Autobiography of Margaret Sanger. Margaret Sanger
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on a shelf and, in my mind, had nothing to do with the everyday human problem. I was not looking for theories. What I desired was merely a simple method of contraception for the poor.
The pursuit of my quest took me away from home a good deal. The children used to come in after school and at once hunt for me. “Where’s mother?” was the usual question. If they found me at my mending basket they all leaped about for joy, took hands and danced, shouting, “Mother’s home, mother’s home, mother’s sewing.” Sewing seemed to imply a measure of permanence.
I, too, wanted to drive away the foreboding barrier of separation by closer contact with them. I wanted to have them solely to myself, to feed, to bathe, to clothe them myself. I had heard of the clean, wind-swept Cape Cod dunes, which appeared to be as far from the ugliness of civilization as I could get. Socialism, anarchism, syndicalism, progressivism—I was tired of them all. At the end of the spring, thoroughly depressed and dissatisfied, I tucked the children under my arms, boarded a Fall River boat, and sailed off, a pioneer to Provincetown.
In 1913 the tip of the Cape was nothing but a fishing village with one planked walk which, I was told, had been paid for by Congress. Up and down its length the bellman, the last of the town criers, walked, proclaiming the news.
At first we lived in the upper story of a fisherman’s house right on the water. After he went out in the morning, his wife and her children, and I and mine, were left alone. Then the old women recalled scenes from their early days on the whaling vessels. Their mothers had brought them forth unaided, and their own sons, in turn, had been born on the ships and apprenticed to their husbands. They fitted into life simply, but the younger Portuguese, who were taking over the fishing industry, were asking what they should do about limiting their families.
The village was rather messy and smelled of fish. I was still too close to humanity and wanted to be more alone, so we moved to the extreme end of town. Our veranda faced the Bay, and when the tide was high the water came up and lapped at the piles on which the cottage was built. Stuart, Grant, and Peggy used to sit on the steps and dabble their toes. At low tide they had two miles of beach on which to skip and run; it was a wonderful place to play, and all summer we had sunrise breakfasts, sunset picnics.
Ethel, who had married Jack Byrne, was now widowed and had also gone into nursing. She had considerable free time and stayed with me. Consequently, I was able to leave the children in her care when I made my expeditions to Boston’s far-famed public library, taking the Dorothy Bradford at noon, and coming back the next day. Even there I found no information more reliable than that exchanged by back-fence gossips in any small town.
I spent the entire season at Provincetown, groping for knowledge, classifying all my past activities in their proper categories, weighing the pros and cons of what good there was in them and also what they lacked. It was a period of gestation. Just as you give birth to a child, so you can give birth to an idea.
Between interims of brooding and playing with the children I took part in the diversions of the minute colony of congenial people. Charles Hawthorne had a school of painting, and Mary Heaton Vorse with her husband, Joseph O’Brien, were there; so also were Hutch Hapgood and Neith Boyce. Jessie Ashley had lifted Big Bill Haywood out of the slough of the Paterson strike and brought him down to rest and recuperate.
Big Bill was one of the few who saw what I was aiming at, although fearful that my future might involve the happiness of my children. Even he did not feel that the small-family question was significant enough to be injected into the labor platform. Nevertheless, as we rambled up and down the beach he came to my aid with that cheering encouragement of which I was so sorely in need. He never wasted words in advising me to “wait.” Instead, he suggested that I go to France and see for myself the conditions resulting from generations of family limitation in that country. This struck me as a splendid idea, because it would also give Bill Sanger a chance to paint instead of continuing to build suburban houses.
The trip to Europe seemed so urgent that no matter what sacrifices had to be made, we decided to make them when we came to them. In the fall we sold the house at Hastings, gave away some of our furniture and put the rest in storage. Although we did not realize it at the time, our gestures indicated a clean sweep of the past.
Anita Block proposed that we go via Scotland; she wanted me to write three or four articles on what twenty-five years of municipal ownership in Glasgow had done for women and children. Socialists were talking about how everything there belonged to the people themselves and had earned their own way—banks, schools, homes, parks, markets, art galleries, museums, laundries, bath houses, hospitals, and tramways. The city was about to pay off the last debt on the transportation system, and this was being hailed as a great victory, a perfect example of what Socialism could do. It sounded big and fine, and I, too, was impressed. Certainly in Glasgow, I thought, I should find women walking hand in hand with men, and children free and happy.
In October the Sangers sailed from Boston on a cabin boat, little and crowded, and one black night two weeks later steamed up the Clyde. The naval program of 1913 was causing every shipyard to run double shifts, and the flare and glare against the somber dark was like fairyland—giant, sparkling starlights reaching from the horizon into the sky, a beautiful introduction to Utopia.
The very next day I started out upon my investigations. To mind the children, aged nine, five, and three, I availed myself of a sort of employment bureau run by the Municipal Corporation. I had been told that anyone could call here for any imaginable type of service. In response to my summons, there promptly arrived at my door, standing straight and machine-like, a small boy in a buttons uniform, with chin strap holding his cap on the side of his head. Willie MacGuire’s stipend was to be twelve cents an hour, or fifty cents for the half day. His function was to take the three out, entertain them, and return them faithfully at any time designated. Though he was no bigger than Stuart, his efficient manner reassured me, and I soon learned that he performed his duties diligently.
Religiously I made the rounds of all the social institutions, and at first everything appeared as I had been led to expect—except the weather. It had always just rained, and, when the sun did show itself, it was seldom for long enough to dry up the walks. Though the streets were clean, they were invariably wet and damp, and nobody wore rubbers. Everywhere could be seen little girls down on their knees, scrubbing the door-steps in front of the houses, or, again, carrying huge bundles or baskets of groceries to be delivered at the homes of the buyers. The people themselves seemed cold and rigid, as dismal as their climate. Only the policemen had a sense of humor.
As I proceeded, flaws in the vaunted civic enterprises began to display themselves. Glasgow had its show beauty spots, but even the model tenements were not so good as our simplest, lower-middle-class apartment buildings. One had been constructed for the accommodation of “deserving and respectable widows and widowers belonging to the working class” having one or more children with no one to care for them while the parents were away. But the building had been turned over to the exclusive use of widowers. Widows and their children had to shift for themselves.
All tenements were planned scientifically on the basis of so many cubic feet of air and so much light per so many human beings, ranging from quarters for two to those for five. No overcrowding was allowed.
“Well,” I asked, “what happens when there are five or six children?”
“Oh, they can’t live here,” replied the superintendent. “They must go elsewhere.”
“But where?”
Conversation ceased.
With particular attention I traced the adventures of one family which had expanded beyond the three-child limit. The parents had first moved over to the fringes of the city, and thereafter as more children were born had traveled from place to place, progressively more dingy, more decrepit. They now had nine and were inhabiting a hovel in the shipbuilding slums, unimaginably filthy and too far from the splendid utilities ever to enjoy them.
The further I looked, the greater grew the inconsistency. The model markets carried chiefly wholesale produce, and the really poor, who were obliged to huddle on the far side of the city, contented themselves with bread and tea and were thankful to