For instance in 1920 it was pointed out to every member of the Judiciary Committee that if the bill dealt with anything which was “advanced” or ahead of the times or out of harmony with the lives of the average person, it would not have happened that one of the largest of the women’s magazines (with a circulation of over two million copies, and an advertising rate of $6000 per page) would have published a feature article entitled “Has a Mother the Right to Decide How Many Children She Will Have?”; nor would that magazine have spent thousands and thousands of dollars as it did, to advertise this special article in the newspapers of many large cities, using full and half pages for the advertisements; for the editor of a popular magazine is always canny enough not to give his readers anything which is very far in advance of wide-spread public opinion. They were told also that this same magazine followed that article with an editorial asking the opinions of the readers on the laws relating to birth control. A digest of the replies was made, and the proportion of those who were in any way opposed to the change of the laws was only sixteen out of a thousand who unqualifiedly wanted them changed. To help the members of Congress to displace their own sense of discomfort in merely considering this “disagreeable subject” with a sense of the actual suffering of others whose ignorance made them the victims of the present laws, the Voluntary Parenthood League followed Comstock’s own method in Congress for the correction of his blunder, that is by submitting sample instances showing the need for the legislation proposed. The exhibit of 1873 was smut. The exhibit of 1923 was pitiful suffering. The following petition was sent to every member of both Houses of Congress, and was inserted in the Congressional Record of February 8, 1923, by Representative John Kissel, the Sponsor of the Bill in the House: TO THE MEMBERS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. Gentlemen: Just fifty years ago this month, Anthony Comstock showed to your predecessors specimens of the revolting, smutty literature which was then being circulated by conscienceless publishers among the young people of this country. The Bill he proposed for the suppression of this traffic got almost instant support, as the abuse was flagrant and the proposed remedy a natural one. But by an obvious blunder the Bill was drawn to include all knowledge of contraception, when the aim of the Bill was only the suppression of this knowledge in connection with sex-perversions—a blunder which has meant injustice, hardship and insult to millions of parents ever since.