However in fairness to the rank and file of the club women it must be stated that two years earlier, in June 1920, they gave every evidence of being willing and even glad to pass a resolution of protest against the barriers to contraceptive knowledge, and it was only the timidity of the leaders which prevented their having full opportunity to do so. This circumstance occurred at the Biennial Convention of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs at Des Moines, and was reported as follows in the Birth Control Herald: At the Des Moines Convention in 1920, at the close of Mrs. Dennett’s address to the Health Conference on “Children by Chance or by Choice,” the delegates began a rapid fire of questions. Mrs. Dennett asked if she might put just one question to the delegates, namely, as to how many of them wanted the prohibitive laws of this country regarding contraceptive knowledge to remain as they are now without change. Not a hand was raised, whereupon Mrs. Dennett said “That is interesting in view of the fact that your Resolutions Committee has declined to report out a resolution on that question.” Instantly a delegate asked the Chairman, Mrs. Elmer Blair, to have the resolution read. The delegates listened hard. A second slow reading, was asked for. Then without pause someone moved the adoption of the resolution and it was carried _unanimously_ with a rising vote of thanks to the speaker. Over 500 delegates were present, constituting about a third of the whole Convention. The wording of the resolution was as follows: _Whereas_ one of the primary necessities for family and therefore for public health, is an intelligently determined interval between pregnancies, to be secured by regulating the inception of life and not by interfering with life after it starts, and _Whereas_ the lack of knowledge as to how to secure such an interval frequently results in serious disaster for mothers and babies and indirectly for the entire family and community. _Be It Resolved_ that this Conference on Public Health urges the speedy removal of all barriers, due to legal restrictions, tradition, prejudice or ignorance, which now prevents parents from access to such scientific knowledge on this subject as is possessed by the medical profession. Of course it was evident that any resolution which was carried unanimously by a third of the delegates would carry by at least a good majority if submitted to all the delegates, and the rebuke thus administered to the resolutions committee created quite a bit of consternation among the officers of the Federation. But the resolution was not submitted to the whole convention, nor has one been allowed to come forth at any subsequent convention, although considerable effort has been made to have it done. The nearest approach to it has been the making of a recommendation by the officers, that the whole subject of birth control be “studied by the clubs.”