They talked an hour and when they had finished, it seemed as though I myself had been through their tragedies. I was reminded of the story of a Spaniard who had become so desperate over the injustice meted out to innocent prisoners that he had taken a revolver into the street and fired it at the first person he met; killing was his only way of expressing indignation. I felt like doing the same thing. I decided then and there that the clinic should open at Brownsville, and I would look for a site the next day. How to finance it I did not know, but that did not matter. Then suddenly the telephone rang and I heard a feminine voice saying she had just come from the West Coast bringing from Kate Crane Gartz, whom I had met in Los Angeles, a check for fifty dollars to do with as I wished. I knew what I should do with it; pay the first month’s rent. I visualized two rooms on the ground floor, one for waiting and one for consultation, and a place outside to leave the baby carriages. Fania Mindell had left Chicago to assist me in New York. It was a terribly rainy day in early October that we plodded through the dreary streets of Brownsville to find the most suitable spot at the cheapest possible terms. We stopped in one of the milk stations to inquire about vacant stores. “Don’t come over here,” was the reply. Many social organizations were being established to meet the demands of poverty and sickness, and we asked of them all, only to receive the same response—“We don’t want any trouble. Keep out of this district.” The mildest comment was, “It’s a good idea, but we can’t help you.” Although they agreed the mothers of the community should limit their families, they seemed terrified at the prospect of a birth control clinic. It sounded also as if they were afraid we would do away with social problems and they would lose their jobs. Brownsville was not unique; Brooklyn was and still is dotted with such dismal villages, and even Queens with its pretensions to a higher standard has its share. But Brownsville was particularly dingy and squalid. Block after block, street after street, as far as we could see in every direction stretched the same endless lines of cramped, unpainted houses that crouched together as though for warmth, bursting with excess of wretched humanity. The inhabitants were mostly Jews and Italians, some who had come to this country as children, some of the second generation. I preferred a Jewish landlord, and Mr. Rabinowitz was the answer. He was willing to let us have Number 46 Amboy Street at fifty dollars a month, a reduction from the regular rent because he realized what we were trying to do. Here in this Jewish community I need have no misgivings over breaking of windows or hurling of epithets, but I was scarcely prepared for the friendliness offered from that day on.