Woman of Valor (90 page)

25.
U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Ways and Means,
Birth Control: Extracts from Hearings on H.R. 11082
. 72d Cong., 1st sess. Also quoted in Kennedy,
Birth Control
, p. 234. U.S. Congress. Senate. Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary.
Birth Control, Hearings on S. 4436
, 72d Cong., 1st sess., May 12, 19, 20, 1932, M.S. to Kate Hepburn, Jan. 12, 1932, and M.S. to Ida Timme, Dec. 10, 1931, MS-LC. Also see coverage in
The New York Times
, May 13, 1932, 40:5-6, and May 20, 1932, 11:2, and Robert S. Allen, “Congress and Birth Control,”
The Nation
134:3476, Jan. 27, 1932, p. 104.

26.
For the significance of these rulings and an argument for achieving social change through the courts and not the legislature, see Morris L. Ernst to M.S., Dec. 9, 1931, and Jan. 28, 1932, along with Morris L. Ernst, “How We Nullify,”
The Nation
(Jan. 27, 1932), both in Ernst files in MS-LC; and also Kennedy,
Birth Control
, pp. 246-48. On the legal status in the states: “Proceedings of the American Conference on Birth Control and National Recovery, Jan. 15-17, 1934, Washington, D.C.,” p. 49, MS-SS. On Sanger's strategy: M.S. to Kate Hepburn, Jan. 12, 1932, and Col. J. J. Toy to M.S., Dec. 10, and Dec. 12, 1931, all in MS-LC. M.S. to Mrs. Jessie Ames Marshall, June 1, 1934, rearticulates her position on the educational value of fighting.

27.
A résumé is in James Joseph Toy to Adelaide Pearson (secretary of the NCFLBC), Dec. 18, 1931. Toy offered to help with the promise that he would first sell off his entire interest in an Ohio company manufacturing spermicidal jellies, but there at first remained concern that he was using his position in the field to advance his own products. He apparently then earned Margaret's trust, however, and she agreed to pay him $200 a month for three months. See telegram from Sanger to Toy, dated Nov. 17, 1931. Also see J. J. Toy to M.S., Sept. 21, 1931, Oct. 26, 1931; Dec. 11, 1931, Jan. 6, 1931 (actually 1932), Jan. 21, 1932; M.S. to J. J. Toy, Oct. 20, 1931, Oct. 29, 1931 (telegram), Dec. 16, 1931, Jan. 13, 1932, Feb. 22, 1932, Oct. 7 and 20, 1932, and Jan. 19, 1932, all in MS-LC.
Toy's transcriptions of his interviews with William F. Montavon, legal representative of the NCWC, and Edward F. McGrady, lobbyist for the AFL, on April 13, 1932; and with John A. Ryan and Dr. J. J. Mundell, on Apr. 15, 1932, all in MS-LC, chronicle the allegedly confidential discussions that led to the legislative redraft.

28.
Hearings on S. 4582
, 1931. Margaret Sanger, “The Pope's Position on Birth Control,”
The Nation
134:3473 (Jan. 27, 1932), p. 103.

29.
Transcript of Toy interview with John A. Ryan and J. J. Mundell, Apr. 15, 1932, MS-LC; Noonan,
Contraception
, pp. 422-23. On Ryan's differences with the hierarchy, also see Leo H. Lehmann,
The Catholic Church in Politics
, reprint by Birthright Inc. of articles that appeared in
The New Republic
, Nov. 16 and Dec. 21, 1938; and Francis Lyons Broderick,
Right Reverend New Dealer, John A. Ryan
(New York: 1963). On his relations with Roosevelt, see Franklin Roosevelt to Very Rev. John A. Ryan, Sept. 1, 1932; Ryan to Raymond Moley, Nov. 29, 1932; Ryan to FDR, April 19, 1933; Louis Howe to Ryan, April 7, 1933; FDR to Ryan, Sept. 24, 1935 and especially, FDR to Ryan, Jan. 7, 1937, inviting him to give the benediction at his inaugural. All in JR-CU.

30.
W. F. Montavon to J. J. Toy, May 2, 1932, MS-LC; “Copy of Statement of Edward F. McGrady Before a Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate,” May 12 and 20, 1932, MS-SS. Mrs. F. Robertson Jones to Mrs. Thomas A. McGoldrick (quoting the testimony), Oct. 27, 1932, MS-LC. Morris L. Ernst to Florence Rose, May 2, 1932, and M.L.E. to M.S., May 9, 1932, MS-LC. I uncovered no documentation of these meetings in the Ryan papers at Catholic University. The archive does contain Ryan's testimony. See “Economic and Social Objections to Birth Control,” Statement by Dr. John A. Ryan, May 19, 1932, JR-CU. Ryan was also an active member of the American Civil Liberties Union, and a friend of Roger Baldwin. He opened his testimony on the defensive, insisting that the bill extended beyond reasonable limits on freedom of speech.
Readers of my presentation of these events, who are familiar with David Kennedy's discussion of the same material in
Birth Control
, his biography of Sanger, will once again find considerable discrepancy of fact and interpretation. Kennedy refuses to concede that Sanger made any effort at all toward compromise. On page 268, for example, he cites a 1932 letter from Morris Ernst urging conciliation without ever mentioning that she did indeed follow Ernst's advice. Earlier, on pp. 236-37, in his otherwise detailed text, he relegates his account of the private meetings with Father Ryan and his emissaries to a footnote, but nonetheless attacks Sanger alone for torpedoing what he characterizes unfathomably as this Catholic gesture toward compromise. Offering no information on the resolution of the meetings, however, he cannot explain why she alone was at fault. He simply condemns her failure to comprehend the moral principles at stake and neglects to mention the dramatic change in Catholic doctrine on natural methods of contraception underway at this juncture. By not considering this development, he fails to acknowledge its inevitable impact on the larger public policy controversy. What's most curious about this oversight is that earlier in his text, on p. 210, he does credit the significance of rhythm as a medical development in the 1930s.

31.
NCWC, “The Question of Birth Control: A National Menace,” n.d. (1933). A copy of this circular accompanies an affidavit from a stenographer at the Clinical Research Bureau in New York who said that, on Feb. 2, 1933, she had been given the circular by a man named T. J. Hillis, who identified himself as a former socialist, and said his son-in-law was studying at Fordham University. He had been told, he said, that 30,000 letters would be written by Catholics to every member of the Judiciary Committee to protest birth control and showed her a copy of a solicitation for such protests, dated Jan. 30, 1933; all in MS-SS. For an example of the opposition mail, see Margaret McGuire, president, San Francisco County Council of Catholic Women, to Hon. Henry F. Ashurst, chairman, Judiciary Committee, U.S. Senate, Mar. 2, 1934,
SEN A-E 1
, NAMS. Also see “The Birth Control Racket,”
Commonweal
16:6, (June 8, 1932), pp. 141-42, and “Editorial Comment,”
Catholic World
135 (July 1932), pp. 480-87. On the New York incident, see Rev. Worth M. Tippy, press release dated Mar. 26, (1933), MS-LC. Also see Margaret Benson (executive director of the American Birth Control League) to Dr. George J. Ryan (president of the Board of Education) Mar. 19, 1935, in which Benson condemns Dr. Marie Warner of the clinic for exhibiting bad taste by going beyond a general discussion and actually demonstrating how the diaphragm works with the help of a diagram. The letter was reprinted in local newspapers and elicited a vituperative response from Margaret, who accused Benson of “disloyalty to the cause” and of washing her “soiled linen in public.” See M.S. to Benson, Mar. 29, 1935, both in MS-SS. Finally, the Celler conversation is reported in “Notes to Margaret Sanger from Guy Irving Burch,” Jan. 20, 1935, MS-LC.

16: SAME OLD DEAL

1.
Stuart Sanger to J.H.N.S., Nov. 14, 1929, and Oct. 5, 1931, describe the stock purchases and advise him not to sell his seat on the exchange. On the purchase and loss of the seat, also see M.S. to H.E., Feb. 23, 1932, and for more on the bottoming out of their finances, M.S. to H.E., Mar. 12, 1933, MS-SS. The developing acrimony between Noah and his son is chronicled in their correspondence during the winter of 1931-32, all in MS-SS. Relations had, in fact, been strained between them since 1924, when Jim Slee left 3-in-One Oil and went on his own to Wall Street because his father refused to grant him a salary increase. An affidavit dated May 26, 1938, signed by Noah Slee and witnessed by Grant Sanger, makes reference to an agreement of July 24, 1929, just before the crash, in which Noah had lent his son $438,000 for investment purposes, in MS-SS. Lincoln Slee was described by Stuart Sanger as a “drifter,” whom Slee never had much to do with, author's interview, Mar. 19, 1986. Grant Sanger had similar memories in an interview of Dec. 18, 1987.

2.
M.S. to H.E., n.d. (1930), M.S. to J.N.H.S., from London, n.d. (sometime in the summer of 1930).

3.
On her capacity to make him feel involved in her life through her well-narrated letters, see M.S. to J.N.H.S. Jan. 1931, from Pittsburgh; Apr. 10, 1932, from New York City; and miscellaneous letters postmarked Marienbad, Villa Serena, Italy, Paris, etc., Aug. 8, 14, 20, 22, 29, Sept. 3, Sept. 20, 1932, MS-SS.

4.
On a typical marital evening in Feb. 1932, see M.S. to H.E., Jan. 31, 1932, MS-SS. Slee's penurious supervision of the accounts is exemplified in correspondence with Adelaide Pearson in Washington in 1930 and '32 and with Stella Hanau, in 1935 and '36, (especially an unsigned memo, probably from Pearson, dated June 8, 1932), all in MS-LC. Also see Florence Rose to J.N.H.S., Apr. 23, 1931. For one among many of Margaret's thank-yous for his gifts, see M.S. to J.N.H.S., June 28, 1934, MS-SS.

5.
M.S. to Françoise Cyon, Dec. 28, 1932, MS-SS.

6.
Minutes of 1928 ABCL Annual Meeting record Eleanor Roosevelt as an active member, PPFA-SS; newspaper clippings on Eleanor and birth control include a Heywood Broun column in the
World-Telegram
, Feb. 1, 1933; “Mrs. FDR Assailed by Priest on Birth Control,”
Chicago Tribune
, Aug. 16, 1932; “Roosevelt v. Roosevelt,”
San Francisco News
, Nov. 27, 1931; and editorial in
New World
, which appears to be a Catholic publication in Chicago, Dec. 4, 1931, all in MS-LC. Mrs. Roosevelt's refusal to discuss B.C. in an interview is reported in Hazel Moore to M.S., n.d. (1935 from Atlantic City), MS-LC. Finally, see “Worse than any “Ism,”
Catholic World
149 (Aug. 1939), pp. 513-16.

7.
M.S. to H.E., Nov. 29, 1932, MS-SS; M.S. to Mrs. Thomas Hepburn, Jan. 6, 1933, MS-LC; Marvin Mclntyre to M.S., Apr. 20, 1933, Presidential Papers, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y., hereinafter “FDR Papers.” The Mclntyre letter bears a buck slip with the designation, “for President's approval.” H.L. Hopkins to M.S., Aug. 1, 1933, MS-LC. Hopkins still wouldn't lend his name in 1942: M.S. to Harry Hopkins, Apr. 9, 1942, MS-SS. Elinor Morgenthau to M.S., Nov. 4, 1933, MS-SS. Even after Roosevelt won a third term in 1940, Samuel Rosenman still claimed it would be “out of place” for him to attend, or even send greetings to, a birth control dinner, though he did request an autographed copy of Margaret's latest book. See M. S. to Samuel Rosenman, Oct. 3, 1941; Rosenman to M.S., Oct. 8, 1941; Rosenman to Florence Rose, Oct. 16, 1941; and Rose to Mrs. Albert Lasker, Oct. 22, 1941, which includes the citation Sanger put in his copy of her book: “To Samuel Rosenman whose courage and vision helped us to fight the fight. My life-long gratitude.” Mrs. Ickes' support is noted in “Birth Control's It,”
Time
, Feb. 18, 1935, clipping in MS-LC.

8.
M.S. to H.E., Dec. 3 and Dec. 30, 1933, MS-SS.

9.
Alan Brinkley,
Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin and The Great Depression
(New York: 1983), pp. 100-101. Robert E. Sherwood,
Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York 1948)
, p. 25, p. 37. Joseph P. Lash,
Eleanor and Franklin
(New York: 1970). (Lucy Mercer Rutherford, with whom Roosevelt had had an earlier affair, renewed her acquaintance with him while he was President and was present at his death.) Also see David J. O'Brien,
American Catholics and Social Reform: The New Deal Years
(New York: 1968). One hundred thousand women were employed by the Civilian Works Administration by the end of 1933.

10.
Hearings on H.R. 5978, pp. 61-66, 151-52; David Kennedy,
Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger
(New Haven: 1970), pp. 238-39. “The Federal Hearing,”
Birth Control Review
1:6, Mar. 1934, p. 2. Cardinal Hayes is discussed in Worth M. Tippy to Stella Hanau, Dec. 10, 1935, MS-LC. Also see “The Gods of the Machine,”
Commonweal
23:9 (Dec. 27, 1935), pp. 225-26, in which Hayes attacks birth control as a Malthusian tool of “mechanized, materialistic industry”: and John A. Ryan, “Fallacious Arguments of the Birth Controllers,”
Catholic Action
, 16:4 (Apr. 1934), pp. 9-11, 23. Warren S. Thompson and Pascal K. Whelpton, “The Population of the Nation,” in
Recent Social Trends
, Vol. 1, makes the argument against restrictive birth control legislation. On women in the 1930s, and particularly during the critical year 1933-34, see William H. Chafe,
The American Woman: Her Changing Social, Economic, and Political Role, 1920-1970
(New York: 1972), pp. 43-65; Susan Ware,
Holding Their Own: American Women in the 1930s
(Boston: 1982), pp. 16, 66-67, 104-105, which has marriage and birth data, and also Susan Ware,
Beyond Suffrage: Women in the New Deal
(Cambridge, Mass.: 1981), pp. 43-67. Linda Gordon,
Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America
(New York: 1976), p. 310, condemns Sanger for abandoning feminist arguments at this time but fails to consider the context in which she had to operate.