Margaret Sanger: an autobiography.Sanger, Margaret
History
Margaret Sanger: an autobiography.
Sanger, Margaret
Birth control -- United States -- Biography; Sanger, Margaret, 1879-1966
A dinner was given at Portland; the chairman, who had seen Susan B.
Anthony and many other women with causes come and go, made a short
speech of introduction. I rarely remember what people say on such
occasions, but one of her statements has remained in my mind. “I would
like to see Margaret Sanger again after ten years. Most movements either
break you or develop the ‘public figure’ type of face which has become
hard and set through long and furious battling. But her cause is
different from any other I have ever known. I should like to see how she
comes out of it.”
I have thought of this many times—how, if the cause is not great enough
to lift you outside yourself, you can be driven to the point of
bitterness by public apathy and, within your own circle, by the petty
prides and jealousies of little egos which clamor for attention and
approbation.
One of the first persons I met in the city was Dr. Marie Equi, of
Italian ancestry and Latin fire. Definitely, she was an individualist
and a rugged one. Her strong, large body could stand miles and miles on
horseback night or day. She had been brought up in the pioneer era when
medical work was genuine service. If cowboys or Indians were in fights,
difficulties, jail, Dr. Equi was always on hand to speak a good word for
them.
It was in Portland that I realized _Family Limitation_, which had been
crudely and hurriedly written in 1914, needed revising. The working
women to whom it was addressed needed the facts. It had served its
purpose in its unpolished state, but the time had now come to reach the
middle classes, for whom it required a slightly more professional tone.
Dr. Equi gave me genuine assistance in this matter.
The wider the distribution of the pamphlet, the happier I was. Since it
had not been copyrighted, anybody who wanted to could reprint as many as
he wished, and I.W.W. lumberjacks, for example, transients without
families who moved to California for the crop harvesting in the summer,
often thus provided themselves with a little extra money as they
journeyed from place to place. When they unrolled the blankets draped
over their shoulders out dropped a half-dozen or so pamphlets.
An automobile mechanic of Portland had made one of these reprints and
asked me whether he could sell it at my next meeting. I myself had never
distributed _Family Limitation_ publicly, but if any local people wanted
to do so, I had no objection. Accordingly the mechanic and two of his
friends sold copies and were arrested. Their trial was postponed so that
I could deliver my proposed lectures in Seattle and Spokane.
When these were over I came back to serve as a witness, and at another
meeting held the night preceding the trial four more of us were
arrested, Dr. Equi, two Englishwomen, and myself. I was tremendously
gratified by seeing women for the first time come out openly with
courage; over a hundred followed us through the streets to the jail
asking to be “let in too. We also have broken the law.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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