The one fear, however, which did relate to the member of Congress himself, was as to his own career, and the effect which taking an interest in the bill might have upon it. In discussing the extent of this fear, one of the senior Senators ventured the opinion that “there never was a man in public life who did not consider his career first,—he has to, if he is going to get anywhere.” More than one Senator refused to sponsor the bill on the ground that it would give too good an opportunity to political opponents to “have fun” at his expense. The type of “fun” they anticipated was apparently somewhat like that in which some of the Congressmen indulged when Mr. Kissel first introduced the bill. A story which then went the rounds of Congressional gossip was that “Kissel, being a lame duck, will be out of a job in two months and so he has introduced the birth control bill to pave the way for getting rich by manufacturing contraceptives.” Mr. Kissel shed the jollying with good grace, and when one of his colleagues inquired why he “wanted to do a thing like sponsoring that bill” he came back cheerfully with, “because there were 434 of you others who wouldn’t.” But there was a more serious side to the possibilities of this sort of fun, as recognized by one of the representatives who was facing a re-election campaign at the time when he was asked to consider sponsoring the bill. He was very candid in saying that he did not intend to be defeated, and that he knew he had political enemies who would not scruple to use this bill against him by circulating stories which it would cost him more to contradict and explain than he cared to spend. And he added, “Maybe you will call that political cowardice, and maybe it is, but anyway that is where I stand.”