Woman of Valor (71 page)

32.
Hersey, “Margaret Sanger,” p. 114, Grant Sanger interview, p. 11. On teaching as a career for the Irish, in particular, see Diner,
Erin's Daughters
, p. 96. Margaret may have rejoined her mother's family in New Jersey, though Hersey says that Anne Higgins herself never saw her parents after she moved away.

33.
Again, thanks to Alex Sanger for a copy of Anne Higgins's death certificate. Also see Mary Higgins's diary, Mar. 31 and Apr. 1, 1899, and MacLaren and Mautner materials, both in MS-SS.

34.
Margaret Sanger,
Woman and the New Race
(New York: 1920),
Autobiography
, pp. 41-42. Kohut,
How Does Analysis
, p. 156. Here again, I am indebted to Phyllis Rose, since parallels to the life of Virginia Woolf suggest themselves. In
To the Lighthouse
, Woolf creates enduring testimony to her dependent embrace of her mother in the exquisitely drawn portrait of the saintly and selfless Mrs. Ramsey, an idealized mother who derives her only satisfaction from assuring the comfort of family and friends. The invention of a perfectly realized maternal presence helped resolve Woolf's unspent grief for the mother she herself lost at the age of thirteen and helped set her free of an emotionally controlling past. See Rose,
Woman of Letters
, pp. 110, 170, Bell, p. 18, and, of course, Virginia Woolf,
To the Lighthouse
(New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1927).

2: LOVE AND WORK

1.
Autobiography
, pp. 42-45,
My Fight
, pp. 29-30. The Higgins family Bible, MS-SS, has Margaret's handwritten notes describing what became of her brothers and sisters. Additional information is in Harold Hersey, “Margaret Sanger: The Biography of the Birth Control Pioneer,” New York (1938), pp. 28-30, and in a genealogy Margaret compiled in 1930, given to me by Alex Sanger.
Ronni MacLaren and Elissa Mautner in “Corning's Margaret Higgins Sanger,” made a search of the local police docket between 1895 and 1905 and turned up the Richard Higgins incident, along with two earlier arrests of Joseph Higgins for petty burglary and fast driving.
Hasia Diner,
Erin's Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the 19th Century,
(Baltimore: 1983), p. 19, suggests that Irish mothers typically overdominated, pampered, and protected their sons, but sent the daughters out to work earlier, which gave them greater autonomy and motivation. Surely, the Higgins sisters dominated the family.

2.
Regina Morantz-Sanchez,
Sympathy and Science: Women in American Medicine
(New York: 1985); Paul Starr,
The Social Transformation of American Medicine
(New York: 1987), pp. 79-180; George J. Annas, Sylvia A. Law, Rand E. Rosenblatt, and Kenneth R. Wing,
American Health Law
(Boston: 1990), pp. 701-703.

3.
Morantz-Sanchez,
Sympathy and Science
; Lavinia Dock and Isabell Stewart,
A Short History of Nursing
(New York: 1931), p. 145., Mary Adelaide Nutting,
A Sound Economic Basis for Schools of Nursing
(New York: 1926), pp. 155-63. Barbara Melosh,
The Physician's Hand: Work, Culture and Conflict in American Nursing
(Philadelphia: 1982).

4.
Annas, et al.,
Health Law
, pp. 703-705. On the requirements of a nursing degree, see James Reed, “Margaret Sanger” in
Notable American Women, A Biographical Dictionary
, edited by Barbara Sicherman and Carol Hurd Green (Cambridge: 1980), p. 623. Also see N. Tomes, “The Silent Battle: Nurse Registration in New York State, 1903-1920,” in
Nursing History: New Prospectives, New Possibilities
, edited by B. Conliffe Lagemann (New York: 1983) p. 107. My thanks to Sylvia Law for this reference. Finally, see M.S. to Mary Higgins, June 20 and July 15, 1902, in MS-SS. M.S.,
Autobiography
, pp. 46-53, has Sanger's description of the backbreaking conditions, and Hersey, “Margaret Sanger,” pp. 74-75 and 77-79, corroborates her recollections by quoting from the hospital's turn-of-the-century annual reports.

5.
M.S. to Mary Higgins, June 1901, and “My Dear Maggr,” n.d. (1901), where she talks about treating the case of intestinal cancer, both in MS-LC; M.S. to Agnes Smedley, July 7, 1924, on the consequences of having been ill for so long, in MS-LC. Also see the Olive Byrne Richard interview with Jacqueline Van Voris, and James Reed,
The Birth Control Movement and American Society: From Private Vice to Public Virtue
(Princeton: 1984), p. 121. Grant Sanger, M.D., in his Schlesinger Library interview of 1976 offered this diagnosis of his mother's tuberculosis.

6.
M.S. to Mary Higgins, Dec. 29, 1901, in MS-LC. Photos in MS-SS. Olive Byrne Richard interview with Jacqueline Van Voris, p. 25.

7.
M.S. to Mary Higgins, May 12, 1902, says she's to graduate in June and then has a month to make up from her operation. Also see, M.S. to Mary Higgins, June 20 and July 15, 1902, MS-SS. Grant Sanger interview, p. 11.
My Fight
, p. 35, and
Autobiography
, p. 30, which distorts the narrative to cover up the fact that she married before she completed her degree. On the tension between personal and professional fulfillment for women of this era, see especially, Barbara Sicherman,
Alice Hamilton: A Life in Letters
(Cambridge, 1984), introduction.

8.
M.S. to Mary Higgins, May 12, 1902, and n.d. (Aug. 1902), and William Sanger to Mary Higgins, Aug. 18, 1902, MS-LC.

9.
M.S. to Nan Higgins, n.d. (Aug. 1902), and to Mary Higgins, “Sunday 12n,” n.d. (Aug. 1902), and William Sanger to Mary Higgins, Aug. 18, 1902, MS-LC.

10.
William Sanger to Mary Higgins, July 27, 1902, and Aug. 18, 1902, MS-LC. Whether she actually quit before finishing the makeup credits for the two-year degree, or did not continue the third year for registration, is unclear, though the latter seems more likely, since she did subsequently work as a practical nurse.

11.
W.S. to M.S., “Dearest,” Wed., May 1, n.d. (1901), MS-LC (in unidentified correspondence).

12.
W.S. to M.S., Dec. 8, 1914, MS-SS. For confirmation of his virginity at marriage and his wife's pre-marital relations, see W.S. to M.S., Jan. 1915, MS-SS. Karen Horney theorized extensively on why women tend to marry their fathers. On conflict and desire in marriage, also see Phyllis Rose,
Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages
(New York: 1984), p. 7.

13.
M.S. to Mary Higgins, July 15, 1902, MS-SS.

14.
The Sanger version of her first husband's genealogy is in
Autobiography
p. 56, and M.S. to Trena Senger, Sept. 11, 1939, MS-SS. It is wholly disputed by Ely Sanger's immigration papers, Port of New York, Oct. 3, 1878; his naturalization records, Superior Court of the City of New York, Feb. 6, 1891, and the death certificates for Ely Sanger and Henrietta Wolfberg Sanger, dated respectively Feb. 1, 1903, and Sept. 24, 1913, all cited in a Sanger family genealogy given to me by Alex Sanger. On William Sanger also see Ralph Waldo Fawcett,
The Trial of William Sanger
(New York: 1915) in MS-SS.

15.
Bill Sanger conspired in the subterfuge. His daughter Joan (now Joan Sanger Hoppe of Great Barrington, Mass.) was also never told of her Jewish grandparents, never met her Jewish aunt, and said in a 1985 letter to the author that religion was simply never discussed in the family, because her father was a confirmed atheist. Bill may also have tried to protect himself from the rampant anti-Semitism in the New York architectural profession. The quote is from M.S. to Virginia Gildersleeve of Barnard College, May 10, 1944, MS-SS. Joan was admitted. Olive Byrne Richard, in her interview with me, remembered visiting the Sangers in New York when relatives in traditional religious garb came to visit.
For an example of Margaret's concern about an anti-Semitic comment made by Havelock Ellis, see M.S. to Hugh de Selincourt, Jan. 16, 1927, MS-LC, and on the need to bring Mrs. Henry Morgenthau and New York's Jewish elite into the birth control cause, M.S. to Juliet Rublee, n.d. (1928) in MS-DC. Also, Sanger Journal entry, Sept 14, 1938, MS-SS, on reference to the Rublee's efforts in London to help get Jews out of Germany and Austria because of Hitler's “sadistic outbursts.”
Once again, there is a parallel here with Virginia Woolf, who also married a Jew. See Rose,
Woman of Letters
, p. 89, which makes the point about the attraction of social disadvantage. The unfortunate self-consciousness and self-loathing of several American Jews of Sanger's acquaintance who became public figures is chronicled in Ronald Steel,
Walter Lippmann and the American Century
(New York: 1980) and in Vicki Goldberg,
Margaret Bourke-White
(New York: 1986).

16.
Autobiography
, p. 60.
My Fight
, p. 36. Byron Caples, M.D. to M.S., Feb. 6, 1930, MS-SS. The TB was apparently a problem even before the pregnancy, and Bill spoke of sending Margaret to Saranac in his letter to Mary of Aug. 18, 1902, MS-LC. The Trudeau Sanitarium at Saranac Lake, N.Y., destroyed its individual patient records from this era in the 1950s and cannot confirm that Margaret Sanger was a patient.

17.
Sanger's illness is described in
Autobiography
, pp. 49, 53, in M.S. to Mary Higgins, June 1901, MS-LC, M.S. to Ethel Remington Hepburn, Apr. 11, 1938, MS-LC, and M.S. to Philip Bourke, editor of the
Fluoroscope
, a magazine about TB, June 5, 1935, the latter cited in Reed,
Birth Control Movement
, p. 396. Also see Hersey, “Margaret Sanger,” pp. 71, 75. For a popular account of Saranac that does not document Sanger's stay but offers some perspective on her experience, see Robert Taylor,
Saranac: America's Magic Mountain
(Boston: 1986). Also, Susan Sontag,
Illness as Metaphor
(New York: 1979) on TB and sexuality, pp. 12-13.

18.
W.S. to M.S., Feb. 15, 1914, Grant Sanger, Schlesinger interview, p. 12, and author's interview with Olive Byrne Richard.

19.
Autobiography
, p. 61,
My Fight
, p. 40. Olive Byrne Richard interview with Jacqueline Van Voris.

20.
M.S. to Lawrence Lader, Oct. 27, 1953, MS-SS;
My Fight
, pp. 43-44,
Autobiography
, pp. 62, 66.

21.
Ibid.; W.S. to Grant Sanger, October 21, 1952, MS-SS, Hastings clipping from Feb. 20, 1908, in MS-LC, Scrapbooks; M.S. to Juliet Rublee, “Wednesday” (Bronxville), n.d. (about 1919) MS-DC. Joy G. Dryfoos, “Margaret Sanger's Suburban Interlude,”
The Westchester Historian
, 63:3, Summer 1987, pp. 73-78. My thanks to Charlotte Fahn, the current occupant of the house, for a copy of this article.

22.
Autobiography
, pp. 66-67; W.S. to Grant Sanger, Oct. 21, 1952, MS-SS.

3: SEEDS OF REBELLION

1.
The standard references on this cultural transition are Henry F. May,
The End of American Innocence: A Study of the First Years of Our Own Time
(New York: 1959), which cites the Brooks quote; see esp. pp. 21, 23, 30, 39; and Morton White,
Social Thought in America: The Revolt Against Formalism
2d ed. (Boston: 1957). For Lippmann quotes, see
Walter Lippmann: Early Writings
, edited by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (New York: 1970), introduction, and Ronald Steel,
Walter Lippmann and the American Century
(New York: 1980) p. 45; and for Floyd Dell,
see Love in Greenwich Village
(New York: 1923), p. 27. Also see Leslie Fishbein,
Rebels in Bohemia: The Radicals of the Masses, 1911-1917
(Chapel Hill: 1982); Irving Howe,
Socialism in America
(New York: 1985) and Robert A. Rosenstone,
Romantic Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed
(New York: 1975).

2.
Autobiography
, pp. 69-70; Hersey, “Margaret Sanger,” pp. 86-92; letter from William Sanger, n.d. (1911), in Socialist Party Local New York Letter Books, 1907-1914, Tamiment Library, New York University, hereinafter SPNY,Tamiment-NYU. Election results are in
Report of the Board of Election of the City of New York for the Year Ending December 31, 1911
(New York: 1912), cited in Alexander Campbell Sanger, “Margaret Sanger, The Early Years, 1910-1917,” senior thesis, Princeton University, 1969, p. 31, in MS-SS. Just under 10,000 total votes were cast in the district.

3.
Autobiography
, pp. 69-72.

4.
For Socialist Party electoral results, see Howe,
Socialism in America
, and on women and socialism,
The Papers of Eugene Victor Debs
, microfilm edition, in Tamiment, NYU, p. 11; E.V. Debs,
Woman: Comrade and Equal
, undated pamphlet issued by the National Office of the Socialist Party, Chicago, in MSSS; “Women and Socialism,” an editorial in
The Masses
1:2 (Dec. 1911), p. 4, and Mari Jo Buhle,
Women and American Socialism, 1870-1920
(Urbana, 111. 1983), Chaps. 4-7 and especially pp. 147-56. An advertisment for “Margaret Sanger, Women's Organizer” is in
The Call
, Nov. 20, 1911, and for Sanger on suffrage, see her article in
The Call
, Dec. 24, 1911, both in Tamiment-NYU. Finally, see Alex Sanger, “Early Years,” p. 35.