M. W. D.—“Can the country expect level-headed citizenship from the man whose maximum wage isn’t over $20 a week, and whose family has increased annually for several years, whose wife is sick, and whose babies are hungry and ailing?” Congressman X.—“No, certainly not. Those men get desperate. They are ready to take up with any wild ideas.” It was just this point of view, plus the unemployment situation, which led one of the foremost conservatives of the Senate to consider for three weeks the sponsoring of our bill. He became convinced that “when father is out of a job it is no time for mother to have a baby,” and while he felt concerned that the rich don’t have more children, he thought that was no excuse for victimizing the poor by laws which try to keep them ignorant as to family regulation. However, he begged off from shouldering the bill, saying he couldn’t undertake it for so long that in fairness to us we should ask some one else to introduce it. He was the fourteenth Senator asked, and by that time the always sympathetic Chairman of the Health Committee said we reminded him of Diogenes, except that instead of hunting for an honest man we were merely hunting for a courageous man! An outstanding independent of the Senate, one of the truly “busy” members, frankly explained what ailed most of them. “Congressmen are such cowards,” said he. “Believe in it? Of course they do, and privately they will all say so, but that’s mighty different from sponsoring the bill. I know. I’ve been here twelve years.” A Catholic Congressman from an industrial district crowded with mill workers, listened soberly to the figures of the baby death rate in his home town (130 per 1000, as compared with New Zealand’s world record of 50 per 1000). The conversation went about like this: “Suppose we look at this thing practically. Do any mills in your district raise a man’s wages every time he has a new baby?” “No.” “Do you see any legislation ahead that will put wages on that basis?” “I do not.” “Don’t most mill workers reach their maximum wages at about the age of 30?” “I should say so.” “Is it fair, then, for the government to deprive these fathers of the knowledge by which they can keep their families somewhere near in proportion to their wages?” He looked pained and said: “It is surely a serious question. I want to think it over.”