Senator Cummins’ Secretary has courteously allowed the Voluntary Parenthood League officers to review the letters which the Senator has received regarding his Bill. It is a remarkably representative collection containing commendation from every sort of American citizen. The letters range from intellectual sociological appreciation to stark human appeal. Some are on important organization letterheads, and others are on poor paper in cramped handwriting. They come from doctors, lawyers, clergymen, educators, social workers, fathers, mothers, teachers, and just folks,—the normal thinking responsible-citizen sort of people. The happy mothers write, who are proud of their wisely spaced families, and they urge the Senator to push his Bill hard so that all the other mothers may have the knowledge that they have. The mothers who have been wrecked by their own ignorant parenthood write too, and say pathetically, “this Bill will help mothers of the whole country.” And the one most insistent message in most of the letters, in one form or another, is that the _thinking_ people want this Bill passed. At the bottom of the pile appears the eleven page letter from John Sumner, consisting of elaborate irrelevancies, and many inaccuracies, and, permeating it all is the revelation of his own cynicism regarding the moral character of the mass of the people, particularly the young people, who according to his idea, should be kept as ignorant as possible on this subject, because he is sure they can not be trusted with the knowledge. If John Sumner thinks to inspire the young by thus handing them a wholesale insult, he will perhaps meet an illuminating surprise ere long. A large batch of the letters Senator Cummins received after his second introduction of the bill were similarly reviewed, and the proportion of letters for the bill to those against it was twenty to one. CHAPTER IV THE HEARINGS ON THE CUMMINS-VAILE BILL AND THE AFTERMATH