Woman of Valor (88 page)

19.
Marie Kopp,
Birth Control in Practice: Analysis of 10,000 Cases and Stories of the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau
(New York: 1934), p. 40, 145-47, 172. Also see Hannah Stone, “The Vaginal Occlusive Pessary,”
Practice of Contraception: The Proceedings of the Seventh International Birth Control Conference
(Baltimore: 1930); and Hannah Stone, “The Birth Control Clinic, Some Problems in Procedure,” an apparently unpublished manuscript in MS-LC, which discusses the relative merits of questioning women about their sex lives. For a brief time, the sex questions were dropped because they embarrassed many patients, but they were quickly restored in the belief that effectiveness with contraception was impossible for those with major sexual anxieties.
The quote from Helen S. Isaacson is in a condolence letter to Abraham Stone, Aug. 1941, AS-Countway. The McCarthy incident is from
The Group
. Other examples of unhappy client mail include Helene Simon to M.S., Mar. 28; Anna E. Nash to M.S., May 2, 1929; Mrs. Harry H. Revelle (the upside-down user) to M.S., Sept 28, 1931, and M.S. to Revelle, Oct. 12, 1931, all in MS-LC. These complainants received cordial responses.

20.
Kopp,
Birth Control in Practice
, pp. 101-103. For comparable data on sexual behavior drawn from questionnaires, see R. L. Dickinson and Lura Beam,
A Thousand Marriages, A Medical Study of Sex Adjustment
(Baltimore: 1953), pp. 438-42. Also see Hannah M. Stone, M.D., and Henriette Hart, “Contraception and Mental Hygiene,”
Mental Hygiene
, 17:3 (July 1933), pp. 417-23.
Lewis Terman in
Psychological Factors in Marital Happiness
(New York: 1938) downgrades the emphasis of sexologists on sex factors in marital happiness, yet, at the same time, confirms the Stones' findings about frequent inability to reach orgasm among women. Terman's point is that he found just as many happy couples among the sexually maladjusted as there were unhappy ones among the sexually compatible.

21.
Abraham Stone, “Presidential Address to the American Association of Marriage Counselors, May 26, 1950,” copy in AS-Countway. On the controversy over premarital instruction, see R. L. Dickinson, “Premarital Examinations as Routine Preventive Gynecology,”
American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology
8:5 (Nov. 1928), p. 631. On the issue of whether rupturing the hymen should be “comme il faut” for doctors with patient authorization, see Marjorie Prevost to M.S., Nov. 23, 1931, MS-LC.

22.
Ralph P. Bridgeman, “Guidance for Marriage and Family Life,”
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
160 (Mar. 1932), pp. 144-62. Abraham Stone, M.D., “Presidential Address to the American Association of Marriage Counselors, 1950,” p. 1; “The First Ten Years of The American Institute of Family Relations, A report from the Board of Trustees;” “Margaret Sanger Research Bureau Marriage Consultation Service,” typescript, n.d., all in AS-Countway.
Blank examples of the marriage consultation service case record, also in the Stone papers at Countway, show that, although a history of hereditary diseases was taken for each patient, the emphasis was on medical, sexual, and social factors that affected the individual directly, the latter including economic status, housing conditions, etc.

23.
For a succinct summary of their views, see Hannah Meyer Stone, M.D., and Abraham Stone, M.D.,
A Marriage Manual: A Practical Guide Book to Sex and Marriage
(New York: 1935), esp. pp. 18-27, and Hannah Stone, “Marital Maladjustments,”
The Cyclopedia of Medicine, Surgery and Specialties
(Philadelphia: 1940), pp. 820-29, copy in MS-SS.

24.
Hannah Stone, M.D., “Marriage Counseling: Marital Problems and Adjustments As They Arise in Birth Control Clinics,” remarks at the Conference on Birth Control and National Recovery, Washington, D.C., Jan. 17, 1934, copy in MS-SS. Freud's commentary is in “Three Essays on Sexuality,” in Sigmund Freud,
Collected Papers
(London: 1940), pp. 219-35.

25.
Stone and Stone,
Marriage Manual
, esp. pp. 203-33, “The Art of Love.” Also see Hannah Stone, M.D., and Abraham Stone, M.D., “Sexual Disharmonies,” unpublished manuscript in AS-Countway, esp. proposed chapters “Frigidity in Modern Woman,” “Female Orgasm,” and “Premature Ejaculation.” This highly technical manuscript on female orgasm, evidently intended for a professional audience, was never completed for publication.

26.
Stone and Stone,
Marriage Manual
, Chaps. 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7, and quotation on p. 206. Also see Abraham Stone, M.D., “The Case Against Marital Infidelity,”
The Reader's Digest
(May 1954), copy in AS-Countway. Alfred C. Kinsey et al.,
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female
(Philadelphia: 1953); and Regina Markell Morantz, “The Scientist as Sex Crusader: Alfred C. Kinsey and American Culture,”
American Quarterly
29:5 (Winter 1977), p. 573. On sexual counseling technique, see “Margaret Sanger Research Bureau, Marriage Counseling, Group Sessions,” Transcripts for Oct. 1946 through Jan. 1947, in MSSS. Also, Abraham Stone, M.D., and Lena Levine, M.D., “Group Therapy in Sexual Maladjustment,”
American Journal of Psychiatry
107:3 (Sept. 1950), copy in MS:SS.
I have cited these transcripts at length because they form the basis of Linda Gordon's indictment of the Sanger Bureau's marriage counseling on the grounds that it tended to victimize unhappy women, and thus exemplified the abandonment of Sanger's commitment to female autonomy and the transition of birth control from a female to a family-centered institution. Although I share some of Gordon's criticisms of the actual sex counseling, I have attempted to offer a more complex and, I believe, more accurate reading of what actually transpired in these sessions. The question of how representative these group sessions really were must also be raised. Finally, it may be worth pointing out that, although the counseling was done under Sanger's official auspices and she obviously bore responsibility, it appears that she only knew of the group experiment after the fact. See “Memo to Mrs. Sanger from Dr. Stone via Compton re: marriage counselling service,” May 10, 1947, MS:SS. There is no response from Sanger in the files.

27.
Profit and sales data and information on legal entanglements are referenced in correspondence between Lincoln Schuster and Abraham Stone, in AS-Countway. See, for example, L.S. to A.S., Sept. 30, 1941, Jan. 19, 1942, Sept. 20, 1944. The book was declared unmailable by the post office in 1941.

28.
On the popular critique of marriage and sexual advice literature, see Jean L. Block, “Are Those Marriage Manuals Any Good,”
Cosmopolitan
(Oct. 1948), pp. 42-43, 136-40; “Love & Marriage: By the Book,”
Time
(June 28, 1963); “Sex Manuals: How Not To,”
Newsweek
, Oct. 18, 1965, pp. 100-01, clippings in a file on marriage manuals, Kinsey-Bloomington. Ironically, the
Newsweek
piece quoted Dr. Mary Calderone, then medical director of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Also see Betty Friedan,
The Feminine Mystique
(New York: 1963). The final quote is from Helena Huntington Smith, “They Were Eleven,” profile of Sanger in
The New Yorker
6:20 (July 5, 1930), pp. 23-24.

15: LOBBYING FOR BIRTH CONTROL

1.
Helena Huntington Smith, “They Were Eleven,” profile in
The New Yorker
6:20 (July 5, 1930);
My Fight
. On beginning to write the book, also see M.S., Journal, July 23, 1930, MS-SS, and Guy Moysten to M.S., Jan. 31, 1930.
Sanger had apparently written asking for advisory and editorial help on a “history” of birth control. Instead Moysten urged a “personal chronicle”--all she had done in a purely “objective way” with “no compulsion to weigh facts.” Ellis made the same observation in H.E. to M.S., Nov. 18, 1930. Finally, see M.S. to H. de S., Aug. 4, 1930, MS-LC. My observations on the autobiography are informed by the insightful views of Carolyn Heilbrun,
Writing Women's Lives
(New York: 1988).

2.
Review clippings are in MS-LC. See especially, Mary Ross's review in the
New York Herald Tribune
, “Books,” Sept. 27, 1931; Mary Beard in the
Saturday Review of Literature
, Nov. 2, 1931, and assorted clippings from
The New Republic
, Nov. 11, 1931; the
New York Post
, the
Philadelphia Inquirer
, the
New Haven Journal-Courier
, and
The New York Times
, Sept. 28, 1931, 26:1. Ellis's views are in H.E. to M.S., Aug. 25, 1931, and Oct. 13, 1931, MS-LC. For Sanger's distress about de Selincourt, see M.S. to H.E., Nov. 28, 1931, MS-SS, H.E. to M.S., Dec. 14, 1931, and M.S. to H. de S. Oct. 30, 1931, MS-LC.

3.
Sanger's 1931 dinner speech is in MS-SS. Wells's transcribed quotation was used as a salutation for a dinner honoring Margaret on the occasion of her receiving the medal of the American Woman's Association. Also see, H. G. Wells, Apr. 11, 1932, MS-LC. Sanger's private description of the dinner is in M.S. to H.E., Nov. 28, 1931, MS-SS. Also see Ruth Topping, “Social Notes on H. G. Wells Birth Control Dinner,” Bureau of Social Hygiene Papers, Rocky-RG2; and “Wells Dinner in New York,”
The New York Times
, Oct. 18, 1931, clipping in MS-LC.
NYT
also covered the AWA dinner and Wells's tribute, Apr. 21, 1932, 23:3, and ran an editorial in praise of Sanger, headlining her as a “Gentle Crusader,” Apr. 10, 1932, Sec. 9, 2:8. Linda Gordon,
Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America
(New York: 1976), p. 328, uses the dinner as an example of Sanger's wholesale conversion to snobbish pretense.

4.
M. W. Dennett to M.S., Feb. 15, 1930, and M.S. to M.W.D., Mar. 4, 1930, MS-SS; National Committee for Federal Legislation for Birth Control, hereinafter NCFLBC, “Transcript of Middle Western States Conference on B.C.,” Columbus, Ohio, Nov. 12, 1929, discussion with Yarros on p. 14, MS-SS; John Price Jones Corporation, “A Survey and Plan of Fund-Raising, for the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau and the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control,” copies in MS-SS and MS-LC. On the ABCL's refusal to support Sanger or give her access to its membership files, at a board meeting of Dec. 12, 1929, see resignation resolution of the New Jersey Birth Control League, Jan. 1, 1930; and M.S. to Annie G. Porritt (ABCL secretary), Jan. 20, 1930, MS-LC.
On the continuing ill-will, see M.S. to Annie G. Porritt, Jan. 2, 1930, MS-LC; M.S. to Mrs. F. Robertson Jones, Dec. 8, 1930, and Eleanor Dwight Jones to Mrs. Edward A. Norman, Jan. 2, 1931, both in MS-SS and both examples of the manner in which the two women continued to undercut each other's priorities and solicit support for their respective organizations, at the other's expense. On the identity confusion caused by the existence of competing birth control entities, see, for example, Howard Knight to M.S., Mar. 13, 1931, MS-LC, when the league and Margaret competed over who would have a booth at the National Conference of Social Work. The league's formal endorsement of Sanger's bill is in Mrs. F. Robertson Jones to M.S., telegram, n.d. (1930) in NA-MS, Sen. 71, A-E 1, Washington, D.C. However, “Aims of the American Birth Control League,” a statement dated Sept. 13, 1933, PPFA-SS, is one of many documents that never even mentions birth control legislational, although it does commit the organization to advocating “the enactment of laws for the sterilization of certain classes of persons with incurable hereditary defects.” The situation improved when Ruth Topping became executive director of the league in 1933. See, for example, Mrs. Louise deB. Moore, chairman of the executive committee, to Mrs. Edward Cornish, Mar. 6, 1935, MS-SS, which urges support of Sanger's bills. Margaret was not invited to the league's Carnegie Hall rally in 1935, which did make front-page news. See, “A Night That Will Make History,”
Birth Control Review
3:4 (new series) (Dec. 1935), copy in MS-SS.
Once again, I have gone over this controversy in some depth to explain its substantive, as well as personal, dimension, since the narrative of these events in David Kennedy's
Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger
(New Haven: 1970), makes it seem that Sanger's intemperate ego was the critical issue in the dispute, which is unfair.

5.
On the Slee tax appeal, see M.S. to Messrs. Covington, Burling & Rublee, Aug. 1, 1926; Newell Ellison to M.S., June 25, 1927; J.N.H.S. to Messrs. Covington, Burling & Rublee, May 22, 1928; Ellison to J.N.H.S., enclosing a new petition on the 1926 case, July 3, 1928; M.S. to Messrs. Covington, Burling & Rublee, Aug. 1, 1928, and their response of Aug. 2; Ellison to J.N.H.S., Oct. 9 and Oct. 18, 1928; Penelope Huse to M.S., Oct. 24, and Nov. 30, 1928; Ellison to J.N.H.S., Mar. 6, 1929; Ellison to M.S., Mar. 24, 1930; Ellison to Walter I. Willis (Slee's son-in-law and a vice president at 3-in-One Oil), Jan. 15, 1930, and Willis's response, Mar. 19, 1930, all in MS-LC. The size of Noah's settlement is mentioned in M.S. to Juliet Rublee, Oct. 1 (1930), MS-DC. The matter got press attention in “Birth Control,”
Time
13:11, Mar. 13, 1929, pp. 36, 38. The ABCL tried again unsuccessfully to gain not-for-profit status in 1937 by distinguishing itself from Sanger's group. See memo dated Oct. 15, 1937, MS-SS. Ironically, Margaret was finally able to establish the tax exempt status of her own New York clinic the following year. See John R. Kirk, deputy commissioner, U.S. Treasury Department, to “Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau, c/o Greenbaum, Wolff and Ernst,” Oct. 24, 1938, MS-LC.