Margaret Sanger: an autobiography.Sanger, Margaret
History
Margaret Sanger: an autobiography.
Sanger, Margaret
Birth control -- United States -- Biography; Sanger, Margaret, 1879-1966
Tall, very thin, wearing her clothes with an air, Frances was one of the
finest persons I have ever known. To her, fair play amounted to a
religion; she was so highly sensitive that she lay awake at night after
merely reading of an injustice done to anybody. To hundreds of
conscientious objectors who were incarcerated during the War because of
pacifist or strike activities she sent cigarette money, magazines,
stationery—always anonymously—assisting their families and suggesting
plans for their own futures. Her death was not only a blow to us but a
blow to any endeavor that was seeking understanding. Many lifers who
depended on her for brightening luxuries must now wonder what has become
of her.
In 1920 Anne Kennedy came to help boost the circulation of the _Review_
and gain further financial aid for it. She was a Californian with wide
club experience, and had two children. Fair, in her thirties, cheerful,
and a good mixer, she was most maternal-looking with her soft gray hair
and sweet face; you felt you could lay your head on her bosom and tell
her the story of your life.
The incorporation had heralded a new trend wherein we could have a
recognized policy. When the _Review_ had first been started I had had to
beg authors to write. Free speech was their favorite theme, and their
pieces were inferior, but they were the only things I could fall back
upon. I used to ask possible contributors, “Don’t you agree that these
poor mothers should have no more babies?”
“Of course, but where’s there any article in that?”
Then I had to suggest ideas, show them how to link these up with larger
sociological aspects, until they began to cast into the arena legal,
medical, eugenic compositions. The material on free speech continued to
come in, but we did not need to print it any longer.
Incidentally, we now secured second-class mailing privileges. Soon
afterwards I happened to be talking to a cousin who worked in the Post
Office, a very young boy in his early twenties, who kept assailing me
with questions about the _Review_. I could not understand his
unprecedented interest, and asked, “Why are you so curious?”
“Well, I’m the official reader. It’ll save my having to wade through
every issue if you’ll tell me ahead of time just what your policy’s
going to be.”
“Do you make the decisions?”
“That’s my job. If any seem objectionable I send them on to Washington.”
I was horrified to find this adolescent in a position which permitted
him to pass judgment on such serious matters, but I was able to reassure
him; the course we had adopted would in no way interfere with retaining
our second-class mailing privileges.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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