Woman of Valor (76 page)

34.
Ellis,
Task of Social Hygiene
(material in quotation, on p. 12). Also see Ellis,
Essays in Wartime
, esp. pp. 92-115; Ellis,
Little Essays
, passim; Sanger's review of it in the
Birth Control Review
, 7:4, (Apr. 1923), and Ellis, “The World's Racial Problem,” a review in
Birth Control Review
4:10 (Oct. 1920), p. 16., of a book by eugenicist Lothrop Stoddard,
The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy
, in which Ellis is skeptical, but not wholly dismissive.
My impressions of Ellis's increasing “bewilderment” about eugenicism are drawn from his later writings and also from the interviews with François Lafitte and Joseph Wortis, previously cited. Though Ellis shared many of the prejudices of his upper-class English milieu and privately may have made snide remarks, he exhibited no overt anti-Semitism and worked diligently to help Jewish refugees relocate out of Germany in the late 1930s.

35.
For Ellis's views, see his
Man and Woman
, esp. the introduction and pp. 447-51, and “The New Aspect of the Woman's Movement,” in
Task of Social Hygiene
, pp. 67-112. Material in quotation is on p. 81. Sheila Rothman's introduction to the edition of the work previously cited presents a derogatory interpretation of Ellis's thinking about women, with which I respectfully disagree. Also see Rowbotham and Weeks,
Socialism and the New Life
, pp. 146-48 and 170-172.
On Ellis and Goldman see E.G. to H.E., Dec. 27, 1924, and May 30, 1928, in the Emma Goldman Papers, Tamiment, NYU. Ellis returned the tribute and contributed in 1928 to a fund being raised to enable Goldman to write her memoirs.
On his relationships with Schreiner and Key, see Olive Schreiner,
Woman and Labor
(New York: 1911), esp. pp. 20-21, 46-51; Ellen Key,
The Century of the Child
(New York: 1909), p. 85; Ellen Key,
Love and Marriage
(New York:1911), esp. pp. 229-33; and for the material in quotation, Ellis's introduction, pp. vii-xiii, Ellen Key,
The Renaissance of Motherhood
(New York and London: 1914), esp. p. 88. For Ellis, Schreiner, and Key's influence on emerging feminists, see Nancy Cott,
The Grounding of Modern Feminism
(New Haven: 1987), pp. 41-46.
For modern-day thinking on these same issues, see Carol Gilligan,
In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development
(Cambridge, Mass., and London: 1982), pp. 68-70, and Sylvia Ann Hewlett,
A Lesser Life: The Myth of Women's Liberation in America
(New York: 1985) passim. Sylvia A. Law, “Rethinking Sex and the Constitution,”
University of Pennsylvania Law Review
132:5 (June 1984), pp. 955-1039, offers a provocative, revisionist legal argument on women's rights to constitutional protection of their biological role as child bearers.

36.
Margaret Sanger, “Comstockery in America,” speech at Fabian Hall, July 5, 1915, MS-LC. Also see the form letter of invitation to hear the speech, July, 1915, MS-LC, and M.S. to “Comrades and Friends,” Aug. 1, 1915, MSLC.

37.
Leonard Abbott to M. S., May 1915, June 1, and Aug. 15, 1915, MSLC; E. G. Flynn to M.S., Aug. 1915, MS-LC; Caroline Nelson in San Francisco to M.S., June 12, 1915; Charles Schultz of the Oakland IWW to M.S., Nov. 7, 1915; Mrs. F. E. Daniel, publisher of
The Texas Medical Journal
, to M.S., Aug. 19, 1915, MS-LC; Harry Breckinridge, “The Persecution of Margaret Sanger,”
Mother Earth
9: 9 (Nov. 1914), pp. 296-97; M.S., “A Letter from Margaret Sanger,”
Mother Earth
10:2 (Apr. 1915), pp. 76-78.

38.
“Statement of William Sanger,” Sept. 10, 1915, Court of Special Sessions, New York, MS-SS; James Waldo Fawcett,
The Trial of William Sanger
(New York: 1917) in MS-SS; “The Conviction of William Sanger,”
Mother Earth
10:8 (Oct. 1915), pp. 268-71; “Criminals All,”
The Masses
, Sept. 17, 1915, an article enclosed in the William Sanger correspondence, MS-SS; “Sanger Trial in Comstock Case Ends in Uproar,” unidentified New York newspaper clipping, scrapbook, MS-LC. Also see, “William Sanger on Trial,”
The Call
, Sept. 10, 1915, 6:1-2; “The Case of Sanger,” editorial, Sept. 11, 1915, 6:1-2; “What They Say About the Sanger Case,” Sept. 11, 1915, 1:6 and “William Sanger Sentenced to Thirty Days in Jail,” Sept. 11, 1915, 1:7.

39.
On her defensiveness about her absence from the children, see M.S. to W.S, May 31, 1915, MS-SS; also
My Fight
, pp. 117-18, 126, and
Autobiography
, p. 175.

7: THE FRENZY OF RENOWN

1.
Autobiography
, p. 180. For a statistical breakdown of birth control coverage in popular magazines listed in the
Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature
and in select newspapers and books, see Hornell Hart, “Changing Social Attitudes and Interests,” in President's Research Committee on Social Trends,
Recent Social Trends in the United States
Vol. 1 (New York: 1933), pp. 382-83, 414-16, 422-23. Also see James A. Field, “Publicity by Prosecution,”
The Survey
, Feb. 19, 1916, p. 599, in MS-LC. For parallels between Sanger and Besant, see “Three Rebel Women,”
Birth Control Review
13:4 (Apr. 1929), p. 106.

2.
See, for example, Max Eastman, “Is the Truth Obscene?”
The Masses
4:6 (Mar. 1915) and successive articles in the May, June, July, Sept. and Nov. issues. I took this particular quote from
The New Republic
because it was widely circulated through a condensation of the articles that appeared later in “The Battle over Birth Control,”
Current Opinion
59: 339-41, (Nov. 1915). For the original, see “The Age of Birth Control,”
The New Republic
2: 113 (Feb. 28, 1915), “The Control of Births,”
The New Republic
, 2:114 (Mar. 6, 1915), and subsequent articles and correspondence on the subject in the issues of Mar. 13, Mar. 20, and July 3, 1915.

3.
Mary Alden Hopkins, “The Control of Births,”
Harper's Weekly
, 60:3042 (Apr. 10, 1915), pp. 342-43, and subsequent articles in the series, especially, “Dead Babies,” Apr. 17, 1915, pp. 369-70, “Spacing Out Babies,” Apr. 24, 1915, pp. 401-402, and “The Falling Birth Rate,” June 12, 1915, pp. 567-68.
The New York Times Index
for 1914 and 1915 lists relevant articles under “family,” “birth control,” and “Sanger.” The first entry is on William Sanger's arrest and the decision of the Free Speech League to help defend him, Feb. 6, 1915, 12:5; followed by articles on July 19, 16:7, July 25, 11:14:7, Sept. 5,11:8:5, Sept. 11, 7:2, and Sept. 12,11:15:1. Also, see John Reed to M. S., Jan. 12, 1916, MS-LC. A tabulation of birth control coverage in
The Times
and
The Reader's Guide
between 1866 and 1926 was made by Francis McLennon Vreeland, “The Process of Reform with Especial Reference to Reform Groups in the Field of Population,” doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan, 1929, pp. 296-312, and Tables 85 and 87.

4.
On feminism and the declining birth rate, see “Birth Control Calendar,” clippings from
The New York Times
for 1915, including “Women and the Fading Maternal Instinct,” Sept. 5, 1915, MS-LC. On the formation of the NBCL, see “Birth Control,”
The Masses
6:8 (May 1915), p. 20. On the original NBCL membership, see Vreeland,“Process of Reform,” p. 690. On Mary Ware Dennett, see biographical entry in
Notable American Women, 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary
, edited by Edward T. James and Janet Wilson James, (Cambridge, Mass: 1971) pp. 463-65. The Parsons incident is recounted in Elsie Clews Parsons, “Wives and Birth Control,”
The New Republic
6 (Mar. 18, 1916) pp. 187-88; in Rose Pastor Stokes to Elsie Clews Parsons, n.d. (191516), RPS, Tamiment-NYU; and in Sanger,
Autobiography
, p. 189, where she “doctored” the incident by saying that twenty-five women were asked to “plead guilty” with her in court, and only one agreed. The second Parsons quote is from Elsie Clews Parsons,
Social Freedom
(New York: 1915), cited in David Kennedy,
Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger
(New Haven: 1970), p. 60. Finally, see Carrie Catt to M.S., Nov. 24, 1920, MS-SS.

5.
On the suffrage victory see Eleanor Flexner,
Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States
(New York: 1973), originally published in 1959, pp. 262-75. For a discussion of the ideological distinctions between older suffragists and women activists and the younger generation of “feminists” who added sex to their rights agenda, see Nancy Cott,
The Grounding of Modern Feminism
(New Haven: 1987), Chap. 5. The rash of birth control publicity from 1915 to 1918 is analyzed in Vreeland, “Process of Reform,” and in Hornell Hart, President's Commission on Social Trends:
Recent Social Trends in the United States
(New York: 1933), pp. 414-16, which makes the point that birth control did not again receive comparable attention until the 1930s, when, as we shall see, Margaret Sanger abandoned an interim strategy of quieter organization and lobbying and intensely pursued national publicity for a second time.

6.
Anita C. Block, “The Sanger Case,”
The Call
, Sept. 19, 1915, Sunday Supplement, p. 13:2-3. A critical reply to the editorial was written by Jessie Ashley. See “Differs on the Sanger Case,”
The Call
, Sunday
Magazine
, Sept. 26, 1915, p. 13: 1-2. The quote is from William Sanger to M.S., Sept. 27, 1915, MS-SS. Also see W.S. to Mabel Dodge, Feb. 28, 1915, and Leonard Abbott to Mabel Dodge, Feb. 3, 1915, in the Mabel Dodge Luhan papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, and W.S. to M.S., Sept. 21, 1915, MS-SS. (The second benefactress was Grace [Mrs. John Sargeant] Crane.) Stuart Sanger discussed his aunt's role in his placement at the Winnwood School on Long Island in his interview with the author, Mar. 1986.

7.
Wm. Sanger to Mabel Dodge, Sept. 27, 1915; W.S. to M.S., Feb. 14, 1914; Mar. 25, 1914; Jan. 10, 1915, with threat of suicidal impulses; Sept. 3, 1915, enclosing the poem; Sept. 14, 1915, on her birthday; Oct. 6, 1915, all in MS-SS. M.S. to W.S., Oct. 13, 1915; Mar. 21, 1917 (wishing to give back his name) and Mar. 24, 1917, also all in MS-SS.

8.
Author's interviews with Olive Byrne Richard, Mar. 1985, and Stuart Sanger, Mar. 1986.

9.
Dreams of Peggy in Journal, May 1, 1926, MS-LC, and memory of the cremation in 1936 India Diary, MS-LC; M.S. to Juliet Rublee, Nov. 3, n.d. (1923), MS-DC; and M.S. to H.E., May 30, 1929.
Autobiography
, p. 182. Additional dreams of babies are in Sanger Journal entries for Oct. 6, 1924, Feb. 14, 1936 and May 28, 1951, in MS-SS.
Margaret often wrote about her dreams to Havelock Ellis, whose own interpretations of dream content disputed the dominant psychoanalytic theory of sleep as the province of highly charged sexual symbols. Ellis insisted instead that dreams represent no more than a random sorting out of the significant events of one's conscious life, possibly affected by such physiological factors during sleep as body temperature or position.
Freud on dreams of babies is in Sigmund Freud,
A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
, translated by Joan Riviere (New York: 1960), p. 143, where he interprets unconscious images of babies as representations of the genitalia. Ego-pyschologists would more likely read a generalized anxiety pattern stemming from early childhood into these dreams. Of course their meaning could only be determined in relation to direct conscious associations, but the sustained pattern is nevertheless compelling.
The depth of Margaret's grief for Peggy is also evident in contemporaneous letters of condolence. See, for example, Jessie Ashley to M.S., Nov. 8, 1915; Stella Brown to M.S., Dec. 5, 1915, and April 6, 1916; and Emma Goldman to M.S., Dec. 7, 1915, which entreats her to stop blaming herself, all in MS-LC. M.S. to Grant Sanger, May 31, 1942, in MS-SS, reminds him that it is Peggy's birthday, and that “the bond of mother and child never dies.” Olive Byrne Richard, Margaret Sanger Marston, and Nancy Sanger Ivins also spoke of the special bond among Peggy, Grant and Margaret in their oral reminiscences with Jacqueline Van Voris, for the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Nov. 25, 1977.
M.S. to Lawrence Lader, Dec. 3, 1953, answers his question about her use of the word “guilt” in a letter about Peggy to Emma Goldman by saying “guilt” was a “hackneyed word” and that she preferred the term “regret,” because it did not imply wrongdoing on her part. “As to leaving the children I knew it was a necessary sacrifice to leave them to prepare my defense in order to leave them a clear record of their mother's work,” she continued. Her behavior at the time of the tragedy, however, suggests the appropriateness of the term “guilt,” even by her later definition.

10.
These “psychic experiences,” and Margaret's conflicted responses of both comfort and disbelief are reported in notes on a conversation with Dorothy Brush, dated Aug. 17, 1937, MS-SS. Margaret also told Brush that several years following the death, she attended a meeting led by a Parsee Indian, where she met a small woman psychic who claimed to have communicated with Peggy. The woman described the child accurately and then, to Margaret's astonishment, said Peggy was with “Domah,” the name which the Sanger children used for Bill Sanger's mother. Letters Margaret kept from the Parsee woman are also in MS-SS, but there is no confirmation of the psychic experience.