Woman of Valor (81 page)

4.
Charles Valenza, “Was Margaret Sanger a Racist?”
Family Planning Perspectives
17:1 (Jan.-Feb. 1985), pp. 44-46. Transcript of First American Birth Control Conference, Opening Session, Nov. 11, 1921, pp. 1-7, 36-42, 75-76, MS-SS. Sanger quotes are on p. 4 and p. 7. In all other respects, the views of the two women were actually quite close: see Antoinette F. Konikow, M.D.,
Voluntary Motherhood
(Boston: privately printed, 1923) and
Physician's Manual of Birth Control
(London: 1931). Finally, see
The New York Times
, Nov. 10, 1921, 12:2, and Nov. 12, 1921, 18:1.

5.
“Birth Control Raid Made by Police on Archbishop's Order,”
The New York Times
, Nov. 14, 1921, 1:4. Coverage continued throughout the week: Nov. 15, 1:3; Nov. 16, 17:1-2; Nov. 17, 5:3; Nov. 18, 18:2-3; Nov. 19, 1:4; Nov. 21, 1:4. Nov. 22, 16:2; Nov. 23, 9:1-2; Nov. 25, 7:1. The Hayes statement was printed in full in the
Times
, Nov. 21, 1921, 6:2-3. Another spate of coverage followed the inquiry proceedings in January. See
NYT
, Jan. 18, 1922, 36:3; Jan. 22, 5:2; Jan. 24, 1:5; Jan. 25, 14:5 (editorial); Jan. 25, 1922, 36:3. Also see “Brief Submitted in Behalf of Paul D. Cravath and Others,”
Birth Control Review
6:4 (Apr. 22, 1922), p. 54-55; and “The Press Protests,”
Birth Control Review
5:12 (Dec. 1921), pp. 16-17.

6.
The New York Times
, Nov. 19, 1921, 1:4; Lawrence Lader,
The Margaret Sanger Story
(New York: 1955), p. 180, also quotes from the Hearst's,
New York American
. Transcripts of Cox's speech and of Sanger's are in the stenographic record of the conference, MS-SS, with quotations respectively on pp. 10, 21-22.
An actress by the name of Mary Shaw also spoke, and Juliet Rublee made the evening's pitch for money, asking for support of a proposed birth control clinic under medical auspices.
Also see, Morehouse, “The Speaking of Margaret Sanger in the Birth Control Movement from 1916 to 1937,” Doctoral Dissertation, Purdue University, 1968, pp. 120-28, MS-SS, and Anne Kennedy to Harold Hersey, Feb. 19, 1937, in MS-LC. Finally, compare the text to “Notes for Town Hall Speech, 1921,” MS-LC, to see how Sanger capitalized on the alleged church intervention.

7.
“Topics of the Times: Resistance Was Not the Remedy,”
The New York Times
, Nov. 15, 1921, actually criticized the birth controllers for acting like “anarchists” by resisting the police. A day later, however, the paper recanted with “Topics of the Times: No Basis Found for Action,” Nov. 16, 1921, 18:4-5. Also see “Birth Control and Free Speech,”
Outlook
129:30 (Nov. 1921), p. 507. Editorial comment is summarized in “The Press Protests,”
Birth Control Review
5:12 (Dec. 1921), pp. 16-17. The hearings and the Rublee incident are reported in “Digs into Leader's Birth Control Past,”
NYT
, Nov. 23, 1921, 9:1-2; “Arrest Mrs. Rublee for Views on Birth,” Dec. 3, 1921, 9:1-2 and continued coverage on Dec. 4, 20:1-2; Dec. 8, 16:2; Dec. 10, 15:6; Dec. 18, 16:1. Also see “Mrs. Rublee's Arrest: A Record and a Protest,”
Birth Control Review
6:1 (Jan. 1922), pp. 5-7, and M.S. to H. de S., “March, Syracuse N.Y.” n.d. (1924), MS-LC, where she says that the best way to fight the Catholics is in “old Yankee fashion.”

8.
“The Case of Birth Control: The National Woman's Party,”
Birth Control Review
7:6 (June 1923), pp. 141-42. Another example of Sanger's frustration with the failure of feminist leaders to support birth control is in M.S. to Kitty Marion, Jan. 4, 1935, MS-LC. Nancy F. Cott,
The Grounding of Modern Feminism
(New Haven: 1987), pp. 53-114, offers a thoughtful analysis of feminist politics in the 1920s. The best prior interpretation of Sanger's contribution to these debates is in Sheila Rothman,
Woman's Proper Place: A History of Changing Ideals and Practices, 1870 to the Present
(New York: 1978), pp. 188-209, with mention of Sheppard-Towner specifically on p. 136. Sanger discusses her reservations about this reform in
Pivot of Civilization
(New York: 1922), p. 116.
The term “social feminism” was first used by the historian William O'Neill in 1969 to group together women who put their concerns as labor organizers, social activists, and reformers ahead of their direct concern for women's rights. On the limitations of this categorization, see Nancy Cott, “What's in a Name? The Limits of Social Feminism; or Expanding the Vocabulary of Women's History,”
The Journal of American History
76:3 (Dec. 1989), pp. 809-29.

9.
The employment statistics are from a two-part article by Chase Woodhouse, “The Status of Women,”
American Journal of Sociology
35:6 (May 1930), pp. 1091-95, and 36:6 (May 1931), pp. 1011-16. Also see S. P. Breckinridge, “The Activities of Women Outside the Home,” President's Commission on Social Trends:
Recent Social Trends in the United States
(New York: 1933), pp. 709-43. The best analysis of this data is in Alice Kessler-Harris,
Out to Work: A History of Wage Earning Women in the United States
(New York: 1982), pp. 217-49.
For evidence of the intense concern these trends aroused, also see Suzanne LaFollette,
Concerning Women
(New York: 1926), Virginia MacMakin Collier,
Marriage and Careers, A Study of One Hundred Women Who Are Wives, Mothers, Homemakers and Professional Workers
(New York: 1926), esp. tables on pp. 27-29, 56-58; Nancy E. Scott, “The Effects of the Higher Education of Women Upon the Home,”
Journal of American Sociology
32:2 (Sept. 1926), p. 257; Viva Boothe, “Gainfully Employed Women in the Family,”
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
160 (Mar. 1932), pp. 75-78; Ethel W. Cartland, “Substitutes for Motherhood,”
Outlook
134 (June 20, 1923), pp. 229-30; “Is The Younger Generation in Peril?”
The Literary Digest
69:7 (May 11, 1921). The latter article appeared under the magazine's “Topics of the Day” and dealt essentially with the danger of shorter skirts, dance, makeup, etc., to young women. The Sanger quotations are from Hannah Stein, “Does Marriage Interfere With a Career? Interview Margaret Sanger,” the
Syracuse Herald
, April 5, 1926, clipping in MS-LC.
William O'Neill in
Everyone Was Brave
(Chicago: 1969) took the view that this kind of emphasis on personal liberation for women detracted from political and economic concerns raised in earlier struggles for suffrage and labor reform and inadvertently produced “the feminine mystique,” which Betty Friedan and other pioneering women's rights advocates bemoaned in the 1960s. In this respect, O'Neill positioned Margaret Sanger as a reactionary figure in the long history of the women's rights struggle, influencing the subsequent work of David Kennedy, who failed to appreciate fully the burden of social and sexual repression on women of Sanger's generation. More recent historical writing explains why this arbitrary and one-dimensional view of feminism's decline in the 1920s is unwarranted. See especially Cott,
Grounding
, pp. 179-239.

10.
John B. Watson,
The Psychological Care of Infant and Child
(New York: 1928). Cott,
Grounding
, pp. 145-74; Rothman,
Proper Place
, pp. 178-88.
A dynamic interpretation of images of liberation for women in the 1920s was presented at the Seventh Berkshire Conference on the History of Women held at Wellesley College, June 19-21, 1987. I have adapted some of this material from a session titled “The New Woman Revised: Images in 1920s and 1930s Art and Theatre,” which included a paper by the art historian, Ellen Todd, “New Types and Old Traditions: Images of Women and Consumer Culture, 1920-40.” Perhaps the most cogent analysis of what happened to women and marriage in the 1920s is in Margaret Mead,
Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World
(New York: 1949), esp. pp. 292-98, 304-29.

11.
Dorothy Dunbar Bromley, “Feminist-New Style 1927,”
Harper's Monthly
155 (1927), p. 556. John B. Watson, “The Weakness of Women,”
The Nation
25 (July 6, 1927), pp. 9-10. Sanger,
Pivot of Civilization
, pp. 238-39.

12.
Sanger,
Pivot of Civilization
, p. 220.

13.
The quote from Sanger is in M.S. to Ethel Byrne, Mar. 1917, MS-LC. On the formation of the NCWC, see John A. Ryan, “The National Catholic Welfare Conference,” unpublished manuscript for an autobiography, pp. 144-150, in the John A. Ryan Papers, Catholic University of America, hereinafter, JR-CU; John Tracy Ellis,
American Catholicism
(Chicago: 1969), pp. 140-44, and Esther McCarthy, “Catholic Women and War: The National Council of Catholic Women,” paper delivered at the Berkshire Conference of American Women Historians, Bryn Mawr, Pa., June 9-11, 1976. Ellis, p. 118, identifies Rome's distrust of American church liberalism as evidenced by a papal communication (
Testem Benevolentiae
) of 1899. Also see Patrick Cardinal Hayes, “Cardinal's Pastoral, Catholic Charities Appeal, April 26 to May 3, 1925,” copy in MS-SS.

14.
On the contraceptive canon and Ryan's role in reformulating church policy in this country, see John T. Noonan, Jr.,
Contraception: A History of its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists
, 2d ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: 1986), pp. 414-24, and Alvah W. Sulloway,
Birth Control and Catholic Doctrine
(New York: 1959), pp. 37-43. The quotes, in order, are taken from Sulloway,
idem
, p. 38 and p. 199, citing
The Catholic Encyclopedia
, 12 (1907), p. 279; Noonan,
idem
, pp. 423-24, citing Rev. John A. Ryan, D.D., “Family Limitation,”
Ecclesiastical Review
54 (1916), pp. 684-96; and the Pastoral Letter of the Archbishops and Bishops of the United States, Sept. 26, 1919, in Guilday, ed.,
The National Pastorals
, pp. 312-13; Rev. John A. Ryan, D.D., “The Attitude of the Church Toward Birth Control,”
Catholic Charities Review
4:10 (Dec. 1920), pp. 299-301, copy in MS-SS; Sulloway,
idem
, p. 41, citing
The Catholic Encyclopedia Supplement
(1922); and Hayes, “Cardinal's Pastoral,” April, May, 1925, MS-SS; John M. Cooper, Ph. D., associate professor of sociology at Catholic University of America,
Birth Control
(Washington: n.d. [1920s]), pp. 17, 21, MS-SS; and finally, Rev. Thomas J. Cawley,
Those Dangerous Babies
! (reprint from
The Catholic Light
, weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Scranton) n.d. (1920s), pp. 16-18, MS-SS. The NCWC began circulating anti-birth control propaganda. See Memorandum from “Father Burke, Father McGowan,” Aug. 6, 1925, National Catholic Welfare Conference Papers, Catholic University of America, hereinafter NCWC-CU.

15.
M.S. to Michael Slattery, executive secretary, NCWC, Dec. 31, 1920, MS-LC; Genevieve Grandcourt (probably a penname), “Bachelors Oppose Birth Control,”
Birth Control Review
5:2 (Feb. 1921), p. 13; “The Sin of Birth Control,” reprint of an article from
The New Republic
, Dec. 28, 1921, in
BCR
6:2 (Feb. 1922), p. 17; M.S. to Juliet Rublee, n.d., MS-DC.

16.
For a contrary interpretation of the Catholic controversy, which essentially blames Sanger for having failed to understand the legitimacy of the church's immutable moral position, see David Kennedy,
Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger
(New Haven: 1970), pp. 147-53. Kennedy, however, neither acknowledges the low end of the debate on both sides through the 1920s, nor concedes that the American church was late in articulating and publicly advancing its natural law arguments as moral doctrine. Sanger met the attacks of the Catholic Church on its own muddy terrain. Still, she never gave up. In 1929, she even sent John Ryan a complimentary copy of one of her books. See M.S. to Father John A. Ryan. Feb. 6, 1929, and J.R. to M.S., Feb. 9, 1929, in which he promises to send comments. JR-CU.

17.
Wm. Inge to M.S., Oct. 27, 1920, MS-LC. Reference to Inge's public remarks on population is from the pamphlet titled
The First American Birth Control Conference: Why
?, MS-SS. Also see Margaret Sanger, “The War Against Birth Control,”
American Mercury
(June 1924), clipping in MS-LC; and 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. 285-86.

18.
The first quote is from Louis I. Dublin, “The Excesses of Birth Control,” address delivered before the Sixth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference, New York, Mar. 26, 1925, copy in MS-SS. The speech was covered in “Population Rise No Menace,”
The New York Times
, Mar. 27, 1925, 8:1-2. The second reference is to a “Dr. Schlapp” who spoke several days later. See “Finds Excitement Injures the Race,”
NYT
, Mar. 29, 1925, Sec.l, 6:1-5. Dublin was chief statistician for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. The speech was revised for publication as “The Fallacious Propaganda for Birth Control,”
Atlantic Monthly
, Feb. 1926, reprint also in MS-SS. For a critique of Dublin, see Norman Himes,
Medical History of Contraception
(Baltimore: 1936), pp. 398-405. For support of Dublin's viewpoint from organized labor, also see J. B. S. Hardman, an official of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, “Organized Labor and Birth Control,”
Birth Control Review
13:9 (Sept. 1929), pp. 245-51. The Norman Thomas quote is from the same
Birth Control Review
forum, “A Socialist's Viewpoint,” p. 255.