Woman of Valor (72 page)

5.
Elizabeth Griffith,
In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(New York: 1984).

6.
For this dimension of suffrage, see especially Aileen Kraditor,
The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement 1890-1920
(New York: 1965), esp., pp. 5355, and Ellen Dubois,
Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848-1869
(Ithaca, N.Y.: 1978), passim. Also, William H. Chafe,
The American Woman: Her Changing Social, Economic and Political Role, 1920-1970
(New York: 1972), pp. 10-13. After Stanton's death at the age of eighty-seven in 1902, she was all but obliterated from the official memory of the suffragists. Matriarchal honors were instead bestowed on Susan B. Anthony.

7.
The Roosevelt remark is quoted in David Kennedy,
Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger
(New Haven 1970), p. 42. Also see “Race Suicide and Racial Stamina,”
The Literary Digest
47:676 (Oct. 18, 1913). Roosevelt's views are also summarized in his article “Race Decadence” in
Outlook
, Apr. 8, 1911, p. 765, and in James Reed,
The Birth Control Movement and American Society: From Private Vice to Public Virtue
(Princeton: 1984), pp. 201-203 and Linda Gordon,
Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America
(New York: 1976), pp. 135-58.

8.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
Women and Economics
(New York: 1966), originally published in 1898, esp. p. 33, and Carl Degler's thoughtful introduction. Also see Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
The Man-Made World
(New York: 1911).

9.
Jacqueline Van Voris interview with Olive Byrne Richard, pp. 2-3, 18-19 (quote from p. 9), and author's interview of Mar. 28, 1985.

10.
Reed,
Birth Control Movement
, p. 83. My thanks for the Visiting Nurses information to Karen Buhler-Wilkerson and Ellen Baer of the University of Pennsylvania Center for the Study of the History of Nursing. Also see Karen Buhler-Wilkerson, “Public Health Nursing: In Sickness or in Health?”
American Journal of Public Health
75:10 (Oct. 1985), pp. 1155-61.

11.
Autobiography
, pp. 89-92.
My Fight
, pp. 46-55.

12.
Reed,
Birth Control Movement
, pp. 3-33; Gordon,
Woman's Body
, pp. 3-71. On the great upsurge in abortion between 1840 and 1880, also see James C. Mohr,
Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy, 1800-1900
(New York: 1978), pp. 46-85, and on the crusade to end it, pp. 147-245. A popular account of abortion in the Jewish ghetto is in Kate Simon,
Bronx Primitive
(New York: 1982), pp. 68-69. Also see Richard and Dorothy Wirtz,
Lying In: A History of Childbirth in America
(New York: 1978), pp. 155-61; Carl Degler,
at Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present
(New York: 1980), pp. 196-97, 228-29, 279-97; Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations Between Women in Nineteenth Century America,” in her
Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America
(New York: 1985), pp. 217-44; Paul Starr,
The Social Transformation of American Medicine
(New York: 1987), pp. 79-144; and Brodie, “Family Limitation in American Culture: 1830-1900,” doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago, 1982, pp. 469-74. On the late nineteenth century fertility decline among native-born and immigrant, see Degler,
At Odds
, pp. 219-22, citing, among others, Tamara Hareven and Maris A. Vinovskis, “Marital Fertility, Ethnicity and Occupation in Urban Families: An Analysis of South Boston and the South End in 1880,”
Journal of Social History
8 (Spring 1975); Norman E. Himes,
Medical History of Contraception
(Baltimore: 1936), pp. 333-52; John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman,
Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America
(New York: 1988), pp. 59-64; and Gordon,
Woman's Body
, p. 66. The data on New York is from Morris H. Kahn, M.D., “A Municipal Birth Control Clinic,” reprint from
The New York Medical Journal
(Apr. 28, 1917), MS-SS.

13.
Margaret Sanger, “To Mothers Our Duty,”
The Call
, Mar. 26, 1911, and “Impressions of the East Side,”
The Call
, Sept. 3, 1911, both at Tamiment-NYU. For the maternal mortality statistics see Louis I. Dublin and Lee K. Frankel, “Visiting Nursing and Life Insurance: Statistical Summary of Eight Years,”
Quarterly of the American Statistical Publication Association
(June 1918), in the collections of the New York Academy of Medicine, hereinafter NYAM. On the role of the Visiting Nurses, see Louis I. Dublin,
A Family of 30
Million: The Story of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company
(New York: 1943), also at NYAM; and Diane Hamilton, “Faith and Finance,”
Image: Journal of Nursing Scholarship
20:3 (Fall 1988), pp. 124-27. Comparative national data is in Louis I. Dublin, “The Problem of Maternity: A Survey and Forecast,”
American Journal of Public Health
29:11 (Nov. 1939) pp. 1207208; and Robert Woodbury,
Maternal Mortality: U.S Department of Labor, Children's Bureau Publication 158
(Washington, D.C.: 1926), pp. 1-30. Finally, see Ellen A. Kennan, “Maternity: A Hazardous Occupation,”
The Birth Control Review
3:7 (July 1919) pp. 10-11.

14.
Autobiography
, p. 111. “What Every Girl Should Know,” ran weekly in
The Call
, Sunday Supplement, Women's Page, Nov. 17, Nov. 24, Dec. 1, Dec. 8, Dec. 15, Dec. 22, and Dec. 29, 1912; Jan. 12, Jan. 19, Jan. 26, and Feb. 2, 1913. The article for Feb. 9 was censored but ran on Mar. 2, 1913. Also see letters and editorial comment for Dec. 29, 1912, Jan. 5, Jan. 12, Jan. 19, Jan. 26, Feb. 2, Feb. 9, Feb. 19, Feb. 11, Feb. 11, Feb. 14, Feb. 16, Mar. 2, Mar. 16, and June 5, 1913, all at Tamiment, NYU. The articles were subsequently collected, edited, and bound in paper under the title
What Every Girl Should Know
(New York: 1920), but much of the original political rhetoric is deleted; copy in MS-SS.

15.
Mary Alden Hopkins, “Birth Control and Public Morals,”
Harper's Weekly
, 60:3048 (May 22, 1915), pp. 489-90. Heywood Broun and Margaret Leech,
Anthony Comstock: Roundsman of the Lord
(New York: 1927), p. 15. This journalistic account is still the best biography of Comstock. For a psychoanalytic interpretation of Comstock and his hold on conservative public opinion, see Robert W. Haney,
Comstockery in America: Patterns of Censorship and Control
(Boston: 1960), pp. 172-77.

16.
Anthony Comstock,
Traps for the Young
(New York: 1884), p. 9, also cited in C. Thomas Dienes,
Law, Politics and Birth Control
(Urbana Ill.: 1972), p. 33.

17.
On late Victorian social purity reform, see especially William Leach,
True Love and Perfect Union: The Feminist Reform of Sex and Society
(New York: 1980), esp. pp. 85-96.

18.
Dienes,
Law, Politics
, pp. 35-39; Alvah W. Sulloway,
Birth Control and Catholic Doctrine
(New York: 1959), pp. 3-7.

19.
Section 211 of the Federal Criminal Code is cited in full in Mary Ware Dennett,
Birth Control Laws: Shall We Keep Them, Change Them, or Abolish Them?
(New York: 1926), pp. 9-10; Sections 1142 and 1145 of the New York State Penal Code are summarized on pp. 10-11. For the chronology of events, also see Dienes,
Law, Politics
, pp. 20-48; Dennett,
Birth Control Laws
, pp. 19-45; John T. Noonan, Jr.,
Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists
, 2d ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: 1986), p. 412; Sulloway,
Catholic Doctrine
, p. 23 and notes on pp. 181-87; and Harriet F. Pilpel and Theodore S. Zavin, “Birth Control,”
Marriage and Family Living
, 14:2 (1952). Finally see, James F. Morton, “The Origin and Working of the Comstock Laws,”
Birth Control Review
3:5 (May 1919), pp. 5-7; and Reed,
Birth Control Movement
, pp. 34-45.

20.
Mohr,
Abortion in America
, pp. 196-99, Broun and Leech,
Anthony Comstock
, pp. 121-22, Hopkins, “Public Morals.” Also see, “A Physician,”
Madame Restell: An Account of Her Life and Horrible Practices Together with Prostitution in New York: Its Extent, Causes and Effects Upon Society
(New York: 1847). A copy of this paperbound book is in the rare books collection of the New York Public Library.

21.
Brodie, “Family Limitation in America,” pp. 280, 288, 306, 316 323 325, 330, 342-44, 354.

22.
For contrasting interpretations of the Mosher survey, see Degler,
At Odds
, pp. 262-64, and Peter Gay,
The Bourgeois Experience, Victoria to Freud
, Vol. 1:
Education of the Sexes
(New York: 1984), pp. 135-44, both of whom use the data as evidence of sexual enthusiasm, v. Rosalind Rosenberg,
Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism
(New Haven: 1982), pp. 180-87, and Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “A Richer and Gentler Sex,” paper delivered at the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women in America, Bryn Mawr, Pa., June 1976, both of whom take a more cautious view. On Kinsey, see Alfred Kinsey, et al.,
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female
(Philadelphia: 1953), pp. 267-69 and 330-32. Ira L. Reiss,
Premarital Sexual Standards in America
(Urbana, Ill.: 1953), pp. 126-45, Reed,
Birth Control Movement
, pp. 54-63; and Gordon,
Woman's Body
, pp. 192-94. Daniel Scott Smith speculates that a loosening of standards may have occurred even earlier in lower middle-class culture where individuals, and especially women, were less vulnerable to rigid sanctions. See Smith, “The Dating of the American Sexual Revolution: Evidence and Interpretation,” in
The American Family in Social and Economic Perspective
, edited by Michael Gordon (New York: 1973). Robert Latou Dickinson, M.D. and Lura Beam,
The Single Woman: A Medical Study in Sex Education
(Baltimore: 1934), an analysis of clinical records from a private practice in Brooklyn, New York, uncovered an 8 percent incidence of premarital intercourse in the 1890s, but 18 percent by 1918; pp. 62-64, 430, also cited in Rosenberg,
Beyond Separate Spheres
, p. 202. On the antiprostitution hysteria, see “Sex O'Clock in America,”
Current Opinion
(Aug. 1913), pp. 113-14. For a statistical breakdown of periodical coverage of the 1910-1914 hysteria over prostitution and sex morals, see President's Commission on Social Trends:
Recent Social Trends in the United States
(New York: 1933), pp. 414 and 422. The principal secondary source on the campaigns against prostitution is David Pivar,
Purity Crusade
(New York: 1973). Allan M. Brandt,
No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States Since 1880
(New York: 1985), pp. 7-51, analyzes the progressive response to venereal disease. Also see Smith-Rosenberg, “Richer and Gentler,” pp. 176-77; Reed,
Birth Control Movement
, pp. 57-58, and Kennedy,
Birth Control
, pp. 66-68.

23.
Broun and Leech,
Anthony Comstock
, pp. 17-18, 229-30, 249, 257-58; Gertrude Marvin, “Anthony and the Devil: An Interview,”
The Masses
5:5 (Feb. 1914), p. 16. The cartoon was also from
The Masses
, Sept. 1915, cited in Broun and Leech, p. 11. For Emma Goldman on Comstock's influence, see “Victims of Morality,”
Mother Earth
, 8: 1 (Mar. 1913), pp. 19-21.

24.
For a variation on this analysis, see Max Eastman, “Revolutionary Birth Control: A Reply to Some Correspondence,”
The Masses
6: 10 (July 1915), p. 15, which refers to opponents of birth control as those who see any reference to sexuality as “a libidinous violation of something sacred.”

4: THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL

1.
Memos on Women's Committee Activities from Mar. 11 to May 25, 1912, in SPNY, Tamiment-NYU. The Ashley dispute is No. 77. Sanger on Ashley is in
Autobiography
, p. 71.

2.
Mari Jo Buhle,
Women and American Socialism, 1870-1920
(Urbana, Ill.: 1983), p. 171. Nancy Shrom Dye,
As Equals and As Sisters: Feminism, the Labor Movement, and the Women's Trade Union League of New York
(Columbia, Mo.: 1980).

3.
Margaret Sanger, “The Women of the Laundry Workers' Strike,”
The Call
, Jan. 14, 1912, Tamiment-NYU, and
Autobiography
, pp. 79-80. U.S. Congress. House. Rules Committee.,
Hearing on the Strike at Lawrence, Mass
., H.R. 671, 62d Cong., 2d sess., Washington, D.C., 1912, pp. 226-33. “Mrs. Taft Hears Strike Children Tell Woes to House Rules Committee,” The
New York Herald
, Mar. 6, 1912, clipping with a photograph of Sanger, along with a clipping from The
New York World
, Mar. 3, 1912, in MS-LC. “Mrs. Taft Listens to Strike Charges,”
The New York Times
, Mar. 6, 1912, 6:2-3. Also see Raimond Fazio, an IWW official in Chicago, to Julius Gerber, a Socialist Party organizer in NYC, Jan. 31, 1912, SPNY-Tamiment, NYU. Sanger wrote on Lawrence for
The Call
, Feb. 15, 1912, 6:3, and Feb. 18, 1912, 15:6, Tamiment-NYU.
A warm personal recollection of Sanger leading the children into New York City comes from Rada Bercovici, daughter of the radical writer, Konrad Bercovici, whose family took in several of the evacuees, author's interview, Mar. 24, 1986.
On Sanger at Lawrence, also see Carlo Tresca, “Autobiography,” unpublished manuscript in the Carlo Tresca Papers, Manuscript Division, New York Public Library, hereinafter CT-NYPL, pp. 124-41, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn,
The Rebel Girl
(New York: 1973), p. 142. On Lawrence in general: Melvyn Dubofsky,
We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World
(Chicago: 1969), p. 248, and on the role of women at Lawrence: Meredith Tax,
The Rising of the Women: Feminist Solidarity and Class Conflict, 1810-1917
(New York: 1980), pp. 260-70. Additional clippings on Sanger's arrest in Hazelton are in MS-LC, Scrapbook 2. Also see M.S., “With the Girls in Hazelton Jail,”
The Call
, Apr. 20, 1913, 15:6-7, Tamiment-NYU.