mary Ritter, 428, 429n4 Bendix, Kurt, 18n19, 151n16, 157n4, 157n9 Bennett, Josephine Day, 139, 140n1, 142n13 Bennett, Tuscan, 77, 79n10 Beratungstelle für Gerburtenregelung (BfG), 139, 140n1, 141n3, 141n4, 141n8, 141n9, 142, 143n4, 144n6, 154n4, 155n16, 157n1, 160n3, 160n6, 162, 163n6 Berlinske Tidendes (periodical), 249, 250n10, 251n13 Bermuda, 360, 362–64, 364n2, 364n3 Bernabé, Adolfo, 92, 92–93, 93n1 Bertram, George C. L., 489, 491n3 Besant, Annie, 572, 575n8 Beverly, James, 215, 236, 237, 237n2, 237n3, 238n9, 238n10 Biblical citations, 90n11 birth control, 2, 74–75, 172; class-based, 168, 173, 185, 188, 194n2, 285, 321n27, 484n13, 488, 540; human rights and, 197; mainstreaming of, xxii–xxii, 68, 71; morality of, xix, 45, 46n9, 89, 191, 193n7, 233n2, 324, 329; MS on, xix, 1, 57, 173, 237, 566, 569, 604; natural law and,

xix, 324, 325n8; opposition, xx, 190n7; MS on, 71n8, 87–89; peace and, 253n7, 530; propaganda and publicity, 3, 24, 66, 72, 75, 125; public health and, 197, 506, 509n14; rationales for, 2, 65, 116, 581n14; resource scarcity and, 428, 437, 554n6; social and economic welfare and, xix, xxii, 75, 192, 506, 531. See also contraceptive; public health Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau (BCCRB), 65–66, 69, 70n2, 74, 84, 93nn3–5, 95n4, 98n9, 140, 150, 150n5, 165n25, 168, 176n4, 176n6, 182n3, 187n11, 190n13, 195n4, 214n10, 220n17, 222n5, 235n1, 240, 242n13, 246, 248n7, 263n4, 267, 318, 321n30, 341, 377, 390n10, 396n20, 424n9; case histories and records, 130, 132n9, 141n7, 173, 176n3, 248n7, 248n15, 345; finances and funding, 150n3, 159, 160n11, 553, 553n1, 554n2; instruction and training, 92, 172n22, 177n9, 247n1, 342n9, 443n16, 586n15; international work, 353, 482, 491, 492n13; officers and staff, 229n17, 262, 273n25, 423n3, 424n10, 429, 430n1, 437n1, 444, 447, 448n8; research and clinical trials, 406n1, 458, 460n8, 484n16, 528n8, 532, 544n1, 547, 550n9, 550n13. See also birth control films; Journal of Contraception birth control clinics and leagues, 125, 176n4, 177n17, 178n22, 182n4, 232n3, 416n6, 555, 556n5; MS on, 52, 58, 173–74, 181, 387, 398, 509n14, 539; raids of, 388, 390n15. See also American Birth Control League (ABCL); Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau (BCCRB); family planning associations; Harlem Branch; individual nations and state birth control conferences, xxii, 67–68, 113n1, 113– 15, 115, 115n3, 119n15, 124, 151n15, 161n18, 281n8, 388, 390n13, 390n14, 480n10, 607–8; American Conference on Birth Control and National Recovery (Washington, DC, 1934), 243, 245n17; Conference on Birth Control in Asia, London (1933), 138, 196, 242, 284–85, 286n4; International Conference on Planned Parenthood-ENEAR, Berlin (1957), 587–88, 589n2, 589n3, 591; International Congress on Contraceptives, Amsterdam (1921), 19n2; International Congress on Population and World Resources (ICPWR), Cheltenham (1948), 411,

index  •  627 419, 433n9, 433n10, 437, 438n6, 438n8, 438n9, 439n11, 439n12, 441, 442n7, 442n8, 443n10; 1st American Birth Control Conference, New York (1921), 3, 66, 572, 574n5; 4th International Conference on Planned Parenthood (4ICPP), Stockholm (1953), 495n8, 500, 519–20, 522–23, 523n4, 525, 526n2, 526n3, 594n10; 5th International Conference on Planned Parenthood, (5ICPP) Tokyo (1955), 500, 529, 530n2, 530n3, 539, 542, 545n3, 545n7, 546–47, 549n5, 553, 554n7, 555, 556n6, 557n8, 557n10, 557n11, 558, 559n4, 559n6, 559n9, 560–61, 562n2, 563n15, 611, 611n2; 5th International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference, London (1922), xxii–xxiii, 21, 23n10, 26n14, 66, 71n12, 106n1, 572, 574n6; finances, 551n17, 562n9, 594n10; 6th International Conference on Planned Parenthood, (6ICPP), New Delhi (1959), 566, 568, 570n4, 571, 573, 576n22, 577, 577nn31–33, 577–78, 579n2, 580n5, 580n7, 580n8, 582, 587, 590–91, 591, 593n7, 593n8, 593n9, 594n5, 596, 599–600, 600n1, 602n11; 6th International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference, New York (1925), xix, 66–67, 71, 72n1, 73n4, 73n5, 74–75, 76n1, 77, 79n3, 106n1, 121, 180, 572, 574n6. See also conference proceedings; World Population Conference (WPC) Geneva, (1927); 3ICPP; 7IBCC Birth Control Development Fund, 161–62, 163n4, 175, 178n20 Birth Control Federation of America (BCFA), 353, 407, 407n9, 408n1, 409n9, 411, 517n9, 517n10 birth control films, 290, 293, 293n14, 301, 306, 311, 312n8, 312n17, 355, 381, 383n6, 462, 464n17 Birth Control in Asia (Michael Fielding, 285 Birth Control International Information Centre (BCIIC), xxiii, 138, 196–97, 213n2, 228n4, 229n8, 231, 232n3, 278, 284–85, 286n3, 321n28, 331, 340n12, 347n1, 347n3, 355, 357n2, 357n8, 358n14, 386–87, 389n6, 462n1, 491; correspondents, 138, 196, 199n2, 225n1, 249, 286n5; Council, 196, 333n7, 340n14, 346–47, 355–56, 387; finances, 198–99, 223n11, 227, 228n2, 231n3, 240, 242n10, 276, 280, 281n9, 284–85, 285n3, 286n6, 287n10, 331, 346, 353, 398; goals and strategies, 138, 284, 355–56, 358n9; London

Committee, 227, 228n2, 231n3, 232n1, 232n4, 232n5; MS on, 284, 338–39, 347, 347n2, 354–56, 398; newsletters, 247, 248n15, 294, 296n6; officers and staff, 138, 151n13, 196–97, 199n6, 214n7, 220n15, 223n14, 223n15, 231–32, 276, 286n6, 295n1, 307n2, 333n1, 340n13, 346–47, 347n1, 354, 357n1. See also birth control films Birth Control Investigation Committee (BCIC), 162, 163n1, 164n8, 164n11 birth control laws and legislation, 75, 117, 201, 535n7; Comstock Law, 19n8, 97n6, 111n24, 184, 195n4, 240; in Czechoslovakia, 224, 225n6, 233n2; in Denmark, 19n1; doctor’s only laws, 241n12; in France, 75, 76n8, 81n26, 134, 135n1, 135n3; in Germany, 17n17, 19n1, 103n19, 144n5, 209n15, 417, 467, 469n7; in Great Britain, 80n19, 572; international, 19n1, 77, 80n15; in Italy, 146, 368, 370n10, 370n13; in Japan, 184, 204–5, 247n2, 392, 395n12, 443, 444n1, 445, 446n7, 452, 497, 498n8, 526n6, 553, 554n4; legal cases, U.S. v. One Package, 209n12, 352, 477n12; in Mexico, 234, 235n3, 341; in Netherlands, the, 19n1, 19n8; in New York, 76n9, 97n6, 98n6; in Norway, 124, 125n3; in Poland, 210, 266n1; in Puerto Rico, 93n1, 96, 216n5, 236, 405, 406n5; in Soviet Union, 257n18, 351n4; in Spain, 183, 184n3, 201; in Sweden, 423n8, 468n3; in U.S., 19n9, 97, 98n6, 108, 139, 206–7, 208n3, 221–22, 222n9, 223n10, 237n1, 240, 337n2, 558 (see also National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control; United States Congress, birth control hearings) birth control methods and devices, xx, 3, 41, 43n6, 181, 183n7, 193n13, 194n12, 246, 248n7, 301, 313, 404n7, 412, 424n14, 468, 475, 536n12; abstinence, 82n4, 82n5, 82n6, 87, 89n3, 91, 324, 326, 329n5; MS on, 88–89, 314; advertising, 309n3; cervical caps, 132n8, 177n9, 177n10, 183, 184n2, 219n10; chemical contraceptives, xx, 13–14, 17n12, 168, 171n19, 177n14, 184n2, 185–86, 187n11, 188n5, 189, 263, 443, 446n3; coitus interruptus (withdrawal), 172n26, 257, 443n11; condoms, 71n10, 132n8, 183, 184n3, 186n6, 217, 244n5, 313, 314n5, 318, 402n10, 561; costs, 192, 313, 313n4, 318, 321n27, 355, 400, 403, 470n14, 483n12; diaphragms and pessaries, 70, 71n9, 130, 132n7, 132n8, 168, 171n19, 176n6, 177n9, 177n10, 177n14,

628  •  index 183, 184n2, 185, 186n6, 187, 187n11, 188n3, 189, 192, 194n14, 204, 207, 208n12, 219, 219n10, 248n7, 249, 254, 256n17, 263, 309n4, 313n4, 318, 337, 337n2, 345, 412, 460, 461n3, 530, 530n5, 530n6, 550n11; discussion of, 47, 48n2, 48n3, 74–75; douches and douching, 43n6, 47n16, 171n18, 171n19, 186n6, 192, 194n15, 240, 241n4, 293n12, 400, 484n14; effectiveness of, 168, 171n18, 172, 172n26, 173, 176n6, 177n13, 180n4; foam powder, 187n10, 309n4, 341, 342n9, 345, 346n2, 346n4, 346n5, 352–53, 356–57, 358n16, 373, 375n18, 380n15, 382n4, 393, 396n20, 399, 402n8, 402n13, 403, 404n6, 404n9, 407n7, 412, 470n14, 531, 533n6, 546, 549n3, 550n8; herbs, 405–6, 407n11, 407n12; instruction and training in, 66, 153, 168, 173–74, 176n7, 177n9, 177n11, 183–84, 187–89, 249, 262, 424n14, 496, 506, 539; intrauterine devices, 130, 132n7, 132n8, 153, 154n6, 154n7, 177n10, 229n11, 430, 431n5; jellies and pastes, 132n8, 171n19, 176n6, 183, 187n11, 188, 188n3, 188n4, 188n6, 217, 219n10, 248n7, 254, 256n16, 412, 547, 550n9, 550n11; MS on, 173, 183, 187–88, 190, 262, 269, 313n4, 314, 412, 457–58, 461, 497, 500, 525, 530, 531, 535, 550n11, 553, 558, 599; paper, 41, 43n6; pill, xxiv, 177n14, 197, 207, 479n3, 479n4, 500, 530, 530n5, 541, 544, 554n8, 555, 556n6, 556n7, 558, 559n6, 559n7, 560, 606n8, 606n9; plugs and tampons, 263n9, 292n11, 402n9, 403, 484n13; safe period (“rhythm”), 177n14, 233, 233n2, 240, 241n7, 301, 306, 307n7, 341, 342n4, 412, 462, 463n9, 463n11, 464n8, 475–76, 477n11, 479n1, 482, 501, 550n10, 581n14; salt-based, 401n7, 527, 528n5, 528n6, 528n7, 528n8, 532, 533n6, 550n14; spermatoxins, 177n14, 208n7, 269, 272n9, 272n10, 351n11, 497, 500; spermicides, 184n2, 187n11, 188n6, 190n5, 194n15, 263n9, 400, 401n7, 402n9, 404n3, 470n14, 550n11; sponges, 186n6, 188n6, 188–89, 190n5, 293n11, 318, 341, 342n9, 400, 402n8, 403, 404n3, 510n26; suppositories, 71n10, 171n19, 186n6, 187n10, 442n6, 550n9. See also contraceptives birth control movement, xix–xxii, 1, 74–75, 125, 126n8, 137–39, 178n19, 188, 196, 240, 352, 353, 411, 415, 481, 499, 604; goals and strategies, 2, 125, 158, 174, 440–41, 499–500, 565–66; history, 75, 76n6, 159, 438n10, 481, 534, 572, 574n4,

575n9, 580; MS as leader, xix–xxii, xxiv, 67, 75, 232, 412, 455–56, 499, 514, 514n4, 516n8, 517n9, 518, 565–66, 608; MS on, xxiii, 1–2, 24, 45, 65–66, 71, 117, 137–39, 142–43, 162, 175, 180, 198, 213, 230, 284–85, 385, 387, 415, 440–41, 447, 468, 514, 534, 544, 588 Birth Control Movement in England, The (HowMartyn and Breed), 223n15 Birth Control Review (periodical), 2, 5, 7, 21, 22n3, 22n5, 24, 26n12, 31n2, 58n3, 65, 69, 70n4, 81, 83n8, 89, 89n1, 89n4, 90n8, 90n9, 90–91, 93n2, 97, 98n9, 121, 122n9, 125, 138, 152n18, 159, 161n12, 189, 481, 483n6; articles, 59n7, 59n8, 120, 122n11, 123n24, 123n25, 202n2 birth moratorium. See birth strike birth rates, 80n19, 148n8; differential, 34, 38n4, 67, 105n6, 129n16, 193n6, 285, 286n8, 501, 570n13. See also individual countries birth strike, 11n10, 14, 17n12, 205, 206n11, 431–32, 433n4, 433n5, 553 black populations: birth control and, 362–63, 364n4, 399–400, 408n4; MS on, 435 Blacker, Ann, 582, 585n1 Blacker, Carlos Paton, 157n7, 162, 163n1, 164n11, 165n24, 285n1, 286n7, 432, 434n14, 472n1, 472nn2–5, 478–79, 479n5, 480n8, 491n1, 492n11, 499, 506–7, 509n18, 513n3, 514, 516n5, 517n11, 525, 533n3, 533n8, 547, 551n18, 562n2, 562n11, 575n15, 597n1, 598n5, 610n1; correspondence, 284–85, 470–72, 471, 478, 489–91, 491n2, 493n15, 531–32, 532n1, 533n3, 577–79, 582–84, 587n26, 590, 596–97, 598n7, 607–10; IPPF and, 515, 516n5, 516n7, 519, 521n5, 521n9, 522n13, 525n6, 555, 561, 572, 576n20, 578, 579n1, 585n5, 585n7, 586n19, 586n20; MS on, 515, 520, 524, 597 Blacker, Carmen, 582, 585n1 Blacker, Helen, 582, 585n1 Blackstone, James Henry, 60, 62n5 Blanshard, Mary Hillyer, 465, 467n12 Bloch, Iwan, 201, 203n20 Blondel, Katherine, 362–63, 363n1 Boas, Conrad van Emde, 448n7, 494n1, 494n2, 494n3, 494–95nn5–7, 495n12, 524n4, 563n12, 589n10; MS on, 493–94, 495n6 Bocker, Dorothy, 190n13; Birth Control Methods, 189, 190n13

index  •  629 Bombay, India, 292n7, 294, 296n10, 296n12, 507, 510n28; birth control clinics and leagues, 293n2, 505–6, 507n2, 509n16, 592; MS on, 290, 294, 518 Bonaparte, Napoleon. See Napoleon Bondfield, Margaret, 246, 248n13 Boyd, Mary Sumner, 82, 83n8, 122n9 Boyd-Orr, Sir John, 437, 438n8 Boyle, Gertrude, 3 Boy-Zelenski, Tadeusz. See Zelenski, Tadeusz Kamil Marcjan Brabourne, Doreen, 295, 296n12 Brabourne, Michael, 293, 295, 296n12 Bradlaugh, Charles, 572, 575n8 Brandt, Zelma Corning, 24, 26n15 Braude, Isaak Leont’evich, 261–63, 263n1, 263n3, 264n7 Brazil, 585n8 Breed, Wilhemina (Mary), 114, 115n3, 116, 118n2, 149–50, 151n13, 199n1, 222, 223n15 British West Indies (BWI), 399–400, 401n3, 401n6, 461n2, 461n4; birth control clinics and leagues, 399, 401n2; birth control in, 399, 460, 461n3 Browne, Arthur H., 361, 362n4, 362n6 Browne, Stella, xx Brownsville Clinic, 98n6, 193n9, 566 Brunton, Paul. See Hurst, Raphael Brush, Dorothy Hamilton, 372–73, 374n11, 375, 376n5, 376n6, 377n8, 381–82, 382n2, 416, 416n4, 419, 420n2, 422, 424n12, 424n15, 424n16, 428, 429n2, 434–35, 436n10, 437, 438n2, 439n13, 442n2, 442n3, 443n5, 447, 448n12, 460n7, 466n1, 466n6, 466n10, 473, 474n9, 478–79, 483n4, 508n10, 516n5, 550n15, 551n24, 561n1, 562n10, 563n16, 573, 575n13, 576n28, 577n29, 587n23, 588, 589n5, 589n11, 596n26, 598n4, 604n7; Around the World News of Population and Birth Control, 455, 474n8, 476n1, 476n6, 477n7, 477n10, 482, 482n1, 483n2, 511n32, 514– 15, 517n20, 524, 524n1, 524n2, 548, 551n24, 574n1, 577n31; correspondence, 382n1, 383n15, 384n14, 384n15, 464–66, 475–76, 480–82, 514–15, 516n3, 516n4, 524, 560–61, 571–73, 573, 577n30, 590, 592; Japan and, 384n14, 420n3, 428, 429n7, 450, 451n6, 496; MS on, 440, 514, 516n8; and 3ICPP, 480n11, 482n1, 485, 516n5, 517n15

Brush Foundation (BF), 439–41, 442n3, 443n16, 447, 465, 466n2, 466n6, 475, 477n7, 481, 482n2, 484n18, 491n10, 492n10, 492n11, 516n4, 518n20, 521n8, 573, 582, 585n6, 586n12, 596 Brush III, Charles F., 372–73, 374n11, 375, 381, 382n2, 415, 416n4, 428, 429n2, 473 Buckmaster, Stanley Owen, 109, 110n20, 111n21 Buck, Pearl, 460n7 Budzinska-Tylicka, Justyna, 211n1, 227, 228n7 Buerger, Anna. See von Bucovich, Anna K. Bund Deutscher Ärztinnen (BDÄ), 128n4, 128n8, 128n11, 153, 155n13, 155n14, 155n19, 160n6, 160n7 Bund für Mutterschutz und Sexualreform (BfMS), 11n8, 15n2, 16n7, 79n6, 103n19, 132n11, 132n13, 133n15, 141n10, 151n16, 160n4, 160n6, 160n7, 161n16 Bureau of Social Hygiene (BSH), 76n7, 102n13, 105n8, 106, 110n12, 176n3 Burgess, John Stewart, 54, 55n8 Cadbury, Barbara, 465, 466n11, 514, 546, 549n7, 595n23 Cadbury, Elizabeth, 334, 335n6 Cadbury, George, 466n11, 592, 595n23, 598n5 Cadbury Foundation, 492n10 Caesar, Julius, 147, 148n5 California, birth control clinics and leagues, 419, 420n6 Canto, Arturo Cisneros, 30, 31n2, 32n6 Carlisle, Richard, 572, 574n8 Carli, Mario, 146–47, 148n2, 148n3, 148n4 Carr-Saunders, Sir Alexander, 106, 106n1, 106n2, 109n6, 116, 118n3, 145, 145n7, 149, 151n17 Catholic church, 55n13, 123n14, 227; MS on, 7–8, 54, 85, 107, 120, 122n12, 156, 189, 207, 221, 230– 31, 236, 240, 335, 342n4, 354, 361, 399, 402n4, 430, 434, 450, 453n4, 523, 561, 579; opposition to abortion, 7–8; opposition to birth control, xx, 31n3, 32n5, 122n9, 157n5, 190n2, 193n8, 208n3, 223n10, 231n5, 237n1, 238n6, 241n7, 241n8, 321n29, 335, 341, 400, 487, 487n2, 501, 534, 535n5, 578, 579n2, 581n14 Catholic Review (periodical), 236–37, 237n2, 237n3 censorship, xix–xx, 475, 575n8 Chance, Clinton F., 99, 100, 101n1, 101n8, 101n9, 102n18, 104, 105n13, 107, 110n12, 110n20, 115n3,

630  •  index 126, 131, 132n4, 133n22, 133n23, 145, 161, 163n1, 163n4, 165n19, 165n24, 177n6, 177n13, 178n20, 285n2, 433n8, 437, 464n15, 531, 532n2; correspondence, 149, 151n11, 161–63, 164n9, 164n12, 172–76, 176n1, 176n2, 176n5, 177n15, 178n19, 178n21 Chance, Janet Whyte, 100, 100n1, 102n18, 104, 105n13, 110n20, 126, 130–31, 132n4, 133n22, 133n23, 157n7, 161–63, 162, 165n17, 165n19, 165n20, 172–73, 175, 176n1, 176n2, 178n24, 178n25, 178n27, 282, 282n1, 283n2, 433n8, 437, 464n15, 531, 531n2, 532n2 Chang, Min Chueh, 479n4, 559n7 Chang Tso-lin (Zuòlin Zhäng), 52, 52n1, 61, 62n1 Chang (Zhang), H. C., 169n2 Charles, Edward, Sexual Impulse (Charles), 282, 282n1 Charles, Enid, 229n13; The Practice of Birth Control, 228 Chattopadhyaya, Kamaladevi, 505, 508n11, 510n29 Chattopadhyaya, Virendranath, 81–82, 155n20 Chen, Mary, 336–37, 337n1 Chen Hai Cheng (Hai-Chang Chen), 57, 59n9 Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Zhongzheng), 143n3, 358–59, 359n1, 359n2 child labor, 49, 50n6, 57–58, 59n14 child spacing, 77, 342n6, 406n3, 534, 569, 599 Child, Harold, 21, 23n13 Chile, 585n8 China, 22n2, 51, 51n2, 53nn3–6, 55n9, 56, 59n10, 59n11, 60–62, 63n12, 63n14, 63n15, 143n3, 167, 171n16, 171n20, 172n23, 198, 268n7, 506, 557, 560n14, 570n10; abortion, 55n6, 194n13, 396– 97, 397n3; birth control clinics and leagues, 154n3, 168, 169n3, 170n9, 189n8, 191, 558, 568; birth control in, 55n6, 57, 138, 154n3, 164n13, 166–69, 169n2, 170n6, 171n16, 172n26, 194n12, 194n13, 267, 281n7, 338, 360n4, 385n1, 536n10, 557, 560n11, 568, 570n6, 570n12, 581n13; civil war, 60, 189n1, 191, 358; communism, 58n4, 81, 143n3, 169n1, 170n12, 190n1, 358–59; MS on, 24, 52, 55n7, 57, 58n2, 162, 338, 346, 352, 355, 359, 372, 384–85, 558, 568; population size, 557, 568, 570n7, 570n8; press, 56–57, 59n7, 59n9, 162, 165n18; pronatalism in, 536n10; women in, 57, 58n3, 58n4, 59n12, 59n14, 169, 170n11, 191, 192,

359, 360n4, 509n19, 536n10, 570n12. See also Japan, and China; Manchuria; Peking; Shanghai; Sino-Japanese War Chinese Medical Association, 337, 386n2, 503, 504n11 Chinese Students’ Alliance (CSA), 168, 172n21, 172n24 Chisolm, George Brock, 462, 464n12 Chou, Anna, 268n1, 339n3, 340n8, 346n6, 384– 85, 385n1, 399n3 Chou (Zhou), L. C., 169n2 Christianity, MS on, 319n9 Chungkuo I-Shih Hsiehhui (CISH) (Chinese Medical Association), 337, 386n2 Churchill, Sir Winston, 468, 470n12, 472, 472n9, 607 Clark Jr., Percy LeMon, 262–63, 263n10 Clayton, William L., 605, 606n11 client letters, 121, 122n9, 123n25, 179, 246, 248n10, 276, 308–9, 312–13, 314–15, 460, 461n5 Clinical Research Bureau (CRB). See Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau Clyde, Ethel, 228, 230n18, 248, 252, 253n9, 254, 266n2, 270, 273n20 Cohen, Helen Donington, 439, 439–41, 442n1, 442n5, 442n9, 443n12, 443n14, 443n15, 447, 448n6, 463n3 Cole, Leon, 73n4 Coleman, Elizabeth, 29n11, 33, 33n5, 44, 46n6, 69, 70, 70n6, 71n11 Coleman, Horace, 27, 29n11, 45, 46n6, 71n11 Colombia, 5, 6n3 Comité National d’Études Sociales et Politiques (CNESP), 127n2, 133n18, 133–34, 135n2, 135n4, 136n11 Committee on Maternal Health, 162, 164n10, 182n3 communism and communists, 10n2, 11n7, 190n1, 197, 494n4; abortion and, 11n7, 495n9; birth control and, 55n6, 190, 495n9, 581n13; MS on, 494, 579 Compton (Johnson), Mary W., 437, 437n1, 438n2, 447–48, 448n1, 448n9 Comstock, Alzada (Anita), 115n3, 116, 118n2 Comstock Law, 19n8, 97n6, 111n24, 184, 195n4, 240 conference proceedings; Proceedings of the World Population Conference, 68, 118n2,

index  •  631 118n3, 121, 122n6, 123n20, 123n21, 126, 135n6, 151n13, 163n4; 3rd International Conference on Planned Parenthood, (3ICPP) Bombay (1952), 506, 508n3, 508n12, 520n4; 6th International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference, New York (1925), 121, 123n22. See also Practice of Contraception conferences, xxii, 66, 94, 137–38, 166, 169n2, 175, 185, 186n5, 187, 198, 205, 206n9, 207, 209n16, 218, 221–22, 227–28, 229n8, 230, 231n3, 240, 279, 281n5, 431–32, 433n7, 467, 469n4, 533, 534, 579, 581n18; All-India Medical Conference (1936), 318, 321n21; All-India Women’s Conference (AIWC), 274–75, 278n1, 278n2, 278n3, 278n5, 280n2, 283n6, 283n10, 284n11, 296n14, 296n15, 297–98, 305, 317, 319n7, 319n9, 320n10, 320n13, 320n16, 320n17, 320n18, 336n9, 456, 480n7, 591, 594n14; MS on, 277–79, 315–17; American Congress on Clinical Medicine, Washington (1923), 72, 73n5; International Conference on Women (ICW), Calcutta (1936), 319, 322n35, 334, 335n5, 336n8, 336n9; International Congress for Sex Research (ICSR) Berlin (1926), 100, 102n19, 103n20, 104n1, 175, 178n18; International Congress of Genetics, 5th, Berlin (1927), 94, 96n8, 107, 109n7, 126n6; International Congress of Sex Research, Berlin (1926), 102n19; International Congress on Eugenics, 2nd, New York (1921), 3; 1st International Neo-Malthusian Conference, Paris (1900), 572, 574n6; 2nd International NeoMalthusian Conference, Liège (1905), 76n5, 572, 574n6; 3rd International Neo-Malthusian Conference, The Hague (1910), 76n5, 572, 574n6; 4th International Neo-Malthusian Conference, Dresden (1911), 16n4, 76n5, 572, 574n6; International Woman Suffrage Alliance Congress, 10th, Paris (1926), 99, 102n12, 102n16; Lambeth Conference (1930), 361, 362n5; Medical Women’s International Association Conference, Stockholm (1934), 249, 250n11, 251n12; Washington Naval Arms Conference (1922), 3, 22n6, 52n2; World Economic Conference, (Geneva, 1927), 107, 110n13, 159; World League for Sexual Reform Congress, Brno (1932), 218, 220n14, 221, 222n3, 224, 225n4, 225n7, 226n11, 227–28, 228n1, 229n11, 240; World League for Sexual Reform Congress, Copenhagen (1928), 141n6; World

League for Sexual Reform Congress, London (1929), 149, 151n14, 162, 164n7, 164n9, 175, 178n18; World Population Conference, Rome (1954), 501, 547, 550n15, 551n16, 551n18, 551n25. See also birth control conferences contraceptive manufacturers and manufacturing, 132n8, 263n10, 321n25, 321n26, 403, 404n8, 405, 407n8, 418n5, 423n8, 440, 442n6, 458–59, 459n5, 460n8, 470n13, 484n14, 541, 547, 561 contraceptives, 181; clinical trials, 541–42, 542n1, 542n2, 543nn4–6, 543n8, 544, 549n3, 550n11, 550n12, 550n14, 555, 556–57nn6–8, 593n9, 606n9; research and testing, xxiv, 1, 3, 7, 13, 17n12, 17n13, 116–17, 118n5, 119n8, 119n9, 119n11, 141n12, 153, 164n10, 172–74, 177n13, 177n14, 208n7, 218, 220n11, 220n12, 257n19, 259n9, 263, 269, 309n4, 345, 346n2, 346n3, 350, 353, 375n18, 407n12, 408n4, 411, 442n8, 468, 468n1, 470n13, 478, 479n3, 500, 527, 528n5, 528n6, 531, 533n5, 533n6, 541, 543n4, 550n9, 558, 559n7, 559n8, 573–74, 577n36, 606n8, 606n9 contraceptive supplies, 69–70, 71n9, 97n1, 191, 262, 263n4, 264, 264n6, 264n7, 273n19, 321n25, 338, 385, 386n3, 396n20, 401n5, 405, 415, 417– 18, 418n2 Cook, Adelaide Pearson, 216, 216n7, 248n15 Cook, Robert C., 578, 580n7, 580n8, 580n9 Coolidge, Calvin, 67 Cooper, James F., 77, 79n9, 84n2, 84–85, 92, 93n5; Technique of Contraception, 177n11 Cornish, Hilda, 235 Costa Rica, 585n8 Co-Tui, Frank Wang, 396–97, 397n1 Cousins. Margaret, 277–78, 278n1, 278n2, 278n5, 279n7, 307n8, 315n4, 318, 321n25, 321n31, 333n3 Cox, Harold, 3, 104, 105n6, 105n10, 149, 151n17, 574n5 Cramer, Aline Smith, 405, 406n4, 407n10 Cramer, Lawrence W., 405, 406n4 Creel, Dana, 475, 481, 483n7, 485, 486n3, 501 Crew, Francis Albert Eley, 109n6, 116, 118n3, 119n11, 123n16, 141n12, 220n11 Crocker, Lispenard, 381–82, 383n10 Crow, D. A., 228n2, 233n5 Crow, Mary, 233n5 Crowdy, Rachel, 86, 86n3 Cruikshank, John Merrill, 408, 408n4

632  •  index Cuba, 405, 406n3 Curie, Marie, 378, 379n5 Czechoslovakia, 84n5, 84–85, 85n3, 85n5, 223–24, 225n2, 225n5, 226n8, 226n9, 226n14; abortion in, 223, 226n10, 233, 233n2; birth control clinics and leagues, 226n14; birth control in, 223, 225n6, 233, 233n1; Catholic Church in, 84, 85n4, 224, 226n10, 233; Jews in, 224, 225n5; Spolecnost pro Plánování Rodiny a Sexuální Výchovu (SPPRSV), 224, 226n9, 226n11; women in, 223–24 Damon (Wright), Celia A., 373, 375n20, 405, 447–48, 448n4, 448n7 Daniels, Anna K., 157n6 Daniels, Elizabeth S., 157n7 Darwin, Charles, 572, 575n8 Dave, Victor, xx Davis, Katharine Bement, 101n4, 102n13 Dawson, Lord Bertand of Penn, 67, 71–72, 72n1, 73n3, 74n10, 108, 109n6, 111n20, 111n22 Day Rufus, 562n4, 573, 576n23, 580, 581n18, 581n20, 583, 586n13, 587n24, 589n11, 590–92, 592n1, 593nn3–6, 594n13, 594n15, 595n23, 595n25 de Beer-Meijers, Flora, 18, 19n6 de Marin, Inés Lassise, 215–16, 216n1, 216n3 Denman, Lady Gertrude Mary, 437, 438n9, 517n11, 599n1’ Denmark, 248, 250n1; abortion in, 250n3; birth control clinics and leagues, 248, 250n3; birth control in, 85n6, 249; MS on, 249, 250n1 Dennett, Mary Ware, 108, 111n24; Birth Control Laws (1925), 108, 111n24, 111n25 Denton, Mary Florence, 382, 384n14 Desai, Ganpati, 507, 510n28 Desai, Mahadev, 297, 300, 301n1, 304n29, 305, 325, 329n3, 331n4, 343, 344n3 de Selincourt, Bridget, 21, 23n12 de Selincourt, Hugh, 3, 7, 20–21, 22n1, 22n3, 23n12, 23n13, 111–13, 114n8, 114nn12–16, 420n9, 433n8 de Selincourt, Janet, 21, 23n12, 23n13, 112, 114n14 Dewan of Mysore. See Ismail, Mirza Dick, Dorothy. See Brush, Dorothy Dick, Sylvia, 438n2 Dickinson, Robert Latou, 92, 94n7, 117, 119n12, 162–63, 164n10, 165n25, 430, 431n3; Contraception, 94n7 Diderding, Dida, 249, 250n7

Dill Thomas M., 361, 362n3 Donington, Helen. See Cohen, Helen Donington Doris Duke Foundation, 492n10 Draper, William H., 605, 606n11 Draper Committee, 605 Drummond, Angela Constable-Maxwell, 120, 123n14 Drummond, James Eric, 120, 123n14, 123n15 Drysdale, Bessie, 432, 433n8 Drysdale, Charles Vickery, xx, 77, 79n3, 123n24, 144–45, 145n4, 149–50, 151n12, 151n21, 157n7, 182n2, 183n8, 207, 208n6, 432, 433n8, 460n7, 462, 464n13, 485 Dublin, Louis I., 74 Duchess of Windsor, 408, 408n1, 409n6, 409n7, 409n9 Duke (Cromwell), Doris, 280n1, 281n10, 281n12 Dunlop, Binnie, 18, 19n9, 100n1 Dunn, Leslie, 124, 126n6 du Pont, Amy, 599–600, 600n1 Durand-Wever, Anne-Marie, 144n8, 153, 155n13, 155n14, 156, 157n1, 157n9, 158, 159n2, 160n6, 164n14, 417–18, 418n1, 418n2, 437, 438n7, 461– 62, 464n16, 464n17, 469n6 East, Edward Murray, 72, 73n4, 73n8, 74, 94, 95n4, 95n5, 96n8, 98–99, 101n3, 101n4, 115n3, 120, 124–25, 126n6 Eddy, Sherwood, 255, 305, 307n5 Edin, Karl, 251, 252n6 Edward, Duke of Windsor (former Edward VIII), 408, 408n3, 409n6, 409n7 Edward III, King of England, 64, 64n1. See also Edward, Duke of Windsor Eguilez, Alberto, 183, 184n5 Egypt, 64, 64n2, 242, 244, 278n4, 354, 581n15: birth control clinics and leagues, 245n15 Einstein, Albert, 484–85, 485n1, 488, 489n8, 489n9, 508n5 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 604, 606n11 Elkan, Rudolf, 157n9 Ellis, Havelock, xx, 7, 13, 21, 22n3, 22n5, 23n10, 66, 73n4, 74, 100, 103n23, 106, 108, 109n6, 114n13, 149, 151n14, 200–201, 203n17, 213, 213n2, 335n1, 336n11, 336n12; correspondence, 111n25, 238–39, 239n1, 239n5, 334–35, 335n2 Engel, Arthur G. W., 522, 523n2

index  •  633 England. See Great Britain Eno, Eula, 193n5 Ernst, Morris, 419, 421n10 Erskine, Cicely, 305, 307n7 Ethiopia, 366, 368, 370n7 eugenics, 67, 80n17, 135n2, 136n9, 193n6, 202n4, 204n25, 229n15, 234, 412, 565; birth control and, xx–xxiii, 38n4, 76n7, 155n9, 285, 285n2, 595; MS on, 228, 285, 366–67; negative, 80n17, 136n9, 266n1, 266n3; positive, xxiv, 67, 136n9, 147, 148n6, 193n6, 285n2 Eugenics Record Office, 73n3 Eugenics Review (journal), 285, 286n8, 608 Eugenics Society, British (BES), 151n17, 152n20, 284, 285–86nn1–4, 286n7, 447, 470–71, 491n3, 608 Europe, 38n2, 138 Evang, Gerda, 251n15 Evang, Karl, 522, 523n3, 598n5 Evans, Ernestine, 417–18, 418n2 expansionism, 35, 39n8, 40n15, 40n22, 60, 147 Fairchild, Henry Pratt, 98, 101n2, 101n3, 101n4, 120 Family Limitation (MS), xix, xx, 27, 29n15, 80n19, 98n6, 189, 190n3, 190n9, 195n4, 226n16, 293n12, 399, 401n2, 401n7, 484n13; translations and foreign editions, 6n4, 6n7, 30–31, 31n1, 32n4, 59n6, 70n7, 223–25, 225n3, 226n8, 233, 233n2 Family Planning Association (British) (FPA), 404n5, 411, 416n6, 423n3, 432, 433–34nn9–11, 439, 463n2, 468n3, 491n3, 510n23, 517n11, 599n12, 610n3 Family Planning Association of Ceylon (FPAC), 528n9 Family Planning Association of East Pakistan (FPA-EP), 528n9 Family Planning Association of Hong Kong (FPA-HK), 502–3, 504n6, 504n9, 510n27, 551n23, 603n2, 603n5 Family Planning Association of India (FPAI), 456, 458, 459n6, 470n9, 470n10, 474n5, 477n14, 505, 507n1, 507n2, 512n4, 525n3, 528n7, 531, 550n11, 550n12, 550n14, 557n10, 593n5, 595n22, 601n7 Family Planning Association of Pakistan (FPAP), 528n9

Family Planning Association of Singapore (FPAS), 510n27, 537, 551n23 family size, 100n1, 342n7; MS on, 58n1 Farquharson, Gladys May, 533–35, 534, 535n1, 535n2, 535n4, 536n12, 536n13 Farris, Edmund, 475–76, 477n11 fascists and fascism, 146 Fawcett, James Waldo, 122n9 Ferch, Betti, 77, 78n1, 157n10, 164n15 Ferch, Johann, 77, 78n1, 157n10, 162, 164n15 Ferguson, Frances Hand, 521n10, 527, 561 Ferrer y Guardia, Francisco, 213, 214n4 Fielding, Michael. See Newfield, Maurice Fink, Lotte, 144n6, 157n9, 537, 538n1, 538n2 Finland, 251, 252n2, 253 Fisher, Jerome C., 519, 521n8, 521n9, 551n20, 572, 576n19 Florence, Leila Secor, 157n7 Flowers, Estelle, 573, 576n27, 576n28 Folsome, Clair E., 457–59, 459n1 Ford Foundation, 492n10 Forel, August, xx, 201, 203n19 Foreningen for Seksuel Oplysning (FSO) (Union for Sexual Education), 81n24, 85n6, 250n4, 250n6 France, xx, 11n10, 106, 108n2, 111–12, 113n3, 114n8, 114n10, 134–35, 135n1, 135n4, 227, 367; abortion in, 397, 397n2; birth control in, 75, 76n8, 144n9, 229n10; birth rate, 39n6, 75, 76n8, 367, 370n8; La Ligue de la Régénération Humaine (LRH) (League for Human Regeneration), 76n5, 79n4, 81n26, 575n10; pronatalism in, 75, 76n8, 135n2, 136n9, 229n10 Freeman, Bishop James E., 408, 409n6 free speech and free press, xix–xx Fujin kôron (Women’s Review) (periodical), 246, 248n12 Fuld, Caroline Bamberger, 488, 489n9, 489n11 Funu Zhazhi (Ladies Journal), 57, 58n1, 58n3, 58n8 Furth, Henriette, 131, 132n13, 132n14, 162n18 Fuss, Madame, 227, 228n6 Gaekwad II, Sayajirao, 276b, 310, 312n7, 356n7 Gale, Linn A. W., 6n6 Gale, Madalena, 6n6 Gamble, Clarence J., 406n1, 407n6, 476–77nn6– 8, 477n13, 492n11, 507, 510n26, 512n4, 516n2,

634  •  index 528nn6–8, 533n4, 533n5, 533n7, 533n8, 549n7, 550n9, 556n4, 556n5, 562n4, 562n9, 595n18; correspondence, 405–6, 516n2, 529n8, 555, 556n2; IPPF and, 501, 514, 516n5, 521n10, 528n5, 531, 532n3, 554–55, 556n1, 556n3, 561, 562n7, 562n8, 562n10, 562n11, 563n16, 565, 591, 598n5; MS on, 514, 527, 528n5, 531–32, 555–56 Gamble, Richard, 528n5, 528n6, 554 Gandhi, Devdas, 298, 302n14, 305, 307n9, 344 Gandhi, Indira, 567 Gandhi, Kanaiya “Kanu,” 299, 303n22 Gandhi, Kasturba Nakanji, 299, 303n23, 329, 344 Gandhi, Mohandas K., 82n6, 90n10, 276, 279, 283n8, 283n9, 288n4, 289n2, 289n3, 295, 297, 301n2, 301n4, 302n8, 302n10, 302n13, 302n15, 303n20, 303n23, 304nn26–28, 304n30, 305, 307n5, 307n6, 329n3, 330n11, 331n1, 344n1, 505; birth control and, 82, 82n4, 83, 83nn1–3, 83n8, 84n5, 87–89, 89n2, 89n3, 91, 92n2, 281n6, 305, 326, 330n12, 331n4, 343, 508n9; correspondence with MS, 82–83, 83n1, 83n3, 84n6, 289, 289n1, 330–31, 343–44, 344n8, 528n5; Mahatma Gandhi (C.F. Andrews, ed.), 287, 288n4, 326, 329n2; MS on, 14, 87–89, 282, 287, 297–301, 305–6, 307n3, 310, 331n3, 518, 609–10, 611n9; visit with, 297–301, 301n6, 302n7, 302n12, 303n17, 307n9, 310, 325–29, 330, 343 Garth, Rev. William Henry, 72, 73n6 Gaunlett,Tsuneko Yamada, 44, 46n3, 46n4 genius, study of, 120–21, 122n9 Genss, Abram, 259, 263, 263n3, 264n11, 270, 273n15, 273n16 German Birth Control Committee, 153, 155n12 Germany, 7–10, 10n1, 11n8, 11n9, 12n15, 12n16, 12n18, 12n19, 13–15, 15n1, 17nn14–16, 18n20, 40n21, 153, 155n18; abortion in, 7–8, 10n5, 11n6, 11n8, 15, 15n2, 16n10, 17n17, 103n19, 103n21, 127, 128n11, 129n16, 138, 156, 417, 430, 438n7, 469n7; Allied occupation, 417, 418n2, 437, 467, 469n7; birth control clinics and leagues, 12n1, 12n11, 16n10, 36, 68, 126n7, 126–27, 128n9, 129n13, 129n15, 129n19, 130, 133n17, 140, 141n9, 141n10, 143n4, 149, 151n16, 158, 160n6, 162, 163n5, 182n3, 182n4, 199n5, 209n15, 212n12, 438n7, 464n16 (see also Beratungstelle für Gerburtenregelung; Bund für Mutterschutz und Sexualreform [BfMS]); birth control in, 13–15,

16n6, 16n7, 16n10, 17n17, 18n19, 68, 103n21, 127, 128n11, 129n13, 129n19, 130, 138, 142, 143n5, 155n12, 155n17, 156, 157n4, 158, 165n23, 177n14, 199, 417, 467; birthrates, 7, 13, 16n6, 36, 39n7, 39n12, 40n20; Catholic church in, 7–8, 11n6, 127, 131, 142, 144n5, 155n15; children in, 7–9, 12n12, 14–15; communism and communists, 10n2, 128n11, 142, 143n4, 143n5, 154n5, 157n2, 157n3, 159, 219n9; Jews in, 241n6; militarism in, 7, 10n4; MS on, 7–10, 13–15, 35–37, 126, 158– 59, 163, 221; physicians in, 13–15, 39n10, 128n4, 128n11, 129n17, 130, 132n8, 160n8 (see also Bund Deutscher Ärztinnen [BDÄ]) ; politics, 7–9, 10n2, 11n6, 11n9, 11n10, 11n11, 12n17, 13, 16n3, 40n18, 129n15, 133n17, 143n3, 143n5, 155n17, 156, 160n6, 162, 241n6; population size, 14, 17n14, 35–36, 39n8, 39n9, 39n12, 39n13, 40n13, 40n16; pronatalism, 17n18, 241n3; socialism and socialists, 12n17, 8, 127, 128n11, 129n19, 142, 143n5, 156, 157n2; sterilization, 131, 133n15, 133n16, 133n17; suppression of birth control, 418n1, 418n2; women in, 7–9, 10n3, 10n4, 13–14, 126– 27, 128n6, 128n7, 130–31, 430. See also Verband der Krankenkassen Berlins (VKB); Verein für Sexualhygiene und Lebensreform (VSÄ) Ghatge, Garabai, 334, 336n7 Giddings, Franklin H., 101n4 Gilberman, Cesar, 583, 586n15 Gini, Corrado, 113n3, 113n4, 121, 123n21, 123n23; MS on, 123n22, 130, 132n10 Ginsburg (Allman) Olga, 242–44, 244n6 Giroud, Gabriel, 76n8, 77, 79n4, 81n26, 213, 214n9 Goddard, Henry H., 109n4 Goh Koh Kee, Sai Poh (Constance) Wee, 507, 510n27, 538n8, 589n10, 596n26 Goldstein, Ferdinand, 77, 79n7 Gonzales, Fermina, 189, 189n2 Gordon, Ishbel (Marchiness of Aberdeen), 334, 335n6 Gräfenberg, Ernst, 154n6, 154n7, 157n9, 177n14, 429–30, 430n1, 430n3, 431n7 Gräfenberg Ring. See birth control methods, intrauterine devices Grant, John Black, 166, 170n3, 170n4, 267, 268n7, 372, 373n4, 374n9 Grantham, Alexander, 503, 504n5

index  •  635 Grantham, Maurine S., 503, 504n5 Gray (Ely), Etta, 419, 420n6 Great Britain, 282, 425n18, 470n12, 472, 472n9; birth control clinics and leagues, 78n2, 110n20, 116, 118n6, 126n7, 151n17, 165n17, 165nn23, 173, 182n3, 182n4, 228, 229n17, 232n1, 468n3 (see also Family Planning Association [British]; National Birth Control Association; Society for the Provision of Birth Control Clinics [SPBCC]; Walworth Women’s Welfare Centre); birth control in, 72n1, 116, 131n1, 164n8, 165n17, 199n1, 220n16, 229n13, 610, 610n4; MS on, 422, 468 Great Depression, 198, 240 Green, Susanna (Sue), 99, 100n1, 101n7, 115n3, 119n13, 126, 127n2, 131, 133n18, 133–35, 135n1, 135n2, 135n4, 135n7, 136n10, 136n11, 138, 143, 144n9, 149, 151n9, 386, 389n2, 389n3 Griessemer, Thomas, 520, 521n7, 521n12, 522n13, 551n20, 571–73, 574n2, 575nn13–17, 576nn19–21, 576n23, 576n24, 577, 577n31, 577n32, 577n35, 577n37, 579n2, 582–83, 585n4, 585n9, 587n23, 589n11, 606n3 Griffith, Edward F., 421, 423n4, 437, 439n11 Grotjahn, Alfred, 127, 129n16, 130, 161n18, 164n14 Grove-White, Mary, 537 Gschwend, Jakob, 181, 183n6 Gunn, Selskar, 108, 110n16, 267, 268n7, 340n5, 372, 374n9 Gurdjieff, George I., 86, 87n9 Guttmacher, Alan, 607n13 Guy, Gerda S., 157n7, 198, 218, 220n15, 222, 223n11, 223n13, 227–28, 228n2, 251n17, 293–95, 296n1, 333n3, 340n12, 346, 362n6, 386, 389n4, 389n7, 398, 432, 434n11, 437, 467n13; correspondence, 231–32, 233n5, 248–50, 295n1, 333n7, 347, 387 Guy, Harry John, 197–98, 223n11, 223n13, 227, 228n2, 233n5, 251n17, 287n10, 331n2, 331–32, 333n1, 333n3, 340n12, 347, 386, 398, 434n11, 437, 467n13 gyneplaques, 263n4, 270, 273n19, 273n20, 318, 321n24, 338, 340n11, 345 Häberlin, Hermann, 181, 182n6 Haberman, Roberto, 30–31, 31n1 Hachisuka, Masaki, 42, 44n22

Hadassah, 242, 244n3 Haddad, Sami Ibrahim, 243, 245n12 Haire, Norman, 77, 78n2, 100, 103n20, 103n21, 151n14, 157n7, 162, 164n9, 164n14, 175, 178n18, 225n4, 432, 434n13 Haiti, 434, 435n3, 435n6, 436n7, 436n11 Haldane, Charlotte, 123n24 Hamburger, Carl, 127, 129n14 Hanihara, Masanao, 25n7 Happiness in Marriage (MS), 99, 101n6, 101n7 Hardy, G. See Giroud, Gabriel Harlem Branch, 159, 160n11, 273n25, 489n11 Harmsen, Hans, 127, 129n18, 130, 132n7, 157n9, 161n18, 164n14, 417 Hartog, Mabel H., 465, 466n7 Hashimoto, Senshun, 450, 451n7 Hata, Chieko, 538 Hawaii, 556n7 Hawarden, Eleanor, 347n1, 354–56, 357n1, 357n2, 358n13, 358n14, 358n16, 386 Haweis, Stephen, 399–400, 401n1 Haynes, John Randolph, 235 Heise, Agnete, 249, 250n7 Hélios, 441, 443n12 Hendricks, George H., 445–46, 446n1 hereditary diseases, 234, 235n3, 544 Heron, George W., 243, 244n8 Heymann, Lida Gustava, 159n1 Higgins, Anna (Nan) E. (sister), 112, 114n11, 411 Higgins, Ginger (niece), 438n2 Higgins, Michael (father), 95n2, 103n22, 114n11 Higgins, Richard (brother), 7 Hildyard, Muriel B., 364, 364n1 Hildyard, Reginald, 360, 361n1, 362–63, 364, 364n1, 364n3 Himes, Norman, 295n3, 388, 390n18, 390n19, 401n7 Hirohito, Emperor, 414, 415n7, 611, 611n3, 611n4 Hirota, Koki, 246, 247n3 Hirsch, Max, 158–59, 160n8, 161n17, 161n18 Hirschfeld, Magnus, 13–15, 16n8, 16n10, 141n5, 225n4, 288n1, 288n2; Men and Women, 287, 288n1; MS on, 14, 140, 287. See also IfS Hitler, Adolf, 241n6, 265, 266n3, 354, 413, 417, 607 Hoagland, Hudson, 542, 542n1, 543n11 Hodann, Max, 143n4, 144n6, 151n16, 157n4, 157n9, 163n6, 210, 212n12, 422, 424n11

636  •  index Hodson, Cora B. S., 115n3, 150, 152n20 Hogben,Lancelot, 229n14, 229n15; Genetic Principles in Medicine and Social Science, 227, 229n14 Holland. See Netherlands Holland Rantos Co., 97n1, 263n10 Holmes, Edward G., 408, 409n6 Holt, Rackham, 372, 374n12, 375, 381–82, 382n2, 383n15 homosexuality, 225n4, 227n12 Honda, Chikao, 497, 498n6 Hong Kong, 64, 276, 385, 503n3, 504n13, 504n14, 555; birth control clinics and leagues, 503, 504n8, 603 (see also Family Planning Association of Hong Kong); MS on, 502–3. See also Chungkuo I-Shih Hsiehhui (CISH) Hoover, Herbert, 101n5, 231n1, 237n1 Horder, Lord Thomas, 109n6, 285, 286n4, 334, 336n12, 347, 347n3, 386, 398, 432, 434n14, 437, 438n9 Houghton, Henry Spencer, 54, 55n8 Houghton, Vera, 463n3, 466n5, 470n10, 489, 492n3, 493–94, 505, 507n2, 511n31, 513n3, 514, 516n5, 529, 536n13, 537, 538n7, 548, 555n1, 561, 573, 577n32, 581n18, 582, 596, 608, 610n6; correspondence, 493–94, 495n12, 527, 554–56, 571; MS on, 461, 513 Howard, Harvey J., 54, 55n8 How-Martyn, Edith, xx, 96n9, 100n1, 101n7, 102n15, 102n17, 102n18, 103nn23–25, 112, 113n3, 115n1, 117, 118n5, 119n8, 119n9, 119n13, 119n15, 131n1, 144n7, 149, 150n2, 151n7, 151n8, 152n23, 157n13, 158, 159n1, 159n2, 161n13, 162, 178n18, 186, 199n1, 208n1, 208n11, 217, 220n18, 228n1, 230n18, 238, 242, 245n13, 251n17, 277–78, 289n1, 308n16, 310, 316, 345, 385, 386n6, 389n4, 402, 434n13, 535n3; and BCIIC, xxiii, 138, 196–98, 199n3, 213, 214n7, 217, 225, 225n1, 227–28, 228n2, 231, 239n4, 331, 333n2, 333n9, 357n3, 357n8, 389n1; correspondence, 98–100, 99, 103–4, 114–18, 122n7, 126–27, 128n2, 130–31, 131, 133n18, 135n5, 149–50, 150n1, 158– 59, 198–99, 206–8, 208n1, 217–18, 221–22, 222n2, 227–28, 228n5, 229n5, 229n16, 230–31, 242–43, 248–50, 305–6, 308n15, 318, 337–39, 386–88, 390n12; MS on, 158, 284, 294, 332; and 7IBCC, 142–44, 144n7, 149, 156, 157n7, 158,

159n1, 159n2, 164n14; speaking tours, 197, 217, 222n1, 242n10, 242–44, 245n16, 274, 278n4, 279n6, 281n6, 286n3, 287n10, 289, 289n3, 290–91, 292n10, 294, 295n3, 296n4, 307n1, 315, 318, 319n5, 321n33, 332, 333nn2–6, 333n8, 333n9, 338, 339n1, 339n2, 340n14, 345, 346n6, 383n6, 389n1, 389n9, 404n2, 534; and World Population Conference, 95, 104n1, 105n12, 105n13, 114–15, 115n2, 117 Hu Shih (Hú Shì), 56, 340n10, 388, 391n21, 391n22, 570 Hugh Moore Fund for International Peace, 521n12, 585n4, 605n1 Human Fertility (journal), 343n10, 424n6 Hungary, 81n22 Hurst, Raphael, 322–23, 324n1 Huse, Penelope B. P., 119–21, 121n1, 121n2, 459, 460n9, 460n10 Huxley, Julian, 104, 105n7, 106, 109n6, 116, 116n3, 123n16, 124, 126n6, 420n9, 566 Huxley, Thomas, 572, 574n8 Hyppolite, Hector, 434, 436n8 Ichikawa, Fusae, 377, 379n2 Ichita, Kobashi, 381, 383n8 Illinois Birth Control League, 22n4, 181n3, 182n3, 235, 244n6 immigration restriction, 4, 73n3 India, 42n1, 90, 91n1, 112, 113n7, 117, 162, 179n1, 198, 276, 282, 289n2, 289n3, 303n16, 303n21, 312n9, 313n1, 457, 498n12, 508n6, 510n25, 570n8, 606n9, 608; birth control clinics and leagues, xxiii, 82n2, 82n3, 182n4, 281n11, 315n3, 318, 321n23, 355–56, 357n8, 358n11, 482, 484n15, 508n10, 509n15, 601n7, 601n10 (see also Family Planning Association of India [FPA-I]; Society for the Study and Promotion of Family Hygiene [SSPFH]); birth control in, 68, 81–82, 82n3, 82n6, 87–88, 274–76, 291, 304n32, 308, 309n3, 313, 314n6, 316–17, 320n20, 321n27, 456, 467, 469n4, 469n8, 474n8, 477n9, 480n7, 483n12, 500, 520n4, 536n9, 547, 570n9, 600, 601n6, 601n8, 602n10, 603; birth rates, 286n9, 292n9; British in, 279n6, 279n7, 283n3, 283n4, 296n13; caste system, 302n13; Catholics in, 316–17, 319n6, 334, 462; children in, 290–91, 292n8; independence, 279n6, 283n3, 283n8,

index  •  637 283n9, 296n12, 296n13, 469n4 (see also Indian National Congress Party); marriage, 308, 309n2, 313, 313n3; MS and, 92, 92n3, 119–20, 275, 313n2, 500; MS on, 275–77, 286n9, 289–90, 293, 295, 310–11, 316–19, 334, 355, 458, 473, 478, 518, 555, 556n2; population of, 275, 327, 330n7, 570n8; press, 325, 511n31; women in, 274–75, 277, 287–88, 288n6, 288n7, 291, 293, 317, 325–27, 329n3, 330n8, 334, 335n4, 462, 467 Indian National Congress Party (INCP), 283n3, 284n12, 296n13, 326, 329n5 infanticide, 55n6, 172n27, 445 infertility and sterility, 506, 510n23, 510n24 Ingersoll, Marion, 573, 576n24, 576n37 Inge, Dean William Ralph, 72, 74n9 Ingle, J. Forrest, 418, 418n3 Institute für Sexualwissenschaft (IfS), 13–14, 16–17nn8–11, 18, 19n4, 161n16, 182n3, 212n12, 288n3 International Committee on Planned Parenthood (ICPP), 411–12, 422, 424n13, 424n16, 439–40, 442n5, 442n9, 448n6, 448n7, 455–56, 466n4, 468n2, 469n5, 470, 470n10, 472n2, 472n5, 472n6, 473n2, 473n23, 479, 480, 491n10, 493, 494n3, 499, 507, 508n4, 511n32, 516n4, 576n24, 608; American Committee, 447, 448n1, 465, 466n11, 470, 484n17, 491, 548, 551n19; British Committee, 464, 467, 470, 470n10, 479n6; Dutch delegates, 470–72, 472n5, 493–94, 494n1, 494n2; finances, 462, 464n14, 465, 468n1, 469n6, 470n11, 484n17, 491n10, 556n1; German delegates, 461, 469n5; meetings, 461, 464, 467, 493–94, 495n8; MS on, 440–41, 448n5, 456, 464–65, 582; officers and staff, 462, 463n2, 463n3, 463n6, 465, 471, 472n1, 472n3; Swedish delegates, 462, 463n5, 470, 472. See also Around the World News of Population and Birth Control Internationale Gesellschaft für Sexsualforschung (INGESE), 102n19, 161n16 International Federation of Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Leagues (IFNMBCL), 67, 74–75, 76n3, 77–78, 79n11, 81n21, 94, 95n1, 98, 138, 144, 145n2, 145n3, 150 internationalism, xxi, 1–2, 66, 138 International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), xxi, 471–72, 472n2, 500, 507, 508n4,

511n32, 511–12, 514–15, 516n5, 521n9, 528n3, 531, 540n3, 550n15, 554, 564–65, 576n23, 579, 580n11, 580n12; American Committee, 530, 531n7, 571, 574n4, 576n22; British Committee, 598n6; Constitution, 500, 519–20, 520n2, 521nn5–7, 521–22nn10–12, 522n15, 522n16, 523n6, 524, 525n6, 529n12, 537, 572, 576n20, 576n21, 584, 586n16, 586n17, 586n19, 593n5, 594n16; Executive Committee, 501, 547–48, 551n18, 551n22, 554, 573, 586n12, 586n14, 587, 599n12; finances, 491, 492n11, 501, 526, 530, 548, 552n27, 561, 563n12, 572, 581n18, 582, 587n24, 590–91, 592n1, 593n10, 594n12; Governing Body and officers, 501, 507, 512n4, 516n6, 519–20, 521n9, 521n10, 524, 525n6, 548, 552n31, 561, 562n7, 564–65, 573, 575n17, 576n19, 583, 587–88, 589n9, 589n10, 592, 595n20, 595nn23–25, 596, 598n3, 599n12; members and membership, 511n33, 529, 537, 538n1, 540n3, 540n4, 545n3, 559n5, 580n12, 586n19; MS and, 500, 507, 548, 552n31, 563n12, 564, 571, 587n25, 589n4, 589n6, 589n9, 594n13, 595n24, 599; MS on, 491, 501, 513, 526–27, 530, 539, 548, 561, 563n13, 565, 580, 582–83, 586n11, 588–91, 593n5, 596–97, 598n5, 599; regions, 522n14, 524n4, 537, 538n7, 549n1, 549n3, 549n7, 551n23, 554, 583–83, 585n5, 585n20, 586n14, 586n16, 586n21, 587n22, 587–88, 589n10; U.S. Committee (USCIPPF), 590–91, 593n3, 593n6, 594n12. See also International Committee on Planned Parenthood (ICPP) International Planned Parenthood Federation— Europe, Near East, and Africa (IPPF-ENEAR), 584, 586n14, 586n20, 587n22, 587–88, 589n10 International Planned Parenthood Federation— Far East and Australia Region (IPPF-FEAR), 586n20, 586n21, 589n10 International Planned Parenthood Federation— Indian Ocean Region (IPPF-IOR), 586n20, 587n24, 589n10 International Planned Parenthood Federation— Western Hemisphere Region (IPPF-WHR), 501, 524, 527, 527n4, 528n4, 529n11, 535, 536n11, 548, 551n25, 564, 571, 582–84, 585n4, 585n5, 585n8, 589n10, 590–91, 592n1, 593n3, 594n11, 594n12, 606n3; PPFA and, 526, 528n1, 528n4, 551n20, 552n27, 558n29, 575n17, 583, 585n9

638  •  index International Sex Education Conference (ISEC) (Stockholm, 1946), 411, 419, 421, 421n11, 423n3, 423n5, 424nn12–14, 433n9; MS on, 421n11, 421–22 International Union for the Scientific Investigation of Population Problems (IUSIPP), 121, 123n19, 137, 438n8, 463n6, 501, 550n15 International Woman Suffrage Alliance (ISWA), 100, 209n16 IPPF. See International Planned Parenthood Federation Ireland, birth rates, 287n9 Ishimoto (Katō), Shidzue, xxi, 3–4, 26–27, 28n4, 29n10, 32n9, 41–42, 44, 46n4, 47, 48n3, 62n3, 69, 138, 184, 186n1, 186n3, 186n6, 187n7, 205n1, 206n9, 247n1, 247n2, 353, 372, 377–79, 378n1, 380n9, 380n10, 382, 382n5, 395n5, 395n6, 396n20, 396n22, 398, 413–15, 416n1, 416n2, 427n2, 427n3, 428, 429n4, 429n7, 444n2, 446n4, 450n1, 474n7, 496, 498n4, 509n17, 529, 538n5, 545n4, 553, 562n2, 562n4, 598n5, 602, 611n3; arrest of, 391–94, 394n2, 395n8, 395n9, 395n10, 395n13, 395n14, 395n111, 396n15, 396n16, 396n21, 415, 427n4, 538n4; as politician, 416n2, 420n4, 425–26, 427n4, 427n6, 444n1, 497n1, 537, 538n3, 538n6; birth control and, 70n1, 70n2, 70n6, 71n9, 78, 81n23, 205n2, 246, 247n6, 377, 382, 383n12, 393, 396n18, 396n19, 399n3, 426, 426n1, 427n5, 427n6, 427n8, 428, 428n1, 456, 537, 538nn2–4, 538n7, 554n4, 561, 562n9; correspondence with MS, 69–70, 184–88, 186n4, 187n9, 188n1, 195n2, 195–96, 204–5, 205n2, 246–47, 391–94, 414n1, 415–16, 425–26, 428, 443–44, 449–50, 453n4; MS on, 28n6, 497n2, 506, 537, 611 Ishimoto, Arata, 30n18, 391, 394n2, 415, 416n3, 416n4, 426, 427n12, 428 Ishimoto, Baron Keikichi, 27, 28n6, 34, 41, 45, 46n8, 48n7, 69, 70, 71n12, 186n1, 537, 538n5 Ishimoto, Tamio, 30n18, 415, 416n3, 416n4, 426, 428, 429n3 Ismail, Mirza (Dewan of Mysore), 354–55, 357n4, 357n5 isolationism, 354 Italy, 146–47, 148n2, 148n10, 222n4, 371nn17–19, 551n16; birth control in, 113n3, 368, 371n20, 510n22; birth rates, 146, 148n7, 241n5, 286n9,

368, 371n16; MS on, 147, 240, 368–69, 378; pronatalism in, 113n3, 146, 148n7, 240, 241n5, 368, 371n15, 378; women in, 146, 148n3, 368–69 Iyer, Venkataraman, 322–23, 324n1, 324n2, 325n4, 325n5 Jackson, Lawrence Nelson, 597, 599n11 Jackson, Margaret C. N., 489, 491n3, 497, 506, 510n23, 510n24, 597, 599n11 Jacobs, Aletta, xx, 77, 79n5, 180, 182n2, 574n6 Jamaica, 403, 404n4, 533–34, 585n4; birth control in, 402–3, 404n4, 534, 535n2, 535n4, 536n13 Jamaican Family Planning Association (JFPL), 533, 535n1, 535n3, 535n4 Jamvold, Eleanor, 251n15 Japan, 3, 26–28, 32, 43, 48n6, 48–49, 69, 380n11, 391, 414n5, 414n6, 446n8, 489n5, 500, 537, 541, 543n3, 545n6, 570n8, 608; abortion in, 205, 205n5, 206n7, 206n8, 247n2, 446n3, 446n7, 456, 469n4, 496–97, 498nn7–9, 509n17, 525, 526n6, 541n8, 545n9, 603n3; ban on MS entry, xx, 20–21, 22n2, 22n6, 23, 26–27, 28n2, 29n9, 51–52, 429n7, 445, 449, 452n2, 452–53, 453n2, 473, 474n6; birth control clinics and leagues, 3, 41, 69–70, 154n9, 182n4, 185, 186n3, 186n5, 186n6, 205, 246, 248n9, 377, 379n1, 382, 420n4, 450, 529, 530n1, 602, 603n4 (see also Nihon Kazoku Keikaku Kyōkai [NKKK]; Nihon Sanji Chôsetsu Fujin Dômei [NSCFD]; Nihon Sanji Renmei Chôsetsu [NSCR]); birth control in, 41, 46n10, 47, 69, 70n6, 71n10, 138, 153, 154n9, 177n14, 184–85, 186n3, 186n4, 186n7, 206n6, 246, 289n9, 383n8, 392–93, 413, 414n3, 425, 426n1, 427n7, 428, 443–44, 444n3, 449, 451, 456, 469n4, 478, 489n6, 496, 506, 509n17, 539, 540n7, 541n9, 541–42, 546, 550n8, 550n10, 554n4, 560n12, 570n9, 600, 603n3; birth rates, 286n9, 378, 380n14, 420, 468, 470n14, 496, 539, 545n3, 602n15; censorship, 22n9, 32–33, 34, 69, 247n2; and China, 52n2, 62n4, 352, 359 (see also Sino-Japanese war, 1937); expansionism, 206n10, 207, 209n13, 247n2, 554n6; family size, 497, 498n10, 554n5; government, 20, 375, 385, 428; militarism, 353, 425, 426n3; MS on, 4, 13n11, 20, 23–24, 28, 32–34, 37, 41–42, 43n10, 47–48, 58n3, 207, 353, 378–79, 385, 411, 413–14, 445, 473, 496–97, 503, 504n12, 518, 519n4, 544,

index  •  639 547, 553, 558, 602, 611; occupation of, 411, 413, 420n7, 427n4, 446, 449, 450n3, 451, 474n7; politics in, 3, 22, 205, 246, 247n3, 247n4, 353, 391, 394n3, 545n5; population control, 154n9; population size, 4, 40n22, 378, 414, 414n4, 419–20, 446n7, 488, 489n4, 496, 497n3, 570n7; press and publicity, 22n8, 22n9, 23, 26–27, 28n7, 29n9, 29n16, 32, 33n2, 69–70, 186n2, 186n7, 205, 246, 377, 380, 394, 456, 496, 497n4, 541 (see also Mainichi Shimbun); pronatalism, 184, 353; women in, 27, 29n12, 34, 37, 43n9, 43n11, 43n16, 45, 47, 60, 61, 62n3, 185, 413, 419, 420n1, 429n4; workers in, 69–70, 70n5. See also SinoJapanese War; Tokyo Jaurès, Jean, xx Jensen, Thit, 78, 81n24, 249, 250n4 Jewett, Elizabeth R., 48, 48n6 Jews and Judaism, 243n2, 354; and birth control, 242, 244n5 Johnson, Albin E. “Jack,” 519, 520n3 Johnson, Louis A., 452, 454n2 Johnson, Mary Compton, 215n3 Johnson, Olive M., 199, 199n6, 222, 223n14, 228, 464n13 Johnson (Little), Beatrice W., 99, 102n10 Jones, Eleanor Dwight, 109n10, 150, 152n20, 159, 161n12 Joseph Robson B. Branch, 193n5 Journal of Contraception (journal), 341, 343n10, 358n14, 401n2. See also Human Fertility Kaizō (Reconstruction), 3, 20, 22n7, 25n3, 27, 33–34, 42, 43n13, 413, 416 Kaji, Tokijiro, 41, 42n3, 42n4, 43n6 Kaminsky, Grigor, 259, 269, 272n12 Kanda, Naibu, 42, 44n20 Kanno, Takeshi, 3 Kaprio, Leo, 423n6 Karpisková, Betty, 226n9 Karve, Raghunath D., 82, 82n2, 82n4, 82n5, 83n7, 88, 89nn3–5 Kasuba, Ryūen, 541, 543n3 Katō, Baron Tomasaburö, 25n7 Katō, Kanjū, 205n1, 391–92, 394n4, 395n6, 395n7, 395n11, 416, 416n1, 417n10, 427n4, 427n5 Katō, Shidzue. See Ishimoto (Katō), Shidzue Katō, Takiko, 415, 416n3, 426, 428

Kaufman, Alvin, 281n9, 286n3, 331–32, 333n2, 333n3, 338 Kaur, Amrit, 298–301, 301n5, 302n8, 305–6, 310, 311n3, 474n8, 531, 533n4 Kawamura, Tetsutarō, 41, 43n8 Kehl, Renato, 201, 204n25 Keller, Helen, 488, 489n10, 511–12, 512n1, 512n5 Kennedy, Anne, 14n15, 23–24, 25n1, 53, 54n1, 54n2, 55nn10–12, 70, 71n9, 77, 79n12, 99, 102n11, 108, 109n10, 110n13, 112, 113n3, 114, 115n3, 119–20, 121n2, 122n10, 123n17, 131, 133n20, 434–35, 436n1, 436n8 Kerr, Robert, 420n9, 433n8 Keynes, John Maynard, 66, 73n4, 106, 106n1, 107n4, 109n6, 144–45, 145n6, 149, 151n17 Key, Ellen, 200–201, 204n22, 379 Khandratta, 290, 292n7 Khandvala, Kapila, 306, 308n15 Khosla, R. N., 524n4, 589n10 Kim, Tong-Sōng, 49, 50n2 King, Gordon, 502, 503n1, 507, 510n27 King, Henry O., 453, 454n8 King, Isabella Greenway, 453, 454n8 King Edward Memorial Hospital (KEMH), 290– 91, 292n2, 293, 296n8 Kingsbury, John Adams, 235, 557–59, 559n1, 559n2, 560n14 Kisch,Enoch, xx Kishi, Nobusuke, 602 Kitaoka, Juitsu, 562n4 Kitzweger, Emma Hackins, 149, 150n2, 159, 161n15, 207 Knathbull-Hugesson, Hughe, 382, 384n17, 384n18 Knights of Columbus, 30, 31n3 Knopf, S. Adolpus, 235 Knowlton, Charles, 572, 575n8; Fruits of Philosophy, 575 Knud-Hansen, Knud, 405, 407n7 Kocerthaler, Ernesto, 183, 184n4 Kohashi, Miyoke, 27, 29n12, 47, 48n1 Kollontai, Aleksandra, 201, 204n24, 247, 248n13 Kollwitz, Käthe, 126, 128n5, 140, 141n11 Konoye (Konoe), Fumimaro, 375, 376n1 Kopp, Marie, 157n6; Birth Control In Practice (Kopp), 173, 176n3 Korea, 49, 50n2, 50n3, 50n6, 52; MS on, 49–50, 50n4, 56

640  •  index Koya, Yoshio, 496, 498n5, 506, 509n17, 529, 541, 543n4, 561, 562n4, 562n9, 598n5 Krafft-Ebing, Richard von, xx Krishnavarma, Shyamaji, xx Krupskaya (Lenin), Nadezhda, 348, 350n3 Kubo, Tokutaro, 381, 382n5 Kumarappa, Joseph C., 298, 302n11 Kupperman, Herbert S., 557n8, 559n6 Kurz, Alice, 572, 576n14, 577n30 Lader, Lawrence, 522–23, 523n1 Lafitte (Cyon), Françoise, 334, 336n11, 433n8 Lange, Helene, 126, 128n6, 128n7 Lankaster, Alice Grace, 282, 283n6 Lankester, Arthur, 282, 283n6 Lanval, Marc, 441, 443n11, 443n12 Larsen, Nils, 557n12 Lasker, Albert, 408, 408n1, 409n10, 434, 434n2, 464n14, 552 Lasker, Mary Reinhardt, 407–8, 408n1, 409n10, 434–35, 435n1, 435n2, 452, 453n3, 552–53, 554n3, 561, 602–3, 604n7 Lasker Awards, 434, 436n14 Lasker Foundation, 435n2, 491n10, 552, 553n1 Laski, Frida, 218, 220n16, 227, 228n2, 233n5, 489 Lathrop, Julia, 101n4 Latin America, 5–6, 6n1 Latz, Leo J., 241n8; The Rhythm, 240, 241n7, 241n9, 401n4 Laughlin, Harry H., 71, 73n3; Eugenical Sterilization in the United States, 71 Lawton, Mary, 252, 253n10 League of Nations, xix, 37, 67, 75, 76n3, 77, 84, 84–85nn2–3, 85n7, 94, 96n6, 121, 123n14, 123n15, 137, 232n3, 384; and birth control, 86, 86n1, 86n3, 87n6; Catholics in, 86, 86n1, 231, 231n5 Lebedeva, Vera, 263n3, 348, 351n5 Lederer, Ilse, 461–62, 464n16, 469n6 Lee, S. W., 345, 345, 346n6 Leigh, John Cecil Gerard, 108, 111n22 Lenin, Vladimir, 217, 218n1, 220n13, 348, 607 Leunbach, J. H., 157n8, 249, 250n3 Levine, Lena, 421–22, 423n5, 424n10, 437, 438n4, 439n11, 506, 509n21, 519, 520n1, 561, 562n8, 572–73, 575n16, 589n11 Levine (Bukzin), Sara, 388, 390n13

Levinson (Warner), Marie Pichel, 228, 229n17, 271, 273n25 Levy, Abraham J., 242, 244n1 Levy-Lenz, Ludwig, 157n9 Library of Congress, 475, 476n5 Liebnicht, Karl, 11n9, 16n3 Lifshiz, Anna, 24, 25n4, 54, 55n12, 82, 86, 87n10, 120–21, 122n5, 125, 161, 163n3 Lightbourne, Hyacinth, 534, 536n7 Lindsay, Benjamin Barr, 179, 179n3, 203n18; Companionate Marriage (1927), 179, 179n3, 184n1, 201, 293n18 Little Clarence Cook, 73n4, 79n11, 81n28, 94–95, 95n1, 95n3, 99, 101n9, 102n17, 103–4, 104n2, 105n3, 105n8, 107, 109n4, 115n3, 137, 145n3; correspondence, 107, 110n11; MS on, 105n5, 120, 122n13 Livi, Livio, 121, 123n23 Lorimer, Frank, 437, 438n8, 442n7, 448n7, 462, 463n6 Loth, David, 452, 453n2, 453n4 love, MS on, 327 Lowe, Chuan-Hua, 191–92, 193n5, 193n7, 194n11, 372–73, 374n5 Luxemburg, Rosa, 11n9, 16n3; MS on, 8 Lycie Świadome (Conscious Life), 210, 212n11, 212n15, 215 MacArthur, Douglas A., 413–14, 414, 420n4, 444, 444n3, 447n8, 449, 450n2, 451–52, 456, 473, 474n6 Macauley, Mary, 221, 222n5, 431–32, 432n1, 464n15 Madjuginskii, Alexander, 259–60, 260n1, 261n9, 263n3, 272n14 Maharashi, Ramana. See Iyer, Venkataraman Mahoney, Florence, 452, 452–53, 453n1, 454n7, 454n10, 454n11 Mainichi Shimbun, 474n7, 497, 498n6, 537, 543n5, 602 Majima, Kan, 184–85, 186n4, 186n5, 377, 379n2, 456, 496, 509n17, 529, 529–30, 530n1, 530n2 Mallet, Bernard, 106n3, 106–7, 109n6, 114, 119n15, 122n12, 123n15, 135n2, 137; MS on, 106n3, 120 Malthus, Robert, 10n8, 572 Malthusian, The (journal), 19n9, 462, 464n13, 572, 575n10

index  •  641 Malthusianism, 8, 11n8, 35, 38n2, 75, 145, 145n4, 149; birth control and, xxii, 1, 2, 91 Malthusian League (British), xx, 11n8, 19n7, 20n10, 75, 76n4, 79n3, 81n20, 106n1, 110n20, 113n7, 118n7, 145n4, 151n12 Manchuria, 49, 51, 52, 60, 154n1, 205, 206n10, 207, 209n13, 247n5 Mangrulkar, Yadao R., 300, 304n31, 306 Marañón, Gregorio, 200–201, 202n2 Margaret Sanger Research Bureau (MSRB). See Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau; Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau (BCCRB) Marion, Kitty, 55, 55n10 marriage, 327–28, 330n10, 330n11; birth control and, 327 marriage counseling, 424n10, 439n11 Marriage Guidance Council (MGC), 423n3, 423n4 Marriage Hygiene (journal), 293n2, 295n3, 356, 358n14, 388, 389n8, 390–91nn17–19 Martin, (Alice) Marjorie Spain, 114, 115n3, 119, 121n3, 158, 160n9, 165n20, 172, 176n1, 198, 199n1, 218, 227, 228n4, 228n5, 232, 232n3, 233n5 Martin, Anna, 116, 118n6 Martin, Percival William, 227, 228n5 Martyn, George Herbert, 100, 103n24, 207, 208n8, 222, 316, 319n5, 402n2 marxism and marxists, 36, 40n18 Masaryk, Tomás, 85, 86n2 Mashima, Chimo, 525, 526n6 Matrix (periodical), 243, 245n18 Matsuba, Michio, 543n7 Maxwell, J. Preston, 338, 340n9 McCormick, Katharine, 86, 86n5, 460n7, 468n1, 469n6, 543n12, 546, 549n4, 553, 557n9, 574, 605, 606n8; correspondence, 467–68, 541–42, 542n1, 543n8, 578 McNamee, Dorothy, 464n15, 467n13, 519, 520n3, 602 Megaw, John, 282, 283n9 Mehta, Amolak R., 481–82, 483n8, 483n9 Mehta, Jivraj J., 290–91, 292n3, 293, 344, 344n9 Mehta, Ved, 481, 483n9 Meinard, Louis, 99, 100n1 Menon, Lakshmi, 317, 320n15, 321n16 Mexico, 3, 5–6, 6n8, 30, 31n3, 235n3, 581n16, 583; birth control clinics and leagues, 6n6, 32n7,

235n3, 586n10; birth control in, 5–6, 6n8, 30– 31, 31n3, 80n19, 233, 341, 342n5, 342n8; Catholic church in, 6, 6n8, 30, 342n5; pronatalism, 342n5, 581n16; socialism in, 6n8, 7n9, 30, 31n3; Vera Cruz, 234–35, 235n2, 235n3, 235n4; women in, 6, 6n8, 7n9, 32n8 Meyer, Adolf, 73n4, 94–95, 95n3, 95n4, 95n5, 101n4, 234–35, 235n1, 235n5 Middle East, 138, 242, 471, 472n6. See also Palestine (Mandate) Middle Western States Birth Control Conference (Chicago, 1923), 66 midwives and midwifery, 242–43, 242–43, 244n3, 244n7, 244n8, 249, 250n8, 364, 498n9, 525, 526n6, 539, 540n7, 558, 560n12, 600, 602 Milbank Memorial Fund, 170n6, 472n8, 559n1 Miller, Lucy Murray, 49, 50n9 Miller, Ransford S., 49, 50n7 missionaries, 24, 49, 50n5, 54, 55n7, 61, 63n17, 162, 164n13, 193n7, 396 Mitchell, Wesley C., 101n4 Mitsui, Reiko, 382, 383n13 Miyakawa, Yoneji, 381, 383n9 Mohr, Otto Louis, 124, 124–25, 126n6, 251n15 Mohr, Tove, 249, 251n15 Mo-Jo, Kuo (Guo Mòruò), 557, 557–59, 559n1, 560n14 Moll, Albert, 100, 102n19, 159, 161n16, 175, 178n18 Møller, Katti Anker, 124, 125n2, 251n15 Monforte, Juan, 183, 184n1 Moore, Hazel Black, 198, 199n4, 206, 208n2, 419, 420n3 Moore, Hugh, 520, 521n12, 529n12, 576n20, 582– 83, 585n4, 604–5, 605n1, 606nn3–5, 607n13 Moore, Leonard, 243, 245n11 Moore, Louisa W., 604, 606n4 Morain, Lloyd, 589n8, 597, 599n13 Morain, Mary, 589n8, 599n13 More, Adelyn: Uncontrolled Breeding, 38n3, 39n7, 40n14, 40n15 Morrow, Elizabeth Cutter, 235 mortality rates, 170n6, 180n4, 341, 410, 414n6, 536n8 mortality rates, infant, 342n6, 534; in China, 170n6, 172n27; in France, 75; in Hong Kong, 504n13; in India, 180n4, 292n9; in Japan, 489n4, 497

642  •  index motherhood, 146, 148n4, 217, 366–67 Motherhood in Bondage (MS), 120, 122n9, 126, 128n5, 140, 141n11, 154, 156n23, 189, 190n3, 190n10, 212n16, 213, 214n6, 216, 429 Mott, John R., 24, 25n11 Mott, Leila White, 24, 25n11 MSRB. See Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau Mudd, Stuart, 476, 477n13 Mukherjee, Charulata, 295, 296n15, 333n5 Mumbai. See Bombay Muñoz, Manuel Aguilar, 200, 202n8 Mussolini, Benito, 112, 113n4, 123n22, 146–47, 148n1, 148n7, 148n10, 241n5, 365, 369n1, 369n4, 370n12; MS on, 146–47, 240, 365–69 Myers, George, 486n6 Myers, Louise Chase, 485, 486n6 My Fight for Birth Control (MS), 139, 159, 161n14, 203n16, 206, 208n11, 211, 213, 214n6 Naeser, Johanne, 249, 250n6 Naeser, Vincent, 249, 250n5, 250n10 Naidu, Sarojini Chattopadhyaya, 276, 305, 307n6 Napoleon, 146, 148n1, 148n5 Nariman, Khurshed F., 291, 293n18, 294–95, 296n10 National Birth Control Association (NBCA), 285n2, 286n4, 331, 398, 399n1, 399n2, 403, 404n5. See also Family Planning Association (British) (FPA) National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control (NCFLBC), 139, 196–98, 199n4, 208n2, 208n4, 220n18, 222n9, 223n12, 231, 231n2, 235n1, 237n4, 242n11, 245n17, 388, 390n10, 391n20 National Council of Women (India), 334, 336n7, 336n9 National Peking University, 54, 54n5, 56, 568, 571n16. See Guóli Beijing Dàxué National Socialism. See Nazis and Nazism National Woman’s Party, 102n16, 120, 122n11, 369n4 Nazis and Nazism, xxiv, 241n3, 241n6, 288n3, 353; MS on, xxiv, 240, 354 Nederlandse Vereniging Seksuele Hervorming (NVSH), 469n3, 493, 494n1, 494n2, 495n10, 495n12

Negro Project, 407, 489n11 Nehru, Braj Kumar, 482, 483n10, 483n11 Nehru, Fori (Shobha Friedmann), 482, 483n10, 484n15 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 283n3, 283n4, 283n8, 283n10, 284n11, 329n5, 456, 467, 469n8, 473, 473n1, 473n2, 474n8, 487n3, 505, 507, 508n5, 508n6, 510n30, 511, 512n3, 570n9, 600, 601n4, 601n5, 601n8; MS on, 282–83, 518 Nehru, Kamala, 282, 283n3 Nehru, Rameshwari, 298–301, 301n5, 302n9, 302n13, 305n34, 305–6, 310, 311n3 Nelson, Warren O., 571, 574n3, 590, 593n7 neo-Malthusianism, xxii, 11n8, 11n9, 19n5, 35, 65, 74–75, 76n5, 98, 138, 144, 145n7, 148n8, 149, 151n12, 572 Netherlands; abortion in, 85n6; birth control clinics and leagues, 16n6, 16n10, 181, 509n14 (see also Nederlandse Vereniging Seksuele Hervorming); birth control in, 16n10, 80n19, 85n6. See also Nieuw-Malthusiaanich Bond (NMB) New Deal, 237n1 Newfield, Maurice, 228n2, 232, 232n2, 286n6, 295, 296n14, 346–47, 347n1, 386, 432, 434n12, 438n4, 608; Parenthood: By Design or Accident (Fielding), 232, 232n2, 295, 296n16, 318, 321n28 New Generation (journal), 159, 161n13, 420n9, 575n10. See also Malthusian, The New Generation League. See Malthusian League (British) New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM), 72, 73n4, 73n6, 237n4 New York Call (periodical), 98n6 New York Public Library, 475, 476n5 Nieuw-Malthusiaaniche Bond (NMB), xx, 16n10, 18, 19n3, 19n5, 19n6, 79n5, 85n6, 145n5, 469n3, 575n10 Nihon Kazoku Keikaku Kyōkai (NKKK) (Japan Family Planning Federation), 529, 530n1, 537–39, 538n3, 538n8, 540n5, 543n7, 545n3, 558, 595n19, 602 Nihon Sanji Chôsetsu Fujin Dômei (NSCFD), 246, 247n6, 248n8, 248n10 Nihon Sanji Chôsetsu Renmei (NSCR) (Birth Control League of Japan), 28n4, 42n3, 184,

index  •  643 186n3, 194–95, 195n1, 204–5, 205n2, 205n5, 206n9, 246, 446n4, 526n6, 530n1, 540n5, 540n7 Nihon Sanji Chôsetsu Kenkyukai (NSCK) (Japan Birth Control Society), 42n3, 46n8, 70n1, 70n2, 71n12, 81n23, 186n5 Nishio, T., 42, 44n19 Nixon, Margaret, 243, 244n8 Nobel Prizes, 251, 252n3, 253n7 Nohowel, Margaret Dressler, 163, 165n22 Norman, Dorothy, 473, 474n3 North Kensington Women’s Welfare Clinic, 182n3, 462n3 Norton, Elliott S., 84, 84n2, 85, 86n2 Norway, 248–49, 251n14; birth control clinics and leagues, 124, 125n2, 126n5, 249–50; birth control in, 125n1, 126n4; Modrehygienekontovet (MHK), 248, 251n15, 251n16, 423n3 Notestein, Frank, 485, 485n3 nurses, 177n9, 191, 192n2, 193n4, 295, 342n3, 496, 539, 540n7, 560n12, 600 Nye, Archibald E., 465, 466n8 Nymalthusianka Sälkskapet (Swedish Neo-Malthusian Society), 81n25 Odling, Katherine “Bunny,” 311n6 Ogawa, Ryūshiro, 205, 206n8 Ogburn, William Fielding, 73n4, 108, 110n18, 235, 485, 486n3 Oka, Ryôichi, 450, 451n8 Okhrana Materinstva I Mladenchestva (OMM), 217, 219n4, 219n5, 254, 255n7, 256n10, 256n11, 257n19, 261, 263, 263n1, 272n11, 348–50, 351n5 Olivares, Adalberto Tejeda, 234, 235n4 Olson, Harry, 109n4 Ontario Birth Control League, 81n27 Orage, Alfred, 86, 87n9 Ortho Research Foundation, 457, 459n1, 459n6 Osborn, Frederick H., 578, 579n2, 579n3, 580nn4–6 Osborn, Henry Fairfield, 101n5 Osborn, (Henry) Fairfield, Jr., 571, 573, 574n3, 577n34 Otis, Margaret, 493, 494n3, 495n6 Ottesen-Jensen, Elise, xxi, 157n8, 411, 421, 423n7, 423n8, 424n12, 437, 448n7, 461, 463n5, 506–7, 509n20, 509n21, 512n4, 514, 516n5,

517n11, 522n14, 524, 524n2, 524n4, 525, 526n4, 550n15, 562n2, 562n11, 563n12, 564, 589n10, 594n15, 598n5, 598nn7–9, 599; MS on, 421–22, 423n9, 462, 515, 561, 563n12, 597. See also Riksförbundet för Sexuell Upplysning (RFSU) overpopulation, 73n8, 77, 84n5, 137, 601n8, 606n5; MS on, 1, 411–12; and war, xxiv, 22, 34–38, 40n15, 147, 354 Owens, Herbert T., 49, 50n1 Ozawa, Tatsuo, 541, 542n2, 543n3, 543n6 Paciencia, Josefa, 189, 190n2 pacifism and pacifists, 354 Packard, Arthur W., 373, 373n4, 375n18, 390n19 Page, Kirby, 305, 307n5 Painter, Muriel “Budge,” 508n10 Pakistan, 581n19. See also Family Planning Association of East Pakstan; Family Planning Association of Pakistan Palestine (Mandate), 242–44, 244n5, 245n2, 354; birth control in, 242–43, 244n3 Palmer, Eileen, 105n3, 118, 159, 305–6, 307n2, 308n16, 310, 312n11, 319n5 Pan, Quentin (Pan Guangdan), 193n5 Pandit, Vijaya Lakshmi, 282, 284n11, 473, 473n3, 518, 519n2 Parker, Joanne, 372, 374n13, 375, 381–82 Parker, Robert Allerton, 476n1, 482, 483n4 Parker, Valeria Hopkins, 176, 178n27 Paschal, Marian, 279–80, 280n1 passports and visas, 42 Pathfinder Fund, 595n18 Paul, Alice, 120, 122n11 Pazzini, Andrew J., 519, 520n3 Pearl, Raymond, 67, 72, 73n4, 73n5, 74, 94, 95nn3–5, 96n8, 98–99, 101n3, 101n4, 104, 104n2, 107, 109n4, 109n5, 115n3, 119n15, 122n13, 123n24, 137; MS on, 107, 120, 122n13 Pearse, Mary Agnes, 48, 48n6 Pedreño, Javier Morata, 200–201, 202n7, 203n9 Peiping fu ying pao cheng (PFYPCH), 169n2, 190n8, 192n2, 192n3, 360n5 Peking (Beijing), 51n1, 51n3, 51–53, 56, 60, 165– 66, 170n6, 189, 267; MS on, 51–52, 338 Peking Committee on Maternal Health (PCMH), 166, 169n2

644  •  index Peking University Medical College (PUMC), 55n8, 56, 58n3, 166, 169n2, 170n4, 171n15, 268n8, 340n5, 374n9 Pendell, Elmer, 485, 486n7 Pengelley, Charles E., 402–3, 404n1 Pennsylvania Birth Control Federation, 150n4 People’s Republic of China. See China Pesce, Vito, 506, 510n22 Peters, Dewitt, 436n8, 436n9 Pethick-Lawrence, Emmeline, 282, 283n7 Philippines, 188–89, 189n1, 189n2, 338 Phillips, Anna Jane (Shuman), 284, 290, 292n5, 297, 300, 302n12, 304n25, 305n34, 306, 308n16, 310, 316, 319n4, 325 physicians, birth control and, 17n18, 19n19, 47, 66, 71, 74–75, 155n14, 155n15, 173–74, 176n8, 177n11, 181, 182n5, 191, 210, 355, 475–76, 583 Pillay, A. P., 289, 290, 291n2, 293, 295n2, 295n3, 297n17, 309n3, 314, 315n3, 321n25, 356, 358n11, 387–88, 389n8, 390nn17–19, 494n1, 510n29 Pillsbury, Eleanor, 524, 524n4, 526–27, 529n11, 533, 535, 536n13, 551n20, 551n22, 552n26, 552nn28–30, 572, 575n16, 576n20, 583, 585n9, 589n10; MS on, 548–49, 552n28 Pilpel, Harriet, 519–20, 520n2, 521n7, 521n10, 523, 572, 576n21 Pincus, Elizabeth Notkin, 555, 557n9, 560 Pincus, Gregory, 478, 479n4, 541–42, 543n4, 543n8, 543n10, 543n11, 555, 556n4, 557n9, 557n12, 559n6, 559n7, 560–61, 562n4, 573–74, 577, 577n33, 583, 590, 593n8, 605, 606n9 Pittman, Hobson, 438n2, 439n14 Pivot of Civilization (MS), 2, 27, 29n11, 89, 101n7 Placzek, Siegfried, 130, 132n6 Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), 436n13, 469n3, 471, 478, 479n1, 480, 484n17, 491, 552n28, 570n4, 577, 607n13; clinics, 461n1, 560n13; Executive Committee, 411, 450n5, 453n2; international work, 492n11, 492n13, 514, 521n7, 526, 552n26, 564; MS on, 514, 577; officers and staff, 452, 453n2, 453n3, 463n7, 467n12, 551n20, 552n26, 552n28; research, 478, 479nn2–4 Poland, 209, 210, 211n1, 211n3, 212n7, 212n14, 214, 266n3, 266n7, 267n11; abortion, 209–10, 211n2, 211n3; birth clinics and leagues, 210, 211n1, 211n4, 227, 229n7, 241n3, 265, 266n4;

Świadome Macierzyństwo Klinika (SMK), 211n5, 211n6, 267n9; birth control in, 210, 211n3, 211n4, 212n8, 212n10, 227, 240, 265, 266n1; Catholic church in, 209–10, 211n3, 211n5, 230, 266n1; Jews in, 212n10, 241n3, 265, 266n5, 266n8; population size, 265, 266n6; pronatalism, 266n3 Pommerenke, Wesley T., 544, 545n9 Pope Pius XI, 156, 157n5, 193n8, 227, 231, 241n7 Pope Pius XII, 501 Popprová-Molinková, Karla, 196, 208n11, 223–25, 225n1, 226n9, 226nn11–13, 228, 229n11, 233, 233n1, 241n1 population, 35, 39n5, 39n6, 610n3; birth control and, 116–17, 118n5, 279, 436n15, 566; growth, xxiv, 2, 35–36, 40n23, 74, 147, 180; peace and, 208n6; resources and, 437, 485, 485n2; size, 34, 38n2, 74, 180; war and, xxiv, 367, 414. See also overpopulation; population control; population research population control, xix, xxi, xxiv, 38, 67, 78, 116, 275, 412, 499, 517n11, 531, 565, 605n2 Population Council, 456, 574n3, 579n2, 593n7 Population Reference Bureau (PRB), 472n8 population research, 412, 436n15, 440, 471, 472n8, 485, 485n2, 485n3; Office of Population Research (OPR), 472n8, 485, 485n3, 486n5 Porges, Max, 222n3 Portet, Lorenzo, 7, 213, 214n3, 214n4 poverty, 167; birth control and, 167, 191–92, 326, 400 Practice of Contraception (Stone and MS, eds.), 182n1, 189, 190n3, 207, 208n5 presidential elections, 230–31, 231n1, 231n2 Price, Burr, 94, 96n5 Proctor, Edward R., 228, 230n18 progesterone. See birth control methods, pill prostitution, 45; in China, 57, 60–61, 62n2, 62–63nn6–10; in Japan, 46n10, 46n11, 47n12, 47n15, 47n16 Pruitt, Ida, 169n2 public health, birth control and, xxiii, 197, 342n3, 352, 355, 368, 412, 446n3, 534, 544, 560 Puerto, Felipe Carrillo, 30, 31n1, 32n4, 32n8 Puerto Rico, 93n1, 215, 234n8, 236–37, 238n5, 238n7, 405, 406n3, 556n7, 570n11; birth control clinics and leagues, 92, 93n3, 216, 216n3,

index  •  645 236, 406n5; birth control in, 92, 93n1, 96–97, 215–16; Catholic church in, 97, 97n3, 216n6, 236, 238n6, 406n5; Liga para el Control de Natividad de Puerto Rico (LPCNPR), 93n1, 96–97, 97n1, 98n7, 216n6, 236; population size, 92, 215, 236, 238n7, 238n9; poverty in, 92, 215–16, 216n4, 236, 238n5, 238n8; pronatalism in, 236, 238n6 Purandare, Nilkanth A., 291, 293n18, 322n33 Pusey, William Allen, 72, 73n7 Pyke, Margaret, 398, 399n1, 399n2, 448n7, 461– 62, 463n4, 471, 472n6, 474n2, 491n2, 513n3, 597, 599n12 Qingtang Yu, 57, 58n5 quacks and quackery, 185, 186n3, 187n7, 246, 348 Quakers, 8, 12n12, 15 race and racism, xxii, 363, 565 race health. See race improvement race improvement, xix, 58n3, 74, 77, 81n17 race suicide, 19, 238n6, 363, 364n4 Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli, 505–6, 508n8, 508n9 radicals and radicalism, 160n5; MS on, 158, 160n4, 160n5 Raicho, Hiratsuka, 45, 46n2 Raisman, Abraham J., 579, 580n11 Raji (Devi), Indira, 334, 336n10 Rama Rau, Benegal, 482, 483n11 Rama Rau, Dhanvanthi, xxi, 456, 459n4, 459n6, 463n9, 476, 477n14, 482, 483n11, 484n15, 485, 491n1, 493n3, 505, 514n2, 519, 520n4, 525, 526n3, 528n5, 528n7, 528n8, 533n4, 537, 549n1, 549n6, 551n16, 551n18, 557n10, 562n2, 564, 594n13, 594n14, 601n2, 601n4, 602n11, 605, 607n13; correspondence, 493–94, 494n1, 546–49, 549n3; International Planned Parenthood Federation and, 500, 507, 511, 512n4, 514n2, 521n5, 521n6, 524, 524n5, 526n4, 529n12, 531, 547–48, 551n18, 555, 562n7, 562n8, 572, 584, 585n5, 586n20, 590, 594n14, 594n15, 598n5, 598n6, 608–9, 610n7; MS on, 512–13, 524, 531, 546, 561, 563n13, 590–92, 593n4, 593n5, 595n17, 595n19, 595n21, 597 Ramírez, José Siurob, 341, 342n1, 342n5 Rao, Devi Krishna, 546, 549n7 Rauschenbach, Emma, 126, 130n20

Reiland, Karl, 107, 109n9, 114n10, 121n4 Reiland (Cobb Watson), Virginia, 112, 114n10 Rieder, Emily, 100n1, 101n7, 238–39, 239n4 Riese, Hertha, 130–31, 132n11, 132n12, 133n15, 157n9, 161n18 Riese, Walter, 130, 132n11, 132n12 Rifkinson, Nathan, 405, 406n4, 407n10 Riksförbundet för Sexuell Upplysning (RFSU), 411, 421, 421n11, 423n3, 423n8, 424n9, 468n3, 495n8, 517n11 Robinson, Caroline, Seventy Birth Control Clinics, 177n17, 182n4 Rock, John, 462, 463n11, 478n3, 542, 542n1, 543n4, 543n9, 559n7, 574, 605, 606n9 Rockefeller, John D., Jr., 76n7, 175, 178n25, 604–5, 605n1, 606n12 Rockefeller, John D., III, 509n17, 579n2 Rockefeller, Martha Baird, 551n17, 604–5, 605n1, 606n6 Rockefeller Brothers Fund, 492n10, 604 Rockefeller Foundation, 55n8, 108, 110n16, 166, 267, 268n7, 268n8, 338, 340n5, 388, 390n19, 456, 475, 483n7, 499 Rocker, Milly Witcop, 3 Rocker, Rudolf, 7, 13 Rodriguez Carballeira, Hildegart, 196, 199, 199– 202, 202n1, 202n3, 202n6, 203n12, 213, 213n1, 213n2, 229n8, 238–39, 239n1, 239n2, 239n4; writings, 201–2, 202n4, 202n5, 203n10, 203n11, 203n14, 203n15 Rodriguez, Manuel Guzman, Jr., 216, 216n3 Roe, Gilbert E., 154, 156n21, 156n22 Roe, Humphrey Verdon, 108, 111n23 Rogers, Vena, 243, 244n8 Rolleston, Humprey, 106, 109n6 Rollet, Henri, 108, 110n14 Rolón, José Lanuze, 93n1, 96, 96–97, 97n1, 97n3, 98nn7–9 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 486–87, 487n1, 487n3 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 231n1, 236–37, 237n1, 272n12, 401n2, 429n10, 487n1 Roosevelt, Theodore, 236–37, 238n8 Roots, Margaret, 554 Rose, D. Kenneth, 515, 517n10, 572, 575n12 Rose, Florence, 248n15, 250n2, 252n7, 254, 256n10, 259, 341, 342n2, 342n5, 342n8, 353–54, 374n9, 375–76, 381, 385, 388, 391, 402n14,

646  •  index 404n9, 423n1, 428, 429n3, 459n5, 512, 549, 552n33; correspondence, 248–49, 371–73, 374n6, 374n7, 374n8, 375n16, 376n3, 421–22, 431–32 Ross, Edward A., 123n25, 235, 252n7 Round the World for Birth Control (MS and How-Martyn), 276, 358n15, 519n2 Rowe, Clara Louise, 24, 25n4, 54, 55n12 Roy, Basanta Koomar, 89n3, 89n4, 90n7 Ruben-Wolf, Martha, 129n16, 144n6, 153, 154n4, 154n7, 157n9, 159, 161, 163n5, 163n6, 217, 219n9 Rubinraut, Herman, 196, 208n11, 211n1, 212n11, 212n13, 212n16, 212n17, 225n1, 240–41nn1–4, 242n12, 266n1, 266n4, 266n7; correspondence, 209–11, 211n1, 214–15, 215n3, 240, 241n5, 264–66 Rublee, George, 235, 391n21, 407 Rublee, Juliet, 2, 53–54, 54n1, 86, 87n7, 87n9, 94, 96n5, 103n22, 150, 152n19, 173, 176n2, 388, 391n21, 407; correspondence, 53, 54n2, 54n3, 107–8, 108n3, 109n10; and World Population Conference, 98, 101n2, 105n4, 108n1 Russell, Bertrand, 21, 22n7, 33, 33n4 Russell, Dora, 151n14 Russia. See Soviet Union Rutgers, Johannes, xx, 14, 16n10, 18, 19n2, 19n8, 180–81, 182n2, 337n2 Rutgers-Hoitsema, Marie, 18, 19n3 Sadakata, Kameyo, 381, 383n7 Sadie Sachs, 203n16, 461n1, 461n5 Sahgal, Nayantara Pandit, 473, 474n3 Saita, Akira, 541, 542n2, 543n3 Saitō, Hiroshi, 246, 247n4 Saitō, Kyoshi, 381, 383n6 Salvemini, Gaetano, 368, 370n14, 371nn15–17 Samuel, S. Jeffrey, 228n2, 233n5 Sand, René, 108, 110n15 Sanger III, Margaret (Marston Lampe) (grandaughter), 411, 426, 427n10, 602 Sanger, Barbara (daughter-in-law), 427n10, 448n12 Sanger, Grant (son), 21, 23n11, 23n12, 23–24, 27–28, 30n21, 33, 34n7, 56n14, 64, 64n4, 70, 99, 103n22, 112, 131, 133n21, 161, 163, 248, 254, 258nn5–7, 259, 266n2, 270, 354, 431n8, 563n17, 570n3, 598n4, 604n7; correspondence, 122n5,

269, 271n4; education, 65, 102n14, 113n5, 158– 59, 160n10, 252n4, 417n8; MS on, 54, 56n14, 252, 252n4, 257–58; World War II and, 411, 416, 417n8 Sanger, Margaret Higgins: arrests and imprisonment of, 3, 19n4, 98n6, 193n9, 607; awards and tributes, 566–67, 607–10; biograpical details, xx, 410–11, 558, 607; censorship of, xix–xx; clinics and spas, 116, 118n1, 120, 126, 150n2, 221; correspondence, 447, 448n2, 448n10; death, 567, 607, 611n1; descriptions of, 508n5, 559n2, 601n2, 610; dreams, 24; exile of, xx, 1, 18, 19n2, 19n6; feminism of, 67, 350, 366; finances, 3, 65, 119n10, 139, 164n16, 221, 223n7, 311, 312n18, 373, 431n4, 462, 476, 477n17; health of, xxiv, 2, 49, 65, 73n2, 117–18, 118n1, 120, 130, 144n10, 150n2, 221, 222n3, 252, 337, 338, 343, 344n6, 375–76, 377n7, 377n8, 381, 387–88, 390n11, 391, 394n1, 407, 446n2, 448n3, 449, 462, 464n18, 491, 492nn5–7, 500– 501, 513, 516n3, 523n5, 544, 545n8, 552n16, 560– 61, 562n3, 566, 573–74, 576n25, 585n1, 589n12, 596, 597n2, 601n2, 602n13, 602n14, 604n7, 609, 610n5; horoscopes, 54, 55n12; interviews and profiles of, 211, 212n17, 214–15, 215n1, 216n2, 224, 226n12, 248n12, 269, 272n13, 460, 460n1, 604; leadership of, xxi; love affairs, 22n1, 84n1, 111; photos, 69, 70n3, 71n11, 247, 248n14, 329, 503n2, 601n5; public speaking, 33, 33n1, 33n2, 53, 610; publicity, 431–32, 432n3, 432n4, 433n4, 433n5, 438n3, 451, 452, 453n5, 513, 514n6; radicalism of, xx, 66–67; radio broadcasts, 295, 296n11, 313, 313n4, 405, 406n3, 508n4, 538–40; speaking bans, 135, 135n1, 135n5, 136n11; speeches and lectures by, 34–38, 46n2, 46n9, 58n1, 58n3, 69, 73n2, 180–82, 290, 296n10, 309, 317, 320n19, 377–79, 424n12, 437, 438n10, 504n9, 508n5, 522, 525, 526n5, 544, 545n3, 545n4, 563n15, 571n16, 599–600, 601n9, 609; spiritual and psychic beliefs, 54, 116, 306, 308n12, 323; use of her name, 70, 71n10, 185, 187, 187n8, 187n9, 188n2, 194–95, 195n3, 205, 205n4, 206n6, 517n11 —articles by: “Birth Control in Soviet Russia,” 267n12; “Do They Want Birth Control?,” 330n8; “Does Mr. Gandhi Know Women,” 304n29, 325–29, 330–31; “Gandhi and Mrs. Sanger Debate Birth Control,” 212n13, 304n29, 343, 343n2; “Gandhi Discusses Birth Control,”

index  •  647 329; “Light for Mexico and South America,” 5–6; “Mahatma Gandhi and Birth Control in India,” 83, 83n4, 87–89; “Motherhood Enslaved in Italy,” 146–47; “Practical Work for Birth Control,” 292n10; “Soviet Union’s Abortion Law,” 348–50; “The Civilizing Force of Birth Control,” 200, 203n9; “What Margaret Sanger Thinks of Mussolini,” 365–69; “Women in Germany,” 157n3; “Women in Germany” I, 7–10; “Women in Germany” II, 13–15 —other writings by, 241n3: clippings, 205, 206n11, 271n5; diaries and journal entries, 26– 28, 32–33, 41–42, 44–52, 56–58, 60–62, 64, 253–55, 255n7, 257–58, 259–60, 282, 287–88, 290–91, 297–301, 322–24, 329n1, 336–37, 360– 61, 364, 375–76, 380–82, 519–20, 525; newsletters, 315–19, 319n2, 496, 502–3, 505–7. See also individual books, journals, and pamphlets Sanger, Margaret (Peggy) (daughter), 415, 416n4, 426, 427n10 Sanger, Nancy (grandaughter), 411, 602 Sanger, Stuart (son), 103n22, 112, 131, 354, 427n10, 448n12, 453n1, 490, 598n4; education, 65, 113n5, 133n21, 273n22, 273n23, 417n9; health, 197, 269, 271, 271n4; World War II and, 411; World War II and, 417n9 Sano, Tsuneha, 42, 44n18 Sasaki, Yukitada, 42, 44n21 Scher, Jack, 259, 260n4 Schmincke, Richard, 140, 141n9, 157n9, 163n6 Schreiber, Adele, 127, 128n4, 128n12 Schreiner, Olive, 378, 380n7 Schultz, Jonathan, 582, 585n2, 588, 589n4, 589n7, 596–97, 598n4, 598n10, 599n12, 599n13, 600, 602n12, 604n8 Schwimmer, Rosika, 77, 79n8 Scidmore, George Hawthorne, 26, 28n1, 28n5, 29n14 science and scientists, 66, 71, 98–100, 124–25, 509n18, 555, 558 Scotland, xx Scripps Foundation for Research in Population Problems (SFRPP), 110n17, 438n8 Senior, Clarence, 551n20 Seventh International Birth Control Conference (7IBCC), Zurich (1930), xxiii, 138, 142–44, 143n2, 145n1, 145n7, 149–50, 172, 176n2,

176n16, 177n15, 197, 207, 208n7, 284, 509n14, 572, 574n6; delegates, 156, 157nn6–11, 158, 181, 182n1, 186n4; finances and funding, 172–75, 178n20; MS on, 138, 142–44, 149, 151n15, 156, 158, 173–75, 177n12, 180–82; planning, 141–42, 144, 144n9, 149, 158–59, 160n6, 160n9, 162, 164n14; program, 144n6, 165n21, 178n22, 180, 182n1, 183n7, 183n8, 208n6; staff and officers, 157n7, 163, 165n20, 172, 176n1 sex and sexuality, 66, 329n4; MS on, 88–89, 304n33, 326, 330n11 sex education, 78, 81n18, 168, 202n4, 412, 424n14, 439n11, 442n8, 494, 494n1, 509n20, 509n21, 598n9; in China, 169, 171n16, 192, 194n16; in Netherlands, the, 469n3, 495n10; in Palestine, 244n7; in Soviet Union, 217; in Sweden, 411, 423n8; in United States, 495n11 sex reform, xx, 103n19, 103n21, 128n12, 161n16, 200, 224 Shahani, Tarachand, 300, 304n31, 306 Shanghai, China, 42n2, 54, 55n9, 56n2, 56–58, 58n2, 59n9, 59n10, 59n14, 60–62, 62n2, 62n6, 63nn8–11, 63n16, 162, 166–67, 171n17, 189, 189n1, 267, 339n4; MS on, 56–58, 60–62, 338, 339n3; Shanghai chiehyû chihtao so (SCCS) Shanghai Birth Control Information Bureau, 375n18, 385, 386n7; Shanghai-jieyu lienmeng (SJL) (Shanghai Birth Control League), 164n12, 171n14, 190n8, 191, 192–93nn1–5, 267, 268n5, 338, 340n7, 372 Shastri, Ganapati, 322–23, 325n4 Shaw, George Bernard, 66, 74, 202n8, 367, 370n10 Shimojō, Yasumaro, 529, 530n2 Shin Fujin Kyokai (SFK), 43n16, 44, 46n1, 46n2, 46n5 Singapore, 64, 276, 555. See also Family Planning Association of Singapore Sino-Japanese War, 1937, 371–73, 373n2, 373n3, 374n9, 375, 376n2, 376n3, 382, 382n4, 383n16, 384, 385n2, 386n4, 391n21, 391n22, 396 Slee, J. Noah H. (second husband), 23, 30n21, 34n7, 65, 99, 102n13, 104, 105n14, 106, 108n2, 109n9, 113n5, 113n6, 114n8, 114n11, 114n13, 115n3, 116, 118n4, 119–20, 121n4, 122n8, 150n6, 151n10, 159, 160n11, 162–63, 222n6, 222n7, 231n4, 239n1, 251, 264, 268n2, 311n1, 374n14,

648  •  index 382n1, 405, 411; birth control support, 110n12, 117, 119n10, 138–40, 141n2, 150, 152n19, 190n10; correspondence, 251–52, 309–11, 312n10; health of, 175, 178n23, 207, 208n10, 406n2, 407; MS on, 112, 120, 131, 164n16, 221–22, 230, 372–73 Smedley, Agnes, 68, 81, 82n1, 128n9, 129n17, 130, 131n3, 132n5, 140n1, 141n2, 141n4, 141n5, 142n13, 143n3, 154n2, 155n11, 155n20, 156n21, 156n22, 169n1, 169n3, 170n6, 171n13, 189, 190n2, 192n1; in China, 143n3, 152–53, 154n1, 154n3, 156, 165–69, 169n2, 170n7, 170n9, 170n11, 171n14, 171n16, 172n21, 172n22, 189n1, 190n4, 191, 192n3, 196, 267, 268n4, 340n7, 373, 374n19; correspondence with MS, 81–83, 139–40, 141n2, 152–54, 165–69, 188–89, 191–92, 193n4; in Phillippines, 188–89, 189n1; in Soviet Union, 153, 154n5, 260n3; MS support, 138–40, 141n2, 142, 167–68, 169n3, 170nn8–10, 191–92, 192n2, 192n3, 268n5 Smith, Gladys DeLancey, 388, 390n13 Smith College, 447, 448n10, 473, 474n9, 475, 476n5, 572, 575n11, 603 Snow, William F., 175, 178n26 Sobrero, Aquiles J., 583, 586n15 socialism and socialists, 8, 8n7, 11n8, 19n7, 156, 157n3, 197. See also individual nations social workers, 600 Société Française d’Eugénique (SFE) (French Society for Eugenics), 135, 135n8, 136n9 Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress (SCBCRP), 106n1, 111n23, 151n12, 182n3, 283n7 Society for the Provision of Birth Control Clinics (SPBCC), 111n22, 118n7, 151n12, 151n17, 182n3, 229n17 Society for the Study and Promotion of Family Hygiene (India) (SSPFH), 290, 309, 315n3, 331n3, 358n11, 388, 390n17 Song, Gil, 49, 50n4 Soong, Mei-ling, 358–59, 359n1, 359n2, 360n3, 360n4 Soviet Union, 197, 215n5, 217–18, 218n1, 219n3, 220n18, 246, 247n5, 255nn2–6, 257, 258n3, 258n7, 263n2, 263n8, 266; abortion in, 197, 217–18, 220n12, 253, 256n12, 257–50, 258n1, 258n5, 258n6, 260n3, 260–61nn6–10, 263n1,

270, 272n14, 348–50, 350n1, 351n4, 351n6, 351n7, 581n13; birth control clinics and leagues, 126n7, 182n4, 217, 219n4, 254, 256n15, 270 (see also Okhrana Materinstva I Mladenchestva [OMM]); birth control in, 80n19, 154n7, 177n14, 197, 208n7, 217–18, 220n12, 253–55, 256n12, 256n15, 257, 257n18, 257n19, 259, 260n3, 262, 264n11, 269–71, 272n8, 273n16, 348–49, 351n9, 536n10, 581n13; children in, 217, 219n6; communism and communists, 217, 263n8; family size, 256n12; MS on, 197, 207, 208n7, 221–22, 253–55, 262, 269–70, 271n6, 272n8, 272n14, 349–50; population size, 220n12, 256n12, 272n12; pronatalism, 348, 351n10; Vseoiuznoe Obshchestvo Kulturnoi Sviazi (VOKS), 254, 255n8, 256n9, 260n2, 261, 263n3, 270, 272n14; women in, 197, 204n24, 217–18, 218–19nn1–5, 219n7, 219n8, 253, 256n13, 348–50, 351n10 Sozial-Harmonische Verein (SHV), 11n7, 11n8, 16n7 Spain, 183, 200–202, 213, 213–14nn3–5, 229n9; birth control clinics and leagues, 213n1, 229n8; birth control in, 183, 184n3, 201, 202n4, 203n15, 213, 227; Catholic church in, 203n12, 229n9, 230; MS on, 42, 213; sex reform in, 200, 202nn6–8, 203n11, 203n12, 203n13 speaking tours, 197, 279–80, 385, 387, 398; Asia, 2; Bermuda, 360–61, 361n2, 361n3, 363n2, 363–64; Burma, 330, 331n2, 335n3; Caribbean, 353, 405, 406n3; Ceylon, 276, 497, 498n12, 505; China (1922), xxi, 21, 54n5, 55n9, 56n5, 56–58, 58n1, 58n3, 154n3, 570; China (1935–36), 197, 274, 276, 279, 330; China (1937), 352–53, 359, 360n3, 372–73, 373n2, 375–77, 385; Germany (1920), xxi, 2–3, 7–10, 13–14, 40n19; Germany (1927), 68, 126–27, 127n1, 128n4, 128n8, 128n9, 128n10, 130, 153, 155n19; Great Britain (1920), 2, 7; Haiti (1948), 434, 434n4, 434n5; Hawaii (1922), 13n14, 24; Hong Kong (1935–6), 197, 276, 337– 39, 339n1, 386n3, 501–2; Hong Kong (1952), 497, 498n11, 502–3, 503n2, 504n5; Hong Kong (1959), 600, 601n3, 602, 603n2; India (1935– 36), 197, 274–78, 279, 284, 286n9, 287n10, 287– 91, 292n7, 293n13, 293–95, 296n7, 296n15, 297, 304n31, 305n34, 305–6, 309–11, 311n2, 311n6, 312n8, 315–19, 319n3, 321n22, 322n34, 322n35,

index  •  649 322–24, 332, 333n6, 333n7, 334, 519n2; India (1952), 505; Japan (1922), xxi, 3, 20, 20n1, 22n7, 22n9, 22n13, 23–24, 25n3, 25nn5–8, 26–28, 32–33, 41, 43n14, 44–45, 47–48, 48n2, 48n5, 48n7, 53, 69, 377, 427n9, 445, 446n5, 451, 478, 488, 538, 540n2; Japan (1936), 276, 377, 379n3; Japan (1937), 353, 376n4, 376n5, 376n6, 376–77, 380–82, 382n3, 382n5, 429n3; Japan (1952), 456–57, 487, 492n8, 496–97, 518, 519n1; Japan (1954), 500, 538–40, 544, 545n6, 545n7; Japan (1955), 500, 558, 559n4, 561; Japan (1959), 600, 601n3, 602, 603n4; Korea, 42, 43n14, 49, 50n3; Middle East, 2; Netherlands, 3, 7; Phillippines, 276, 559n4; Scandinavia, 197, 248, 251, 251n13, 251n14, 252n1, 252n2; Singapore and Malaya, 336, 497, 498n12, 505; Soviet Union, 197, 248, 253–55, 255n1, 257–61, 264–66, 269–70, 271n2, 272n18, 349; Thailand, 497, 505, 600; United States, 143n1, 207, 209n14, 268n2, 271n3, 344n7, 568, 570n3 Speck, Rose, 476, 477n16 Spencer, Anna Garland, 175–76, 179n27 Spina, Franz, 226n14 Stalin, Joseph, 218, 218n13, 257, 258n3, 269, 272n12 Steinberger, (Sarolta) Charlotte, 78, 81n22 Steinhardt, Laurence A., 251, 252n3 sterilization, 73n3, 92–93, 93n6, 234, 300, 306, 315n5, 656; compulsory, 285, 286n7, 315n3, 315n5, 406n6; in California, 405; in Cuba, 406n5; in India, 469n4, 469n8, 600, 602n11; in Mexico, 233, 235n3; in Soviet Union, 197. See also vasectomy Sternberg, Grace, 508n10, 600, 602n13 Stewart, George David, 72, 73n6 Stewart, Maxwell, 164n12, 164n13, 166, 169n2, 169n3, 170n7, 190n8, 191, 192n1, 192n3 Stöcker, Helene, 77, 79n6, 157n4, 157n9, 158–59, 159n2, 160n3, 160n4, 160n7, 163n6 Stone, Abraham, 157n6, 197, 218, 220n17, 401n7, 421–22, 438n4, 439n12, 447–48, 460n7, 463n8, 473, 479n1, 479n2, 482, 492n8, 559n6, 561, 562n2, 562n8, 572–73, 575n15, 575n16, 598n5; BCCRB, 544n1, 547, 550n9, 554n3, 555; correspondence, 461–62, 478–79, 479n2, 480n6, 544; international work, 343n10, 411, 423n3, 437, 437n11, 444, 448n7, 450n4, 456, 474n8, 476n6,

477n9, 477n14, 491, 493n14, 496, 503, 504n9, 506, 512n4, 514–15, 516n5, 519–20, 520n4, 521n7, 524, 524n4, 527, 535, 561, 589n10; marriage counseling and, 220n17, 463n9, 463n10 Stone, Hannah Mayer, 93n4, 157n6, 197, 208n5, 218, 220n17, 246, 248n7, 271, 273n25, 423n3; Contraceptive Methods, 91, 93n4, 97, 97n4, 190, 190n13; “Report of the Clinical Research Bureau,” 92, 93n5 Stopes, Marie, xx, 106n1, 108, 111n23, 111n24, 151n12, 157n7, 201, 204n23, 231–32, 232n1, 232n2, 249, 250n8, 283n7, 307n8, 361, 362n6, 404n3; Birth Control News, 231, 232n1, 361, 362n7; Married Love, 111n23, 204n23 Storm, Wim F., 448n7, 493–94, 494n2, 494n3, 495n6, 495n12 Stoughton, Philip, 346n1, 396n20, 402n13, 404n6, 404n6 Stritt, Marie, 13, 15n2, 16n3, 16n5 Stützin, Joachim, 157n12, 165n24, 207, 209n15, 213, 214n8, 238, 239n3 Stützin, Katharine Lipinski, 144n8, 156, 156n1, 157n1, 157n2, 157n12, 158, 159n1, 159n2, 160n6, 161, 165n24, 199, 199n5, 207–8, 209n15, 213; correspondence, 142, 142–43, 143n2 Summerskill, Edith, 228n2, 233n5 Sundaram, Manjeri, 314, 315n4, 318, 321n31, 356, 358n10 Sundquist, Alma, 252n6, 253n8 Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), 413, 416n3, 421n12, 427n7, 429n7, 444, 449, 453n4; and MS, 444n2, 450n3, 452 Sweden, 251–52, 252n1, 252n3, 252–53nn6–8, 424n17, 523n2; birth control clinics and leagues, 252, 253n8 (see also Riksförbundet för Sexuell Upplysning [RFSU]); MS on, 422, 423n2, 423n9, 425n19 Switzerland, 228n4, 232n4 syndicalism and syndicalists, xx, 3, 8, 11n10 Syria, 242–43, 243n1, 245n9, 245n13, 245n14 Tagore, Rabindranath, 90, 90–92, 91n1, 91n5, 276, 279, 281n6, 310, 311n4, 311n5, 518 Tait, Florence, 158, 160n9 Takayama, Gizô, 518, 519n1 Taussig, Frederick, 197 Tennð, Taishð, 53, 54n4

650  •  index Terashima, Seiichiro, 42, 44n17 Third International Conference on Planned Parenthood, (3ICPP), Bombay (1952), 458, 467, 470n9, 470n10, 473, 478, 491n1, 494n1, 495n7, 500, 505–7, 510n29, 510n30, 511n32, 546, 591, 595n21, 608; delegates, 480n9, 486n7, 491n2, 505, 508n3; finances, 456, 467, 476, 480, 480n9, 481, 482n2, 492n10, 594n10, 594n11, 609; MS on, 491, 499, 505–6, 508n7, 508n13, 512, 534; planning, 456, 462n1, 470n10, 474n4, 474n5, 476, 477n14, 478–79, 480, 480n9, 480n11; program, 491n3, 492n9, 493n14, 506–7, 508n5, 509n15, 509–10nn17–27, 609; sponsors, 481–82, 485–86, 486, 486nn4–7, 488, 515 Thompson, Louise, 100, 103n25, 150, 152n23, 199, 199n7 Thompson, Warren S., 101n4, 108, 110n17, 434, 436n25, 444, 444n3, 449, 486n7 Thomson, Mary “Polly,” 511–12, 512n2 Time and Tide, 99, 102n12 Timme, Ida Haar, 150, 152n19 Tokyo, Japan, 32–34, 41–42, 44–45, 46n11, 47n16, 47–48, 195n1, 383n8 Town Hall meeting (New York) (1921), 3, 32n5, 75, 76n6, 572 Travancore, Maharaja of. See Varma, Chitra Travancore, Maharani of. See Bayi, Setu Troyanovsky, Alexander, 262, 264n6 Truman, Harry S, 429n7, 453n2, 456, 474n6 Truman, Helen, 481, 483n5 Truro, MA, 95n2, 103n22 Tsai Yuan-Pei (Cài Yuánpéi), 54, 54n5 Tsien, Hsue-Shen, 568–69, 569n1, 570n2, 570n5, 570n6, 571n14 Tucson, Arizona, 407, 411, 447, 448n11, 449n12, 453, 454n9, 564 Tushnov, Mikhail Pavlovich, 258, 259n9, 272n9, 272n11 Tyler, Edward T., 590, 593n9 Tokyo Heimin Byōin (Tokyo People’s Hospital), 41, 42n3 United Kingdom. See Great Britain United Nations, xxiv, 428, 429n5, 474n8, 487n1, 548, 550n15; Population Commission, 429n6, 472n8. See also World Health Organization (WHO)

United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), 418n3, 418–19 United States, 570n11, 570n13, 571n15, 578, 606n11; birth control clinics and leagues, 177n17, 182n3, 182n4, 539, 540n6, 558, 560n13 (see also American Birth Control League; Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau; Planned Parenthood Federation of America); Birth Control League of Massachusetts (BLCM), 388, 390n15, 390n16; birth control in, 177n14, 469n3, 580n8; Catholics and Catholicism in, 223n10, 428, 429n7, 579n3, 580n8; foreign aid, 580n4, 580n6, 604, 606n11; political parties, 231, 231n2, 237n1; population policy, 578, 579n3, 580n6 United States Congress, 231, 240, 578; birth control hearings, 189, 190n6, 190n7 Uruguay, 585n8 Van de Velde, Theodore, 201, 203n21 Van Vleck, Joseph, 551n20 Vaňková, Mrs., 224, 226n14 Varma, Chitra, 316, 320n12 vasectomy, 314–15, 315n1, 315n2, 315n5 Vatican, the, 429n10, 449, 501 Vela, Gonzalo Vázquez, 234, 235n4 venereal disease, 47n16, 78, 80n18, 176, 178n26, 396 Venezuela, 585n8 Verband der Krankenkassen Berlins (VKB) (Berlin Health Insurance League), 129n13, 143n4, 151n16, 157n4, 165n23 Verein für Sexualhygiene und Lebensreform (VSÄ) (Association for Sexual Hygiene and Life Reform), 129n19, 157n4, 160n6 Vickery, Alice, xx, 18, 20n10, 78, 79n3, 81n20, 150, 152n21, 152n22, 180, 182n2 Virgin Islands (U.S.), 405, 406n4, 407n7, 407n10 Voge, Cecil I. B., 157n7, 217, 220n11 Vogt, William, 440, 442n4, 462, 463n7, 476n6, 477n7, 478–79, 480n11, 482, 485, 486n7, 491, 514–15, 516n5, 517n14, 517n17, 520, 521n7, 521n11, 526–27, 528n1, 528n6, 529n1, 552n29, 572–73, 576n20, 577n33, 587n23, 589n11; MS on, 528n1, 548, 562n8 Voise, Raymond, 134–35, 135n2, 135n4, 136n11 Voluntary Parenthood League (VPL), 73n5, 111n24, 190n7

index  •  651 von Bucovich, Anna K., 430, 431n6 Voronoff, Elizabeth, 515, 517n17 Voronoff, Ephim (John), 515, 517n17 Vox Medica, 163, 165n24, 214n8 Wadia, Avabai, 493n3, 507n2, 508n5, 528n7, 593n5, 595n17, 596 Waldman, Morris, 157n6 Walmsley, Lewis C., 506, 509n19 Walworth Women’s Welfare Centre, 78n2, 79n3, 116, 118n7, 151n17, 182n3 Wang, Zok T. (Shuzen Wang), 191, 193n5, 193n7 Wang Liu, Liming “France Willard,” 170n14, 193n5 war: birth control and, xix, 67; MS on, xxi, 34– 38, 354, 366; women and, xxi, 40n20 Warren, Charles Beecher, 43n15, 44 Watts, Dorothia, 316–17, 319n9, 320n11, 320n14 Watumull, Ellen, 457, 459n2, 459n4, 470n9, 470n10, 476, 477n14, 478–79, 481, 485, 486n8, 492n11, 512–14, 514n5, 549, 552n32, 557n12, 561, 563n14, 573, 576n24, 580, 581n18, 581n20, 585n4, 587–89, 589n1, 590–92, 594n14, 595n17, 595n22, 595n23, 598n4, 598n5 Watumull, Gobindram, 457, 459n2, 481, 512–13, 514n1, 549, 552n32 Watumull Foundation, 457, 459n2, 459n3, 476, 492n10, 516n4, 520, 595n19 Weed, Ethel, 415, 416n3, 416n5, 417n7, 419–20, 420n1, 420n5, 420n7, 421n10 Weir, Rosalyn, 443n9, 464–65, 466n2 Weisskopf, Joseph, 224, 225n7 Wells, H. G., xix, 7, 66, 84n1, 84–86, 87n8, 202n8, 261, 268, 272n12, 273n24; on birth control, 84n1, 85n3 Weltman (Blatt), Estelle, 259, 260n5 What Every Boy and Girl Should Know (MS), 190n12 What Every Girl Should Know (MS), 189, 190n3, 190n12 Whelpton, Pascal, 437, 438n8, 444n3, 485, 486n7, 557n12 White, Franklin N., 86n4 Whitney, Leon F., 235 Wicksell, Knut, 78, 81n25, 574n7 Wiesner, Berthold Paul, 141n12, 142n13, 157n7; MS on, 140

Wilkinson, Henry, 360–61, 361n2, 364n2, 364n3, 557n12 Williams, J. Whitridge, 101n4 Williams, Leon J., 362, 362n8 Willowlake, 99, 101n9, 102n15, 112–13, 113n5, 149– 50, 151n10, 159, 238, 282, 359, 431n4 Wilson, Hugh Robert, 27, 28n9, 29n14 Wilson, John P., 520, 521n8 Winsor, Mary, 110n12 Winternitz, Mathilde, 141n4, 157n9, 163n6 Witcop, Mildred, 7 Witcop, Rose, 7, 15n1 Withrow, Oswald C. J., 78, 81n27 Wolff, Charlotte, 157n9 Wolfson, Dr., 254, 256n12, 272n10 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 378, 379n4 Woman Rebel (MS), 76n6, 98n6, 481, 483n6 women: freedom and rights of, xix, xxii–xxv, 1, 37, 58n3, 58n4, 118n5, 327–28, 330n10, 350, 368, 517n12, 540, 565; MS on, xxi, 10n7, 275, 350, 365–69, 565; oppression of, 146–47, 148n5, 366; sex and sexuality, 200, 327 Women and the New Race (MS), 2, 46n9, 59n9, 81n24, 89, 148n5, 189, 190n3, 190n11, 212n16 Women’s Christian Temperance Union, 46n3, 171n14, 193n5, 267 Wong, T.D., 51, 51n3 Woo, Arthur, 337, 385, 386n3, 503, 504n10 Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology (WFEB), 542, 542n1, 542n2, 543n11, 583 working classes, 8, 35–38, 39n11, 558 World Health Organization (WHO), 456, 463n10, 464n12, 501, 523, 523n3, 560 World League for Sexual Reform (WLSR), 103n19, 140, 141n6, 151n14, 202n7, 229n12 World Population Conference (WPC), Geneva (1927): Advisory Council, 110n14, 110n15, 110n17, 110n20, 115, 115n3, 126n6; birth control and, 107n4, 114–15, 124; delegates, 109n6, 110n19, 113n3, 113n4, 114–15; English Committee, 96n9, 103, 106n1, 106n2, 106–7, 107n4, 109n6, 109n8; funding, 99, 103, 104n1, 105n8, 106–8, 108n1, 110n12, 122n13; MS on, 94, 98–99, 104, 107, 115–16, 120–21, 122n12, 122n13, 137, 280, 479; planning, 94–95, 95n3, 95n5, 96n7, 96n9, 98–100, 101n4, 101n5, 101n8, 103–4, 104n2, 105n11, 106–8, 109n4, 111–12, 113n2; program,

652  •  index 94, 101n2, 102n13, 105n7, 106, 108, 109n6, 109n9, 114–16, 123n24, 127, 129n16; staff, 114–15, 118n2, 121, 121n3, 122n12, 123n18; women and, 120, 123n16, 126n8 World Population Emergency Campaign (WPEC), 566, 604–5, 606n5, 606n6, 606n10, 606n11, 607n13 World War I, xix, xxiv, 1, 34, 37–38, 148n9, 148n10; birth control and, 1, 18, 416n6; MS on, xxi, 1 World War II, xxiv, 354, 402, 407, 410–11, 413, 415, 425, 429n6; birth control movement and, 410, 467, 608 World’s Christian Student Federation, 25n10, 25n11 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 453, 454n8 Wright, Helena Lowenfeld, 157n7, 251n11, 448n7, 461, 463n2, 463n4, 489–90, 491n2, 491n3, 506, 510n25, 512n4, 513n3, 514, 516n5, 516n6, 517n12, 528n6, 528n7, 598n9; MS on, 461, 491n2, 515, 516n6, 527, 597 Wu Peifu (Wú Pèifú), 60, 62n1 x-rays, 47, 48n4

Yamagata, Isoh, 50n2 Yamamoto, Sanehiko, 26–27, 28n3 Yamamoto, Senji, 70n7, 186n5 Yang, Marion, 169n2, 170n3 Yarros, Rachelle, 157n6, 235 Yen, (Yang-chu) James, 164n12, 169n2, 170n3, 170n5, 170n6, 170n7 Yen Fu-ching (Yan Fuging), 166, 171n15, 193n5 Yomiuri Press, 444n2, 446n4, 451 Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), 25n9, 25n11, 33, 191–92, 268n5, 317–18, 321n32 Young Women’s Christian Federation (YWCA): in China, 24, 26n11, 167, 171n14, 193n10; in Singapore, 336–37, 337n1 Zahn, Sarah C., 447, 448n11 Zborowski, Hazel, 311, 312n16 Zelenski, Tadeusz Kamil Marcjan, 210, 212, 212n8, 212n11, 215, 215n2, 266n7 Zimmerer, Emily (Midge), 112, 114n10 Zimmern, Lucie Olympe, 112, 113n2 Zuckerman, Solly, 578, 579n10

Esther Katz was an associate professor of history at New York University, founded and directs the Margaret Sanger Papers Project, and is coeditor of the Speeches and Articles of Margaret Sanger, 1911–1960. Peter C. Engelman is the author of A History of the Birth Control Movement in America. Cathy Moran Hajo is the author of Birth Control on Main Street: Organizing Clinics in the United States, 1916–1939.

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